The next morning when I woke up, I laid there for a few seconds before breathing slowly out of my nose.

“Are you alright?’ Katy asked through the speakers embedded in the ceiling of my room.

“Huh, oh yeah, I’m fine,” I sighed. “I was just thinking about having to go to work today.”

“I can call and let them know that you’re too sick to come in if you want,” Katy suggested.

“No,” I replied immediately as I sat up. “I can’t do that to Reggie and Donna. They’ve helped me out too much over the years and their business is already in a bad enough place without having to pay me sick leave when I’m not sick.”

Okay then, if you’re going to go to work you need to get up,” Katy told me.

“Yeah, I know,” I groaned as I got up off the bed grabbed my uniform and staggered towards the bathroom.

Once I had showered and saved I quickly made myself some breakfast and the all-important coffee which should finally allow me to wake up completely I grabbed the last couple of things that I needed for the day and made my way out of the safety of my flat.

About twenty minutes later I stepped through the pristine sliding doors of the small store where I worked and weaved my way between shelves full of household items such as pots, pans and s mall kitchen appliances as I made my way up to one of the counters where a tired looking middle aged man with hair that was both thin and slowly turning grey from stress was waiting for me with a small smile on his face

“Hey Tyler,” Reggie greeted me. “How was your break?”

“Pretty good boss,” I replied with a small smile. “How have things been here?”

“Pretty much business as usual,” he sighed as he gestured around the empty store. “As you can see.”

“Just the two of us today?” I asked as I looked around for any other staff members.

“For now,’ Reggie nodded. “Janice will be coming in for the after-school period but that’s about it.”

I groaned inwardly at Reggie’s mention of Janice. The tall blonde wasn’t exactly what one would call the best of employees. In fact, she was positively unmotivated to the point where I couldn’t really understand why she even still worked at the store. She only knew how to work the till and could only give the vaguest of directions to a specific product when asked.

I did have to admit that she was good at working the till. Or at least better than I was but she did spend a little bit too much time chatting with some customers when there was other work to be done. She also didn’t like me very much and often referred to me as that skinny weirdo to the other staff when Reggie and Donna weren’t around. Unfortunately, we were often rostered on together because I knew the store like the back of my hand but wasn’t that good at dealing with people on the till.

On the other hand, having her on during the busiest period of the day hopefully meant that I wouldn’t have to work the till during those hours which was a plus as far as I was concerned so I decided to just accept it like I normally did instead of causing a fuss.

“Alright then boss, unless you have anything else that you need me to do, I’ll go and check the stock that got delivered this morning,” I suggested, and Reggie nodded happily in agreement. Unlike me Reggie actually preferred manning the till and wasn’t particularly good at things like checking stock. He also had a bad back that made it hard for him to restock the shelves so I would no doubt have to do that later as well.

Most of my first day back at work went fairly well except for when Janice called me over to the intercom so that I could show a customer where to find the particular brand of mixer that she was looking for. When I got there, I could see from the smug look on Janice’s face and the mildly disgusted that my colleague had told her exactly what she thought of me and suppressed a sigh as I plastered what passed for my customer service smile across my face.

“Can I help you with something ma’am?’ I asked while refusing to even acknowledge Janice’s presence which I could tell irritated the rather narcissistic young woman to no end. The customer in question was a middle-aged woman who glowered at me for about a second before answering.

“I need you to find this mixer for me,” she said showing me the screen of her Cyber Module and I cringed when I saw the picture on it.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” I said carefully. “But we don’t actually carry that mixer in store.

“But this young lady told me that you did!” The woman exclaimed irritably drawing the attention of Reggie who was just finishing up with another customer.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” I repeated firmly as I finally spared my colleague an irritated glance. “But she was mistaken. We do have other brands however.”

“I want this mixer not another one!” The customer exclaimed stridently as she waved her Cyber Module in my face.

“Well then, I’m afraid you will have to go somewhere else,” I told her. “I believe that brand is sold at several other stores nearby.”

“This is ridiculous!” She shouted. “I want to speak to your manager!”

“Very well,” I sighed and raised a hand to beckon Reggie over.

“Yes Tyler, what is it?” he asked once he had walked over from the till he had been working at.

“This customer wants to make a complaint about us not having a certain item in stock,” I told him letting some of the irritation that I was currently feeling through in my voice as I pinned the now slightly nervous looking Janice with my gaze. “Mostly because Janice claimed that we did have it in stock when she should know that we don’t carry anything made by that brand here. At all.”

