“Sir, what am I going to do with this?” Eclairs said as she held up the Mardukryon shirt.

 I had just gotten back from the Nornyr Online Convention. I went straight to my law firm because there was plenty of paperwork that needed my attention, both electronic paperwork and normal, good old paper kind of paperwork. Later I have to go to some meeting in JYE's office. Busy, busy day. I really wanted to join the part of the Hunt where we were going to mine some lodes in a part of a mountain I haven't been to before, but I couldn't escape from such an important meeting. Maybe I could catch up with them later in the evening. I could give the ores and other stuff I was going to find to Blacksmith Sumuel to get some good stuff out of him. 

Eclairs shook the Mardukryon shirt in front of me to get my attention. 

“How would I know what you’re going to do with that.” I looked up from the document I was reading and sighed. “Eclairs, I still haven’t achieved omniscience. People are not building temples and making sacrifices in my name so I don't have godlike powers. I don’t know what’s going on inside your head. Or is this a guessing game?”

I gave her my Mardukryon shirt. It was a cool shirt but I don't think it was a shirt appropriate for me, or at least, for the persona people knew to be me. Such a waste if I just wore it inside my house. I could have hung it as a decoration but I preferred to keep my house bare and simple so that people visiting could not draw any conclusions as to the kind of person I was. 

So, I ended up giving Eclairs the shirt.

“No, no, no. What I meant was what am I supposed to do with a shirt that’s not my size?”

“Like I said, I don’t know.”

“Why did you buy me a shirt that’s not my size?” she said comparing the shirt with her body. “This is too big for me.”

“Well, obviously it's too big for you because it’s my size. I would be really surprised if we're the same size.” I shook my head and went back to reading. I took out my fancy fountain pen to sign the documents. It took some effort to learn how to use it but damn do I look very cultured when writing with it. Fountain pen collectors might roast me for using it for that reason. 

Eclairs snorted when she saw me use the fountain pen. She knew why I was using it instead of a normal pen. Then she said, “You’re going to give me a shirt that’s not my size.” She placed her hands on her hips. 

“I wanted to buy that shirt, so I bought it in my size. Why would I buy it in your size?”

She opened her mouth then closed it. She just stared at me in disbelief.

“Eclairs,” I said patiently. “You should learn not to be self-centered. People who buy shirts don’t buy them in your size. You have to accept the fact that the shirt buying universe doesn’t revolve around you. I doubt if a lot of people know what your size is, ergo, they couldn’t buy it even if they wanted to.”

“But…but you’re giving it to me—”

“I’m trying to think about some quote about self-centeredness. Hmmm. Can’t think of anything.”

“Wow. I’m the self-centered one?”

“Eclairs. If we have a nationwide poll where people will vote on who is more humble and down to earth between the two of us, you know that I’ll win, right?” Eclairs was rolling her eyes so much I feared that she was going to detach her eyeballs. I hoped that when that happened, the detached eyeballs wouldn't roll around my office dripping blood.

I opened my drawer and took out a magazine.

“Here we go…” she said when she saw what I was holding.

“Who’s on the picture? Me. And you see how they took the picture? It was while I was volunteering in friggin’ Africa feeding kids in some war torn country. You probably couldn't point out that country on a globe. And you know why? Because I forgot the name of that country. Oh wait, it's here in the article.

"Anyway, I didn’t accept their invitation, the people from the magazine, to pose for a picture. That’s too much. They had to content themselves with a candid shot. To which I agreed to be published afterward. See how humble I was?”

“You’re going to lecture?" Eclairs said. "I feel like you’re going to say something important. Or is this the same sermon about what really matters is how people perceive your action not the real reasons behind it. I heard that one many times before."

"Nah, that's a different lecture. The 'it's the thought that counts' is really bullshit?" I stared at the cover of the magazine. "I forgot what I wanted to do. I was supposed to tease you with the size of the shirt but I was distracted by my awesome picture on the cover."

"Something about self-centeredness," she said as she folded the shirt and put it on the table.

