The rest of the day went pretty well. Despite the rocky start in our relationship by the time we finished the training session both Gary and Shara had warmed up to me. This was actually mostly because Katy had dragged me away while the kids had been looting one of the mobs that we had killed and given me a stern talking to about the way that I was treating them.

When we finished Sterling and I swapped information so that they could contact us again if they wanted to. Once that was done Katy and I went our respective ways. Since I was going to help Kerr out Katy decided that she was going to go and make arrows with her own trainer.

Sure, enough when I got to Kerr’s shop the old man was busy making Cores, so I went down the back to help him. Every now and again Kerr had to go and man the counter which was a bit of a pain but there wasn’t much we could do about that since Kerr didn’t have employees. I suggested that Kerr hire someone temporarily and the old man said that he would think about it, but I could see that he didn’t really want to do that. If there was one thing that I knew about Kerr it was that the old man liked his privacy, so I decided to leave it be for now.

Once we were done for the night I headed back to the inn where the others were waiting for me. As per usual I was the last to arrive and they had already ordered food for the entire party from the group funds. We chatted about everything that had happened today, from the sound of things the others had done a surprisingly good job spreading the word about the Event. Thankfully, we had done quite a bit to improve our relationship with the other players in town in the past few weeks so more people should believe us. It also turned out that my idea of lending our services to weaker parties was a very popular one both with the rest of my Party members who had all gained some more contacts with the Players that they had helped out.

Once we had finished eating Kelly turned to me with a serious look on her face.

“So, about that contract that you sent me earlier,’ she said. “I gave it to one of my colleagues along with the ones that Warren and I received and according to him they look pretty normal. I’ll send you the details when we Log Off.”

“Sounds good to me,” I nodded. “Does this mean that we’ll be meeting your AI’s soon?”

“Indeed, it does,” Warren rumbled.

“I got a contract as well, so you’ll be meeting mine too!” Fern exclaimed excitedly. “Thanks for putting in a good word for me by the way boss!”

“I look forward to it,” I chuckled in reply before noticing that Evie was being even quieter than usual. “I can still ask them to send you a contract if you want Evie.”

“Uh, thanks for the offer but I’ll be fine,” Evie replied. “I was just thinking that I might pay for my AI to join us in game as well that’s all.”

“Don’t feel like you have to if you don’t want to or can’t afford to dear,” Kelly told the petit blonde who shook her head.

“Money isn’t a problem for me,” she said quietly.

“I look forward to meeting them too,” I said quickly before things got too uncomfortable. “I’m sure that they’re really nice Evie.”

Evie nodded but I could see that her heart wasn’t in it. I still didn’t know what was going on in her personal life and I sure as hell wasn’t going to pry.

“Right, I’m gonna go now,” I said after we had chatted for a few more minutes. “I have to get ready for dinner with my parents tonight.”

“Oh, so you’re finally letting them meet Katy then, are you?” Kelly asked. “I hope that it goes well.”

“Yeah, mum was pretty surprised, but she didn’t take it as badly as she could’ve,” I nodded. “Anyway, I had better head off. I need to do some cleaning.”

The others all wished Katy and I luck with the dinner and as we headed upstairs to our room. I was still a little nervous about my parents meeting Katy, but it was too late to change my mind now so I just Logged Out.

“What are you going to do now?” Katy asked as I clambered out of my VR Rig.

“I think that I’ll go to the supermarket and get some ingredients for dinner first,” I replied as I pulled on some clothes. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Is there anything that I can do while you’re out?” Katy asked. “I could activate the vacuum cleaner while you’re out.”

Much like the apartment that I rented came with a basic AI of its own it also had several robotic vacuum cleaners that could be controlled by the AI. Since the apartment that I was renting was pretty cheap they weren’t as good as vacuuming yourself, but they could save a lot of time.

“Sure,” I agreed. “That’ll be helpful. Thanks Katy.”

As soon as I said that Katy activated the vacuum cleaners which shot out of their charging stations like machines possessed. I chuckled in amusement as I walked out the door. Katy’s enthusiasm had caused some of the worry that I had to lessen.

It was a slightly grey but otherwise pleasant day outside and I made it to and from the supermarket without anything particularly interesting happening. Katy had obviously finished vacuuming the house while I was out because they were safely back in their charging stations. It looked like she had done a much better job than the apartment’s AI Sally had ever done which meant that I would only need to vacuum around the edges of the room and under the pieces of furniture that the vacuums couldn’t move like the dining table and the sofa which would save me quite a lot of time.

