When I woke up, I quickly had a shower and went about my other business before making my way to the kitchen and preparing something to eat.

“Hey, Tyler you have a message from Julian,” Katy told me through one of the speakers on the ceiling.

“Okay play it,” I replied wondering what my friend had to tell me now.

“Hey, shorty!” the message began making me smile happily. It really had been too long since I had seen him and Sarah. “I hope things are going well for you in-game. We have good news! Sarah managed to convince the folks at Gransoft Entertainment to pay us back if we buy our own copies of Soul Core Online and you manage to become one of those Ranger things. So, we’ll be joining you later today when we get home from work. So that’s tomorrow for you in-game. We’re both looking forward to playing with you again buddy, see you soon.”

“He’s right; that is good news,” I remarked once the message finished playing. Having those two along would massively increase our party’s combat potential. They would, of course be starting from Level 1 but with their skill levels that wouldn’t slow them down very much with the rest of helping them out. In fact, if they didn’t both manage to defeat the doppelganger thing in the tutorial and unlock the Quest to kill the Terror Chicks then I would eat my spellglove.

“Indeed, I’m looking forward to meeting them,” Katy agreed.

“I wonder what sort of AI they’ll end up with?” I wondered to myself, then I realised something that I’d never really thought about before. “Actually, how does that even work when you just buy the game off the shelf? I mean you had months to learn about me, but their AI companions haven’t had time to do that.”

“That’s a good question,” Katy replied. “As I’m sure you’re aware your Rigs are constantly monitoring your brainwaves. They use this data to pick five AI’s with similar wavelengths from the pool of available AI’s. When your friends log into the game, they will be able to interview the AI’s that had been picked out for them to see if they can get along. If they manage to find an AI that they think they’ll be able to get along with and the AI agrees then they are assigned that AI as a companion.”

“Huh, that makes a certain amount of sense,” I muttered to myself. “Fair too.”

Unlike the relationship between Katy and I, which for better or worse had essentially been forced upon me. Katy had explained that both the player and the Ai had to agree to be assigned to the other which should hopefully prevent too many issues. Then again people who claimed to have loved each other get divorced all the time so there was margin for error as well.

“Yeah, it took quite a while for both AI’s and humans to come to an agreement on how to deal with that,” Katy agreed. “I’m sure there will still be problems but there just isn’t much more that we could do.”

When Katy finished, I quickly ate the rest of my meal and made my way to my room to log into the game. After waking up for a second time in-game I headed downstairs and greeted the other three who were waiting for me.

“I have some good news for those of you who don’t already know,” I said as I approached the table that the others were sitting at making Katy smirk at me. “My friends are going to be joining us tomorrow. That’s tomorrow game time not real-world time by the way.”

“Well that’s a relief,” Evie sighed. “I was looking forward to meeting them, but I actually have to go to work tomorrow real time. So, I won’t be able to log in until tomorrow night and even then, only briefly since I will be working the following morning as well.”

I nodded at this; someone being busy was bound to happen at some point. I was going to have to go back to work in a couple of days myself. Hopefully that was only going to be temporary. I was aiming to become a Ranger and get the position at Gransoft which should mean that I could spend most of my time playing the game. I still wasn’t really looking forward to having to deal with the players who decided to cause problems in-game, but I seemed to be doing some of that anyway.

After we finished breakfast, we made our way to the barracks where Harmon and the other guards were waiting for us or rather waiting for me because they weren’t expecting the others.

“Hey Harmon, would it be alright if my friends joined us for training today?” I asked as we walked over to the old man who raised his eyebrows when he spotted the others.

“So, these are your friends, are they?” he asked. “Catherine’s actually told me about them. It’s very nice to meet all of you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Evie replied, and Fern and Katy nodded in agreement as they looked around the courtyard interestedly.

“Since Catherine has told me that all four of you have been very useful. I don’t see why they can’t join us for training if they want to,” Harmon decided after thinking about it for a few seconds.

“That’s great!” I exclaimed glancing curiously at the other guards who were all sitting on the ground with their eyes closed. “What sort of training are we going to be doing today?”

“We’re meditating today which will increase your Intelligence,” Harmon replied. “Intelligence increases your Spirit which is useful for anyone no matter whether they want to be some sort of fighter, a mage or somewhere in-between.”

“Cool,” I replied. “How does that sound girls?”

