She had been walking for the last three hours now (20% progress in speed; hurray) and boy, was she mistaken in thinking this was a tranquil place. Not only had she shot and killed seven more Sholf's, she had made contact with a wide variety of other beast that wanted to eat her. Sitting in the grass, she shook her tired legs and got another strand of hair out of her sweaty face. Not only sweat covered her face, but long stretches of dirt, blood and a blade of grass she had not yet noticed. Her space suit was dirty beyond believe, the shoes and pants that were once white were now brown, covered in mud and other substances she hoped were mud. And while her pants were just dirty, her top was filled with long gashes and tears and a big oval spot of black where a Bubble had seared her suit. Her arms and gloves; a combination of blood red smudges and mud. It had been quite the adventure. The Sholfs had no longer been a problem as they had the curious habit of letting their prey come to them. Once she knew, she took aim and blew them to kingdom come collecting 14% in spatial awareness which was great, but also accumulating 210 credits which was even better. The only problem with this tactic was that once she fired her shot, it would incinerate at least forty percent of the entire Sholf. So, she needed to aim for the head or the wool loot would incinerate with it. She found out about the hard way by wasting three Sholfs before she realized. The good news; the wool stacked. Sort of. After adding the fifth to her inventory, the stack took two spots in her inventory, something she thought of as realistic but still wanted to curse. A credit sink; a mechanism that would force every player to invest heavily in an upgraded inventory, while they rather had invested that credit in something useful.

Since seeing the massive Kevoulder, she had walked a dozen minutes before meeting the next weird creature; the Mocking birds. No, she didn't mean it were Mockingbirds. These birds were actively mocking her. The first one she met, had flown from behind her and onto a blade of grass that was five meters in front of her, had turned around, still holding the blade in its little bird grabbers and stared at her. The bird; small, no bigger than her fist, had its red feathers streamlined around its body. So far so good, but the first time she had seen the birds head, she had stopped walking rather abruptly. The bird grew something that looked like the antlers of a deer on the sides of its little head. They weren't big; maybe four centimeters up and wide but it was a peculiar sight that could not be easily forgotten as the antlers were white and looked like bone, and that was before you saw that its tiny tongue was sticking out of its mouth.

Its curious black beady eyes were staring at her and she was staring back. Didn't this look exactly like children when they were laughing at someone? Making fun of them by putting their hands next to their heads and sticking their tongue out of their mouth? While she thought, another bird had taken the blade of grass next to the first and stared in her direction too. "This is too weird..." She grumbled out loud, and the little birds had responded by a salvo of what sounded like laughter, soft and bird-ish, but laughter nonetheless. She looked at the birds, and thought of killing one so she could name it, but thought the better of it for now. She didn't want to just randomly kill everything in her path. While that was how most would play a game, she had always opted to only kill those who tried to kill her.

Shaking her head, she decided that it was better to just continue walking, struggling her way through the grass. The birds seemed to multiply every time she looked at them, lifting off of their blades of grass and then flying ten meters and landing again, turning their collective gaze back to Sophie. By the time she had walked another hundred meters, forty beady eyes were staring at her every move. Making their laughing noises every time she stumbled and cursed a little. It was like a rolling laughter tape she had always hated when she watched old school sitcoms. Worse of all, was that the sound kept getting louder and louder as more birds kept flying in. At the height of their hilarity and the height of her annoyance, she stumbled over a piece of wood. Which could not have come from any tree as there were no trees on the plain, and had to have been planted here or spawned out of now where; those were the two options. The loud laughter of the birds coupled with them trying to pry their antlers into her skin and suit while pecking at her skin gave her the idea they had somehow planted it there, and let her across it so she would be down when they attacked. She struggled to get up, and waved her hands around, to beat sense in the little shit heads but they expected it and made a retreat again. Seeing that attacking her was a lost cause, their antlers and beaks hardly doing any damage. Done playing nice she had grabbed her plasma gun and fired a shot into the flock, killing at least five with the single shot due to it exploding outward and taking some of the little fuckers with it. 20 Credits and two percent toward spatial awareness brought her good mood back, plus an extra 200 credits for naming and killing the bastards. This was before she saw them make a U turn and heading back. 

