My vision cleared and I saw a pile of gold in front of me. So it was worth way more than I could carry. I turned my vision completely inward and leveled up a few more times. Level sixteen! I loved this armor! The first hour of playing a character was always the best. After that it became a slogging descent into power as I worried away at the remaining experience required. I touched the pile and it all vanished into my pack. Fifty million. Damn. And he'd left his sword! Most higher leveled angels destroyed their weapons when they burst. It took a truly powerful weapon to survive their death sequence. I picked it up. It was unidentified. Damn. I shoved it in my pack and walked slowly for the staging point pad. I could carry it, but it was a very close thing. One more coin and I'd be crawling. From there I went back to Zezhria. I landed on the pad and rushed to the nearest merchant. "You got an identify scroll?" she nodded. "Great, how much?"
"Eighty." I summoned a stack of coins on my hand to transfer the money and she handed me a scroll. I immediately pulled out the angel's sword and identified it. Such a powerful monster, it was probably over level thirty, at least. That meant the weapon, since it was undoubtedly better than uncommon, would likely be better than mine. It was! The sword was a level sixty rare! No wonder it tossed me so far despite his level being low enough that I could take him. Just another Holy Sword, but it was a freakishly powerful one. I giggled at my good luck. "Damn, where'd a weakling like you find that?" I glanced up at her. She was one of the player vendors. So she thought she could make better money selling to other players than the shops. "Or any of your gear? You've got to be loaded to buy cheat gear."
How dare she insinuate that I paid real money for in-game gear! "It's not cheat gear. I just buy the standard level sixty gear from the shops. I'm loaded, yes, but I don't cheat. I earned every single coin by myself, thank you very much." The potions were a natural means of gaining quick power. If I wanted to I could have crafted them myself, but that was tedious and I was rich. Regardless, it wasn't cheating. It might have been a loophole, but those existed in every game. The developers even put some of them in on purpose. I wasn't sure if linking gold and having those potions were one of the ones they'd left on purpose or not, but it was there. I wasn't cheating, I was using the system the way it was meant to be used. By design or accident was irrelevant.
She scoffed. "Any level sixteen wearing level sixty gear is a cheat. I don't care how you got it." That didn't make any sense. If you could buy it from a shop vendor, it was legal. Thus, not cheating. "Being filthy rich is just an excuse."
"Says the girl selling level forty gear. If you'd just kill more monsters, you'd get richer faster. A level sixty gets a minimum of two thousand gold for each kill. You can make money from buying and selling stuff, but there's more money in real estate than gear. You can even own the city, if you get rich enough. Not a ton of buyers for that large of a property, but just saying you own a city is pretty cool. You've chosen the least lucrative method of gaining money and complain about being poor." I shook my head and moved over to the open anvil. I took off my chest armor and started pounding away at it. The better equipment you used a skill on, the faster the skill advanced. It didn't hurt that I repaired my gear myself for each and every one of my characters. If there was anything I was a pro at, it was probably repairing gear. The game was even trying to get me to fail with some mistimed prompts, but I knew better than that. By the time I'd finished repairing my armor, my repair skill was up to level twenty.
I'd been pounding the armor for almost two hours, and she was still watching me. "What kind of a name is Voidslayer58008?" one that I'd chosen in twelve seconds for my first character. Names weren't important for solo players. I pretended not to hear her. She walked around until she was looking me in the face. "It sounds more like a wizard name than a rogue." Like she could talk. What kind of Necromancer decided on the name Lethe? "How do you know so much?"
"Because I've got twenty four characters to level sixty. The character limit was set to thirty six, so I decided to max out the game. I wasn't fast enough. Still pisses me off, though." Not really, part of having unachievable goals. I'd gone farther than anyone else I knew of, but I'd failed to accomplish my goal. Sure there was a little irritation, but nowhere near enough to call worthy of being "pissed off" about it. I'd never actually expected to get anywhere near as far as I had.
Was that the reason I was such an angry person? I set unreasonable goals and then got mad at myself for not meeting them? Maybe. I was getting better, though. I wasn't even that mad this time. And I could never limit myself to realism. Couldn't abandon a goal, either. Fucked if I do, fucked if I don't.
