Once Sen is out of game, he sprints to the closest restroom, then walks leisurely to the kitchen, making a ham sandwich and some coffee, as he is going to pull an all nighter with his shiny new game. He thanks every deity he knows the name of that it is friday, or well, saturday considering it’s past midnight, as he won’t have any of his tutors bugging him over the weekend.

He finishes his meal and coffee, and is just about to leave when Lynna comes in.

“So what’re you thinking about the game so far?”

Sen grins before replying. “It’s honestly creepy how realistic it is, but it makes it so much better. Have you hunted anything yet?”

“No, I decided to join one of the schools to learn some more skills before I go out hunting. Though I’ll have to do some hunting soon, you need contribution points to learn anything good, and you can only get those by turning in crystals and loot drops. I still need to practice the basic skills they have classes for first.”

“So what school did you join anyway? And what are the differences?”

“I joined the Lotus school. They focus on movement and longsword skills.”

“Hm. Any particularly interesting ones?”

“Well the reason I joined was someone showing off a sword skill that actually launches a wave of energy from your sword. And it’s only an F ranked skill which means I’ll be able to get it pretty easily so long as I grind out some contribution points.” Lynna’s black eyes are glimmering in excitement.

“Is there any way to get skills other than joining a school?”

“Well you can only get skills ranked up to C from a school. Skills higher than that only drop from mobs. Each mob has their own skill book they’ll drop, and it’s about a 1% chance of getting it.”

“I’ll stick to grinding out mobs for now. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a few skills of my own.”

They wrap up their conversation as Lynna begins making her own sandwich, and Sen heads back to his room to play some more. When he logs back in, he is back in the field, but it is dark out, countless stars shining above him, and two massive moons in the sky looking down like a gigantic pair of eyes. He’d never seen a real moon seeing as Alpha has none, but they are very common in games.

He wonders for a moment if it was just a skybox, or if the moons are actually programmed into the game, but shrugs the thought off and decides that learning why it is suddenly night is more important.

“Hey Tir, why is it night now?”

“The day/night cycles in this game are only four hours long, so as to not force those in a different time zone to play only in the dark.”

Considering that the days on Alpha are thirty hours long, that is a massive difference. Sen shrugs, then gets back to hunting. With the two large moons, there is still enough light to see by.

He slaughters a few more rabbits and goblins as he wanders deeper into the grasslands, and soon starts coming across other monsters. There are biters, small round feathered balls that seem to be all teeth, the accurately named grass snakes, which are snakes that look almost exactly like a fallen strand of grass, which are black birds that are almost as tall as a goblin.

For each of the mobs, Sen will eat ten of their crystals if he can get that many, then save up the rest of the energy crystals in his inventory to be his capital to buy a proper sword. He isn’t sure what to do with the other loot drops, so he simply lets them sit in his inventory until he can get rid of them.

As he continues deeper into the grasslands, the monsters become more and more varied, from six legged furless rodents, to disgusting giant bugs with far, far too many legs. Sen happily, excluding the giant bugs, slaughters his way along until he is practically exhausted, with the in game sun about to rise.

He decides to hunt one more group before heading back, and runs into a group of goblins. A grin still on his face, he charges in. His first swing rips out the throat one of them, but as he turns to the next, a group of people come charging in, stabbing the one he was going to kill. Sen’s face is now sporting a large frown.

“What the hell?”

“As if one person deserves all these goblins. This area is controlled by us, the King guild. Hand over the energy crystals you’ve gotten, and maybe we’ll let you go,” The man who had stolen his kill arrogantly says. Sen knows of the King guild, and has gotten in quite a few conflicts with them in other games. Pretty much everyone who plays MMO’s has gotten in conflicts with them at one time or another.

They’re almost always the largest guild, though they’re never the most powerful, seeing as how they’ll accept almost anyone. Due to their size however, many of the people in it tend to be horribly arrogant about it, trying to bully people constantly.

The people behind the man talking are snickering, and Sen’s lips turn up in a smile betrayed by the anger in his eyes. It seems he is going to get in some early pvp. He spins the dagger around his hand as they start to surround him.

Before their encirclement is complete, he dashes forward, empowered by body strengthening, and the arrogant man’s eyes widen in surprise as his dagger stabs into his throat before the man thinks to respond.

Sen laughs a little as he turns to the next enemy. It seems King’s recruiting standards are as low as always. He dodges a hasty swing from the next one, and grabs his arm, pulling his neck directly into the path of his friend’s swing. Turning, he jabs his dagger into the heart of the one wearing a horrified expression from having killed his friend.

Sen habitually wipes off his dagger, even though with the parental settings on he can’t see any blood. He checks his inventory, but sees no new items from having killed them. Seems this game isn’t going to encourage open world PVP.

As if the conflict had never happened, he asks “hey Tir, why aren’t I feeling hungry? Most games have some form of satiety system.” Not that any game could get the taste quite right, but they would still make you eat regardless.

“It’s a game, why would we make you eat?”

Sen blinks. Is Tir being snarky? ‘At least I won’t have to bother bringing food around everywhere’ Sen thinks to himself. He then asks Tir for the fastest way back to the road, but Tir simply informs him that there is a fast travel system to any city that you’d visited, so he opens up his map. He notes that the city he started in is called Falan before pressing on it, then selecting the quick travel button.

