[Friday. Third day. K City. Yushin’s Home. ]
Yushin wakes up to his new daily routine after getting some sleep. Since he decided to dedicate himself to Tales, the beginning of any game is a critical moment of opportunity. Any time lost can turn into a divide between the top and average players and a great loss.
Because of this, many players avoid sleep like the plague and keep going for hours and hours straight, ignoring possible dangerous health issues. Adequate rest is also needed to maintain an optimal condition, and from what Yushin saw, Tales is challenging enough that it will make a huge difference.
To Yushin, this amount of youthful recklessness is not on the table. With his current body, there will be no problems during gameplay for the foreseeable future. However, even if he is able to stand some pain, the effects of prolonged pain on his sick body are not to be underestimated. His condition can worsen at any moment. While it does not cause neural damage, Kirishima’s disease can cause pain and organ failure at the advanced stages.
Balancing his physical and mental needs with game time will be a challenge, especially if he aims to compete with hardcore players. On the “bright” side, not having to care about being alive ten years from now also gave him the option to be more reckless. After all, in only five years he will be gone from this world.
He can rest for all eternity then.
After some jogging and morning exercises, Yushin sees the grandma sweeping in front of Old Lady Buns. He greets, chats for a bit and plays with Silver Belly. She was very busy in the mornings, getting everything ready for the day. Her shop is not big but has a very loyal following. Her granddaughter makes enough money even without the shop, but she is very attached to it.
“It’s getting harder and harder to keep working,” the grandma sighed, “These old bones are almost dust.”
“Shouldn’t you hire a part-timer?” Yushin asked.
“I barely make enough money to break even. I can’t possibly pay someone, and I can’t make ma granddaughter pay either. She needs to save for her future. Maybe It’s time to close the shop and retire.” The grandma was very conscious of her granddaughter’s position. Having a good job, but coming from a poor family meant a lot of doors would be closed to her.
Yushin could suggest A.I., but those were expensive. Seeing as she couldn’t afford a part-timer, getting A.I. to help is definitely out of the options. If things were different he wouldn’t mind helping her himself, but right now it was not an option either. He made his mind to help her, one way or another.
Seeing the worried look on his face made her smile, “Don’t worry. I’m not senile enough to think this shop is ma everything. I have worked all ma life, shouldn’t I rest? It’s not like these old bones will go hungry, like in the past. I have a great granddaughter, you know!”
Yushin smiled. By this point, he adored this old lady, “Grandma, have you heard of [Virtual Reality]?”
“Like those games coming out recently? I know a bit about it. I’m no good with technological stuff.”
“Yeah. They are a whole new world. Even if you are tired or hurt in real life, as long as your brain is fine you can adventure and do a lot of things.”
“Haha, that’s for youngins’, isn’t it? Why are you telling this to an old woman like me?”
Yushin smiled, “In the game, obviously there is food. There are recipes, many different types of meats and vegetables. Cooking is very important there! Since you are going to retire, don’t you want to try? You can even try to open Old Lady Buns again. Maybe you can’t make money by playing the game, but you are going to close shop anyway, why not try something new for a while?”
The grandma was a bit serious. She had heard from her granddaughter about all the new stuff coming out in the world and how those games were so realistic they were like a whole new life. In this world, she has seen much, has suffered much, has lost much. But she did not travel, her circumstances never allowed it.
“...But… aren’t those expensive?”
“I’ll pay for it. Of course, I won’t do it for free. Grandma needs to feed me both in real life and in the game!”
They both laughed. But she still hesitated.
“...An old woman like me, playing games. I’m not good even with phones. I don’t think it will work.”
“Grandma, you don’t need to mind the difficult stuff. You see, there are a lot of people who play it just for fun. There’s a grandpa playing with me right now. Also, players can do a lot of things. They can live there like they live in real life. You can just learn things slowly and do whatever you want. If you don’t like it, you can always stop.”