“Thanks for doing the vacuuming while I was out Katy,” I said as I placed the shopping bags on the bench and began unpacking them. I had actually done most of the shopping for the week while I was there, so I actually had quite a lot to put away. Once I had done so I started preparing the ingredients for the casserole that I was making for tonight. I decided on a casserole since that would allow me to spend more time cleaning while it was cooking.

“You know, I’ve been wondering,” Katy mentioned as I worked, “You seem to be surprisingly good at cooking. Was it your mother who taught you?”

“Both of my parents can cook,” I replied absently. “So, they both kind of taught me.”

“By the way Kelly sent me the information that her friend gave her after looking at your contract would you like to go over it with me?” Katy asked.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Mum and dad will want to know more about my new job.”

It turned out that there were quite a number of benefits other than the significant salary. There was also a signing bonus that would be more than enough for me to move into a nicer apartment and still have enough left over to pay the bills. Even more surprising than that was that I was also going to be assigned a prototype VR Rig that Gransoft was developing. I would have to provide feedback to the team working on it but that was the only string that seemed to be attached. Basically, this job was everything that I could’ve wished for and more. So much so that it almost seemed to be too good to be true. I actually mentioned that to Katy, but she pointed out that since the AI’s that Gransoft created have human-like personalities finding someone like me that most of them actually like was incredibly difficult which was why Gransoft was trying so hard to employ me.

“That does make sense,” I admitted as I pulled the small vacuum cleaner that I used to clean the edges of the room that the robotic vacuum cleaners had difficulty getting at. “By the way have you posted on the online forums about the Event yet?”

“Yeah, I did that last night like you asked,” Katy replied. “It’s been pinned by the Forum Moderators which basically means that Gransoft confirmed the existence of the Event, so it’s been getting quite a lot of attention.”

“That’s good,” I nodded. “It sounds like things are going as planned.”

“What do you think about meeting everyone’s AI’s?” Katy asked. “I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re like. It should be interesting.”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “I think I have a fairly good idea what Julian and Sarah’s AI’s will be like, but I have no idea what Fern’s or Evie’s AI will be like. What do you think?”

We continued to chat about what we thought our friends’ AI’s might be like while I continued to clean the apartment. It was only when the timer that I had set when I had put the casserole dish in the oven started beeping that I realized that more than two hours had passed, and I had to get the vegetables on before my parents arrived.

Moving quickly, I prepared some vegetables for roasting and put them in the oven under the casserole before heading to my room to change into something nicer than the now grubby clothes that I was wearing.

Once I had finished changing, I sat down on my couch to wait for my parents to arrive. While I was waiting, I asked Katy to bring up the Forums for Soul Core Online to see if there was anything interesting to see.

“Oh look, there’s an update coming out, that’s weird,” I said as we scrolled through. “Wonder what’s going on.”

Katy selected the post which expanded to fill the screen.

“Oh, I see they’re updating some of the UI,” I nodded. “That explains why they needed to specifically tell us.”

There were a couple of other things that they were fixing. Mostly a couple of bugs and some balancing changes but it was very obvious what the main part of the update was. They were changing the way that Soul Cores worked slightly. Up until now a Soul Core Levelled Up when it gained a certain number of Soul Points depending on the Level of the Soul Core, but they had decided to change it so that it was a percentage amount instead. I could kind of see why they did that. Some of my Soul Cores had reached the point where the number of Soul Points that they needed to Level Up had stopped increasing and I could see why that might irritate some people.

“Did a lot of people complain about the way that it works right now?” I asked Katy.

“Eh, not really,” she replied after a few moments which made me guess that she had actually checked the answer to my question before answering. “It seems that several people on the team had suggested that they change it before the game was released but it was decided against for some reason. But now that a few people have started to reach the point where it’s noticeable they’ve rethought their position.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.”

“What do you want to look at now?” Katy asked. “Do you want to see what people are saying about the Event?”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” I nodded, and Katy brought up the post that she had made for me under my username. From the looks of things most of the comments were positive ones from. There were a couple of comments saying that I was the guy who had harangued another player on the first day that the game went live but to my surprise there was another post underneath all of them that claimed to be from the kid that was saying that I had been right to tell him off.

We continued browsing the forums to see if there was anything else interesting happening in the game right now but for the most part it was stuff that we already knew. I was just about to go and check the food when my doorbell rang.

Sure, enough my parents were at the door, and I quickly let them in before going and checking the food like I needed to. The casserole was pretty much done but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt it so I flipped the vegetables before leaning against the bench and watching while my parents were having a conversation with Katy who had put herself up on the tv so they could see what she looked like.

