CHAPTER 13: THE SHORTCUT
The coordinates glowed in my inventory like stolen treasure.
Su Mucheng's shortcut data was comprehensive—wall positions mapped to the pixel, timing windows annotated to the tenth of a second, optimal entry angles that Excellent Era's professional players had refined through hundreds of test runs. The kind of intelligence that guilds would kill for. The kind that she'd given me without hesitation.
December 11th. Nine days since the server launched.
Time to break another record.
I opened the party interface and sent an invite to Soft Mist.
The acceptance came in three seconds. Tang Rou was already in the Boneyard lobby, her Battle Mage standing motionless at the dungeon entrance like she'd been waiting. No greeting. No questions. Just presence.
She knew I'd be doing this tonight.
She's been watching my login patterns.
Before I could send the ready signal, another notification popped:
[Steamed Bun Invasion has joined your party!]
I stared at the message.
I didn't invite him.
Party chat lit up immediately:
"LORD GRIM! I saw you were online and I thought to myself, 'Steamed Bun, your cultured umbrella friend is probably doing something exciting!' And I was RIGHT!"
I checked the party settings. Open invitation—I'd forgotten to lock it after the scouting run.
Careless.
Or maybe not.
The PRD pulled up Steamed Bun's profile automatically: spacing efficiency 97%, skill usage 23%, combat awareness anomalous. His chaos had saved time during the scout. His unpredictability had forced me to adapt in ways that improved my own play.
Maybe he's exactly what this run needs.
I typed: "Stay close. Follow pings. Don't die."
"UNDERSTOOD! I will be the most followable person you've ever met!"
Tang Rou's Soft Mist shifted slightly—the Battle Mage equivalent of an eyebrow raise. She'd never partied with Steamed Bun before. This would be interesting.
[Cleansing Mist has joined your party!]
The fourth arrival was silent. Su Mucheng's alt account materialized at the dungeon entrance, Launcher class, gear that looked deliberately understated to avoid drawing attention. Professional-grade positioning even while standing still.
The team's complete.
Battle Mage for aggressive DPS.
Brawler for chaos and disruption.
Launcher for ranged coverage and burst damage.
Unspecialized for... everything else.
[PRD: Cross-player interaction logging initiated. New data category: Team Dynamics.]
I loaded Su Mucheng's shortcut coordinates into my navigation overlay and pinged the dungeon entrance.
"Moving in. First shortcut is 47 seconds from spawn."
The Boneyard opened around us in shades of gray and death.
Skeleton patrols. Bone constructs. The familiar architecture of a dungeon I'd scouted twice but never run at full speed with a party. The PRD tracked everything—mob positions, patrol timers, the subtle differences between what my meta-knowledge expected and what the 10th Server actually delivered.
Corridor one. Standard pull. Three mobs.
I pinged the engagement point and Lord Grim moved.
The first skeleton fell to a spear thrust before it finished its aggro animation. Soft Mist was already past me, Dragon Breaks the Ranks carving through the second mob with timing that hadn't existed a week ago. Steamed Bun's Brawler punched the third skeleton so hard it flew into the fourth—a mob I hadn't even targeted yet.
He pulled an extra mob.
But the AOE from Tang Rou's follow-up caught it anyway.
Net time: faster.
[Corridor 1 cleared. Time: -4 seconds vs. baseline.]
Cleansing Mist's Launcher hadn't fired a single shot. Su Mucheng was saving her cooldowns for the shortcut timing window—she knew the route better than I did.
Forty-three seconds to the first shortcut.
We moved.
The shortcut was a wall segment that looked identical to every other wall segment in the corridor.
Su Mucheng's data said it was destructible during a specific 2.3-second window that occurred exactly 47 seconds after dungeon spawn. The window coincided with a background animation cycle—a design oversight that Excellent Era's testers had discovered and never reported to the developers.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
I swapped to hammer form and struck the wall.
The stone crumbled. Behind it, a passage that bypassed corridors two through four entirely—a straight shot to the mid-dungeon checkpoint that would save twenty-five seconds if we cleared it clean.
Steamed Bun's reaction was immediate: "THERE'S A SECRET PASSAGE?! I LOVE SECRET PASSAGES!"
He charged through before I could ping the safe zones.
Of course he did.
I followed, Tang Rou on my heels, Cleansing Mist's Launcher already lining up shots through the opening. The passage was narrow—single-file only—and the mobs inside were higher level than the main route. Excellent Era's data said the optimal clear involved precise positioning that used the narrow corridor to funnel enemies into AOE kill zones.
Steamed Bun was punching a bone construct in entirely the wrong direction.
Adapt.
I shifted Lord Grim's position to cover his flank, called a target switch to Tang Rou, and watched Cleansing Mist's artillery fire delete a mob cluster I'd been planning to kite.
She's compensating for the chaos.
She's used to this.
She's played with Ye Xiu for years, and Ye Xiu's style was—
The thought died as my fingers fumbled a weapon swap. Tonfa to gun, three frames late, the Desync eating into my execution at exactly the wrong moment.
