Chapter 12: Jane's University Preparations

"Princess, why won't you pick somewhere closer to home? Daddy wants to come check up on you." The wiry man dressed like a lumberjack due to his abuse of flannel shirts pleaded.

"Dad, I'm lucky to see you at dinner. When will you check up on me?" Jane asked her father in disbelief.

"That's true, dear. You should show more of an interest in your daughter's life." Olivia grilled her husband. "At least I do mother-daughter workouts. How else would I know what's going on in her life? Do you even know about her new boyfriend?"

Jane's father's eye began to twitch. "Boyfriend? It's not that Jackson running around is it? I knew he looked like a playboy. Running around half-naked. Could it kill him to put on a shirt?"

"His name's Jake, Dad." Jane informed.

"I don't care what his name is. How long have you been together? Why hasn't he asked my permission?" Her father yelled. He started looking around the room.

"What is it, John?" Her mother looked around.

"Where'd I put my gun collection? I thought it was in the living room." He asked, lifting up a couch cushion.

"It's not there. You wanted me to put it in the bedroom closet, since you haven't used them lately." Jane's mother said, pulling his arm to get him to sit back down.

"Jane, remind me to get the case out so I can polish them when you bring him around for the next date." John said firmly.

"Will do, Dad. Whenever I get a boyfriend, you'll be the first to grill him." She teased.

"Whenever you get...you aren't dating this James character?" He asked.

"Nope. Jake and I aren't on speaking terms since he wanted to see me with my top off while I was cooling off after a run through the mountains." Jane casually mentioned.

John's eye spasmed again. "Olivia, what do you do on these Mother-daughter runs?"

"Running." She deadpanned.

"Moving on," Jane said. "I want to go to Oxford. I can stay there straight through my PhD. Plus, I'd be in a decent position to visit other areas of Europe using train."

"It's just so far. If it's about money, I'll pay for Harvard." He continued to plead.

"I got a scholarship offer from them, too. But no, I'm set on Europe. Besides, the degree's name doesn't matter. I'm all about location on this decision." She stood firm. "It's not like you couldn't teleport there if you wanted to visit, Dad."

"Honey, you keep saying that. I don't' think you understand the devices limitations." He said in a pained voice.

"What do you mean? Whenever someone talks about it in the same sentence as, 'Taking work all over,' it sounds like it can cross a continent." Jane asked, a little confused.

"I'm sure a rare few could. Most, though, are limited by range and power consumption of the device. Plus, you'd have to have a location's elevation, GPS coordinates, and other information stored in the device to begin with. That requires prior visits. Your mother's device and my own is limited to 50 stored locations and a range of 500km. They're one of the higher-end models."

"So you couldn't hop to the far East-coast and then hop over to England?" Jane asked. Jane stopped and waved her hand. "Right, the distance between the continents is over 5,000km. Still, you could fly over on a plane every so often and visit during a weekend."

"Fine, honey. If you insist on this, we'll support you. You should be careful, though. Europe has a much deeper supernatural world than America. The place is old and has a lot of hidden corners you could find yourself in. Your mother and I also have a lot of enemies there. So best not to let anyone get your DNA if you could help it." He said while Jane's mother looked on concerned.

"Huh, don't I have to get shots on record?" Jane wondered aloud. "I'm fine with healing myself, so I'd be fine there as long as I don't lose consciousness."

"Jane, I'm talking about if you are attacked in a random Instance or someone slashes you with a weapon and runs off. It wouldn't be out of the norm for someone to use that to get information on you and then cast a tracking spell or put the sample of blood into a device that'd do the same thing." He said.

"Devious." She said, nodding.

"You wouldn't believe. They've had millennia to refine their methods." Her mother said.

"I guess it's good, then, that I can suppress my aura to appear like a normal person. I'm make sure to wear a scentless suit and cover all areas of skin and hair and wear goggles if I decide to explore an Instance or sneak around. That way no one will recognize me." Jane replied while nodding.

"You'd do best to just keep a low profile and not let anyone suspect what you do. Even the best disguise would be useless if someone started looking into you for anything suspicious. Then they'd just have people or devices watching you for a few months to see if you do anything related to the supernatural. You're going to a place that has more cameras than New York." John said gravely.

Jane's mother smiled. "Still, do have fun. Worst-case scenario, we have to change your appearance like your dad and I. You'd lose all the work you've put into developing your education history, but you can always start over." Her mother leaned in and whispered. "I'll get you a mask with hair to wear over your face to look like an older woman before you leave. You should still wear gloves, fingerprints."

