#[ me when i'm in a competition to choose the most unserious post title and my opponent is tumblr user @5point1

[5point1--blog]

what doesn't kill me gives me exp

introductory writing sample — cw: blood, violence

"Kafka, it's almost day reset. If I don't get my dailies done in the next ten minutes, I won't be able to claim the rewards." There was a whiny undertone to the young woman's complaint. The Stellaron Hunters had been out on a mission all morning and afternoon, and it was now system time 16:48:21. Part of being a hacker and a gamer was having a good memory; a certain amount of bandwidth in Silver Wolf's head was taken up to memorize the times associated with reward resets in her games. System time 17:00:00 was rapidly approaching, with not a second to waste. Surely, Elio's script could accommodate a measly few minutes to speedrun daily commissions?

Of course, nothing was stopping Silver Wolf from spending lavishly on ingame currency to make up for whatever she might have missed, were the day to roll over. However, to her, it was about the principle of things: keeping up her daily gaming streak to get the max amount of rewards, and feeling like you actually earned your gacha pulls. What's the fun of tossing exorbitant amounts of money at a game she would eventually beat in totality and grow bored of immediately? It's the challenge and the effort that matters. Funnily enough, this line of thinking also aligned to her view of life as a whole. Life to her was a game, and she'd long since maxed her level on Punklorde before Elio found her. Now, being able to traverse countless worlds and meet millions of NPCs and likeminded gamers meant she was living the dream.

System time now read 16:49:51. Silver Wolf did not even wait to consider Kafka's response, nor did her eyes peek up at the chaos ensuing before her (though she did wish Sam and Blade would pipe down a bit; her wireless earbuds were out of charge and all the combat noises in real life were drowning out the OST to her game). It's not like she could have exactly helped with the brute force work anyways - that was not Silver Wolf's expertise. Her deft fingers rapidly tapped across the screen of her phone, equipped with state-of-the-art processor to make switching between games and running multiple games within the screen easy. AFK daily rewards, collected; MMORPG commissions, completed; FPS battle pass rewards, claimed. Silver Wolf tabbed in and out from game to game. This was but a fraction of her true skill - support through technological means, even though it was now used for something that the rest of the Stellaron Hunters would consider "meaningless." Not to worry, she wasn't dead weight - the next time a security system needed to be bypassed, there truly would be nobody better for the job (as long as you don't mention Screwllum's name).

System time read 17:00:04. She was able to complete all of her game dailies except one. Really, by now she should have known to step away from the action so blood wouldn't get on her screen and murk up the display - that was precious time wasted to wipe it off and continue her missions. "Sam! Come on, I was on my last NPC dialogue!"

That was the last thing that poor fellow that now lay lifeless on the ground heard. It was almost a pity her "only" contributions to this mission were all the intricacies of getting the team from point A to point B, including intel collection and manipulating basically anything electronic in the vicinity for the benefit of the end goal. Still, a 5.1 billion credit bounty doesn't get put on your head without you doing something serious to warrant it. Criminal? Maybe so. Look at it from a different perspective - she just chose the villain class on this save of the game since it had the most story paths, that's all.