Author’s Corner: Author-sama has no excuses. The feels from rereading last chapter were too real. [th_015_orz-v2.gif]

After leaving Tessa’s house, I wandered aimlessly around with the two birds on my shoulder. Given what had just happened, neither I nor Celeste really felt like talking. Even the birds could feel that the atmosphere wasn’t right for their usual antics, and simply obediently sat on my shoulders. I was walking around for nearly an hour before I finally settled on a destination, heading to a simple fast food restaurant to get something to eat. Of course, fast food places always used food synthesizers, so their taste wasn’t that great. However, it also meant that your food was ready as soon as you ordered, and since the register was typically manned by an AI, it was very rarely messed up.

After sitting down and having a bite to eat, I gradually let my mood improve, though it was still quite a shock to have seen Tessa like that. On a whim, I checked my contacts list, and found that both of my parents were offline now. Did something happen? Normally, they wouldn’t really need a reason to log off, unless they were just spending time together that they couldn’t in the game.

Once I was done eating, I threw away the trash and started walking back towards my place, while calling them up. “Hey, John. How are things going in the real world?” I could hear my father speaking with a bit of worry, likely remembering that just a couple days before he had told me about the Seeds. At least, a couple days from my perspective, nearly two weeks in the game.

“Not that good.” I said, trying to hide what I was feeling from my voice. “Mom, I’ve got a question to ask you, is that alright?”

“Sure, dear. What is it?”

“Your character is a type of elemental, right? What’s it like to be an elemental, and is there a way to get a physical body?”

She paused for a moment at the question, and then there was a light gasp from the other end. “Who?”

Looks like she figured it out. Not like there would be very many reasons I’d ask, given the circumstances. “A six year old girl.”

“Oh… Oh, I’m sorry. Of course I’ll help, but I don’t know what good it’ll do. The planet I started on was a stray planet without a sun, locked in perpetual night. As a Shade, I couldn’t ‘see’ with my eyes, or ‘hear’ with my ears, or even touch or smell or taste. But I could sense everything under the cover of darkness, like a kind of radar. My race is incapable of making sound without striking something, so my only mode of speech is an ability called Shadow Tongue, which is used to communicate with other dark-attuned races. She should be similar, able to see through a radar anything touched by her element. As for a physical body… after I reached level thirty, I started to be able to condense my body into a solid shape, but it took quite a bit of focus to maintain. According to the elder shades I encountered, a true body isn’t established until level fifty.”

I nodded my head. There was no way I’d make a little girl fight until she had enough experience to be level fifty. By that time, I’d be more than able to give her a race change, if she didn’t manage to buy one from the game. Speaking of.. “Is there still the option for players to restart their character with a new race?”

This time, it was my father that answered. “It’s possible. All you have to do is find a shrine of the gods and pray to be reborn. The cost is five hundred dollars, or ten gold coins. Though, I’m a bit worried what will happen when people start using that.”

“What do you mean?”

In response to my question, he simply sighed as he spoke. “From the news we’ve heard, the company that developed the game, Manifest Industries, no longer technically exists. At least not in the physical sense. Normally, if you were to reset your character, the money spent would go to the company, who would then spend it on other things to continue circulation. However, if it is just being offered up to the ‘gods’, then something like that won’t happen. It would be the same as burning a pile of money. The same thing would happen with everyone that paid for a Seed as well.”

My eye twitched slightly as I started to understand why the option to preorder had still been available. “They’re wanting to force us into use coin currency, the same as in the game. Precious metals can easily be mined from other worlds once we explore space. Although new currency can be printed, it would only prolong the inevitable.”

“Exactly. Like this, everyone will be forced to use the same types of coins as they have in the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if bankers gained an ability that let them convert one type of currency to the other.”

I nodded my head slightly, changing my direction to begin walking home a bit faster. “Possibly. If I could get into the game, then I might be able to finish developing my class abilities. At least with that, I could help people change their physical race.”

My father laughed a bit at that. “Good, good. You probably have one of the best classes available for this new world. As for time to train… why not establish an Adventurer’s Guild? By now, people who logged on right away have had nearly two weeks to train. Quite a few should be strong enough to have classes at this point.”

I thought about his suggestion, and nodded. With a thought, I quickly dispersed some suspicious mana that had been gathering across the street from me. “True, and this way other people could get involved and I wouldn’t have to worry about being everywhere at once.”

Of course, I had no idea how to establish an Adventurer’s Guild. And by the time I figured it out, someone would have likely beaten me to it. There were a thousand beta testers for NeoLife, and I highly doubted I was the most forward thinking of them. If I was, then this world had bigger things to worry about than a few monster invasions.

