I fight a battle every day

Against discouragement and fear;

Some foe stands always in my way,

The path ahead is never clear!

'The Fighter' Samuel Ellsworth Kiser

*******

The idea had been simple, at least in theory.

The problem with swords and sorcery fantasy is that it is almost always centered in the age before technology, that is household appliances, took off. It is easy to forget in the modern world, but throughout history, humanity has lived a very meager life. No refrigerator or microwave, no running water or indoor plumbing and no pest control.

This causes problems that are very hard for the modern mankind to think about on more than an intellectual level. When hygiene was not really important for the layman, focused as they were on survival. This meant that refuse was left in places that it really should not be. This attracted vermin.

Vermin like mice and rats were a significant problem before modern pest control methods existed. They carried diseases and spoiled food, even today particular places in the world are still dealing with thousands upon thousands of critters that would eat their grain and produce.

Nero's idea went like this.

'I need to eat. To eat I need to make money. To do that I need to sell something or render a service. I have nothing to sell. What kind of service can I perform that will pay? What are problems I can fix? What were the issues in medieval Europe? Starvation, wars, day to day life and plague.

Starvation is not a problem, and I cannot fight. So I can help in day to day life, chores mainly, or help with a plague. There does not seem to be a plague, and I cannot heal.'

This had been his train of thought until he had picked up the little snake. His next idea went something like this.

'I cannot stop a plague or heal, but why not prevent one while helping in day to day life?'

With the little snake in hand, or on the shoulder as the case may have been, he went off to find one of the mankind's greatest foes, the rat.

Kaesar focused on places with food first of all, as they would be most susceptible to vermin. He would go up to the counter of a restaurant and ask to speak to the owner. Sometimes whoever was there would say no or answer that the owner was not available. If that were the case, then Nero would move on. It took a few tries to find somebody who would talk to him, but on the fourth attempt, he managed to speak to the boss of a small restaurant.

Once Nero was talking to the owner, or boss, of the establishment their conversation went something like this.

"Before we begin, I would like to ask if you are having any problems with rats or mice at your restaurant."

"No sir, our food is perfectly fine."

That was the first hurdle, making sure they understood he wasn't trying to ruin their reputation.

"I'm sure the food is excellent. I'm sure you take care of your restaurant. But they do pop up every once in a while, don't they? I'm just asking if you would hire somebody to deal with them if they showed up?"

"That's what you meant when you said you were talking about business. I'm afraid you are too late, we hired a mage to get rid of the small nest here last week."

That was the second problem that tended to crop up. Nero had not experienced the magic and had thus treated this situation as if it were identical to the middle ages. Here you could hire somebody with magic that could deal with a problem with magic.

Still, that did not mean Nero was out of options. When he received a reply similar to this in later interviews he would ask;

"How much did that cost?"

The replies he got were about the same, between 2 to 5 gold coins. Kaesar did not know for sure, but he imagined that gold was a significant amount of money.

It made sense in a way, mages were somewhat rare, at least more so than warriors, and they would get paid more because of their scarcity. It probably a slightly specialized field of magic as well, a standard fireball was more likely set fire to a restaurant than it was to kill vermin.

That being said, Nero still saw an opportunity. Business was not his specialty, but he knew the basics. Like the fact that if you could do the same job for less money, you could steal clients from the competition.

So he told the owners of the restaurants that if they wanted it done more cheaply, they could call him.

Eventually, he had some luck.

The fifth owner he talked to, the twelfth restaurant of the morning in all, hadn't yet hired anybody to exterminate the rats that had begun to spring up in their storage room.

Nero jumped on the opportunity, saying that he could get rid of them all for much cheaper than a regular mage. It had taken some convincing, but the money that could be saved led to the owner agreeing to allow Kaesar a chance.

Pest control You have been given a chance to help a local restaurant owner. Kill all rats in the storeroom by noon to receive your reward. Rats: 0/17 Grade: E

This was the first sign that something had gone wrong. A quest had been generated, Nero wasn't so much a noob to not know what a quest was. It was basically a task given in exchange for rewards.

Nero saw no problem with this, he treated it like it was a job. Kill the rats to get paid.

That is what lead to this situation.

