‘Even though I said I’d do it……….How the hell am I supposed to do this!’

*UGH*

Weiss slouched against the wall at the front of the Training hall. Beside him was an assortment of tools that corresponded to the skills he had obtained

from the possession.

He looked up and glared at the sun, it was noon in-game and the sun was glaringly bright. He scrambled up onto his feet and turned around to go inside

except, the entrance to the training hall was still blocked by rubble.

“Fuck this.”

He half-heartedly punched a large piece that was at chest level. The rubble still did not budge, however multitudes of screens covered the sides of his

vision, they displayed all the things he could do to the stone in front of him. He narrowed his eyes as he flicked through the screens. After a while his

shoulders slumped.

“Might as well get started somewhere.”

Continuously muttering curses about the stone and the quest he was one, he picked up the appropriate tools off the ground and stored the rest in his

inventory. Then began a surprisingly quick first try at masonry, which was somewhat of a fusion of the architecture and sculpting skills. With the skill

activated, his hands moved by themselves as the chisel and hammer in them rapidly cut the larger chunks of rubble in the entranceway into rectangular

shapes. In the span of an hour, the entranceway had been cleared and the rubble had been transformed into a few large stone cubes and many bricks.

Weiss cracked his back and wiped the sweat away from his face.

“There, now I can finally get into this damn building. It really is better when everything is cleaned up.”

He picked up one of the bricks and stepped inside. Then he walked over to the hole he had crawled through the other night. He ran his had along the

opening and began to estimate how many bricks he would need to repair it. Suddenly a new window popped up.

insufficient materials to repair.

He paused and pulled his hand away, then looked at the brick in his free hand. Then he looked back at the opening.

“Ah.”

He felt stupid; the game would obviously have such a mechanic. He had seen it several times in RR where an architect would almost instantaneously build an entirely new building if they had enough materials. All it required was some mana to develop the layout and then it could be built! So why wouldn’t the same thing work for repairs!

He hurried back to the entrance and placed his hand on the stack of stone and the other on the wall. He then activated the building repair skill!

He had a somewhat out of body experience as he entered a view point a few feet away from the entranceway and above it. As the skill activated he saw

the wall being magically repaired as the stone beside him began to disappear. When the front wall of the Training Hall had been completely repaired the

out of body view stopped and he was back in his own body. On the ground beside him was only some dust leftover from chiseling the stones.

“Just barely enough huh?”

The entire process had taken him nearly an hour and a half. That was just for one wall, considering the hundreds if not thousands of walls in the city not

to mention the Citadel itself and all the buildings he would have to build from scratch, he truly began to realize the entire scope of this project. It was enough to make him fall to the ground. He sat there at the now cleared out front entrance; his legs huddled up in front of him as if to block the site of all

the buildings that spread out before him.

When he stood up again, he had dead eyes, it seemed as if Weiss was no longer there. His body moved as if it were one of the zombies that were located farther into Serabourg. In this listless state he slowly made his way about the area around the training hall, transforming any salvageable rubble into cut

pieces of stone. It seemed that the system would only register the stone as material if it were cut back into a cube or prism shape. His processing speed

gradually became faster as his body became used to the movements. Over the span of the rest of the day he had completely cleared away the rubble in

the area around the training hall. As night fell Weiss began to repair the rest of the training hall, it was completely dark when he was finished

There was a faintly hopeful expression on his face as he checked his quest status. Completing the singular building didn’t register anything on the

completion counter. His mood hit a new low.

‘After all, this is a quest I shouldn’t be touching until I’m in the 200s much less soloing.’

Despite all his complaints, he never stopped. Now that the Training hall had been done he began working his way around the other nearby buildings and

repairing them. The work was slow and by the time the sun had risen he’d only managed to fix five other buildings, they seemed to have once been

shops, before running out of stone.

He was now resting outside of the last building he repaired. In his hands was an oddly shaped piece of rubble that he could never convert back into a

correct shape for repair usage. In his hands he held the sculpting knife that he had found in the back of the training hall.

‘Weed became a legend starting right here. With a little sculpting knife and an absurd idea that he could make money off of a video game; and now I’m in the same situation!’

As he took a bite out of his disgusting starter bread he began to work the knife over the piece of rubble. Several windows opened to show what he could

do and with the help of the advanced level sculpting skill correcting his moves he was able to craft the image he wanted from the rubble. After an hour of work he had a small statue of twin swords with olive branches in the background. As he appreciated his handiwork he walked back to the Training hall

and with the aid of his skill placed it over the doorway.

