There were two major parts to the full VR gaming rig: the neuro-virtual headset and the bio-cradle.
Technically, the virtual world could be essed just by the NV headset. To allow the user to connect to a virtual simtion, the NV headset induced a state of trance reportedly somewhere between a meditative state and a deep sleep state.
This trance was the reason why some Halfworld yers had been able to log up to 50 hours nonstop on virtual tforms, at least until recorded health risks had virtual gamingpanies forced to institute hard limits on log-time within their systems.
This was apromise betweenpanies and the government, intended to maintain the health of the user.
The bio-cradle was designed to reduce the stress the use of the virtual system ced on the body, as using the headset without the bio-cradle for more than the allotted amount of time induced massive muscr disorientation when disconnecting plus muscle strain and stiffness.
It was a fancy recliner-type chair, with the outer appearance curving like a snail shell.
With the bio-cradle and headset together, the user was allowed 20 hours of virtual time before the system turned unresponsive for the remaining four hours of the day.
Without the bio-cradle, the virtual hours allowed to the user of just the headset fell to 12 hours total per day.
Eli had no ns topete for the top yer listings.
After living in war-ravagednd for years he had no wish to contribute to the wars. Rends may be a game, but he had only yed that game for a week before the NPCs became flesh and blood.
He was not averse to killing; it was needed to survive in Zushkenar, after all. But to cut down people just for quest rewards? He''d feel that he was nothing more than the bandits he greatly despised.
Even if the Rends NPCs were code right now.
Unfortunately, he needed money.
And the most lucrative craft in Rends at present was war.
The craftmasters of the previous iteration of the game were skilled and established, but the crafting and battle systems had not been integrated.
Yet.
There was some spection in the future over thete craft upgrade, why it came ten months after the Masters of War expansion was introduced.
Some thought the war expansion was offered upleted because there was a problem with the integration but thepany forced the release anyway.
Others thought the expansion was released early because another popr game was nning an upgrade at the same time, and RSI wanted to cut them off.
Still others thought thete update was to give the battlers a chance of a foothold in a world that crafters already dominated.
There were other rumors but he''d only skimmed the forums. No one knew definitive facts anyway.
He only remembered because when he joined the game in thest timeline, already months after the craft upgrade, the mood was still high. The craft sses and subsses that used to be important only to role-yers and adherents of Craftmasters suddenly were so imperative to the efforts of war.
But he couldn''t choose crafting now, not full time. Even if in the future crafters would be as important as battlers, he needed greater battle skills to be able to protect himself in Zushkenar.
The craft update would be in eight months.
That was too little time to level up a crafting ss to where he would be able to profit from the advantage of that knowledge. Not to mention, the middle crafting levels were a moneysink.
And he still didn''t have a gaming rig.
Eli grimaced.
The only high-level skills he had were leatherworking and forestry. A consequence of being forced into drudgery after transmigration.
He breathed deep the old rage at the thought of Findrakon, that damned guild that used their fellow transmigrators like tools until they broke.
He''d really been too trusting.
Well, if they were created in this timeline again, he''d been part of a sessful ve rebellion once, hadn''t he? His sharp smile grew wide enough to show teeth.
This time, he won''t be so helpless.
"Who needed a guildn''s protection anyway?"
He could do this on his own.
Eli didn''t want to battle other people, didn''t want those instincts ingrained into him, but he had no qualms about mass killing the fantasy beasts that roamed Zushkenar.
None at all.
In Rends, the beginner quests often started at monster hunting. Bing part of an army or a war n was more lucrative so few remained as monster hunters after leaving the starting viges.
That meant there would be littlepetition for prey.
It would be difficult, even then.
There wasn''t even a subss titled ''monster hunter''.
He''d be mostly making it up as he went along.
Eli thought about it.
Why not?
It sounded fun.
It would also take best advantage of his forestry and leatherworking skills.
It sounded very fun.
He decided. "A monster hunter."
Let''s do it.
After eight months, the war ns would create hunter-crafter subguilds to take advantage of the update.
Before then, he had to be established. He had to level both battle skills and craft skills to a usable level.
A challenge.
Eli had no ns topete for the top yer listings, but he needed to be a high-level yer when the Quake came. Realworld skillsets gave a yer an edge in Rends, and in-game skills were massive advantages in Zushkenar.
