I loosened my tie as I examined my hotel room. I specifically asked for a room with a VR pod.

“Nice. I can’t miss the start of the Hunt,” I said as I began to undress. Should I change clothes or just get in the pod naked? Nah, I’d better get some comfy clothes. What if someone came to the room?

The first NornyrCon already opened today. Plenty of events were lined up. One of them was the public book deal signing. Well-known authors were commissioned to write stories about the Nornyr World. In this time of holo-projections and all sorts of gadgets where you could read stories from, physical books were making a comeback and Nornyr was going to jump on that rising trend.

It was only a matter of time for paper books to return. When the books were released, I planned to buy them all. I think it would be good to stack my shelves again with books that I actually read and not just books that would make me look like a cultured, widely read, educated man when someone came inside my office. I rarely read the books on my shelves because I have everything I needed on my RollUp computer.

The contract signing was going to be held later this afternoon. I was also going to be there, photoshoot and all. Another public contract signing was for the new reality show on JYE’s channel. De Gamma, the highest leveled guy on Nornyr, along with some other people, were the subject of a planned show, showing their in-game life and stuff like that. People loved reality shows, past and present, no question about that. JYE was riding on that human need to know about the lives of other people especially the top players of Nornyr.

Everything has already been prepared. I have reviewed the contracts and the other parties have already assented to it. I was just here for photo ops purposes. But I wasn’t going to go back home immediately after I was finished with my business here.

I haven’t been to conventions since I was still playing games back then. I have no idea how they looked like now. And who knows, I might find some useful information about the becoming a strong tank.

With soft comfy clothes on, I went inside the pod, pushed the button to activate it, and closed my eyes.

As I logged in, I popped in the middle of the village by the golden fire. Usually, there were about five or so Mardukryon players hanging around the center of the village. There were times that more people congregated here but that was because they were a party waiting for their friends.

Today, the village center was packed with players. Fifty was on the low end of my estimation. There was a sea of indicating that the Mardukryons with me were players. At the fringes of the throng, there were Mardukryon NPCs gathering. The actions of the NPCs were probably influenced by the multitude of players in the village center.

“There you are. Hey! How’s it going.” CragHeadDave jostled his way through the large muscular bodies of Mardukryons to reach me. He waved enthusiastically with one hand while pulling along another player with the other. I could actually recognize his Mardukryon face although we just met yesterday.

I just gave one wave in return, acting like a quiet and reserved person. It was automatic for me to do that when someone was feeling like we were close friends even if I barely knew the person. Snobbishness? I don’t think so. I just didn’t like people getting too friendly with me before I had more time to gauge what their personalities were.

Still, this guy allowed me to complete the Chilled Steel set so I was going to try to be nice to him. He helped me in my ascension to immortal tank godhood so I was thankful for that. I wasn’t a complete asshole, mind you.

“Hello,” I said with a smile.

“This was the guy I traded with yesterday,” he said to the female player he dragged with him. He turned back to me and said, “Thanks for the trade. I really mean it. The completed Integral Bit is so awesome. I’ll show you what it does during the Hunt.”

“Thanks for the items as well. It helped me too.”

“I pretty much got that Bit at a discount. By the way, this is my girlfriend,” he said, referring to the female player. “She helped me a lot in getting the pieces of that Spiteful Ooze. I owe her big time.”

“He’ll help me farm, anyway, so it’s an investment,” she said with a mischievous smile.

An investment, that was my thought as well, lady. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “Is it fine if I added you as friend? I’m looking for more customers for my wares, although what I can produce are not that good. Cheap though.”

I found out that her name was CragHeadBabe when I added her to my friends list. I nodded my head. These two were meant to be. How about me? When would I find the person who was meant to be with me? Just kidding. I’m taking a break from relationships right now since my fiasco of an ex-girlfriend.

“She may be a bit rude at times, but she’s an amazing person,” CragHeadDave said, winking at CragHeadBabe.

She playfully punched him. I felt left out. Was I third wheeling indirectly here? Maybe I should Eclairs along so that I have a servant?

“You’re lucky to have an amazing girlfriend,” I said. As for me, I was lucky to be an amazing person too. Imagine if I wasn’t amazing? The horror.

“Listen up people,” someone spoke loudly. A high-level player, indicated by his relatively larger size than the rest of us, stood on a small makeshift stage. He wore linen clothes with glowing runes. Behind the stage were Justalyne and Mephisto.

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Justalyne spotted me and waved at me. She elbowed Mephisto and pointed at me. He waved as well. This must mean that the guy on the stage was ChilliMaster?

“We’re gonna get our shit together in this Hunt, okay people?” he said. He had a deep voice and a commanding tone. Everyone paid attention to him. “We’re gonna get everything organized. We’re gonna level and get strong, and get off this stupid mountain. You got me?”

There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. We’ll be the first batch that will set out with the NPCs. As you know, or don’t know, the second big Hunt of the month has three objectives. One, harvest the plants that the Foragers planted along the Lord Mirdabon trail. Two, hunt down beasts. We’re gonna get some friggin meat for the village. Three, we’re gonna pass by lodes that have been exposed on the sides of the mountain. Pathfinders have been hard at work this past month to identify their locations.”

