There hadn’t been much left for John to do after speaking with Lady Oswald. He’d spoken to BR and gotten the gnome to enchant the guest house stove for another ten silvers (because apparently temperature control was a little more involved) and then sat down to make Mana Stones for the next seven hours. After creating nine life stones of Exceptional quality and putting them up for auction (this time with a buyout of seven gold) he retrieved the now much-diminished mana core and logged off for the night. Coming to, he pulled off the headset and put it aside even as he got up to perform his nightly exercises.

While he ran through the series of squats, pushups, lunges, and jumping jacks he considered the last few days. Things seemed to be going well, and he was on track to have a good crop. His current neighbors left something to be desired but one couldn’t have everything he supposed. Lady Oswald was right about the location of the tree and his farm though. There were probably things he could do to mitigate the problem; he’d need to think on it. He needed more straw so he’d have to grow more wheat or see if he could buy some from Frank.

The various thoughts, and his workout, came to a halt as someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” John said and the door opened to reveal his father. “Hey dad, what’s up?”

“Not much, just thought I’d see how you were doing and figured that, since I could hear jumping, you were probably awake,” his father offered.

“I’m okay, still pretty busy. What are you doing up? Normally you have work at like six.” John replied.

“Mondays through Fridays, yeah,” Derick said with some bemusement.

It took John a moment to get it. “It’s Friday.”

“Yes, yes it is. Why don’t you come have dinner and tell me about what you’re doing? I’ll try not to keep you up too late,” Derick said with a half-smile.

“Sure, just let me change.”

A few minutes later John sat at the counter next to his father, an open pizza box between them.

“Alright, so, tell me all about what’s been happening. The forums are all abuzz about someplace called Runic Rock where some famer has planted a magic tree and unlocked a set of trials. Sound familiar?” Derick said.

John snorted. “I’d bet the forums didn’t say ‘some farmer’.”

“Nope, they said ‘John’.” His father replied with a grin. “Real catchy screen name by the way. Very you.”

“Well I wasn’t going to call myself x x Dark Lord x x,” John snarked back.

“I will have you know my gaming tag was both feared and revered in my time!”

“Feared because of the cringe it induced, and revered because someone had the gall.”

“What an unfilial son I have raised!”

“You should be proud, I’m truthful and honest, isn’t that what people always say they want in a child?”

“Touché!” Derick said as he lifted another slice of pizza. “So, tell me about your ‘magic tree’.”

“Well, I was trying to create a tree that makes portals, but I ended up with a ‘Galaxy Tree’. Which so far just acts as a portal beacon, er, a way for portals to lock on to an area, and produced fruits with spatial effects,” John explained.

“What kind of effects?”

“Well, the big one is the True Portal Fruit, which lets you make a portal to anywhere you can name or describe. But they’ve been declared a national treasure, and I’m going to get a measly amount of compensation for them,” came John’s sour reply.

“So you’ve got empire wide renown then,” Derick said.

“What?” John blinked.

“John, you’re growing what sounds to be either a very rare, or one-of-a-kind item that the local government has acknowledged. Odds are good people very high up now know who you are and are watching. Sure, you could have sold said fruits for a fair amount of money. Possibly as much as a grand per, and yeah, that’d have netted you a fair amount per year. But what did you actually put into getting that item?”

John thought about it for a moment. “About a month of time, and maybe twenty dollars?”

“So basically, nothing in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile you’ve netted the good-will of the emperor and a magical tree that I assume has other fruits, given the way you said ‘the big one’.”

“Yeah, it also produces a fruit that allows you to open a portal at the Gateway of Worlds, that’s… uh… the name of the shrine…”

“Awww Dark Lord Junior I am so proud of you!”

John groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”

Derick grinned. “Alright, so that sounds like it functions like a normal portal, that’s what you wanted in the first place, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” John admitted.

“So you got the thing you wanted, and some extra. What else?”

“Well, one of the fruits gives a line-of-sight teleport ability for a short time, and the final one just gives you a displacer effect.”

“True displacement or visual displacement?”

“True displacement, so you’re both there and not there, whatever that means,” John said.

“It means that you’re solid for all beneficial purposes but intangible whenever it’d be convenient. In most games it’ll be bypassed by some form of magic or special weapons. It’s gonna be great for low level players though, and that line-of-sight teleport thing is going to be great for just about anything that needs mobility. Imagine if your tank can literally teleport in front of oncoming threats, or your rogue can teleport behind people, or hell, your healer being able to teleport around a battlefield. And let’s not forget the possibility of Tele-skimming,” Derick said.

“Tele-skimming?”

“Yeah, it’s where you use line of sight to teleport from point you can see to point you can see. If you’re in a hilly region, flying, or someplace else that lets you see far away it can be a very fast mode of travel. Was that everything the tree makes? Can you grow more trees?”

“No, it’s a special type of tree the doesn’t produce viable seeds very often. Although the pits do have magical effects. The two portal pits produce a portal to the Gateway of Worlds when planted, and the other two teleport you back to the shrine when you swallow them,” John explained.

“Huh… do you have to eat the fruit off the pit to activate the magic?” Derick inquired.

