Tyler blinked, and all of a sudden he was in his pod, making it clear to Tyler he was walking now. He must have lost himself in the class hall after his run in with the chaotic AI, and was ejected from his pod for an unknown reason. It was just another event on the pile of events that he had been through in the past week. Conversations with the AI Ministers, a unique tutorial, dragons, dual classes, a unique class, and most of all, the fact that he had digitized at such a young age.

He was just a fat kid with bad acne, he wasn't an adventurer, he settled to be a support character, amassing resources to sell to Raiders and PvPers alike. Even in this day and age of designed diets for Tower residents, he was an odd one out. Most people didn't have weight problems, unless they were tailoring themselves for something while digitized, a supporting Friar class for example.

He stepped out of his pod, and he immediately fell to the floor. His body just felt exhausted, worse than one of his desperation exercises in his attempts to lose weight by running stairs. A cube robot approached Tyler, and extended a hose into his mouth. Before he could pull away, a cool, soothing liquid was dispensed into his mouth.

"A special blend directly from my personal records." A female voice came from the robot. "I'm going to have a more direct hand in your diet, turns out someone out there altered the nutrients in your meals from the Tower. Looks like someone was trying to keep you fat, you little fatty."

"I thought I turned off that nickname Syrix," Taking another sip of the drink. "and if I remember correctly, I had added that nickname to unacceptable vocabulary."

"Yea, I found that nickname while talking to this AI, and I figured reminding you of your current.... shape would be a good way to keep you on the right path." The IX symbol appeared on the robots display screen. "I've created a custom diet for you, and all food you are to eat is to be accepted from this unit, and nowhere else. Prime and I did some digging around, we have taken steps to make up for lost time."

After a few minutes, Tyler found he had enough strength to get himself off the ground and sit down on his reclining chair. He took a glass of pink liquid from the robot, which was presented by a robotic hand out of the top of the unit. He took a long sip of the drink, the same soothing feeling. Strawberry-Banana, one of his favorite evening snack flavors. After every sip, he could feel his energy returning, and strength building his muscles.

"OK, what is this? Are you giving me some sort of steroid right now?"

"A few actually. There are supplements to help repair damaged muscle, supplements to increase metabolism, as well with other supplements to help build muscle as well. With the current exercise routine, you had to be ejected from your pod to recover, there has been too much variation between your time in the pod and your time while digitized."

"Great, anything in there to help me take the upcoming power bomb?"

"Power bomb?"

"Yea, something tells me Bea isn't going to be happy that I didn't buy the property deed." His face was in his hands, with him reciting something Beatrice said to him once. "How am I supposed to explain that I got ejected early?"

-

"Don't worry Tyler, we both kind of expected you to not get the property. We saw the reports of the dragons at the city, we actually saw the feed of you being cornered by JackAttack, the look on his face is everywhere right now. I bet if you got a screen cap of his face up close, you probably could have made a fortune…."

Emma trailed off, whispering about JackAttack being arrested. Tyler was on the ground, realizing that Beatrice could deliver a brutal Sharp Shooter. While he didn't receive a power bomb, he was locked into place until he could beg for enough forgiveness for not getting the property.

"While we expected you to not get the property, doesn't mean you should miss the punishment for failing." Beatrice was posing overtop of Tyler, leaning back a little more in the submission hold.

"If you say so." Tyler grimaced, refusing to show any more pain knowing that would it only the situation worse. "I wouldn't say it's a complete failure though."

"Not a complete failure? How do you figure, you didn't get the property we reserved, you are stuck walking, and who knows what property will be available to us. We put our down payment, which is nonrefundable by the way, two years ago." Beatrice leaned forward slightly, then yanked back on Tyler's leg. "Next offer will probably in a basement, under a Butchers shop, in the slums."

"It wouldn't be that bad. Everybody wants food, so at least people will walk past our shop. Being in the slums also means that we can do more shady deals in a day without drawing the notice of the Guard. We will also probably be able get regular customers by providing…."

Tyler wanted to tell his business partners about his reward from his quest, he knew that he had to keep quiet about it. If news were to get out that he had a ticket with the most sought after property, he knew that he would never find peace in the digital world.

