This day has been the strangest one I’ve had in a while. So far, I was kicked from my guild, attacked by a bratty ninja, accidentally met a roleplayer…and now I’m waiting next to a virtual table. At a virtual inn. With virtual food being served to me by artificial intelligence (AI). Oh, by the way-

“Thank you”

The inn’s waitress, a Dwarf, smiled while walking away. She served a bowl of meatball soup, within it light noodles and various small vegetables float inside. Restores 10% health and magic, also reduces freezing effects.

Not that I can actually taste this while my elf eats…Ugh. I just needed that bratty ninja for a short moment to register a room with me. Afterall, it’s cheaper whenever multiple people buy a room at an inn. Maybe it’ll be quicker if I just leave the party I have with Remix and find someone else to buy a room with. Plus, I probably shouldn’t log off in the same room as Remix, or else my character might get killed if this building doesn’t grant automatic protection for Players. I wouldn’t be surprised if Remix decided to do that since she lost a fight to me. Remix has just been another brat on the internet so far. Which means concepts like honor and respect are basically lost on her. But…I don’t really like thinking this way, I prefer to normally trust people. Besides the players who are always unecessary jerks in online games like this, the only people who actively care about ‘honor’ and ‘respect’ in online games are roleplayers. I hate roleplayers.

That guy Krafty is 100% a roleplayer. And because of him, I’m waiting for Remix. It’s a shame I didn’t notice it sooner, no sane person actively bathes in a video game. I bet they don’t take showers or bathe in real life. Anyways, he managed to drag Remix into bathing with him because they started interacting, which turned into a conversation, and now into a roleplaying session.

While Sayooshi impatiently waited, he also brooded to himself about how much he hated roleplayers. While his chubby elf character was in a consistent eating animation. In Divine Mortality a player can eat food in their inventory or near them fairly quickly, usually at a max 15 second channeling animation. But that is if the player decided to press the “eat all” button or max out the consumption slider, ranging from 5% to 10% to 15% and so on until 100%. Player characters can eat a lot, even when their health and mana bars are full. So, if Sayooshi wanted to, he could buy a pile of bread buns and eat all of them at once. He would not do that though since that would waste his ingame currency. The only reason he bought the soup was to clear off the freezing effect applied to his character since he traveled at night during winter in the north.

Sometimes, occasionally, some Players either from boredom or curiosity do buy a whole pile of bread for whatever reason. If they simply leave it there, the AI characters who are running the establishment or are the ones selling the items would simply retrieve it all back after a while. And since the game contains an open world economy, often there are a limited number of items from the seller. So whenever someone decides to mess around by doing something like littering any type of item or objects from their inventory unto the floor, they won't be able to cause much damage or nuisance due to the limits of the sandbox. Often times, most objects and items can be interacted with by the player in one way or another. The most common interaction is of course to move an item or certain objects and props from one point to another. But some props/objects can only be interacted with in special ways such as how it's possible to sit on a stool but not move it because its integrated with something like an AI-operated inn. However, besides smaller objects and props which can be altered by players, larger objects and props such as trees can rarely be altered by Players or AI unless a powerful enough ability is capable of destroying trees two fold. Meanwhile, even larger things in the Overworld like structures such as the hot spring inn Sayooshi is inside cannot be damaged by almost anything. The only things inside the inn which can be destroyed are small props fit into the level design such as alcohol bottles or stools, and even then it depends whether the inn is designated in a type of safezone area (which it is in) by the game's rules. Yet, rarely, unattainable or indestructible things within the Overworld could be designed as alterable during real-time gameplay if a Lesser God (ingame moderators) decide so.

Either way, these things are once again simply ignored or eventually accepted by most players of Divine Mortality as “the realities of a virtual world”. You eventually become accustomed to both the limitations and possibilities of the game world. The curious, explorative, and technical players do often test the boundaries of the game, and they have been successful in some cases but not always. Traditionally, these players try to access areas in the game world which are blocked by invisible walls, but this type of exploration isn’t common in Divine Mortality since most of the world is already accessible and places which aren’t are blocked by gameplay mechanics like permission to enter locked palaces. Even whenever some Players log off (or even paid non-players) attempt to data mine the game’s files to extract, collect, sometimes decipher, and organize as much information as possible from the game, they are still unable to learn many things. And even then, a lot of things like the textures on items or doodads are almost pointless to learn about besides the ‘need’ to record them in a fan encyclopedia. “Common pants – Northern – 1”, “Common Axe – 13 – Coastal”, “RockStack28dp”, and so on.

Still waiting inside the hot spring inn’s first floor where the entrance and dining area is located at, a few other Players were inside. Besides another elf who appeared to be away from their keyboard the whole time (AFK), there were two other players inside. They sat facing each other on a tiny round dining table. One was a Snowmel and the other was a Dwarf. Both of them were background individuals as far as Sayooshi was concerned, but they happened to be discussing topics which interested him. At first, Sayooshi automatically assumed that they were also roleplayers, and simply dismissed their presence, just like that. Generally, who else would constantly sit on a virtual chair inside a virtual inn for no other reason besides purchasing food items to heal up or log out from the game?

What interested Sayooshi about the two background individuals was their discussion about the nature of Player governments in Divine Mortality. Something which has been brewing in Sayooshi’s mind for a while.

Where can I find him? That “Mystimender”? Now that I think about it, the only roleplayer who I could tolerate. What a shame I didn’t remember their name or add them as an ingame friend.

Even though he was kicked from his previous guild less than an hour ago, Sayooshi has already decided what his new goal in the Divine Mortality will be. He decided this while on the way here to Kurajur with Remixhorizon. Or perhaps even earlier, just after Kafeorkoko told him goodbye.

His goal is to find a certain Mystimender. He had met them once before over a month ago, during an event in which they both participated in. Sayooshi wanted to find this man because he believes that the Mystimender he met is the most trustworthy skillful and extremely knowledgeable player of Divine Mortality. The perfect candidate for Sayooshi’s grand plan. That’s right…The next TRUE step in Sayooshi’s journey is to create a new Player Government, one which could rival the only current Player-led government called the Republic of Adventurers.