When I was back at Breaker City, I didn’t go back to the apartment, or Anchors; I just walked the city for a while, or at least Area 10. I’ve hit the narrow window of light and Area 10 didn’t look as bleak as it did in the dark. I walked down to the waterfront and the docks, looked over to the land on the other side of the river. There was more of Breaker City on that side, I’ve seen it from Sarahs apartment. Was that part of the area system as well, and if not, who lived there? So many questions. I walked back north, through a littered park, not the same that I’d seen from the apartment on the day that I arrived. There were no one camping in here, but people we’re out basking in the sun. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot more people in Area 10 now compared to when I arrived. Something told me that the people in the park had been here for some time already. They completely lacked that nervous energy of the new arrivals. A pair on a bench to the right was kissing, smiling at each other looking stupidly in love.

Well, enjoy that feeling while it last, kids.

I was thinking about that afternoon again, when I parked my car on the drive way, confused of seeing Thomas’s blue Trans-Am already parked there. That gut-wrenching suspicion that grew to a certainty when I slowly opened the front door. Those sounds from the living room. I walked slowly towards it, like in a trance, and there they were, Melindas pale ass going all jack rabbit style, Thomas hairy legs twitching, his hands on her lily-white ass. I think I blacked out for a moment. When I came back Melinda was screaming and crying, trying to wrap a blanket around her, Thomas backing into a corner, still naked, showing his palms saying it’s not what it looks like, dude. The dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. How could be anything else? I punched him right on the jaw. Melinda was wailing, begging me not to kill him. Before she said it, it hadn’t even surfaced as an option, but when she voiced it, I wanted nothing more than to kill that fucking bastard. But I didn’t. I left and when I returned both of them were gone. Melinda had left a note saying that she was moving out and would come to collect her things the next day and told me not to be there when she did. She was moving in with Thomas.

Good riddance and fuck you both.

Suddenly, green text started running in my display.

Sarah Parsa: You up for doing something?

What? Some kind of in-game-messaging system?

Brad Richards: What? Some kind of in-game-messaging system?

I managed to reel that back before it went away.

Brad Richards: Sure. I was thinking about looking on some appartements in Area 9.

Sarah Parsa: You hit level 10, then? Good boy! I’m proud of you. I can meet you at the Milanol. We can grab something to eat before we go house hunting.

I looked at the message for a good while, a frown on my face. Where was this heading? Up until now it had only been sex, and Sarah had been more than okay sending me away as soon as the deed was done. Now she wanted to grab dinner and go house hunting? This could get complicated. Once again, I saw Melindas pale ass in the sofa, the double betrayal, the girl I loved and the person I saw as my closest friend. I wasn’t going back to that.

Hell no.

Sarah Parsa: Hello?

Brad Richards: Yeah, dinner sounds fine.

Couldn’t piss that lady off. She knew the Alpha Prime and I was already at odds with his kid brother. I didn’t need any more powerful enemies.

I had only passed through Area 9 in Sarah’s car, in night time. Now, sitting in a cab, seeing the fluorescent green line on the map I felt less than sure that they would actually let me cross. Maybe one needed to have spent a certain time in Breaker City before being allowed to advance, or some stupid shit like that. I hadn’t been here even a week. I hadn’t noticed in the dark, when we just blew past the crossing, but there was an actual checkpoint here with NPCs in grey uniforms. The cab driver slowed in and rolled down his window, showing a laminated card. The other NPC came down the side of the car, rapping the side window with his knuckles, giving me a stern disapproving look.

I rolled down the side window.

“Please show your stats menu, sir.”

I did. The NPC gave a slight nod.

“Welcome to Area 9, sir. I’ll hope it will prove to be everything you wished for There’s a quite a lot of available apartments on the East Side, if you’re in the market.”

“I am. Thank you very much, good sir.”

And then we rolled on.

“You can drop me of at the Milanol,” I said to the driver as if I knew perfectly well where it was.

