Six-months; the duration of each season in Akyria.

It was how long things were good-and- growing. It was how I'd gone from tailory to armory which John had recommended I begin learning the other particulars of. I didn't get to start the first composite works until the summer began. That was five months and a weeks time of learning more and applying the ever-developing knowledge to cement it into thought.

Not just smithing, but also metallurgy. One needed to be able to refine metals into pure specimens for certain works. Other times, one needed to alloy these and insure the mixture was thorough, without destroying more fragile-to-heat metals yet mix them with a metal more resiliant to the heat.

That could be simple, sometimes, with some-techniques, taking each metal out when they were their respective proper temperatures for bonding. Alloys, composites, metals, and the purposes of where their functions and forms crossed together into the more general and dynamic, or specifical and basic applications.

General and dynamic; those like a durable and corrosion resistant steel you could make about anything with. Or specifical and basic; like a steel that was fire, electricity, acid, or vibration resistant depending on what you needed to make out of a steel. But steel was one category, and even soft metals weren't exactly 'easier-to-work'.

Most melted faster. This understanding translates a lot towards further realizing 'If it melts faster, it will be destroyed by heat faster too.' when you extrapolate upon that simple yet fundamental link. Tin, gold, silver, if you burned them up they weren't what they had been anymore.

One benefit of soft metal usage was it was often shaped in a thin form. It was used to bond as soldering. Jewelry, solderings, gaskets, seals, small-utensils, gildings, and other platings-and-coatings, there were all sorts of uses for learning how to work more fragile metals.

But, when heat breaks down the molecular bonds due to the metals having exceeded their material states ability to remain even a liquid any longer, it vaporized, the split parts of the sum began rapidly reacting with else in the surrounding environment and one way or another, changing.

So short answer is 'humpty-dumpty' does not get put back together again at that point, when a soft metal exceeded its more narrow window of thermal-threshold. Using heat smartly was the way to go, high at first to start heating it up, lowering it quickly to the point it could get where you wanted it.

Even smithing and metallurgy weren't all. Pottery, and in particular, the ability to make ceramic, porcelain, and vitreous-enamel, which was plenty enough time to also learn by helping make bricks, mortars, and cements, because the kilns came with moments of downtime while your crafts were being fired.

I'd spent the first month penny-pinching too frugally for the most benefit possible, until a common sense realization what with literally making clay-and-else into bricks. Bricks, one built-with, or one could sell. You're turning mud-and-hay into good-money, think about it! And heavy as they are, people will pay you good-money to lug away heavy-brick.

I had realized I was missing out on saving, because much was within miles of town, and for a month I had ignored it. A mine anyone could go to, one with good iron in it, but that you would have to sort out from the stone you mined. Your working into said stone would necessitate shoring the opened expanse.

That meant you'd be putting some of that iron back into the shoring with nails, or taking time to hand drill holes in the beams in which to insert pegs. Pegs you'd have to hammer in, of course, and were best tar soaked so there was no gaps for the pegs to hold moisture inside and rot out.

Nails, it was. Beams, I'd have to cut and shape, which a saw was better for than a hatchet. I'd need a pickaxe to even begin mining, but couldn't ask to borrow one, because it was one thing to borrow one for clearing roots and another to borrow for trying to make a living. I did have one option for making the money for all this.

A shovel and a bucket were all I'd afforded with some left after breaking the silver coin. Yet, in a shovel and bucket, a man finds fortunes far better and easier along surfaces in comparison to the man who hits hard surfaces with a heavy instrument and mainly collects valueless stone that surrounds what little has value.

Scooping. It is for those who want to be rich. Scoop all of value, that sits easy on the surface, you won't need to steal to become wealthy in time. It takes time and effort, walking and moving on and around, exploring and adventuring which are all things humans would prefer over mining.

Knowledge made things valuable you would never otherwise think had a use. There was dogs feces all through town. It was used in the tannery, as was urine, only it was easier to get folk to use a convenient public urinal with privacy-door than bring in feces. So I scooped that, first. It was beneficial to everyone, valuable, humble dog-poop.

