Alexia talks with her nurses about all the things she's experienced and learned while inside the game. The nurses also work and take her blood sample, question her, and check her vitals on the monitor's screen. After her morning tests, Alexia is given her breakfast, which she quickly devours, much to the shock of the junior nurse.
"She was given two trays of eggs, bacon, orange slices, and two glasses of milk, and she took both trays down in under ten minutes. Where is she putting that stuff?" Luaren asks in utter bewilderment.
"Hahaha. She's always had an appetite. Even though she's on her sick bed, she's able to take down her meals in a matter of minutes. It always surprises me."
"She probably gets that fierce appetite from father." Erica and Lauren turn in surprise to see Arthur standing in the doorway, "Afterall, he has always been a real glutton himself."
"Oh, Arthur. Nice to see you again," says Erica.
"You too," he answers with a smile.
"What do you mean dad has always been a glutton?" Alexia asks with a tilted head.
"He may hold himself back at public events, but if you ever catch him at personal gatherings, he's constantly stuffing his face. It's pretty funny."
The entire room laughs for a bit, and then the nurses excuse themselves so that Arthur can have his time with his little sister. Alexia begins by telling him about what happened earlier this morning and how she fought her way out of her tough battle.
"Ha. That certainly does sound like a difficult fight. Sorry I missed it."
"It's alright, Arthur. I know that you try to be here for me as much as you can and I don't blame you at all," the little girl says with a warm smile.
Arthur chuckles and then pats his little sister's head, "There you go again. You are an incredible little girl."
"Haha," she laughs cheerfully. Then she remembers, "Oh, by the way I wanted to ask you something about the game."
"What is it?" he asks as he takes out the game's manual.
"I saw this button on my status bar that said 'Evolution,' on it. What is that?"
Arthur flips through the pages of the book and then finds what he's looking for, "Ah. In Legend Conquerors Online, all races can evolve into new species. They can all do this a total of four times, making for a total of five different evolutionary stages. And the requirements vary, but all of them require you to be level 100 when you evolve."
"What do you mean the requirements vary?"
"Well like I said, all evolutions require you to level 100. But, in order to evolve into a certain species, you may have to complete a certain task a certain number of times, or gather certain items. When you evolve, you may go back to level 1, but your stats get a boost."
"So even though I go back to level 1, I'll be stronger than when I was level 100 in my previous form?"
"That's exactly right. In your case, you have three different evolutionary paths. You can either become a Bloody Empress Vampire, a Vampire Chaos Overlord, or an Eclipse Vampire Goddess," Arthur notices his sister perking up at the sound of the last option, "Ah, that last one sounded nice to you huh? An Eclipse Vampire Goddess is the most powerful out of your evolutionary choices, but at the same time, it's also the most difficult to achieve and the hardest to level up."
Alexia smiles at her brother, "You're the one who said that life is about challenges right? If I'm going to choose a path, I might as well choose one with a lot of obstacles so that I can have a lot of fun."
Arthur sighs, "Good grief. How can a 10 year old be such an adult? Oh, and by the way, your skills and magic can evolve too."
"My magic and skills can evolve?!"
"Yep. However, before you can get magic skills to evolve, you have to get them to max level which is 10, and you also have to get all the spells from their spell trees. Once you do that, they'll evolve into a new type of magic and they'll have an entirely different spell tree."
"Whoa! That's so cool! So what can my magic skills evolve into?" she asks with anticipation.
"According to this, fire magic evolves into blaze magic, and then into inferno magic. Inferno magic allows you to create explosions and stuff. Darkness magic evolves into shadow magic, and then into void magic. Void magic lets you create things like black holes. Finally, your lighting magic evolves into thunder magic, and then into storm magic," Arthur explains.
"So awesome! What about my other skills?"
"Well, as for your vampire exclusive skills, if you do choose the path of the Eclipse Vampire Goddess, your regeneration skill should evolve into high-speed regeneration, and then into a skill called immortality. The rest of your vampire-related skills will all evolve eventually."
"So players can evolve four times and skills can evolve twice."
"Good catch."
"Alright. I remember you saying yesterday that players can also build their own nations, right? Can you tell me how to do that?"
"Sure thing…" Arthur flips through the pages of the manual once more, "... Okay, building a nation is actually both simple and complicated at the same time. To build a nation, you need 1 million gold coins and 500 thousand wood panels that you get from destroying trees. The gold will be used to buy an area of the map about the size of California and a small army, and the wood will be used to build your first stronghold. Your army will only number 500 at first. You'll also need to choose your faction."
"Faction?"
"There are three factions, good, evil, and neutral. The evil faction cannot align with the good faction and vice versa, but the neutral faction can side with either. The different factions each have different armies that you can choose from. For example, if you choose the evil faction, you can have an army of undead, an army of demons, an army of vampires and so on and so forth. Whereas the people in the good faction can have any of those forces in their own armies. Instead they have soldiers like angels, elves, and fairies."
"Isn't each map the size of several continents? How do you expand your territory?" Alexia asks.
"You gain land by either buying it, or fighting in wars against other nations. If two nations fight in a war, the winner gets the loser's territory and the gold and items in their treasuries. Then there's the people in your nation. Even though they're NPCs, you have to make them happy. You do this by creating food and energy producing facilities. The happier your citizens are, the more gold you get from them."
"I see. What can you use the gold for?"
"You can use that for any number of things in your territory. For one, you'll need to create magic energy generators so that you can produce more troops. Then you can use the gold to upgrade your troops. Players can also visit your countries so you'll also have to build a quest guild. Doing so will increase your gold even further."
"What about the troops?"
"There are several different types of soldiers that you can create. These include infantry, cavalry, stealth, magic support, magic attack, archers, aerial, war beasts, war machines, and commanders. Their ranks range from 1 to 10. And once they reach rank 10, then can be upgraded to their elite forms, with the exception of the commanders."
"Why not the commanders?"
Arthur smiles, "You're going to like this. The commanders in one's army can be just as powerful as a max-level player."
"Even when they've evolved the maximum number of times?!"
"That's right. The commanders in a player's army are hand-created by the player or player's ruling the country themselves. You can make them any race, give them any feature, and grant them any power you want as long as you have enough gold and magic energy stored up to do so."
Sparkles appear in Alexia's eyes, "That's so awesome! And to think that they can all be just as powerful as the strongest players. How many commanders can I have in an army?"
"You can have up to thirty. And if an enemy were to attack your fortress, you'll be able to coordinate the battle through them."
"All of this sounds awesome, but how will I be able to manage an entire nation?"
"You'll be able to do that all from your throne room in your main castle. You can also have up to 50 players managing a country together. Oh, and make sure that you set up defenses for each of your strongholds. This includes things like catapults, tretchubetts, giant crossbows, and magic cannons."
"This is all so amazing," Alexia says while laying her head back on her pillow and trying to absorb all the information, "Do you think that I can do it?"
"I know you can. But, wouldn't you rather get some friends to help you out with it? After all, it's going to be a lot of work if you go at it alone."
She smiles, "Then I guess that it's a good thing that I'm smart and have a lot of free time on my hands."
Arthur laughs, "Be that as it may, try to get along with other people. You don't have to always go at it alone."
"You got it," she answers with a smile.
With that, Alexia logs back into the game world, and continues to spend the day fighting and talking with her brother.