-2

-3

-1

-2

Those numbers were slivers of his HP draining away as five rats bit at his shins and feet, causing him to feel a little stinging in the area. Two more were warding off the small snake as it tried to bite them. It had already eaten one at the beginning of the confrontation, and one more was wrapped up in its coils, slowly being strangled to death.

The thing that Nero had forgotten was that for all Gods' Nature resemble reality, it was a game. A game is not reality, it a world meant to challenge and entertain. Good games do not mirror reality, what they do is shape their own reality in a way that engages the players.

Nero planned to sit on a barrel or something, release the little snake and allow it to hunt down the rats. The most significant problem he foresaw was that the snake might not be able to eat all the vermin within the time limit. If that were the case, he would just get it to track down the rats so he could hit them with a broom or something.

Within a few minutes of walking in the storeroom one rat had already been eaten, so things had been off to a great start.

But then more and more rats had appeared, it was when three showed up at once that Kaesar realized what was wrong. He did not know how but the game had made rats join together to try and kill him.

In real life, this would not be a problem unless there were hundreds of rats. With less than ten he would have been safe. What were they going to do, nibble on his ankles till he fell down then knaw on his earlobes?

It was only when he noticed his health fly away that he started to realize the gravity of the situation.

A game is where a human can kill a dragon or a god. A rat can indeed kill a man. They just need to bring his HP down to zero and even if no mortal wounds had been inflicted he would still die.

Kaesar wasn't ashamed to say he started to panic when his health hit fifty percent. He had never been in a fight before and the closest he had come to a situation like this, one where adrenalin was pumping through his veins, was the reason he was currently paralyzed in a hospital bed. Where before he had been merely lifting his feet to try and keep them out of reach, his fear made him more proactive.

He tried stepping on one of them, though it merely moved out of the way. After a few tries of this tactic not working, he decided to pick one up. He got lucky, one of them was bitting his ankle and did not have time to get away when his hand came down.

With the struggling beast in his hand, he threw it as hard as he could across the room where it impacted against a wall. The throw did significant damage to its health, a small red forty popping up when it landed but did not kill it as it got up a moment later and came back to bite Nero once more.

Though panicked, Nero noticed its return and grabbed at it again. It couldn't escape this time either, though it was because it was limping from the previous damage. This time Nero kept it in his hand as he tried to reach down and grab another. It flailed ineffectually in his grasp, unable to escape nor bend in such a way to bite his fingers as he tried to choke it. Little red ones and two popped up as he did so.

He finally managed to grab another one right as the rat in his hand gave one last squeak and died. Kaesar started to squeeze the new rat as he tossed the dead one away and reached for another.

It took a few seconds, but he managed to corner it between two crates and grab it by the tail. In the form of contortion that would make a gymnast proud, the rat bent its body by its tail and lent up to bite his fingers.

-5

"Shit." The pinch made him drop the rat, but he recovered quickly and managed to grab it once more before it could escape.

With one rat dead and two in hand that only left two of the vermin trying to eat him from his feet. Though this was indeed a game, this was a virtual reality game.

There was no need for Nero to merely stand there and let them eat him, nor was there an agility stat that determined his chance at not getting hit. Instead, all he had to do was to keep moving, and the rats would have to try and keep up with his long strides.

Dodging the movements of two rats was significantly easier than trying to do the same with five. This moment of spite allowed Nero a chance to look over at his companion.

The little snake had done well for itself.

Not counting the one rat eaten at the beginning, two more were dead around it. The last rat seemed to be on its last legs as well. As Nero watched, the serpent sprung forward and settled its jaws around the mammal's neck, an eight popping up above its head. The rat tried to struggle for a moment before going still.

With danger haven passed, the rest of the clean up went surprisingly well. No more groups showed up, and the snake got a buffet.

It took another hour to get the rest of the rats, both because Nero took a moment to rest to heal and because the snake needed time to digest. Kaesar was no expert on serpents and so wasn't sure if this was the standard speed of digestion or if the game was different.

Once the task was finished, Nero left the storeroom to meet the owner again.

"All done."

"Thanks, you got that done rather quickly. Did you use magic?"

