Lina patiently sat on the cart, gently swaying her legs back and forth while overlooking the crowds around her, waiting outside of the Town Hall of Kordas. No other player or NPC paid her any mind, and nothing interesting was happening around her, thus she resorted to staring up at the sky to see the clouds floating aimlessly above her. A few minutes passed by and she began dozing off, but was quickly woken by Aegis’ voice. She jerked her head away from the clouds to face him as he stood in the doorway of the town hall, several other players brushing past him as they entered and he exited.

“Lina, we’ve got a problem.” Aegis said in a serious tone, his face reddened with visible frustration.

“Wh-what’s wrong? Is there a problem with the deed? Or the gold?” Lina asked as she retired her relaxed demeanor.

“Come,” He motioned her into the building with a wave of his hand before turning and walking with urgency back inside. Lina hopped off the cart after setting down the reins and made her way up the stone stairs to enter the large building, her eyes taking a moment to adjust from the change in lighting to the dim interior of the building. She followed Aegis to a desk on the far wall of the dark wood building, furnished with elegant paintings, statues and tapestries.

She arrived at the desk after passing by several groups of other players that crowded the interior, squabbling over their own land deed purchases.

“That’s the problem.” Aegis pressed his index finger down on the land deed as it lay on the wooden desk, specifically an empty section on the Land Deed form labeled ‘Land Title’. “He says since the Land has been out of possession of the Kingdom for so long, it needs to be named before we can claim it.”

“I’ve never met someone who thought of naming their land as a punishment.” The middle-aged gnomish NPC behind the desk mumbled in disbelief as Aegis explained the situation to Lina.

“You want me to come up with a name?” Lina asked anxiously, prepared to decline with her next sentence, but she stopped herself from speaking when she saw the desperation in Aegis’ eyes as he looked at her. “U-uhm… m-maybe… name it… Dnal?” She suggested shyly.

“Is that just Land backwards?” Aegis raised a brow at her. She nodded reluctantly before sighing.

“S-s-sorry, I’m n-not very good at names either.”

“Look.” The gnome groaned as he motioned behind them at several groups of players now gathering in the lobby waiting their turn. “A line is forming, just pick a name and the land is yours.”

“Don’t rush me.” Aegis grumbled back as he started tapping his fingers on the desk.

“Maybe ask Darkshot?” Lina suggested, to which she got a light chuckle out of Aegis.

“He named himself Darkshot, he’d just suggest something like Darkshot Kingdom.” Aegis dismissed her suggestion.

“Well… I think if you devote land to a deity, there’s some instances where the land gets bonuses…”

“I should name it Eirene you think?” Aegis asked hopefully.

“I can’t permit you to name your land solely after one of the great beings worshipped in these lands.” The gnome replied shortly.

“What about just Rene?” Aegis asked both the gnome and Lina.

“That would be acceptable.” The gnome replied impatiently. Lina responded with a nervous shrug.

“Ok I’m naming it Rene. Short for Eirene. It’s settled?” He hesitated, to which they both only stared at him, prompting him to quickly scribble it in with the ink pen on the desk.

“Finally.” The gnome sighed with relief before yanking the paper away.

Land Registration Complete!

You are now the Lord of Rene

Land Status: Hostile

Land Rank: 0

Population: 0

Registered Structures: 0

Increasing your land rank will unlock additional management options. Land rank increases by improving the quality of the land, removing hostile creatures, and encouraging players and non-players to live on it by providing infrastructure and security.

You may view and manage your land through the Land Management interface now available on your main menu.

“That’s it! It’s done!” Aegis let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes yes, now move along.” The gnome motioned him away, to which Aegis complied. He and Lina made their way out of the building back towards their cart.

“Congratulations.” Lina smiled at him.

“Thanks… it was all because of your help though.” He smiled back. “So I can just build stuff on that land now, right?” He asked as the two hopped on the front of their cart.

“I think so… to start a building you need to craft a foundation, but as far as I remember that’s a basic architecture level 1 thing, that just lets you start a building. Then you can build whatever you want on top of the foundation, and add as many materials as you like to make it bigger so long as you own the land.”

