“Fuck!” Shin exclaimed as he crumpled, his tolerance skill was decent but stubbing your toe on a cartwheel always came as a shock. He grabbed onto the cart and slowly stood back up. “Nice one, dumbass,” he thought sheepishly to himself, shaking his head. He had become a cart driver only a week before and was not used to his new role. It was gruelling work when loading and unloading, due to his low strength but he enjoyed the travel and he had a higher tolerance for motion sickness and discomfort than the rest of the people with the animal handler skill that applied for the role.

Shin peeked inside the cart and sighed with relief seeing none of his patrons were on board yet. “At least no one saw” he muttered as he hoisted himself into the ragged cart. He was supposed to be taking a group of travellers on a tour across the kingdom, giving them an in-depth explanation of the places they passed. His portley boss was shirking his duty as per usual and left the tour to him, who had never left the western capital. At least since he arrived here as a baby sixteen years ago. His boss had seemed responsible when he tested the applicants in order to choose his apprentice, however, since being selected Shin had just been left to his own devices. At least the commission for such a horrendously long trip was decent and with any luck, he could garner enough in tips to afford better lodging. He was living, like most apprentices, in a self-built shack in the less cadaveric areas of the commoner's district.

He was extremely eager to increase his standing as his friends Milo and Fay were miles ahead of him in terms of their apprenticeships, he would never admit it but jealousy certainly played a part in his efforts. Fay was about to qualify as a junior guild hand and Milo was in line to inherit his father's farm. Scanning the passenger portion of the cart Shin was content that, despite being a bit run down, his passengers would be satisfied. As he was organising his stock and finalising his preparations he saw a group headed in his direction.

The group heading towards him were wearing odd black and white clothes that clung tightly to their bodies and were led by an aged man with salt and pepper grey hair. The man moved his body with an ease that seemed wrong for one of his age. A good determiner of high stats. He was clearly showing them around and pointing at innocuous objects to the sheer delight of his companions. They seemed to be a well-groomed and organised group, walking uniformly, almost like the soldiers Shin had seen patrolling the walls of the capital. Shin narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly.

“Damn,” he thought to himself, he had assumed that they were either from a religious order or a group from another kingdom. Either way, he knew he was screwed, a commoner like him would be put to death if anything happened to them or if they were powerful and arrogant figures and disapproved of him and his cart. He quickly pinched himself to get rid of his stray thoughts. “Good morning sir, are you…” He asked before being interrupted by the man in the lead “We put extra focus on the individuality of the NPCs as you can see, it should really kick the realism into a new dimension,” said the lead man while gesturing at Shin, again to the amazement of his followers.

“So is this procedurally generated?!” queried another man with obvious excitement. The lead man smirked. “ not quite, as you know...” Shin zoned out after a while as he honestly had no idea what the on earth these people were talking about.

“Excuse me,” the lead man said, trying to get Shin’s attention, to no avail. “…... see they can even get bored hahaha,” the lead man said to his peanut gallery with a cackle as Shin managed to regain his focus rubbing his forehead. “My profuse apologies sir,” He said stiffly as he quickly bowed his head to disguise the look of embarrassed shock on his face “not a worry lad, please if you would…..we must be off,” the lead man said charismatically with a wink in response. The lead man gave Shin a sense of comfort, he clearly had a lot of kindness and wasn’t the type to demand the death of a cart driver which greatly comforted him, allowing the return of his authority as the leader of this cart. “Of course, Gentlemen if you are ready we can be off,” Shin said with some dramatic flair to match that of the lead man.

“The fields around here are responsible for the majority of our kingdom's income, producing enough grain to sustain our people as well as the people from the kingdom of the north who rely on our grain as they can’t grow their own. We then in turn use the money made from that sale to hire their kingdom’s soldiers to protect our own kingdom” Shin began, making sure he gaged the reaction of his audience. The men in the black outfits were all only occasionally paying attention to him as they were mesmerised by the view of the fields.

“How long is the journey to our first destination?” asked the lead man who’s named had been revealed to be Jakob. “If we keep our pace we will arrive by just after dusk Sir” Shin explained, this remark got all of the passenger's attention, sparking responses such as “I’ve got to be in a web conference at three”, “I have a call with my stockholders” and other such nonsensical exclamations. Jakob raised his hands to calm the other passengers “you need not worry, we have managed to achieve relative dilation of time, we managed to achieve a five to one ratio, so today's demonstration we will finish just in time for lunch” He comforted with his charismatic flair.