“Sounds good,” Fern nodded. “I don’t have too many Skills myself but then I don’t really have anything that increases my SP either so increasing my Intelligence will still be useful for me.”

“Yeah, I can always use more SP,” Evie agreed.

“Sure. Why not,” Katy nodded.

“Good, alright let’s begin,” Harmon said gesturing for us to sit down in front of the other guards.

Special Action!

Due to your position as a Ranger Initiate you have been offered a chance to take part in Intelligence training with the guards.

As soon as we sat down Harmon started talking us through the process of meditating, but I chose to ignore it. I had already learned how to meditate in one of the other games that I played. I occasionally even used the technique in real life.

I actually quite enjoyed the sense of serenity that meditating brought me and soon the constant drone of Harmon’s voice faded away. Everything cleared away as I entered the meditative state which allowed me to organise some of the thoughts that I’d been having recently.

One thing that was easy enough for me to come to terms with was my feelings towards Katy. Not only was she a useful source of information about the game but her presence actually made me feel more at ease than I would normally. If it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t have ended up in a party with Evie or Fern because of my own issues but she had pushed me to find people to play Soul Core Online with which had led me to two people that I enjoyed spending time with.

Another thing that I thought about while I was meditating was becoming a fully-fledged Ranger. There were plenty of advantages for becoming a Ranger but that didn’t mean that there weren’t bad things that went along with them. Most obvious being generally disliked by a large part of the player base. Another consequence of becoming a Ranger would be that my time in-game wouldn’t be my own and I could be ordered by Gransoft to drop whatever I was doing and deal with whatever problem they had.

Now, I wasn’t trying to talk myself out of becoming a Ranger. I’d already decided that was what I wanted to do. Like most gamers becoming a pro player was a goal of mine and even though it was quite different from what I’d had in mind when I’d started playing this game it was still a paying job that required me to play Soul Core Online. But it was still a massive responsibility and everyone who I’d talked to believed that I was the man for the job.

Soon I was shaken out of my meditative state by Evie who was frowning irritably down at me.

“Zeke everyone else finished up ten minutes ago!” she growled at me as I blinked up at her.

“Don’t blame him lass,” Harmon chuckled as I looked around to see that she was right. The were only a few guards hanging around in the courtyard. “He just got a bit carried away; it happens sometimes.”

“Yeah sorry,” I said as I checked the notification that was waiting for me now that I had finished meditating.

Special Action Completed!

You have completed your training session with the Ponson guards!

+2 Intelligence and 0.5 SP regen for perfectly completing the training!

“Holy shit,” I muttered as I stared wide-eyed at the notification. Last time I had only received a single point in Agility, but this time not only had I increased my Intelligence by twice that I had also increased my regen.

“What is it?” Fern asked interestedly when she saw the look on my face.

“I got 2 Intelligence and some SP regen as well from the training,” I explained, and all three girls glared at me simultaneously. “What?”

“Ha!” Harmon chuckled. “You got the highest possible increase from your training kid. Even Evie only got 2 Intelligence and she did better than Fern and Katy.”

“Oh, sorry,’ I replied rubbing the back of my head bashfully. “This actually isn’t the first time that I’ve mediated though so don’t beat yourselves up too much.”

“It’s not the first time that I’ve meditated either you know,” Fern grumbled before sighing. “Well we should get going. We want to finish that rabbit hunting Quest before heading over to do that more difficult one that you got right?”

“Yeah,” I agreed thankful that she had chosen to change the subject of the conversation although I could still feel Katy’s gaze burning into me. Apparently meditating hadn’t gone well for my AI companion. “Let’s get going, see you later Harmon.”

“Yeah, I’m training the other group of guards tomorrow. So, I’ll see you in a couple of days if you don’t have business with me before then,” Harmon nodded. “I wish you all luck in your ventures.”

“Thanks,” I nodded before turning and heading back out of the gates to the guard barracks.

“Well that turned out better than I expected,” Evie noted. “I was actually a little worried that he wouldn’t let us join in with the training.”

“Why?” I asked with a chuckle. “I was pretty sure that Catherine would’ve told him about how we all took down a group of player killers, so I wasn’t worried.”

“Yeah that does make sense now that I think about it,” Katy agreed with a sigh. “We should probably thank her.”

“Yeah and I owe her that favour as well,” I sighed as we walked down the street towards the town gates.

