After several days, Neb was walking inside of the game traveling towards the walled city of men. Along the way he passed several players fighting some goblins and animals, but he just walked silently towards the city.

After several hours he got out of the forest and saw a gigantic city . He was expecting a large city but he did not expect the scale would be able to fit twenty football stadiums. Overwhelmed a bit he logged off to have a little bit of change.

But when he woke up to the loud sounds of notifications from his computer, it seemed like his maps were selling like hotcakes, so without much hurry he went to the kitchen and boiled some water, prepared a cup of spicy-beef instant noodles, and stood in front of the kettle for five-long minutes.

When the water was in the process of boiling, he professionally seasoned the instant noodles with the pre packaged seasoning, and added some garlic paste, then when the water was boiling hot he poured water into the cup and covered the lid.

Sitting in front of a small window he held his cup of noodles waiting for the heat to slowly sink in, it was quite relaxing looking at the slums that were shadowed by the good area of the city.

Alas his noodles were cooked and he went to his computer to see the progress of his maps. When he turned on the display on his monitor he coughed so hard, some noodles went through his nose, when he saw the display on the screen.

Staring at the monitor intensely, he was almost in a trance of disbelief as he saw the numbers 2 623 000 placed in his screen, they were the credits he had earned by selling the map in the city trade hub. It was a whopping two point six million credits, with that kind of money one can already move to a better area of living, much better where Viviane lived.

“Holy! I am rich” neb exclaimed as he snorted out the noodles from his nose. It was not a pleasant feeling but it was understandable who would not be shocked to see millions of credits into their account.

…

Two weeks passed and no news was heard from Neb, his room was vacated and his contacts numbers were not available but nobody noticed at all except for Veran and the others, but they did not mind they just played the game. Their living life also changed when the players discovered the currency exchange inside of the game, so they would spend most of their time playing inside of the game to earn coins for credits.

One silver coin is equivalent to ten credit points, that is the minimum amount to be exchanged in the bank, Veran and his gang could get around 20 coins on a daily basis and if they exchange it they would roughly get around 200+ credits considering that a normal paying job cold only earn them 10-20 credits per week they opted to play more of the game.

The leveling system was also discovered by players. It was quite tedious as they would be needed to kill enemies and do a lot of tasks, and report to the guild wizard, but on the other hand the increase in attributes was worth it because it only takes a few hits from a normal enemy to kill them.

Many people left their jobs and played the game for money, this left holes in some industries that require man power to function, but who knew that the company that developed the game would offer job specific robots to fill in those gaps, they must have been planning to do this all along.

…

In a shop in the city, a young man was scurrying around fetching the things that the head blacksmith ordered, when players would enter they would think that the young man was an NPC as they would always see him working there day and night.

But this young man was Neb, he worked here for a week already earning himself a badge of apprenticeship for smithing, this badge has a magical effect of allowing the players to control heat of the surrounding air. Badges in this world kinda acts like a magical enchantments but they could be lost or destroyed, and earning a badge could be dependent on luck and patience.

Neb’s Apprenticeship for smithing badge is to assist the head blacksmith in doing the work, Neb uses it to cover the head smith with cool air so that he could work without much losing body fluids, and to avoid heat stroke because it was hot in the smelting room. In Neb’s time in the Smith shop he learned how to use the olden method of creating weapons from a small piece of metal.

He also earns a small salary from the head smith, which is roughly 20 silvers a day, but he was not bothered to exchange them for credits yet so he just keeps them in the room provided by the head smith.

Sure he was not going to be rich by working here but he was here for the experience, later he could use this to get by in life in case the game abruptly collapses due to the credit exchange.

Sure enough after another week of working there, the head smith sent him out into the world, he had finished his apprenticeship, the head smith rewarded him with another badge called Beginner blacksmith badge, which has the effect of adding 5 strength stat points to him allowing him to carry much heavier weight that he could carry in real life.

Armed with a sword he moved across the city stumbling into the local pharmacy, where players could buy medicines, sell ingredients, request for medicinal concoction and other sorts of chemical stuff.

“Good morning adventurer, what would you like today?” the Npc lady behind the counter asked Neb once he was in front of her.

“I would like to buy a recipe for a weak poison coat” Neb said without much hassle because he had inquired about this position that could be applied to a weapon sometime ago.

The lady wrote words on a piece of paper and handed it to a staff member in the back and returned with a folded piece of paper. “Adventurer , the recipe costs 50 silver coins” She said so Neb handed her 50 silver coins and received the paper.

Checking the paper he saw that the materials were not expensive so he asked them from the pharmacy surely enough they have it.