"Thanks." Jane whispered back.

"Don't encourage her!" Jane's father cried out.

~*~

It was already the end of May and Jane had sent off her confirmation letter to Oxford. What Jane didn't say to her father was that her country's Administrator had suggested she attend somewhere in Europe in a message she received last year. She didn't mind, because she was already considering somewhere overseas.

Jane didn't know what The Council had planned for her, but it was likely more than simple amusement. There's a lot of countries squished together in Western Europe, so they likely wanted her there to run a bunch of errands in secret to further their own interests. Jane didn't know if there were factions among the Administrators, but she wouldn't put it past them to at least have their own pawns and hands in the local politics. So having an outsider to further their position in random Quests would be ideal for anyone. After all, what Player doesn't do anything for Quest rewards?

Not Jane, that's for sure. So those Administrators better work together, because she isn't going to be caught between factions.

Weeks passed and Jane spent much of June finishing up her online classes and talking with different academic organizations to ensure that all her course credits would give her the most opt-outs at Oxford. She was sure they would, but bureaucracy between two countries and three schools would give too many variables for something to slip through for Jane's liking. It was enough luck that Jane's GRE and SAT scores helped her get a full scholarship.

Jane did suspect that the Administrators helped her along, however. She didn't have near the activity and volunteer requirements that most applicants had these days.

~*~

When Jane decided to stand out and get accepted to a premier University, get a degree where she could excel, and start networking to create her own organization with enough power to start a very large game of chess with various political powers; she had thought to get an MBA and dual major with something like Chemistry. The pharmaceutical companies always seemed to go unnoticed, yet hold a ton of political clout. Advanced Mind and Singularity changed Jane's plan.

Sure, those degrees would ensure her choice job offers in existing companies to start working her way up from. She might even come up with some miraculous cure, but she wouldn't own the patent. No, she had a better idea.

Her current identity, Jane Blackthorne, was to remain pristine. Innocuous and completely unassuming. She would be someone that no one would think "Supernatural" about because she'd be doing something that no Power would be monitoring. She'd be a Literary and Arts major.

Jane was sure that if you got into the business-side of things that there would be some supernatural organization interested in some way with literature or art. Books could be a big business and art was often used to smuggle blackmarket goods through money laundering or shipping.

Jane was going to be a writer and artist, though. Aside from drugs, what illegal stuff do they get into? The real beauty of the plan was she'd be invited to all the major gatherings and could be a headline name on the invite list and still blend into the background.

The second part of the plan was to have alternate identities. Being overseas was perfect for setting them up. People disappeared all the time, so Jane was going to find two other girls her age and of similar features and assume their identities after they'd gone missing.

Harsh and on the far-end of the morally gray area, yes. But effective. She wouldn't cause the disappearances and would save whatever naïve party-girl she could from potential abductions, but those that happened she would act on. Then, she'd get their identity information and start electronically living their lives while she lived her own.

By the time she graduated with two PhDs in the Arts, she'd have one identity with an MBA and Chemistry graduate degrees and another with Computer Science and Engineering. She might add others if she had time, but she doubted it. She'd only do these because they could stop before the post-graduate level and still work well in a corporate environment while being done without face-to-face meetings online.

Her Singularity skill would be essential for these. She could easily gain access to the school's servers and find out the personal details and start back-dating and altering records as needed. She'd even have them be in some school organizations and edit their faces into the relevant school publications prior to their printing.

No one would question it because they wouldn't to admit to not knowing who that person was. So long as the functions were crowded enough, she could pull it off. Oxford was also linked to other schools, so she'd make sure at least one of the identities were from an alternate institution.

~*~

Jane had already started on her plan last year. As soon as she was 17 she had spent a small part of her weeks submitting to legitimate and obscure literary group competitions. Poetry, Short Stories, Fan Fiction forums, etc. She didn't have much in the way of graphic design talent, so she didn't enter those competitions. She'd nurture that when she started University. Oddly enough, she couldn't create a skill for that. It didn't matter much, anyway, since her depth perception and muscle control was quite good.

What Jane was really proud of was her financial independence.

After several months, someone on a fan fiction forum had suggested that she look into short story compilations and turning them into an ebook to sell on the major marketplace that also will give her 70% of the selling price. She had been using the pseudonym Celest for her fan fiction. Oddly enough, no one had linked her to Landless Wonders.

