Metropolis - Capsule Bay 286 - Unit 10

Sunday, May 10th, 2089 | 10:00am

[Status: In-Game]

Aya could only stare at Donovan’s message. Her plan was threatening to unravel before her eyes and she tried frantically to come up with something that could patch it all back together, but she couldn’t. Without Donovan, she probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Nobody else would be as effective against Serving Time. Having experienced Donovan firsthand, she could confidently say he was a distinctly unique individual. She would never sing praises about his personality, but in this case, it could be the saving grace of the operation.

Her mind was spinning, trying to come up with something to change his mind.

Aya: What about your quest? Were you able to find someone?

She waited anxiously for him to message her back. Luckily, his neurotic personality didn’t let her wait long.

Donovan: It is still ongoing. No, I have not.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she wondered why she’d even worried in the first place. She knew what the boy was like.

Aya: What are you going to do then? Did you find a way to do it by yourself?

Donovan: I will use you. I have not.

Aya rolled her eyes and smiled at his typical terse response. As always, he took one question at a time, like they were part of two completely different conversations. She chuckled and shook her head in a mixture of exasperated amusement and relief

Aya: … But didn’t you just say you couldn’t?

She wasn’t used to conflicting statements from Donovan’s arguments. They were usually so dry and factual that a misunderstanding was nigh on impossible.

Donovan: Could not and would not are not the same thing in this scenario.

Aya: … Huh?

Donovan: I assume that is your way of prompting me for an explanation. My mother is not always correct in her assumptions.

Aya: And by that you mean…

She ‘prompted’ him further.

Donovan: Exactly what I said.

Aya: … Explain further.

Donovan: My mother assumes I cannot play with prisoners. She also says I can not finish my daily homeschool assignment in two hours. In a sense, she is correct about the latter.

Aya: So… what does that mean?

Donovan: My average completion time is around one hundred and eleven minutes.

Once again, she found herself torn between amusement and exasperation.

Aya: What I meant was… So are you going to play with me?

Donovan: Naturally. I have not found a better replacement. And by that, I mean I have found none.

He’d just admitted no one wanted to work with him and yet he delivered it in such a way that was insulting to her. She gritted her teeth, trying to find amusement in the fact.

Aya: But what about… your mom? Will she be okay with it?

She hesitated in adding the last bit, but having raised a kid herself she felt trapped by the non-existent ‘mom-code’, even if it was just to relieve her own conscience.

Donovan: What about her? All she said was that I cannot play with you. As the past has shown, I obviously can. As to whether or not she will be okay with it, I have no idea.

Aya: But if she said you can’t…

Donovan: Precisely. She said cannot, not should not. Now can we please get on with it? You are wasting my time.

Aya: Right…

Aya didn’t know what to think of Donovan’s interpretation of his mother’s words, but since they went in line with what she wanted, she decided to mull over the morality of it later. She sent him her coordinates in the square and he was there less than five minutes later. His stoic face took in the stack of Contracts as she put it away. The slant of his eyes gave away his curiosity, but he didn’t ask so she didn’t tell. She figured he was curious, but not curious enough to go through the effort of finding out. Slowly, she was getting used to him and his peculiarities. She just hoped it was enough to convince him to go along with her plan.

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean… no?”

“I mean no,” he said. “I won’t do it.”

“Why not?” she asked, hands raised in question.

“Because it is a waste of time. I am busy.”

“You’re busy,” she repeated flatly. “With your quest?”

“Yes.”

“Which you need my help for?”

“Yes,” Donovan said. “Well, anyone would do, but yes.”

“Which I need to level up for?”

“Yes,” he said. “You need to be at least level twelve and that is if you followed my leveling instructions.”

“I did,” she replied.

“Good,” he said. “What level are you…”

His mouth thinned into a straight line.

“Six,” Donovan answered himself in an eerily low voice without any intonation whatsoever.

Aya suppressed a smile and shrugged.

“So you see,” she said innocently. “It won’t be a waste of time. I’m gonna need it anyway.”

Donovan slowly dragged his eyes up. Aya had never seen anyone manage to roll their eyes without directly doing so until that moment. She bit the inside of her cheeks to stop herself from grinning like an idiot.

“Fine,” he said. “I have one condition.”

“Name it,” she said perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

“This time, I want a Contract detailing the exact mission parameters. I need your side of the deal to be added in as well. You will help me with this chain of quests until it is done.”

“Fine,” she said, echoing him. “What’s a chain of quests?”

“It occurs when one quest leads to another. Some quests need you to perform a certain action to unlock them. Others require the completion of a previous quest.”

“Huh,” she said. “And how many are there going to be in this… chain?”

“I do not know,” he said.