She finally gave in, “Right. I will try it, son. But I still need time to tell ma granddaughter and let people know I’m going to close.”
Yushin nodded. He chatted for a bit more and then went home. The grandma sent a few dishes with him and absolutely refused money, much to his displeasure. He did indeed think of letting the grandma be his primary cook, but he also thought she would do well in the game, maybe even be a company for Old Man Young. Her spirits would also rise and maybe great joy will be found. He could tell her physical condition was not good, working to the bones every day would break her soon. She was just too stubborn to let go.
But he also didn’t want her shop to be gone forever. Even if the game part didn’t work, he is willing to pay for a part-timer or even have an A.I. installed. A.I. controlled shops are not rare these days, although not cheap either. Convincing the grandma to accept his help would be the hard part.
Back at home, Yushin opens a storage room, takes a wooden spear from within and goes to the yard. This is the spear he used when he was actively training with his former master, it is full of memories and a bit battered by time and hard work.
“How is master doing now, I wonder…?” His eyes looked full of sadness and sorrow. His body moves in a circular motion, much like his in-game avatar. His strikes are much slower and weaker in his real body. In Tales, one feels he can jump to the roof and back easily, like a true warrior.
How can a game system make people feel like that? How did Kingdom Corp advance much further than the others with neural interfaces, enough to completely affect user perception and imagination of the game reality? So that even the smell of blood and death are as vivid as a real-life battlefield?
Nothing he experienced in the game so far feels different than doing in real life. If he closed his eyes, he would wonder whether he was in the game or not. Even though there are no changes to his body, his mind certainly received the benefit of experience. His brain was pushed in such high adrenaline and extreme situations it would be impossible to say there was no gain.
Is this why the military seems to be very interested in Tales, even investing large sums? This system seems well suited for training and simulations. However, whether it will have long-term effects on the brain and body is still a mystery. There is also the possibility that people will confuse reality with the game since even Yushin has a problem distinguishing the both of them right now. This means crazy things can happen because of it.
Games have always been blamed for violent behavior, even when there is no evidence linking violence to it. In fact, many researchers suggest otherwise. Blaming games is an easy way out for those in power that need to justify why tragedies happen.
Yushin thinks that, right now, being inside the game feels much better than his normal reality. It is like if you suddenly started living another life, with another body and other possibilities. What if you could live in a fantasy world and be an elf, or a dwarf, live all those fantasies you had when you were young? Just by thinking about it one would jump in excitement. This is where the reality of games is at right now!
Suddenly, while practicing some moves with the spear, a thought hit him. It was something he said to the grandma earlier, ‘Even if you are tired or hurt in real life, as long as your brain is fine you can adventure and do a lot of things.’
As long as your brain is fine.
How did he not think of this earlier?
His master once had an accident and became tetraplegic. This also shattered his will to practice the spear and made him stop. While he could not bear to think how would he live in that situation, his master never wanted to die. He loved his life and his wife way too much to give up.
Eventually, he moved away into seclusion and Yushin lost contact. He wanted to go and find him but was not sure how to act. His master’s wife met with him one day and told him that all he wanted was to live in peace. He understood that if they met memories would surface and he would never be able to let go.
But now Kingdom Corp advanced neural interface by this much. He is confident his master would also be able to play the game. But, will this be a good thing? Is it better to leave him alone? Would he just bring more pain into his already tragic life?
Yushin can’t decide right away. As before, he eats breakfast with a silent ROAH. More information on Tales is displayed on the screen, together with the current daily important events in the world.
Being an advanced A.I., ROAH runs data analysis and scrapes the web for info. Those are routine operations and it will only present the data if Yushin asks for it. Tales continues to be a hot topic as expected. A lot of new info is popping up left and right, but with the developers making things difficult there aren’t many proven theories around. Formulas are almost impossible to come by.