This time, the square is far more filled with other players, everyone talking to their own guide or their friends. “Tir, If I want to find my sister, what will I have to do?”

“As you both live in the same area, she will have started in the same city. You will simply have to agree to a meeting place out of game, and then you could add each other to your friend’s list.”

Sen nods, even though he isn’t sure if Tir will be able to notice it. That seems simple enough. He puts that to the back of his mind for the moment though, first he has to figure out where to get rid of his loot. After asking Tir, he takes one of the automated cars to the market district.

The market area doesn’t have any buildings above maybe three stories, but each of them has their own style. The building he first enters seems to deal in practically everything, having a section for clothing, a section for armors, a section for weapons, and even camping supplies and backpacks in one section, though he isn’t sure why anyone will need the backpacks considering that everyone has an infinite inventory.

Walking around, he eventually finds an area that is basically just a very large counter with a bunch of people behind it to deal with the crowd of players he can see, each of them getting rid of their loot drops. Sen figures this will be where he can sell his drops, and gets in a surprisingly long line.

Luckily, the line moves quickly, and Sen is soon in front of the counter, with a bored looking man behind it. The bored man waves his hand, and a trade screen appears in front of Sen. From his forty odd drops, he will be earning a measly fifteen goblin crystals. When he asks why they are all goblin crystals, he learns that each energy crystal has its own value, and the “base” energy crystal is the most common energy crystal throughout the world, in the case of G rank monsters, the goblin crystal.

“So is there a way to trade in my energy crystals I have for different ones? I ended up with a ton of goblin and horned rabbit crystals, and not too many of the others.” Sen asks the skinny man behind the counter.

“There’s an energy crystal shop a few stores down. They’re the ones with a terribly gaudy exterior.”

Sen thanks the man, and exits the store with an additional fifteen goblin crystals. He wants to go to the energy crystal shop, but holds himself back. First he will need to get a weapon. He can always shop for a weapon at the department store he was just in, but he really doesn’t want to get what seem like mass produced goods.

His first stop is a massive building, with copious amounts of smoke coming out a gigantic chimney in the back of it. On the front of the building is a large sword crossed with a spear, “Hellion’s Armory” written beside it. Walking inside, he is met with a clean linoleum like floor, with stands for different weapon types set up throughout the store. Everything is neatly arranged, and sorted by both type of weapon and price. Naturally, Sen gravitates towards the weapon type he had used in his past life, large two handed swords. He soon finds what he is looking for, but becomes quite disappointed when he gets a better look at them.

The swords aren’t bad per se, but they aren’t particularly good, and they are all practically mirror images of each other, clearly cast rather than forged. Before leaving, he asks a clerk about forged swords, and is disappointed to learn that this particular shop only deals in mass produced weaponry.

After wandering around a bit, Sen finds himself a bit lost, but soon hears a sound he had been familiar with in his past life, that of a hammer banging on metal. Excited to have found someplace that deals in forged goods rather than cast, he follows it to a small store with nothing but a clumsily written “Clay’s Smithy” out front.

Walking inside, he is met with stands full of swords, spears, and various other weapons scattered throughout the concrete floor, along with armor set up on models, but all placed in seemingly random positions. The counter is empty, and he can hear the clanging of metal hitting metal from the back. Looking around, he is much happier with the weapons he sees here, and he soon finds the stand that has hand and a half and two handed swords on it.

The swords aren’t individually priced, but the stand they are on has a “20 G-rank” written on top of it. Pulling a few swords out, he compares them. None of them are exactly the same length, each one designed for a different person rather than the one size fits all system Hellion’s armory uses.

He eventually settles on one that has a blade a little under four feet in length, with a handle a little under a foot long. He wants to get a longer one, but then again, he is only fourteen, and not tall enough yet to use one the same size he had used as Damien He still has around two more years of growing to do. Sen starts to worry a bit, if he takes after his mother, he is never going to be able to wield a weapon the same size as he had in his previous life. And he only has two more years until he’s an adult.

Shaking off the worry, he waits a bit, and the person in the back soon comes out. He is a short man, but heavily built, his clean shaven face as covered in soot as his leather smithing apron.

“I’d like to buy this please”

The man gives a short glance over it, before grunting in assent, pulling up a trade window between the two of them. Looking it over, Sen notices it’s the same trade screen he saw at the department store like place, with the sword in the blacksmith’s side of the window. He puts up twenty goblin crystals, fifteen from his loot drops, and five from extra goblins he had hunted. He presses the accept button the second he is done putting them in. The man must have pressed accept as well, as the sword turns into motes of light which float into Sen’s chest. Pulling up his inventory, he sees he now has a “small greatsword” in it. He thanks the man, as manners had been drilled into him by both his lady in his previous life, and his parents in this one, and leaves the store with a grin on his face.

Once he is out he pulls the sword from his inventory, and equips it, as it comes with a nice little shoulder harness. The sword itself is almost as tall as he is, but he is happy to feel the reassuring weight of a sword he hadn’t felt since his previous life, as no other game has gotten the feeling of it quite right.

He considers going to the energy crystal shop for a bit, but figures that the only energy crystals he has left over are a few horned rabbit ones, so there isn’t any point in getting just a couple of more rare crystals at this point.