"Ah, right. I took out the magazine to tell you about people that go help other people. You know how they always say help others to feed your soul, not your ego. Serve others, not yourself. Help others and you get that warm fuzzy feeling inside of you." I leaned back on my chair and paused for a bit. "I think doing good for the psychic reward of fulfillment and being happy for helping others is some form of self-centeredness."

"What? How can that be being self-centered if you're helping others? They're not like you. I mean, no offense sir, but you're not exactly helping people because you care for them."

"You know that I really don't get offended even though I'm a prideful person. I don't think it's fitting if someone like me will get offended by something a peasant says."

"Am I the peasant in that sentence?"

I continued, ignoring what Eclairs said. "And I'm not really sure about what I'm talking about myself. I can't put myself in the shoes of a person who's really altruistic. It's supposed to be helping others without rewards or even at your own expense. But I think that that warm fuzzy feeling they're talking about when helping others is a reward. Even sacrificing yourself to save others is some form of self-centeredness."

"Uh. Okay. Whatever you say. I don't think I would be able to understand how you think." Eclairs patted the folded shirt. "So, going back to the matter at hand. What do I do with this?"

"Are you sure that won't fit you?" I said jokingly. 

She pursed her lips and looked at me sternly.

"I have a bigger size than you do. I'm sure that shirt will fit you." I wasn't sure how long I could continue annoying her until she gets angry.

She exhaled forcefully. She began unbuttoning her black blazer with an annoyed look on her face and then took it off, revealing the top part of her red pencil dress that closely hugged her body. She always wore solid monochromatic colored dresses with a blazer on top. Apparently, having designs on clothes was not her style.

"Why did you take off your blazer?"

"It's hard to wear a shirt over my blazer," she said, smoothing out her blazer and putting it on my table.

The dress she wore was sleeveless. She had toned arms that made me wonder whether or not she had been working out. I knew that she was taking several Virtual Courses so I was surprised she found the time to go to the gym. She was in surprisingly great shape. Her rather thick blazer hid her figure.

She caught my eyes wandering over the flawless white skin of her arm. Then she smirked as she put on the Marukdryon shirt. 

"What?" I said. 

"Nothing," she said as she looked down on the shirt she wore. It was obviously too big for her. No surprises there. "I guess I could wear this at home." She did a twirl. "This could pass off as a really short dress."

"You're going to wear that as a dress?"

"I hope you're not having weird thoughts," she said, smirking again.

"Weird thoughts about what?" I said knowing full well what she meant. Then I changed the topic. "You know that our dress code does not allow sleeveless." 

"You know, weird thoughts." She took off the shirt. "I guess I violated the dress code. So...what are you gonna do about it?" she said then she stuck her tongue out to show that she was kidding. 

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

I cringed at her stupid attempt to make a sexual joke. Did she think that we were close friends or something where she could joke about something like that? Were we really that close?

I guess she noticed my expression because she suddenly shook her head and instantly turned serious and said, "Don't mind what I just said." Her cheeks were turning as red as her dress. She hurriedly put her blazer back on. "See, now I don't violate the dress code. You do know that a lot of women wear sleeveless blouse or dress under their blazers or cardigans when working in a corporate environment?"

"Um. Is there something wrong with you?" I said. Should I mention that her joke was cringey? Or was she flirting with me? Then that was in the top three most embarrassing attempts at flirting that I have encountered. I desisted from making an issue out of it because I knew that she would get extremely defensive and cold. She always did that if she did was being embarrassed. Still, it was tempting to tease her. 

"Nothing's wrong, sir," she said in a high-pitched voice. 

"That was a quick change of expressions right there," I said. Should I tease her a bit? Nah, she would probably kill me if I did that. She does look very cute when she was embarrassed. Her eyes were less scary the more she was embarrassed, but I really, really didn't want to get murdered.

She folded the shirt again and tucked it under her arm. "Sir, I'm practicing my, uh, acting. Yes. I'm taking acting lessons and I'm practicing my expressions. Is there anything else you need, sir? I still have work to do," she said icily as if threatening me not to continue talking to her about what she said earlier. 