“Uh… I don’t know.” John admitted.

“Well, I suggest you find out, because if not selling a whole fruit is leaving money on the table. In your place, I’d determine exactly what factors go in to deciding how the magic activates. Like, what happens if you puree the fruit and drink it? What if it’s baked into a pie? If you eat a quarter of four different fruits of the same type, does it count as eating a whole fruit? If each fruit weighs exactly half a pound, then does all that weight have to come from the same fruit? What happens if you eat only half a fruit? Do you get half the benefit? What happens if you eat half of two different fruits, does something new happen?” Derick questioned.

John paused, pizza halfway to his mouth as he considered the questions, he then put the slice down. “And if it doesn’t need to be eaten off the pit I can sell the pit separately…” he murmured to himself.

“Yes, that was one of my points. So, the big bad government came and took away the super-special-awesome-over-the-top magic item. Big deal, you’ve got tons of profit to be made off these other fruits. Also, you’re gonna make a ton of in game money from charging people to use the shrine.”

“Wait, how did you know about that?” John asked.

“Because people complain when they have to pay money for things, even if it is a very small amount. So, what else has been happening?”

“Well, I managed to unlock a set of what’s called ‘unlimited trials’. Basically, they’re tests the gods let you take, and if you pass you get an item that will help you in whatever trade you’ve decided to study, but if you fail you get a curse that relates to it instead,” John explained.

“Alright, so high risk, high reward. Did you take the trials?”

John shook his head as his mouth was full.

“Let me guess, too risky?”

John nodded and swallowed. “Two of the goddesses are not happy with me, and they control the trails of the body and soul. If I fail either I’m guaranteed to get a curse that’ll screw me over.”

“Have you considered doing something to make them not mad at you?” Derick asked.

“Like what? They’re mad because I didn’t let them bully me into giving one of them sole control of the shrine.”

“Well, typically religions have rituals to observe that are said to appease the gods. Sacrifice of animals, goods, or time, that sort of thing. Maybe you should consult the laypeople of their churches and see what can be done,” his father advised.

“Still don’t see why I should have to be the one to make amends,” John grumped.

“Because that’s how people with power work.”

John gave an annoyed sigh but nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

“Alright, so what else are you doing?”

“Well, I’m currently growing a cash crop and hoping to sell it for real money. I’m estimating around seven thousand plants with a quality of around Good, which will mean about twenty-one thousand pounds. If I can sell ten pounds for a dollar then I’d make a profit of around twenty-one hundred dollars. One thousand eight hundred and ninety after Aurum takes their cut,” John explained.

“That’s not bad at all. You paid… what? Five hundred for the headset and another two hundred for a year’s subscription? Two thousand isn’t great for three months of work, but given that you’ve had a rough start I’d be willing to bet that number is going to go up,” Derick replied. “What are you planning on doing next?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. The alchemist’s sponge, that’s what I’m growing right now, is just a stop gap. That, and I’m pretty sure there’s a reason most people aren’t growing it almost exclusively, I’d bet growing it too many more times in a row is a bad idea. I was thinking that I should try some luxury crops, because the flavors in game are so amazing. I don’t know if they’re boosting the sensation or if we’re just eating substandard foods but I’ve never had chocolate that tasted that good before,” John explained.

“Probably a little of column a, little of column b to be honest. That said, where’d you get chocolate?” his father wondered.

“Huh? Oh, it was a chocolate chip cookie I got as part of the last update. Why?”

“You really need to pay more attention to the forums, you’re in the Eternal Empire, right? Like everyone else from the northern Americas. Just like everyone in the south Americas are in the Central Wastes Republic, everyone in Europe is in the Kingdom of the Moon, everyone in India is in the Free States, and everyone in Asia is in the Tranquiline Courts. There are a couple other small countries dotted about, but you get the general gist. Thing is, things we take for granted as being available world wide can’t be obtained outside of their natural regions. Like, chocolate, vanilla, sugar cane. Most of those haven’t been transported around the world yet. There are a few that have, like lemons, but they’re absolutely the exception.” Derick explained.

There was a moment of silence as John digested that. “But… but what about portals, and people with large inventories… that kind of stuff should make travel around the world possible, if not normal.”

“Well, the current assumption is that the game world is as big as earth, and portals cost one hundred mana per mile per second. Or per minute if they’re an enchanted structure. Let’s say you want to go from the center of the Eternal Empire to the center of the Central Wastes Republic. The forum post I read assumes they’re about as far apart as Canada and Brazil, so call it five and a half thousand miles. That’s a total of five hundred fifty thousand mana per second or minute. In other words, it costs waaaaaay too much. And that ignores the problems of whether you want another nation’s citizens teleporting into your cities.”

“How much of the forums did you say you’d read?” John asked with a quirked brow. “Do we need to get you your own account and headset?”

“I’m considering it,” his father replied.

They spent the next few minutes in companionable silence as they finished off the pizza. Then John spoke. “Well, if you do decide to play, I’m ninety percent certain that x x Dark Lord x x has already been taken.”

“Ugh, what has this world come to?!”