Saying our goodbyes, my mother wished me luck with helping the little girl, and I quickly found my way to my house. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like another monster had attacked yet. Once I got inside, I suppressed the void field while moving up to my computer. Seeing that my mood was no longer as bad, Celeste spoke up while the birds resumed nuzzling my face. “How’d it go? Get any good information?”

“Yes and no. Some good, some not so much. Trying to find out more now.” Looking over to the spell formation on the wall, I decided to disable it for now. With Plant Manipulation, I ejected the Seed of Void from the wall, and then filled the formation with wind mana. There was an audible whoosh as the air once again returned to the room. Once I picked up the Seed of Void and put it in my inventory, I went back to looking up recent news related to the new changes.

The first thing I found was that, after the message appeared for everyone, people began getting skill notifications while going through their everyday life. Things like gaining the cooking skill, or a doctor getting a medicine skill. Apparently, politicians even got a leadership skill. Though, I suspected a few probably got some other skills, such as bribing, blackmail, etcetera.

Along with that, a few people discovered that they could check their status, and even had an inventory. Though, almost nobody started out above level five, so their inventory size was pitifully small. However, this did mean that the friends list worked for everyone as well, almost completely invalidating the need for modern communication devices.

On the religious front, people had initially proclaimed that this was divine providence, brought forth by their respective gods. However, when it was revealed that the new system had its own gods, the believers did a complete change. Now, they openly persecuted the system, saying that anyone who willingly logged into the game was an agent of a false god or some devil. They called those who had transformed from the game as monsters, leading to quite a number of arrests.

Next, rumors of potentially powerful monsters appearing. The strongest was one which was reported to affect the oceans itself, as the tide had been fluctuating wildly lately. People believed that there was likely something similar to a kraken or leviathan beneath the waters, and so boat travel had been quickly stopped in order to prevent casualties. Storms had also been raging unpredictably, causing it to snow in the deserts while the arctic experienced a heat wave.

Thankfully, nothing like a dragon had been reported appearing yet. Aside from the mysterious monster beneath the ocean, the most terrifying thing reported had been minotaurs and elementals. Hearing about the elementals brought back memory of Tessa, and I had to ask myself how many of those were simply people that had lost the ability to communicate.

Finally, I came across a petition to establish an Adventurer’s Guild. As I had expected, I wasn’t the first to think about it. Though, the changes to the world were barely two days old, so it was still merely a petition. However, it was incredibly popular as it offered a real solution to stop the monsters spawning over the world.

Well, not like I was going to be leading the guild anyways, even if I had been the first to suggest it. To my surprise, it looked like everyday life had been largely unobstructed, aside from the need to watch out for monsters which caused a heavier police presence in the city.

Turning off my computer, I glanced over to the Seed, debating whether or not I should log in to do some quick Technomancy experiments. I still refused to do such in the real world when it could have any significant effect on me, especially after I repeatedly failed to mimic the camera scope of my rifle. Shaking my head, I decided to wait to do that until later. First, I sent Yin and Yang back to my grove, and then reset the void spell formation.

I needed to cultivate my affinities until they reached 10% before I did anything new. Once I was done with that, I could work on new affinities and new experiments. Though, I did determine that I would study the next slime that I fought. Worst case, they don’t call me to fight one, I understand the basic process to make one myself.

When I sat down on the floor to begin cultivating, Celeste spoke up again from my wrist. “So many things changing so quickly. It’s a miracle your race can adapt to it all.”

I smiled slightly and looked down to her. “This is too much for some of them to take in, so I’m sure that there are many that are unsettled by this. Some even downright reject it. But, life goes on. Whether the cashier at the grocery store is a well mannered young man or an elf, you pay for your purchase and move on. There will be a bit of hesitation towards the more drastically altered people, but most likely there are a few that barely notice any change in their life at all.”

Celeste listened to what I said, nodding her head slightly. “I see.. Still, it’s quite amazing. When you said that everyone had been human just a few days ago, I had expected mass panic. Aside from what you read about the more fanatical religious followers, there doesn’t seem to be much trouble. “

“Pretty much. There’s probably going to be more changes soon. Once a few people get high enough level to study the enchantments worked into spaceships, there will likely be a race to develop the first interstellar voyage. That will cause a whole new level of excitement, I think.”

The holographic woman nodded her head slightly. “I see… To think that the world you came from is one where you are restricted to a single sun, and yet you have these devices capable of sending you all the way to Hascion, and even seem to hold sway over the flow of time. It seems well beyond the ability of your planet, no offense… So where could they have come from.”

Once again, I cast my sight over towards the Seed. “That’s a very good question, and it’s one that is getting very tiring. My best guess is some other dimension. If it was simply space that was crossed, and the time ratio was the same, I would believe it might be an alien race. But the time difference wouldn’t make sense in that case. Best I can think of is that it connects to another dimension where time moves five times faster than here.”

Celeste thought about it, looking over towards the Seed. “Is it really?”