I decided to let it go because I was such a considerate person. Bless me.“Eclairs, could you call IT Guy?”

“Which IT Guy? And they do have names, sir.”

I stopped myself from grinning. Eclairs was adding 'sir' to everything she said. Normally, she rarely referred to me as sir. I planned to buy blast proof glass and surround myself with it, then I was going to tease here about this incident. “Saint. I’m talking about Saint. You do know he hates his first name, right? He was the one who said I should call him IT Guy.”

Eclairs frowned as if she wasn’t going to believe me and then said, “Sure sir, I’ll tell him to go to your office. And thank you for the shirt.”

As Eclairs closed the door, I opened the pamphlet that Santi gave me. It had a page in front saying that it was a community effort from Mardukryon players. They also signed it with their in-game names. Their pamphlet was also published online in their own forum with chat. And they're inviting people to visit their site. I was going to visit that later. I haven't seen that earlier when I was searching for Mardukryon guides so maybe it was a new one.

Such a nice bunch of people. I have encountered different kinds of player communities during my gaming days. They really ranged from nice to assholes. It was good that the Mardukryon players in my country were generally nice people. But then again, our country have generally nice people. It was probably due to our country having the top rank in the recent highest quality of life surveys. I think I was the one who pulled up our rankings for being a super nice individual. 

I looked at the names of the players once again. Should I memorize these names? I only knew Santi in the list and no one else. I think I saw some of these names when I was trading with other players but I couldn’t be so sure.

There were several important information that I got from reading it. It confirmed that Mardukryons do have a larger experience bar than other races. I never knew how much was the difference before but the book said that it was two and a half times larger at level one and then the difference grows exponentially. They have a rough estimation but there were hidden factors that affected their calculations. That was fucking huge!

I smiled as I remembered my friend who was obsessed in computing game formulas based on tests. I wondered where that guy was now.

Flipping over some pages, I reached the computation that I wanted. The one for Vitality. One point in Vitality gave half a percent increase of maximum life. On its own, it didn’t mean much, but what made it strong was that Mardukryons gave exponential base health while leveling. Per level up, we gain ten health points times that level. At level two we get twenty additional life, at three we get an additional thirty and so on. It would up to a pretty hefty sum when we reached the max level which was currently a hundred.

I never really thought about how much life I had because the monsters in the mountain were scaled to make our life difficult commensurate to our exponential stat gain. Which would mean that a level twenty human would get easily squished by the same monsters I was facing. 

The Vitality Stat apparently affected regeneration as well, something like one percent of the base regeneration per point. There was a caveat that they couldn’t pinpoint it because it was affected by hidden stats. Vitality affected magic resistance as well as Resilience, a bunch of secondary attributes. I have to look up more on the Resilience Stat. As for magic resistance, they didn't know how much it increased per level because there were so few magical shits on the mountain. Well, they should pay the electric mammoths a visit, although those probably only appeared in huge Hunts. 

There was an interesting note below the Vitality page. Giants would get more health than Mardukryons could ever dream of. Sad. There was no way Mardukryons could hope to match a Giant’s base health. Some other races also outstrip a Mardukryons base health even with Vitality like Rune Golems and the Forbidden Titanic Automatons, whatever those races were. However, the Vitality stat of the Mardukryons gave percentage increase of maximum life, after all of the flat health additions were in place. 

Which meant that depending on the items equipped, there might be a chance to outstrip a giant's health. But you should also keep in mind that the giant would have his own gear as well.

I closed the booklet as I heard footsteps down the corridor leading to my office.  

“Sir, you needed me?” Saint said.

He has such a cool name, I wonder why he doesn’t like it. I nodded. “Did you hear about that reporter who died?”

“Yeah. It’s all over the news. I even had my spinal port checked at a JYE service center. Mine is a top-end spinal port, but still.”

“I’ll probably go to a service center tomorrow,” I said more to myself than to Saint.

“And they’re now pushing for standardization because of what happened. Due for a long time now, if you ask me. Those kind of accidents were bound to happen with substandard implants. What do you want with him, anyway?”