“Oh yeah I almost forgot about that,” Fern said. “You seem to have a knack for getting yourself into interesting situations.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” I replied with a weak chuckle as I recalled the series of events that had led me to where I was now. I still hadn’t told them the whole story about how I had become a Ranger Initiate and I wasn’t planning on doing so without Milly’s express permission but even the things that they knew about were impressive enough considering how long the game had been out.

When we walked out of the town gates and down the road towards the fields where the rabbits were, we were ambushed by a familiar figure.

“Hey, you lot abandoned me to be eaten alive!” Drew shouted as loudly as he possibly could. The arrogant young man was obviously trying to draw as much attention to us as possible.

“Look kid,” I said irritably. “You messed up, don’t blame anyone else for that. I told you to retreat when more rabbits than we could handle started attacking us, but you decided that you weren’t going to listen.”

“We could’ve handled it!” he exclaimed again stamping his foot like the spoilt child that he so obviously was.

“I disagree,” I replied drily glancing sideways at Evie who shifted uncomfortably when she realised that I was looking at her. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Katy rolling her eyes in exasperation and Fern sneering at him and in all honesty, I couldn’t blame them for their reactions. “But we do have your share of the loot from the rabbits that you killed. Take it and leave us alone.”

“Huh?” Drew grunted deflating slightly at my words. This probably wasn’t helped by the fact that the small crowd of rubberneckers started to chuckle at how childishly he was acting.

“He said; we’re giving you your share of the loot,” Evie sighed as she brought the items out of her Inventory. I could see from the look on her face that she didn’t want to deal with him anymore and from the way that Drew stared at the girl he’d been trying to impress when he was in a party with us, he realised it as well.

Drew wordlessly took the meagre bundle of loot from Evie’s hands and stared down at it blankly as we continued on our way.

“We really have to stop attracting crowds like that?” Fern grumbled.

“Hey that one wasn’t my fault,” I replied as she smirked at me.

“Anyway, what was that all about?” I asked Evie. Last I knew she was still upset about what had happened to Drew but to my surprise she had in some ways been even harsher to him than I had.

“I’ve been thinking about things over the past few days and when he confronted us like that, it just suddenly hit me how realised how pathetically he was acting,” Evie sighed. “I am still a bit annoyed that you let him die in the horrible way that he did, but it was definitely his own fault, not yours. Besides the only one of us with a ranged attack was me and I didn’t do anything to put him out of his misery when he was getting torn to shreds by those rabbits.”

“Okaaay,” I replied. “I guess that makes sense and yeah if I’d been able to finish him off with a ranged attack I probably would’ve. But I don’t think that you should blame yourself too much for that either. Even I hesitate to kill other players if I don’t need to.”

“Yeah I know,” Evie nodded. “Anyway, we should probably start hunting. We’ve got a lot to get done today.”

Having said her piece Evie started walking faster leaving the rest of us looking after her with bemused expressions on our faces.

“Huh, I guess that the meditation session earlier helped with more than just increasing her Stats!” I joked making the Katy and Fern groan loudly before walking past me after our friend who looked like she was preparing to attack one of the groups of rabbits.

There actually seemed to be slightly less rabbits in the area than yesterday and I could see several other groups of players were taking advantage of this fact. Now that it was less likely that they would be attacked by other groups of rabbits even less skilled parties could hunt the rabbits in relative safety.

On the other hand, fighting groups of rabbits was fairly simple for us. Especially now that Evie had her spell-gun which showed its usefulness within seconds of attacking the first group of rabbits. As I had suspected she was an excellent shot and was even able to kill one of the members of the group of rabbits that we were attacking before Fern and I were close enough to engage them in close combat.

It only took us a couple of minutes to take out the group of five rabbits that we had attacked which was a new record.

“Alright my Lightning Magic Core levelled Up again,” I told the others once we had looted the rabbits. “Just give me a second.”

Congratulations your Basic Lightning Magic Core has reached Level 3!

Please pick an upgrade from the choices provided.

Increase Intelligence by 1.

Increase SP regen by 0.5

Soul Points: 4/50

After thinking about it for a few seconds I decided to increase my SP regen. My Intelligence had already been increased several times recently thanks to my various Soul Cores and the training earlier, so I was pretty comfortable with how high it was for my Level.

