Take A Good Long Look

Sitting up from my diving chair with a quiet groan as it powers down into stand-by mode after logging it, I stretch my arms and legs out from my seat before sitting back in the large reclining chair. My gaming chair was the mid-step between helmets and a full-blown pod or cabin, allowing for the full-body biometrics of the upper end units with some of the affordability of minimal electronics. Nowadays new helmets released for around four grand and tapered to two while my last-season chair cost six-and-a-half grand.

The reason why I got last season's was because it was an anniversary model from the company that was actually a little more expensive than the usual chairs. Why? Because the usually smooth geometric foam padding and sensors of this chair had multiple protrusion and vibration settings for massaging gamers after long hours spent playing.

In most games there was usually a limit to four or six hours a day and then sleep play depending on the country or age of the player. However, in competitive games like Bygone Era there was the capacity for eight hours of 'daylight' gaming even for normal players. Competitive players who came with a sponsor to cover costs and care, though, could game as long as twenty hours in a day between day and night.

Enjoying the various settings of my chair for fifteen minutes since it was still fairly early in the morning, I finally get up after letting my body be loosened up mechanically before heading downstairs. Thanks to my father not only owning his own business based in self-defense and physical fitness, despite not being an adult I was allowed to be a 'freelance sponsored player' because I was not part of a clan or sponsored workshop.

For a solo sponsored player like me, our income was mostly whatever we converted from the game as well as whatever my sponsor chose to pay me after proving I was worth paying. This, of course, depended on the sponsor and contract.

I personally had three reality months to not only make my mark in the top one hundred rankings of at least three different rankings as well as one specialist ranking in a top twenty or ten position.

I had officially accomplished at least that goal by securing the imperial reputation ranking and could secure a secondary top ten clan ranking. This would open me and my father up to not only a diversity of advertisement abilities but also the ability to start a reality workshop through his gym. On top of this, the clan and my clanmates can seek their own sponsors.

Of course, that would depend on their own rankings and favorability. I expected the girls would be applicable to lesser fashion names wearing clothes designed by common fashion lines like models when not in combat. However, if a sponsor wanted to put stipulations on wearing weapons or the equipment used in combat then there would be conflicting priorities.

"You seem pretty deep in thought," my father remarks after coming into the kitchen after I had made myself a large breakfast of fruit and granola bars after taking care of my morning business. "Something happen in the game?"

"We found another dungeon and cleared half of its modes," I reply with a brief nod. "We can choose who goes in and how with the help of my favorite favoring AI-slash-goddess in the game. Our names and the name of our party which we decided would be the name of our clan, it's Tragedy's Traveler's. Our patron deity is Melpomene, one of the upper neutral gods. Of fate."

Sitting down across from me with an abruptness, my father asks, "That all sounds like good stuff, and is probably why you finally secured that top rank. Though, you don't look to happy."

"No, I'm ecstatic," I assure him quickly after practicing my Overeating skill in reality for a few moments. "It's just, I'm a little tired mentally right now. We couldn't clear the upper modes of the dungeon because the enemies in normal have more numbers than easy and difficult has higher levels while the actual Hard mode had nothing but elites. Our equipment was pretty roughed from just the increased numbers and the higher levels would shadow them even worse.

"So we find a village after a day or so of fast travel and then we wake up and set to working smithing new equipment," I go one without even pausing to eat except to burp once as room was made in my stomach. "All day. I spent all day swinging a hammer on steel to the point where I was debuffed for exhaustion then I woke up and did it again! All of our equipment does sixty, seventy, and eighty something damage depending on the type of weapons, now, and im now an Expert Blacksmith."

"Isn't that-" My father starts to ask until I just bulldoze through his input.

"I even made a new masterpiece in the form of our Shield Guardian's giant wall shield," I say quickly after swallowing almost a third of a tangerine whole. "It has a physical attack of almost five hundred and an innate skill-chance to trigger and equal damaging EXPLOSION! Couple its P-A-T-K with a class skill that increases damage with that thirty-percent trigger rate and you can one-hit elites and some bosses of equal level. The defense is equal to the attack!

"The thing that has me upset right now, though," I carry on while my father just looks at me with confusion. "Is that I still have hours of armor crafting to do and I need to work out the design. We're going to be using Gigantula Silk as the base for suits before augmenting with a layer or two of leather and primitive pieces. Well, for most of us. It's time that I outfit our melee fighters with proper metal armoring and we have just the signature rare or epic grade materials to make it from."