‘As I thought, it looks cool!’

Would you like to register this piece as part of the building?

“Uh….sure?”

Statue Completed! (Fine piece): The Peaceful Blades

The paradox of martial training in peace time is represented by the sculpture as it is put in context of the training hall. It seems as though the blades are protecting the olive branches which represent peace. Trainees will be filled with the feeling of training harder so their blade remains sharp and passerby will feel protected by the ideals represented by the sculpture. Though the creator was skilled his whimsical attitude during the creation detracts from the statue’s intended nature of seriousness.

Artistic Value: 400

Special Effects:

Increased Stamina regeneration during training +10% Increased Strength and Agility during training +5% Increased Fighting spirit during training +5% Wards against evil

“Huh?”

New Stat: Fighting Spirit

You can call on superhuman strength temporarily, or bring weaker monsters to their knees with your force of will from your eyes alone. You are prohibited from distributing any bonus points to this stat, and it will rise spontaneously, depending on the avatar’s action, or especially if you’re fight monsters for a long time, or often confront monsters stronger than your current level.

“uh….”

Quest Updated!

The barrier against the undead has expanded due to a sculpture that wards against evil! Additional effects may occur depending on sculptures and the artistic values of houses!

Weiss plopped himself back down on the ground. After a while a smile seemed to register on his face, and his shoulders began to quiver. Then he burst into laughter. Anyone that saw him now would think he was insane.

“Of course! I’ve been going about this all wrong!”

‘I should’ve approached this like it was an old RTS game like Age of Empires or one of the other ones my dad had. I currently have free reign over how

this city will be shaped; the quest just wants to drive out the evil by restoration of the city. It didn’t specify what the city would look like in the end!’

“Fufu…”

He now had a trace of an evil smile on his face. An expression he and his brother shared.

‘But it will be no good if I don’t plan for the future!’

“logout!”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jack slowly got up from his bed. His body was a little shaky as he stepped onto the floor. He had what had been popularly coined as Dive Sickness. It was something several people were experiencing due to the Accessor gear. Though it had only been in use for three days, many people had already experienced the issue and had complained. Just before going to bed last night, Jack had even heard rumors about Haptix doing a recall.

He didn’t mind it though. He had read one person speculating on a forum thread on the topic that it was caused by the muscle in the body constantly being flexed to prevent atrophy. However, because of the absurd amounts of time someone spent in game the muscles had the constant twitching ingrained into them. So when you woke up, you would be like Mohamed Ali for a few minutes as your body calmed down. So to Jack it seemed like a funny little quirk and was much preferable to one of his appendages falling asleep while he was in game.

As the twitching came to an end he made his way over to his computer to begin his master plan! First he started up a game called Ruler’s Choice. It had been his dad’s favorite game when he was around Jack’s age. In the game, you had to build a city and then develop the surrounding infrastructure as well as defending it from attack. The thing that had separated it from other common RTS’s was its build quality and freedom within the game. Next Jack opened up several pages and searched for various things such as aqueducts, how the machuu Pichuu ruins were made, and the religions within NewRoads.

It was already afternoon so he quickly made a lunch and returned to his room. Then for the rest of the day he began to work on his master plan.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*BZT!*

Jack looked down at his phone. It displayed a notification….

Jack! OMFG! Why the hell did you quit? Was Zack really that big of a pain in the ass? Seriously, text me and explain when you get this!

“………. Haaaa, guess I should say something.”

I found a better way to work for the summer. Sorry but you’ll have to solo on the machines Meg! Try not to break anything!

*BZT!*

Jerk! Ya know what fine, I’m glad you left! Better watch yourself if you ever come to the pool!

“…..really?”

Meg also worked at the local pool. A place where Jack would frequent with his friends, including her, over the summer.

whatever

Jack personally felt it wasn’t worth bothering with her when she was in this kind of mood. He then went back to working on his master plane, despite it now being well into the night.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Asshole.”

Meg lay curled on her bed as she looked at her phone. She looked depressed and said at her friend’s indifferent comment. There was an Accessor Gear on her head, which she turned on with the thought.

‘Why do I always have to say mean things like that? Jack why are you….’

Then her thoughts cut out as she escaped from reality.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“AAaaaahhhhh finally!”

Dawn was just breaking as Jack looked at his handiwork. On his computer a refined metropolis was displayed with a grid like pattern for streets and

clearly defined sections. It was quite the opulent city and had an almost unnatural feel to it as anybody could see that, while robust, it seemed like it would be terribly expensive to build.