I watched silently for a few moments to see how things were going. The things that they were talking about were pretty simple things. Katy wanted to know more about what I had been like when I was younger and my parents naturally wanting to learn as much about Katy as possible.

Unfortunately for my parents most of Katy’s early experiences came from video games, movies, and internet research so it was either extremely dry information about how she developed in the early day after her consciousness formed or it was about her learning about the things that I like after I pre-ordered Soul Core Online. I knew some of this already, but it was interesting to hear Katy go into more depth about her early days.

“So, you learned most of what you know from reading things on the internet?” my father rumbled. My father wasn’t a tall man. In fact, I had several inches of height on him if I stood up straight, but he did have very broad shoulder which made him much more intimidating than I could ever be. Other than that, we were actually pretty alike since he had dark hair that was starting to recede and green eyes that were the exact same shade as my own.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Katy replied with a laugh as she realized where he was going with his question. “I am an AI. I can check through hundreds of different websites in a few seconds. I can filter out false information with ease.”

“That’s a good point,” my mother agreed.

“I was just giving you three some time to get to know each other,” I replied from behind them making my mother jump slightly in surprise like she had forgotten that I was even there.

Once my mother had recovered from her surprise, we started the conversation about Katy’s early life up again which I could tell she appreciated until we heard a beeping sound coming from the kitchen.

“Well, it sounds like dinner’s ready,” I said as I headed back into the kitchen. “Could one of you set the table?”

A few minutes later we were eating dinner. I had already given Katy the information on the casserole that I had made. It was actually a pretty good casserole considering that I had basically just thrown some ingredients in the dish and shoved it in the oven. From the lack of conversation, I concluded that my parents and Katy agreed with me.

Once we had finished dinner, we made our way back to the couch and after a few moments set up a movie to watch. The movie was a new one that I had never heard of, but it was pretty good. Or at least Katy and I thought so, but my parents were of a different opinion. Still, it seemed to only drive home just how alike Katy and I actually were. We ate the dessert that mum had brought for us while we were watching the movie which was just as good as I had hoped that it would be.

After the movie had finished my father finally decided that it was time to ask me about my new job. I mostly let Katy explain most of the contact related stuff to my father who ran an accounting firm and was fairly knowledgeable about these sorts of things.

“It seems like this company values our son quite highly,” my father pointed out after a few minutes. “I don’t really know much about games or his responsibilities, but it seems to me that they’re actually giving him more than they should be.”

“Tyler and I talked about this earlier actually,” Katy replied. “It’s actually a bit difficult to explain but try to think of it this way; one of Tyler’s main responsibilities is to be an ambassador between the AI’s who run Soul Core Online and the players. How much do you think that a service like that is worth?”

“I see,” my father nodded. “That’s a good point. If I look at it that way, it does seem pretty fair I suppose. However, that does raise a number of other questions about why Tyler is the one who got this job.”

“Well, there are several reasons,” Katy replied carefully. “Some of them are just related to how he treats people, but I think Tyler should tell you the main answer to this question himself if he wants to.”

“Fine I guess that can tell you,” I nodded as my parents turned to look at me. “I was eating a meal at the inn in Polson, the town where I started when I noticed that the waitress was acting a bit oddly. Due to some events earlier in the day I had made a contact in the local guards who wanted me to meet with the Captain of the Guards.”

I paused for a few moments to meet my parents’ eyes slowly.

“As Katy has already explained all of the Non-Player Characters in the game are run by an AI like her which means that they are practically indistinguishable from other players,” I continued. “When I met with the Captain of the Guards, I mentioned that she was acting odd and suggested that she was being harassed by some players.”

“I think I see where this is going,” my father said as he held up a hand. “Your suspicions were correct.”

“That’s right and I was asked to help bring the perpetrators to justice,” I agreed. “Together with one of the guards I went undercover. However, things went wrong and the Guard who was masquerading as a new waitress was somehow captured, and I was forced to try and save her from her attackers. For the most part things after that went well and another Guard arrived to arrest the Players. As he entered the room, I noticed something odd and knocked him aside just in time to get stabbed by an assassin sneaking up behind him and that’s basically the story.”

“Well, you also gave them some ideas on how to deal with criminal Players since their normal methods didn’t work very well,” Katy told my parents now that I had finished.

“I think that I understand now,” my father nodded. “At least a little.”

We continued to talk about more details about my job for a few minutes, but it was pretty clear that neither of my parents really understood some of it because they didn’t really know anything about games.

“Alright then Tyler,” dad said as he glanced at his watch. “We should probably be going.”

After I showed my parents out, I cleaned the dishes before dragging myself to bed and just flopping over.

It had been a long day.