Twelve hours of ytime a day wasn''t enough.
He needed a full rig.
He opened a tab for the RSI website.
He stared, then grumbled. "Since when did people be so brazen, openly robbing others in broad daylight?"
Since RSI purchased Rends, they also had released a few Rends-themed NV headgear.
Rends NV-headsets cost in the range of 5000 to 40,000 ecru.
Five thousand ecru was enough to buy a studio apartment in one of the cheap areas of the city.
In Rends, it was easier to earn money as a new yer than all the other virtual games in the world. But not enough to justify the prices of the gaming gear.
This was why leveling was so important to many yers. Only top yers profited from Zushkenar. A gamer in the top 100,000 rankings could earn thousands of ecru a year by just ying the game.
It wasparable to the sry of the average office worker in argepany. And that was before the money that could be earned by taking advantage of the dedicated Rends video portal.
It was the media portal that gained the attention of the world. RSI set up a dedicated site just for Rends yers and encouraged them to post their battles and their in-game exploration.
It was a great idea.
If Rends yers had posted their videos on shbang, the most popr video portal in the world, their efforts would have been lost among the thousands of other incredible videos on the site.
On RedVisor, the RSI media site, all the broadcasts showed off the truly extraordinary visuals of Rends. And with the incredible fight scenes against that backdrop, which viewer couldn''t be interested?
With the viewcount on the media portal increasing exponentially with every day, businesses started circling like sharks smelling blood in water.
The idea of sponsorships for the top yers was already starting to circle in corporate rumors and the business pages.
Eli shook his head.
Rends wasn''t popr enough yet to gain sponsorships for the elite yers, but it was only a matter of time.
In a few more months, those headsets would be selling like hotcakes as more yers started to profit from the game.
He paused when he saw the description box for one of the headsets - it would give an additional subss slot. The Lazybones headset looked like it was geared to appeal to the old yers of craft-heavy Rends, many who boycotted or stopped ying when the first advertisements of the Masters of War expansion appeared.
Eli might have yed Rends for just a week, but even he knew that in the face of a game where battle was encouraged, the subsses were mostly considered useless.
But not in Zushkenar.
All the transmigrated yers had their skills transferred ording to their levels and proficiency.
But the subss levels of each yer were enhanced by a magnitude, and those subsses were the reason many of the low-level yers didn''t die within the first year.
Eli, as the yer Scare, had only survived those first few confusing weeks in another world because of the automatic knowledge that his ss skills gave him.
That meant, in this game, he needed to gain as many subsses as he could.
It didn''t even matter if he leveled them in-game as long as they would be useful to him after the transmigration.
The character creation page offered the yer 3 subss slots as primary, which was more than enough for most yers. If a yer wanted to actively level all subsses, they''d be running around the ce all day every day and wouldn''t be able to keep up with leveling their battle ss.
In Rends, the most effective builds for gaining cash in the shortest amount of time had a near-singr focus on the battle sses.
Which was why the forum rmendations gave only two choices: be a battler or a crafter. Leveling both at the same time was stupid. Especially when leveling them at the same time from the beginning.
"Ahaha…."
It looked like Eli was going to be stupid about this.
Hunting monsters in Rends wasn''t that lucrative, really. Not before the update. Also, some monster materials didn''t keep long. He needed to use them to craft something before they degraded.
There were reasons Eli didn''t want to ustom himself to killing people. When the yers transmigrated, many continued the path they knew. That is, leveling and battling.
It was unknown how many transmigrators died because they continued the inter-faction wars after the Quake.
When Scare died in Zushkenar, themon consensus was that only two thirds of the transmigrators were still alive. That was only because many of the elite yers sued for peace about a year after the transmigration, nearly simultaneously from everynd in Zushkenar, confusing the locals greatly.
Every race and nation in Zushkenar had Earthborn yers in it, and with that intangible bond between them managed to calm a good deal of the bloodlust between warring factions.
Then there was Findrakon, which exploited the low-level yers and the former NPCs, but the bastard at the head of the group was an immortal cockroach that knew how toy low and keep away from the major conflicts. It was the reason the exploitative guild hadn''t been decimated by the faction wars and the fact that yers could no longer be resurrected.