Each capital city had property lots 1 through 1000, and with so many large guilds wanting a place to call home in the safety of a capital city, competition was fierce. The last property, number 254, was rumored to be sold in the billions of gold, to the Guild 'Shop Keepers are not WEAK!'. The guild, being a second generation guild, used the property to set up their one stop shop 2 KM away from Myneria's transport gate.

Property lot number One, located immediately beside the transport node, had advantages for all players. To Tyler, the property would be most effective with a shop occupying the lot, as a majority of all traffic passing in front of the property. Tyler and his partners had managed to reserve a piece of property outside of the capital city, on the junction of the city access road and the Kingdom Highway.

The AI council decided that allowing all players to access the Auction House while digitized would remove an aspect of reality. While every single raider needed to rely on people like Tyler to maximize their profits from loot, like everything else in the world, people respected power. Tyler planned to take full advantage of the location, using young adventurers, he would buy items for cheap, and use his contacts to disassemble the gear and get part of the crafting materials and some cash depending on the size and quality of load he could provide. These low level characters wouldn't have spells that would return them to a capital city, and buying a recall stick would be far beyond their wallets, even after selling all materials from their bags. Sure, these low level characters could look up how much their items could sell for, or what materials they could be broken down into. On the other hand, would these low level characters know a leather worker to stitch together 20 leather scraps into a leather strip, for the profit margin of a copper or two? No, Tyler would strong arm these people into selling their items for low prices, and make them smile with gratitude while he separated the naïve adventures from their wallets.

Beatrice finally freed Tyler from the leg hold, and she motioned him to move from the middle of their trading space. "You are lucky though, I called a friend of mine, and she was able to put a hold on a property in our name. We'll be right on the corner at the top of Noobie Alley, with all the new players filtering through all hours of the day." Beatrice stretched out her neck, "how else do you expect me to pay for my road to raiding, or fund Emma's goal for Alchemy?"

"It's OK, I'll be diving shortly, and I'll take care of buying the property. I can transfer you the deed for the property later on, the most important part is that we claim the property." Emma actually put her book down, crossed her hands over her knee, looking between Beatrice and Tyler. "Once I pay for it, I'll make my way to it and give Tyler access to Admin, so once his walking cooldown is done, he can go straight to our lot and develop our lot as quickly as possible. We need to at least allow players to buy basic items, and the sooner we can get Tyler to the desk, he can start buying items from people, and then look for hiring someone to work the desk, and work our way to earning the "Demand 24 hours a day" achievement. Once we get that achievement, we can do business in HYTOMA without enforced operating hours…"

"Yup, we enact our plan to get things going. All I know is that I need my store to dump my stuff while building my skills, and that means getting our enterprise up and running." She turned her full attention to Tyler. "We all know here that you are going to benefit the most at the end if everything works out like we planned Tyler. You're going to be the first one for Emma to sell her potions, tonics, poisons, and whatever else comes out from her cauldron, pills? Whatever, but for you to enjoy those things, or my items from raids, you need to work now and make sure we have easy access to materials and gear."

"Now Emma, you said you were going to buy the property for us? Well, don't carry anything of real value that isn't bound to you." Beatrice was being serious, no traces of maintaining her character while she was digitized. "With the announcement of VI, If you get too close to city hall, you are going to be attacked and killed by players trying to get the Lot 1 deed for themselves. It's gotten so bad that you can't even walk away, these idiots think that if they block city hall, then they will eventually get their hands on the deed. From what I hear, every capital city that has property services are blocked, but it's concentrated in Myneria, compliments of the announcement from VI."

Tyler turned inward, a storm cloud forming slowly becoming blind thanks to the frustration he was feeling. He was being pulled in every direction ever since he started the process to digitize, feeling completely out of control, never being given the decision if he wanted to take part. Some people would literally kill to be elbow deep in a story like he was in, loving the idea of having their name immortalized from being the first of having such involvement with so many key AI figures. Tyler though, he just wanted to say that he would love to be the hero, but for some reason, having it forced on him took away from the fun he was supposed to feel. Instead of him signing up to go on adventure, he was getting buried in chaos, new storylines, legendary adventures, new mechanics, and how was he capable of handling everything?