I didn’t, but the fact that there was a restaurant in Area 9 that Sarah was okay dining at, told me that Area 9 must be a big upgrade from Area 10. The first thing that struck me was the amount of people in it. Area 9 was positively bustling compared to Area 10. It felt more lived in. There were no empty store fronts at street level and all the windows above had curtains or flower pots in the windowsill. Area 9 felt very much like Lower East Side of New York, and the shape of the peninsula now became even more apparent as the slightly altered shape of Manhattan. There was no Central Park in the middle of it, though. There was a grand park, I could see on the map, and something looking like a lake, but that was all the way up in the north, covering parts of both Area 1,2 and 3.

The driver pulled in outside the Milanol, a restaurant by the corner of Galato’s and Maine; tables and chairs placed on the sidewalk, protected by a black awning that went around the corner. Inside I saw somber lights from oversized lightbulbs and waiters scurrying between the tables with trays. This was a world apart from Anchors that much was apparent. And of course I was underdressed, still in a button-down shirt, jeans and workman’s boots.

Sarah, in a black dress and her hair done, was waiting by a table just outside the entrance door, smoking. On the table was a drink in a tall, beading glass. She got up and hugged me, the delicate scent of her perfume tingling my nostrils. We sat down and she snapped her fingers to a waiter, pointing at her glass and then at me.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“You’re going to like it,” she said, pluming while smiling. “They have all the things in here that we have on the outside, but you won’t find this drink anywhere but here.”

“What is it,” I asked, looking at the milky green liquid.

“I don’t really know, but they say it’s herbs from the east side of Witcher’s Fall in Windersmyr, where the windswept birches thin out and the snow takes over, mixed with a special blend of whiskey the monks in the Western Valleys distils.”

“Wow, that’s what I call a sales pitch. Just imagine if we could bring that stuff to our world and sell it.”

She nodded with a knowing smile, as if she had thought the same thing many times, which I guessed she had.

“Comfortable grind some dungeon for gold, finance a trade caravan to Witcher’s Fall and the West Valleys, have them bringing wagon loads of the stuff back. That would’ve been something, but as you might’ve noticed there’s a function economy in place here as well.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That’s why Area 9 can have a place like the Milanol, for example. It wasn’t here when Area 9 was formed, it looked much like Area 10 then. But, as mentioned earlier, there are as many ways of playing this game as there are players. Some get enough of action and adventure after a couple of weeks and never ever even hit level 10. But do they return to the world outside just because of that? Maybe, from time to time, but you can’t just turn your back to this, when you know it’s here. So they go into business, starting those trade caravans, open restaurants or hotels, or whatever is in demand and live a good and fulfilling life on the inside.”

I was contemplating that, not knowing what to think about it. It was escapism in a way, but on the other hand, this world was as real as the one on the outside, or at least it felt like that. I could understand that Sarah preferred to be who she was here on the inside, to be a Hooters waitress on the outside. But, could one really stay in here, forever? Was that even a possibility? I guess it was. A thought struck me that gave me mental vertigo. One didn’t age inside the game world. Minutes on the outside was days and weeks in here. I tried to do the math in my head but my 6 in intelligence wasn’t enough. I at least got the stunning realization that one could live thousands of years on the inside before the body on the outside became too frail and weak to carry on.

“I can see it in your face, that you’re piecing the puzzle together, what makes this thing tick. And with that, I think you understand why the highest-level player is Raker with level 87. He’s the wealthiest, most powerful being in this world, but he could lose it all in a heartbeat if he’s killed. He would only be sent back to level 80, sure, but all his skill points would be wasted, all his loot, all his wealth, everything would be gone. And a level 80 without advanced skills? He would be a punching bag amongst his peers. The more you earn, the more you have to lose. You reach a breaking point where the risk doesn’t meet the reward. That’s where you stop and just hog the benefits for your level. For Raker, it was level 87, for me it was level 42. For you?” She angled her palm towards me, giving a shrug. “That’s up to you to decide, but if you’re serious going after Raker, you should know that many before you have as well, but has been lured to a halt by all the glitz and glamour of high-level life.”

“How does the Battle Clash jack into all this? I saw level 60’s butchering each other.”