"Not really, it was mostly thanks to this little guy." He nodded his head towards the small snake which was resting on his shoulder once more, a noticeable bulge in its stomach.

"Seems useful. So how much do I owe you?"

"My services are cheaper than mages, so just give me ten." Because Kaesar was new to Gods' Nature, he did not know the currency or how much it was worth. He expected the coins under gold to be silver but wasn't sure and did not want to seem ignorant, lest he is taken advantage of.

"Good deal. Here you are, ten silver." As he expected. The restaurant owner pulled out a small money pouch and counted off ten silver coins, which Nero pocketed.

"Thank you, if you don't mind I will have a meal here before I leave?"

"Sure, always ready for customers." The owner said as he led the way into his building. "Take a seat, I'll get someone for you right away."

As Nero sat down, the little snake slithered from his arm to the table.

"You know, it is thanks to you I got this meal. How about it, want to stick together?"

The snake made no answer, Kaesar wasn't even sure it could understand him.

"All right, if you are going to come with me, your going to need a name. Hm, I'd name you Jormungandr, but you are no world serpent, are you? A bit too small to circle the world. Then I'll name you Jorry for short because you are short."

The newly named Jorry gave no answer besides curling upon itself and closing its eyes.

That was fine, Nero hadn't been expecting an answer anyway. He decided to be productive while he waited for his food.

Opening the menu, he scrolled through it for a moment. He had leveled up from the quest, twice in fact. He now had ten points to spend on any of his free attributes.

He did not do so immediately; instead, he entered the network portion of the menu to access the internet.

Nero knew that he was ignorant of a lot of things when it came to games in general and so he did what he always did when confronted by the unknown, turn to books for an answer.

*****

Though he had finished his 'job' around mid-morning, he only arrived at Ground Sheer around six in the evening, right on time to start his first day of work. Originally Nero had intended to return to the bookstore he had found yesterday, but he had not expected to delve so deeply into the game industry that he had a hard time extracting himself.

Because of his meticulous personality, when Augustus wanted to learn something he tended to go very deep on the subject. In this case, he had started with the initial creation of games in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This was the time period where the video games were in their infancy and thus when their culture underwent the most significant shifts. It probably would not be a lie that in the first century since the creation of the first video game, pong, had more significant cultural changes than all the hundreds of years following put together.

That wasn't even counting all the games and media that came before it that influenced the gaming world. Tabletop RPGs alone had changed games to such a great extent that their aftereffects remained to this day. Nero had only been in Gods' Nature for a little over a day, and he could see influences from things like Dungeons and Dragons, not to mention Tolkien's works.

Kaesar had really fallen down a bottomless hole if he wanted to understand gamer culture, it was the project of years. Truthfully this spurred Nero on, not only because of his hard-headedness but also because he found the subject interesting enough to pursue it. Maybe he could finally keep up a conversation with his sisters when they started talking about things like DPS, RNG and other acronyms he did not know the meaning of.

That was still a long way off though. As he had discovered, there was a term that represented him rather well. Noob, derived from the word Newbie, it meant somebody new to something that did not know what they were doing. Nero also learned that is was often used as an insult, intended to demean somebody's knowledge and intelligence as well as skill in a game.

If Nero wanted to shed his 'Noobness,' then learning was vital, as well as understanding various skills that other gamers took for granted.

He had already completed the first step, acknowledging his 'noobness,' the next was to learn about games and then get better at them. Both he could accomplish in this training hall.

So it was with some small amount of excitement at the prospect of improving himself that he entered the building.

"Well if it ain't the job thief, go away your face annoys me." Which disappeared immediately upon seeing a small old man sitting at the front desk.

It was to be expected, nobody liked the idea of being replaced or other people muscling on their territory. Though Nero had no intention of taking the old man's job, merely using it as an opportunity to get training at the facility, Furu would not necessarily perceive it that way.

Still, Nero did not take it to heart. He had expected this reaction to a degree, though not to this extent.

"I don't want your job, I just thought you might need some help." He put on an air of innocence like he was falsely accused.

"I don' need no help. I've been working here since before you was born, I can do my job jus' fine. Watch your mouth, boy. Before I whip ya one." The old man looked indignant at the thought that he was too early to work.

