Sometimes, people hide in plain sight. This wasn’t Carlos’ style, however. Indeed, his style was the one of a diplomat. And like all diplomats, Carlos wouldn’t miss the chance of knowing what was happening in such an important place as Another World.

His former boss?

He didn’t care much about Shabe as he cared about being able to conduct transactions and use Another World to make his life easier.

He, of course, didn’t kiss the world goodbye. He was just one of hundreds of thousands of people who got to hide a few neurosets from the government persecutions and apprehensions which followed Shabes’ death.

In the future, neurosets might become scarce and few. However, right now, crime sindicates, intelligence agencies, army and mafia all around the world were using it like crazy. By killing themselves? Of course not. They had people with avatars close to them, so why wouldn’t they use these to connect to Another World and conduct transactions while they still can?

The main concern, of course, was how to come back to ones’ body when they wanted to logout. After all, without the User Interface, there was no logout screen.

Then again, some special people could access the remnants of that system. These special people with high-level characters, most of them magic users of the many races, became known as “neuromancer priests”. The “Chosen Children of Shabe”.

And Carlos, now, was on a neuromancer priest head-hunting. Neuromancers were rare, very rare, people. Usually, ones with an intelligence stat above 300 or special circumstances.

That would mean people with at least a main level of 30, and only if they invested every single exp point in intelligence.

Thus, most neuromancers were actually people with a main level of 60 or 80, and who had balanced stats - the magic-oriented players who used to be a part of a small in-game elite.

Carlos wanted these people. The “services” they could provide were good stuff, after all. And the information on who they were and were lived was worth the price of a pile of neurosets in platinum.

So, as he approached the Furuk Empires’ capital city, Astoria, nothing made him happier than finding a good Kings’ Quest posted on plain sight for all to see.

He needed people, and now the good Emperor of Furuk would do that to him free-of-charge? Thank you very much and return anytime!

***

- YOU!

Raphael was noted as soon as he entered the city.

“A player?” - A hopeful thought ran across his mind.

However, soon his hopes were shattered. In front of him, inside a luxurious carriage, a fat man using a cape and many rings pointed his fingers at him.

“A NPC noble. Urgh.”

NPC nobles were the kind of thing which would be fun for some people, but which Raphael hated. Specially since he “permanently entered” the game. These obnoxious meat robots could move the towns’ militia around and would be bossy all the time.

- What can I help you with, your excellency?

Luckily, their A.I. was as bad as the rest. As long as one treated them with some degree of deference, no matter if it was a knight or a duke, all would understand you had been properly educated and would feel it was enough.

At that moment, the fat man threw a piece of rope in Raphaels’ direction.

- Tie yourself to my carriage and follow me obediently.

Raphael had a yellow, crooked smile on his face. What though luck. He was stopped in his tracks by the “stupid and arrogant” kind of NPC noble. If this was still the game, then all he would need to do would be to access the user interface and reject the sub-quest which would clearly have appeared by now.

- Reject. Quest reject. Quit. Cancel. - Raphael tried a little bit of everything in a low voice, just in case.

“Should I run?” - If he used a teleportation scroll or some other item, then he would be able to escape the fat noble in front of him.

However…. he would also trigger an “offended noble” quest, which would have a bunch of different ramifications and so on.

“So bothersome…”

- Stop there, scoundrel! I, Commander MaxFarts of the Republic of Farcry command thee!

As Raphael was almost tying himself to the carriage, just to see what would happen and if it would be a simple quest, a voice came from behind him.

“If that isn’t a player, then I’m not a male anymore!”.