Late in the afternoon the team stumbled out of comfortable beds. Their breakfast as healthy as can be, beer, bacon and eggs. At least that’s what it looked like.

After further deliberation, the decision to buy even more food was confirmed. There is still a weight limit they had to adhere to but they were still far off.

The soft limit would begin to slow them down and that’s the limit they were reaching.

“Its okay. We’ll eat some of it on the way.”

“That’s true. With Sorp’s appetite we’d be lucky not to starve.”

The four corses are now latched to the wagon. Their breathing loud enough to scare small children.

Two of those corses are Sorp’s, one is Dart’s and the third, surprisingly Ret’s. Ret had gathered the total of thirty percent discount.

Ret was fond of taking care of the corses. So he went the extra mile during the contracts, earning the respects of the animal rearers.

Like Sorp, he was offered a more permanent position in the village. Ret was touched, never had he treated this kindly.

It was only Dart and Kom that weren’t offered any positions. Kom went from person to person, doing small tasks, this was in line with his character. He talked his heart out and moved on.

“How about we pick up some girls for the journey?”

“Pal is right! What are we even doing?”

Sorp gave them a look. Sorp didn’t understand the world Perpetuity to much, but he understood they were going to go train. He wanted to go train.

Dart didn’t even acknowledge them. His hands waving in the air. He was becoming more adept at using the projection technology.

Kom and Jarem were half nodding in agreement. They had been very busy and hadn’t met any pretty girls for a few days now.

“We’re going. Get on.”

Pal and Ret sulked. They still got onto the wagon. Sorp held the thick translucent harnesses connected to the corses.

Since they weren’t riding individual corses and instead having four of them pull a wagon, special tools were required.

With the expensive wagon came a B.F.M. used to control the beasts pulling them. The requirements to this is to have tamed beasts connected to them.

The wagon’s B.F.M. interlocks with the other four B.F.M.s and the owners of the B.F.M. all accept the request to allow the wagon’s B.F.M. to control them.

This type of tool is closer to what virtual humans use instead of a B.F.M. it has low requirements to use. It is designed for long intervals of use.

Only when changing directions, increasing speed, decreasing speed or stopping does it begin to fatigue the user.

These things appear to exist to prevent theft but are in place to manage the economy.

The wagon takes just under half the road. Its great width is due to the two corses walking side by side. With two in the lead and two following those corses..

The wagon itself is just about as wide as two corses walking side by side. The road itself is wider than four lane highways.

While on the road every person they meet stares at them. The boys drink in the attention, their expression aloof.

“Look at all these peasant walking.”

“Aie. those poor souls.”

They made sure to talk loud enough for everyone to hear them. The expression of awe turned to anger or confusion.

One half of the people felt they were being mocked, the other half thought maybe this was some sort of event.

It was a glorious affair. Sorp’s large figure holding translucent reins. The enormous wagon, four corses dragging it.

Everything related to Perpetuity is popular. Big spectacles happening in the city, such as people breaking laws and being imprisoned.

There are instances of people discovering professions and selling their products for high prices. An example, a cook sniffed out the cooking profession and was making a killing selling his food.

Unlike normal food, his sated people for longer duration. The food itself provided small buffs, this ranged for health recovery rate to simple things like lowering anxiety.

Many such cases gained immense popularity. Becoming a worldwide celebrity overnight. Sorp and his friends were getting a taste of fame.

Numerous requests to unblur their appearances came in. At first they were frightened but soon got used to it and acted even more smug.

Dart was frowning hard. He did not want to become famous and was angry at every last request that flooded his way. He dug out the option that block the requests.

Jarem, kom and especially Ret and Pal were all considering it. If it wasn’t for Dart admonishing it, they would have accepted to the requests by now.

Dart had his reasons but in the end, no matter what others did, he would still be blurred out. Sorp ignored the requests entirely and they were piling up.

The speed of the wagon was a bit slower than its peak idle speed. Which is about double the speed of a jogging human.

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Occasionally people would run along and ask questions. Pal, Ret, Kom and Jarem all played the suffering nobles. Sometimes they had looks of pity, sometimes it was disdain.