"Get to level sixty a few times and you gain perspective. I own seventy shops and over four hundred houses. They all give me revenue without me doing anything at all. They're spread across the world, but they all pay into my account, so I don't even have to be using the character I bought it with for the money to come in. I get two million gold per hour for doing nothing. Even when I'm not online. And this game is realistic, money is the most powerful weapon you can have." I didn't mention the fact that I'd stopped buying real estate when I realized that dragon hunting was far more lucrative. They each had hoards of at least ten billion gold. And they were more fun than sitting in the real estate room in the bank. And the real estate took two or three months to pay itself off. Millions per hour sounds nice when you don't know it costs hundreds of billions to get to that point. The beta was only a month long. I'd still sunk a ton of money into businesses before I realized that, though. "That's the best advice anyone can give you. Get a lot of money, and you can pay other players to do stuff for you. The npcs aren't the only ones that can put bounties on stuff. Or design quests." Damn. I was in teacher mode. How'd she do that? "It's all in the guidebook. Read it sometime."
"You read that whole novel? Damn, you've got a lot of time on your hands. I can only play for an hour a day. My Dad doesn't like videogames. Says they melt my brain." He was so wrong. Games expanded the minds of the players in so many ways it was ridiculous. I'd read an article about it before I bought my VRI, I couldn't even remember all of the ways this game was supposed to make me smarter. "So, are you actually a boy? That kind of compulsiveness is usually reserved for girls. Boys are more the type to just jump in and start hacking at stuff."
How naïve. "That's one type of boy. There are more types of boys that just jocks. The morons might be the only memorable ones, but we nerds exist too. How about you, are you actually a girl, or just a perv?" she laughed at me like I'd made a joke. "What? It's not like nobody does it. That's why the game is technically Mature, no matter what the system says. Everyone knows it's not a game designed for kids. Because our bodies are realistic, one hundred percent. They got away with a Teen rating because character detail isn't a degree of sexual conduct. And none of the main quests or cut-scenes have any sex in them at all. Skin of their teeth, if you ask me. If gore or violence were a consideration, that would have shoved it way over, but those were done away with over four hundred years ago."
"What main quests? I didn't know there were main quests. Or cut-scenes. When do you see those?" I almost busted up laughing. I'd thought my joke was obvious, but apparently not. "What's so funny?"
"There aren't any. That's why they got away with a Teen rating. Because the raters couldn't figure out what to use. This is the only game I've read about that doesn't have a plot at all, it is completely controlled by the players and their interactions with the npcs. The battles are gruesome, but that isn't a rating anymore. There aren't any quests built around sex, drugs, alcohol, or anything else they actually screen for, so that was their evaluation of what was available. The testers didn't know you could have sex with the npcs or other players, so they didn't think there was any sex in the game. If the testers knew what they were doing, it would have been rated Mature. Or Adult." I'd figured it out accidentally. I'd asked an npc if she'd give me a blowjob for ten grand when I'd made my first million. I never expected her to do it. I didn't even know that my character model had a penis, as taking off all of my equipment had me in underwear and trying to take it off myself didn't do anything. It was a little disappointing that I couldn't feel it, but it had still been stimulating enough that I hadn't asked for anything else from her or any other npc. I definitely didn't blow my first million overnight. That never would have happened. I also didn't get a bounty on one of my characters for asking a princess the same for a billion. What sort of degenerate would do something like that? Even if I were to do something similar, I would know that a princess would think she was worth more than a billion.
She was staring at me like I'd just become some sort of monster. Did she think this world was nothing like the real one? Hadn't she noticed that the developers had gone to great lengths to make sure the world was realistic? In every sense of the word? "And you call me a perv. Who would have sex with someone in a game? It feels like real life, so they can't justify it as just being a mouse-click."
Was she retarded? The only sex nerds got was virtual. "You're probably pretty in the real world. Only someone hot wouldn't see how awesome it is to be able to have sex in a world where you're as hot as you make yourself. And this game is full of adrenaline. Some people even have relationships online. It's so close to reality, what does it matter?" her eyes widened like she'd never thought of it that way. She must be pretty in the real world. "This virtual world is the equalizer. Here, nobody is ugly. Here, nobody is fat that doesn't want to be. Here, you can even be the opposite sex of your real body. Everybody is what they want to be. Without spending hours putting on makeup and doing your hair. All I have to do is take off my helmet, and my hair is perfect. Automatic. No work involved. Who wouldn't want to have sex in that environment? Especially when your actual body is the ugliest, twisted, pimple-ridden, gangly, disgusting thing to ever walk Earth's surface. It's a simple matter of realism to give up on sex in the real world and want it in this one." I took off my helmet to make the point. I would look the same in twenty years of game time. Who needed the real world when there was a world of perfection at their fingertips? The only down-side was that I would eventually die if I never came out of the game. And the VRI was designed to kick me out after eighteen hours. I could turn it right back on, but the idea was to get me to at least notice the real world occasionally. And not miss school. "I definitely can't have sex with an elf in the real world. A girl can dress up like one, but it's not the same. Besides, you have to worry about diseases and shit when it's real. Gross."
