Morning dawns and instead of the peaceful return to normal awareness that normally follows a night of meditation he was instead jarred awake by a system message.

RLMessage

From - “Mother”

To - “That idiot son of mine”

Subject - Don’t make me come in there

Hey Idiot,

I expected this to happen but still. It has been more than a few days since you last came out. Goodness knows the game is engrossing but to spend a month in there? I will not ask much but maybe consider coming out once a day irl? You might be an adult now but as long as you live in my house you follow my rules. Oh, and this will be incredibly hypocritical of me but my company are doing an extended exploration trip that won’t allow logging out. I won’t see you irl until a week from now. Finally, going to get me that promotion now that I don’t have to be always available if something happened to you.

Hugs and Kisses,

Your Awesome Parent

“I definitely let time slip away from me. This felt too much like a standard journey for experience the sect would send people on and I got caught in the atmosphere. Besides that what is up with this message? The only system generated bit of it is the ‘RLMessage’ part at the top. Seriously Mom, if you’re going to mimic the form of a letter be more serious about it. Meh, guess I can spend the game day outside. There is stuff I need to look into, anyway. I want to figure out what was up with that elephant goblin but it can wait.”

After a quick check of the area to make sure it is safe Jason logs out. Greeting him once he is out of the pod is a cheery little note stuck to his door. A strained smile graces his face as he reads it, “You actually came out? Wow! When I first got access, my parents had to cut off the nutrient pipe so it would force me out. Guess you’re a better kid than I was. Anyway, I made cookies for myself. They are in the fridge and not for you. Oh, and since you came out, I am totally holding you to that once a day thing.”

“Welp, guess the first order of business is eating some cookies. After that though I need to do research on the town I will be getting to after passing by the wasteland. By then I should hit the level 9 bottleneck and will need a boss to fight. While I can solo a boss in general the specifics can be tricky as something like a flying boss with ranged attacks would hose me.”

Heading over to the fridge Jason pulls up a wiki on his phone. A handful of cookies later and he has found some of the info he needed. Specifically, the next town over was called “Wasteland’s Edge” for, you guessed it, being on the edge of the wasteland. Its specialties are importing supplies for adventurers and exporting mob drops. The only thing stopping the place from being a dungeon town is several well-paid lawyers so they don’t have to pay more taxes. That and of course the fact that the wasteland isn’t a dungeon but reality rarely gets in the way of laws.

There is a natural dungeon nearby but they strictly control access so they don’t earn too much money from it. Of course if it was a True Dungeon then the local kingdom would take over no matter how much screaming happened but that is life. However, that is all outside of what Jason needs at the moment. Without a dungeon he will have to find a field boss of some sort or keep moving. This gets him thinking about his other options.

“I don’t want to head to the next town. The travel would take too long and once at the bottleneck you don’t gain any experience. With my already restricted ability to gain it that isn’t a good idea. Besides, there has to be bosses around that are newb friendly. If anything, the locals need them to break the bottleneck as well. A town on the edge of a danger zone like the wasteland will need as many people past the first divide as possible.”

Jason digs deeper into the info available to him. While not the most popular town players have visited it enough in the past. Eventually though he gives up. Nothing is recorded on the local low level bosses. This makes sense of course as none of the visiting players would be so low a level. However, that isn’t going to help him. Nibbling on his last cookie Jason pulls up a rough map of the area on the kitchen wall. Looking it over just frustrates him even more.

“There isn’t a sewer so no rat kings. The wasteland bosses are all at a significantly higher level than me so that wouldn’t help either. Rabbit plains isn’t somewhere I want to mess with as I seem to be somewhat peaceful with the place. I guess this forest over by the wasteland might have something? That is much too small though to sustainably produce bosses. All that is left would be this scrubland that just covers the area around town. What I read though puts aerial enemies as being top of the food chain here. People from the town have an easy enough time with them as they are all trained with a crossbow. As I have admitted to myself though flyers are not my best match up.”

Looking up at the clock app on the wall Jason realizes he doesn’t have much time left. It is almost night again in the game and he doesn’t want to miss out on his cultivation. Not having a choice about it he goes to log back in and hope for the best. Once back in the game his body unfreezes, and he takes control. Opening his eyes and to his surprise there is several rabbits all around him. Jason freezes and hopes they notice and just leave. Finally, one rabbit does and after freezing it bolts out of the clearing. This sets off the rest of them and soon Jason is once again alone in his camp.

“I did not expect that! This place should not be safe enough for the game to leave my body around. Then again, since it did I guess I am wrong? Though this definitely means I will not be messing with the plains. Somehow I count as being friendly with the rabbits here.”