Decision Point
Otter_44351147 logged into Eve and played some, for about forty three minutes straight. He abbreviated all numbers as American language characters, so if he saw this number, he would translate this to 43 minutes, as it was listed as forty three colon seventy two point sixty three seconds on the time clock list. He was using an application on his cellular phone, which he called a mobile, which was a fairly common place thing to do, to see where his ranking score was at. He called it a rank. It was a colloquial abbreviation for ranking score, which itself was a colloquial term for place where he was. He was still level 47. He could not climb any higher due to the day cap being reached. If you died, called being felled, in Eve, then you could re-assign your statistic points in any way you liked. His had been maximized out. At level 99, you had enough statistic points, which were abbreviated to the Chinese word for stats in the community, by the community as well, typically as that is the way they would refer to them. He referred to his stats as phony. The support staff had not contacted him yet. They sent him an electronic mail, shortened to an e-mail, later in the week, but for now, it had not been something they thought of him. He had been fighting in the Lower Farm of Otter, which was a Chinese-language name for the area he was in. He fought otters and other critters like rabbits and also fish that jumped out of wells like it was an ancient Chinese war drama. He enjoyed fighting these things. He was trying to get back to rank 1, the first spot on top of the list in Eve. There, he could enter the con', which others called a 'con, and he changed it to spelling it this way as well, and put a funny mark called a tongue-sticking out face next to his apologetic phrase ending in :P, which meant he was sure he would change it in the future. He liked to type in chat when he had down time, called off times for some of the more professional players, but he had a lot of down time as well when monsters needed to respawn. He could not enter the higher level zones because of a fear of death. If he died too soon, then he could not reach rank 1 on the DELO score board. He had to be content with fighting for scraps. The other players who he met he killed as well. They gave a lot more experience points, abbreviated as EXP, but he called them experience points, though the game termed them EXP, and gave them in fractions as well. He was earning 0.9 per kill of a monster, which were not controlled by active players, but by the game, and 1.1 per human player, which he and his clan called PVP characters and who gave more EXP per kill.
Usually, someone was around to kill. This gave him more EXP. But he also got less money from not checking around. Sometimes they also gave him inventory droppers, the Chinese-language community called the drops from human players. A human player could drop a random item if it was chosen off of the games rotation decision menu, which was something they assumed existed. Usually it was better than what you had. This was not always true, but the community decided they were not bad to equip right away. There were no cursed items in Eve, so you only had a level lockout count to consider. He, Otter_44351147, was unable to equip this item. He sold it to a merchant. It was for a level 53 character, who he had just killed. He was still level 47. You could not get more than 500,000 EXP in a day in Eve. It capped you, the community called the state that was being at 500,000 EXP and not being able to go higher, at this number for the developers, who the community collectively titled the dev community, shortened to dev's, fun, they had decided as a community, basically all of them used dev's for developer's. He had to wait 24 hours to increase his statistics. He could use all of the EXP at once, but he could not save it for later. He had to content himself with increasing his gold score and his reaper counts. If he died, he would lose all his EXP and his level would be reset back to 1. In towns, or safe areas as they were called, but the community called them towns, likely as they were modeled after towns and had features the more dangerous areas did not, and looked a bit safer, the community considered it being honest to say, you could log out or in safely, and not lose EXP. There was no fighting in towns. If you entered one and a monster was still hitting at you, you could still die, but otherwise they could not enter the towns bright gold colored barrier borders. In towns, he chatted to clan mates and they urged him to jump up in rank real quick before PAX Eternal 2081. If he did not, he could not go. This was because they needed top level players to be there with them to win against the other clans who they might match up against. He was in his clan zone, where he could use the clan treasure chest, and he got new equipment, potions and even special items to fight anew with. He got out there and got more EXP as well, but he could not use this yet. He saved his EXP Potions in his special personal storage, and did not use them right now, but saved them for later, when he could. He had been playing until 1 AM in the morning, Chinese time, and had to go to bed, he considered, for school tomorrow. He was in High School in China. As a 16 year old, he was in expedited emergency classes. If he won those, he could go on to a new, fighting education in rural China, he considered with his classmates, sometimes. They called it this because they were confused why they needed to go to school. He was doing well in grades, but he had no tests or special things to do today. He didn't do his homework. They didn't care about it. They challenged him on the issue. He had to do it in detention. He went back home and was told he was grounded for a week from playing Eve. They locked up his game system and took his computer and electronics and fun things away and he had to be happy with not being happy. This was a horrible thing to him. He played it some at a friends house but Xi could not rank up that fast at this friends house. He wanted them to be around, though. He left his friends house, and went back to his home. He finished dinner and made some chances at playing around. But he ended up not doing his homework again. He was grounded for life. He could not play games ever again. At his friends house, he played Eve and met Auria online. They were chatting in a town. She told them she was 17 years old. They considered this true. They knew her in class. She was 16 years old! They teased her in school over this. She was trying to play it cool! Online, she was now a max level character. She had been in her clan for 45 days straight. This meant she was having fun! In her game world, her character was dressed like a Chinese knight maiden, and she used magic to down her foes and siphon their blood for her other skills. Otter_44351147 used these as well. There was a common pool of skills to choose from, and feats as well and also premium things to acquire. He had a lot of them and in no time flat he was back to 100% again. He had all of the emotes, and all of the skills he wanted, and he was back to level 99. He was ready to go to PAX Eternal 2081 next year! It was still a ways away. It was more than 6 months in the future. So he had to survive until then.