"Bastards, both of you are bastards; IT WAS RESEARCH!" Jumping out of her chair, Emilia attempted to defend herself, only succeeding in egging us on further as we continued teasing her in accents.
After a few minutes, all three of us had become giggling messes as we laughed with tears in our eyes, a much-needed change of pace considering the level of stress we had gone through the last couple of weeks.
"Alright, you guys do your own thing; I'm heading to my office to check up on the forums and see what I can find out by fiddling with Arkadia." Since things were winding down, I decided to head out.
Standing up and stretching, I waved over my shoulder at the married couple and headed to my computer. As expected, R****t was filled with hundreds of thousands of comments pertaining to the saturation, how it affected them, and, more importantly, the different functions we now had available to us through Arkadia.
"Moments like this prove to me I really am not THAT big of a weeb or nerd, albeit I'm still pretty bad, but these guys are on a whole other level compared to me." Muttering to myself, I scrolled through the seemingly never-ending lists of subforums until one in particular caught my eye.
It was under r/ArkadiaFunctions, a thread by a poster named 'GrindingMyAssOffInADungeon.'
-ARKADIA GAVE US DUNGEONS!-
It was the title of the post, and upon opening it and reading through it, I couldn't help but instantly open the Alpha shop and navigate to an option I had basically ignored.
:{Instance Tokens}:
The thread detailed how the poster hadn't been too affected by the assimilation process, and when Arkadia's functions went live, he immediately checked the shop. Upon finding an option for Instances, he didn't think twice and started buying them up.
As it turns out, not only was the original poster a total nerd, but a famous pro gamer with a specialty in MMORPGs. Recognizing the term 'Instance,' he didn't hesitate to purchase and use the item.
From there, the post gets a little hard to read as the poster explains, using a bunch of slang and gamer terms, that upon crushing an Instance Token, he was teleported to a different place, where he fought against several packs of wolves and even earned some XP and loot in the process.
Unfortunately, the number of each that the poster obtained wasn't that much, but according to him, each wolf he killed with his semi-automatic pistol brought him 5% XP, along with 0.25 Low-Alpha coins.
"Fuck," Contrary to the giddiness of the poster of the thread, I was instead filled with dread because I could forsee how bleak the future was beginning to look; my reasoning was simple.
If anyone and everyone had access to these Instance Tokens, it wouldn't take long before the whole planet was filled with superhumans. And that was never a good thing, no matter the franchise or medium.
Putting power in the hands of every person, good or evil, was bound to have unforeseen consequences, even more so the fact that they could bring modern weapons into these instances to earn easy kills.
All in all, it was a recipe for disaster.
Reclining back in my chair, I exhaled shakily, trying to calm my thoughts before eventually opening the Instance Token Shop.
[Alpha Rank: Instance Token Emporium]
:{Basic Instance (α) = 5 Low-Alpha Coins}:
:{Basic Instance (α+) = 25 Low-Alpha Coins}:
:{Basic Instance (α++) = 50 Low-Alpha Coins}:
:{Basic Instance (Α) = 1 High-Alpha Coin}:
:{Alpha Instance (α) = 5 High-Alpha Coin}:
:{Alpha Instance (α+) = 10 High-Alpha Coin}:
:{Alpha Instance (α++) = 20 High-Alpha Coin}:
:{Alpha Instance (Α) = 100 High-Alpha Coin}:
Reading the prices of the Instance Tokens nearly gave me a heart attack. With a simple glance, it wasn't hard to tell what the difference between each token was; clearly, the plus and double plus signs meant something.
Every game or novel has a rarity along with rank, and clearly, the plus signs indicated there were either stronger opponents or better rewards available for completing the Instances.
Then there were the prices, which, if broken down into USD, even the lowest class token cost 5 Low-Alpha Coins or 500 dollars. Comparatively, the most expensive token, the High-Alpha one, cost a whopping 1 million USD, million WITH AN M, THAT's 6 Zeros after the one.
That thought alone made me lightheaded, as there was no conceivable way I could come up with that much money often enough to frequent that tier of Instance; HOWEVER, that also meant there would be a straightforward power gap formed in time, especially in rich countries like the UAE, where a hundred thousand dollars was pocket change.
It also meant that the 1%ers, as they were called, a.k.a, the wealthiest people in the world, would have a clear advantage. But that was a given and something I had been worried about since the moment I found out Earth Currency and valuable items could be exchanged.
Nothing stopped the remarkably rich from dumping their fortunes into coins and reaping all of the benefits.
Still, it wasn't like I had explored the entirety of the Arkadia Shop function, and I had already found a singular instance of a stopgap.
The Elixir, sold in the medicinal tab, was not only limited to 50,000 pieces but also had a one-per-person clause. However, that didn't necessarily stop the rich from handing over money to their subordinates or family members in order to purchase more and horde them.
Remembering the existence of that item, I shifted my panel back to the medicinal shop and felt like slamming my head on a wall.
:{Elixir (Α) = 10,000 High-Alpha Coins}: *Limited to 43,897 World Wide and one per User*
'I KNEW IT! IT HAS ONLY BEEN A LITTLE OVER AN HOUR, AND 6,103 ELIXIRS HAVE BEEN SOLD! THAT'S OVER SIX HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!' I screamed mentally before getting up and falling onto the carpeted floor of my office to stare at the ceiling.
"No, let's think of this logically, Taylor; the last time I checked, the Earth's Population was 8.5 billion people, meaning that if 1% of those eight billion people are actually rich…fuck that's still 84 million people. So 6103 Elixirs being sold isn't that far off; if anything, it's too few."