Two hours of sifting through professions has left the guys distraught. The sheer amount of information on a single subject can cause confusion.

Seeing everyone walk in silence, Kom feels the an itch to fill said silence.

“Sorp, what do you think?”

“It’s interesting. Weapons.”

“What kind?”

“Metal.”

“What about you Jarem?”

“I feel wronged.”

“What?”

“Wronged damnit. Why do I have to know all these things about plants anyway!?”

There is no lack of anger in Jarem. His statement roused some emotion, Pal can’t help himself but to join in.

“That’s right! And forget about plants, I now know more about making clothes than I am comfortable to know.”

“Only you idiots would complain about something so easy.”

“Dart, don’t even talk to me right now you sponge. I bet your loving this. Masochist.”

Rest of the day is allocated to incessant exercise and eating until sweet freedom shows itself.

The last exercise of the day is what is being called theoretical B.F.M. control. It does not actually exhaust the users, as the exhaustion exercise does.

What this Theoretical B.F.M. control is supposed to accomplish, is to allow people to understand how to find their limits, even as these limits expand.

The idea might be simple. But execution requires repeated practice. This is because understanding their limits requires a feedback.

In this case, the feedback is present upon drawing onto whatever B.F.M. reserves a user has. The difficulty lies in understanding the feedback and how to use to their benefits.

An intelligent person might have an advantage here. But that is only in the shorterm, as the B.F.M. is in its essence, using a muscle above all else.

Any practiced swordsman will understand a simple slash with their body, not their mind. And as such, a user will need to understand their B.F.M. like they understand how far they run without exhaustion.

It is athletic oriented people that hold the greatest advantage here. This does include a person like Sorp.

The issue at hand is that the feedback is fatigue in some sense. But once fatigue is noticeable, it may already be too late to strike a balance.

It is all these issues and more that require weeks of practice. It requires understanding and the active mind to be mindful of it.

“Pal.”

“Going out?”

“You coming?”

“Coming.”

“Jarem?”

“Coming.”

“Suppose we don’t have to ask Dart and Sorp.”

“Dart was always like this, but Sorp is obsessed with that B.F.M. nonsense.”

“Leave them to it, lets go hunt.”

Their idea of a hunt is far more insidious than it lets out to be. As it is not animals they hunt, not animals in the human sense, at least.

Laws in Perpetuity are tricky. Perpetuity, as in the world has no rules. The city state. Perpetuity, the governmental power. It is this Perpetuity that has laws.

Only camera’s placed in places outside the city, are in places with valuables worth defending. These can be Vcoin vaults, various valuable crafting materials, B.F.M. weapons and armours.

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There are no B.F.M. armours in the Third or Second reinforcement camps. But there is weaponry. And in the Second, there are hefty sum of valuable materials.

Any social venues do not have monitoring for anything but actual merchandise being sold. And the camp governs itself.

Without enough malicious events, meaning fighting or other exploitations of the camps residents, human or virtual humans. There will be no patrolling in the name of public safety.

From their experience, the guys already understand that if they remain stealthy. If their actions are not directly harmful to Perpetuity’s interests. They will be allowed free reign.

Having already run amok in the Third reinforcement camp with no public condemnation of interference of other sorts, it is clear that their evil is untethered.

This is allowed because they never were stupid enough to steal from those that would fight back. And least of all, large syndicates or governmental forces.

Stealing, coercing and abusing civilians however, this seems to have no repercussions.

There are various reasons for this lack of security. One is that the ultimate purpose is not to guard the people, but to guard against them.

Because the government sees people as both a resource and a disease. It is only when actions become detrimental to the governmental interests that change will be seen.

Outside of that, another reason for this lack of safety is to prepare people for what comes when they exit the Pebble in the river.

It is there were the government will no longer be pushing and helping civilians as directly, and begin depending on them for precious materials.

What this might achieve, is a vigilante force might present itself. Created by the people for the people. Perhaps people will form groups, guilds or other organizations.

What is true, is that outside of the city’s border, a certain form of lawlessness exists. And outside the Pebble in the river, it is complete lawlessness.

Five days into the training, everyone was adjusting to routine, but more importantly, they have consumed all available novice crafting professions information.

At this point, it is expected that users begin practicing a specific profession, one of the twelve. This is to replace the same time slot.

This is one of the reason why the Second wave reinforcement camp is three times larger than the Third reinforcement camp. Due to the facilities for crafting.

Having reviewed every profession, the guys all picked their professions. This was all done on a whim.

Pal had argued against picking Clothier but eventually found it to fit him. His farsighted thoughts had him thinking he’d need cool clothes in the future.

Jarem selected Poison concoction, having been seduced by various insidious poisons described.

