After a short shower, only one minute of hot water allocated per day, and a change of clothes, it was time to find some food. While the gym had only been perused by us, the same could not be said for the dining room. When we entered there had to be at least thirty other people in there. Which meant that most, if not all of this floor’s renters was here. If everyone picked the smallest room size, each floor could accommodate fifty rooms.

Fortunately they had already been there for a while, which meant that there was no queue at the replicators. I ordered the large NutriShake for three mealcubes instead of the traditional two, plus one cube deposit for the glass. It had all the proteins and nutrients needed for twelve hours instead of eight. It was just as disgusting as the smaller variant.

As I watched the replicator built the fragile glass one molecule at a time, I noticed that Kira, Masuro and Ainsley ordered a shake as well. Edward and Liam must have had a bit extra mealcubes to splurge on what looked like a dry burger. Just bun and patty, no condiments as far as I could see.

On the wall, there was a large vidscreen. It took up half the wall and was showing GameNewz, the premier news channel for mostly gaming related news. It was a big channel now, but nothing compared to what it would become in three months. After the Challenges were announced, it became the most watched channel, even more traditional news broadcast. It would also undergo a qualitative change.

At the moment it was a typical gamer news broadcast, with silly names, outfits and a lot of half naked females. In the future it would become a much more serious news channel. Not wanting to hear the report about Dawnguard and its new endeavours in Carn Online, I used my wrist device to mute it. By synching up to the sound of broadcast, the device could broadcast a field that negated the soundwaves of the broadcast, but still let me hear everything else.

When the replicator finally finished my NutriShake I went to an empty table in one of the corners. More like shuffled there. I could hardly lift my feet, my body ached all over. I was not the only one who seemed to suffer from the training. Edward was wincing with each step and Liam was rubbing the back of his head. Probably not from the training itself.

“Damian, can you explain the contribution points we received just before logging out? I’m not sure I completely understand it,” Ainsley asked as she sat down. I envied her, Kira and Masuro. Not for their good looks or youth, but for their ability to not slump after a grueling work out.

“We received CPs?” Liam mumbled around his boring burger.

“Yeah, I tabulated, well the system, tabulated it before we logged out,” I answered Liam first. Taking a long drag of the disgusting slimy shake, before answering Ainsley, “The guild doesn’t actually give you money or equipment, instead it awards Contribution Points, or CPs. You can buy things from the guild for CPs.”

“Okay, I get that, but how are the guild earning anything on it?” Ainsley pressed. Looking at the others, I saw that their attention was elsewhere. Ainsley was the only one really interested in the nitty gritty boring stuff.

“Normally when you contribute something to the guild, you do it at ninety percent of the value. To take the rabbits you handed me before logging off. Each is valued at two silvers, or forty coppers. You received thirty six coppers for each rabbit. When I bought them from the guild, I paid with CPs worth forty coppers,” I explained, and started to pull up some data on my wrist device.

“How much is a CP worth?”

“One copper. Now for the first platinum each of you contributed, you got the full amount, no profit for the guild on that. Right now, we’ll probably end up with a lot of swings in the CPs. Allowing people to go negative. But once we’re established, you need the CPs to acquire something,” I said and pressed a final button, projecting the contribution points from the game.

Name

Current CP

Monthly CP Deduction

Damian Heosphoros

-40,220

240,000

Ed the Summoner

8,990

240,000

One-Eyed Dragon

-21,340

240,000

Blaze the Magnificent

16,660

240,000

Robin Windrunner

14,660

240,000

Sensei Kira

24,660

240,000

“Couple of questions. First, why do you and Masuro have negative CP?” Ainsley eyes darted over the data.

“Masuro got pieces of his armour from three of you. That’s factored in. Each of you started with eight thousand points, which is the equivalent of one platinum. I took out those five platinum, and the eleven seagulls. Which is why I’m that far in debt.”

“Okay, but what is this Monthly CP Deduction?”

“The guild will deduct the cost of your welfare tax and rent of the pod room. Which is equal to twenty platinum, right now. If you want to upgrade, it’ll be more expensive. Additionally, the guild will deduct an extra fifty percent, or in this case ten platinum, to cover taxes and expansions. And this monthly real time, not ingame. So inside the game we got two months.”

“Expansion?”

“Getting more people out of the Coffins,” I said absentmindedly.

“Coffins?” the confusion on her face told me I had slipped up. I had used a term that would not be common yet.

“Uhm, the Initiative,” I said and pointed to the vidscreen, showing scenes from the processing centers, “You know, how people get put on ice and put away. Almost as if they’re put in coffins.”

