Stress Playing and Memories

"This price is outrageous! It's a place to stop and get gas for Pete's sake!" A woman was shrieking at the top of her lungs at the manager for the night, her husband shrieking along with her.

"Mam I understand but we don't make the prices, we change them according to what the company hands down to us. The prices are final unless there is a mix up in the..."

The conversation faded out of earshot as Darien left the store and began his walk home. Luckily they had asked for the manager right at the end there, was his internal conversation as he crossed the street. He was tired, the night had dragged on with angry people showing up every hour as if it was scheduled.

He was all too happy when he reached the door to his apartment and practically fell inside with how much he had been leaning on the door, a surprised cry escaped his lips as he found his footing and recovered.

"You alright?!" He heard a woman shout from the hallway. He poked his head out and saw that the older lady who lived a few doors down had been leaving as he had arrived.

"I'm okay thank you! Just lost my footing is all." He waved; his face flushed with embarrassment. He turned when she waved back and went along her way. Heading inside Darien went and ran himself a bath, he would relax a bit then decide to play some games before sleeping for a few hours. However when he went to run the water he noticed that nothing was coming out.

Puzzled he peaked back out into the hallway, it was then that he noticed a piece of paper tacked to his door.

Dear tenant, on XX/XX we are going to be shutting off water to the building for approximately four hours while we do routine maintenance on the pipes. We ask for your understanding and apologize for the inconvenience.

Darien fumed a moment before he settled down and just ran a hand over his head in frustration. "Fine...no bath." He grumbled when he finally walked back into the apartment and sat down at his desk. Firing up his PC he logged into Rune Union to begin sorting through the messages from before.

One message in particular stood out after he checked Sin's auto hunting practice.

Thank you for replying back!

I'm really new to games so

any help is really appreciated.

I have some free time on

Wednesday if you are free

Too?

-FeverDreamer

"Well that's surprisingly polite." Darien typed out a reply saying he would have free time before night as he works the graveyard shift. He specified that the time was Eastern Pacific US time and to just send him a message whenever the person gets online.

Cracking his knuckles he checked Sin's auto hunting progress and was surprised to find a rare sword among the loot. "I plan on making Sin more of a damage tanker so a magic weapon or something woulda been nice." He muttered and moved the sword to his own inventory along with some other items he would go and sell to the newly established Dragoon Imperium. When all the inventory moving was done, he set Devi to auto walk over to the part of the map that was now covered in a gold tint. This signified that a nation had applied borders and the map was updated daily based on players actions.

"I remember watching the effects of player wars on the map." He shuddered, recalling one town after another vanishing on the map. Before the server wipe and the update, players had spent so long building and gathering together to make those towns. Only for them to vanish to more powerful guilds or players who became one man armies.

"Wait...I wonder if those banned players are going to come back to this game since everything changed."

One player that Darien remembered was among the first to be banned was someone who had advanced the necromancer class to lich and used a skill scroll to get a holy resistance passive. They had leveled the passive to the max where holy healed them instead, then with high resistences he became the first godlike player to wreak havoc on the server.

A whole nation had been taken out before he was banned after so many people reported him.

"There's bound to be people who will find broken builds. Just hope it can get found out early." He remembered in the early days of the game people found an exploit with the health regeneration that made it high enough to counter certain damage against other players. Pvp was wrought with broken defense builds that made it hard for pvp popularity to take off.

A ding from the computer brought him back from reminiscing. He had reached the outskirts of the town, it had high walls now with NPC guards patrolling them.

"Devi!" Fin walked over from the gate with a wave. "Here to sell some stuff? I was hoping I'd see you around, the guild master wanted us to give some of these out to players that had helped us." He started a trade and gave Devi a traders permit and merchants license. "With these we do take a percentage of trades and purchases but this would allow you to trade with anyone here, even guards and stuff."

"I appreciate it. Getting ahead of the game to be able to sell here would help both of us out a bit." Darien typed out the response and smiled. These items later would probably cost a lot to get once the nation became more established. "You guys really rushed a nation."

"Our guild leader I think did marketing or something before? He organized everyone so we could all have fun doing the stuff we wanted while working towards an end goal." Fin acted proud as he talked about the guild.

"It also helped that we have a few people streaming the game in our guild. Got a lot of people wanting to join before we even made the leaderboards." One of the other players that was with him made a few emote gestures.

"Speaking of there is a meeting being streamed right now so I gotta head out. We have a player marketplace set up if you wanted to auction anything. Later Devi! Thanks for all the help so far." With that, Fin and a few others left the front gate, leaving it open as Devi walked behind them and into the center or town.

"Just goes to show how advanced a town can get." Darien muttered as he looked at the stone walkways and magic stone Street lamps. The market was abuzz with NPC's going about their tasks and players talking to one another and making deals.

Moving Devi up to the market kiosk, Darien began moving the items he wanted to sell and set their minimum buy out price. A few moments after he put them on the auction house he could see text from people talking.

"Hey some enchanted swords went up!"

"Enchanted weapons already? Holy $hit!" Darien saw people moving towards the market kiosks and immediately he was met with notifications pings stating that each of them items he posted had already sold.

"Am I that ahead right now?" He pondered looking at the character models of the players. "None of these guys look like they have any good gear right now..." He muttered then began walking out of town. He went to the group tab in his menu and set Sin to auto farm again near the village. "I'll let him keep going since he was so lucky before. What should I do in the meantime though?" He left the city gate and began having Devi auto walk North towards a giant lake on the map. "Haven't been here yet, wonder what I can find."