From that point onwards, the mocking birds had stayed with her even when she tried to thin their flock. An hour she walked, growing angrier with the minute, plunging her way through the constant laughter of the Mocking birds. Then she found the fourth strange creature of the plain. The Bubble, a creature she didn't even know how or why it had ever been invented as it was just a bubble that sparkled in the sun like a bubble of soap. Floating around, waving in the wind, being carried from blade of grass to blade of grass until she had walked into one by accident. It had bounced right off of her, leaving a soapy kind of liquid behind that smelled awful and started burning a hole in her suit. If she had thought of it a little longer and had observed that the Mocking birds were staying far away from it, she might not have almost blown herself up. But as the laughter continued and the smell of burned suit went into her nostrils, she had shot it out of the air in a rage of pure spite and its explosion had turned into a fireball. The size it almost burned her eyebrows off. As the system asked her for a name, she was too tired to be original and had just replied with Bubble, later regretting her choice fiercely, but she couldn't change its name into Maya's Soap Farts anymore. Defeated she continued her march through the plain, before she noticed the incredible sound of nothing. The silence, the blissful silence was a sign that the Mocking birds had finally left and together with the 200 credits this had been a very convenient encounter.

She sighed and walked in a peaceful and calm step through the plain, the grass and its toughness. Not even registering anymore, after the torment of the Mocking birds and she finally thought she was done with flying fuckers. Not half a kilometer later, there came along a little something she named the Whistler. First she thought it was just a big fluorescent blue ball of fur with four little dragonfly wings, slowly zooming over the plain, minding its own business. The furball had long arms in proportion to its body, and seemed to end in claws, no hands, only furry arms and claws. Between the two arms, was a body shaped like a mango, two black beady eyes; a bit away from the top, parallel to the arms; white strokes of fur above it like little eyebrows and a tuft of white fur on top of its head. And a little mouth all the way down where his belly ended, completing the face like features. Underneath the mango shaped body dangled two small legs, barely even visible. It flew over the plain a little lack luster, it looked, its little wings zooming from exertion to keep the relative large body afloat. The wind blowing it in random directions and its long arms hanging down like someone who didn't see a purpose in life anymore. She would have felt compelled to help the little bugger if she had met it earlier when she had just landed, but now she only felt weariness for its presence.

As it flew in random directions, carried in part by its wings and in another part by the wind, it kept coming closer, and then when it was about a meter away it seemed to take control of its direction and flew straight to her shoulder; where it landed and sat. Its little legs sticking out and its mango body plumping a little as it sat down. Sophie stood still, her head slightly turned, her eyes trying to make the almost impossible angle to look at the blue creature that was barely the size of an apple and weighted even less. The creature looked up at her, its beady little eyes radiating innocence; as they can only in movies or games. Its surrogate eyebrows slightly raised and its claws put together as it was the epitome of innocence. It stayed like this for two seconds as Sophie and the creature were locked into a staring contest before it turned its body to the front again and whistled. Its tiny mouth pouting together, eyes closed, he started a tune that was beautiful. It was carried by the wind of the plain, and sounded much louder than it should have sounded. Its tune was a sound of peacefulness, soft edges and low tones, joint with beautiful high pitched climaxes. Swirling from left to right as it kept is seating of her shoulder. She had got slightly dizzy, sleepy even, and had yawned with her mouth wide open. Her eyes half closing as the tune brought her all the peace she so desperately needed at the time. Yawning again she closed her eyes, just for a minute she had thought, just a minute of quiet, some blissful rest. Her eyes had closed and her consciousness had drifted, the last thing registering was her falling into the grass below her, face first. For once she had been glad that the grass wasn't too soft and that it had pillowed her fall, and then blackness.