Understanding flashed across her face, before settling on a sorrowful expression, “Dead to the world.”

“I’m sorry,” I put my hand on top of hers, “That was rude of me. I spoke without thinking.”

“It’s okay. It’s only been a da— hell it has only been a little more than twelve hours since I said goodbye to her. She chose to go there early. Didn’t want to get dragged there by the SecuriBots. ‘I still have my dignity,’ she said,” Ainsley said as tears started flowing as she spoke. Through teary eyes she looked at me, “Please tell me you’re confident in this. That there’s a way to earn money to get Sarah out of there.”

“I’m certain. This game will grow like you wouldn’t believe. And there’s two ways of selling ingame currency for credits,” I tried to project confidence and reassure her, “There’s the weekly auction, where there’s the possibility of earning a lot of credits. Or losing them. At the same time Perennial will buy one billion credits worth of coins every in game week. But they only pay one credit per silver.”

“How can they do that and still make the game turn a profit?”

“In many games, rich people will spend tons of credits to get ahead. The only way to buy coins for credit is through the auctions. The company will earn good money on this, but you’re right. It won’t make a profit. Not right now. But it will eventually. I’ve my sources, I just need you to trust me.”

“It’s hard when you’re being so mysterious,” she frowned and leaned back.

With a sigh I nodded, “I understand. But I can’t reveal everything.”

“Ugh, you’re being fru—” she started.

“Look it’s Kira in the news!” Liam suddenly shouted. Loud enough for the room to become silent, as everyone first looked at him, and then to the vidscreen. True enough, it showed the lead up to the fight between Kira and Iron Bear. With a few keystrokes I disabled the sound cancelling of the vidscreen.

“—sted on the forum. It shows a secret many of the beta testers didn’t want us to know about,” a male commentator spoke, as the fight began. There was total silence in the room, as Kira kicked the two Bears’ asses.

“Sloppy,” Kira muttered as the video showed her using Leap to evade the Slash.

“Yeah, I see why Damian wants us to fight with our own abilities, instead of Combat Instincts,” Masuro commented.

“No, I meant me. I had to rely on my avatar’s abilities instead of my own.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, you were totally awesome,” Liam objected, “And super sexy.”

“It’s not goo—” she started.

“Kira,” I interrupted her, “It’s the first day. You’ll get used to it. And while I understand you want to rely on your own skills as a martial artist, the fact is that the abilities in game are powerful. And that will only increase. Don’t see it as the avatar’s abilities, but as new techniques to learn and master.”

She was about to open her mouth and protest, when the room exploded into noise. Shouts of “Holy crap”, “Cheat”, “Hax” and “What a babe!” could be heard from the largely male population of the room.

On the vidscreen the clip had ended and had switched back to the studio. A guy with green hair and a cheap rainbow coloured suit was the main host. While the eye candy was a voluptuous girl with pink hair and cat ears.

“As you’ve just seen, assisted combat mode sucks when up against manual mode. None of the beta testers told us about this,” the guy shouted the last part in an affronted tone.

“I’ve got to remember that kick to the dick, quite effective” the girl said absentmindedly.

“Vixen! You can’t say dick on air.”

“Why not? You just did.”

“I was pointing out that you can’t say dick, tits or a—” his tirade was interrupted by a screen saying “Technical Difficulties”. Which of course resulted in jeers and laughter around the room.

I noticed Kira had maneuvered her chair in such a way that Masuro’s body shielded her from view. At least mostly. The conversation around the room turned excitedly into a discussion of assisted versus manual mode. Ill informed discussion though. It was hard not to laugh at some of the more outrageous claims of people who knew not of what they spoke.

“She’s even trending on the forums,” Liam excitedly informed us as he messed with his wrist device. Since there were no holographic projection, I reckoned he was using the lenses. Dreadful things. He let out a whistle, “Wow, Dawnguard is willing to pay her twenty thousand credits a month to train them.”

“Who’s Dawnguard?” Kira asked with an excited smile. Worry twisted in my gut. Not because it would change my plans much in this game. I still intended to let Dawnguard take the prize on this one, in order to expose them. What worried me was that I would have to enforce the contract I signed with Kira. Which would make the others look unfavourable at me. And if she chose to stay after all, because of the penalties for breaching the contract, it would be like leaving a rotten apple in a box next to some fresh ones.

Liam started gushing about my former guild, “Dawnguard is the best guild out there. No matter which game it enters, it always ends up being one of the dominating forces. Only the Silver Lords has any shot at taking them on. And that’s only because it’s sponsored by Silvertech Industries. The other top ten guilds have to band together all the time. Otherwise Dawnguard and Silver Lords would just steamroll all of them.”