"Ah, I see…" Dad says slowly while getting up hurriedly to busy himself with making a cup of coffee in case I decided to make another long winded report. When I remained silent except for the sounds of sloppy eating, he starts with, "Once you get a clan going and have a group of specialists for crafting, it'll be easier on you I'm sure. Pretty soon we could even start posting advertisements on the official forums"

"When the others at least have similar crafting bonuses to mine so I can work on my own equipment, I'll be happy," I say after taking a burping break most of the way through my meal. "I'll probably always be my own best craftsman since I have the most unique version of the Crafty title. And, I would not lot another person reforge my primary sword. It's almost a one-of-a-kind haunted weapon with a spirit that's bound to me. I might even be able to make another one or a haunted armor piece because I'm medium and found some miscellaneously named equipment among some corpses.

"Oh, I changed my race," I add as an afterthought. "I almost died from a fungal parasite colony that could have unleashed a plague in the game but I froze myself and the area and used transmuted both the colony in my body and my body into a hybrid. So, I magically evolved myself into a new species entirely called a Plaguedman and I can fuse other body parts or replicate biological materials."

"How fucking broken are you in that game?!" My father suddenly demands. "What level are you, now? Honey!" He suddenly calls out to my mom somewhere else in the house. "Bring me that administration tablet! I need to look at Leo's stats!"

"Level thirty-eight or thirty-nine and my Agility is like two hundred, now," I reply with a small smirk before returning my attention to my food. "You should talk to Papi about getting dungeon clips from everyone, we did some serious fighting in those four runs."

Just a few moments later, both my mom and dad were going over the 'administration tablet' that tied my 'private sponsor' to my character. Then, it was placed on the table in front of them, displaying my current avatar in the equipment I had gone to sleep in rotating slowly above my basic stats.

Name: Life Hack

Lv38

Affinity: ALL(small) (medium Elementalism) (medium Spirituality)

Title: Delai Family Guardian

PATK:166(+2)

PDEF:250 ((Pain Tolerant)(Damage Resistant)

MATK:111

MDEF: 132 (+50% Magic)(+35% Fire/Darkness)(Curse Immunity)(Poison Immunity)(Disease Immunity)

MVSPD: 156% (160%)

Str: 172(+5)

End:187(+40)

Agi:201(+40)

Int: 194(+5)

Will: 181(+5)

Luck: 169(+30)

HP:466(+180)

MP:510(+160)

Familiars: 5/6

Looking at the tablet as I walk over to join them, I watch as my parents scroll down through my list of skills and titles and perks after barely managing to get a look at my compiled permanent and temporary stats. Looking at them actually made me a little giddy, especially at how my in-game movement speed was half a time greater than my natural biometrics allowed.

"After looking through everything, my father asks, "Have you tried any unorthodox training methods yet? I may or may not have done some skimming and found a basic guide for agility training. The maker claims it will make you dodge arrows and crossbow bolts with a minimum one-thirty movement."

How frickin' fast was that first berserk mini-boss?!

"No, not at all," I reply shamelessly while thinking of hour our extra runs were spent with me training against that same mini-boss. Then, pulling out my phone to look into player crafting and trade posts, I say, "Aside from practicing footwork dodging an Imperial Legion recruit in unarmed combat for an hour or two a couple of times. Honestly, it's more rewarding to evade confrontations."

"Evade what?" My father asks in an odd mixture of curiosity and surprise. "Confrontations, like when the monsters randomly jump out at your character in the old games? Fleeing? Boy, who raised you to run from a fight?"

"If you do it continuously, you get a few Agility and Endurance every time you successfully escape the first few times, then every other time, then every few times," I reply with a shameless shrug. "And, it's not about running from a fight. The recruit I was training with works at the municipal smithy and the night foreman, since im simply sleepless in the game, is a decorated soldier or officer from the legion. He gave me the secret, but differently."

"Differently," My father echoes blandly, probably still scrolling through all of my miscellaneous information looking for the number of fights that I had actually run away from.

"The training exercise was blind jogging through the forest at night to develop my Agility and Endurance stats, but he advised me to evade confrontations because I was already on a mission," I explain loosely. "You still get points for just dodging trees for different periods of time, but those coupled with the flee rewards."

"Crafting, obviously, explains how your Strength is so high," my mom says while looking at her phone instead of the tablet. Her device was the parent device, which was a requirement for my being sponsored for 'virtual sport' at my age. "But, you did not develop magic until later, how did you get your Intelligence and Willpower stats so high so fast?"

