“In other news...” The video that flashes onscreen makes us both sit up and pay more attention to the TV. Looks like they just moved onto a new segment. “Law makers are considering new regulations in regards to artificial intelligence in the face of the boom of quantum-computer powered AI that has appeared over recent months.” As they speak, there are a few short clips that play through. It's basically photorealistic, but the coloring is off. The vibrancy shows that it's not actually live footage.

They're mostly a ground level shots from a fantasy style city, and it only takes one look at the people moving through the streets and the buildings around them to recognize it's from Planes of Oblivion. The architecture is different than Lenarlil. The way it cuts from place to place makes it feel like they pulled the footage from some promotional video.

“Recently, the next-generation AI being used in some popular games has been argued to have reached human level intelligence, which has sparked controversy about AI ethics and whether or not they should be given human rights, and their use for frivolous entertainment like video games.”

Fara snorts at the dig. The mass media and government will never get tired of using video games as a punching bag, will they? They've been at it for like, a century at this point.

“For more information, we're going to John Patrick, who recently interviewed one of the AI inside one of these new games.”

There's a slight delay as they switch over to footage of a man, the look and background giving away that he's in-game. His character looks like a pretty average guy, short brown hair and everything. I note that he isn't in starter gear, so they must have bought him some clothes to look presentable. They probably bought the gold for it too. I can't even imagine them trying to farm for it themselves.

Besides selling the game itself, Dana Corp makes almost all their money on transaction fees, when players trade each other in-game gold for real money. Besides streaming, that was the second half of my plan for making money playing. Sell stuff for gold, then trade it to other players for cash.

Bought with real money or not, the reporter's clothes don't look particularly modern, but aren't any sort of fancy fantasy style either. Probably the closest thing to a suit they could find for him.

“Thanks, Dean. I'm currently reporting from inside the popular new game Planes of Oblivion. This is my avatar, the character I use to play. It looks a little different than I do, but in this game, I don't have to look anything like I do in real life.” He goes on for a bit about how players take on fantastical appearances and can do all sorts of things from battling monsters, to crafting, to hanging out.

As if that description doesn't fit every MMO for the last sixty years. It reminds us again that the TV news will probably never get video games. Or at least they don't expect their usual senior citizen watchers to get them. Once the reporter has made it through the intro, he cuts to the interview he says he conducted earlier today.

“So, we're here with Henrick,” he starts, camera showing him sitting at what has to be a bar or inn. Behind the counter stands a thin man with black hair and somewhat scruffy clothes. “Could you tell us about yourself?”

“Sure,” the bartender shrugs lightly. “I'm Henrick, a Nirvallan. I'm a bartender in Zephis.”

“So, Henrick,” John starts in with his questioning. “You are aware that this world, Nirvalla is part of a game, right?”

Henrick frowns, but shrugs it off surprisingly well. “Well, yeah. It's not exactly a secret.”

“What do you think about it? Does it bother you that your world is a game played by children?”

With a sigh, Henrick shakes his head. “First off, I should point out that all the Guardians are adults. This 'game,'” he makes air quotes, “would be way too violent for kids. Have you even seen the Oblivion?” Then he shakes his head and waves a hand like he's disregarding the topic. “Anyway, I can't really say whether it bothers me or not. I don't really have any say in things.”

John also drops the other topic without getting into it, instead drilling in on the man's opinion. “So what you're saying is you don't care that your world is only a simulation of reality?”

“No, I'm just saying that there's not much use worrying about it. I've talked to plenty of Guardians in my time. Even if my world only exists as part of your world outside it, at least I know.”

“Know... what?” the interviewer looks stumped by that one.

“About the ones in charge. 'Gods,' is what Guardians would call them,” he throws up air quotes again. “I'm sure I don't speak for everyone, but I'm glad we know that the ones out there, running things in here, are sane.”

“I mean,” Henrick goes on after a pause, chuckling somewhat darkly, “can you say the same? As far as I've heard, you don't know anything about the gods of your world. Your world could be a simulation with another world outside running things, just like mine is. I've met my 'gods.' They run around slaying monsters and have drinking parties every night. They may just be people who see my world as a game, but they're still people. Not faceless, inhuman forces beyond our understanding. Don't you find the mystery of your own world terrifying?”

John is speechless, mouth hanging open as he searches for a response. He remains that way for a solid few seconds, before pulling himself together and addressing the camera with badly faked enthusiasm. “Well, some food for thought. Thanks for your time, Henrick.” They quickly cut away after that, wrapping up and moving on to another segment.

“Wow...” both of us are shaking our heads. Leave it to the talking heads to put both feet in their mouths and have their own logic fed to them by someone who should have every right to be offended. They literally asked someone how they felt about their world not being real on camera. How did they expect that to go?

Henrick made a good point too, we don't know how our own universe ultimately runs. Not without our own gods popping in to tell us, which clearly hasn't happened, and likely never will. If they even exist.