However, information is never completely out of grasp. Just like in common life, there is the underworld part of gaming. People sell information, items, power leveling, support and even player killing. In Tales, power leveling can’t be done directly, but of course, you can pay someone to help you gain experience by partying. Where there is a will, there's a way. Or so they say.
Yushin frequented quite a bit of those websites before. As a guild leader, he had to pay attention to things happening in the game, be they good or bad. After all, even games are subject to fraud, favoritism and especially, bugs. Once they even caught a Game Master giving godly items to the top guild he was in. Being out of the loop is never good.
Yushin pays special attention to topics like guilds, soul control, skills and techniques in Tales. In some of those sites, people sell information, but right now none of those seemed interesting to him. Eventually, a lot of info will pop up. Of course, he could also use it to SELL information, but he had no intention to do so. He did not need money. Instead, it would only make other people stronger.
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Streaming platforms are also a good source of information. While videos cannot be recorded in certain places in Tales, like [Gate Dungeons], open field dungeons and other places are still valid spots for streaming. He saw many people venturing through Faint Forest and other interesting places.
But even streamers are taking measures against giving away too much info. While they need to gather public, if people know where they are a lot of ill-intentioned players will make life hell for them. Having people camping you 24/7 does not make a good experience.
The developers seem to have considered this, as Tales embedded streaming system only exports the player vision and not the menus, conversations and other things he can access. It is not possible to change the view since people could use it to watch their own streams, like an eagle's vision from above. Voice chat can be directed at the audience, but party chat will only be broadcast if all party members allow it.
The places are very different from each other with a legion of different monsters. The names of the places are often hidden. The player skills are also on their initial stage, so nothing got his attention. There are also way too many streamers for him to check them out one by one. The one on faint forest didn’t venture any further than him, so it was useless.
Thinking about [Soul Power], Yushin feels he has much to try and learn. It is an easy system to activate with thought and seems simple enough at first glance, but to manipulate it further seems to require a lot of concentration and imagination.
Considering the people he knows, so far he is the only one able to manipulate and control it further. During his last dungeon run, there wasn’t anything special regarding soul activation from the others. As usual, they just thought about the skill, felt it activate and moved accordingly.
Soul Power is definitely based on real-life Qi concept. As such, there seems to be a small gap before it can be controlled. It’s as if you first need to believe there is a hidden power inside of you for it to manifest. Even though in the real world he cannot feel anything out of the ordinary, inside Tales he is able to feel some sort of invisible energy, similar to moving air, that revolves around the world and into his body, or from his body to the outside world.
It feels as if he can feel his own blood slowly moving around and circulating. Concentrating his thought, that amount of power seems to vary, speed up or down and communicate with the [World’s Power].
However, even when using advanced search algorithms there is no info about this on the internet. The thing closest to it was how people had a ‘weird feeling’ when activating skills. Those people were the ones closest to understanding how [Soul Power] works, even though no one knows how long it will take for them to break that barrier.
Complaints about the game are still the same, even ramping up. Monsters are tough and will act in ways common players are not able to predict, unlike most A.I. After a few days, players now know much better whether to avoid somewhere or stick to the weaker areas.
People also started looking for other things to do rather than just jump into leveling areas and into death. Some chose to become employed in the cities and to grow slowly from there. Playing like a fantasy life simulator, just raising their crafting skills or becoming a merchant.
There are also those with much bigger aspirations, that are trying to create settlements inside and outside the kingdoms. Creating a settlement inside a kingdom/city sphere of influence is not simple. Not even taking into consideration the settlement’s survival chances and the odds they will grow well, the kingdom can at some point demand them to disband or even send a punitive expedition.
In short, only if their approval is gotten the settlement will be allowed to exist inside a kingdom and that often means heavy taxes. Choosing a good spot for it is also difficult since any area near a good resource is likely to be claimed by a nearby power, such as a city. But Tales is so huge players can try their luck in a remote area, or even venture outside the frontier.
