Cut to Ares. She's now inside the game and in the training room, but then something goes wrong. As she walks towards the control panel, a glitch occurs; the dummy robots start moving strangely. Suddenly, the entire room is filled with glitches, startling her and causing her to fall to the floor. But after a few seconds, everything returns to normal.
What the hell is this?!!!!!!
Without hesitation, she quickly opened her social media feed and immediately checked the Q&A thread for the finals. Although people were talking about glitches, they were mostly minor bugs, but lately there had been more of them. Even small anomalies were becoming more frequent in the game. In her mind, it felt like something bad was about to happen soon.
While she was gathering information, the other three entered the game. It was Moon's first time using a VR set similar to Ares's, which made him so dizzy he couldn't walk,Ares walked towards him first.
"Hey!!! Moon are you alright?"
"I'm feeling dizzy and can't go on. I need to rest for a while." And he leaned against the wall.
"It ok ,I was the same at first. Try closing your eyes for a while, it might help,Okay let me ask you something, where does your group's name come from?"
"When the three of us first got together, I suggested that our team compete in the finals. Both of them really liked the idea and suggested that I be the team leader. I'm not sure yet whether I should be happy or sad about being the leader"
He made a thoughtful expression and then chuckled slightly.
"They used my name as the starting point for their team name. I told them it was embarrassing, but they said, "Go ahead," and together they named it Moonlight Squad"
"When I first heard it, I thought it sounded funny. Sorry about that"
"Oh, really? Haha," he said, his voice softening.
"And how's the dizziness?"
"It's better now. This is the first time I've used it, and it feels so new. Thank you," he smiled at her.
"W-well, that's good!!!" She blushed and looked away.
Throughout the day, the team practiced with each person's class of firearms. Moon asked Ares to teach her how to shoot the R.357. She agreed, and the two stood in front of a moving dummy. She let him try shooting first. He picked up the gun but used only one hand, firing six shots but only hitting two.
"No, no, you have to hold this gun with two hands. It's your first time using it, you're not accurate yet. Don't try to use it with only one hand"
Then she positioned him to shoot from behind. As he was about to pull the trigger, she, behind him, held his hands steady and then… BANG!!!!! Head Shoot!!!!
"Unbelievable! I hit it!"
"See? I told you to hold the gun with two hands; it's much more stable than holding it with one."
"Thank you for teaching me," he smiled at her again.
Ares, realizing he was holding her hand, quickly let go. Then, teasing remarks about the blossoming romance followed.
"Hey, hey! Do you think the same as me, g, that there's a strong scent of sweet love around here?
"Yeah, Semi, that's why there are ants everyhere!"
Both parted ways after hearing the surrounding birdsong, each going their own way to practice. But Ares was still puzzled by the glitch from earlier, so she tried to find more information on the internet about this phenomenon. Eventually, she came across a column that wrote about strange glitches occurring in games. Not only that, the poster discovered a cryptic message that appeared in the finals beta test trailer. It was a warning image that flashed for a few seconds and said...
GOOD EVENING !
THIS BROADCAST HAS BEEN HACKED BY CNS
[ SEEK THE TRUTH
BEYOND THE WALLS !]
And another one.
GOOD EVENING !
THIS BROADCAST HAS BEEN HACKED BY CNS
[ ONE NIGHT, THREE DAWNS
SEE THE SIGNS ]
"What the heck?! CNS? Who are these people anyway?"
After she had been searching for information for quite a while, Semi came to call her for lunch.
"What are you doing?"
"Huh!? You startled me! Nothing, nothing. Anyway, what do you want?"
"I was about to tell you that we should go have lunch out. I've heard those guys complaining for the past 30 minutes, and if we don't feed them, they'll turn into crazy monkeys!"
"So, have you guys decided where to eat yet? If not, I can recommend some good restaurants near our house"
"Okay, I'll go find those two monkeys first"
While Semi was going to call everyone over, Ares, who was about to look at the column, was shocked because a few seconds later the column was deleted, and it contained a disclaimer stating:
"This post violates cybersecurity rules. VAIIYA reserve the right to delete this post and ban its owner, effective immediately."