Aya bites her lip thinking she would be able to do more research into the world of Moon Valley, all she knew so far was there was money to be made here and it was an MMORPG.
"I remember the app had an earnings tab." Aya says, getting an idea, she opens up the Moon Valley companion app to check the earnings tab.
Quickly pulling open the Moon Valley companion app, she first checks her current items
Tapping a bit she scans the list.
[Current Items]
[Equipment]
[Food]
[Crafting]
[Items]
[See all]
Hitting the see all button she sees her loot organized into categories for easy viewing.
[Cotton Tunic x1
Magic ring x1
Leather boot x1
Starter Sword x1
***
Rabbit fur x5
Rabbit meat x17
***
Health Potion x5
Mana Potion x5]
Moving on to the earnings tab she takes note of the in-game currency she had so far.
[Moon Points: 1550
Moon Gems: 50
Gold: 10]
On noticing the Gold button was highlighted, she clicks it to see what would happen.
[Convert Gold?]
(Minimum 5 Gold)
[Yes/No]
It asks her, Aya's eyes widen, she searches for the help screen and clicks on the button, inciting an animation screen to pop up.
"Low on cash? We've got you covered! Exchange in-game currency for real money. This allows you, dear player, to make money while giving Lumos inc a cut." the fairy on screen says.
"Please note that only Gold may be exchanged, terms and conditions apply."
Aya's face falls a bit a bit at the news, she thought she would be able to convert her Moon Points since she had acquired so many of them.
"So that's why they gave me more Moon Points than Gold." she mutters. Moving on she clicks the next animation with the topic: Auction house.
"Hello again." The tutorial fairy greets her. "Did you know Moon Valley has an in-game auction house?" the fairy giggles.
"No, I did not." Aya says, she'd heard the term auction house before but only among the very upper echelons of society. It was apparently some fancy place where they sold expensive things or whatever.
"Sell crafted and rare items from adventuring and or production to other players for Gold!"
A demonstration appears on screen, Aya watches a legendary piece of equipment be sold off, she then watches a crafted food item be auctioned off as well.
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"Hang on, you can even cook in this game?" Once the animation stops, Aya puts her hand to her chin deep in thought. Deciding to try out the conversion feature she clicks the Gold on the app tab
[Convert Gold?]
(Minimum 5 Gold)
[Yes/No]
Aya gulps, testing out this feature would lead her to sacrifice half the gold the game gifted her. Closing her eyes she clicks the yes button and the app asks her for a digital wallet and password, she enters it.
[You will incur a 25% Transaction fee]
Aya groaned, hitting yes. It doesn't take a moment for 31.08 Lu to hit her account. Aya gasps, so loudly her boss growls at her.
Giving a nervous laugh she smiles sheepishly and points to a bare wall.
"Sorry I thought I saw a spider." she says. The man shakes his head, going back to reading the newspaper.
31.08 Lue was enough to get her a dinner at some of the higher end restaurants in the city! And she just made that for Free!
"This is more than I make in an hour!" Aya whispers, resisting the urge to convert the rest of her Gold, Aya's mind begins whirling.
This would mean she could craft items in-game and auction them off one by one, her stats didn't make her feel super confident about being an adventurer anyway.
"Let me see if there are any forums that can help me." she says, she opens her web browser and searches for a Moon Valley forum. It doesn't take long for dozens of forums to show up on her phone screen.
Reading through each, she clicks on the one hosted by the Moon Valley website.
Within the pages of the forums, she could see dozens of topics about the best equipable items and potions take. Moving on she scrolls and scrolls until she finds something about food.
"Ugh food is so hard to make, no wonder they sell for crazy on the auction portal." an annoyed user of the forum types
"What? But I made bread and only got a few measly Moon Points for it."
"Of course you did, the food that sells for crazy amounts have stat buffs and make you resistant to certain types of damage. You can't just peddle any old bread lol." another user replies.
Aya pauses, taking note of this information, she clicks off and continues to read the rest of the forum, she finds another title
'Why are crafting items so difficult to find in this game?" a user asks.
"Buy my guidebook, I was a beta tester."
"Ew no thanks." another user replies, causing Aya to laugh a tiny bit. Gotta respect the hustle though.
"Geez."
"It's because no one wants to share their secret foraging spots, and merchant classes, both NPC and players charge for it." another user replies.
"Damn production classes! Some of us just want to play the game!"
"Suck it up."
After her foray into the forums, Aya finds there are two ways to play the game. Adventurer and Production or Crafter.
