Early in the morning, I began carving a couple of masks. Carving was a skill my biological father had taught me on a camping trip. Back then, I had carved an entire chess set, learning the basics of this art. Now, I applied this skill to create two masks - Guy Fawkes masks, also known as Anonymous masks. These masks embodied a piece of our personality as outsiders, as born programmers.
Although I had no paint to color them, I was satisfied with the result. The simple wooden masks had a mysterious allure, concealing our identity and granting us anonymity.
I handed one of the masks to Mark, and he examined it curiously.
"V - as in Vedanta?" he asked, recalling our earlier discussion about identity and pseudonyms.
"No, more like Anonymous," I replied, smiling. "If we don't keep our identity secret, we might draw attention to ourselves - someone who wants to uncover the secret of the weapons or simply someone seeking a formidable opponent."
Mark nodded thoughtfully and put on the mask. It was symbolism that underscored our role in this world, portraying us as enigmatic and powerful cultivators.
"Check this out," Mark said, sending me a script. "I developed this in my spare time."
I opened the script and began reading it. It was an auto-dodge program designed to help us evade arrows. Mark explained that the movements would be forced and jerky while the script was active.
"Jerky movements are still better than getting hit by an arrow," I agreed.
As I skimmed through the script, I noticed some changes I could make to improve it. I added that the potentially flying arrows should be tracked by sound. Additionally, I planned to display the trajectory of the arrows in augmented reality, allowing us to anticipate their direction and dodge them in advance.
"Here, I've created a Git repository for it and shared the project with you," I said, handing Mark the information.
[Git created]
"You do realize we wanted to reach the mountain before it gets dark. Even we don't have night vision. Nori can't process information that doesn't exist," Mark reminded me.
"Yes, you're right," I agreed. I saved the final changes I had made and added the rest to my to-do list. There was still a lot to accomplish, but we couldn't postpone it any further. Determined, we set off for the bandit stronghold.