I said, “He has written something about people using Nornyr as a medium for, uhm, let’s say sketchy activities.”

“Like black market dealings and drug trafficking?”

“I didn’t say that and you didn’t hear that from me,” I said, grinning. “But you do understand the problem with it?”

“Yes sir, I do,” Saint nodded solemnly. He used to work with an IT department in law enforcement, but our pay was way higher for less stressful work. “I very much do.”

It all began a couple of decades ago, when I was still playing games. The proliferation of misinformation began on the internet. People with various interests would spam the internet with false news and all that. There were various reasons they did that. Since most people on the internet couldn’t be bothered with searching the veracity of anything they read, they believed it and caused panic. In one country, an economic crisis nearly began because of some stupid false news that millions of people believed.

Bottomline was, many people called for regulation of the internet by their governments. Of course, that had many freedom of speech implications, but as usual, when people want something done, they implement it in the laziest way possible and they forget about the consequences.

It resulted in sites promising protecting your privacy and all that. Of course, criminal organizations, human trafficking, drugs, those kind of nasties, moved in to those sites because various governments were prodding everywhere.

Eventually, governments cracked down on those sites as well.

What has that got to do with Nornyr Online? Well, JYE protected all its users’ data. Everything was protected from the government, or the corporations, all sorts of entities that mine data. Even though players could log in to the internet in their pods, no one could get into the systems of JYE. Or at least, that was what they boasted.

“People are bound to overreact to those kinds of news. Just imagine a parent knowing that their kid playing a virtual game was sitting in restaurant in the virtual world while players in the next table where talking about drug trafficking.” I tutted like I cared about the upbringing of kids playing Nornyr. Even if kids tried to fight me in the future, I would show them no mercy. 

“So, he’s reporting things about that? Are those true? You want me to take down his site?”

“Hey, we don’t do stuff like that,” I said in a serious tone like I was the paragon of morality and integrity. “He’s a crazy conspiracy guy, according to some people that I talked to that read his works. And he’s not reporting about them but rather he puts them on his blog.”

“Take down the blog. I get it.”

“No, no. You find that blog. I can’t find it. Maybe someone deleted it? I don’t know.” I wrote the address of the blog that I got from Mephisto. “This is it. I can’t find it now. Try finding it.”

“Sure, boss. Will do,” he replied, tipping an imaginary hat to me.

“Thanks a lot, IT Guy. Can you do it ASAP?”

“I’ll find it by tomorrow,” Saint said. He made that gesture again as if he was tipping a hat then left my office.

I opened up my computer and logged in my account in Nornyr’s website. People might find it weird that I was still using a good old computer monitor, but I really didn’t like those hologram thingies. It was really hard to find a store that was still selling monitors.  

I explored the Mardukryon Skill Tree. My Ancestral Constitution was just a Sliver from leveling up and reaching level ten. It was going to cap at fifty health regeneration per second.

I saved my skill points because I knew that ranking up a skill that reached level ten required more than one skill point. It was a trade-off between branching out to more skills or ranking up one skill.

Another reason that I was saving up the skill points was that I didn’t know a lot about the game. My original plan was to put all my points in defensive skills and maybe some heal skills from the support part of the tree. That would make me very tanky indeed. But the fight with the elephants made me realize that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything with just being tanky.

Going over my skill tree, especially the defensive skills, I realized that there were skills that were redundant or weren’t compatible with each other. There were also some other skills that worked well together and a combination of the mechanics of two skills would probably have more benefits than getting four different skills that didn’t have synergy with each other.

I should plan my own build. Something that would be really tanky while taking advantage of that tankiness. I took out a newly bought small notebook from my drawer. I was going to start writing down my plans like I used to in the past. This was the beginning of the end for all the players who were currently in the top ranks.

Now, I was serious. 

I looked for a normal pen, not a fountain pen because I hated using it. It required so much effort to write with it, but my penmanship looked handsome as hell though. I didn’t need pretty penmanship when I was planning my build.

Raising the ball pen I found, I said, “And the decree of the immortal tank god HeraldicHardOn starts now.”