She was looking good and truly disgusted with me. My tiny frame wasn't the only repulsive thing about me. Most girls couldn't stand my personality either, so I was fucked any way I looked at it. "You're a loser, aren't you?" I'd misread her expression. It wasn't disgust, it was pity. That was even worse. "Do you actually look like that? With the piercings and the mohawk?"
I snorted. My Mom would rip out piercings and shave a mohawk off while I slept. She hated punks. Drunks were fine, but punks were not allowed. "Yeah, right. No. It takes muscle to pull this look off. I don't have the testosterone to be muscular. I'm about the same height, though. Unfortunately. What about you? You black with blond hair to your ass?"
"I'm not black, and my hair isn't as long, but yes. If you're not a punk, why did you make yourself into one in the game?" did she not get the point of fantasy? Creating a better world? An ideal world? I was what I wanted to be instead of what I was. Obviously. "What do you gain? Why live a lie on purpose?"
I cocked my head as I considered how to answer that without making it seem like I was talking down to her. Girls hated that. Supposedly. I'd never actually had a conversation with one, so I wouldn't know. Not a real one, anyway. Even this one, there was always the chance that it was just someone who was really devoted to playing their character. There are no girls on the internet, after all. "Why put on makeup?"
"You make your character into a punk so guys will pay attention to you?" she sniggered as I glared at her. She thought she was so witty. Stupid girl. "I get your point, though. You do it so everyone else can see what you think is on the inside. Little secret from someone who actually wears makeup, it doesn't work. More makeup doesn't reveal your soul, it just makes you look like a whore." That wasn't revealing the soul? Could have fooled me. People usually looked like they wanted to look. More or less, depending on competence and a willingness to exert the effort. Those that looked like whores tended to be whores. I didn't need experience to know that much. It was a form of advertising. Advertising yourself to the world instead of a product, but it was the same basic principle. "So, what's your opinion? How do I look?"
"Bland." Her eyes widened like she'd never heard that before. Definitely hot in real life. "The point of a fantasy character is to have a distinguishing feature that sets you apart from every other fantasy character. Mine is the scar, see? And the red to black color scheme. Hardly original, but it is a distinguishing feature. Your eyes don't match your hair, and you have no distinguishing feature. You don't dye your gear, either. Or buy matching sets. Very economical of you, but it makes you fade into the crowd. That gear is good for fighting, but most characters have their fighting gear and then their city gear, which isn't the best but looks better. Or they get rich enough to transmogrify it. Some even have gold-farming gear, experience-farming gear, and a dozen other sets stashed away in case they need them. You can even set up a quick-command to switch gear easily. I don't have anything else, because I'm so weak at the moment, but it gives you a persona. Your persona is Necromancer, right now. Not Lethe. Not that I can really talk. My persona at the moment is level sixty uncommon Assassin. I'm a lone player so it matters less to me than a guild member anyway."
"I can't help it. I wasn't expecting the character creation to be so in depth! I messed up ten times before I chose a preset character!" she looked like she was about to cry. Really? I thought girls were all about constructive criticism. It was, like, their catchphrase, or whatever.
"So buy dyes. You can use them on your gear, hair, or scars. If you don't have any, you haven't been fighting hard enough. Every time you drop below twenty percent health you get a scar that doesn't go away without a ridiculously expensive potion. Or a Saint. Not many of those if Zezhria." Damn it! Teacher mode! Stop! What was it about her that made me want to help her? Was she charming me? No, I'd notice that powerful of a spell on me. I'd still do what she wanted, but I'd resent it. And it wasn't a Necromancer ability. Not to mention the fact that it was a spell that only a level sixty could learn. But then again…she was an elf. They all could learn to combine spells, and not all of them turned out how you'd expect. If she was a level sixty spell combiner…she could make a charm spell with Necromancer abilities. I downed a cure-all potion, just in case. The desire to help her didn't go away. Damn it. She was an actual girl. At least claiming to be one. That was her true power. I didn't even have proof that she was a girl, but that didn't really matter. The developers had done their job well. "Dye the scars you don't want the same color as your skin. They pretty much vanish. Dye the ones you do want a flashy color. Like this." I pointed at my left eye. "And if you have the gold you can make your armor look different, too. Shape-wise, not just color. Dyes are cheap, transmogrification is expensive. Personally, I think it's a waste of money, but plenty of people change their look that way instead of a quickset."