[Combo chain interrupted. -2.3 seconds.]
Damn it.
But Tang Rou was already filling the gap. Her Soft Mist slid into the position Lord Grim should have held, absorbing the mob aggro I'd dropped, turning my mistake into her opportunity.
She saw the fumble.
She covered without being asked.
That's not rivalry. That's teamwork.
The passage cleared in eighteen seconds—seven seconds faster than Excellent Era's professional average.
The boss chamber opened ahead of us like a mouth full of bones.
The Boneyard's signature encounter: a Necromancer surrounded by skeleton guards, three phases of escalating chaos, and a DPS check in phase two that punished parties who couldn't coordinate their burst windows.
In the source material, this boss was where Ye Xiu first demonstrated why team synergy mattered more than individual skill.
Let's see if that lesson translates.
I pinged positions. Soft Mist took the left flank. Steamed Bun—against all logic—understood the concept of "right flank" and actually went there. Cleansing Mist set up at maximum range, her Launcher's targeting reticle already locked on the Necromancer's center mass.
"Phase one: clear adds. Phase two: burst window at 60% HP. Phase three: don't stand in the purple."
"What's purple?" Steamed Bun asked.
"The death circles. They're purple."
"I HATE PURPLE!"
The engagement started.
Phase one was controlled chaos.
Skeleton guards spawned in waves, and the party's damage output tore through them faster than I'd projected. Tang Rou's improvement since our duel was measurable—her combo completion rate was approaching 97%, and her positioning showed none of the overcommitment that had cost her both rounds. She was learning from every fight, adapting in real-time, becoming something more than the character profile I'd inherited from the source material.
Steamed Bun's chaos found its rhythm. His punches drew aggro in patterns that looked random but weren't—the PRD was flagging his movements as "anomalous" because they defied conventional modeling, but from inside the fight, I could see the instinct beneath the madness. He moved like someone who'd never been taught the wrong way to play.
And Cleansing Mist was professional grace in action. Su Mucheng's positioning was flawless, her burst timing synchronized with Lord Grim's setup without any explicit coordination. We'd never played together, but her muscle memory was built on years of partnership with the real Ye Xiu—and apparently, that translated.
[Phase 1 complete. Time: -8 seconds vs. baseline.]
"Burst window in three... two... one."
Phase two.
The Necromancer's HP bar hit 60% and the burst window opened.
Everyone unloaded. Tang Rou's Rising Dragon Soars the Sky. Steamed Bun's Brick—thrown at the exact wrong angle, but somehow landing anyway. Cleansing Mist's Satellite Beam, the Launcher's signature skill, burning through the boss's HP like paper.
My hands moved through the Umbrella's weapon forms: spear for the initial thrust, gun for the ranged follow-up, tonfa for the combo extension. The Desync was there—it was always there—but the team's damage output covered the gaps.
[Necromancer HP: 40%. Phase 3 threshold approaching.]
The boss screamed and the purple death circles started spawning.
"Don't stand in—"
Steamed Bun was already standing in one.
His HP dropped by 30% before he punched his way out, somehow using the damage animation's knockback to reposition into a better angle for his next attack.
That shouldn't have worked.
But it did.
The Necromancer fell at the 8:47 mark.
[BONEYARD DUNGEON CLEARED!]
[New Server Record: 8:47. Previous Record: 9:24.]
[Party Leader: Lord Grim]
The notification went server-wide. World chat exploded.
I leaned back from the keyboard and let the moment breathe.
Two records in four days. The 10th Server knew Lord Grim's name now—and more importantly, they knew the name of a party that had just demolished a record by thirty-seven seconds.
Party chat pinged:
"WE'RE FAMOUS!" Steamed Bun typed in all caps. "LORD GRIM, WE'RE FAMOUS PEOPLE NOW!"
Tang Rou's response was a single thumbs-up emoji—the first non-verbal communication I'd seen from her.
Cleansing Mist typed: "Good run. Same time tomorrow?"
Same time tomorrow.
Like this is already routine.
Like we're already a team.
[PRD Update: Team Dynamics data compiled. Cross-player synergy patterns flagged for analysis.]
My inbox started filling before I could process the notification. Congratulations. Recruitment offers. Accusations of hacking from players who couldn't believe a record could fall that fast.
And one message that stood out from the rest.
[From: Chen Yehui (Excellent Dynasty)]
[Subject: Congratulations on your achievement]
The message was short, polite, and completely devoid of the warmth that characterized the other guild leaders' recruitment pitches. No money offered. No elite squad access promised. Just questions.
"Impressive clear time. The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella is an unusual choice—where did you learn to use it? The technique reminds me of someone."
I read the message twice.
Chen Yehui.
Excellent Era's guild operative.
The man who spends the entire source material trying to undermine Ye Xiu's comeback.
And he's already fishing.
[PRD: New profile initiated. Chen Yehui (Excellent Dynasty). Classification: Hostile Intelligence Asset.]
I closed the inbox without responding.
The celebration could wait. The team had just announced itself to the server—and to the people who would do anything to stop what we were building.
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