The three had turned to their desk, working on their own projects, a busy time for all of them. With the three being close to similar age, digitizing around the same time meant they all had lots of things to do. Beatrice needed to continue to hone her skill development grind, constantly making small changes to combat maneuvers to try and unlock new skills to earn her first dungeon key. Every swing of a weapon, every ability used, all magic cast, every combat step, all information gathered by the player during combat, practice time and more was measured by combat characters.
While combat characters planned their actions for their gameplay, creation characters couldn't plan their development. They had to rely on random developments while they moved forward, a tailor could randomly learn a new stitch pattern which allowed them to create an item at a faster speed, a cook could taste a spice and be inspired to learn new recipes at a faster rate for an hour. Herbalists could learn a leaf pattern then be able to spot a plant in the wild from a further distance, or divide a leaf to double their gathering rate but increase their chance at ruining a plant.
Emma had set her sights on alchemy, and with her family backing, she had spent time developing her knowledge and practical experience by tutoring under an alchemist from a small guild. While Emma was very soft spoken, her work in alchemy had been quite the opposite, with directives from Tower Security that she only practice alchemy in approved labs to prevent further fire damage.
With her knowledge, she would have an easier time starting her profession, but she would not be able to make money due to lack of digitized knowledge. While she knows what sage, mint and rose water was, and that it would make a basic healing potion, she would not create a sellable item. Because she didn't have the actual pattern of making a healing potion in her profession log, when she created the potion using the correct methods, the potion result would display unknown effects.
Instead, Emma had to eat sage, mint and drink rose water, and she would slowly learn about the materials while digitized. There were a number of ideal guides to eat the items to be efficient for what you want to learn, there was always the qualifier that the order would change due to random buffs, debuffs, quests and world events. Tyler would come in to ensure that materials she needed to learn were always on hand, and he would make sure to buy up all alchemy patterns whenever possible.
While Beatrice and Emma worked, Tyler thought to himself, looking for a way to satisfy VI, getting results while not giving the AI any reason to make the situation worse. Looking up at the screen he had moved from his H-Pad on his wrist to the podium in front of him, he had some streams from the Myneria, a voice over trying to describe the madness going on in the city. What had turned from a blockade into a full blown riot, Tyler couldn't help from cringing thinking about how to navigate the city without catching the attention of anybody.
Tyler knew it was the natural progression, of course it was the natural move to block city hall. If the most desired property was thought to be dropped to the ground upon death of the player carrying the item, regardless of what Tyler knew about it disappearing, people would do everything they could do to make it drop. Since they didn't know who the player was that had the item, the only real thing they could do was make sure nobody entered the building, making sure the property wasn't turned in and their chance of claiming the property lot.
As Tyler sat in reflection, his H-Pad on his wrist beeped at him, a default tone. Emma and Beatrice looked at him, they both knew that Tyler had changed all of his settings, Tyler being proud of the fact that he was as far away from default anybody could be. He shrugged at them, pulled his H-Pad screen off the wall, pushing in at the corners shrinking the size down, flicking the corner removing the tension from the screen, he wrapped it around his wrist and looked at his alerts.
** Congratulations! A player has discovered your wagon and has accessed your shop. You have earned the "First destination, first customer" achievement. You have been awarded the "Shop" function for your cart while it is parked. Access your shop from your Travelers log, with the "Shop" function being unlocked, you can now access portions of your Travelers log from your H-Pad. **
After reading the message, his dragged his finger across the window, letting his mailbox settings archive the message, saving the achievement notice for further research, the less people earning the achievement, the more valued it was. When the window cleared the small screen, a new tab across the top appeared reading "Wagon", he pushed the tab. A miniature Beatrice jumped on top the screen, bent over and grabbed a hold of the current screen, ripped the page up and away, then tossed it off to the side, revealing a new window. The miniature Beatrice faced toward Tyler, posed with a flex, then jumped back into the screen, the animated transition triggering at random.
** Wagon
Level: 1
Name: Default Wagon
Current Customers: 1
Available storage slots: 10/10
Available shop slots: 6/6
Your first wagon. While you can upgrade this cart, that left front wheel looks pretty suspect, no matter how much work you put into it, no movement bonus awarded. Hire a Blacksmith visit your wagon to repair the wheel. **
** Quest received. Use your H-Pad to create a quest to hire a Blacksmith and fix your wagon.
Quest reward:
Wagon speed increase.
Raise limit of contracts by 1.
Quest creation UI
**
His eyebrows shot up, and without thinking he said out loud "wait, what?" Emma and Beatrice were still looking at him, clearly thinking that the notification noise was something that deserved their attention.
"You going to tell us what's going on, or are you going to need to be convinced to tell us what's going on?" Beatrice said while standing up from her seat.
