Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler : Susan talked to a librarian about Voice. We learned a little bit about Susan’s past. Voice taught Susan about chemistry. This got outside knowledge banned from the game. He accidentally acquired Susan’s alchemy book, and Susan learned he was from another world.

The system is undergoing maintenance in ten minutes. Forced logout has be initiated.

As soon as Voice read the notification, he found himself in the white room. He sighed.

Just when I finally started to get things going they kick me out.

Brenton logged out of the white room, and looked around his bedroom. It was just turning dawn.

Wow Brenton thought to himself I can’t believe the time dilation from the real world to the pod is one to five.

It had been about three days in the virtual world, but only about fifteen hours in the real world. He got up and stretched. Being coopted up in the pod all day was pretty bad for his muscles. He decided to go for a short jog. He had a bike, but seeing as the area around where he lived was full of hills, he decided to just try using his own two legs.

It was a mistake. He hadn’t really done any exercise since he was in high school. When he was a sophomore he just stopped, since the only required phys ed. was a year and a half. Brenton regretted that now. He wanted to be able to play that game as much as possible, but not if it had a negative impact on his body.

When he came home, thirty minutes later he found a note on his door. He had spent five minutes jogging, then walked a little bit before deciding to return home. The return trip was mostly uphill so it took him a considerably longer amount of time.

He read the note.

‘A woman calling herself bit bee or something called. She asked if you could meet her tomorrow at Bishimonster Japanese Restaurant at 8 in the morning. She said since you couldn’t play the game tomorrow anyway it shouldn’t be a problem.’

He was surprised that Bit-Bee would have contacted him.

I guess she would know that there was going to be server maintenance.

He went to his bedroom, got a set of sleeping clothes and went to take a shower. He only slept in his boxers and a pajama bottom. He had gotten the pajama pants for Christmas a few years ago, they were the single most comfortable piece of clothing he had. In fact he was pretty sure they were the single most comfortable piece of clothing on Earth.

He took a quick shower. Even though he never worked out or did any really strenuous activities he had a nice body. He was gifted with a natural six pack, and a generally fat free body.

Once he was done drying off and ‘fully’ clothed he went to his bedroom. He set two alarms, one for 7 am and one for 7:15. He could never seem to wake up with just one. He had earnestly tried to fix this habit at one point in his life, but that only resulted in being late to many classes, or missing some altogether.

He went to sleep. He woke up ate 7:17 after hearing the alarm blaring in his ear. He turned it off and sat up. He was on the edge of his bed, his eyes were closed and his head was drooping. His mind was mostly awake. It always seemed to him that his body could not keep up with his mind. It’s not that he was some super genius or anything, but his body always seemed a little bit less controllable than his mind.

He walked to his closet his eyes still shut. He knew every step of his room perfectly. He had this same room with the same layout for at least ten years. He had totally forgotten about the pods existence. He gathered his clothes, and headed for the bathroom, only to run smack into the pod.

OW! That really hurt! Brenton thought to himself. He was now fully awake, but in a not negligible amount of pain.

He walked around the pod silently fuming at the change in his everyday life.

Thinking on it for a second he smiled, a natural happy smile. It’s not really that bad I suppose. I do get to play this game for another six days before anyone else. Well I guess it’s just five day. Hmm, actually it didn’t say how long the update would take.

He washed his face, put on some deodorant and a spritz of cologne, and headed to the restaurant. Sushi was his favorite food, so he had been there a few times before. Usually the sushi place didn’t open until five pm, but it seemed like today it would open early.

When he arrived at Bishimonster, he was greeted by one of the chefs. He thanked the chef and walked in. The woman he assumed was Bit-Bee was sitting at the bar. The reason he assumed she was Bit-Bee was that she looked identical to the woman that had helped him make his character in DIVE, also she was the only customer here.

He went up to Bit-Bee. “Bit-Bee I assume?” he asked casually, but in a low voice, she wouldn’t want her in game name to be known to the public… maybe. She looked pretty down in the dumps. Her shoulders were slumped, and her head drooped. She was holding a glass, most likely it contained sake, or some other alcohol.

“So what to what do I owe the pleasure?” He was trying to be cordial. He had no idea why she had called him.

What if I did something wrong? What if there was some rule I hadn’t read that I broke? Is she here to take the pod back?

“You know,” She started in a very sad sounding voice, “I got into a lot of trouble because of you.”

Brenton didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what he did, but if he would have to take responsibility if he got her into trouble.