“Excuse me, but why are you explaining things?” the customer snarled before thrusting her Cyber Module in Reggie’s face who sighed loudly upon seeing the picture of the mixer that she wanted.

“While you are correct that he should’ve let you explain the situation he is actually correct,” Reggie replied. “We don’t carry anything made by that brand here.”

Now the customer turned her anger on Janice who finally realised that she was actually the one who was in trouble right now and started spluttering excuses as the woman started screeching at her. I knew that I could’ve handled the situation better but I really hadn’t wanted to deal with anything like this on my first day back and it was pretty obvious that Janice had been trying to get me in trouble so the bad feeling only lasted until Reggie clapped a hand on my shoulder and told me to go and take over the other till while he defused the situation.

I didn’t even spare Janice a glance as I headed towards the other till. I knew that Reggie was probably going to chew me out a little later on, but I knew that Janie was going to get it worse than I was because she had caused the problem in the first place.

Sure, enough when we were closing up Reggie asked me to come to his office where he sighed heavily before turning to look at me.

“So, you could’ve handled that customer earlier a lot better,” he began before raising his hand to stop me from speaking. “And yes, I know that Janice caused the problem. But the fact remains that it is your job to deal with customers when needed just like it is with any other employee. Normally you’re better than that so I’m willing to just put it down to the combination of it being your first day and that Janice was messing with you. I’ve known for a while that you two don’t really get along, but I was hoping that you could put your issues aside while you will working.”

“I have tried Reggie,” I sighed. “But Janice doesn’t seem to be interested.”

“Yes, I know that too,” Reggie agreed. “The others have told me similar stories several times.”

“So why did you put both of us on today?” I asked as I made a mental note to try and find out who had told Reggie about the issues that I’d had with Janice in the past so that I could thank them. Despite the fact that I had quite bad social anxiety I was actually one of the more liked members of staff because I was willing to do all the jobs that the others either couldn’t do or didn’t like doing. Janice on the other hand was known for being lazy and unable to do most of what had to be done.

“Because I wanted to give the two of you another chance to work things out,” Reggie sighed. “Or rather I wanted Janice to prove that she could work with literally any other member of staff since no one else wants to work with her. Don’t worry I’ll be having a talk with her about her behaviour next.”

Okay now I did feel a little bit sorry for Janice. It was just a fleeting sensation that I quickly banished by reminding myself that I had never done anything to her that would make her dislike me this much.

“Alright I guess that I’ll go and do the ordering then go, if that’s alright with you, boss,” I sighed.

Reggie thanked me as I got up to leave and as I walked down the corridor towards the small storage area at the back of the store, I heard him calling for Janice to come to his office. I finished up as quickly as possible so that I could avoid Janice after Reggie was done with her. Reggie was a good, patient man but once you were on your last chance, he was very firm, and it wasn’t unusual for people to just quit once he was done explaining the literal list of everything that they were doing wrong. Needless to say, I also wanted to get home as quickly as possible so that I could log in to Soul Core Online as well.

Stepping out onto the shop floor I noticed a young man waiting outside and cringed as I considered whether I had time to slip out the back and avoid him entirely. The young man I was dreading to come into contact with was Janice’s boyfriend Dermot and he liked me even less than she did. Making up my mind quickly I pulled the hood of the jacket that I was wearing over my head and made my way outside as casually as I could. Dermot glanced up but thankfully when he saw that it wasn’t Janice, he looked back down to the screen of his Cyber Module.

Deciding to take my blessings when I got them, I walked away from the store as quickly as I could without attracting attention to myself. I was about halfway down the street when the strident tones of Janice’s voice as she screeched angrily at Dermot about how I had blabbed to Reggie and gotten her and trouble and shook my head as I realised that she wasn’t going to learn her lesson any time soon.

A few minutes later I got a message from Reggie on my own CM that he would pick me up and drop me off tomorrow since he didn’t trust Dermot not to try something stupid if he managed to catch me alone. I sent him a message back thanking him for the offer. I knew that it wasn’t specifically Dermot that he was worried about but that he wasn’t likely to confront me alone. Reggie had actually seen me take down a man much larger than I was using the skills that I had learned by playing VR games over the years so he knew that I could actually take care of myself. I had lost quite a bit of weight since then though I probably couldn’t do it now though.

Once I got home, I quickly ate a cup of instant noodles and cleaned myself up before deciding to take a short nap since it was about midnight in the game world right now. A few hours later Katy woke me up and I logged in to the game world. As soon as I woke up in my room at the inn, I grabbed my armour and shoes before heading downstairs where the others were all waiting for me.