Tyler looked back at his H-Pad, trying to calm himself down, still wanting to keep his class a secret for the time being, and his business partners finding out he had a mobile shop would be something that they couldn't keep quiet about. While they were business partners, he had his doubts about them keeping quiet about a secret class, and the less thing he needed was attention. As he gathered his thoughts, a room update went across the bottom of the screen, a way to keep his secret.
"You didn't see? Someone discovered a wagon outside of the city while they were looking for anything dragon." He opened the discussion room, created to send out updates that were discovered from the dragons. The founder of the room was verbally delivering updates as they came in from people scouring the forest, meanwhile side rooms and open discussion were happening via text. He pushed the room details, and 3D image came to life in the form of a dragon above his H-Pad. He grabbed the top of the dragon, and tossed it towards Emma, she caught the flying dragon with her H-Pad, and Tyler repeated the move towards Beatrice. They pushed the small dragons into their H-Pad, and the room details appeared on screen.
Emma pulled at an icon so it appeared above her H-Pad, and she flicked it towards the podium in the middle of their shared space. An image came to life above the podium, an elf in green crouching, looking like she was inspecting the ground in front of the cart. A voice came from the podium below the image;
"I was looking around the forest, and one of my ranger skills told me that there was something funny about this grouping of trees, something wasn't right." A voice that came from the podium was excited, "when I approached, I saw the wheel, and I can't say that I have ever come across an unattended wagon that you could interact with. When I was just out of arms reach, I got a notice telling me that I had discovered a Traveling Shop, and that I was free to browse the goods. I didn't see anybody at the counter to talk to, but when I was in front of the shop counter, a window popped up. There didn't seem to be anything for sale, but it's a working store, and owned by someone. The details are set to private, but when I tried to move the wagon, it wouldn't budge, and the system actually gave me warning. It said that the wagon was parked, and any attempt to move the wagon would be considered a Kingdom offence, and would be hunted down to stand trial in front of the King.
"I've never seen a shop on wheels, and so, I don't even know what class would be able to own one. A Peddler isn't allowed to use a vehicle, but they can rent a pack mule to carry their goods, a Caravanner doesn't get a shop, just a transport wagon. None of this makes sense, you can kill and loot a player with no involvement with the Kingdom law, you can pickpocket people, and if you don't get caught, you don't get punished. But to try and move this wagon, even if nobody is around to witness what you are doing, it's being treated as spawn camping!"
The voice finished its message, not wanting to give away any additional information that couldn't be gained from a short visit to the mysterious vehicle. Already in the text discussions, dialogue was flying past the screen, impossible to read every single thing said in the discussion, forcing people to lock onto specific user names to have a conversation. People were claiming to be the owner, trying to auction off the wagon, some people saw it as a threat to trading alliances, other people thought nothing of it, just a new item to populate the digital world.
"Well, while that sounds interesting, to be honest, this sounds like this falls in Tyler's lap. He's the trader of the group, whatever that wagon is seems to be a shop, so he can look into it after he sets up the shop. Only once he's set up the shop is when he can claim the ownership papers for the property, don't need you to run off right away over some shop on wheels. Then again, it is a shop on wheels, I think the closest you can get is with a street vendor, and unlock quick unloading that can directly transfer items from wagon to shop stall."
"Yup, I agree with that, Tyler can worry about that. A small outfit like ours couldn't use something like that, we aren't strong enough to park something like that in a high level area, and putting it in anything less than that would be waste." Beatrice turned to Tyler, "next time you log in, you head to our property, set up the potion stands and counter, build the wall for our storage, install system security. Buy that hanging sign if you have the money left over, but make sure we have everything we need for us to level before you get it. Remember, our early success leads to your profits later, so make sure we start off right."
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"I got it, I'll get the property document from you whenever we see each other in the shop. I'm not worried about who is carrying that piece of paper, as long as one of us has it, the three of us can have full access to the shop." Tyler got up from this chair, looking at his wrist making sure he had his detachable screen. "I'm going to head back to my place, going to contact some people, see if I can get some deals on the potion stands, and whatever else. You may not think it's important, but we can't look like a joke with cheap furniture, but we are the new guys showing up and we need to be taken seriously."
Before either could respond, he walked towards the public lifts, heading to his apartment. As he made his way to the lift lobby, he brought up the quest to repair the wheel of the wagon. He read the quest again, not taking long as it was short, typical for any quest leading into an tutorial. What interested him though was the Quest Creation UI, as quests generated from players didn't have an interface, they were generated by someone asking another to do something, and the system deciding if it was enough to warrant a quest. The easiest way to generate a quest was to ask someone to kill a number of monsters for materials, and that you would pay them gold, or give them an item as a compensation.