There are also many minor jobs that need to be done, and while most of them are taken care of by NPCs, there is no rule forbidding players. Cities, Settlements, and Forts have civil and military positions, and no one can predict right now the impact these will have on the game. There are hundreds of small scenarios where their influence can be felt.
If you rent a good spot for a store in a city, and one of the players is against it, and it so happens that he holds an office as a civil servant of the city, it wouldn’t be hard for him to initiate a task to kick you out of that spot, even by underhanded means. Imagine if a player rises to be King or Emperor. He would wield great power and do whatever he wanted.
From all of this, Yushin thinks Tales has two types of dangerous situations: Game triggered events, the one scripted by developers, such as Lataf, and player-driven events and consequences. While game triggered events in most games tend to be predictable, player behavior can be as crazy as anything. Someone powerful can go around murdering everyone in a city if there is no game system to prevent him forcibly.
That also means the end game will not be a boring equipment search. Each player can have his own goal, from being the greatest warrior to the richest merchant. It also opens up possibilities like city and kingdoms rise and fall, betrayal, and wars.
Yushin checks his smartphone, no emergency messages came from his party, so probably nothing happened to the Mutal. His Doctor sent him a message to remind him that Monday is a checkup day, and his parents also sent messages. They often communicated like this, since most of the people close to Yushin already gave up on trying to change his behavior. They know he only moves at his own pace and is aloof from the world, aside from writing and, in the past, gaming.
This also made him lose contact with many friends over the years.
He did not go into his Cord Dis! Chat App, usually only opening it occasionally not to distract himself from work. There was also no need to keep tabs on his fellow writers and former guildmates. However, seeing the app did remind him of something he has to do, and so he sends a message to his editor. He rarely comes over, so Yushin didn’t feel the need to tell him in person. Most of their contact is through chat and email.
“I’m taking a break from work indefinitely. Sending you my last finished work. You guys decide what to do with it.” He sent this short message and a text archive by e-mail attachment.
Not even bothering to wait for a reply, Yushin finished any chores left and wanted to hop back into the game. How could he know the chaos that message would cause?
Mister Rui hasn’t sent anything to him, so his request is still ongoing. Right now, in the game, Yushin knows he has four main goals:
First, to keep leveling, improving and learning more skills. He needs to be careful not to be left behind compared to top players in skill level and experience. Although he can’t know what the elite level is at in this game, he can’t afford to slow down. His main objective is still to explore the unknowns of Tales, and being weak will not allow him to do so.
Second, he needs to help the Mutal village and prepare to face Lataf eventually. This is also one of his priorities because it will introduce him to the management system and allow him to create some sort of base that can be used to test multiple things in the future. Who doesn’t want more manpower in the end?
Third, he needs to help Rain Falls become the leader of Free Forest. He quite liked her. If before this was only a small wish of his, now it is a mission. There’s no way in hell Goldclaw or someone else will take that spot. Aside from helping Rain, he would also establish a powerful ally for his guild and a solid foothold for his future adventures and expeditions. Free Forest is powerful and already an accomplished guild. Having permanent access to its dungeon will also guarantee that the Mutal quest line can be attempted.
If Goldclaw becomes guild leader, he is sure the first thing he’ll do is ban him from entering the guild. He is already trying to do so.
Fourth, to finally create his guild. This is also one of his main goals. He wants to experience again how it feels to lead people and work together towards the top, to live everything one more time before the end. Giving his all toward a goal. The only reason he still hasn’t created it is because he was trying to find people to start it with him.
To reach those goals, he also has a few minor objectives. First, is to learn about Soul Control by experimenting with it. Second, is to practice and improve his engineering and other support skills, like magic. Third, is to find more info on the quest to find the mystery of the Faint Forest and the Raibyr, and so learn a bit more about his own mysterious origin.
Just thinking about it gives him a headache. He has so much to do.
Before going back into the game, he makes ROAH order a new cockpit and deliver it to the grandma’s house. He thought about sending one to his master but decided to think about it a bit more.
