Towards the end of the exam, people have completed everything except for one or two recipes from the profession they qualified in.
These are the last people, some have already managed to clear all objectives and left the testing area.
Those few that have left are both talented, somewhat intelligent and ambitious. But most of all, they were lucky.
Dart is one of these people. One of eight that managed to finish the test three days ahead of schedule.
Dart, like the other seven was lucky. He had split his time studying two professions, meaning he had to practice with the B.F.M. crafting tools more.
This made him better at utilizing them. But the degree of proficiency he has is still not capable of surviving the crafting process without help from the Perpetuity system.
Twenty percent B.F.M. completion rate means the item has a high rate of failure. So he has surprisingly managed to complete a few recipes almost entirely through luck.
It is easy to see this as lucky because once the data is analyzed, you see that Dart not did struggle with a few recipes but struggled with others.
This doesn’t make sense in respect to B.F.M. competency, as that’s the entirety of the qualification. It lacks consistency. And the same thing can be seen for other early completers.
Of course there is something to be said about their talent, ambition and intelligence. And this made them complete earlier, better B.F.M. control lowers the chance of failure.
On the thirteenth day, everyone has finished the exam. Everyone completed everything required of them.
Upon leaving the testing area, they are given a familiar medal. A medal used to prove their qualifications.
Since Dart was one of the first one out, he had a two days to arrange their traveling. He couldn’t deal with the animals, only Ret knew where they even were.
Ret was still in the testing area, where all communication and recording was impossible. What he did do was gather momentous amount food.
After this he had some leisure time, this time was spent browsing what had happened these past two weeks. Greatest difference was the number of people in the camp.
There is not a small number of people in Perpetuity but they can’t all be leading the pack. Most of the people trickle in like a tide.
Not only does the environment funnel people towards areas like the Reinforcement camps, but information has also become common place.
It has turned highway traveling into a lucrative trade, many people have been contracted to drive people in large carrighes.
This sort of quality of life and a clear path to progress has created a virtual flood of people. The large roads are not filled but they can be said to have traffic.
Such traffic has created jobs for the more out of reach villages and the people on contracts there. Things like stalls with general foodstuff by the highway are not rare.
The number of people in the Second wave reinforcement camp has more than quadrupled, excluding the graduates, there are exactly two hundred sixty two people training and studying.
This is small scale compared to the First wave reinforcement camp, which has over four thousand people already, making the facility look packed.
This issue is managed through illusory instancing. Instead of creating bigger facilities, Perpetual Power uses layered instances.
This means that millions could theoretically stay in the same spot as Perpetual power can create near infinite seamless instances.
These instances do not need to big or small, they can be a single building or a single stretch of road. It only matters whether people have direct eyesight to each other.
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It might sound complicated or maybe convoluted, but the technology for it is solid, all that matters is that it is managed properly.
People can be in multiple instance at one time, this is what makes the instances layered instead of just making more and more new instances.
An example of this would be a person opening a door to a house and in the moment the door is interacted with, that person is most likely in two instances at once.
A second example would be a person entering a crossroad. On a crossroad, one with heavy traffic, is presumably two to four instances. One for each stretch of road.
These things might not matter in the grand scheme of things, but can be considered worthwhile to know. This sort of technology is hungry for resources.
For the first time, the guys were thinking about taking a break from Perpetuity. They had been here for months, they ate and slept here.
Soon they had been here for twelve weeks. This can’t be considered a long time, and they certainly didn’t feel like it had been long.
Once the time difference is calculated, only two weeks have passed in the real world. Two weeks, in which they learned monumental amount of information.
Everything aside, the training and the traveling. It all pales in comparison to the amount of information they managed to stuff inside their brains in the span of two weeks.
Two weeks in real time, but even in when twelve weeks are considered, about three months, it is still an astonishing amount of information they absorbed.
In a sense, traditional learning has been cast to the wayside and even people without sight or hearing can learn myriad of things without effort.
It might be blunt to say, but even retards are capable of possessing ludicrous amount of knowledge, whether they can apply is a different matter.
“We should get to the next camp first.”
“Why does that matter? We can leave now and come back.”
“I agree with Kom, Pal, I think we should go to the next camp first.”