She had woken up by something hairy trying to crawl into her mouth. She was lying face first in the mud, the soft and wet earth embracing her left cheek while her right cheek lay skywards. The feeling of a hairy claw trying to pull her lips apart, and then a jerk on her lower jaw that had been lodged in the ground as she had fallen face first. With a shock, she had snapped her eyes open, starring at the angry looking blue fur ball that was still trying to pry open her mouth. Without thinking of what would have happened if she had landed on her back, she pulled her arm up and smacked it down on the spot where the still struggling fur ball met its end. A huge mistake as she thought about it later. The blue fur ball, which she named the Whistler, had dropped 5 credits, and had exploded underneath her fist, sending blood and gore over her face and even some of it into her mouth. She had gotten up slowly, her face looking like a battlefield, scrunched up like she ate a lemon. Spending the next ten minutes getting everything off her face with a few blades of grass and her dirty glove. The results hadn't been very promising.

And that was how she had spent her three-hour trip so far; not wanting to draw conclusions yet she was just resting, mostly her mind. She was disappointed about her ability to protect herself, even though all the "attacks" had mostly been harmless. Harmless as in; she prevented creatures from some very disturbing antics. Would she need to shoot everything on sight from now? Was she being naïve instead of being true to herself? It was a game, wasn't it? She should be able to kill everything without feeling guilty or thinking too much of the incidents of the past. Bah, she hated mindless killing, even in a game. She had never done it; so why start now. She decided to keep doing the same; if it didn't attack her she would not kill it. But everything she named, went straight to the kill list. A little hypocritical, she knew, but first; it was a game, and second; naivety kills. She rather hated her actions then die. Strengthening her resolve, she did some Psionic exercises, sitting crossed legged she looked around to see if there was anything that would try manslaughter, seeing that there wasn't yet, she broke of a blade of grass. Positioning the blade of grass in front of her nose she closed her eyes and focused. Trying to find it was more of a hassle then she had expected. It was way smaller than the finger that the old man had used. Twenty minutes went by, as she focused all of her attention, trying to find the energy she had found before, then guiding it outside and forming something that looked like a third arm. Feeling for the grass she knew was in front of her. Seeing but not seeing; the state that the old man had kept on repeating. She could feel the first drops of sweat flowing from her face, streaking passed the blood and mud, curving towards her chin.

 Then at the forty-minute mark, she finally felt the blade of grass, it felt so small to her sight, barely visible, as it seemed to flow with something. Not spending much time to pat herself on the back she tried to move the grass towards her, trying to touch her nose with it. It didn't budge. She kept at it, straining herself, feeling the headache from overdrawing of the psionic energies, but the grass wouldn't move. Breathing out a big gulp of air and hanging her head a little, moving it left and right to crack her neck she gave up, not wanting to end up unconscious again, and opened her eyes. Using her glove to clean her face out of habit, not even noticing only making it worse. She checked her Genesis, and she had gotten 5% from an hour of practice. This would take awhile before it would be useful. Sighing she stood up and looked around, the sun was slowly disappearing behind the mountains but she still had four hours to kill before she needed to eat dinner and study. She needed training. Not the mindless walking around, or shooting the Sholfs. She looked around for something suitable, and found a rock, that looked like a rock, about four-hundred meters to her left. Determent she would no longer mess around, she walked towards the rock, slowly going faster, and then going into a jog. Jogging in the tall grass and mushy ground was like walking through water, but good for her Speed genesis. Arriving at the rock, she was completely out of breath and her speed had gained 5% in five minutes. Breathing in big gulps she leaned against the rock. It was just about as tall as the grass at its lowest, and one and half meters into the air at its highest, being about 3 meters wide on the side she was currently facing and one meter wide at its lowest side.

