4.02

“What would happen if we put this bag of holding into another one?” - Last words of far too many people.

We finished selling our stock later that night and had accumulated a pretty sum of a hundred and eighty-four gold, though we had some problems splitting it.

“Forty, forty, twenty,” the potato said and I furrowed my brows.

He meant for Peps and me to get forty percent of the share, and he twenty percent.

“Now now,” I argued back, “You made the store, did all the food preparation, grew the skewers and fished the grubs out of the husks, that’s at least forty percent.” Normally, I didn’t mind people giving me more money, but this guy actually put a lot of work in this. It would annoy my conscience to fail to pay back someone who actually worked competently with me.

Neither of us believed an equal split would be ‘fair’, especially given the division of labour. Though our definitions of what we should each be respectively paid for differed.

“I really don’t think I deserve that much, all I did was talk to-”

The potato raised a hand and completely serious, said to Peps, “You are the most valuable member of this team.”

I agreed, dealing with a few people I can do, almost a hundred like we did today? If Peps wasn’t here I couldn’t have played the stoic chef as well as I did. As for why the potato was so grateful… I asked and he said.

“I spent fifteen years working in retail.”

Oh. Fair.

“Still, all I did was talk.”

“All Ustubers and video advertisers do is talk. And have you seen their salaries?” I replied. The argument was mostly bullshit, even amateur Ustubers nowadays had teams working with them and spent hours each day cultivating recognisable and algorithmically perfect personalities. True solo indie channels died out ages ago. But it had enough basis in logic that I could jump to another point. “It’s more about the brand than the actual work,” I continued.

“Now you don’t start selling yourself short as well,” the potato interrupted. “You’re the whole supplier of this, you killed the actual things and bought the BBQ grill and spices. Until the location is discovered you have a total monopoly. Even longer if people can’t kill them en masse.”

“I am not selling myself short,” I answered. “The equipment is a long term investment that I plan on using many times in the future and the monopoly won’t last long. People just need to poke those things with a stick a few times to figure out their exact capabilities.”

Both Peps and the potato looked at me strangely as I said that.

A familiar snort came from behind. Despite breathing heavily and looking like he ran several marathons, Noam still found the energy to laugh, “Really Dusts? How many people would see those creepy looking fucks descending upon you and immediately think ‘Gee, I should poke this with a stick!’”

Grabbing a nearby rock- actually, wait it’s a potato, I threw it at Noam. And surprisingly, he made no effort to dodge. The potato boiked the side of his head and unceremoniously knocked him down to the ground.

I huh’d in surprise. How long has he been running?

A second later, I heard frantic running as several people, also heavily out of breath, crash into the doorway where Noam had fallen.

“Huff I… hufh… got him…” an elf said as he tiredly leaned on the doorframe.

“I’m gonna... huff… shove this up his ass,” another pursuer said as she raised a spear, before collapsing to the ground. Like dominos, the completely out of breath pursuers fell around Noam. One of them tried half-heartedly stabbing him, but he was clearly too out of breath to try anything.

“Uurrgghhhh…”

“Hey… Can one of you… *huff* shove this up his ass for me?” the pursuer said as she weakly gestured at us.

“Unless you plan on paying me then no. Outsource your vengeance to someone else,” I replied.

“So,” I said, turning back around, “How about thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty?”

We ended up splitting it forty percent going to me and thirty percent for Peps and the potato. The potato justified his share by saying he’ll take all the leftover shells, apparently they were useful for his class and turned my earlier argument that the equipment I bought was a long term investment, thus justifying his labour creating the storefront as him planning to open an independent shop.

“Where is he!” I heard an unknown voice yell.

That was the eighth one now.

“The second store to the front by the right, the one that’s the old Maccas,” I answered.

The pursuer grunted thanks, before following my direction.

A moment later…

“What are all these mushroo- AAAAAA!!”

Peps glanced at me with incriminatory eyes, which he did for the last seven as well. “He’s fine,” I assured him.

“AHHHH! THE PAIN! IT’S LIKE I HAVE BEEN SHOT AND DRENCHED IN ACID!”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!! I TOOK A FUCKING SENSORY PATH! THIS PAIN IS TWENTY TIMES STRONGER! AAAAAH! WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SHROOMS!!?”

“Well, hindsight is twenty/twenty as well.”

“MY EYES! I AM BLINDED!”

“Hindsight is zero/zero then,” Noam muttered.

“AH!!! JUST YOU WAIT TILL I GET TO YOU!”

“Wait a moment… You took a sensory path and didn’t notice me hiding under the table?” Noam yelled as he peeked out.

Ignoring Noam’s casual conversation and Peps boring holes in me with his stare, I focused my attention on the potato who set aside my split.

“Seventy-five gold,” the potato said as the man screamed his dying throes. “Do you have a way to carry all this?”

“I have an idea,” I glanced under the table, “Noam, watch my stuff for a moment.”

The two wisps who had been laying shrooms mines started towards me, “No need,” I said, “stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Leaving the store and passing by the shroom field, I quickly made it to the mall’s Wayshard.

I opened my menu and navigated towards the IP store and made my first purchase. Five IP for a single character slot. The option greyed out for a moment before the cost was updated to fifteen IP.

Then, I touched the Wayshard.

You may Travel to:

Gaia (Current)

Indiri

Character Slot 2

Mentally thinking about the slot, the world changed around me, and I was once again standing on that hospital rooftop.

A holographic figure appeared in front of me. Eve wasn’t around, guess that time was special.