“Ah, the Black Bloods, they are another part of the equation entirely,” she said and snuffed her cigarette out against the ashtray, sipping her drink. “They’ve made a choice that will lead either to glory or to destruction. I think you’ve already noticed that levelling slows down the higher you get, and that curve will only get more punishing the higher you go. Stats will come in slower and slower until you’re completely plateaued. In that situation, if you’re a restless, martial soul, you can get into a bio hack program. The program enhances your physical base stats, maybe elevating strength from 7 to a 10, giving a massive boost to all your skill stats. It comes with a price, though. You’ve seen them, all roided up, but what a Black Blood gains in physical power he loses in restraint, compassion and empathy. Having one of them, governing all of us have proved… less than desirable.”

“Raker is a Black Blood?”

“Oh, for sure,” she said, lighting up another cigarette. “You won’t hit level 87 without massively enhancing your base stats. Just wanted to let you know.”

Well, that did change the perspective a bit.

“But, it’s too early to think about that,” she said, draining the rest of her drink. “The Battle Clash restarts the next week and you’re intent on be in it?”

I was, and I told her.

“Yeah, thought so. You’ll be entering the lowest bracket, then. It’ll be a free for all but there will be players up to level 15 in your bracket. When your bracket is decided, the winner can choose to enter the next bracket that starts a week after the finale, facing level 16’s to level 20’s. There will be a stream of your Clash for the die-hard fans, but there won’t be any extensive TV coverages until the level 40’s joins in on the fun.”

There was a thing that had irked me for a while, something Sarah spoke of as a natural part of life here in the game.

“You’re talking about the lack of exposure like it’s a bad thing. I don’t want the exposure. I want the levels and the Battle Clash is the fastest way of getting them. What aren’t you telling me.”

She smiled faintly, looking down at the table, tapping the back end of her cigarette.

“You’re right. It isn’t important. I just stated the facts.”

Well, that was an obvious lie…

The waiter, a girl in her twenties with brown hair in a ponytail, brought me my drink and put it down on a linen napkin. She didn’t have an NPC tag above her head. Sarah ordered another drink to her food. I chose steak with fries, biting my tongue when I saw the prices. Sheez. 400 for a steak and deep-fried potatoes? No wonder people did good business in here. Please understand, I’m not a cheap bastard, but I’ve been living on a budget since I got in here and I was under the false impression that I actually was somewhat flushed with cash after the Gauntlet, but I realized now that my 4900 credits wouldn’t last me long in Area 9.

But the food was great and the drink was mind-bogglingly good, tasting sweet but with a slight acidic edge. We took in another one before paying; Sarah insisted on paying for me, but there I drew the line. I’m old-fashioned in that way. It was bad enough I couldn’t buy her dinner, but she paying for me? That was a definite no go. We jumped into a cab, a bit drunk and happy and went down to East Side. I popped open the real estate pages for East Side, scrolling through them, setting the upper price range at 2000 a week. That was more than I wanted to pay, and if Sarah hadn’t been there with me in the back of the car, leaning against my shoulder to see the display, I would’ve put it at 1000.

“Not that one,” she said and pawed at the air, closing down one of the windows. “That area isn’t as charming as the ad makes it out to be, trust me. And not that one,” she pawed another window shut. “But that one.”

Weekly rent 2200 credits, three rooms and with a view of the river from the living room. I agreed it really did look good. I marked it for a physical tour. Sarah turned her head and kissed my neck, making all my systems going into ready.

There was a rotund, balding real estate agent waiting for as at the curb, hugging a blue ring binder to his chest. The tag over his head:

Lester Moore NPC

Lester gave us a professionally trained smiled and blathered on about the apartment while we walked the stairs up to the third floor. He needed say no more. I was sold on the place as soon as we entered. The afternoon light spilled in through the large windows in the living room, and through the kitchen window I could see the glittering surface of the river alight with fire in the setting sun. It was a done deal and we sent Lester packing with a smile.

The furniture was bare bone and I would need to go shopping after cracking some more monster skulls. The bed was a single bed. Sarah sat down on it, bouncing a little to test the springs, before giving med a wicked smile.

“It’ll do.”

And it did.