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Getting her heartbeat back to normal levels, she again checked if her jog had attracted anything unwanted but could see nothing but the swaying of the grass. Now that said nothing in, or of itself but it made her feel better anyway. Slowly making her way towards the lowest side of the rock and positioning her feet right in front of it, she breathed out a final long breath and bent her knees before explosively trying to jump onto the forty-centimeter-high surface of the rock. In real life, this would have been as easy as taking candy from a baby, in the game it was the achievement of the century. Her oversized boots were not only big, but also ten times as heavy as anything else she had ever worn. She barely landed, her knees still in a ninety-degree angle, and her hands stretched to the side, trying to keep balance and not fall off again. Balanced, throwing her hands in the air like winning a gold medal, challenging anyone that thought it wasn't.  "This is going to be harder than I want a game to be…" she mumbled before bending through her knees, doing ten squads, then threw herself into a pushup position, doing ten push-ups, then ten sit-ups before she did a mountain climber over the rock to the top where she jumped off and landing on her feet, knees bending to make the impact lessen and rolling herself forward, evenly distributing the inertia of the jump. She stood up, sprinted towards the other side of the rock through the high sturdy grass and leaned against it again, all of her muscles hurting and tired. She hadn't experienced this kind of exhaustion since she was six. The stone wobbling in her vision, her breath coming ragged, her chest and abdomen burning, her legs soft and unsteady. She looked at her Genesis, agility, strength and speed had gone up with 1%. A laughing sound came from her throat in-between short and deep breaths "this is going to suck...".

She continued doing the same parkour for two hours, resting 3 minutes in between, every round became harder, every time she landed from the jump hurt more, the exercises went slower and jumping the rock failed more times than she cared to admit. But as she was sitting on the rock, her butt hurting from the squats, still breathing heavily. Each breath hurting her chest and abdomen, exhausted and not capable anymore to take another step, she had gained 30% in all three which was a huge leap. Even if it was not yet paying off at this moment. She needed more, she wanted to reach GEN2 in all three, so she at least be a little like she was in real life. But first she needed rest. Laying her body on the stone she pressed the log off button and went to see what was for dinner.

The coffin lit slit open, and she tried to get out of the machine but her whole body protested. Groaning and lifting herself up of the side she crawled out of the POD and tried to stand on her wobbly legs. "Holy hell, was this in the manual?" she mumbled, making an unsteady step towards the table. She thought of calling for help from Frank, but if he would see her now, it could be awhile before she was let back in. No way she was going to let that happen! She took the bathrobe off the chair and winched when she tried to put it on, her chest muscles and six-pack had not hurt this much in five years. This was definitely not something usual. Trying to make her way towards the table, she arrived and with a groan sat down. Her butt was protesting the sudden movements and then embracing the soft surface of the chair. Ready, she called for Frank through the mobile intercom sitting on the table, asking for some food and study material. She would do her studying first and then go back into the POD, better for her body to rest a little first and let her brain do the work.

_______

An alarm rang in a dark room, and for a while it continued its wail. Sophie struggled with her bedsheets, trying to get out of the mess she had created for herself. A big yawn escaped her mouth as she sat up, leaving the alarm to finish its song of agony until she had enough. She slapped it with her flat hand, turning the alarm of for another five minutes. In the meantime, she could get used to her waking state and remember how to turn off the god-awful machine. Slowly an arm went up as a hand tried to remove the heavy crusts that laid in the sides of her eyes. The hand balled into a fist and then gently rubbed her eye until she was tired of it and another yawn spread her face in two. It had been a short night. First she had studied boring stuff about stock markets and Data mining she would never use anyway. Frank had said if she wanted him to do certain things for her, she should have a grasp of what she was ordering someone to do. It had been one of his morality 101 courses she had rather skipped. But she understood why he did it, many times now had she ordered him to do something that sounded interesting or fun, before realizing it was a really hard or complicated thing to be asking of someone. It had reigned in her expectations of people in general, and specifically Frank. It was good he did it, but she enjoyed none of it. The only positive thing she could get out of it was that at least now she knew how data mining worked, instead of using it as a magical word to throw around at parties. Which, she didn't, go to parties that is.