I didn’t really care what this character was, so I just thought ‘Random’.

The figure morphed into something more recognisable. Its lithe body looked around one eighty-five centimetres. Way taller than my Myconid character and taller than myself in real life, at least by a few centimetres. It had a mostly androgynous looking face, sharp ears were barely concealed by its light auburn hair and almost white pupils that appeared blind.

Elf Fighter.

“Good enough,” I said, intending to stay with this selection. The world changed around me, I briefly glanced at my spot at the base of an extremely large tree.

“Good evening,” a melodious voice sounded out to me. “Welcome to the tutorial.”

“Yep, I’ve been here,” I answered. “This is all very interesting but can I skip to the bit where I get my equipment and skills?”

The other elf held an utterly serene if somewhat amused look, “Very well.”

The world shifted again and I was at a derelict fashion store that was oddly filled to the brim with stuff. Unlike my last tutorial, I was aware of a number. Twenty gold. My budget.

“Not enough for a bag of holding then,” I muttered, most bags were in the hundred to five hundred range.

“Choose your weapon as you wish, but choose wisely-”

“Done,” I said as I took several extremely large and empty bags.

The elf raised her eyebrow, “Are you sure that’s all you want?”

“You’ve never seen what people use alts for have you?” I answered the question with a question.

“... No…” she said after a moment of thought.

“Can’t buy a bag of holding so I’m going to settle on this instead,” I answered. The remaining gold budget I had left crystalised in my hand.

The elf furrowed her brows, “That has to break a few rules right?”

“No clue,” I answered, “but if you don’t know then how would I?”

She held her chin in thought, “Fair I suppose.” She shook her head, “There’s the book for aura techniques, though I suppose you wouldn’t-”

“Still taking it,” I said as I opened the book. “What?” I replied to her questioning gaze, “I’m not gonna half-ass my storage unit.”

I glanced at the book. Strangely aura techniques didn’t have a tiered ranking but had exact specifications of the years of training needed to learn each technique. Most were in the single year range, so I picked three minor ones which fit my max budget of three years, along with proficiency in daggers.

“Ok, where’s the thing I gotta fight?”

The elf raised an eyebrow at me, “Fight?”

“Last time I was here I fought to the death,” I answered. “Unless we’re in accelerated time then I’d hope you’d hurry up.”

“Who was your tutorial guide?” she asked, brows suddenly crossed.

“A mushroom called Henry I think?”

She cursed something under her breath.

“You’re free to go,” she said as we appeared next to a Wayshard, “that part was due to a one-time limited event due to your special character.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Ok then,” I said as I raised my hand to touch the crystal.

“Oh wait! Your name?”

I glanced at her, “Dale I guess,” and teleported back to Gaia.

Noam heard me as I returned, turning around, he took one look at me before saying, “A bank alt?”

I glanced around the shop, Noam was sitting where I was a few moments ago, Peps seemed to have moved on, but there was movement behind, the potato most likely.

“Yep,” I answered as I dropped the empty bags. “Probably the safest bank available to us currently.”

He looked slightly surprised at my voice, before shaking his head and began moving the coins into the bags.

The two wisps looked confusingly at each other, squeaking out something I didn’t understand.

“I’ll explain later,” I promised.

I helped shovel the gold coins into the bag, which truly gave me an appreciation for online currency, or even paper currency if you’re old fashioned, then put away the magical BBQ which I had cleaned earlier.

We said our farewells to the potato, who asked me to add him on my main account later. Which was when I actually learnt his name, Murphy.

Adequate storage acquired, we moved to the Wayshard, avoiding the shroom field I set up earlier as only the wisps were immune to it.

“We’ll need to start doing stuff in Indiri,” I began, “claim our Mercenary licenses and start getting that world’s currency.”

“Sure,” Noam answered immediately. He didn’t doubt me at all, he probably suspected I spent a good amount of time thinking about it.

“Gaia doesn’t have good infrastructure, everything seems to need to be started by Travellers,” I explained. “We could probably make it just as far here but only in Indiri we can eat at a decent restaurant.”

“Hmm… We haven’t checked out their restaurants yet. Imagine all the strange stuff they could make with fantasy creatures and ingredients.”

“Eh,” I unenthusiastically replied. “I really don’t want to spend the Traveller coins we have.”

“They something special?”

I explained to him Daves’ Store, along with all the myriad of things you could buy from there. Finishing my explanation just as we reached the Wayshard.

I left twenty gold between me and Noam as I swapped back to my main. The wisps broke out in squeaks of odd relief as they saw me come back. The gold was mostly just in case but also because Noam was still carrying around that half-broken halberd and clearly needed a new weapon. He could probably make do with just that for a while.

We arrived at a dark alley in Indiri, back at that Port City Bartin, “I’ll have to renew my rent at an inn,” I said, feeling the room key inside my pocket.

“Sure,” Noam answered as he looked to the sky, “already night…”

“You feeling hungry?” he suddenly asked me.

“I can eat my mushrooms,” I answered.

He shook his head, “That stuff is fine but it’s pretty tasteless isn’t it?”

“I guess?”

“You shouldn’t live on that stuff, come on, there’s bound to be a decent restaurant somewhere,” he said as he took the lead walking out.

“Didn’t you hear my whole thing about Dave and his store?” I said as I followed him.

“What’s the point of penny-pinching if you’re rich?” he asked back.

“Saving money is an essential skill!” I lectured as I followed him.

“Come on, how bad could it be?”