The launderers also used the urine, as did the apothecary, and every person who lived in town had fairer prices with everyone of them because of this. However, this was only a start, and I'd washed my bucket downstream of town to go for better prospects. Now, with a second bucket, I rigged the two up together onto a pole for easier carrying over my shoulders.

Shells from the stream were like gold. Calcium-carbonate was good for lime. Lime was good for refining iron, making sugar and salt, cement, mortar, paper, pickling, medicines, ferilizer, but by itself shells were not as valuable as the lime could be to many who would pay silvers for it and competed for what there was of it.

Nobody would pay copper pennies for shells, here. They got their lime from someplace else, and, there was the factor I had the perspective of my worlds past in comparison. Then there is the consideration that it was just an alternative they hadn't had to discover by necessity. Either way, it wasn't difficult to scoop up shells that were left as clams died or were eaten.

For a month, I'd both started to increase profits and had a valuable material for making brick, mortar, and cement. So much revolved around fire, fuel for it, and when I wasn't scooping, I was chopping with an axe in no time and sawing not long after. Boards, beams, firewood for cooking and the winter. Wood burned better, warmer when it had seasoned over time.

Building a basement, a house over it, digging a well, drains, levelling and flushing the building over its deep, wide, basement-hollowed-foundation, really making it weatherproof, sturdy, defensible, though when the grass regrew it would be invisible except for the chimney. Dry wood would make far less smoke than wet wood.

At some point it seemed like I would never stop building out the basements width and depth, wanting more space than I needed since the seasons were longer. Space for wood, food, the well which didn't need be deep as it was fed by a near ice-cold spring. That spring I incorporated rather than fight, and had a springhouse room to add.

Nothing but the firewood was going to be down here flammable, not even the shelves, hatchframe or hatchdoor would be wood. The steps down were even stone, and the ceiling was all bricked and columned to support the cieling from sagging over time. Keeping a fire going low, and slow in the house made the bricks dry faster.

Keeping those cieling-bricks supported by temporary wooden supports while they solidified a few weeks, I'd been terrified that their removal would collapse this all but had been thoughtful and careful to plan out everything. I'd built a seep tank for the toilet, there was a hand pump to get water flowing to it, and the seepage cistern was loaded with lime.

I'd decided my master bedroom be down in the basement later it became so nice, cooler than the heat of the day by far, and by the end of the second month the stone had become a bit too chilly down there for the nights. If not for all the experience building, working with wood and stone, I'd have had to learn to do that here as well.The barn came next as a project.

However the first month' end had saw those primal-begun from my world here begin realizing they needed to regroup and rethink their approaches as individuals and groups. They'd began approaching trading and servicing with their first successes in place of their prior failures and noting each others successes.

Their second months were different. By then they did have decent bows and spears. People who could make these things hadn't just discovered they could benefit from it in-game, they could ply trade skills here and turn that into real-cash. I'd known that from my times each day going back home. Then, the eventual occurred.

A few soldiers, a geologist, a chemist, and a gunsmith walk into a bar, ended up talking about what they did, the new game, joking about what would happen if they got together in-game, and what should have become some kind of joke with a humorous punchline became a phenomenon. Not right-away, nor by this one act alone.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Thousands of similarly versatile and potent, diverse but small groups were still trying to figure out the answer to questions other people had given up on. Most were in it for money, or seeking fame, if not recognition or glory. Others wanted to know; 'Was there more to the place?'

By the end of that third month there had been confirmation of that. 'Yes. Fire-arms were confirmed, though they were rudimentary and potentially more deadly to the wielder than the target. One needed real skills to accomplish real goals in a fantasy world. 'WTF?' It was literally a headline for a famous VR game-reviewer.

When reality hit home that while they had been given an equalized avatar that could be optimized, people would have to condition and train it to see benefits, what blew minds was its demands on existing tradeskills. It was: 'Way over the casuals head.' the week-one review, to: 'Expert gamers fare worse.' after the third-month.

The casual players were faring better because they were more like to go about life and game casually. No pressure or expectations, and, usually unable as often as unwilling to play long, were more likely to have developed more realistic thus translatable skills.

Most expert players were either at the age where they'd spent most of their time playing games, so, vocationally and physically incomparable to those who spent more time moving and orienting their bodies under normal stresses and strains anyway.

