I had spent the night trying to deal with the fact that there were hundreds of people watching me every second. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I got close, I realised that there could be monsters nearby and I woke up, looked around, and tried to sleep again. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up, and was met with loud trumpet noises. Another screen appeared.

Yesterday’s report

2 monsters killed

$35 earned

$35 spent

2314 followers earned

Viewer bonus

$102.34

I wasn’t expecting such a large bonus for having many viewers.

“Mornin’ Alex,” I turned around and saw that the woman from earlier was still here.

“Hi…” I said awkwardly.

“Emily. Thanks for everything that you’ve done. Can’t wait to see what today will bring! Let’s go outside and kill some monsters!”

“Emily, I don’t think that is the right thing to do right now.”

“Why?” she asked. I shook my head.

“We don’t have any good weapons and we don’t understand much about this world. While yesterday it was okay, today it will be even harder.”

“So we just sit here and do nothing?” She asked.

“I never said that either. Currently, we have no food or water. If we stay here we are going to die. We need to go shopping. Then we can go out and go kill some monsters”

“That will be fun,” She said, practically bouncing up and down. I couldn’t believe that someone could be so optimistic. She was almost dead the day before and now here she was acting as though it had never happened.

“Where’s Niels?” I asked, looking around.

“Here,” he said, walking back into the room I was in. “Alex, are you sure that you want to go shopping? We don’t have much money. I just have ten dollars, Emily has five. You spent all your money on the syringe. We can’t afford anything good.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I got a massive viewer bonus yesterday. I have a hundred dollars. That should be enough for something good. Also, I didn’t have a look at many other stores,”

“Might as well try it,” he responded after a while.

After making sure they all knew how to get to the shop, we went there. I looked around and was surprised by the number of people there. It seemed like more people had figured out how to get there.

“You sure this is safe, Alex?” Niels aked. Before I could respond, Emily jumped in.

“Of course this is safe!”

“Don’t worry Niels it-” I tried to respond again but Niels was already speaking.

“And how do you know! You’ve never been here! We had to save your life and you’re pretending like it doesn’t even matter.” I didn’t know what to say. I was never the most socially confident person, but I needed to step in before the conflict escalated too far.

“Please. Stop. Niels, yes, it is safe. Emily, Niels has a point, please do not jump into arguments where you do not know what you are talking about. Now, please. Calm down.” I looked at both of them. Niels walked over to my right side, putting me between him and Emily. Emily seemed to have already forgotten the argument. I guessed it was the best I could have hoped for.

“Oooh. Guys, look over there! A nation store! What’s that? Let’s go check it out!” Emily said as she started going to a small store. Niels looked over at me, practically glaring. I simply shrugged and turned to follow Emily. Niels could be heard muttering under his breath, but after a brief pause, he turned and followed us.

When we entered the store we were met by what seemed to be a giant ant, but with wings and a large tail with a knife at the end.

“Greetings,” he said in a monotone voice, “And welcome to the nation store. We are the only store for starting your very own nation. The first step in starting a nation is getting a town hall. Most commonly this starts off as a system recognised house. A house has many nice commodities but also, no monsters can spawn inside of them. To get a house you need to buy land and have the materials. I can sell you land and the materials for it. Furthermore, because you have no inventory, you will need an inventory backpack. It can store up to a million pounds of material. Luckily for you, no one else is buying anything, and I’m almost out of money, so you can buy it all for a hundred dollars. If no one else is getting a house, your species is done for. I need to make some sales before then.”

“So inside, we have all the essentials? And no monster can spawn inside? How do you prevent people from staying inside the whole time and not playing the game?”I asked as the ant thing shook its head.

“You still have to pay for food and water. It’s inexpensive, $1 per person per day, but as you get more people it gets hard to pay. Also, powerful enough monsters can take it down. Those don’t start spawning until later so you have time.”

I turned to Niels and Emily, “I think that’s a steal!” I exclaimed.

“Get it. This is going to be so FUN!” said Emily. Niels looked at her and them mumbled what I thought was ‘fine’.

“Here, I’ll pay for it!” I said.

“I have the money,” the ant said.

“By the way, is the land the bit that we are in?” I inquired.

“No, it’s ten miles away.” He replied. We stared at him.

“Is there any way to get our money back?” I asked.

“All purchases are final. I can’t give you the land you’re in now. If I do, all of the houses there will be your System houses. I can’t allow that. Here is the backpack and here is a map to the land. Good luck.”

After loitering for a minute we realised that we only had 20 minutes left in the shop. We left the store and looked for a weapon store. We managed to get three swords for the remaining amount of money we had after fighting for a better price. We then went to check the leaderboards. Some people were in the teens already. We needed to hurry up if we wanted to get strong. With our swords, our backpack of materials, and our map, we left the shop and got ready for the journey.