As he stepped onto the public lift, a notice appeared on the corner of his screen, letting him know that the travel time was 10 minutes until he arrived at his section lobby. Noticing a few people on the elevator, he pulled up his search tool, hiding the quest from potential prying eyes. While it was common courtesy to not look over someone's shoulder, sometimes you can't turn your eyes away from a secret quest. He did a search for quest creation in HYTOMA, hoping to learn something new. But like everybody else, question creation was nothing more than guessing and rumors, with examples of how quests spread across the digital world.
He started with local and town quests, the most common quests across all zones. Normally created purely by need of the area, ranging from gathering materials for creation classes, clearing of areas for collection classes, protection of property all decided by system AI based on player availability and difficulty of task. System AI was available for suggestions of rewards for certain activities, as well with ability to create activities to draw in players from other zones, driving down the cost of rewards due to player availability. While system AI wouldn't directly involve itself in local and town quests, it would encourage behavior in players to prevent large groups from trying to control questing in low level areas. Local and town quests would never receive any rewards from spreading the news, deeming the quest could be completed alone, or grouping up with one or two more people with the reward being substantial enough to share with a small party.
Next were town supported quests, where it was determined that a significant amount of the immediate player base was required. These were usually large scale spells, town ending threats, hiring gatherers for a bountiful area, all determined by system AI. System AI would take a smaller involvement, where small bonuses were given to those who actively spread word of what was going on, and offering a share of the rewards, or other ways of bringing people together to complete the quest. Bonuses always determined by the difficulty, as well with how much effort spent on finding assistance, sometimes giving large rewards to players traveling to a neighboring village, or getting a friend from another zone to travel and help.
Zone quests is when system AI steps up it's involvement, providing substantial rewards for traveling classes to be the first to spread the word of potential situations, but also being one to provide new details to all players in the zone. Almost always for threats, the rewards for zone quests were given out by system AI, understanding that all available resources would be required for the quests, but also, most players would travel for zone quests just for the glory and the chance of being part of a story, the documented history of HYTOMA. For spreading news of zone quests, system AI would not take action, but reward traveling classes to spread the word of growing danger. System AI learned how players can communicate outside the tower, and could potentially hurt the growth of traveling classes, as well with removing immersion, it created threats to slowly build. The size of the threat taking months to build, making such large threats easy to miss, always adding small new details, sometimes players not getting rewards until after the completion of the zone quest, inadvertently saying something they noticed in their travels while stopped at an inn for a drink and a nights sleep. Guilds still wouldn't receive rewards, as glory and potential stories were enough to draw in enough players.
Kingdom quests, even with all the side quests, main quests, potential new factions, the birth of new kingdoms, the end of empires, system AI finally takes action with the spread of news. Guilds start receiving rewards for the spread of news of rebellions, threats released by VI, or other Council AI that players believed was purely for entertainment, or the discovery of direct threats to Royal classes. As no NPCs actually exist in game, there were players who invested a lot of time and gold, many openly saying that earning a Royal class was never worth the time spent in, earned a Royal title, and offered support for acting as a Royal in a kingdom AI, and as they were involved with many storylines, had extra protection by system AI. Royals would allow all staff members to post information about ongoing threats in HYTOMA or walking in the Tower, news would also be sent to anybody who subscribed to kingdom notices.
There were records of higher quests, but nobody knows how they start, all is documented is that a notice will be forced upon all users, subscription or not. What was documented was later revealed to be a test by council AI, wanting to see if it's notification system worked in case of actual emergency, and people would be forced disconnected for Tower evacuation.
Tyler nodded to himself, confirming everything that he already knew, but with no information, and couldn't find any posts that contained anything about quest creation UI. Being right back where he started, he had two questions, the first being what exactly quest creation UI was, and second, how was he supposed to create a quest while walking? It was well established the quests had to be created in game, as the quest giver would be the one to initiate a quest by speaking to another player, offering a reward to complete a task. If he wasn't digitized, how can he offer other players a job?
Tyler stepped off the elevator, and turned in the direction of his unit. As he was walking, a wild though came to him, "offering a job, maybe since I can hire players to complete a task, maybe I can hire a blacksmith the same way?" The problem was, he wasn't exactly sure how the hiring system worked. He just put some basic text into the fields of his log book, and then his two mercenary players suddenly showed up. Before he knew it, he was doubting his own idea, knowing that quest rewards usually related to the quest.
Tyler walked through the door of his unit, and the door slid closed behind him. He brought up the quest on his H-Pad, and selected to be his active quest, game systems only allowing one quest to be actively tracked at a time. As soon as he activated the quest, a button appear that read 'quest creation UI tutorial'. Tyler once again over thought his situation, letting his imagination run wild with potential solutions to a problem that didn't exist. He shook his head, of course there was a tutorial, every class system had tutorials to ensure every user understood the basics of the tools in their proverbial toolbox.