‘Got to make this the best damn city in all of Versailles.’

On his desk lay scattered notes on building techniques of the Incans, to Roman infrastructure, to the cookie cutter townhouses that had been prevalent in 90s America. He pulled out his phone and quickly took photos of all the notes. His phone the quickly transformed them into word documents. Next he tapped on a certain icon on his computer.

“Jeffrey, save a 3D rendering of the city on my screen to my cloud.”

“Right away sir.”

He had activated the semi-intelligent AI on his computer. It was an application popular with many since it could handle complex tasks after receiving relatively simple instructions. As ‘Jeffrey’ was completing the task, Jack moved all the newly made documents to his cloud as well.

Then he stood up with the crack of his back.

“Time for sleep!”

He promptly collapsed onto his bed and was asleep instantly.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*BBBZZZZEerRRTT!*

Jack woke up with a start. The sun was starting to set as he sleepily sat up. It was apparent that he had slept the entire day after working on his plan for Serabourg through the night. Thankfully it seemed his parents had been out of the house and hadn’t noticed their eldest son sleep through the day.

*BZZZT!*

Jack glared down at the object that had caused him to wake up. It was his phone, which seemed like it was having a seizure from the amount of messages he was receiving from friends.

After flicking through a few, they all seemed to lead to the same conclusion.

“Where did you get an item like that!?”

The item they were referring to was the sword he had set up for auction. It seemed that its original price of $100 had skyrocketed and the story had been picked up by a few gaming channels along with even one or two regular news sites. Because of this, his friends had now caught wind of it and wanted to

know about it.

‘fuck, didn’t want to have to deal with this.’

He sent out a mass text….

things happened in game and I came across it. I can’t really say more than that. Sorry

‘Like I’ll tell them where I am in game, that’ll ruin the fun when I unveil my city!’

With that thought in mind he quickly logged back into NewRoads.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Weiss sat down on the Training Hall steps and began opening windows that connected to the internet outside of the game. He accessed his cloud and began retrieving the files that contained his notes and the layout for his planned city

‘Ah! I should probably see how much I made’

He had been so focused on the city that he had completely forgotten about the auction until his friends’ pestering texts.

He opened up the Unicorn auction site and logged into his profile. His body went rigged in shock at the amount of money he had gained.

-$4995

That was after paying the $5 transaction fee. Weiss simply sat motionless for a while as he marveled at how much some people were willing to spend for what he considered unnecessary things. But as he reasoned through it, it made sense. Of course there were wealthy people out there that had the money to buy things like this so they could have a cushy ride into the upper echelon of players in the game. With a sword like the one he sold it would be very easy to climb up through the ranks in a nation and gain a great amount of fame and contribution points which translated into better quests, better equipment, better almost everything.

‘Some people.’

Weiss could only shake his head at those kinds of people. But he was also thankful to them since it meant that he could also have a lucrative summer job with things like this. He was sure that he’d be able to find other useful things throughout the city as he reconstructed it.

He hauled himself off the steps and began to make his way about the safe section. This time, rather than just cutting rubble, he demolished everything!

‘It’s best to restart with a clean slate!’

This continued over the next few days until nothing was left. The only building left standing was the Training Hall. Naturally the barrier had shrunk, but Weiss didn’t worry. He rapidly began reconstructing. It took a while in the beginning since he had to develop a blueprint of the design that he had prepared in real life. Then it was simply just a plug and chug as he went about building multiple houses, tightly packed in tidy rows. Their design was simple and was some kind of mash-up of the generic townhouses of 90s America, with the building efficiency of the Japanese, and built using the Incan ‘dry building’ technique. Despite this, they were not uniform as he altered the placement of stones to create patterns. He also went through and added personalized sculptures for each of them. The overall affect gave the feeling of a very aesthetically pleasing design, but was mysterious since one couldn’t quite place there thumb on why it was aesthetically pleasing; this was thanks to the simplicity of the design that Weiss had come up with.

It also had an effect on the barrier as it swelled in size and extended even farther out than it had when he had originally gotten there. This was fortunate as he always needed more raw materials to continue with building his new city.

‘Eventually I’m going to run out though….’

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.royalroadl.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6264

Hey guys and gals! Geez this was quite the update! Took me a bit to realize the method for posting chapters was still the same :dodgy: anyways, I tried to get this out as soon as possible. College is kicking my ass like it usually does so I haven't been able to work on this. Anyways comment and subscribe and maybe write a review and rate. It seems those got deleted with the update! :@