It could either hurt someone he loves dearly or give him a new shot at living.
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[J City. Blue Wind Publishing House.]
The chief editor was looking at the section chiefs and managing editors, which in turn looked at the other editors. They were avoiding their eyes and looking down, afraid of what would come next.
“Say that again.” The Chief Editor told them calmly. He has seen too much during his time there, that little bad news would not shake him.
“Author Chie said she is taking a break… when I pressed the issue, she wouldn’t tell me why.” A female editor with a sharp look sighed.
“Author JJ is also taking a break…” A silly looking editor went next.
“Author PotatoPotato told me the same thing.” A stout editor went next. He didn’t seem flustered at all.
“What is going on…? Why are all these authors asking for breaks?” One section chief asked.
“This is not good. Those three, together with Author Shin, are our best sellers. We can’t have them stop writing all of a sudden, especially if there’s no return date in sight.” A managing editor gave his opinion.
“We can’t force them either. They have solid contracts, there’s no way for us to force them to write.” Another section chief said. All of them looked to one of them in the corner, who started sweating profusely. He was in charge of the contracts in the legal department. Even though he knew there was nothing he could do and that the chief editor approved the contracts, if they needed a scapegoat, it was possible he would be the one getting all the blame.
“Let’s all calm down,” the chief editor said, “It is weird that they are all taking breaks all of a sudden. They are also constantly in contact with each other, so it’s possible it was planned. Editor San, you know Writer Tato like no one else. Do you have any clues?”
“He wouldn’t tell me anything about it. And we all know him. He loves to chat and brag about anything…” the stout editor looked seriously at the Chief, “But recently he has been going on and on about that new VRMMO, Tales Of The Heroic Kingdoms. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he would ask for a break as soon as it was launched.”
“Chief, I just talked with Manager Kon at Cellar Publishing,” He didn’t sound happy, “Authors Adachi, Kyo, and JRR are also taking breaks. They are going crazy over there.”
The chief suddenly had a bad feeling about this. Those authors were all considered competitors and in the same writing generation. If all of them banded in together, there was nothing they could use to make them go back into writing. To keep them, their contracts were also full of advantages they would not give any other writers normally. It was no problem for them to take a few months break, but it never happened all at the same time.
As if remembering something, he quickly looked around the room and his worries increased, “Quickly, go call Editor Akira here!”
One of the staff rushed out. Editor Akira was in his desk reading manuscripts. He seemed so absorbed in it the staff had to call him several times. He also had no idea of the chaos that was happening at that time. Upon hearing the editor-in-chief was looking for him, he quickly jumped from his chair, grabbed his smartphone without seeing the blinking green light, and rushed to the reunion room.
He usually was not called into meetings. Even though his position was quite good, he wasn’t at that level.
Editor Akira quickly bowed when he entered and was about to say something when the Editor-in-chief impatiently asked, “Do you know what’s going on?”
He shook his head and so someone explained it to him. The chief kept going, “Have you heard anything from Author Shin?”
“That workaholic author Shin? Taking a break? ha-ha, don’t worry chief, that would never hap-” Even though it was a one in a million chance, his eyes rested on the blinking green light on his phone. That meant he got a message or an e-mail. As it was his work phone, it was definitely related to work.
His back started to sweat profusely and despair came over him. His editor’s sense told him hell was coming.
With the speed of light, he unlocked his phone and opened the message saying he had a new email.
Despair hit his face once he saw it was from Yushin.
“I’m taking a break from work indefinitely. Sending you my last finished work. You guys decide what to do with it.”
Break.
Indefinitely.
Those words hit him in the head a thousand times in an instant. He looked like he wanted to cry. All of a sudden he was a puppy facing a pack of wolves.
“C-Chief… A-Author Shin is also taking a break…”
“$%¨%¨#@!!!!” That calm Editor-in-chief could only curse at his fate.