If he was a full battler and met those beasts….ah, he didn''t have the time to fight against an entire guild.
Not when the Quake was a year away. A year and four months.
Eli thumped his fist on the counter rhythmically, eyes far in the distance, shaking the memories away.
It was a moment before his attention returned to the Rendssite.
The thought of joining a yer guildn caused something to twist in his gut.
No. He didn''t have to think about it.
Being a monster hunter, until the craft update there''ll be no one willing to party with him anyway.
He tapped the image of the Lazybones headset, opening a greater description andments.
>>even if you sh prices to ?, rsi, who''ll buy it?<<
>>uh, it''s just the added subss slot that''s different from the base headgear? aaaand…it''s nearly the same price as a MarkIX?<<
>>Yes. The Rends gear are all just themed merchandise. Better to buy original from the manugfacturer, sis. It''s cheaper.<<
>>***k, this trash, y even still on list?<<
>>so…you''re all new yers huh…<<
>>[eyeroll.pix]<<
>>from the manufacturer? little noobie idiot, you don''t know wat you''re saying. you''ll lose the rends bonuses if you do that.<<
>>Roll. Roll into a fire and die.<<
Thements degenerated after that, and Eli didn''t want to pick out the data from the name-calling. He closed the tab and checked the prices for bio-support recliners, also called bio-cradles. The cheapest that wasn''t an older model was a cool 11,500 ecru.
Whoa. Maybe he could get one secondhand?
The Lazybones headset cost 6999. A quick calction, rounded up for unforeseen problems, and he whistled at the price.
Even at his oldpany job, it''d take him three years max to save that much.
Where to get 20,000 ecru in a hurry?
His phone pinged.
Eli nced at the disy. It was the coupon code for a Rends discount from Zee.
He quickly sent his thanks.
The expiration date of the coupon was tomorrow. Tsk.
He tapped into his financials. Why did he keep so many ounts after he''d been fired?
Oh. Right.
The Eli of nine years ago had been confident that he''d have a regr job sooner orter that he hadn''t been that frugal. Eli closed the extraneous ounts, transferring the contents to a single bank.
He spent a few minutes filling in a form, and all his money was converted to ecru.
1721 ecru.
Hm. Disappointing. "It''s lower than I thought it would be."
Then he remembered that he''d prepared pretty extensively for the HI interview, even buying a brand new business suit. Tapping to the ount history, he nearly choked when he saw the suit and various essories was 600 ecru. He''d forgotten about that extravagance. That was ten times his monthly food costs, wasn''t it?!
600 ecru was 60,000 golden drax in Rends. That could buy some of the best NPC-made armor currently in the game shops.
Eli flopped over the counter, groaning in regret, then flicked the offending page closed with a finger. He covered his eyes in despairing shame.
He''d really thought he had a chance at Hareon Inteary, didn''t he.
Haha. This was the kind of embarrassment you should feel when finding yourself back in your teens. Not your mid-twenties. What a fresh and ufortable experience. Negative review, would not rmend.
Eli stood abruptly, went to the fridge. He twitched when he realized the shelves were bulgingly full of cans – c, cold coffee, energy drinks, milk drinks. Now he knew why Zee had given him a weird look yesterday when he opened the thing.
He noted that all the cans had the ''extra-sweetened''bel somewhere. What the hell, old me? Was there a sale at the supermart?
The thought of drinking something ''extra-sweet'' made him think of the Zushkenari addictive drugs given to the war ves.
"Why did no one stop me?" he muttered at the wall of drinks he probably wouldn''t be able to drink now.
He held his phone up to one can, and the data on the product was automatically presented. "Apparently they''re limited edition. Can''t be ordered online."
Eli stared at the can in his hand.
"Limited edition…"
There was only one response to that, for a poor person like him: online auction.
He counted the cans, took pictures, and posted the data on the local shopping site. He cleaned up, and wandered about the house.
Thirty minutester, he had more stuff posted on the shopping site, and a ping told him that the drinks had been bought at what he thought was the super-high asking price.
He checked again. It was bought and the funds already in escrow.
Huh. Maybe he should''ve gone higher.
He went to find packing material, and connected to a local delivery site. Fifteen minutester, a delivery drone hovered at his window expectantly. He ced the package of drinks into it.