“So, what are we doing today?” I asked as I took a seat between Evie and Warren.

“I was thinking that we would go and clear out that Den of rabbits that we found,” Fern suggested before anyone else could speak.

“True we did promise to do something about them,” I agreed. “Unless anyone else has a better idea my vote is that we do that then.”

“No that works,” Warren chuckled. “We actually decided to do that yesterday.

“Okay anything else I should know?” I asked noticing that everyone seemed to have an extra piece of gear. Even Katy who was actually able to log in and play without me if someone on my Friend List invited her which was pretty cool.

“We mostly just worked our respective Crafting Skills yesterday,” Kelly explained. “As you can see, I completed the set of robes that I was working on. So, I started on another similar set for Evie that are nearly done. Once I’m done with her robes I’ll start working on some trousers or something for you.”

Kelly had asked me what sort of equipment I was planning on using in this game and I had replied that I was planning on using a combination of light and medium armour. Since I was both a melee fighter and a caster this made a lot of sense. I wouldn’t be able to take as much damage as I would if I just wore medium armour but the bonuses that you got to you casting abilities for wearing light armour should more than make up for that.

As it turned out the others had all finished their first crafting projects as well and had moved onto the next one. Warren was now making some gauntlets for himself and Fern was making a new set of boots. Katy and Evie had just made more of the things that they had made the other day which meant that we now had plenty of arrows and potions for when we raided the Den later.

“Well it sounds like our guys got a lot done yesterday,’ I chuckled. “Well then shall we head off?”

After a couple of skirmishes with a few groups of Rabbits outside of town which were almost surprisingly easy to deal with now that we had a larger group with slightly better gear and more experience, we arrived at the entrance to the Den.

“Right then,” Fern said as she sat down at the entrance before anyone else could. “I’ll go first.”

Warren was the next to go and not long after that I was the only person still waiting outside and at down at the edge of the hole before slipping inside.

After I landed inside the Den, I quickly checked my gear before turning to look at the others who were waiting patiently for me to take my position behind Warren who would be the first in line to enter the tunnels. I really hoped that we didn’t get attacked while we were in one of the tunnels like we had last time. It had been awkward last time we were here but with this many people blocking the way it was much easier for things to go wrong. Especially since it was too dangerous for our ranged attackers to be firing projectiles over our heads if we got into a fight so they would just be in the way.

In fact, Warren and I would basically be the only people able to hit anything with my massive friend taking so much space when we entered the tunnels. We had known this was going to be the case before we got here but it was still slightly worrying to see. I shook my head as I realised that was just the nerves talking, if Warren and I couldn’t handle a couple of rabbits with some minor backup then there was something seriously wrong with this game.

As it turned out we made it down thee first tunnel easily enough and the cavern at the end only had four rabbits in it, so we were able to take care of them fairly easily. About halfway through the second tunnel I called for a brief halt just in case we were attacked by another Armoured Rabbit. Thankfully, I neither saw nor heard any sign of one of the oversized monsters charging towards us so we moved on shortly after that.

Things started to get a bit more interesting in the next cavern where we found 6 of the normal Voracious Rabbits waiting for us as well as an Armoured Rabbit. However, this fight was only slightly more interesting than the last one. With our recent increase and strength and new party members we had none of the problems with killing the Armoured Rabbit that we had last time. In fact, really the only thing that was interesting was the Warren and I took our time with the Armoured Rabbit while we tried to work out what the best way to defeat them would be in case we had to fight more than one later on.

As I had expected Warren’s sceptre was a much better weapon to use against them than my naginata and his shield made it much easier to deflect their powerful charges. However I was able to dodge those charges fairly easily if I had even a little bit of space and my lightning magic meant that I could deal more damage at range so in the end we decided that we could both deal with them easily enough.

While Kelly, Katy, Fern and I were looting the bodies Warren and Evie looked around the area to see if they could find anything to gather for their Crafting Skills and I nearly leapt out of my own skin when Warren started mining a small amount of ore that he had found making me scramble to my feet so that I could stand guard at the entrance to the next tunnel just in case the racket that my friend was making alerted more of the enemies.

As soon as he was done, we decided to head deeper into the as yet unmapped depths of the Den that still lay before us. A grin crossed my face as I looked into the gloomy tunnel in front of me. This sort of thing was exciting no matter how many times I did it and the idea that I was probably one of the first people to make it this deep into one of the Dens in this game only made that feeling stronger.

Warren grinned back at me before stepping into the tunnel. From here out we were on a real adventure!