Her real name was in her description, so repackaging them wouldn't raise any complaints. She went with it.

The short stories on the fan fiction forum weren't really based on any fan fiction. It was just related to that genre the Anime was in. She had always enjoyed Fantasy, so Jane wrote about it.

The first book compilation was titled, Tales From Celest: A New World. It included all tales related to people finding themselves transported or reborn into a new world and how they made a difference. It didn't get much traction, but her fans on the forum helped advertise a little.

A month later, Jane decided to release another. The first book was a compilation of five short stories, roughly 20,000 words apiece. This next one contained three stories at 35,000 words apiece. More of a novella bundle. It was titled, Tales From Celest: The Hero's Messenger.

The second compilation followed the first's theme of a new world, but added the angle of having a common character that interacted with each of those five people. It was a different point-of-view and told the messenger's tale between some of those meetings. Her fans enjoyed it and world slowly began to spread.

It wasn't until April of Jane's Senior year that Jane started gaining notice. She released her latest book. Not a compilation, but an actual 90,000 word novel. Tales From Celest: The Mother's Call. By this time, her fans were picking up a theme. Jane had been working backwards to create a Landless Wonders tie-in and no one had noticed, even with the Celest name.

The third book, as expected, discussed that messenger and the mission that they were brought to perform by The Mother. Her fans loved it, because up until now no one had written any decent fan fiction about the goddess. Those that had had received major pressure from the company overseeing the game to take them down.

Her fans wondered how long it would be before Jane was forced to do the same. Time carried on and a month went by. Jane's books were still for sale at the online marketplace. It created a major controversy on the fan fiction forums, which moved to in-game discussion, which was eventually picked up by the gaming news podcasts and other minor news sites.

By the time Jane had received a contact request by the company overseeing Landless Wonders, VirtuaTech, it was May and Jane had already sold a total of 3.5 million copies of her books. She had only priced them at $3.99, out of curiosity of if they'd sell and also at a price low-enough to entice most pirates to buy instead of waiting for an upload.

Jane wasn't sure if it was the sudden potential at a lost profit that brought about the letter she received from the company, but it was clear that they smelled blood in the metaphorical waters. Jane was requested to enter a licensing agreement with them. They wanted to sell her stories to the players through the game and online store. Legally, they couldn't touch her first two books as they didn't reference the game at all. The third book as safe as well because it was discussing player-generated content and was content that was created by her.

She doubted that the company could legally remove her works even if she didn't meet those requirements, it's just that most players remove those fictions so that they don't have to pay the legal fees to fight them. Jane had made a good bit of money, so she wouldn't have backed down anyway.

Jane spent June in a back-and-forth talk between a lawyer her parents recommended and VirtuaTech. It was a welcome distraction while she was dealing with her school documents. The end result was that Jane retained full ownership and royalties of her books outside the game, as well as rights to all merchandising and franchise opportunities. Including movies and TV deals. If the offers were brokered by VirtuaTech, she was entitled to 10% of all profit, first-cut, after expenses and before the company received its share. If she had found these opportunities outside the company, VirtuaTech didn't have claim on these profits, unless they wanted to use the material at which time they'd resume the current deal after getting licensing rights.

This was a simplified version of the agreement, but Jane was happy with it. It took several versions to get to this point, but after Jane had started citing other agreements the company had with other organizations and individuals, she talked them into it. Her lawyer was quite happy with his easy fee.

This let Jane's books be distributed inside the game by the AI. The books would be player-objects and referenced to her account, but not influence the development of the game. They went under a new class of items that had hit the game after she stopped playing: media.

Media was the company's way of bringing outside materials into the game without influencing it. Any media could be read, but not copied. Even if someone typed up the text word-for-word or paraphrase, a new Player-Object wouldn't be generated as the AI would detect the origin and intent of that player trying to create the item.

Jane was happy. Outside the piracy angle, she wouldn't have to risk Celest's game alterations becoming skewed. She had casually monitored the game over the years by game news websites and online videos. So far, her changes with the Lore she created were all sticking and evolving the way she had hoped. Few player changes had influenced them more than a minor degree.

She was also quite happy with the AI taking her Lore and keeping up the role of The Mother. An Instance of Celest's character would sometimes appear and interact with players and NPCs, doing little acts of kindness, offering advice, giving hints at treasure locations or new technologies that might appear in the future, as well as performing small miracles that would aid crops and the general well-being of the populace.