Kom picked Tinkerer A tinkered creates defensive B.F.M. from biological material like plants and trees. Perhaps he did this at random.

Dart already started working on Synthesizer and Augmenter. His goal was to study three professions, adding Engraver later.

Sorp was straightforward and picked weaponeer. His understanding of it was that he could create a weapon that fit him.

What he considered fitting him is still unknown. It is unknown because he himself can’t be said to know.

Ret, picked medicine concoction, as there is a grave need to maintain animals and it was recommended to him.

Some discussion was had about this, to prevent them from picking the same subjects. In the end there would be some overlap.

As knowledge on fundamentals in any profession is readily available, the focus goes into practical practice.

In fact, almost everything is practical practice. There is the B.F.M. exhaustion exercises, basic fighting techniques, crafting practice and other more advanced survival tactics.

What is fortunate, is that practice doesn’t require actual materials. At least at the novice level. Right now people at the Second reinforcement camp receive substitute materials.

These materials do not result in functional items. And they can only work within workshops. As they are not real materials, but something like holographic.

It is strange, that in a virtual environment, Perpetual Power has decided to create a made up device that renders quasi-objects.

Quasi-objects. It’s meaning similar to virtual, where virtual real means something like ‘almost reality. In a sense virtual can be said to mean almost. Or nearing something.

In the same way, you can say quasi-objects or pseudo-objects to mean similar-objects or fake-objects.

These can be as fine as sand, flexible as plant stems or as hard as diamonds. Through these items, failure is forgone.

It is when tests, promotions, acquiring new, perhaps unknown knowledge that these pseudo objects are no longer valued.

That is not say that materials cannot be dismantled and tested thoroughly and later simulated through the same technology. But it will still require substantial amount of data to do so.

It can help people find what hasn’t been tried before. Meaning they bring up an item and test it against multiple things, and finding that the system doesn’t have knowledge of it.

For example a metal hasn’t been alloyed with another metal. If the system doesn’t have the data to know simulate such an interaction, the researcher can try to do so with the real material.

This has great many benefits. Any new information can be considered valuable. Not only in monetary terms but also for personal knowledge.

As it is in the end, knowledge on specific things that allow you promote yourself to the next stages of a specific crafting profession.

Same thing can be said about fighting methods. Thousands of battles accumulate knowledge. And in this case organized data, this data can be used to benefit the user.

In the stage that Sorp and the guys are at, their battle knowledge has little to no merit. As it is all basic techniques or random flailing. This generic data is already widespread and not valued.

Later when more varied types of B.F.M. tools present themselves, a need for specialized techniques to fight with rises.

Most basic battle techniques are being taught both in a theoretical way and a practical way. The difficulty, the facilities and weapons available all remain the same as in the Third reinforcement camp.

Out of every activity, Sorp spent most of his time practicing these techniques. It never seemed to end. Every few days he could change a weapon, and it would give him a foreign feeling.

Even when he managed to cycle through the many weapons, a new cycle meant a new experience. He had different insights on the weapons.

It can be said that Sorp not only seeks out violence for the sake of violence, but also to experience something new.

Every human, every fight was different. They might be similar, but cumulative experience changed the dynamic and every person met was different.

So even when fighting weak enemies, it was a new taste. A new flavour. And he could experience this best while training fighting techniques.

It is this same attitude that has lead Sorp to be the man who he is today. It can be said to be following his instincts.

It is not wrong to think of it as instincts. It is not wrong to see it as a man seeking excitement. Or a man wanting to experience something new.

Of course people might argue that fighting the same opponent a hundred times is repetition with nothing to offer. But those people are not hyper observant.

It can probably be this aspect of Sorp that has molded him more than anything. The way he perceives changes, in detail that might be too small to even acknowledge.

Not directly perhaps but at least indirectly. Making similar events, where the elements are similar but different enough that there is something new to be harvested from them.

With this virtual environment. Numerous elements have been added to Sorp’s arsenal. In particular, B.F.M. and a far faster regenerative body.

Just the fact that the virtual environment can alter his physical attributes, has intrigued Sorp from the beginning.

Yet it wasn’t until they were inside Perpetuity. The real end result of Perpetual Power decades of research that gave him the environment to experience it.

From the beginning, Sorp felt restrictions on him. This is very hard to perceive or even understand, as people’s physical condition can change from day to day, from our to hour and even few minutes apart.

This restriction did not go away. In Sorp’s senses, this restriction got even worse. But he also understands that his strength has never been higher.

With growth, the restrictions placed can be perceived to increase. In reality it is a constant percentage.

This restriction can be lifted and even turned into a boon, making people go beyond what they should be capable of.

This is done through items. Either armors, weapons, various trinkets or consumables like potions and food.