Donovan’s expression remained as unchanged, but Aya thought she could see him smirking through the stoic facade. Not having a choice, she shrugged, agreed to the deal and wrote out the Contract that they both signed.

“Alright, now that the Contract is taken care of,” he said, “how exactly am I supposed to join a convict-only guild?”

“By applying,” she responded simply.

“Oh,” he said. “I had not realized they even accepted reg applications.”

“They probably don’t,” she said. “But the way I see it, they’ll accept you.” She poked his scrawny chest for emphasis. He eyed the motion blankly and as usual, without any reaction whatsoever.

Aya rolled her eyes.

“No offense,” she said. “But you’re like…” Aya clamped her mouth shut before she said something she’d regret and added “Well, let’s just say you have a very dependable… countenance. They’ll trust you and right now… they sorta need you.”

“How so?”

“Well,” she said. “I’ve been doing some research on my own. They don’t agree on much. The only thing they agree on it seems, is the need to make money. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, they don’t trust each other at all.”

“But you say they will trust me,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Yes,” she said. “They need an… accountant, a go-between, a middle-man. They just haven’t realized it yet… but when you show up with a Contract,” she pulled out another Contract and handed it to him. “Offering your services… they’ll jump at the opportunity.”

He didn’t say anything, maintaining his stoic demeanor, but she could tell he doubted her plan.

“Look,” she said. “None of the members like the stand, but they need it. If you show up offering to cover the stand for the whole time you’ll get one-on-one time with each member as they cycle through. That will give you a chance to learn a lot. But mostly I just need to know what their profit margin is,” she said, counting the things out with her fingers. “their cost of production, the weapon specs of what they sell... And if you can…” she added, pausing as she organized her thoughts,“Find out about the noobs they’re bringing in from other regions.” Ever since Yaz had mentioned it, Aya hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was up.

“You speak as if you are not one yourself,” Donovan said.

She gritted her teeth and chose to ignore it.

“But that’s just a side thing,” she added. “Primarily, I want your focus to be on the weapons, we’ll only have one shot at this. If we can’t break them with our first go… they’ll have time to restructure and reorganize. We really don’t want that.”

Donovan shrugged and signed the Contract. He was about to walk off when he turned around and said, “I will do this, but you had better keep your side of the deal, PM all of you level ups to me.”

The corner of Aya’s lip twitched before she masked her expression, stood up straighter, snapped her heels together and saluted him with, “Sir, yes Sir!”

Donovan nodded and walked off.

Aya shook her head, packed up her things and got to work… Or at least she would have, if she hadn’t received a sudden notification.

Manipulation Successful!

Your tree flourishes.

Stage II: 100%

The manic world is now open to you.

A Manic Creature has Chosen You.

Do You Wish to Accept?

Yes | No

After her conversation with the banker, she’d muted all of the manipulation notifications. They were numerous during her various interchanges with the parties involved with her plan. She’d been so focused on lining everything up that she completely forgot about the Manic Creature she had freed. She hadn’t even considered being able to level her Inner Tree enough to actually accept the Creature on time. Senior Aizan had pretty much convince her that by the time she leveled her Inner Tree enough the creature would be long gone.

She balled her fists in nervous excitement as she opted for [Yes].

Standing in the middle of the town square, with the hot sun beating down on her she waited for something amazing to happen. Something to notify her of the changes the special Manic Creature had brought. Some special ability that would give her an advantage over all the other players. Instead, nothing happened. Heaving a sigh of disappointment, she picked up her things and left the town square.

Not being an experienced player, Aya didn’t pay much attention to the blue bar on the top right of her field of vision. It was her Mana bar and she had yet to learn a skill that required it, so it wasn’t surprising that when its maximum capacity more than tripled, it went completely unnoticed by her.

Metropolis - Capsule Bay 286 - Unit 10

Sunday, May 10th, 2089 | 5:52pm

[Status: In-Game]

The rest of the day went by relatively uneventful. With the exception of the three minutes she took for her nutripack lunch, she spent it leveling. She roamed the regions around Durrenheim looking for mobs at or above her level. As she progressed from one level to the next, she noticed a definitive increase in her abilities. It felt like an accelerated version of working out. She’d gone through workout phases in real life and the only difference in Era was that she could see the changes instantly. Aya even noticed a change in her scrawny frame. She remembered her own first impression of her body, just skin and bones; now there was definitive mass under the skin. It still wasn’t visible or noticeable to anyone but her but it encouraged her to keep going.

Throughout the day, she leveled her Scribe skill while she wrote Contracts, always checking the forums for new requests. She even set up an automatic alert so she could be the first one to accept commissions. By the end of the day she had leveled the skill three times and even paid off the next day’s interest with the bank. She started setting the rest aside to pay back her loan. Aya didn’t want to immediately jump into paying it back in case she needed the money in the future. So far, her plan was going perfectly. There had been minor adjustments throughout the day, as the bottlenecks revealed themselves, but after a day of fixing minor details, things were on track.