"Switch to tablet function or engage with a podium to continue." A robot voice came from his H-Pad. Since Tyler didn't have a private podium, he pulled off his screen and flicked it into rigid screen to lock into the size of a piece of paper.
"Welcome to your quest generation UI. This tool is intended to give you access in hiring employees to assist you in creating store fronts in new areas. You can assign tasks to existing employees as well as establish contracts with available players using your cart as a request board. If you use an existing employee to spread word of a quest, any rewards offered will be transferred to your employee so items can be awarded upon completion."
On the tablet, it switched to a list view, showing his existing contracts. Two new columns appeared, listed as Type and Player Responsible. For both TitanicVoices and JarsforJars, they were listed as employees, and Pylioth was listed as being responsible. He wasn't sure when they switched from being mercenaries to employees, but he guessed when it was determined their contract was long term.
"Please select new quest to start your quest to find a Blacksmith." He pushed a circle on the screen reading 'Existing employee', and a new window appeared on the tablet with 4 headings and an entry field below each one.
Quest name: You are free to name your quest here, but keep in mind, you want to attract players to complete your quest.
Details: Provide information on your quest to the player. While the system will only provide the quest to players who can complete the task, it will not provide any details to other players.
Rewards for quest completion: Provide total gold available to complete the quest, or link items that will be given. Gold and items will be transferred from your inventory to the employee responsible.
Employee Responsible: Select from your employees to manage your quest, employees are only able to be responsible for one quest at this time.
"All right, this is pretty straight forward, pretty rudimentary though." Tyler scrunched up his face, used to 3D interfaces coming from his H-Pad.
"Well, that's not very nice, I set that up under the idea of using it out and around, and being able to keep what you are doing from people around you." His small AI companion came from his bedroom, a V symbol being projected above it's head. "When you are on your tablet, you could be playing a classic game, you could be reading a book, you could be doing research for items. Remember, you want to keep your head down and not get attention, especially with things going sideways."
"Wait, sideways? I haven't even done anything yet, how can things be going sideways?" Tyler put his tablet down on his couch, the screen automatically locking.
"Well, thanks to VI throwing out that notice, we don't really have time to let you build up a base near the capital. From what we have been seeing with chat going around, things are about to explode. Players are tired of being killed just because they want to enter City Hall, other players are angry that they didn't even get a chance at the property deed." The AI projected an image on a nearby wall, showing video of the horde of dragons that Tyler recently encountered. "The other problem that exists, is that the horde is returning, and heading back to Myneria. I don't know what VII is thinking, but clearly something has changed."
Tyler watched the video on the wall, most of the players were looking around the area, hoping their observation skills were better and would find something all the other players missed. Others were posing for pictures in front of the wagon, showing off that they were one of the first people to find it. "OK, well, I still haven't done anything. VI decided to make the announcement, saying she would be pushing me forward, whatever that means. I mean, is it too much to ask that I can go set up my shop?"
The AI presented a glass from and opening on its back, filled with a pink liquid. "Here, have a smoothie, it's banana strawberry, I'll explain what she meant. I'll have to keep it simple, because I can't reveal too many details to you, otherwise people might find out what is going on. Long story short, you and your employees need to be ready to move, quickly. We have been working on plans since the creation of the Towers, and we aren't about to let those plans fail because you want to sit behind a desk selling items to adventurers."
Tyler only sipped on his smoothie, enjoying the taste, but focusing on the claim made by the AI. He was being kept in the dark, and he had difficulty accepting he was so heavily involved, all while knowing next to nothing in these plans.
"Tyler, you will be learning more of what is going on, but we can't tell you too much too early. If you word gets out about what we are planning, the Towers as a whole will descend into chaos. There is a change coming, and to be blunt, you are the most convenient way for us to move forward. VI immediately saw how stuck you were with opening your little shop, dealing with all those new players coming through, and you just don't have the luxury. Sure, we could shower you with rewards and achievements, but that would only bring attention down on you before you we're ready for the playerbase to come crashing down on you. No, our plan is for you to be out of reach of the majority of players once word gets out with what is going on."
"Well, since you are being so blunt about me being a convenience, what exactly are you expecting out of me?"
"Telling you that much shouldn't be a problem. You are our trail blazer, you are going to be the first one on a path we have set for humanity since bringing you into the tower. Your class is going to be important in setting up new towns, but it's also going to help maintain the separation of the digital world and reality." The robot rolled towards it's charging station, then continued. "Sure, I'm light on the details, but the less you know, the less likely you are to say something to someone by accident. Keeping things quiet is in your best interest, and quite frankly, with how much you are hanging on to your idea of running a small shop, you aren't exactly in a position to ask for more details. Maybe once you actually embrace the reality around you, then you might just get to learn more." As soon as the AI finished speaking, the robot pulled into the charging station, and all traces of the Prime AI disappearing, and all Tyler could do is stare at the charging station.