“So they got money to back it up?” Kira asked.

“You’re forgetting the contract you’ve with Damian,” Ainsley pointed out.

It was Masuro, not Kira that asked, “What do you mean?”

‘Damn it Ainsley, give me time to process,’ I swore to myself, before addressing Kira, “Yes, they got the money to pay that salary. What Ainsley meant was the point in the contract that we went over several times. Blue Lotus owns your account, since we paid for it. If you want to leave the guild before the three year contract is up, you can do that. However, you can’t play Carn Online without paying five thousand credits a month for the remaining contract time.”

“That’s bullshit, she’ll just make a new account,” Masuro growled.

“Each person can only have one account.”

“Fuck that, you tricked us,” Masuro was getting loud and angry.

“I explained it to you all several times, I laid out exactly what you were signing. Explained the consequences, I even gave you a hypothetical scenario just like this,” I kept my voice even, and non threatening. Trying to de escalate, while standing firm on my position.

Kira put a hand on Masuro’s arm, before turning back to me, “I remember that now, but you’re still holding me hostage with this contract. They’re offering me more than twice what you’re paying.”

“I can understand why you feel that. However, I’ve a goal, which I explained to you guys. I’m going to get as many people out of those boxes as possible. I chose you to help me, because you have the skill sets needed for me to pull this off, not to make myself rich,” I was getting a little agitated, which bled into my voice, “I thought you would understand, you were about to go into a box.

“However, if you insist on it, I’ll make Dawnguard an offer. They can buy your account for fifty thousand credits. That way I’ve enough credits to hire six new people. People who’ll know what it’s like to be put into a coma, never to know if they’re going to wake up again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve things I need to do. I’ll see you ingame in two hours and thirty three minutes.”

With that, I left. Barely remembering to throw the NutriShake into the recycler and getting back my deposit. I was angry, no doubt about it. I had known a situation like this would pop up at some point, but not this soon. It was way too soon, I had no results to show for it, and it would be a major setback if anyone of them left.

I had almost reached my door, when Ainsley called out to me from behind, “Damian wait up.”

“What?” I asked through clenched teeth. Then realised I was taking my anger out on her. I turned around, with a sheepish smile, “Sorry, shouldn’t take my frustration out on others.”

She searched my eyes and face for a few seconds before saying anything, “Apology accepted. Petals just reached out to me. She’s going to reset her character, but she wants to know what skills we would recommend her to take.”

“Is she going to play solo or join us as a crafter?”

“She asked about both options.”

“Well, if she’s going with solo character she’ll need a setup like Masuro. A shield and some other weapon. I would recommend that she take Shield Bash, Charge, Terrifying Shriek, Lay on Hands and Tether. Of course Observe is always a good spell, but when playing solo every single ability is precious.

“Now if she wants to join us as a crafter, tell her that no matter what she wants to make, we can find a spot for her. To be honest, I feel that Observe and Message are two spells that will be important to any crafter. There isn’t really any spells or abilities you take when starting out that’ll boost crafting. Any crafting skills can easily be learned ingame. It’s not the same for abilities. She can always take Lesser and Greater Transmutation, they’ll help most crafters. Especially Greater Transmutation. Imbue goes well with those two.”

“I’ll send her your recommendations, but I doubt she’ll join as a crafter,” she said and started typing on her wrist device, “For what it’s worth, I know what’s in those contracts and what we signed. But you’re not telling us a lot of things, which makes it hard. Also, you’ve not spent a lot of time with us.”

Taking a deep breath before answering her, “There’s a lot of small things I know, but I can’t tell you how I know it. And for spending a lot of time with you guys, it’ll change in the future, but right now I need to focus on grinding my own skills. You’re all level three already, I’m only level two. Crafting skills take longer to grind, since we don’t get extra XP to invest.”

“Then why didn’t you pick up one or two fighting skills?”

“Because I’m going for a special class, which prohibits fighting.”

“What? A pacifist?”

“Yes actually. It’s a class that are very good for a crafter focusing on multiple disciplines.”

“It’s seriously called Pacifist?”

“Yup, and you lose it if you get XP from killing stuff.”

“Huh. That’s weird, but wouldn’t a specialized crafter be better than a generalist?”

“In theory, yes. However, with the right class and race, it can be highly effective.”

“You haven’t told us much about races.”

“Because right now it’s not really pertinent, it’ll be months before you can take the first step toward changing race. However, there’s a little information published already that you can read up on.”