So far, there hadn’t been any return on investment. The Rockyno’s were the next bottleneck and she hadn’t yet figured out how to work laxatives on them. She would have to wait until the next day. By then, they would have the chance to recover the purified ore and maybe even have gathered enough blacksmiths to process it into the weapons she would be selling. Tomorrow would be a very telling day. Ackman had given her an estimate of three days to complete the construction of the shop. Although the selling of the weapons would not take place for a few more days and she would have no way of knowing for sure how successful it was going to be, one day should be enough for her to have a preliminary idea, at least enough to know if it was a lost cause.

The mere thought of it all ending in failure gave her the chills, but she pushed the pessimistic thought aside and got back to work. Aya had made it from level six to level ten in the span of the day. Her limbs were shaking from the effort, but she still had a long way to go. She staked out another mob, getting ready to Bleed him dry. With bags of blood strapped to her back, it was about time to head back to the Layhens for another delivery. She’d managed to convert all of them into vampiric beings, all for the sake of saving money. A small part of her conscience felt bad while the other part cheered at not letting a single penny go to waste. Paying for both food and water for such a large amount of birds was bound to take a toll, one she wasn’t sure she could afford, at least not yet. And since she needed to kill mobs and level up anyway, she figured Bleed was the best way to do it.

The skill allowed her to control the kill and untarget the beast before it died. It was a way to avoid getting the EXP for the killed mob. It was quite the useful trick, especially when she realized how much faster it was to get stat points in combat. Like Donovan had suggested, she focused her stat gain in speed, agility and strength. At one point during her leveling, she had come across a frog-like beast that walked on two feet and spit poisonous, sticky slimeballs at its opponents. It disabled them before they even got into range.

Aya observed another player’s attack, using the ‘idle’ time to activate her Scribe skill on another Contract. She watched the player attack the beast head-on, only to be glued to the ground the moment one of the slime balls landed below his shins. She cringed as the slime boiled on his skin, releasing colorful and malodorous gases. The player screamed and writhed in pain until he died not long after. Scrunching her nose against the smell, she watched as the frog-beast waddled back to his position. He seemed to be guarding something, and Aya wanted to know what it was.

After seeing the player fight, she could honestly say she was a better fighter than him. Or at least a better strategist, as he had died before any real fighting happened. A frontal attack wasn’t going to work on the frog, and she didn’t want to pit her speed against the slime he launched out of his mouth. She chose to sneak up on the mob, not giving it the chance to target her before she was upon it. With great care, she managed to be successful on the first attempt. It took her a long time as she tried keeping an eye on the frog while scanning the ground ahead of her for footing and surfaces that would give her position away, specifically the dried twigs that were so common in the region.

Later she realized the only reason she succeeded was because the frog never looked her way. Its focus was always ahead and as she crossed a dry and cracked river bed behind the beast, the reason occurred to her. Until a few weeks ago, there had probably still been water flowing in the banks, giving the frog a buffer between itself and any enemies that came its way. Taking the arguably unfair opportunity, Aya landed a perfect Bleed wound on the first try and backed off as quickly as she could. Before the frog realized what had hit it, it was slumped on the ground bleeding its life onto the cracked dirt below. All Aya had to do was wait.

When the frog’s dead eyes stared back at her, she found out that it had only been guarding a bunch of slimy eggs. Her motherly side was torn, leaving the eggs behind unattended like that, but she couldn’t find an use for them, so she moved on to the next target. Had the approach not resulted in a new stat, it would have been a pointless death. Instead, the notification of the Stealth points gained brought a smile to her face.

Aya knew her character would never be a warrior type, not with her small stature and spindly physique. Stealth, on the other hand, was exactly the type of thing she could excel in. From then on, she tried to sneak up on each and every one of her targets. Sometimes she succeeded and again managed to land a killing Bleed blow on the first shot, other times she failed miserably and spent the rest of the fight trying to recover her footing. Either way, her training progressed quite smoothly and she was very happy with the results.

Another benefit of training without Donovan was the way it allowed her to keep the loot all to herself. By the end of the day, she’d completely changed her wardrobe. The starter tunic was long gone, replaced by a shirt from a level fourteen goblin. Aya attacked a tribe after she reached level ten. She remembered how difficult it had seemed even with Donovan’s help. But this time, using stealth to create fictional thefts, she created enough distraction for four of the eight-member tribe. With two other cleverly placed slowing mechanisms she made with the looted toad-slime, she was able to wipe out an entire goblin tribe all by herself. It took her almost half an hour, killing one or two at a time, but by the end she had shoes with a slight agility and stealth bonus, a shirt with slight defensive stats and a saber with better durability than her own.