~*~

All of this, the financial independence that Jane had now and the multi-identities with separate histories that she'd cultivate in the future, let Jane feel secured in her current plan for her life. With June finished, Jane had made all the preparations she could before she left for University in Europe.

Jane chose to spend her remaining month helping the ladies with their use of the Instance behind the waterfall and pumping them for information on decently reputable contacts in the supernatural world to interact with if she needed something. She also made sure to get a list of every known Instance location and who controlled them, especially those that she could earn interesting items and materials from without having to lose too much money.

The ladies were nice to Jane. She got good advice and a couple of the women slipped her items known as multi-dimensional storage tools. One was in the shape of a ring, the other was in the form of a bracelet. It seems that while comparatively expensive, they were low-end in the supernatural world and could hold a roughly 3 cubic meter amount of items each. They'd be worth about $1.7 million a piece if she had to pay with dollars on the open market.

They never got to the open market, though, since conventional science can't make them. They're received from the mutated Instances. It seems that the supernatural world had adopted a standard currency system that revolved around crystals formed from Mana.

The crystals could not be produced, even if you were to condense your own Mana. They appeared in mutated Instances from monster drops or popped out through rifts. Each crystal was used to recharge the advanced technology that found its way through. So some civilization had found a way to harness them safely. Our own society has been unable to power our technology with them, when tried explosions occur.

Since the advanced technology was useful and rare, the crystals as well, it made a decent currency as the could not be replicated. The crystals came in six forms, from lowest Mana quantity to the highest: clear, yellow, orange, blue, purple, and black. Each crystal was roughly equivalent to 100 of the previous.

As a good indication of how much it'd take to exchange one USD for a crystal, that low-end storage tool would be 7 yellow crystals, 700 clear, or $1.7 million dollars. This means that a clear crystal could be exchanged for nearly $2,500. However, what decent supernatural business would do that? Some charge anywhere from 20-60% to convert crystals for mundane currency depending on which organization controls the business and where the transaction is taking place. Which means you're going to be taken if you need a crystal quickly in a dangerous Instance and have to do an exchange.

All of this advice Jane was quite appreciative to learn. She'd have walked into Europe and lost all of her new fortune.

Jane also made sure to do some experiments with her Inventory before she left. When she completed the first quest, she had unlocked the Inventory menu. This let her have a 3x3 virtual backpack. So she could place things into 9 separate areas.

This operated just like Landless Wonders. She could stack up to 99 of a similar set of items. Conveniently, however, she could put any item she wanted in a container and stack 99 of those same container types into one of the spots. This exceeded the functionality of the game.

With each of the sub-quests she completely, Jane gained access to an additional row or column. So she went from 3x3 to 4x3, until she finally reached 5x5. She felt the Administrators were being lazy on the rewards, because she could hardly use all that space if she really put her mind to consolidating.

Another thing she found out was that all storage items seemed to go just fine in an Inventory slot. The ring and bracelet wouldn't fit together as it was classed as different item types due to the shapes, but she could put them in a bag to store in a single slot. So, Jane tagged each storage item with a paper label to give a general idea of what each item would be used to contain. As she found more storage items, this would save her a lot of time. Her last backpack slot would contain all her grouped storage items.

For the other item slots, Jane was going to use the bottom row to store all the alchemy and enchanting equipment she would need. Some wouldn't fit in a bag, so they'd need their own slots. The bag-able items, along with her storage item slot would use 3 slots. That left two item slots open for any large items. She didn't have any yet, but it'd be there.

Her fourth row would be used to store books and other resources. She didn't really need this with her memory, but it'd be good to have some to refer back to or pass on to someone if she had the need. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not. So, before Jane left she had been working on making copies of the books she had had access to over the years, as well as a series of guides for her Advanced Qi Gong.

She left the third and second rows empty. The first included A dagger, a sword, a gun, ammunition, and a series of bags with other weapons and ammunition.

She didn't need to store anything else as she was going to keep the pretense of being a normal person. A normal person would travel to Europe with many kinds of luggage. Even when she got there, she wouldn't store the empty containers. However, she would be keeping her disguises, potions, and some changes of regular clothes handy in storage. Especially money.

By the end of July, Jane had done all she could and was ready to leave her village for the first time in her life.