“I don’t know what I did Bit-Bee, but I’ll tried to make it up to you somehow.” He didn’t actually know if he could make it up to her. It sounded really bad. The only contact they ever had was during the character creation. Reason said that if she were in trouble because of him, then it had to do with her job. Since she was so sad, the only conclusion he could make was that she probably lost her job because of him. If this really was the case there wasn’t much he could do about it. He had no job, lived with his mother, and was a second year college student.

“Oh, please. Call me, hunny.”

“Ok -hunny. Well how exactly did I get you in trouble?” He tried giving his best reassuring smile.

“Just like that! With that cute little face!” Rachel cried out. “You got me in trouble alright. I decided since you were so sweet and cute I’d give you a little special treatment. I sped up time in your pod to give you a little extra time to learn to walk. I wanted to make you look cool to the other players…”

Rachel trailed off near the end. Brenton didn’t think that was so bad. It was definitely not enough to get fired over.

After a moment of quite, Rachel continued. “I may have also kind of, sort of given you a class skill.”

Brenton didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I gave you a skill called Identify. You also got one random high level skill for choosing skill instead of item. Kelsey, my boss, thought that was really unfair.”

“You’ve got to be joking! You got fired for THAT?!” Voice was mad at Kelsey for firing this very nice lady. She only tried to help someone else out. Why was she being punished for it?

Rachel was taken aback. She had watched some of the footage from Brenton’s character. His brain waves indicated that he was lying quite a bit.

Maybe he is just being manipulative, but he isn’t showing any of his usual signs.

What Brenton didn’t know that the update was created by five of the top programmers in DI. Each of these five was tasked with watching one of the winners of the pods. They then took that data, and 15 hours after starting the game they would program an update. This would probably be the only official update that the game would have. The game automatically updates itself constantly. Every tiny action taken by every individual, whether NPC or PC, would slightly affect the game world. This patch was to make sure the game wouldn’t get too boring too quickly, but also to make sure no one would be too overpowered, at least not before the main populous would get a chance to join them.

The programmer that was assigned to him was, you guessed it, Rachel. Rachel knew more about his in game self than he did, probably. She had been in a pod for a little bit longer than him since his character creation. She did not leave the entire time. She had made sure to eat, sleep and do everything else she needed to be ready to watch his entire experience.

The only problem was, he didn’t really get an exploit. He used only a few basic skills, along with skill fusion and a very analytical mind to get to where he was. That wasn’t something they could punish. She was going to fix the outside knowledge thing, but the system detected it and found a remedy itself.

He was really sweet thought, to worry about her.

“No no, I was just yelled at for a while. “ Rachel gave a small chuckle. “We couldn’t just take away your skill I had given you, but at the same time it made you more powerful at the start than the others.”

“So why was I called here then?” Voice asked, perplexed.

“It was mostly just because I find you cute and I don’t have anything to do today. I was supposed to be programming the update, but m part never came up.”

Voice was slightly confused about this but shrugged, “Well doesn’t that make your day a little easier? At least you don’t have to worry about missing a semicolon.” He added basically the only programming joke he knew.

Rachel smiled, “Well I don’t have anything to do, but I’m pretty sure the others are going to give me a hard time when they are done. Why don’t you sit down and have some sushi? It’s my treat.”

Voice sat down beside her, and looked at the menu. He chose a few things and they ate together. They made small talk about what he had been doing in the game. Rachel seemed to find it funny when he told her about his charity. They ate for about an hour, then Brenton decided he needed to go home. She offered to give him a ride, but he wanted the exercise. She told him that he could get back on at 12pm.

After he got back home, it was a little after nine. He still had about three hours before he could play, so he looked up news on the internet about DIVE. Apparently LastingBeauty and ShortDwarf had uploaded several videos via in game cameras. Brenton didn’t even know those existed. The viewer count was in the millions. They had started streaming almost as soon as they started.

They started off by doing a quick quest for a blacksmith (not Evan), and getting a crappy weapon each. They took off right after getting the weapons. They killed several small animals, such as bunnies and squirrels.

After killing the small cute little animals for a couple of in game hours they came back into town to sell the loot. They used the money to buy slightly better weapons and a little armor. They went out and started killing young wolves, and large bunnies.

They continued this process for several more hours. Killing, looting, selling, and repeating. During the entire 15 hours they didn’t log out even once. They had each advanced to level 17. They were getting a perfectly equal share of exp, even though LastingBeauty was obviously doing more damage.

