After a moment of indecision (that felt like more than a month for some reason), Mei decided to just be frank.

"Um... Sorry but I think power levelling would sort of kill the fun of levelling in the early areas." she typed in the party chat.

There was a minute of silence. Mei started to feel nervous. Did she say something wrong somehow? To her relief, a prompt of 'Markkkk is typing...' finally appeared seconds later.

"Oh, that's a relief! I wasn't thinking of going dungeoning today anyway! I'm playing the 'BattleChef class so I was planning on cooking dishes today anyway." the message finally appeared after another minute of typing.

Chef? Immediately, thoughts of delicious food came to mind. It was all good too since there was no need to worry about calories in VR. All the joy with none of the consequence!

"That's alright then," she replied gleefully.

"I'm at the Sealand Port. Wrap there through the portal."

To prevent people from simply using the summon function to travel extremely long distances for free, the summon function was not usable when in different areas.

Mei stepped onto the portal rug. Promptly, a box appeared before her eyes.

Town Portal

Where would you like to go?

'Sealand Port!'

Town Portal

The trip to the Sealand Port will cost 10,000 G. Teleport?

"Oh! I forgot that you don't have much money since you just started! I'll gift you a small amount." messaged Mark with perfect timing.

Mei felt like her heart was bleeding. She was always out of cash and had to keep relying on loans and gifts! Was she always going to stay this way unless she actually threw her own money in for in-app purchases?

Trade

Markkkk's Offer ✔ Your Offer

50,000 gold

Nothing

Accept?

Mei accepted the sum and activated the portal.

Seconds later, she arrived on another spell circled pad. Around her, there were squarish two-storied white buildings with flat tops, much like tiny apartment buildings. In the distance, one would be able to hear the sound the waves lapping if they listened closely.

But what caught Mei's attention most from the skies. Instead of the sky completely being blotted out by clouds like in the Greylands, the sky here was clear and cloudless, allowing her to admire the brilliant blue hue.

"Om-mu!" shouted someone in a strangely refined and masculine voice.

She turned around, seeing a skeleton clad in the most ridiculous get-up she had ever seen.

On the head of the boney creature was a rusty greek helmet, the plume painted rainbow messily. Earrings were stuck to the outside of the helmet with some kind of unknown glue.

He wore shiny plated armour painted gold with a pink bra over it. A huge jewelled necklace hung around his neck, tangled in the bra. Around his pelvis, he wore tattered white jeans with red underwear over it. There was a belt tied into a dead knot over both the jeans and the underwear to stop them from slipping off.

On his bony hands were rings of different colours over every finger. There was actually a finger without a ring, but the skeleton must have really wanted to complete the look as there was a piece of rope tied around it. Bangles were tied to the boney arms with even more rope.

And finally, he had fashionable looking black boots with white wings attached to them. Which would have looked nice if not for the rest of the skeleton's attire.

The sight was so 'dazzling' that Mei had to pause for a second to admire it, very much in the manner of how someone might stare at the site of a car accident in horror. She resisted the urge to laugh internally, looking slightly constipated in the process.

"What? Stunned by my beauty?" the skeleton posed dramatically.

That was the last straw. The voice of a gentleman coming out of something like that pushed her over the edge. Mei bit down on her lip really hard in a bid not to laugh. But as there was no pain in VR, that had no effect. Mei began bitting her lips even harder to stop them from even opening.

-1 -1 -1 -1

"Pfftt-" Mei couldn't hold it back any longer.

She clamped a hand over her mouth.

"I'm sorry..." she apologised.

"There's no need for that, umu." the skeleton raised a palm, gesturing for her to stop. "My name is Umuton, umu. Mark isn't here yet since he went to buy supplies for stuff, umu."

Mei never felt the urge to cringe and laugh at the same time. Why did he have to end every sentence of his with 'umu'? At the same time, she finally noticed the words 'Umuton' floating above the skeleton's head. The horrible attire of the skeleton managed to distract her enough not to notice the words.

Mei was slightly shaken. Mark partied with this weirdo? She could tell as in Limitless, only party members had names floating above their heads.

"Oh, you're in the party? Hi..." said Mei slightly nervously.

"Mmm... Yes indeed. Umu." said Umuton. "You can call me Umu. Umu"

"Haha... why don't I call you by your real name instead?" Mei laughed nervously.

She didn't think she'd feel comfortable calling someone 'Umu'.

"No, no, there's no problem, umu. I'm fine with being called my name online, umu."

"Okay..." said Mei while thinking it was not okay.

"Anyway, wait a second while I message Mark ke ke ke ke ke, umu." the skeleton began to stare blankly into space while tapping in mid-air.

Mei didn't think the skeleton needed to sound out every k in Markkkk's name. As the skeleton typed, several nearby NPCs glanced at him, wondering what the heck that fashion abomination was doing with his 'finger dance'.

Noticing their stares, Mei took slow steps away from the skeleton. She felt slightly annoyed. Why couldn't the game just read minds directly instead forcing players to do this? It would have helped in the incident with the grey crawlers! Okay, on second thoughts, not really, she would have died anyway. But Mei noted to herself not to type when people are nearby anyway.

It was at this moment when the system decided to chime in 'helpfully'.

Purchase Fast Chat for $4.99?

Yes No

Mei was appalled. Online, she had heard people complaining that game devs were making necessary features DLC or IAP because of greed, ruining the game. But this? This was next level stuff! What type of garbage was this?

Resisting the urge to fall prey to the money-grubbing schemes of the game developers, Mei told herself that she could buy 2 big packs of chips with that type of money.

If you buy it now, I'll throw in 5 cans of Potato Chips (in-game obviously)!

Each can recovers 1000 HP, 1000 MP and gives 1000 EXP!

YES no

Mei: ...