“This is not a team exercise. You are to test you ability survive on your own, with nothing but the bare essentials.”

The bare essentials are items people predictably should have. As people have inventory, it is not unreasonable to assume they have a knife.

“You are not allowed to use anything in your inventory. You will be assigned a single knife and rations enough for a single day.”

The group was sitting down a large room. A man and woman standing on stage. One was speaking while the other presented items.

“Anyone eligible to take the test will have to sign up at least a day in advance. If you are not eligible, you still have two weeks to meet the deadline.”

Everyone in the room knew these things, but they still went through with explanations. They are meant to go out in the undeveloped parts.

“Remember to plan ahead. The forest is a dangerous area and you will have to rely on yourself to survive.”

This is a forested area, in it lives multiple type of beasts, almost all predatory.

A part of the task is to find and gather three types of beneficial herbs. These herbs are used to create makeshift bandages and a concoction that slows or stops bleeding.

It is not feasible to ask the participants to self harm, so just creating the products is considered good enough.

On top of that, they’ll have to hunt for food, search for water. They’ll have to create an adequate place to sleep with rudimentary alarms.

The alarms double as traps. This is the riskiest part of the journey. A failure to create a suitable shelter to sleep can easily lead to death. Especially when prolonged.

In addition to this, it is expected they find two different harmful herbs. These are used to smear on weapons, added to traps or used to repel animals.

Lastly, it is expected that they hunt three different animals. This means different species. This can be done through harmless critters. But finding these in the forest is difficult.

Outside of expectations, the contract for the test states that it may last up to four weeks. This marks the end of current attempts and beginning of the next batch.

Four weeks is long for the strong, but too short for the weak. Every step of the way might be dangerous.

Not enough sleep, lack of food, no water, poisonous plants and ferocious beasts. These things could all lead to death.

It might seem unlikely that they’d starve, but water can be a real problem. The pebble in the river, the whole land that Perpetuity stands on, has no natural water sources.

Almost all water is the consequence of rain, the rivers merging creating perpetual rain or the river that Perpetuity has full control of.

In the forest, water is still there. It is usually guarded by a beast of some sort, in most cases these animals are either very strong or pack animals.

The rain can always be relied on, never does a week go by without some rain. But these things can still be devastating.

Perpetuity could demolish this forest. They choose not to. They instead send beasts into it. Going so far as to plant more trees to make the forest larger.

“Why can’t I go with Sorp? This is bullshit.”

“Ye, I’m not onboard with this at all.”

“Ret told me he can bring a beast with him. What kind of bullshit is that?”

“What!? That’s unfair.”

The tamers did have to take their beast with them. Unlike the others, a senior tamer would follow along, hidden. To protect the beast.

They would let the people suffer and die, and only move when the beasts was in real danger. They did this because the beasts are far more valuable.

“We can still meet up once inside the forest.”

“Right! We can just stay in a party and use the compasses.”

This genius plans would fail. This is still a virtual world. Disabling some features is not a problem. They will not be able find each other with such ease.

“Good, we’ll do that then. This’ll be a breeze.”

“But can you sign up for the test now?”

“No, I’m just a bit behind on the endurance. But I’m really close.”

“Same here.”

They can’t be said to be doing bad. The general estimated time was four weeks. Give or a take a week. They are still with respectable means.

Daisy and Sorp can take the contract right away. They would be the first people to take this test. But soon thousands may follow.

Once the way to train their B.F.M. became more open knowledge, the bottleneck for the test becomes the fundamental studies. Assuming they train before entering the training camp.

This forest is one of instanced zones. This means there are multiple instances of this forest. The total number of people that can enter it at once limited.

Its size is still capable of handling up to a thousand people, but this also makes meeting other people more common and is detrimental to the test in general.

Daisy was going to go grab the contract once this presentation was over. Unsurprisingly, so was Sorp. he had fulfilled the bare minimum requirements.

“Are you serious Sorp? What about us?”

“You’ll be fine.”

“We won’t be fine! How can you do this to your brothers!”

“It’s just a test. How hard can it be, Kom? Me and Jarem aren’t worried.”

“Pal, don’t tell me you are confident in surviving alone in a forest!”

“From what I’ve read, it’s more of a jungle.”

“The hell does that mean Dart.”

“A lot of plants. Hard to move around.”

“Great! That’s not any better.”

Daisy didn’t usually join the conversation, but they still acknowledged her presence. She was sitting by them, thinking about something.

“Hopefully I’ll see you out there, Sorp.”

Daisy was already walking away with some swagger when she turned around and said this. She was thinking about how cool she looked right now. And she did have a charm about her.

“Can’t believe you let that little piece run away, Jarem.”

“What do you know? I can’t be keeping any stray dog I find on the street.”

Fortunately for Jarem, Daisy was too far away to hear him. It has to be said, Jarem was feeling a bit down. She managed to squeeze her way into his heart somehow.