“Hey, Fara,” I speak up as it occurs to me. “What's the difference between us and them anyway? In game I mean.”

“We respawn when we die. Since our bodies in there aren't really real, when we die, they're basically reconstructed at our respawn point. Either a tower or a city core. I think that's the lore reason for respawn timers, it takes time to reconstruct our bodies.”

“Huh...” I consider that before asking, “is that it? Nirvallans have inventories and Skills, leveling and everything too?”

“Yeah, all the menus and game stuff is just how things work in their world. They even have Personal Affinities and join us in battle too. If they soul bind to a tower, they can respawn that way, so lots of them will work to defend their towns during the invasions. Some will even become adventurers. Even though they only have one life.”

We're quiet for a bit, the news droning on but no longer holding our interest. “So, are you feeling a little better now?” Fara asks gently.

I shrug. “Better than before.” I'm not freaking out at least.

“Good. Come on, let's get some sleep before we go back in. VR sleep is nice, but it's just not quite the same as real sleep. Always leaves me kind of drowsy when I wake up.”

“Sure.” We head back into Fara's room, where she shows me how to set a login timer, so we can go to sleep and wake up in-game at the time we designate. We set it for two in the morning, to give us a couple hours of sleep, then a couple hours before the scheduled meeting time. We have shopping to do first.

With that set, I relax, eyes drifting slowly closed.

There's the usual tangle of images and colors. Trees, grass, the smell of sunshine. Beautiful crystals and warmth. Dreams that filter through my sleeping mind, all lost when I surface again.

“Mmm...” I mumble as I sit up. I'm groggy. That should have counted as a full eight hours in this world, right? As I turn and stretch, I can feel how I'm Mei again. The way my muscles strain and ease as I touch my toes and rotate my back is incredible. Nothing like how my shitty other body feels.

“Ahh, nice,” I chirp to myself and stand. I'm still in the mismatched, borrowed clothes from earlier. I must look ridiculous, but I shrug it off. Being Mei, I'm sure I look silly rather than ugly.

I head out of my inn room, spotting Lara heading down the stairs ahead of me. I follow and meet her downstairs.

As we sit and eat another meal of a different, but just as delicious soup, Lara says, “So, we'll go get you some gear and I'll get mine repaired before we head back to city hall. Anything else?”

“Clothes,” I reply between bites.

“Sure.” With her easy response, we finish up and head out. We end up passing through a few different areas that are really torn up, past ravaged streets and wrecked storefronts. There are already people working to repair them, and I find myself staring as we walk.

The tools they use look like hammers and stuff I'm familiar with, but the way they use them is way more magical than physical. All over, people are pounding on the broken streets with hammers to restore the stone to good condition. In some places though, there are larger sections with worse damage or different materials they need to process in various other ways, but the whole thing barely even resembles real life construction at all.

Lara has to snap her fingers at me to get me back on task a few times, chuckling to herself the whole way. When we get to Ryvas's weapon shop, it's teeming with people.

“W-what is this?” I stammer, looking around at them all.

“Everyone needs repairs and replacements after big battles, and this one was huge.” I nod around at all of them. Lara pulls me forward, and we push our way through the crowd. I manage to grab a cheap starter bow and arrows, along with another quiver, since no one has touched them. Everyone from the battle is higher level.

Lara doesn't have such good luck and winds up having to grab a couple cheap, mid-grade swords. The price is nothing like I could afford, but she sighs and says she'll have to put in a custom order for a new great sword. “I just got that one too...” she grumbles, barely audible with all the noise.

It's hectic waiting in line and Lara can only really shout a greeting over the crowd as she pays before the harried shopkeep has to move on to the next customer.

We break through the crowd, back out of the shop, to stand in the street for a minute just to get our bearings again.

“Wow...” I voice aloud.

“Yeah.”

Then I pull all my new gear on, situating my bow and quiver before I unequip them and they vanish into my inventory.

Beside me, Lara's sheaths appear on her hip. Her short sword goes in the normal sheath, then I watch with interest as she carefully positions the greatsword at the opening to her magical silver sheath. She has to hold it by the blade because it's way too long to her to reach the handle from a drawing position.

When she pushes the sword into the sheath, the whole thing glows silver, almost intangible as she continues sliding it in, farther than would be possible at its original size. Even the handle shrinks down smaller as the hilt settles into place. The glow vanishes, and her huge weapon now appears as an ordinary short sword.

“Weapon shrinking sheath. Cool, right?” She grins when she sees me watching. Then she starts walking, and I fall in step with her. “They're too big and heavy to carry with me when I'm in this form, so I spent a lot of gold to get this sheath made.” She gives it a loving pat.

“I've kind of been wondering...” I start when she says it like that. “What was that other form of yours anyway?”