Her sleepy eyes stared a little into nothingness as she thought back to the drill sessions she had put herself through after the boring study time. Frowning she rubbed her legs mindlessly and tried to move them a little. Surprisingly, she didn't feel any soreness in her legs or upper body. She had continued to do the parkour on the rock as it was the only thing that wasn't grass as far as her eyes could see. Then after two hours she had been exhausted again, so she had positioned herself against the rock and continued with psionic training for an hour (gaining another 5%) before starting her physical training back up for another two hours. She had finally hit GEN2; in both speed and strength, making the parkour a lot easier. When she was about to do the last bit of training and get agility to GEN2 she had been ejected by an angry Frank who had asked her what the optimal amount of sleep was. Sulking she had clawed herself out of the POD and struggled to get upstairs and into bed. Frank had been frowning, but said nothing as he saw her off, before walking away again. Sometimes she wondered who had programmed his passive aggressive tendencies. She was willing to bet it was her mother. Stiff robot, wasn't she the Miss? Meh.

Stepping out of bed and putting her feet onto the soft carpet, she turned towards the alarm that was about to sing another verse, and turned it off. Now standing in the dark room, she wondered when the last time was she had been woken by the alarm. Normally it stood there for decoration, its only use telling her how much time she had until she was supposed to get out of bed. But this time it had completed one of the two duties it had. She turned towards the curtains, her feet making soft prints into the carpet. Opening them up she could see that rain had won this morning. She always hoped for fog. Couldn't have it all, she thought observing some of the rain drops rushing each other down the window, flowing in and out of one another ending into a pile of water at the base of the window. She smiled gently as she placed a hand on the cold window, kept it there for some time, leaving a handprint as she removed her hand from the glass object. After getting dressed she went down the stairs and looked at the table where some roasted bread and a boiled egg were waiting for her. "Passive aggressive Frank strikes again..." she mumbled as she sat down and ate her sparse breakfast, trying to ease the process of swallowing it by drinking the glass of water that stood next to the plate. Glancing at the newspaper she decided she would read it on the bike. Stuffing the last bits of breakfast into her mouth she got up and out of the chair to do her normal exercise. Finding it harder to motivate herself now that she already did a six-hour session yesterday, but she got onto the bike anyway. She couldn't skip anything today. If she did something wrong today then Frank would reward her with an even more Spartan lifestyle. His parenting was based on a combination of a lot of autonomy, a healthy dose of stuff she needed to do and negative reinforcement. Meaning that if she didn't do it the correct way, like staying awake till 2 am, he would take something away, like down-scaling the taste of food served. It was still good food and he would always make sure she got enough nutrients. But she had gone entire weeks on bread, water and some stew that had no flavor but all the necessities. Just because neither of them would bind-in and come to an agreement of what exactly fell under his purpose of protecting her and what was outright imprisonment. Fun times. She smiled a little when thinking back to those stretches of passive aggressive war. The longest one had been three months and twenty-five days when she wanted to go to the school dance at the end of middle school and he would only let her go if he got to chaperone her. Thinking back about it, it was incredibly stupid, but at the time she had gone through one of her rebellious phases and had done everything in her power to make him back down. To no avail, as she still had the pictures of him in a tuxedo walking hand in hand with the eleven-year-old, angry looking princes that was Sophie

Putting her foot on the peddle of the bike she sat on top of the saddle, paddled and opened the newspaper. There had even been a time she refused to read the newspaper after she had read an article that was shaming the use VR in current society. Calling all those who played in VR, instead of working in real life to make the world a better place, childish, lazy, good for nothings. It had caused quite the uproar and the subsequent dismissal of the journalist responsible, his editor and the CEO of the paper. Not that she had seen any of that until two weeks later as she had gone into a fit of rage and had refused to read any newspaper for two weeks. She had been genuinely upset, and Frank had spared her of negative reinforcement the first three days. After that it was the usual. She looked over page one and stopped paddling. There had been a massive crash in the stock markets due to the news of five of the more prominent VR companies going bankrupt. She read the article while starting her paddling back up...