An hourter, he had an additional 180 ecru in his ount and an added 5/5 star rating on the local shopsite.
That was really fast.
It wasn''t even mid-morning yet.
Heughed. He''d gotten used to deliveries that could take days or weeks in Zushkenar that this speed was almost godly.
Good humor restored, he paged to the Rends site to register.
He bought a year''s premium subscription and got one month free. With the coupon code and an unexpected new ount bonus promo, he had a total of 35% off the purchase price.
Excellent.
He now had an ount but no way to y the game.
Mm. How depressing.
He rolled about on the couch and frowned at the screen showing the RSI Rends NV headsets.
An advertisement popped up.
He growled at it, then paused. It was an advertisement for a GatesTech MarkIX version NV-headgear.
GatesTech was thepany that pioneered the virtual gaming headgear, and their dominance of the market continued for decades. They wereing out with a MarkIX version of their incredibly popr NV headset series around this time.
"The MarkIX…"
He remembered it because Zee was an avid virtual gamer and he''d nearly talked Eli''s ears off thest time around.
They had a fight in thest timeline, after Zee was epted into HI and Eli wasn''t. He''d used Zee of deliberately sabotaging his interview preparation, always talking about VR games and GatesTech and whatever popr gear he was always muttering about nonstop.
Shame suffused Eli''s being at the thought that he''d been formerly someone who ced the me for his failures on other people.
Even if he could me other people, Zee was particrly unsuited to be a viin. He was the kind of idiot who would be attracted to heroics.
And yet, at thest time they''d met in the other timeline, there was an edge to Zee that he hadn''t been used to.
After experiencing Zushkenar, Eli wasn''t averse to the idea that the wars of Rends had honed certain aspects of survival in the yers. After all, one of the early uses of virtual reality was militarybat training.
Thest time he saw Zee, he was more confident, the steel in his spine more evident, and that was one reason that Eli even tried the game.
What did he have to do, to gain that kind of confidence?
When Zee moved his sisters out of the building to a better living space, he knocked on the apartment and asked Eli to help him with an upgrade to his GatesTech MarkVIII headset because his hand was hurt.
Eli had been lonely enough to agree, despite the dubiously bandaged hand Zee had been waving around, and the fact that they barely spoke to each other anymore.
So he spent a day learning to jury-rig a neuro-virtual headset and listening to Zee talking about how in the GatesTech MarkV to MarkVIII, the premium and regr versions had simr software, only the outer shells and the hardware were markedly different.
Zee had given that headset to Eli.
Eli sat up, the idea refusing to die, slowly forming into a concrete n.
Zee had bragged that his personally upgraded MarkVIII had a nearly simr performance to the MarkIX, and even outperformed the MarkVIII premium version.
Eli didn''t know about that. But the upgrade had been remarkably simple.
Everything else was gravy.
He smiled.
He searched the Inte. MarkVIII headset cube upgrade.
There was nothing.
Eliughed, triumphant. There was a path forward.
He owed Zee a few great dinners for this.
"Call, Joven Rigaton."
His phone acknowledged.
The call was picked up.
"Crewan? This is you, right?"
Ah, right. They had each other''s number, but never called each other before. "Yeah. Can you help me with something?"
"Calling that favor in so fast? Good."
"I need to rent a space for a couple of weeks. Semirge, enough for several long tables and an industrial synthprinter, plus extra. Oh, soundproof, if you can."
"…is a basement alright?"
"Yes. If the venttion''s working."
"Sure. Just for you, 800 cash."
"You know I said ''rent'', right?"
"You think soundproofing''s easy?"
Eli considered, then shrugged. "That''s about ny ecru, isn''t it? Alright."
There was a surprised silence.
"What?"
"Something really is wrong with you. When Zee called, I thought he was exaggerating. You haggle prices with everything and everyone. Wait, are you really sick?"
Eli ignored thest question. "Will it be avable today?"
There was an impression of surprise and a shrug over the call. "Sure. Nothing exciting happening today anyway. I am," came the suddenly sarcastic tone, "entirely at your service, lord and master."
"Great!" Eli''s lips curled upward. "I''ll see you…maybete afternoon. Minion."
He ended the call.
There were things to be done.
Hunting monsters wasn''t going to be easy, after all.. And it was something he''d been doing soon enough.