“Good, I already got the architecture skill and the trainer back and Orm taught me about the foundation stuff.” Aegis rubbed his hands together excitedly as Lina grabbed the reins and set the cart into motion. “Now I just need to decide what to build…” his voice trailed off as he started pressing buttons on his interface, opening up a video viewing sub-application, his eyes glazing over in the game world as he did so. Lina went quiet so as to not disturb him as Aegis excitedly began looking up forges that other players had created, hoping to understand how he could make one to smelt Iron and Copper en-masse. The simple thought of him not needing to wait his turn and share the crafting stations anymore made him drool. He got so lost in his research that he’d lost track of time and before he knew it, another in-game day had passed and he had arrived back at the village of Orm.

“That looks like a good stopping point there, Mister. You’ve still got your last exam in the morning.”

His mother’s voice came through the Simbox speaker, timed perfectly to the cart stopping in front of the stables as if his mother had been watching him. It broke Aegis out of his researching trance and he quickly closed all of his menus while hopping off the Cart, Lina doing the same and leading it back into the Orm stables.

“Good time to call it for the night. Last exam until freedom.” Aegis stretched. “Thanks for handling the driving… and… well, everything.” Aegis trailed off as Lina stopped to turn and look at him, smiling shyly.

“Thanks for… a really fun day.” She managed to get the sentence out with eye contact, but reached her limit and quickly looked away.

“See you tomorrow.” Aegis said as he closed out the simulation, leaving the Simbox to see his Mother staring down at him with her arms crossed.

“What was all that about?” She asked him inquisitively.

“What was what about?” Eli asked her, confused.

“I was watching the stream. You got married?” Jillian replied in disbelief.

“Oh, mom, c’mon, it’s just for the experience bonus.” Eli replied dismissively as he walked past her to the bathroom to start brushing his teeth.

“Really, are you sure about that? Does Lina feel the same way?” Jillian followed behind him, arms still crossed.

“Huh? Yeah, mom, of course, we talked about it. You watched what happened, didn’t you?”

“Oh I think I saw what happened better than you did.” She rolled her eyes as she turned and walked off. “Be careful with a young maidens heart.” Her voice trailed off into the house.

“M-mom, c’mon, stop being weird about it.” Eli sighed in annoyance.

“Simbox delivery and pickup tomorrow morning, should be here by the time you get back from your last exam. The Land of Rene better get a stables for Spoody cause I’m taking the week off.” Her voice carried through the house.

...

There was an air of anticipation in the exam room as Eli finished the last few questions on his final exam. He could feel it from others, the excitement for the climactic finale of their Highschool careers to come to a close. But Eli felt as though his anticipation was heightened above everyone else's, knowing that upon returning home he’d begin a career as a streamer in earnest, within his new state of the art Simbox, with self-cleaning and dreamstate features.

Finishing the exam early, he’d gone back to double check his answers and realized quite a few small mistakes and errors on several questions needing correcting. No doubt due to his mind being elsewhere, as he planned out what he’d build on his new plot of land. The thought of buying a home, or land, in the real world never really drew his interest, but for some reason he couldn’t imagine anything more exciting at the present time. As he finished triple checking his answers and finished out early, he found himself idly staring at the paper wondering how much construction resources would be left from the ruined keep, or how much of it would still be intact? While walking to the front desk to hand in his exam, he started to consider rebuilding it, and thought of what it’d be like to live in a grand fortress.

“Congratulations, look forward to seeing you at graduation.” His teacher whispered to him with a smile while taking the exam from him. Eli nodded back absent mindedly and headed out of the school, now sitting out front to wait on Derrick and Lina. He’d finished a good half hour early, so opted to sit on a bench out front of the school building, tapping his eye implant to study more about buildings within the game world. He’d settled on a large forge design capable of smelting Iron for now, as the materials required to make a Mithril forge were a bit beyond what he’d be able to reasonably obtain, and after watching over several guides on building a Grand Dwarven Iron Forge, he started looking up basic stables designs and houses, just to humor his mom. He didn’t get very far into his research before the bell rang, signaling the end of the final day of exams for the school, and slowly the sea of students flocked out of the building.

“Freedom!” A familiar voice shouted among the chatter of students. Eli spotted the shouting Derrick with his arms stretched out into the air. Eli waved him over to see the stupidly large grin on his face.

“I’m so excited man, you have no idea!” He squeaked.

“Same… Y’know I thought finishing highschool would feel a lot different than this.”