LastingBeauty was starting to look like some sort of martial swordswoman. With quick precise strikes that focused on thrusts she was something like a cross between a fencer and rouge. She wore light armor and focused her defense on dodging attacks.

The dwarf was wielding a stereotypic al two handed great axe near the end of the 15 hour video. The only difference was he often started an arc with both hands then he would release his left hand. He would reach for a dagger and throw it while the arc was completed. He wore heavy armor, and took most of the hits from the group.

The other three players, including him had no videos. Although when Brenton looked closely he occasionally noticed something like a person sometimes hiding near the group.

He played the video at ten times speed. Even then he didn’t really pay attention the entire time. He would often browse other sites, and sometimes he tried doing sit ups and pushups. After the hour and a half was up, and he was done with the clip, basically a crappy movie, he had a little more than as hour before he could log back on.

He went outside of his room and talked to his mom for a bit. She had made an early lunch, so since he had eaten two hours ago he grabbed an apple on the table and ate with her. She asked about the game and he told her. He also told her that it was going through an update. He did ‘forget’ to mention the whole Bit-Bee incident though.

Brenton waited till ten minutes before twelve. He excused himself, and logged in to the pod.

He was greeted by the white room.

Well I have almost an hour left, maybe I should do something about this?

He fiddled around for a few minutes before finally opening up the ‘store menu’. He had 1000 DI bills, which apparently increased by 1000 every IRL week. The company could grant more based on certain actions, like if you worked for the company or somehow did a service for the company. You could also purchase 1000 DI bills for $10. You would need to put your credit card information in first though. Since Brenton didn’t have one that option was out. He indicated that he wanted to browse the store. Around him instantly materialized a store as large as a small city. He knew this because he had a map, and a legend. The map indicated the distance between each type of shop.

He said he wanted to go to the house section. Expecting to see lumber, and other materials he was quite surprised. He was in a large room with about a dozen houses surrounding him. All of the houses were two stories, but looking at each display that could be adjust as much as the user wanted, and could afford.

He chose a basic looking house, one story with an attic and a basement. It did not have a garage, but he didn’t need one at the moment. He changed the design a little, but mostly kept it the same. It had a triangular roof, wooden walls, and three windows. The entire house was painted white.

After examining the rooms, a bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen, he bought several things you would need for a house. He bought all the appliances you would normally find in a house, as well as a computer, TV and other appliances that were purely for entertainment purposes.

His bed and couch were the most luxurious pieces he bought. The bed could easily fit four people. It was so big in fact he had to take out about a third of the living room and a quarter of the dining room to make the bed room be able to fit it comfortably.

The couch was a very nice auburn red. It could easily fit four people, six if everyone was sitting in close quarters. The cushions were as extremely comfortable as the bed was.

By the time he was done redesigned his house he only had five game minutes to go. He sat on the couch wondering where the DIVE door would appear. The next moment he got the option as to where he would like it to appear. It was as if the system read his mind.

Which it probably did.

He put the door at the back of his walk-in closet. It wasn’t a huge closet, it was just five feet long. Putting the doorway there, gave it a kind of chronicle of something or other feel.

As soon as the door lit up he walked through. He appeared in the city square near the fountain. He was bombarded by system notifications. They were detailing the recent update; he read most of them, but seeing as they had nothing to do with him he only skimmed. The thing that most caught his attention though was the fact that the time dilation was set from 5 to 2. That meant there was only 288 hours left instead of 720. Voice felt a little cheated.

Well I guess I’m lucky they didn’t lower it to a one-to-one ratio.

It was noon, Voice noticed that there were only two PCs in the square, him and EDI. He decided to talk to her, this was the perfect chance to get her to join his side.

“Hello there EDI. My name is Voice0fReason.” He said this while making a small bow from the waist.

The best way to do this is to make a good first impression.

EDI giggled a little at the sight.

“Well, dear sir, I heard you’ve been helping the NPCs out with their wounded.”

EDI was actually quite impressed by this. There was no real reason for him to do this, since he probably thought of the NPCs as just pixels. EDI was different; she values all life, even if that life didn’t have a will of its own. Would you stop loving your child if they went in to a coma?

“Well I was just trying to help the people out. Actually at first I was looking for you. When I heard you were helping everyone I thought that it was a beautiful idea. Since I had the skill I decided to do my best to help in the best way I could.”