In the night of Wednesday the 25th of April 2047, a statement was released in the United States of America that VRonic, Alternate Reality, Phoenix co., Zebra and last but not least the second biggest in its industry Bench Entertainment have all filed for bankruptcy. Cause for these five companies, all within the top ten of the biggest in the VR industry has not yet been confirmed. According to chronic rumors Lucas Marot has been arrested on fraud charges. Sources within the NYPD have confirmed to this newspaper that the owner of Bench Entertainment and the co-owner of the other four, has been arrested under the suspicion he has been embezzling money from said companies for over a decade. Leaving not much more than a few empty bank accounts. To save what can be saved, and to give creditors a chance to get their money back, the boards of the five different companies came to the same conclusion; filing for bankruptcy. The companies had a total market share of 34% in the VR industry and were mainly focused on the software side. What will happen with the fourteen popular games that these companies leave behind and are played by approximately 153 million gamers, is not yet known. It is expected that the servers will be shut down by the end of the month. The approximated forty thousand employees of the five companies are being let go. Nsquared, arguably the big winner of this debacle for many others, has responded with their sympathies towards the former employees, and to those who are about to lose their VR world. The CEO of Nsquared, Mario Lacerta, speaks of a great shame that has befallen the industry, and has offered to make it up by lowering the prize of Nsquared newest game "Ethereal Space" by fifty percent for the next week. Further stating that whatever happened, or whoever did this will not go unpunished. With this the CEO seems to further confirm Lucas Marot's involvement. Whatever happens, it is projected that at least 40% will take Nsquared up to their offer, almost tripling their player base. Nsquared stock is the only positive stock as an effect of this change in projections. 

The rest of the article just talked about how the stock market had taken a huge hit because of the fallout it had caused in other listed companies. Not so important that Sophie couldn't just skim threw it. The news above it could have far reaching consequences for her gaming experience. She read it again as something made little sense. How could this one person, Lucas Marot or whoever he may be, cause five companies toppling down, in the best payed industry, with no one or anything seeing any anomalies? That was almost impossible in this day in age where AI were in control of Accounting, scanning all in- and outgoing transactions for irregularities. Even if he had gained access to their own AI, the AI of the FBI, or the Tax Department should have picked up enough to come into action long before he could steal almost 32 billion out of the reserves. There was also something else that didn't make any sense, and that was why? Why would a person bleed dry his own five companies, by stealing his own money, making him vulnerable for jail time and destroying his own companies in the process? The companies that had toppled were precisely those that had not been owned by Nsquared, and while Nsquared had owned 41% of market shares, together they were the two big fronts in the VR industry. They had been Apple and Microsoft, IOS and Android, hell even Xbox and PlayStation. Now with them gone only a few non-coherent competitors were left to stand up against the giant that is Nsquared. Something stank but she couldn't imagine she would be the only one to think so. Yet, that was how it usually went. The editor or author of this piece of news could not have been a stupid man, yet nowhere these doubts were mentioned. If there was ever a moment she hated the way the public was informed it would have been now; on the day that her new favorite hobby was about to be swarmed with new players. Technically, she was new too but who cared about that!

The rest of the exercises were done with growling and moping in between, even the personal best on the five kilometers didn't cheer her up or made her frown. She took it in stride and went on with her business, like everyone else that read that article and didn't give a shit. She felt a little angry, but after doing her boxing routine that was mostly gone. It was time she went back in and get serious. She needed to keep ahead of the swarm of noobs which was bound to hit soon.