The adventurers had guilds to which the production classes crafted and sold items to. It was much harder to become a production based player as those subclasses were gotten through quests. Aya kept that in mind too, suddenly growing nervous.
"I hope my luck will see me through." she says to herself. Aya figures if she got a class in the game that would allow her to craft often she would be fine.
"Is this what Daichi meant?" she wonders, closing off the forums and heading back to the app. The final tab that had previously been locked was open now. It was the auction house tab, with a simple interface that would allow her to select an item from her inventory to put on auction.
'I guess it opened when I watched the animations.' she thinks.
As a test, she places two of her rabbit meat on sale at the auction and closes the app. She exhales, at this point, she was just waiting for the office to close so she would be able to game.
Moon Valley could actually be her way out of Axen City. There was nothing for her here and she had no one except her hag aunt.
Unfortunately shortly after she moved to Axen, her grandmother had passed so Aya had to look after herself. There was no word from Mr. Fido after that.
'I don't even know what happened to grandma's stuff.' Aya thinks.
"You've been on your phone all day, is there a special someone I should know about?" the boss asks. Aya squeaks, face heating up at the thought of chatting with a significant other.
"N-No!" she stammers. The older man laughs. Aya frowns, suddenly becoming grumpy from his prank on her.
'Can the clock hit five already!' she whines.
----------
Work closes again with little commotion and all Aya could think about was heading back to her small apartment to play the game and apply all she'd learned from the forum.
Hearing her phone beep on the bus, she's surprised to see her rabbit meat had sold for 100 Moon Points. Aya remembers she didn't even set a price for it since it was just an item she'd gotten the other day.
'Well, I hope whoever got it enjoys their purchase.' Aya thinks. The auction tab was interesting, now she just needed to get home and play.
----------
Walking into her apartment she locks her door and showers before slipping into her pajamas to begin playing.
The theme music plays and soon Aya is back in the realm of the game with her character Yvlena. After checking her items, she notices the box from the quest she did yesterday.
[Yvlena Acquired
Rabbit fur cloak
Quartz Ring
Iron Sword
***
Health Potion x5
Mana Potion x5
***
Potion Recipe]
Quickly equipping her new items Aya is surprised to see her Strength stats go up but her agility and dexterity go down. She concludes the sword is too heavy for her character she unequips it and re-equips the starter sword she started with.
Much better!
NAME: YVLENA
RACE: ELF
HP:120
MP:70
CLASS:????
[LVL: 2]
[EXP:50/70]
[STR]:18
[DEF]:15
[DEX]:16
[AGI]:14
[INT]:11
[WIS]:10
[CHA]:6
[LUK]:8
Satisfaction is written across her face at her new stats.
'Items sure boost you a lot.' she thinks, Aya notices she appeared outside of the Bloom Meadow once again, the area she had been when she was first starting.
Excitedly she decides to check Bloom Haven to see if anyone had a quest for her. Once again running towards the gate, the guards greet her as she passes, welcoming her back from adventuring.
Aya runs around talking to various NPCs, some were nice others were rude, to say the least. One man straight up yells in her face.
"I hate adventurers!" he proclaims and walks away after glaring harshly at her. Aya's character slumps in-game, disappointed.
"What the heck is his problem?" Aya growls. Yvlena stomps her foot on screen and Aya finds it quite interesting how the elf is able to emote her emotions.
'Technology is truly wonderful.' she thinks. Even without the VR headset while playing, Aya felt as though she was within the game. She shrugs it off and chalks it off to good game design but something at the back of her mind tells her there's something more.
Just then an old woman approaches her laughing good naturedly.
"Don't mind him dear." she says, the screen lets Aya know that the woman's name is Beatrice. Aya observes the sweet old woman who smiles at her, showing gentle laugh lines and wrinkles that came with age.
The old woman has a kind face and Aya is hard pressed not to suddenly remember her grandmother.
Aya interacts with her.
"What's his problem?" Aya asks, the old woman waves a hand dismissively, telling Aya not to worry about it.
"He believes adventurers are simply profiteers, they make no room for the simple life." the old woman explains.
"I understand." she says.
"Members of the production classes too." the old woman says. "He just has a lot of feelings about them."
"To be fair I'm not much of an adventurer myself, I would really like to be a crafter of some sort or grow things." Aya says to NPC, she doesn't know why but it feels natural conversing with her. Beatrice suddenly gets an inquisitive look on her face, putting a hand to her chin it looks like the woman is considering something.
"I have a quest for you." She says.