It’s not a complete lie plus I would be more than happy to help for two or three times more than I have if it meant I would get a partner that happens to be one of the first five. EDI seems to be a softie, that is pretty easy to manipulate, a little annoying though. I can’t be doing anything she would consider bad, heh, at least not while she is around..

“So what is it you needed from me?” EDI’s curiosity got the best of her.

Voice quickly thought of a reasonable excuse. “I wished to join a party and go hunting. We could go out and hunt some animals. That ought to help the people around town from starving. This way we can help the people here, as well as gain some actual combat experience.

Party Invite: EDI.”

You have sent a party invite to player: EDI.

Voice was really getting the hang of the game commands. He could basically figure out what any command was that he needed.

EDI has accepted the party invite.

You have become the party leader.

Set exp and item share for the party:

Round Robin: The player that gets the kill gets all the exp and items from the monster.

Shared: Everyone gets an equal share of the exp and items. For items the team must agree on who is getting it. If no agreement can be made the item will be converted into currency and split evenly between the parties. For any amount of money that can’t be shared, i.e. three people must share 2 coppers the one that killed the enemy gets the remainder.

“Shared.” He would rather have it round robin, but most likely EDI would be killing more than him. He didn’t want to lose out just because he was weaker.

EDI was slightly stunned. She thought that Voice was just helping people for the rewards. Well she heard he was turning down rewards, so maybe for the fame. But he could easily ask her to be bait and take most of the kills himself. The fact that he decided the loot system would be shared was very nice of him.

She smiled at him. Voice thought she had figured him out, but once he looked for more than a second he realized the smile was… friendly.

“Alright first thing’s first. We need weapons. I will get us some, what do you want to fight with?”

When EDI heard that they needed weapons she had expected him to ask her to pay.

So that is why he wanted to party.

She was immediately regretful for that thought. He offered to buy them. That meant he was willing to spend only the money he made from selling the potions he made in the betting match. After EDI heard he was helping NPCs she took it upon herself to find him and chat. What she found was amazing. He had collected herbs for a long time, he went into some sort of shop and started to make potions. He made them all night. It was one of the most impressive things she had ever seen.

Why must I be so suspicious around him? It’s not like he’s taking advantage of me or anything. He is helping me out. If anything I’m taking advantage of his kindness. EDI berated herself.

“Um…” She started, unsure of which weapon would be good. She wanted to be the best sword fighter in the game, but LastingBeauty was already ahead of her on that road. “How do two Sai sound? “ She asked.

Voice had no idea what these were but didn’t really care. If it would help her better he would get it for her. All he knew was that ninja sometimes used them. He told her to wait here for a few minutes while he got them.

When he arrived at Evans he started talking. “Hey Evan, how’s it going man? Hey I’m sorry about this but I have to leave the city.”

When Evan heard this he was sad. Voice let it sink in for a few seconds before continuing.

“So I’m going to need a few weapons. I am going to be hunting in the area surrounding the city. My friend wants two Sai, and I would like a staff. Nothing fancy just some basic stuff. So how much is it going to cost.”

Evan was happy to have misunderstood Voice. When Voice saved his wife he told Voice he would make anything for free. Since Voice had refused he would just charge him for the base price of the materials. He would need one iron chunk, and a long thick branch.

“Well, since da materials wouldn’t be da best I would charge… hm a silver.” Normally this order would cost more like fifteen silver at least, but Voice was his best friend. NO sense crying over losing a few silver.

Voice was grateful. This was much cheaper than what he was expecting. He had gotten four silver for the potions he made that night, six from the bet, and one from before. So he would have an even ten after this.

He gave Evan the silver and asked, “So how long until I can come back?”

Evan decided this would be his top priority today. Evan replied, slightly boastful, “I should be able to get these done in about two hours.”

“Thanks Evan.” Voice handed him the silver and left. He thought the blacksmith was probably being lazy. It shouldn’t take more than an hour for the order, but then again Voice knew nothing of the smiths system.

Voice went back to EDI. “It will take a couple of hours. I’m going to make some potions, so meet me here then.”

Voice walked away and started locating plants.

He found a large swathe of green healing herbs pretty quickly. He decided to use critical strike as much as possible while he has harvesting the plants. He wondered why the extraction of the plant wasn’t included in his book. He came to the conclusion that it was probably because it didn’t have anything to do with actually making the potion.

He searched for about half an hour. He was pretty good at distinguishing the bright dots from the surroundings by this time. He didn’t get use his critical strike as much as he wanted, since he found plants so quickly it was the recharge time of the skill that limited it. He used it a total of 40 times. After the 40th time he quit harvesting plants.