"I'm sure you do an excellent job." Nero decided to change tactics a bit. "I just thought that having an assistant would give you some time to relax. Having somebody to split the load would make things easier wouldn't it?"

Furu's eyes lit up a bit at the idea that he could slack off more and not get in trouble for it. The old man then tried to hide it, putting on a reticent face before answering.

"Still, this job's tough. I don' think you can handle it. Y'are a bit too green for my likin'." Seeing that the idea had been planted, Nero pressed the advantage.

"I can learn, once I have the basics down you could let me get some experience and just tell me if I do anything wrong." In this fashion, Kaesar had provided a ready excuse. In the name of 'hands-on experience,' Furu could leave him alone to whatever task and not be held responsible.

Pretending to think about it a moment, the old man answered. "Fine, but ya better not slack off," that was his job "and go see Ken before coming back. He told me ta send you to 'im." Furu gestured with a nod of his head to the back of the building.

Kaesar was ready to admit that he was a total noob when it came to games. But one thing he did know was people. It had been years since he had 'played' but he wasn't so rusty as to forget how to convince others that what he wanted was in their best interest as well.

He had used the same tactic the night before with Ken as well as this morning with the restaurant owner. Framing your desire in such a way that the other party seems to benefit more and make them think it was their idea in the first place was psychological manipulation 101.

Nero had been a bit more forceful than he liked when it came to negotiations while talking to the restaurant owner and the training instructor because he had been a bit pressed as well as out of practice.

Furu was another story. He had gotten a bit of an idea of the other's personality from last nights argument, he had placed himself in a bit of an inferior position, 'helping' rather than 'doing.' He also framed it so that Furu would have an excuse to slack off, something that Nero thought might be a regular occurrence at Ground Sheer.

Having accomplished his goal, he nodded his head to the old man and followed the hallway to the back.

He first checked the training ground but only found one of the other two instructors there with the trainees who seemed to be doing pre-workout stretching. The instructor was the one with the grimace, called Dode if Nero recalled correctly.

Dode noticed Kaesar out of the corner of his eye and waved him over while keeping an eye on the other trainees.

"Ken's in his office, you know where that is?" Nero nodded in acknowledgment. "Go see him then." The instructor did not say anything more, ignoring Kaesar's existence as he turned to leave.

It only too a little while to reach the same office he had been in last night. Knocking on the door, he heard a rough 'enter' before opening it. Like before the trainer was behind his desk though now he was bent over some papers. The last instructor, the one with the cane whose name Nero did not know, was in the room as well, leaning against the wall to the side of the desk.

"Have a seat." Ken nodded his head to one of the chairs without looking up. "This is the kid I was telling you about. Rob meet Nero, Nero meet Rob. He's in charge of this place when I'm not around. The other man you saw is Dode, his our best trainer. When you are learning, you do everything he says got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. Tonight I want you to learn the basics of what you'll be doing with Furu. He can be a bit crotchety and lazy but he's smart, and it will depend on his word whether you stay or not. Today is Friday, so you start work tonight. You'll work Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays and learn on Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Sunday the hall is closed so do whatever you want.

Basic rules are simple. Follow instructions when told what to do, show up on time and don't leave early. You are fired if you get thrown in jail, and I want no fighting between trainees outside of spars in class. You got a gripe with someone, you settle it after the course is ended otherwise both sides get tossed out. I don't need to deal with petty politics in my hall. That's the gist of it, I don't think I forgot anything. Rob?" The instructor finally looked up from his papers to turn to his fellow.

"No, I think you got it all. Any questions?"

"What exactly will I be doing?" He hadn't gotten a definite answer yet, and his closest guess was merely watching the door.

"For the most part, you are to watch the door and deal with the people that walk in. Answer questions and turn away anybody trying to cause trouble. Do not let family and friends of the trainees in the back until the work for the night is done. The only time I want people disrupting training is if there is a death involved. Apart from that, some minor paperwork on the finance of the hall and monthly tax are the only things Furu does. Any more questions?"

Nero shook his head, it didn't sound too complicated, only dull. That was fine, it would give him plenty of time to read up.

"Alright, go see Furu, and he will get you started."

Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, Nero turned to leave.

*****

The night was progressing like Nero had expected. Furu had left him alone within minutes with some vague instructions on how to handle people that came by. They amounted to telling them to return during the day, and that was it.

So here he was, reclining on a wooden chair reading. Jorry was curled up on the desk in front of him. Nero had set him down and allowed him to explore the room a bit, but it had only taken a few minutes for the snake to return and to him and go back to sleep.

Kaesar was a bit nonplussed about how lazy this serpent was. Appart from waking up to check around every ten minutes or so, it just lay there, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth every few seconds as it tasted the air. Maybe Jorry was lethargic from the large meal this morning, it had eaten five of those mice after all, and Kaesar wasn't even sure a snake in the real world was able to eat that much. It had to be three times Jorry's body weight.

Still, the evening was peaceful allowing Nero's reading to go uninterrupted. The only sounds were the occasional shout or groan that made its way from the training room in the back.

Nero was currently reading a somewhat decent book online from the early twenty-second century. Because of its age, he had gotten it for free, and it had been written by a sociologist of some slight renown of the time.

The book, while not being really contemporary, went into some depth about how Japanese culture and media influenced early gaming culture. It was interesting, and it also branched out into other forms of media like light novels and anime and their tropes that changed certain notable games.

The only problem was that because it was a bit out of date, some of the slang required some research to understand. Apart from that small bug, it was providing help in comprehending some things that had flown over his head before. He now realized what Ludendorff meant when he was talking about such things as 'Neko-maids' and 'Onee-sama elf,' and other such tropes were due to their extensive prevalence during the time period of gaming development.

He was reading a rather exciting chapter on the prevalence of what the book was called 'Bikini Armor' in Japanese RPG's and how it spread to the west as a form of 'fan service,' an appeal to the lust of males as the target audience of the time. It was at this point that he heard a faint clinking of bells.

Nero looked up, thinking that maybe somebody had pressed a doorbell or something, but there was nobody in front of the door. The ringing went on for a few more seconds before Nero tried checking the menu of the game.

Sure enough, there was a small icon of a bell ringing next to the network option. Clicking it brought up a small window, through which he saw a woman looking at him.

So this was what answering a call received through the game was like.

The woman though was what really drew his attention, it was a face he was familiar with, though one he hadn't seen in over a week.

"Sophia." He said the name softly.

"Gus." She said his nickname in much the same way, though there were different undertones. She refused to meet his eyes, keeping hers firmly locked on his chin. "My uncle told me what he did. Being able to talk to you again is nice."

"You never visited." He did not mean it as an accusation, merely a statement. Sophia took it the other way.

"Sorry." She sounded meek, too much so for his liking. "I just... I did not want to see you laying there in that bed. I came by before you woke up but, well, it hurts to see you injured like that. Then I ran into your sisters and things... were said."

Nero sighed, his sisters and his best friend had a bit of a hot and cold war going on. At one point they could be the best friends, talking about things that flew right over his head. The next they would be at each others' throats, with snide comments being exchanged.

"I talked to them, they know it wasn't your fault. Maude and Nico were just emotional over the incident." Sophia went to say something, but he preempted her. "It was not your fault."

"But if I had been paying more attention you would not have gotten hurt in the first place." Her eyes were starting to water, though no tears escaped.

"True." There was no point in lying. "But if I had stubbed my toe a minute before or if we had taken a different path or if we left later, I might not have gotten injured either. We cannot change the past, so deal with it and move on."

"You know, you should learn to be more considerate of a pure maiden's feelings." She lightly joked, a small hiccup in her voice.

"Pure maiden?" He snorted. "Tell that to all those kids you sent home in tears. Besides, all I see is my friend being stupid for things she cannot control. What have I always told you?"

"'Nobody can control me, my actions are my own.'" She repeated his oft said phrase while rolling her eyes. "You do know that I am your boss right? I always tell you what to do."

"Only because I let you." Repeating the familiar argument brought a smile to his lips. "Besides you are not my boss anymore, at least for a few years. Doctor's orders."

"How are you doing on that end, the insurance isn't giving you any problems is it." Sophia frowned.