“So, Kom and Jar want to go. What do you guys think?”
“I’m not sure, I’ll leave it up to you and Sorp.”
“Alright, Ret is undecided what about you Sorp?”
“I say we got to the next camp.”
Sorp’s reasoning is simple. This world is more interesting than the real one. The new experiences and a sense of achievement is continuous in Perpetuity.
These things might take some time, but they also have new goals. They just finished the test and experiencing that sense of achievement pushes them forward.
“I just wanted to properly check up on our businesses.”
“I already did that, Kom. Everything is fine.”
“Alright, if Dart says its fine, guess I’m fine with staying then.”
“Let’s go then.”
There are two ways to log out in Perpetuity. One is leaving entirely. To do this, you need to at least be in a Settlement.
And the other is to leave the game and leave behind an avatar. This avatar can be treated as a comatose person. They can be killed and abused.
The benefit of logging out with an avatar staying is traveling. A one week journey can become a day a single day in the real world. This requires someone to travel with and guard the avatar.
It is impossible to directly contact someone inside Perpetuity. Perpetuity only exports data. It is possible to send messages to the real world from Perpetuity but not receive them from the outside world.
It’s not impossible to do these things, Perpetual Power created this one way channel of information for a reason. Their explanation is simple, it’s better this way.
This piece of information or rather, understanding how communication works, is something Dart discovered in his leisure time while waiting for the guys to finish the test.
Seeing as they have their own carriage and beast to drag it, they can utilize one of two logout methods with negative repercussions.
This means they can cut down the consumption of food or drink while travelling, as long as someone drives the carriage.
The issue is when they should log back in. The journey should take a week or two at least. They are still unsure as the information is still not in circulation.
What they can do, is watch the guys recordings or better yet, watch the front runners recordings.
The biggest reason for logging out and doing this, is to not waste time traveling. But they also lose one or two weeks of B.F.M. training, which can be instrumental in future success.
Despite Dart’s explanation, noone decided to utilize this logout method. Pal was tempted, he wanted to check up on the family.
Dart also checked up on their families situation when he logged out at the Second wave Reinforcement camp.
At that time, Dart didn’t leave his pod, he just contacted everyone he had to contact before going back in.
Dart has a mother and two siblings. His younger brother nothing like him and his older sister, almost more of a villain than him.
After making sure no real issues had come up and that their collective employees weren’t skimming too much off the top he logged back in, he knew time goes six times faster in Perpetuity.
Even spending a day in real life would reach six days in Perpetuity, he only spent twenty minutes in the real world. This is two hours in Perpetuity, the thought alone scared him.
The time difference between the two world does in part create a dependance on Perpetuity, the fear of missing out or being left behind is the cause.
Quite a few have experienced this phenomena. Out of the guys, only Dart understands it, or atleast knows to fear it.
To put this into perspective. A year in Perpetuity is at least six years and ten become sixty, half a lifetime.
This is assuming people don’t enter sub instances where the time dilation is exacerbated. With continued B.F.M. training, the human mind might be capable of handling even further time dilation.
While the guys did not plan to escape from the trip, they still took the opportunity to leave for two or three hours.
They can’t be called good people, but they still love their family. Even their family can’t be called good people, but they all stuck together like insects or packs of vermin.
The journey was almost identical to the other two. They traveled, ate, trained, rested, binged on entertainment and not much else.
Daisy did not join the guys. But this time she travelled with a group of men and women on a carriage. The expenses dramatically lowered because they split it between themselves.
Because of the lengthy travel and the very few restops along the way, the travellers sync up. Assuming they do not try to hasten the journey by ignoring any stops.
There is some reason to stop at such locations. There are some special materials being sold there, though they might not know what they are used for.
They can even get simple contracts to move products from one place to another and gain simple reputation.
Those interested can spend some time there to and gain further prestige with the residents, this can lead to numerous things, to name one, setting up a transport export business.
No one stopped at this random village locations. All they did was walk about, take in the sights and perhaps find out what the local export was.
Even the guys took their time to rest and relax at some points. The traveling could take weeks to end, they valued the occasional rest stop. No one knew how far away the next camp was.