'That was a good session. I need to sleep soon. Maybe I should call Sicily and let her know where I'm at.'

Taking out his phone he dialled Sicily's number.

"Hey Peter, I was waiting for your call. So where should we met up in the game?"

"Ok. I'm at Hedgesnow. Where are you at?"

"I picked Port Blair. Looks like we won't be able to meet each other soon."

"Maybe I can teleport over once I find out how?"

"No. There is no teleportation in the game. We will have to walk the whole way. Listen just stay at the mountain for now and level up. Since we are all in the same country, we will soon be able to meet up in one of the major cities."

"Ok. So how is the guild system going?"

"No good. You need to be at least level 30 to become a guild chief. And I'm only level 12 yet. I lost a lot of time running around gathering info. How are you doing?"

"Just reached 15. I plan to level up mining and grab blacksmithing as well while I'm here."

"That's ok. It will be fine. I need to be level 30 to make a guild anyways. See ya later then. Oh, are you working today?"

"Yeah. I need to get to work. I haven't met Sam either. But I'm pretty sure he won't like playing. He is too focused on the job and making money stuff."

"Well, it's ok. Give me a few more days and I will rent out a place for all of us to stay together. If our guild can succeed then I would like to hire you to play with us and you won't have to go work in that construction site."

"That sounds like fun. I'm not ready to quit just yet. We will see how everything goes."

"Ok, then I won't hold you back. Get some sleep."

Sitting up from his cabin, Peter stared at the wall for a bit. He had 1 gold in his account and a few spare changes. He could sell it for a few bucks.

'The game doesn't give high-quality stuff to players and it almost feels like we need to depend on crafters for them. But...'

He slowly got up from the cabin and moved towards the kitchen.

There was a jar of water on the table with a few biscuits.

'Most people prefer playing the hero and it is unlikely for people like me to be present in the game. So far becoming a crafter seems to be the best bet to make good money.'

Peter went to the bedroom and after a few more minutes of self rambling, started snoring loudly.

Light broke the horizon and a new day was born.

Peter got up at the usual time. The game world was pretty impressive but he still had to leave it behind. So far the game didn't pay his bills.

After a quick breakfast, Peter reached the site and started his daily routine. After a few minutes, Sam came over for a little chat.

Sam was to be promoted to supervising assistant soon. It was both good and bad news. It meant higher paycheck at the same time it was no longer possible for Peter to rope him into playing games.

'Maybe if I make enough money and show him it's possible then he would give it a try.'

Peter was sure there would be a possibility of Sam joining him in-game.

To Peter, Sam was one of his most trusted friends. Through the entire rough patch growing up, he was the only one Peter could lean on. Although they were born only a few months apart, Sam always took the position of the elder brother no matter the situation.

'Looks like this is where we will have to part ways.'

It was already time for the afternoon break but all Peter could think of was about the game. It was addicting. There are multiple reasons for this. The whole setup cost 300 bucks per month but there was a reason for this extreme cost.

The setup was made so that the user inside get a surplus supply of oxygen. The atmosphere was over-polluted and this clean supply of air gave the feeling of dosing. This was mostly to help people to not get tired and have strong blood circulation.

Overall the cabins were built to keep the user inside for a very long time. During the testing phase, it was noticed that the cabin can handle itself up to 3 months without any issues.

The VR tech was still in its early days. It might take a few more years to fully augment the sense of taste and smell. So far, these two are the hardest to master.

The day was spent mostly in the concrete mixing area. Peter was tired by the time he finished his work and shortly left. Before leaving he met Sam again and they had a small chat with each other. Peter mentioned about Sicily's plans but Sam wasn't interested.

The gain from playing games was not solid and mostly depended on luck. There were very few people who were able to succeed in the endeavour. No one can blame Sam for being cautious with the idea.

After picking up food at the grocery, Peter reached home and took a bath. Most of the food was ready to eat and only required heating.

Time went by and it was already 8. He proceeded to enter his cabin.

The light completely blinded him and slowly the world faded in.

His mining skills were already at a high enough level for him to advance to the next tier. The issue was the pick he had. Only an iron pick can handle stronger ores. He had to either buy one from a blacksmith or he would have to become a smith and make one for himself.

Looking back, he already had about 2500 copper ores.

Currently, each sold for 10 copper.

'It's nearly 2.5 gold. With the current exchange rate that should be the same as 2500 bucks. But if I can find smith players they might pay me a lot higher for the ore.'

There were restrictions placed to prevent hoarding things and the current deposit was already reaching its limit. Peter will soon have to rent a warehouse if he planned to stock up on ores.

