When Alexander opened his eyes in the gaming booth, he found that it was 4 A.M. in the real world.
He took his time as he got out of bed and readjusted to the slightly different sensations of non-simulated reality. While he waited for the sun to rise, he connected to the forums for Horus.
As he'd suspected, his inbox was stuffed with over 15,000 unread personal messages.
Nearly all were meaningless… trolls, insults, and proposals of all kinds, including many applications to join his guild, Eclipse.
Of course, Alexander didn't even manage the guild anymore. That was all up to Lotus, now that she was the guild leader.
Alexander took advantage of his free time to sell GC. The GC/credit ratio had improved greatly since the events of Era, and today he could gain 2.89 credits for each GC he sold! Not bad at all.
Alexander sold 5,000,000 GC and quickly received 14,450,000 credits in exchange.
What a staggering number! It would even be enough to house his family in Paris's 16th district, the bourgeois neighborhood everyone aspired to. With this in mind, he looked over the options which the real estate agency had sent him based on his stated requirements the other day.
Of course, the prices for every building were completely insane… but then, that's what one had to pay for top-of-the-line services and amenities! The 16th district had the best policemen, firemen, hospitals, schools, and even special air treatment facilities to mitigate the effects of pollution.
Even within the 16th district, there were quite a few appealing options. By the time Alexander was done surveying all the real estate listings, it was 6 A.M. He went back to the forum and posted a topic about his quest, "Massive Conscription," encouraging players to join the Federation army and clarifying that all players would suffer persecution if the quota was not met. He hoped that many players would greedily flock to any option he suggested, hoping to leech off his recommendation like it was an inside stock trade.
Of course, even this measure wouldn't be enough to recruit the 10,000,000 players he needed, but it would be a start. Hopefully, he'd find some more opportunities in the near future to convince players to join up. The fact that the Federation had access to weapons and armor that were much more advanced than the gear on Era would make many solo players take notice, of course.Then, after posting this topic, Alexander looked at the forum's other hottest topics.
Many were discussing the possibility of a war between the Federation and the Orc Empire, of course. After all, 99% of players were in Federation space at any given time, and were obviously worried about whether their gameplay would be affected by the war.
The armageddon on Era was still fresh in everyone's minds, and few players looked forward to another event that might completely stall their gaming efforts. Yet, many others were excited at the prospect of war. For them, Horus's ability to change so much from day to day was the most exciting part of the game.
Nevertheless, Alexander knew the impending galactic war wasn't as serious as it looked. Wars of such scale were extremely expensive for nations in the third technological stage, because ships had such exorbitant costs of production.
In his first life, most wars were brief affairs that were resolved after only one or two battles. After that point, all nations involved tended to be reluctant to spend any more resources, which might leave them helpless against enemies waiting to pounce! It was well known that most nations preferred losing a little territory rather than a fleet, so border skirmishes were often uneventful, so long as the winner didn't press their advantage too much.
Most often, it was a fleet commander's ability to conserve their ships and to withdraw without suffering casualties that brought them honor, rather than their ability to wipe out the enemy in battle.
Knowing all this, Alexander simply ignored most of the topics concerning the war. It was very likely that the two sides would have a skirmish or two, then make peace. Instead, another topic caught his eye: a discussion of the top bounties in Horus.
---------------------------------
| Top 10 Bounty List
---------------------------------
|1| Apophis (Eclipse): 115,000,000 GC
|2| Lucifer (The Warlord): 76,000,000 GC
|3| Ceasar (Renovatio Imperii): 69,000,000 GC
|4| Zeus (Spartan): 47,000,000 GC
|5| Joker (BlackJack): 44,000,000 GC
|6| Mario (Toxic): 40,000,000 GC
|7| Arthas (The Scourge): 34,000,000 GC
|8| Zelda (Hyrule): 29,000,000 GC
|9| DungEater (/): 27,000,000 GC
|10| Scorpion (The Warlord): 10,000,000 GC
Unsurprisingly, the first eight slots were filled by the 7 Gods… and Apophis, of course.
However, Scorpion's place on the board was very interesting! In Alexander's former life, Scorpion had discovered the unique quest in the ruins which Apophis had hunted down upon first joining this new life's version of the game… but then had completely disappeared from relevancy.
In this new life, though, Scorpion had become the tenth most infamous player in the game! It seemed that Apophis stealing from him had given him the drive he needed to crawl his way to the top!
But the entry which intrigued Alexander the most was DungEater in ninth place. Not only did Alexander not recognize the player, but he was the only one on the entire list who didn't have a guild. He'd become the ninth most infamous player in the game—which almost surely meant he was the ninth best player in the game—with no help!
Before he could spend any time researching this mysterious player, Alexander received a holo-watch message from Laurent, the friend who'd lent him the VR helmet.
LAURENT: "Answer me! Stop playing dead and give me back my helmet! You'd better not have broken it!"
Alexander was overcome with embarrassment! Yes, he supposed the exam period would now be over, and his friend would be eager to jump into the VRMMORPG everyone was constantly talking about! He quickly sent back a message.
ALEXANDER: "Sorry man, I was playing! I'll see you this afternoon at the Café Saint-Michel in Sector 5."
Alexander was about to research DungEater, but then the sound of his parents' alarm clock came faintly up from below. He rose and happily went downstairs to meet them.