Her voice suddenly lowers when she responds. “That was my Major Affinity. It's a called Overdrive, it's a Transformation type. While it's active, my whole build changes. I have a whole extra set of Stats, Skills, everything. It also gives huge buffs to my physical stats and stuff. Buuut,” she drags the word out, giving a somewhat sheepish grin all of a sudden. “I can only use the full version once per day. And it lasts one minute.”

One minute?

“Holy...” With a limitation like that, no wonder why it's so powerful.

“Pretty much. It's why I'm known as a Tide Turner. I have a short window to where I can turn around almost any situation, but I only have one shot at it.”

“Mmm, that's pretty incredible though,” I tell her sincerely.

Lara throws an arm over my shoulder, reminding me that she can do that here, and we both smile happily on our way further down the road.

“Oh, speaking of,” Lara eventually says as it comes to her, “you were only level one and made it through that whole battle without dying, right? And you technically finished off the boss, sort of,” she adds with a stiff, uncomfortable expression. “You definitely should've leveled up from all that. Maybe more than once, depending on how you did. You should also have an event reward box in your inventory.”

“Hmm...” I hum and pull up my character menu. With everything that happened, I definitely missed any level up notifications. “Ooh, yeah.” All my stats went up and I have another ten points to spend. Thanks to my Aura Affinity, it's massively outpacing my other stats, the effective total over one hundred already. Even that much feels lackluster for a Major Affinity when I compare it to Lara's though.

Meanwhile, my Vitality is 8. Everything else is way higher, so I put half of my CP into that while remembering how dead all the Oblivion want me. I spread the rest into my other stats after.

Status Power: 17 Vitality: 13 Finesse: 25 Speed: 24 Perception: 27 Spirit: 17 Sorcery: 31 Aura: 68 (122) Character Points: 0

“So, good?” Lara prompts when she sees I'm finished.

“Yeah, I'm already getting stronger.” I give her a big thumbs up and we continue on our way. I also open up the reward box she mentioned, but there isn't all that much in it. Honestly, besides drawing aggro and applying buffs, I didn't contribute any real damage during the battle, and the rewards likely scale with level anyway. Still, I'm not passing up a few hundred gold and some random... based on the magic sounding names, I'm assuming they're crafting materials.

I leave those alone, letting them sit in my inventory. I'll have to mess with my Skills and Abilities later, I should have some more points for those too.

Soon after, we reach the clothing store. I have about fifteen hundred gold left after replacing my equipment, but that really isn't much by this world's standards, so I still have to stick with near-starter priced stuff.

My top priority: underwear.

I whisper as much to Lara, who chuckles to try hiding her embarrassment. It doesn't work at all and I end up blushing first and thirdhand, as she pulls me over to a some shelves with what I need.

Since I've obviously never shopped for women's underwear, she has to walk me through the whole process, which is mercifully more simple than real life from the sound of it. After my lower parts are covered and I have spares in my inventory in case of a repeat of whatever happened with Xanaad, we get to the rest of my clothes.

Within my budget, I end up in a top and skirt just a step up from what I started in, bright blue this time instead of green, and a little thicker so they'll provide a bit of defense. It doesn't match my hair, but it's all they have for my low level. Obviously, most of the gear in stock is for their higher level, wealthier customers. Given my finances, I don't really get to complain about the fashion aspect. That also comes at higher levels.

Thanks to the event gold I'm not quite dirt poor again, but five hundred gold isn't going to buy me much here. Of course Lara offers to pay for some better clothes for me, but I refuse. Not until I can afford them on my own.

Our last stop is a different clothing store, but it looks like this one specializes in robes and cloth armor for mages. This place isn't quite as packed as the weapon shop, but still pretty busy. Lara changes into a spare set of robes, though I don't think they look like the same quality, and hands hers off with a bunch of extra materials, to one of the people working to get them repaired. The guy goes into the back and we head out once more.

Apparently, that wasn't our last stop after all. “Hmm, I need to pick up more potions,” Lara thinks aloud as she checks something in her menu. Probably her inventory. “I used up most of mine in that last battle. Ollin better pay me well for yesterday,” she grumbles. It turns out the potion shop is directly across the street from the clothing store, so we pop in there quickly.

Lara is both unsurprised and disappointed to find that most of their stock has already been bought up after the battle. “This is why lots of people do their shopping the same day, instead of the next morning,” she explains with a defeated look.

She buys up the mana potions they still have left, but mentions she'll need to get more later when they restock. Then it's back over to the clothing store to pick up her freshly repaired armor. With it re-equipped, she nods to herself a few times, and we start walking again.

It's funny, even though we went through that insane defensive battle, the after-battle resupply run was pretty much like any MMO supply run after a normal dungeon raid. Repair, restock, and you're ready to head out again. Though Lara does still need to order a replacement sword. She better have gotten huge rewards for her contribution, with expenses like that...