"No, it will pay for my hospital bills and match the pay I was receiving until I am fit to return to work."

"How long did they say till then?"

"The doctor said around thirteen months until the nanites complete fixing my nerves. I'll be stuck in bed till then. After that, I'll be able to get up, but I'll need physical therapy for anywhere between six to ten months. I'll be able to make it to the girls' graduation at least."

"That long? Was the damage that bad?"

"Yes and no. The biggest problem is that each nerve needs to be reconnected and the nanites are programmed to do stuff like that slowly and carefully. Thankfully I had the more advanced enhancements, and you got me to the hospital quickly, or things could have been much worse." Seeing his friend start to get emotional, Nero decided to change the subject.

"You never told me you played Gods' Nature?" The look in her eye told him she knew what he was doing but went along with it anyway.

"How do you know I'm playing, I could be talking to you on my computer?"

"There is no time lag. If you were outside, then there would be a delay from when you I say something and you answer. My sisters complained about it all the time when I called them for dinner."

She blinked a little, not having realized the implications of different perceptions of time. "I never realized. Then again, I've never received a call while playing before. You know my uncle was the one who created it, so I was one of the first players. He kind of spoils me, I'm his only family after all. I just never talked about it because you did not seem interested."

"You must be pretty high level then?"

"Not really. I'm only level 127, I don't fight that much. I like learning new things more. By the way, I go by Medea in the game. What about you?"

"After the witch from Greek myth? That was one of your favorite plays if I remember correctly. I chose Nero Kaesar."

"Because your father was named Seneca?" At his grimace, she hurried to apologize. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"It's fine. I just haven't thought about my dad for a while, so it was surprising. But no, I chose it because I decided to name my Nature The Beast."

"Ah, the beast of revelation then. Preterism was the one that took Nero as the beast right? And historicism took the... pope, I want to say, as the beast?"

"The Protestant church working with the pope but that's the gist of it."

"Did you use the Latin spelling or the greek?"

"I used the greek because that was the original language. NRVN QSR, Neron Kaisar, also lines the numbers to add to six hundred and sixty-six like is recorded in revelations 13:18."

"Then why do you call yourself with the latin Nero instead of the greek Neron?"

"That is just the way most people know the name these days so it would be easier other people." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly before a thought came that made him smirk. "You'll never guess what the girls call themselves though."

"What?"

"They decided they wanted in on the whole roman thing in the family. So Maude called herself Claudia and Nico chose Octavia." It took a moment for Medea to recognize the significance of it but when she did, she put a hand to her mouth to smother the snort of laughter that threatened to escape.

"Ha! I think Freud would have had a field day with you three." She giggled.

"They hung up in seconds after I told them my name. You should have seen their faces, red like a tomato. Those two get embarrassed way too easily." He couldn't resist laughing a little himself.

"Where are you anyway? Which city did you choose?"

"I'm still in Sarah Keep, I'm waiting for the girls to finish their quest to meet up and register each other as friends. It's going to be a few more months, so I decided to join a training hall while I waited." He figured she would know what they were, having been part of the game for the last two years.

"That's good. I'll be passing through there in a few weeks for a quest so we can meet. Which hall did you join?"

"Ground Sheer."

"That's a good basic one, their reputation is pretty solid. So you're learning to use a weapon?" She asked.

"We'll see, I don't know what I want to play as yet go I'm giving everything a fair shot. How do you enjoy fighting."

"I'm using a magic user build. My Nature is Sage, so I get buffs from learning and understanding magic." It was thanks to his recent studies into gaming culture that Nero knew 'buffs' meant advantages and that 'build' represented the way a person might allocate stat points to their character.

It was still odd to hear his friend talk in gaming lingo though.

"You can teach me how to use magic when you get here then. The training hall's course on magic does not start until winter in a few months."

"I'll contact you once I'm in town. I have to go, I just ran into a rather unfortunate troll."

"Alright, I'll talk to you later then, bye."

"Bye."

The small window shut in on itself leaving Nero alone with his book and snake once more.

******

I must forever be on guard

Against the doubts that skulk along;

I get ahead by fighting hard,

But fighting keeps my spirit strong.

'The Fighter' Samuel Ellsworth Kiser