He had two options before him. Either to become a blacksmith or to look for a better crafting profession. So far blacksmiths were the best one there is.

His mining talent was high enough for him to get his ores and soon he could start as an apprentice under one of the master blacksmiths in the town.

The only issue was that there were a lot more blacksmiths compared to other crafters but it was still a highly in-demand profession.

There was a possibility that the rich folks out there might hire more common people from the outside world and force them to become crafters. This was especially true with the larger guild. As time went on, most of the crafters would be real-world experts.

'Might as well try and get a few bucks before the rest. Sooner or later I will have to quit and look for other methods.'

His mining was at level 8. Soon he would reach level 10 and advance to tier 2. The ranking was pretty weird. It went from LVL 10 for t2, LVL 30 for t3, LVL 70 for t4 and LVL 150 for t5. Additionally, t5 could make extremely rare items and some were even capable of crafting magic items depending on their combat class.

While he was walking towards the blacksmith area, he noticed that the auction house was full. Deciding to stop by just to see what was selling, he noticed that most of the items were LVL 10-20 uncommon or rare items.

There was nothing of interest. Players were making a lot more money at this beginning time as the exchange rate was very high. The game prevented the exchange unless the person had a minimum balance of 1 gold. This was used to prevent dummy accounts.

The smithing area was larger than the public square. It was vast and many apprentice smiths were working on different items. There were a large number of players in the area compared to others.

Soon he met the master blacksmith and the one in charge of the place, Duffan. He was a tier 3 blacksmith and was the best in town when it comes to weapon craft.

"Another one? Are you even sure you want to do this? This isn't easy. It might look easy but most of the crafting requires a delicate hand. No one will buy your stuff if it's not good."

"I am not going to give up before I even try. Please lend me a bit of your knowledge. "

"Walk around watch what the others are doing and try it. I'm not giving you any ores. Get your own."

With that, he now had his first real crafting class.

As he moved around looking for guidance he found out what his first issues were. He needed more tin ores to smelt copper into bronze. So far he only had copper ores in his deposit box and he had to get tin ores from the mining guild.

'Ok moving around takes too much time.'

Peter also discovered that the higher the tier of your crafting or gathering class is the more deposit slots you unlocked.

Soon he was back in the crafting area. There was a furnace and one empty anvil to the far south. He decided to try it.

Peter kept looking back at the others after each move. It took some time but as long as one could get the heat right the bronze can be made in the furnace.

After a few hard attempts, he finally was able to obtain a decent molten bronze which he had to dip into the cast and placed it in the water trough to cool down. The new bronze ingot was of low quality but it can still be used. Instead of using high-quality bars, these low-quality ones were perfect for practice.

Slowly he had made 25 bars. As soon as he finished he noticed that he had already reached level 2 for blacksmithing.

All beginner smiths were given a few recipes to try from. These were all of the lowest quality and the purpose was to get their level higher. Peter too had received them. One for a sword and another for a dagger.

He took one bar of bronze to shape it into a blade and another for the hilt. Crafting the blade took most of the time as he had to redo it again and again till the shape was even. The beginner hammer had already started to chip.

Duffan was eyeing him from the corner. This started to make him nervous. Slowly he proceeded with the blade and it had a rough shape of a sword blade. Keeping it aside he started working on the hilt.

The blade was comparatively easy. The hilt was harder as it needed to be comfortable to hold. After almost 20 minutes of tinkering with the molten bar, he was able to get a rough shape of the hilt as well.

He was too tired and he hadn't even finished one blade yet.

Once both the blade and the hilt were done, Peter slowly began attaching the two there was threading inside the hilt through which peter let the blade in. This took him a lot more effort than he expected but the sword held firm in his hand.

The hilt was still hot and pouring a bit of water, cooled it down and tightened it around the edge of the blade. Now it was impossible to separate them both unless someone chiselled it out.

All that was left to do was to sharpen the blade and lace the hilt with thread so that it doesn't hurt the wielder.

It was already late and he got out of the cabin to have his dinner.

'It's taking too long to make just one sword. At this rate, there won't be many crafters in the game.'

After resting for a bit, Peter went back and entered the cabin.

*****

Profile

Name: Peter

Title: NA

Race: NA

LVL: 15 (LVL up 1450/12000)

Gold: 1.7320

Available points: 0

STR: 20

VIT: 15

AGI: 10

Swordsman (M): T1 (LVL 5)

Miner: T1 (LVL 8)

Blacksmith: T1 (LVL 3)