Or, too young to have realistically lived long enough to have developed the life skills to compete meaningfully with even an average adult casual. That they were not aged to even work often times said enough. Communication, reflexes, role, perspective, as well the many other skills games provided were still useful.

What messed everyone up was that statement Akyria made. 'This isn't a place for playing, this is a land for living. Not for gamers or even players, but instead for those seeking life, knowledge, development, emotions, pleasures-and-pains, stresses-and-strains. Not a game; a crucible.'

However, this infuriating reality the world suddenly seemed to dump in the gaming communities lap would not be taken lying down, naturally inspiring them to assemble their most promising candidates with more comprehensive fervor than ever in the past. Efforts to revise new candidates began, using A.S.' and public records.

A 'good-guy-dream-team', and a 'murder-hobo-mayhem-team' were both being created, so that both gamerkinds most and least scrupulous would be set against this challenge in which their participation and effort were crippled by default.

Most secretly began researching the internet. They openly started looking for others who might have been a scout, a soldier, someone they knew who was particularly resourcful and cunning. However, a bit 'gun-shy' now, gamers had taken a step back about further attempts at this.

It was too interesting, realistic, and puzzlingly lacked anything recorded or shared that suggested any fantastic- elements. Skeptics held out the creator had either considered a blue sun fantastic, so probably a nut, or had hidden a mage class for one lucky ducky to rule over everyone else.

Staves, spears, bows, clubs, one brilliant bastard had even taken to using an atlatl. If our hands had been made to throw spears, they would have been called atlatls instead of hands. With one you can throw spears more accurate, powerfully and with increased range. Three months had changed things.

By the sixth month I had gotten to being proficient enough. I'd had not only tools to use, but spares, and had made good efforts in filling my house. I'd built a barn for Molly, a silo for her primary meal to be where it wouldn't rot or be eaten by pests, and fitted the barn with what she and I needed there.

Hay, salt-block, vitamin-supplement, saddle and blanket, bit and reigns, halters and hitches, plus tools and supplies. More firewood and a metal cooking range for using since it was hot. Anvils, furnace, and the stalls. Molly had the largest, and the hayloft above was something I added to every evening to put up food for her.

All the jars, cans and preserved foods I'd started to put up had started so slow, I'd bought what was cheaper now than later in winter, plenty of flours, meals, jams, jellies and dry-goods. Jerky, and lard were things I made sure were as plentiful as sugar and salt, or spices. I'd made dishes and the like.

Furniture was light, but more than I needed. A bedroom and guest bedroom above and below, kitchen, the living room was the center area where the chimney adjoined the one from the basement. Both went up and out from the roof, so it was bulky to say the least. It was a lot of stone that could hold a lot of heat when needed.

Progressions at this point had all the sorts of hallmarks people couldn't put words to, not even to say they didn't know anymore, because for those involved they were focusing on finding the solution every way they imagined. I was no different, there, we all knew time was the factor and not effort.

The perspective was what had made it all so slow for most. They'd ended up in or around towns, and villages. Even the village that was destroyed and sacked was taken over early by some and makeshift repairs were made by these to the buildings. They'd barely been damaged overall.

No windows to break, but thatch rooves broken up to scare or assault the families out. Wooden-shutters busted of their bracings, doors splintered through or pried out of their frames. Everyone had some type of clothes and simple weapons.

A few who had been around early had put their coin and real money into armor suits and heavy weapons. Resourceful individuals and groups were in better situations by far, materially and health wise. Their developments were more focused. People weren't dying and killing each other, or Akyrian natives anymore. At least not the bulk of them.

Nobody really had the stomach for the feel of killing, those whose avatars died would remember things and forget others but they did remember dying and the reasons they were killed. The memories made most quit playing, some kept on to change it but others would watch recordings and set out for vengeance.

They retained muscle-memory and new trade skills, but lost their avatars developments, any memory of places there or navigation, all sense of how real it was in the way a dream might fade so quick you only knew that you were having one. They would still know they had learned from the place they now forgot.

For many, simply the desire to remember was enough to call them back. Others were not okay with losing memories and didn't just lose interest, but groups who had shared the experience enough now had all long made the result of death understood. There were still gains, the losses were only Akyrian and all about it, not taking much of what one earned mentally.