After telling the others what I had decided to do we made our way over to the next group of rabbits which with a total of seven members was the largest group that we could find. This would hopefully be the last group of rabbits that we would have to kill to get enough Rabbit’s Feet to finish of the Quest.

However even this fairly large group of rabbits was finished off fairly quickly thanks to our improving teamwork and skills. My Static Armour Skill dealt quite a lot of damage to these Rabbits which were weaker than the ones that we had fought in the Den and sure enough by the time we had looted them we had enough Rabbit’s Feet to hand in to Catherine and finish off the Quest for me.

“You guys have done pretty well, haven’t you?” Catherine chuckled as she handed over the meagre number of coins that this beginner Quest had netted us.

Rabbit hunting Complete!

You have successfully helped decrease the population of Voracious Rabbits in the area surrounding Ponson. However, it is obvious that the sudden increase in their numbers was only a symptom of a larger problem.

Rewards

2 Silver and 150 Exp.

Even the Experienced that was part of the reward for completing the Quest was pretty pitiful but something about the flavour text in the Quest completion notification reminded me that we had forgotten to tell Catherine about the Den that we had found the other day.

“Catherine we actually found a Den filled with Voracious and Armoured Rabbits the other day,” I told her immediately catching her attention. “Do you think that might have something to do with the sudden increase in the number of rabbits?”

“Of course, it does!” Catherine exclaimed angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?”

“Honestly we forgot,” I replied, and the others nodded in agreement. “Yesterday was pretty rough.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Catherine sighed. “And you did tell me in the end, so I suppose it’s fine. Still I do wish you had told me sooner.”

“Sorry about that,” I apologised. “Is there some way that we can make it up to you?”

“Well we can’t actually spare anyone to go and deal with a Den right now. We’ve got our hands full dealing with the outsiders who are causing problems,” Catherine sighed. “Do you think you could clear it out for us?”

“Not right now,” I answered honestly. “The Armoured Rabbits are still a bit too strong for us and I’m going to guess that the Boss will be even stronger.”

“You don’t have to do it right away,” Catherine replied. “The other outsiders are managing to keep the number of rabbits down for now. If that changes I will let you know.”

“Alright we’ll train for a bit and then go and clear out the Den once we get stronger,” I said, and the others nodded their agreement once more.

“Good,” Catherine nodded causing a new notification to pop up in front of me. “Don’t take too long.”

New Quest!

Rabbit Warren

(Hidden Quest)

Having discovered the Den where the Voracious Rabbits are coming from you have been asked to clear it out before the numbers of Voracious Rabbits increase any further.

Success Conditions

Clear the Den.

Rewards

500 Exp, 3 Gold Coins and increased reputation with Ponson.

“Sure,” I replied as I accepted the new Quest. “We’ve got a couple of other things to do as well as this, but we should get it done within a couple of days.

Having completed our business, we made our way out of the Guardhouse and started heading towards the other gate where we found Jameson waiting for us.

“Hey there Zeke,” the massive man said in greeting. “You here to hunt some more Terror Chicks?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Well be careful there haven’t been many people who wanted to hunt them recently, so their numbers have grown and some of them have gotten stronger.”

“Well that’s not good,” I muttered. “Can you give a hunting Quest to my friends as well?”

“Yeah sure,” Jameson nodded. “Harmon gave me permission after the training this morning. It’s not the same as the one you got though.”

“That’s fine,” Fern said as the others accepted the new Quest. “Can we get an idea of the average Level of these Terror Chicks?”

“About 5,” Jameson replied making me turn pale as I remembered how hard it had been to fight a Level 2 Terror Chick. “Like I said they’ve been getting stronger. Thankfully it’s around midday so most of them will be asleep now.”

“Well that’s something I suppose,” I sighed. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

“Okay be careful out there,” Jameson replied as we walked out towards the field where I had fought the Terror Birds.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Evie asked once we were outside of earshot.

“Yeah you could say that,” I agreed. “He saved my life on the first day.”

Soon we found the first group of Terror Birds which were much closer to town than they had been the last time I was here. The group that we had discovered was a small one, there were just three birds. One Level 3 and 2 Level 2 and what’s more two of them were asleep which boded well for our chances.

“Well those things certainly live up to their name, don’t they?” Fern muttered to herself as she looked at the rust coloured birds in front of us and I nodded in agreement.

Once we were ready, I nodded to Katy and Evie who both raised their weapons and fired simultaneously.