"Reading bestiaries, crafting books, and general alchemy or botany guides from in the game," I reply with a shrug. "After a few nights of experimenting, it seems the right books are all one point apiece to Intelligence. As for Willpower, I have to thank my third familiar for that one. Imp queens pluck the claws from warrior imps to make into weapons. I bonded with my familiar by ripping claw for nail off of one another a couple of times as well as a few other events and achievements. I think realigning my spine helped, too."

"Getting pissed on by a goblin sure did a lot for your Willpower, huh?" My father asks blatantly, smirking despite the prompt smack to the back of his head that he received.

"Absolutely, how else could I have the mental fortitude to deal with you every day?" I ask with a bright and cheerful smile. "But, honestly, I've gotten some really random and easy rewards and I plan to get some other achievements if I have the time to once I get back to home base." I still had to run a lap around the city.

So far, my research provided me with a very interesting bit of information. Even most of the common-name workshops in the game were having trouble getting their workers and wares above fifth tier. On top of this, the general player population has begun reevaluating the levels of equipment based on their basic and or magical parameters.

The armor my team and I wore into the sepulcher was classed as sixth tier medium armor because it did more than one hundred and twenty physical defense overall with a B grade magic rating for its stat buffs and resistances.

With this in mind, I now had a bar set at which I needed to exceed both the sixth tier at an overall rating of two hundred at least and exceed B grade in its magical parameters. Luckily, the grades of my materials were all above the current average so entering the seventh tier and A grade magic with the simply addition of my own enchantment skills should not be too hard.

If the armor I make for myself is only just barely good enough, though, most of the magical work will have to be left to Oleander for the others

"Leo, are you listening?" My father asks suddenly, snapping my out of my thoughts. "I was just asking when would you be ready to start your clan. I know we already talked about it last night, but today's a new day."

"Of course it is," I tiredly sigh. "I can start the clan whenever we get to an appropriate Guild branch, but I would really prefer to wait and save on gold. After the exchange is opened, we'll have surplus of everything possible to upgrade the clan as far as money can buy in the early stages and then enough to invest in stockpiling materials. We're already going to burn through a lot of our initial rewards for the first Easy clear making our own equipment."

"What are first clear rewards like?" My father asks suddenly, going back through my titles and then 'properties' that contained the party's dungeon information.

"Bits and pieces of good stuff all throughout with a final clear reward of one of everything from everything," I reply while getting up blindly because I was skimming the game's official stock and marketing forum. "Except boss rewards. Minis and main bosses drop full loot, though."

"You did a lot of them, right? I see a lot of achievements for Tragedy's Travelers here," My mom asks and comments while looking at other information on her phone.

"We got two first clears and some of us worked on achievements for soloing the mini bosses which offered some random doubled loot reward," I reply while pulling several fruits from the fridge before going to the pantry to find some protein bars that I end up knocking to the floor."

"Sit the frick down," my father snaps quickly when I stop by the table to deposit my fruits before returning to pick up the protein bars. Even though only one box was currently open, three of the ten neatly organized boxes had fallen. However, exactly three bars, which was what I wanted, had fallen out.

Then, now that I had food, my parents left me alone to eat and study. Now that I had taken the time to better understand both the game's NPC markets as well as player adaptations, I switch over to studying player guides for crafting and enchanting made from teachings of actual tradesmen in the game.

After fifteen minutes spent cramming this information, I spent the next hour or so performing my workouts outside in the growing morning light.

While working out, I carefully monitored my speed, thought, and breathing to maintain a clear mind and steady pace until I finished a set and rested. While resting for a few minutes, I would contemplate one of the materials and its popular methods of use to find a good combination of techniques to achieve the performance or enhancement I wanted.

Then, with only ten minutes of resting after my push-ups, sit-ups, and one-legged squats, I took the treadmill out into the yard to power walk for a good half hour.

I spent this time carefully finalizing my plans for my personal armor by referencing the materials together based on their monster core values and then the natural affects followed by their treatment and working methods to see if any additional materials might conflict. All of this was hypothetical, but it gave me the blueprint for the armor I would make.

That was just in it's physical form and parameters, though. Whatever magical affects I can give it naturally through the crafting process as well as the final material enchantments, though, would make for a roughly random grading. However, I was more than prepared to settle for something along the lines of a literal B-plus because my team was already above average in abilities and skill use.

*