“Yeah, no kidding, but we've already got so much to do. You’re going to Equinor in 3 months, I’ve got my trade school starting in a few months too, and once that’s over I’ll be able to work with my dad…” Derrick trailed off in thought for a moment. “Or, you could become a big time livestreamer and we can just live the easy life. You won’t forget about me when you start pulling in the big viewers, right?” Derrick winked.

“N-no, of course not.” He took his remark seriously, but saw Derrick’s joking expression and tried to lighten himself up. “If we make it to the top, I’m bringing everyone with me, unlike some other useless guy.” Eli tried to sound lighthearted as he said this, but some disdain slipped out.

“What about you Selena?” Derrick called to her as he spotted her stepping out of the crowds of other students. She turned to see them and nervously walked forward.

“What about me?” She asked, confused.

“What are your plans, now that this is all over with?” Derrick motioned to the school building and the students around them.

“Oh… well… I’m going to be studying Coding so I can, maybe, work for Averon some day.” She replied shyly.

“Ah, you know, that suits you pretty well now that I think about it.” Derrick replied.

“Yeah, I bet you’d be able to design some great bosses. They’d probably all be really hard though.” Eli smirked, as Lina let out a light chuckle.

“So what’s the plan? We’ve got three months of non-stop playing, and we’re aiming for the top, right?” Derrick asked.

“Ah, well… Since we’re a bit behind the pack, we’ve still got catching up to do in levels and gear. I’ll need to build up infrastructure on Rene so we can catch up on equipment and crafts and be self-sufficient.”

“If we really want to catch up or overtake the high level players, we’ll have to find somewhere to get high level resources like Birch and Iron, and eventually even Mithril and beyond.” Lina commented.

“We’ll also need to find some good grind spots that drop decent loot for leveling. Kalmoore’s gonna help us with that, thanks to yours truly picking it.” Derrick proudly pointed at himself. “Aside from the Night Hunters, there is not a lot of competition for good grind spots and dungeon crawls, and not much of Kalmoore has been explored yet.”

“If we’re leveling in dungeons, we’d be fastest in a full party of 5 though, and we’re still missing two members for that.” Lina commented, all hint of shyness gone as she spoke of the game.

“I also have to build a stables for my mom, and probably some houses for us, and a forge-” Eli started talking, and the other two continued. The three were all listening to each other while simultaneously having almost completely separate conversations as they waited for the bus that arrived all too slowly, and when it did, the three rushed back to their homes.

...

“Ta-daa!” Jillian squealed with joy as Eli stepped through the front door, beckoning him down their central hallway to the living room. He could see folded pieces of large cardboard lining the walls as he hastily threw off his shoes and bag, rushing to get a clear view of their new living room. It no longer resembled a living room at all, the couch and coffee table were pushed up against the wall as if they were an annoyance that didn’t belong in the room anymore, and instead, resting side by side, were two large slick white and silver Simboxes, much larger than the one he’d been using up until now.

“Amazing… are they working? Did you try them out yet?” Eli asked her excitedly.

“I know right? Not yet, I only copied over our calibration settings and made sure they’re working. I installed everything too. I thought it’d be better if we jumped in together.” Jillian smiled and wiggled with excitement - Eli could swear she was more excited than he was for a moment.

He walked over to the interface on the side of the simbox and started fidgeting with the menu, checking all of the features.

“It’s all here, self-cleaning, dreamstate… We only need to leave the simulation to eat?” Eli asked.

“I still have a job, Mister. And you better keep your physical health up, minimum 1 hour of physical activity outside of the Simulation, it says so on the safety section in the manual. And the self-cleaning is only for the box, not for you, so you better still be showering.” She spoke as her parental tone returned to her for a moment. Eli nodded as he inspected the outside of the box, seeing the cables and tubes all plugged into it from the back.

“So.” She patted the Simbox on the right as Eli had been inspecting the leftmost one. “Ready to test these bad boys out?”

“Y-yeah.” He smiled at her as they both opened up the Simbox’s and sat inside. The interior smelt like a new car, but the cushions and head pillow were incredibly comfortable, almost as if lying in a bed. Not too firm, nor too soft. Once the box was closed, the boot up time was incomparable to the previous box, and within less than a second, he was calibrated and his vision blacked out, followed by the bright flash of light welcoming him back into the Shattered World, where he found himself standing once more in the village of Orm.