Xi's Day
Xi and Mitsuru agreed to go out together. Xi and Mitsuru ate at McHappyLand's in the city and his parents were watching TV at home when he was there in his room. He had nothing to do. His gear was nearby him, in a bag, but he could not use it. His parents were watching television. He watched it with them, and then went to bed. He had showered in the morning. The next morning, he got ready for school and went there before he had ever noticed he was wearing anything abnormal, or par for the course, he was telling everybody tellingly that they were at school. He told his friends he was going to play Eve later. They all decided to join up. In the online world of Eve, they gathered and even played some. Some used emotes and others used sign language as well. Some died and some stayed in the safe areas, unable to want to go out, for they were just doing their own thing. None of them tried downloading data. They were not interested in watching others. At this meeting, they all played, and Xi got his amazing kill counts and Mitsuru got hers. The next one down was a clan mate as well. All of Nocturnal was high ranking. Only Mitsuru, who ranked second, was higher. She and Xi would fight, and the rest would as well. She was careful to avoid others. Her clan could not harm her. If you were in a favorable position, you were safe and sound. Mitsuru was asked to dine, and she did as well eat many things out of the buffet. She was tasked with killing others. They played all the time. Xi and his character, Otter_44351147, were not backing down. Their kill counts were the highest. At over 2 million kills, they finally reached over 3 million and stopped playing games, they seemed to say, as this implied, they had been playing them. They had to stay level 99, rank 1 on the scoreboards, and keep the destiny ticket that allowed them to go to PAX Eternal 2081 next year. The 'con was the biggest event of their lives. The game was not over and done with, not quite yet. Xi got to over 10 million kills and his friends were all over the place. The ranking system, called the death elevator linking order, was having them set apart on statistics like kills, health accrued, and even time spent. That meant in the game world, but it did not seem to actually explain that very well in the Chinese language what this score did. Xi had over 90 hours in the game world. He had been playing for over 365 days. Zero_Nocturnal had been offline for over 400. He was seen online never again. The players seemed to be able to no longer live in fear of his abuse. He had a large kill count as well. They could not remove him from the leaderboards. He was a rank 0 player. He was at the bottom at the list. But once, he was climbing. Now he was at the bottom again. He had to climb fast, or he would lose his chance at the 'con and the prize measuring up to his lofty standards, did he not? It could be that he did not care one way or the other if he measured up in the kill rankings or the 'con attendance regimen he did not like, it implied, if he did not rank up.
Xi and Mitsuru were fighting or in the safe area, wherever there were the most players.
In the outer space zone, Aqua Fields, they were fighting a new kind of player character. They were fighting them, and Xi was able to follow them around the field. Space_Zombie was fighting in a Russian space uniform, called a flight suit, and seemed to have no helmet on. His dark hair and inspiring aura were scary looking. Auria was fighting random foes and gathering happy items. Space_Zombie, who was in the clan _nobody_else, was fighting what he could to rank up, it seemed, as he was fighting players and also critters, called mobs in the game world, and in the community, there were, again, two types. Evil and good critters both existed. None of them were actually player characters. All these did was get you experience and points, sometimes gold drops as well, but missions and random finds did that as well. They sometimes also had loot drops. The players thought there was a randomized list of loot, almost like a circular note, and it allowed them to predict drops. But they did not know the truth. In reality, most items had a very low chance to drop. The development team at the Eve mega office where Mitsuru and Xi had gone to develop a kind of stance against cheating were located in another city fairly far from where they were now playing Eve. At the headquarters, the community decided this was where they changed the games factors.
Eve was a big VR game. It had over a million players playing it. It was a cool game to see running. It was advertised on the application store in the VR world. It was a Chinese-language game and only Chinese players were assumed to be playing it, from the way it was ran. It was made by a company in China as well. It was called the best game ever in the comments by some people and got few stars from some others. The dev's had replied to some players. It was a good game and had an over four star rating on the community-termed app store. It had over 9 million players playing online, it boasted. But these were actually the download numbers. Online, the player count was over 9 million. It was a strong number, the community considered. They considered this a big deal. There were over 9 million people, singular heroes of how the community termed the relationship between the player and the player base, the 'net.