Aya made one last run at the Thorndillies of the region, but even before attacking them she knew it would be the last time she searched them out. The whole group was defeated in less than five minutes and only gave her a total of two speed stats. She’d outgrown the enemy. She bled them out - even there the pickings were slim - and headed back to Nelson’s farm. Halfway through feeding the LayHens, she got Goldilock’s logout notification, finished the task and then logged out at the last minute. For the first time since she started playing the game she felt like she’d actually progressed quite a bit. She couldn’t wait to find out what her ranking was. At lunch it had remained unchanged, still ‘Pending Review’.

Chris lined up against the wall, taking the eighth spot. She wasn’t the only one that used every single game second she could. As soon as the line got going towards the cafeteria, she brought up her b-link menu, took a deep breath and checked her rank.

5662/5792: Pending Review

The air exited her lungs in a shuddering stream. She didn’t know how to react. Her rank had gone up by more than one hundred. She should be happy, but she’d expected more. If her plan had only raised her rank by that much, she didn’t know what four more normal game days could bring. She didn’t see how she could come up with another scheme like she had, and if it wasn’t enough to raise her rank by more than one hundred, she didn’t see how she would become a player by the end of the trial week. She unconsciously flexed her fingers, trying to direct her hope in a different direction.

Chris had pinned them all on the expectation of a massive jump because of the plan, but apparently, that wasn’t going to happen. She realized it didn’t matter how much money she could make if the formula being used to calculate her rank didn’t understand the plan. Her hope now rested on two words, “Pending Review.” Bending her neck one way and then the other as she walked, she tried to stretch the anxiety out of her muscles. There was nothing she could do at the moment, she could only hope that the review was ‘pended’ on a weekday. Perhaps the guard or warden or whoever was in charge of reviewing things had a five-day work week. She could hope. Chris set the worry aside and focused on the things she could do then and there. Eat, train, shower, read and sleep, but first, walk.

By the time Chris made it to the cafeteria for dinner she was, if not physically, then at least mentally exhausted. Her legs felt like they were anchored in lead. Every movement took effort she wasn’t sure she had. It was a strange feeling to have in a body she knew hadn’t moved an inch all day. Just the thought of the exercise she would be doing with Tiny had her cringing. She sighed, finally understanding why the woman was so insistent on the routine. If one hard day in Era was followed by another and another just like it, she could see how a person’s body would deteriorate.

She looked up around the cafeteria, evaluating the other women’s faces for the first time. Many eyes were sunken in with exhaustion mirroring her own. The conversations she’d always heard but never paid attention to had a strained tone to them. Era was taking a toll on everyone. As Chris ruminated on this new realization, she walked up to the meal dispenser. The realization hit her like a brick to the face. Goldilocks was conditioning and even fueling them to do its bidding. The personalized nutrient meals and their personalized b-links. They were being farmed. She felt like she’d been stuck into a matrix reality.

“Be careful of that one Dearie,” Doris’ voice suddenly broke into her thoughts. “She’s not what she seems.”

Chris turned around, looking for the woman, wanting to ask who she meant, but the moment she located her she was already down the cafeteria with a dozen women between them. She pursed her lips, and came to the conclusion that the older woman could only mean Yaz. There was no one else they had been together with. She kept mulling over the meaning of the woman’s words as she sat down and tried to eat her food inconspicuously. She shoveled it down as fast as she could and was out of the cafeteria in the time it took for ten women to go through a food dispenser.

Her thoughts were in turmoil, which was apparently their new normal. She had to worry about the game, her ranking in Goldilocks, keeping appearances in front of inmates, her lawyer, her sister, the warden and now to top it all off, she had to worry about mysterious warnings from Doris? The old woman usually told her things straight out, so it worried her a little that she’d been so secretive in her warning. What did it mean? Was Yaz really that dangerous, that even Doris took special precautions not to be found out? She sighed, knowing the answer wasn’t going to show itself, at least not that night.

Chris unlocked her door with her b-link, walked in and saw Tiny getting ready for her daily exercise. Banishing all thoughts and worries, she got her mat out and filled her mind with the effort of keeping up. Two warm-up positions in, she saw it was going to be as impossible as the previous workouts had been. Soon, her real body was just as exhausted as her mind and she headed off for a shower. The water warmed her spent muscles and relaxed her. Her b-link reminded she had a meeting with Suerte in the morning. She was torn between dread and excitement. Until the trial week was over, he was the only one with information on Rin, but at the same time she wasn’t sure what he would say or do about her progress in Era.