"You can dye your scars? What kind of sense does that make?" she was pouting. Actually pouting. Definitely a hot one in the real world. Ugly girls got hit when they pouted.
I sighed as I gave in to my urge to tell her whatever she wanted to know. "They're like tattoos. You could get actual tattoos, but it requires both painting and some other crafting skills. Not many people paint in an RPG." Not a lot of Dark Elves, anyway. A lot of goblins liked to paint, for some reason, and every goblin city had at least one decent npc tattoo artist in it. Their capital was freakishly painted. I could barely stand being in it with all the garish colors everywhere. "Don't worry about it at this point, just make a better character next time. Make sure you get what you want, no matter how many times you have to start over the build. Dyes are half-measures. And don't worry about the face, so much. The automatic setting is your own, but they shine it up a bit so nobody's identity is in danger of getting stolen or abused, as well as being basically attractive for even the worst of starts. It's too altered for random players to recognize you in the real world, and it's a fine base. Add tattoos and a different haircut from what you really wear, and nobody will come close to recognizing you. Unless you want to be recognized, in which case you can tell the generator to use your real face as a base. Or the face of a celebrity. Several of those are open templates other players have made." I'd never met anyone who wanted to use their own, though. Why use your own face when you could make a better one? I'd met a few pseudo-celebrities, though. One of them was quite dedicated to playing the role. She even used invisible dye on her helmet so people would recognize her easier. That was one of the characters I was almost positive wasn't the sex of their user, but she hadn't broken character so I wasn't completely sure.
Her face went from total pout to relaxed. So she wasn't a total bitch. That was good. "Why were you repairing your own gear? Why not just pay the shop to do it for you, if you're so rich?"
"The way I got so rich was by doing as much as I could without paying anyone anything. I advance the crafting skills I expect to use throughout the game. If I was a mage, I'd be combining spells with one hand as I walked through the town. Since I'm a rogue, I've been activating stealth as much as I can. Class Mentors are expensive. Keeping my mana just short of full at all times is free. Nobody but a Shadow can sustain stealth in town, though." I shrugged as I activated stealth, I turned to a shadow for all of a heartbeat before becoming fully visible again. Shadows tended to level their stealth to such an extent that they were invisible by level ten, just by having it on in town. "That doesn't help my skill at all."
"Attention, server shutting down for launch tomorrow at noon. All testers loyal enough to play the last minute of the beta are given free logins to the launch tomorrow. If you already had an advance copy, you'll see your special reward when you log in tomorrow!" Awesome! I didn't know what the reward would be, but they hadn't been stingy with their rewards so far. I'd gotten into the beta for free so I'd felt a bit irritated at the first part, but special bonuses! Special bonuses were always good! "In addition to the bonus for such amazing loyalty, there will be a special event for the first two days of the launch for every player from the bronze to platinum pass, please spread the word. Even the limited time free-to-play accounts will get access to the entirety of the launch event. We're not planning on hosting any events even half as rewarding for at least two years! Nobody should miss this amazing launch bonus!" This was the first I'd heard of a launch bonus. They'd kept it a secret. They'd kept all of the updates secret too. I was so excited! If I had any friends apart from Hell, who was already here, I would have immediately told all of them.
"Why are all automated voices women? Don't you boys ever get tired of hearing women talk? I sure do. Why don't they use a good, deep voice instead?" so naïve. Only people that actually talked to women could get tired of their voices. I had to admit that this last voice was different. It didn't sound as mechanical as most automated voices. It sounded like Lethe, if her voice was lower and managed to convey "sexy" in an audible fashion. Most developers chose more granulated voices so they didn't get that exact complaint. Apparently this one hit too close to home.
And I was ejected from the game. Damn. I'd barely even started on my Assassin. Unfortunately, I'd taken the sleep stimulant. As I was ejected from the game, I was thrown into dreamless sleep.