“Scary guy, isn’t he,” CragHeadDave whispered. His girlfriend nudged him to keep quiet.

ChilliMaster held up one finger. No, not the middle finger. Just the index finger. Everyone looked at his finger.

“One objective,” he said. “Escorting the Foragers in harvesting the plants is the usual objective that gets finished. Just one objective out of the three.”

Someone said, “How about the hunting beasts part.”

"Yeah, we kill beasts while protecting the Foragers."

"Don't those count?"

ChilliMaster looked like he was expecting the question. “I know a there are many of you who have been in Hunts. We do kill beasts. We do bring back their meat and fur, all that shit, we bring them back. But that’s for our own usage. Not for the village.

“If you have high reputation with the NPCs, you’ll know that during specific Hunts, they’re gunning for specific high-level beasts. The NPCs go for them after the harvesting is done. Not during. All that monsters we kill on the way to harvest the tons of plants do not count for the second objective. Normally, people return to the village after harvest, or they have something else to do. Bottom line, we don’t kill any large important monsters. This time we make sure we do.” He looked over the crowd. “Any miners here?”

About a dozen people raised their hands.

“Good, good. We’re going to mine the exposed lodes along the side of the mountain. I’m sure a lot of you people don’t know where the site are. That’s because Miners don’t come along Hunts. Just holed up down the mines. Now you will. This is a community effort, people.”

Justalyne brought out a huge poster and nailed it to a post. People started to crowd near it to check it out.

“I’m not done talking, people,” ChilliMaster said in a gruff voice. “Anyway, that’s a schedule for the times the high-level guys, like me, will log in. We’re going to do this by batches. First batch will be me. A couple of hours later, I think Meggido1997 will be online? Yup. It’s him. Third batch is EmperorCaesarSalad.” He went on to read the names of the strongest players and when their batches would depart.

“Who’s the guy with the very large battle-ax,” I asked CragHeadDave. “He’s the highest-level player, right?”

“ChilliMaster mentioned him,” he replied. “Meggido1997”

“Such a waste that his friends changed race,” said CragHeadBabe.

“Why, what happened?” I asked.

“I still wasn’t playing during that time. Just heard this from some veteran Mardukryon player,” she said. “Meggido and his friends were the very first Mardukryon players, the pioneers. They have tried to explore the Ice Tunnel, just the portions near the exit since the deeper you get, the stronger monsters you find. I think the others got disheartened about having no progress and changed their race. Only Meggido remained because he doesn’t want to give up.”

“Awesome guy, awesome guy,” her boyfriend added.

She shrugged. “If they were still here, we would have lots of really strong players right now and would have already gotten past the Tunnel. Dunno. Prolly.”

We turned back to ChilliMaster to listen for more instructions.

“There will be several rest stops during the journey. The order will be, harvest shit, kill shit, mine shit. You can choose if you just want to catch up to one specific leg of the journey. Of course, the path will be dangerous and you’ll be travelling alone if you only want to catch up with us at the open mine site, for example. I encourage Foragers to join us during the first leg of our journey all over the mountain.”

A player raised his hand. “So what will we do if we want to catch up with the group? Like I made it to the first stop but I have to get to work and sleep after. When I log back in the party would have moved on, right?”

“And what if we die?” Another one asked “We have to catch up too. Might be hard to do that on our own.”

“Those are valid problems. Actually, those are the main factors that discourage people in joining Hunts. Time commitment…I understand,” ChilliMaster said. “We have a solution for that, the best we could come up for now and I hope that you people will help as well. As I said earlier, people are going to travel in batches. If you die, you can catch up with a later batch, something like that. We’ll also spike the ground with traps from one rest point to the next so that people who missed all the batches will have relative safety.

“You’re not bound to your batches. If the leader player of your batch is still not online and you want to try to catch up to another batch, you’re free to do so. If your batch has already moved on, you can wait for the next batch. You'll have plenty to do per stop. We also have the list of the usual log in and log off times of the leaders per batch. Not gonna promise these guys will stick to schedule, but at least you’ll have a rough idea where to join later if you have to go do real life stuff for a while.”

There were some more questions but the people generally got the idea of what to do in our massive exodus. I was pretty impressed by how the leader players organized everything. Getting people you haven’t met in real life, from all over the world, to get organized was a tough job.

Justalyne caught up with me after the meeting and the crowd started to move to the entrance of the village.  

"You're coming with us," she said. "I've got some Growth Essence I bought from a guy that could make them."

"Wow, that's awesome," I said. "When can Foragers make them, anyway?"

"You'll need to be Rank Fifteen Forager to get that item that makes them."

"Thanks for the invite. I'll contribute to the costs."

"Don't worry about that," she said. "Just help out with feeding corpses to the Essence. I feel I'm sort of responsible for your growth since I was the one who inspired you to become a Forager," she added with a laugh.

"Get going, people," ChilliMaster said, waving his large bronze staff. "Mardukryon horde coming through."