Jakob's explanation sparked such a boisterous response from the other passengers, so much so that Shin decided to just focus on the horses. These people were strange to him; they used words that he couldn’t even begin to decipher and behaved in such a peculiar manner. Once the cart had finally calmed down with a lot of talk about revolutions and the like finally coming to a close, he tuned to face his passengers. The passengers looked to be in shock, Jakob grinning ear to ear as they were clearly in contemplation.

“Hey kid, do you mind if we take a break for lunch?” Jakob asked Shin. Shin immediately brought the cart to a stop and started to distribute water skins, bread and dried meat to the passengers, he felt a tinge of pride that he had managed to secure meat for his passengers. “Obtaining meat almost directly translated to greater tips when on long journeys” his uncle had told him. Since this was Shin’s first expedition into the world of a cart driver he had taken his uncles suggestions as gospel and even sold his own inheritance to afford such a luxury. The passengers seemed bored, disheartening shin until the first bite was taken. “I can taste it!” One of the men accused Jakob, drawing the attention of the others. They all began to tentatively try the food slowly shifting their facial expressions to that of wonder, this finally piqued Shin's curiosity.

He tried to not get involved in others business, however, after listening to the first of Jakob's explanations that he could understand he had concluded that these people were either mages, demons or insane. He was leaning towards insane. Jakob had gone into detail about the taste of the food, explaining that they had managed to allow people to use all their senses in “this world” as well or better than the “real world”. This conclusion put immense strain on Shin’s thoughts. “What do they mean the “real world”? ” the thought kept prodding at his brain. Shin tried to maintain his composure as best he could as to not seem as though he had been listening in to their conversation. Shin’s eyes widened at the words, He feared that if they would murder him, these people clearly weren’t stable.

Jakob and the other passengers continued to talk about subjects that shin couldn’t understand. There were a lot of mentions of “Shares” and a currency called “millions” that they were trying to buy the “shares” with. Shin decided it was safest to retreat into himself and focus on the clopping of the horseshoes on the dusty road. As Shin’s mind was almost clear of his worries Jakob interrupted him “Kid. We need to make a quick detour, take a sunward turn at the next fork in the trail”. Prompting Shin to almost jump out of his skin at the intruding request. “This is it, I'm going to die... Of course my first tour is for insane demon mages that want to eat my soul,” the dry thought sprinted through his mind before he had a chance to restrain it. Shin directed the horses down the requested path, his eyes full of expletives that were bellowing in his head and his knuckles white around the reigns.

Jakob began to pay close attention to the boy’s body language.

Jakob's hand flew with unmatched speed, pressing a point on Shin’s neck. The light in Shin’s eyes faded, however, he didn’t fall. The horses slowly came to a stop thanks to the lack of commands from their master. “Ok gentlemen, we have reached the site of your first real experience of this world” Jakob proudly announced to his entourage.

He was proud, all the sponsors seemed to be enjoying their foray into the wilderness and clearly excited at the prospect of experiencing battle. This was likely the most exciting thing these silver-spooned desk jockeys had experienced in their lives. The destination they were heading towards was a bandit camp that had been scouted beforehand by one of the people testing the world for long term immersion.

Jakob gathered the businessmen “Just up ahead at the edge of the forest marks the start of the bandit’s territory. The bandits you are about to face are considered a low-level threat to us, however, by defeating them we will be freeing this road from a scourge that has plagued the people of a town we are visiting. For you to best understand the mechanics of this simulation, we have granted you administrator privileges. You will have access to all the basic elemental magics and a set of skills that will help you with your mission. I will be assisting you but that doesn’t mean there are no risks. If you get hit, you will experience ten per cent of the pain it would cause you in the real world.” Jakob explained with his signature dramatic flair and an occasional sly grin. The men seemed giddy with the prospect of being a hero until his mention of pain.

“Are there any safety protocols?” Started a bespectacled and immaculately dressed Asian man in Jakob's tour group before being interrupted by an arrow flying over his head.

“They seemed to have noticed you, gentlemen,” Jakob remarked casually as he raised his hands towards the forest from where the arrow flew. A thick wall of earth rose from the ground seemingly under the control of Jakob. “I guess we no longer have time for pleasantries” Jakob commented jokingly, directing the comment to the rest of the men.