He had a good haul, he ended up with 99 green healing herbs and 600 weed. He had stopped after 99 herbs since it would make a new stack, and he had already had a few items slots taken up by the crappy ingredients he couldn’t make anything out of.

Before he started making the potions he found Susan and asked her what she usually did with the left over materials she didn’t use. She smiled and took him to the back room. Without saying a word she opened a trap door in the ground.

Voice marveled at this while he climbed down the ladder. When he got to the bottom, about thirty seconds of climbing later, he looked around. It was dark, but Susan gently blew on the wall behind her. All along that wall bright red flowers started to glow.

You have discovered: Susan’s True Lab. For being the first player to ever step foot in this secret area you are granted 125 fame.

For being the only player able to use this place you will create potions at an additional 15% potency while in Susan’s True Lab.

They went down for about ten feet; every flower lit the one next to it. When they came across the next wall, it too lit up. When the entire was lit in a deep, yet bright, red he took a look around the room. It was huge. It was basically a twenty foot wide, and a hundred feet long. There were large tanks of liquid on each side. They were both a muddy brown color, and were boiling without heat applied to them. Each of these two tanks was connected to a smaller tank by a glass tube at the top. Each of these smaller tanks, glowed a sort of rainbow mix color. The liquid in these tanks adulated between each of the colors.

This series of tanks continued, each glowing a different color, and the one at the very middle of the back wall, which was connected to both sides, glowed with a completely black, kind of eerie, black light. It had a several spigots attached to it. He knew this because he had walked to the back of the room while admiring each of the tanks. The spigots each had a picture directly above it. A few feet above the spigots, which were about as high as his knees, was a turn wheel. The left had a sign of an arm with muscles; the right had a person glowing. Above that was another turn wheel. The left had a skull and crossbones symbol, and the right had angel wings. He guessed these were meant for poisons or potions.

“So what does this tank do?”

“Well, “Susan started clearly eager to brag about her work. “I made this lab several years ago. Each of these tanks basically purifies and distills the power of ingredients. Each tank has a different enchantment added to it, thanks to my friend who shall remain nameless. Anyway the resultant ends up in this tank right here.” She said patting the eerie black tank

“If you turn the wheel on top left it gives the harmful effects, if you turn it right you get the helpful effects. If you turn the wheel below it to the left you get a concoction that either buffs or debuffs, depending on the top wheel. If you turn it right will create something that either damages, or restores. Each of the valves attracts certain properties to it. So if the top wheel is turned left, the bottom wheel is turned right and you open the fire spigot, you get damaging fire poison. If the top wheel is turned right, the bottom wheel is turned left and the life spigot is activated, you get a potion that restores life.”

“So uh,” Voice stuttered, trying to get his voice to come out while he was marveling at this place. His fame almost doubled, and his potions would have a total of 47% bonus to potency. He could also make them 25% faster if he made them at night. By using his critical strike skill he reasoned his potions should be able to heal about 100 points each.

“So could I make my potions here?”

“Sure, just make sure to clean up after yourself. This place has an enchantment placed on it to maximize the ability of the ingredients, so if you just leave them there something bad might happen. Also any ingredients that you have left over just throw into one of these two vats.”

Voice was grateful to her for letting him use the new room. He had about an hour and fifteen minutes left before he had to meet EDI, in that time he could make about 37 potions. He went to work to create the best potions he could manage. After he was done they were going to go on his first killing spree.

Stats WindowNameVoice0fReasonClassN/AHealth100Mana110Stamina130Level1Current TitleVitamin C KingHealth Regen/Sec1.0Mana Regen/Sec2.0Stamina Regen/Sec1.1Strength11Agility10Wisdom20Intelligence11Endurance11Dexterity25Luck10Vitality13Charisma11Fame310

Skills WindowIdentify Novice Level 2 Exp 35.00%Skill Fusion Novice Level 2 Exp 25.00%Identify Skill Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%Herbology Novice Level 1 Exp 40.00%Gardening Novice Level 5 Exp 96.6%Plant Location Novice Level 2 Exp 30.00%Alchemy Novice Level 5 Exp 22.22%Planting Intuition Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%Alchemical Fusion Novice Level 1 Exp 00.00%First Aid Novice Level 1 Exp 60.00%Deception Novice Level 3 Exp 75.00%Critical Strike Novice Level 2 Exp 54.00%