No matter how long the journey was, they kept seeing people walk along the road. The more shameless people would ask for a ride. This was harshly rebuked.

The information about how to get a corse was already public. It was a part of the information Dart sold. And it was becoming popular. This increased his income.

Dart navigated to his personal information. In advanced options he went into his Vcoin section. Every transaction is saved here.

In addition to every transaction is possible to view how much Perpetuity owes you. More detailed information shows how much income he received for individual piece of information he sold.

These things are set in place to manage contracts. Perpetuity acts a guarantor through contracts. Debts unpaid results in fines from Perpetuity. Which Perpetuity becomes responsible for.

The lowest amounts is coming from the miscellaneous insects he had information on. These things might spike in value once professions discovered a need for them.

It didn’t look like he would gain much from his collective information. Only thing bringing in respectable amounts was the information on corse. This included some of the contracts they did.

Due to the nature of widespread information. Information centers didn’t make too much profit. But people did respect and use the service, as it was easier to use than scouring the internet.

The information that the information center disseminated, was always true. It was verified by the world Perpetuity. This was another thing that made it worthwhile to buy their information.

Dart understood this and used it himself to great effect. The proof was the wagon they are riding. This was discovered by Dart through the information center.

Dart swiped his hand about in the air. He was now copying various information into a blank page. Soon he fell into thought and his eyes focused.

Wide eyed like a toad Dart was staring at the screens. He wasn’t surprised. He was just trying to use the Perpetuity’s navigation system with his mind alone.

Everything done in the virtual world is done through the human brain. Everything a person does, that is.

With enough practice, in a state similar to meditation, a person can control multiple different things with their mind alone.

The B.F.M.’s are actually the most brazen example of this. For now however, everyone used basic close combat static B.F.M.’s.

The more mystical B.F.M.’s with fireballs, arcane arrows, electric weapons, have yet to be discovered.

The reason Dart is doing this, is for the sake of efficiency. It’s faster than he can wave his hands and fingers about. But it can be nauseating or headache inducing to learn.

After copying a few random lines from his Vcoin menu he turned his attention to the enormous list of people recording their time in Perpetuity.

Kom was actually monitoring as well. What they felt was strange that the people that begun walking the first day, were still not at the Third wave reinforcement camp.

They had walked all night. Some were passed out on the road. No matter how far they could see, everything was green on either side.

Just the road and the plantations. Forever. After flipping between a few different people it became apparent that the size of the plantations wasn’t simple.

“Sorp.”

Sorp was at the front. He had remained motionless for at least an hour.

“This trip might take more than just a few hours. It may take longer than a day.”

“Okay.”

“We need to make sure we have enough food for the journey.”

Sorp listened to Dart. The guys saw Dart stretch his lanky body forward to talk to Sorp.

“If you notice anything we can eat, we should hunt it.”

“Okay.”

Dart leaned back into his seat and said the same thing to the guys. They even made sure their tents and firewood was okay.

As for food, in general they should be fine. They could steal from the plantations. The taste however, assuming uncooked, couldn’t be guaranteed.

The guys had a lot of food. Maybe enough to feed themselves for a few days to a week. If they ate like normal people and not like wild beasts.

“I’m having regrets.”

“Jarem, please. Just sit down. Have another beer.”

All of four of them were slightly drunk. They were watching various things on their palm devices, sometimes cracking jokes.

Even Sorp was having a drink. Majority of the carry weight was from the outrageous amount of alcohol they brought along.

“Guys. There won’t be any bars out there right?”

“Hold on. What are you trying to say.”

“With no bars, where are you going to find women?”

“Jarem has a point. Pal, this isn’t good.”

“You’re right Ret. We have to turn around. Right now.”

“We’re not turning around.”

“Are you going to find women for us, Kom?”

“Maybe I will. I can do anything.”

“You can’t find your own asshole, fatty.”

“Fatty? I haven’t been fat since the last Arble left the Ring.”

“You’ll always be fatty, fatty.”

Sorp could clearly hear them fighting. But he wasn’t going to turn around, he was excited about training. He had never been trained in fighting.