“Oh, where?” she asked with interest.

“The background lore. The Fall of the Ancients. It’ll mostly be history, but it’ll include a list of races and hints to what bonuses and penalties they provide,” I pulled up the website and found the lore information. A few keystrokes later, I had sent it to her device.

“Thanks,” she said after seeing what she had received, “Are you going back into the game?”

Taking a brief moment to consider how to reply, “No, I’m going to be training my hand to eye coordination in one of the free simulators Perennial is providing.”

“Okay, I’ll see you ingame in a couple of hours,” she said before heading back to the dining area.

I found myself inside a simulated shooting range, with thousands of different firearms to choose from. From the oldest slingshot to muskets to machines guns to laser rifles. If it could be used as a ranged weapon, I could find it in here.

It was not a lie when I told Ainsley that I was going to train my hand to eye coordination. I just did not tell her, I would be starting my training for the next game already now. While you could be successful as a non-combatant in Carn Online, the same would not be true in Nuclear Wasteland: Online. It featured perma-death, and you only got one character. And unlike Carn Online where there was an assisted combat mode and you had all kinds of abilities to access; that would not be the case in NWO. It relied completely on your own skill set and body. Which was the main reason I insisted on the daily workout session.

I was planning on spending every free moment inside different simulators. I would be training mostly marksmanship, but I would also be looking into unarmed combat, as well as advanced driving and flying simulators. With the time dilation, I would be able to train ten hours every real world day. Even with my limited aptitude for such pursuits, I should be able to become proficient in several of them.

I had just picked up a handgun, a ten millimeter, one of the most common calibres in NWO, when I received a call. Since I was inside a game that allowed outside communication, an overlay showing the caller popped up in the lower right corner of my vision. It was Kira.

My stomach started to twist, and with a bit of dread I accepted the call, “Hey.”

“Hey. Uhm,” she said awkwardly, before lapsing into silence for ten seconds or so, “Listen Damian, I wanted to apologize.”

“Okay,” I said with a sigh of relief. I was still worried about how the conversation would turn out, but at least it was a good start.

A few seconds of silence once more, “I know what you want to accomplish is important. And I want to be a part of that, but you’ve to understand. Those twenty grand a month would mean I could save up for the down payment on regrowing my legs.”

“I see,” I had not considered that, “How long would that take?”

“Two years. Faster if I can earn extra credits by selling stuff ingame. As you said there’s good opportunities to earn credits in it. I can clearly see that after you explained it. I know it was rude the way I went about it, but getting my legs back, it’s— well, it's the only thing that has been on my mind ever since the accident.”

“One year.”

“One year?” she repeated confused.

“You’ll have your legs regrown within the year, I promise you that. I’ll even turn over the company behind the guild to you, if you don’t have your legs by then.”

This time the silence was not because of awkwardness, but because I had baffled her, “A year?”

“Yes, and that’s a worst case scenario.”

“But we’re talking six million credits to regrow both legs.”

“Yes I’m quite aware of that.”

“I don—” she started, then stopped. She tried a few more times, before she finally decided on what to say, “I don’t see how that should be possible.”

“I know I keep saying this, but trust me. The potential you can see right now, is nothing compared to what is coming. I just need you to trust me. I’ll send over a contract later that states you’ll gain all shares of Blue Lotus, if we fail to pay for your treatment within a year.”

“Really?” she seemed quite surprised. She did not know me as well as the others. I always meant what I said.

“Yes, if there’s nothing else, I need to get back to training,” I said, feeling the conversation was starting to repeat itself.

“No. I mean, no there’s nothing else, except please don’t be mad at Masuro. He’s very protective of me,” she said. She sounded very happy.

“I can understand that. But I really need you guys to show me some trust, even if I can’t tell you everything, I did invest all of my savings in you five. I chose you five, because I believe you would be the best choice to help me achieve my goal,” I said before saying goodbye.

After a few deep breaths, to regain some form of inner peace and focus on the task at hand, I stepped up to the shooting line. Focusing on the holographic target around five meters away, I pulled the trigger. The recoil made the gun jump. A lot more than I had anticipated. The target highlighted where I had hit. According to the readout, I was seventeen centimeters too far to the right to hit the target.

It was abysmal to be honest. However, it was the first time I had ever fired a gun. What I really needed was some instructions. Pulling up my bank info, I looked at the pitiful one hundred and thirteen credits I had left. Just an hour of instructions would cost twenty five credits. Gritting my teeth, I summoned an AI instructor and paid for two hours of instructions. Time would tell if it would be a good investment or not.