It was a put up or shut up age, and if you wanted to run your mouth you had to deal with the consequences.
Those days were long gone though.
Now, trash talking was excessive and disgusting, yet there were little to no repercussions at all. It was a sad state of affairs… but that's progress, in the eyes of some. It wasn't a physical thing anymore, I guess.
Well, now gaming centers were making a comeback, without the fighting.
Recently a new company picked up on the wave and invested in a bunch of VR systems, and opened VR-Lan'ds all over the country. If one couldn't afford a Cube or didn't have the space for one, all they had to do was rent time at a local VR-Lan'd and that was that. They could easily fit four Eggs in the space of a Cube… and that meant more casuals would be coming to a location near me.
That meant, more bad pugs.
Ah.
I didn't like the prospects.
No, not at all.
Getting back into my car I decided to get some fresh air, a quick drive through a deserted windy mountain road to get the adrenaline going. At one point in my life I was driving a hundred and fifty miles a day, then it fell down to around three-hundred a week, now… I rarely drive at all. My muscle car, my truck, my tuner, and my motorcycle all sat collecting dust.
I should probably sell them, I thought.
I would need the money to continue gaming.
My mind wandered as I drove the long way back to my house, it was a nice day out, the kind of day where I would have spent it at the beach if it were a few year back. A part of me wanted to take a detour, to check out the ocean and see if it looked the same. It always did, but it was always a little bit different too.
The sunsets were always random colors, the waves similar but not identical, and the crowds varied from gorgeous to grotesque depending on the day and time.
The nude beach in particular was especially disturbing ninety-nine times out of a hundred… but every once in a while, there was a hidden gem that made your jaw drop.
Hah, I couldn't help but laugh at the thought.
Well, that was the past though.
My legs were reaching their limit of use for the day, anymore and the pain would start to increase, so it was time to head back.
Back into the virtual world, where life was a bit better.
I also needed to plan for the future, a sudden increase in the player base could change the world drastically. There were a lot of guilds still trying to eke out an existence and carve up small pockets of territory, some of those guilds might pose a threat to me if they become overly ambitious.
Yeah, it was about that time to reevaluate where I stood, and where I would be going in the near and distant future. The North was mine and I had no intention of ceding my territory to others who were late to the party. The wasteland that no one wanted months ago, was now starting to get a little bit more popular thanks to Emily and her blatant advertising. She really knew how to screw a guy over.
Fan favorite huh, well… I wasn't a fan.
Chapter 49: An Ox to Grind
(Friday, June 18th Game Day / Friday, February 26th Real Day)
"We all done here for the day?" I asked the party, after we had finished the last trash group on the fifth floor. "I think I'm going to head out to a neighboring town, check it out, kind of need the change in scenery."
"Yeh, I'm good," replied Barik with a shrug.
The others nodded as they collected their loot, content with what we had accomplished. Once everyone had finished gathering their belongings it wasn't more than a few minutes before the party was disbanded, with everyone heading their separate ways. We had been repeating the grind for a few days now and I was already level forty-four, with the others nearing level fifty. Unfortunately, the reality was that the levels didn't mean too much, like we had thought.
The fights didn't automatically get easier with a new level, but with the increase in our proficiencies and new skills, there had been some marked improvement. I was able to find a skill trainer in town and picked up [Shield Bash], and was working my way towards [Call to Challenge] next. I was also able to learn [Heavy Swing] and [Leg Sweep] with my two-handed axe proficiency, which had stagnated slightly since I started using a one-handed axe. All in all, they were nice additions.
Though, the major proficiency I was still working on and was really waiting for, was my fourth tier lightning spell, [Discharge]. It was a one-second cast Area of Effect spell that originated from the body of the caster, sending an explosive wave of discharged electricity out in a small radius. Seeing as it went out in every direction, it was basically a fool-proof way to knockback a melee unit no matter the angle of attack.
That… and there was also my special lightning spell, the unique one that came with my Artifact, [Flash Step]. [Flash Step] was usable once I reached the fourth tier of lightning magic proficiency and it was a somewhat broken ability.
It allowed the user to travel with a bolt of lightning a short distance in any direction, regardless if it was up into the air or from tree to tree, and then rematerializing at the end point. Basically, it was a short-ranged teleport that made me temporarily immune.
In itself, it was a broken ability.
I wouldn't be showing that to the world yet though… that was a secret to be kept closely guarded until I needed to use it. A spell like that would draw unnecessary attention to me, and I didn't really care for that.
Standing outside of the dungeon entrance, half of the crowd that had gathered before the portal were wearing masks of some sort and I quietly grinned under my own with no one the wiser. Over the past few days, my masks had become suddenly popular as more and more people had ventured down to the second floor. Some even made it to the third floor and with their help, money was slowly trickling into my pockets.
When I first arrived to this town, I was basically broke.
After trading the furs I had brought, along with a few dungeon grinds, I was up to a handful of silver. Turning those coins into masks, I was able to turn a near fifty-percent profit that added up to roughly twenty silver one week later.
The swords I invested in turned out to be a waste, as they weren't appraised for much more than I paid, at eighty-two copper for one and sixty-six for the other. But, it didn't matter too much since I was dealing with a neutral party.
Once I returned to Dragon's Breach they would use the raw materials in a way that would benefit me doubly.
Well, after one week since I first set out to make some money with the shop keep, I was now sitting on thirty-three silver coins with another twenty silver coins worth of goods from all of the grinding stashed away in my room. If I wanted to, I could purchase a heck of a lot of NPCs, but there was another goal at the moment.
And that goal was livestock.
The town I was at didn't have anything regarding animal husbandry except for directions to another town, one that was a good twenty miles northeast of my location off into the northern elven territory.
So, that's where I was headed now.
If I could, I would rather have recruited animals from an Animal-Recruiter but such a thing didn't exist, sadly. At least we had access to an NPC-Recruiter.
Oh well, a jog wasn't all that bad.
The small dirt path that I was running on had cut through the forest and wrapped around a small break between the mountain range that separated the elven territory from the true North. It was a fairly scenic route and surprisingly well-traveled as I ran past numerous elves heading towards the dungeon. I imagine most, if not all, of the elves came this way.
Thinking of elves… I had yet to seriously talk with Ellieby since we last traded. Opening my friend's list that was ready to burst at the seams with four whole people on it now, I barely managed my way down the exhaustive list and found Ellieby.