To my total surprise that evening, I found that I had an elven-run yard sale now operating beside the end of my driveway. Upon investigation, I found they were selling, via barter, all kinds of crafts and knick-knacks, as well as some kind of fresh food and drink, to the local people. This, it seemed, was where my 1 gold/day tax revenue was actually coming from. My elves didn't try to charge me anything, of course, and I was free to sample the goods - not bad!
I decided not to mess with something that was obviously working, and just chatted with people, getting glowing reviews for my Elven Farmstead startup.
There was also a building foundation slowly taking shape in the back yard - obviously the Granary I wanted. Nothing seemed to be happening to it as I watched, but any time I left and came back, I saw that slightly more progress had been made. Magic construction is strange.
Knowing I was missing something, I decided I had to get past my paranoia and get the game info from the internet before it vanished. I found a site for "oldgame rules" and just downloaded the whole works. Then I got offline to go in and read "my" game rules.
Yes, it was different - a lot different. From what I could see, I was playing a much weaker "starter" version, with everything being slower and weaker - by factors of between 5 and 10. In fact, if it wasn't for all the local roads, infrastructure, and suburbs building up my "Trade" stats, I wouldn't have earned any gold at all yet. The only thing really in my favor is that most of the mana production was due to my starter spellbooks, which gave me one mana/day each. That was my ONLY current mana source other than my own personal pathetic 1 point/day.
Worse yet, I was about to run into a bottleneck - land for buildings. My front yard wasn't big enough for a full-size building, and my back yard was taken up by the granary I was building. The good news was that the granary WOULD give me a huge boost - a full +30 Population/day AND 2 full points (not the mini-points the game was currently using) of food production.
I printed out the Rules, then deleted the files and computer history records and rebooted, before trusting the computer to get back online. As I had kind of remembered, I was intended to be the Master Wizard - NOT a combat unit. I was supposed to supervise OTHER units in battle from safely in my control tower, directing them and providing magic support as required.
With myself not a viable Hero, eventually I was going to have to recruit. In the game, there were 2 recruitment spells - one for Heroes, and one for Champions (strong heroes), but those were very expensive in both Research and Casting.
As soon as the granary was done, I was going to have to build that Elven Spearman unit. It would be a full-powered level 2 unit of 6 spearmen the moment it was completed - my own little guard force, and each of the 6 troopers would be stronger than I was. Nothin compared to a decent Hero, of course.
The news on TV was a bit scary - central government was being formed around people with lie-detecting abilities, and such people were offered enormous benefits to be part of the program. For now, the main effect was a huge purge of actual criminals from seats of power and disruption of many chains of command. In fact, they hadn't yet found a replacement for the President who could pass lie detection while reciting the oath of office. The courts were quickly adding rights for officials to be immune to lie detection, but that didn't stop reporters from quickly reporting as lies any deceptive statements officials came out with.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Gaming was slowly being banned from the internet, as people were seeing others around them becoming megalomaniacs trying to advance in their games. In their place, real-life "adventure guilds" were starting to form and local meet-up notices were springing up.
From here, there, and everywhere, new coins were appearing, copper, silver, and some gold. Each had exactly the same weight and were extremely pure metal. This made the gold coins equal to MY coins, at just a bit smaller than a dime, and the silver coins slightly smaller than a penny, with coppers almost exactly equal to a penny. Most of these new coins has someone's face on one side and a symbol on the other - again, like mine. Metals markets were trying to adapt, with exchange rates changing wildly.
At a guess, it appeared we were heading towards gold = $100, Silver = $1, and Copper = 1 cent. I tried to get my Vault to give me change for a gold, but it wouldn't do it.
People who initially "ran for the hills" on Empowerment Day were mostly returning to work now, labor statistics said. According to most reports, many came back when they realized they weren't going to be doing any power-leveling, and there were no "monster waves" coming to kill everyone. Everyone's progress was slow, and any global threats were still in the speculation phase.
Also, many people wanted to "show off" their new body and/or their new Power to their friends and classmates/co-workers. Between the restructured bodies and those with healing abilities, public health was at an all-time high. Crime was a big problem, but a large percentage of it was "for fun" crime and more for practice of new abilities than for personal gain. Those who DID commit serious crimes were finding that a whole new era of bounty hunting was starting up, with many eager to prove they could do the job.
Rumors of new technologies were everywhere, and thousands of people were claiming ways to have "clean energy" systems using either magic or newly inspired technology. My neighbor "Recycle Girl" had been given a job and promotion campaign.
A few other things caught my eye as well. There was a "Dungeon Master's Guild", a "Master System Design Workshop", and a "Future Emperor's Emporium". The other odd ones were "Minions For Hire" and "Rare Acquisitions". While I certainly wasn't ready to contact these places yet, I wrote down their details for future use.
I decided that for the next few days I was just going to play the part of an internet troll and groupie, with overtones of gamer fanboy - it was true enough, after all, and fit in with my pre-Empowerment activities. I was still very worried about what the actual INTELLIGENT elite people (as opposed to political types) were up to. Many of them certainly had access to some excellent, possibly magic-enhanced, AI that would be working on securing them power bases for the new "Age of Empowerment".
As a harbinger, I saw that Bitcoin had just hit $3 million, and interest rates were accelerating upwards across the board. Also, space launches were currently delayed for renovations, but launches scheduled for 3 months out and beyond had more than doubled!
Hard-line nations like China and N Korea were giving out ZERO information - they had cut ties with the internet entirely.