These thoughts were fleeting. Jarem, Kom and Pal often went out to meet people. For men like them, it wasn’t difficult to pick up women. They are confident, good looking and fit.

It was these escapades that left them a little behind. This is compared to the hard working Daisy and Sorp. Daisy and Sorp spent most of their time training in some way.

Similarly, Dart spent majority of his free time studying various crafting professions. His theoretical knowledge increased with the day.

He still didn’t it put to practice, as the practice portion takes multitudes longer. For now, Dart was content in just learning more. He enjoyed it. It was efficient.

This did leave him behind in other things. He himself, was unsure whether he’d meet the requirements for the test. He still had about two weeks to reach them.

What Dart has learned from his excessive dive into the crafting professions, is that cooking seems be a core. There are no negatives to it. And they always seem relevant.

While there is nothing like a gathering profession, it wouldn’t be uncommon for a herbalist expert to walk past treasure minerals, due to not understanding their value.

An expert blacksmith would have an easier time identifying precious metals than he would be at differentiating precious plants. This is self explanatory.

If one does not study all professions, there is a risk of abandoning hidden treasures. Even just studying the fundamentals is worthwhile.

Later material will become harder to work with and a profession’s promotional test more time consuming. The bottleneck quickly becomes time.

Later stages of crafting professions will all have their own B.F.M. tools. This is where game elements become more prevalent. Users will be assisted through these tools.

Dart isn’t the only one striving for different professions. But none of the guys had put any real thought into. These were very interactive things. Not something you just casually gain.

It is exactly because it takes more effort than just accepting a quest that there aren’t as many people dedicating themselves to professions.

Sorp has not touched any of these professions. Very few people actually have. The total percentage of all players who have, does not reach one percent.

The reason for this, is that professions are relatively unknown. Their benefits vague at best, and Perpetuity does not guide people to these professions.

They can be sought out or stumbled upon. But only in the rarest of cases, by action of virtual humans, will a forced interaction take place.

Perpetuity has the steps in place to push people but they don’t actually force this behaviour. They only expect it as inevitable, in spite of how slow it all is.

And they are right. People will eventually stumble half a step forward. There is no need to herd a flock that’s already within the gate. All Perpetual Power cares about is retention.

Retention is hard to achieve. As people are different. So what they provide is opportunities and challenges. This allows the poor new chances and the complacent rich new challenges.

While it is an uncomfortable truth that the virtual world is vulnerable to the influences of the obscenely wealthy.

This is mitigated through one sided output of Vcoin. But this doesn’t stop people from hiring people in the real world.

Even though this is expensive, there are people who can hire thousands and it is still not too much. These kind of people are heads of large corporations. Titans of industry.

This is not actually prevalent right now, but there are quite a few people that have a team of people on their payroll.

In a way, Sorp and the guys could be considered to be a small team. But they are not lead by any one person. They only respect one another and understand Sorp’s unhesitating actions.

Sorp’s group is unique in that they are a group of friends and they can all be considered poor and, meaning their wealth is still inconsequential in comparison to the wealthy.

Group of friends like Sorp’s would consist of sons of wealthy families. It cannot be understated that the wealth Sorp and his friend managed to accumulate is nothing short of a small fortune.

A medium sized household, pulling double incomes, might be able to sink this kind of money into the devices, but not six like the boys had.

Thus it becomes a rare for groups of friends playing at this stage of Perpetuity. Only in the future when prices drop will this become common place.

Currently there are no apparent negative effects of having large number of players in a party. The obvious one is that they’ll have to share any spoils.

The spoils are usually the materials in the surrounding area, including the remains of defeated beasts.

But in some cases, small to large groups are required to even tackle the environment. Meaning there is at least some advantage to a sizeable group.

As for the more rare things like itemization. This is almost exclusively crafted. But exceptions like rewards from contracts, unknown humanoids.

In this case, humanoid has a wider concept than just human like. It is any form of life that posses comparable intelligence to humans and uses tools to support themselves.

This is still months and months away. Only when people leave the island, the pebble in the river, will they have a chance to encounter other humanoids.

According to Perpetuity’s lore. The B.F.M. are developed from existing beasts. These are beast with the natural ability of using the part of the brain that the B.F.M. use.

While there are some that use tools to do this, like humans, most use their own body as a medium. This can be considered more natural but also more dangerous.

It’s more dangerous in that, if their bodies are harmed in a specific way, they might not be able to execute their ability, as their medium to do so is compromised.

Beast with enough intelligence, may use these abilities to make up for their lacking finesse, to craft their own tools, to compensate for their physical dexterity.

This means they might make tools that allow them to possess human like crafting abilities, while still retaining their original form. And it is because of this that they can be considered humanoid.

It is not impossible to meet a two legged bird with nothing but wings and a beak. Yet capable of crafting intricate jewellery. This should be a rarity among rarities, but not impossible.

It is a rarity in the sense that most flying creatures can not do this, but a specific species of bird might be able to. And then using it to create a culture, a civilization.

Whether this has happened or even exists is whole different matter.