Conversations, actions, thoughts, memories all there, but all vision of the place gone. Visual memory was the most effected, but there were a few words people forgot. Arcane, Stone-Sleep, their names there. Oddly enough, those who went through this learned from it.

You could remember you were going to forget it, leaving the words as a neutral, so it suggested there would be more to these words eventually to be lost. The same with orientation; you could navigate by memorizing recordings of Akyria as a reference. Memorizing it thusly, you could then bypass losing it in a way.

Videos and clips made online about it were watched by players and a few gamers who only followed it now instead of playing. Then a documentary was released and took the public by storm that sixth month. Then came the outcry top to bottom.

Fully showcasing the depth of equal realism, altered but barely, and the way players seemed to be enjoying relatively medieval or primal lives. How they'd changed, learn to hunt, actually gone out and done it when they'd figured out how safely. That was one guys piece.

"I learned how to spot parasites, usually in their guts or other organs, check them and make sure they were healthy. I don't just mean when I had killed them, in-game at first, either. Even before I took one I started looking to make sure they didn't look diseased or even ill.

"Horns, hooves, furs, eyes, postures, there is usually a sign of sickness and it isn't always subtle. You check again when you kill it. Certain things, like parasites or infections, only make a portion or area inedible. I can make a bow, a meal, and clothes out of a kill.

"It was hard to have that freedom and lose it. Momentum, gone that fast, beside the feel of dying it was the worse of the two." "So, you're saying, you kind of feel kicked out the door? Or is it more like the gates of heaven, with those nice simple and rustic charms from antiquity recreated again?"

"Heaven? Haha! Kicked out yeah I do, but I don't plan on being one of those guys who sits memorizing from a screen what I want to experience a few hours, here and there. I don't want to forget what the words here mean when I learn em' either, those are gonna be awesome if this place can make you forget. Y'know?"

The next guy had documented his death, mostly because he was close to it already and his avatar was emaciated from having spent his last week of game-time over the months unable to get ahead of his deterioration. He wanted to restart, and needed help from home.

The forgetting, starting over, the realistic killing and slaughter of his body. It didn't disappear, and would do everything else a now rotting corpse would do, so those nearby pitched in loosening the soil with sticks when it got too hard to dig by hand a short ways down.

Whilst showing them dig this, the man and woman giving the interview and unprepared for the shock of this are briefly shown to start breaking. Then the drama is cut. Not because they are faking, acting, but the true shock of what they see overwhelms them. How uncomfortable they become towards the mans executioner is obvious.

Of course, he defends himself well and good, because who would want to log in to a state like that in a game where you have spent so much time suffering and the natural dying or healing process is worse than a death where he can start fresh and healthier with his weight back?

And in a touching moment, he convinces them to slap their own hand hard. It takes them a few moments to calm down enough, as though they'd been apart a few minutes with camera cut, the emotional edge is raw between the executioner and them.

"Slap your hand hard enough to make it red. Feel that pain? Now imagine, trying to live like that here the last couple weeks. Some sickness wasted him, probably ate something undercooked or misidentified something. Already a little light, you wither away pretty quick moving around trying to live when you are healthy if you don't get enough fat."

"Think it's easy to figure out a problem society doesn't have anymore?" Their surprise at the pain in their hands, and the pain in the mans words when he gets out what he has to say move them all to some tears and he elaborates how few die like this now by comparison.

The documentary was all over the place with emotions, because, that was honestly what attracted people to such things anyway and was about the most exciting thing viewers were interested in about the fantasy game world that still hadn't revealed much more than game related memory effects.

Governments and other groups had been watching quietly. Unable to get involved for longer than they liked already, these grounds for potential to cause mental traumas that any person could clearly see cause for had just been the straw breaking the camels back.

A global public-access ban on Akyria came shortly, made law in most countries. The day before public minds could be made up or laws enacted however, Akyria had it' big reveal a couple days after the sixth month started. The villages were the first, a certain maimed and reclaimed one had it originally.

None lived or escaped to tell and had immediately forgoten what they saw. They just knew they had been killed for their heart's meat.