“I’ve got needs.”

“You need to shut up.”

“I’m trying to watch something, shut up Ret.”

“Kom. Put down the device, we need to talk about his!”

“That’s right! Me and Pal are different from you uggos.”

“Exactly! We are actually losing something here. Of course you lot don’t care.”

“You can’t be calling Sorp ugly.”

“Of course I’m not saying that. Sorp has his charm, but he can hardly compete with me.”

It is true that they were handsome. They knew they were handsome, this made it less impactful. They were handsome and still terrorized women.

“Just sit down you idiot. We’ve been on the road for hours already, look, the sun will set in a few hours.”

“How can you be so calm!? Are you going to fuck the dirt!? I’m not sure what you are interested in, but I’m not like you.”

“Listen to Kom, guys. Who's to say there won't be girls out there? Can it be only men exist in this world?”

“Dart has a point Ret, maybe it’s not all bad.”

“Pal, don’t listen to them. When have you seen Dart chase after a girl?”

“Now that you mention it, it's only ever been those few girls.”

“Exactly! See. No way he cares enough.”

Dart was feeling annoyed enough. He waved his hand about and began filtering out some options and then flicked the window to each of them.

“Just look at this. More woman than you can count are in this world and this only the ones recording themselves.”

When he sent it over they looked it over and quickly began whispering between themselves. Dart heard a knock on the wooden wagon.

“Send it to me to. I want to see.”

This was Sorp. he was sat outside the wagon on a controllers seat. But he could still hear them chatting. He was listening intently, it was how he passed the time.

Dart slithered out front to Sorp and sat next to him.

“Want to see anything specific?”

“Is there any fighting?”

“There is. Most of it isn’t very exciting. Let me check for a bit.”

The search system in Perpetuity was in depth. Every live recording has tags related to what is happening in the surrounding.

These tags can be any word in the dictionary. Fighting is of course among them. Detailed searched can be hard to figure out, but they aren’t impossible to use.

Detailed searched things like events within a certain interval. A location if the recorder makes it public. The list goes on and on.

“I can’t find anything special. Most of the people are doing basic tasks, exploring the city or traveling on a road almost exactly like ours.”

There are eight major gates out of the city. These gates lead to places similar to the Third wave reinforcement camp.

The Third wave reinforcement camp focuses on training fighters and survival skills. Other places focus on various other professions.

All locations have some degree of physical fighting involved. They can vary in intensity but they all boil down to the same thing.

Only the Third wave reinforcement goal is to expand territory. The more realistic goal is to train people capable enough to be sent to Second wave reinforcements camp.

In turn the Second wave reinforcement camp trains people in a more intense way. They then send them to the First wave reinforcements.

From there they will be sent to the great bridges. They’ll walk through the great canyon. A canyon so big they won’t see the mountains on either side.

Once to they reach the great bridge what meets them is eternal rain. This is a soft rain. Due merge of The Eternal River, water is constantly in the air.

Measures have to be taken against this rain. One is taken care of before they arrive. Great canals are carved into the rock face, allowing the water to flow back into the river.

The other is to protect the skin. The water is not harmful in and of itself, but constant contact with it will leave a person in a sorry state. This is similar to guarding against the blaring sun.

The endstate is to cross the one of the great bridges to the unknown. To pioneer new lands. Develop new villages, towns, cities or even countries.

People will have multiple lifetimes to accomplish this. This is possible through the dilution of time.

Perpetual Power can even increase this time if people meet requirements and enter Instanced places within the world. An obvious advantage for those wanting to practice their skills.

There is still a problem that Perpetual Power has yet to conquer. And that is eternal life. They can prolong or slow the decay of a body, but it is the mind that crumbles in its stead.

The matters of the mind are still too difficult to manipulate. Something causes the brain to devolve with age.

Unlike the body, it is far too dangerous to wade into the brain with nanomachines. While they still enter it, they cannot modify it like the rest of the body. Smallest mistake can end a life.

This does not mean that Perpetual Power has shied away from such research. It is highly secretive as it is considered taboo.