Sleeping Off A Penalty

Knowing that I was already dead before I even opened my eyes from promptly logging out, I simply flick on the top level recline and massage settings of my gaming chair. Then, without even using my phone to check the time I simply looked out of my window to see that it was fairly late in the day with only some light remaining.

I started to feel kind of hungry after seeing how late it was but after a few moments I realized it was never to late to go to sleep. While diving simulated the functionality of sleep, the mind was obviously rarely at rest. I was something of a veteran when it came to dealing with the affects of losing actual sleep.

Then again, every gamer in the world was used to going without sleep.

For now, I simply lay back and closed my eyes to sleep while letting the vibrating chair soothe my seat-cramped body. Considering the fact that I usually worked out every day in some way after logging out, this was probably the first time in a while that my body would get some actual rest. Especially when considering how long it had been since my last workout.

Sleep took me away what felt like moments later only to drop me off right back in my chair just as quickly. The lighting coming in my window was now brighter and paler to show an early morning sky. My seat was still vibrating under my while concentrating on dozens of different pressure points about my body, working away the few cramps I had begun to develop.

Turning off my diving chair and slowly getting up, I spend ten casual minutes moving through a set of stretches and stances to wake my body up while working the loosened muscles back to tautness. Then I simply sat down at my computer and brought up the perpetually open Bygone Era forums window to start surfing through.

Even though I could not directly contact my friends in the game from outside the game, I was still the Clan Founder and thus could pass messages through the clan or update its main page. In this fashion, I quickly posted an 'offline' announcement thread asking about how things were going in the territory.

Only a few minutes later the others started posting responses on the clan announcement thread that I started. As it turned out, a little two days had passed in the game while I was asleep and in that time not only did the big money clan end up being thrashed by Thirteenth Incorporated but Thirteenth had also managed to reach the troll fort in their lane. Sadly, Duality was still in no condition to use their attempts and had even fought off a troll siege.

Luckily, the plague dragons I left with them handled the brunt of the assault and managed to do so without setting off an apocalypse. None of the dragons died, which meant the bygones still had ten over-leveled dragon pets, but many of them were wounded from acting as literal meat shields. However, their sacrifices were not in vain.

The reinforcements for Duality were said to be arriving 'today' in the game while other clans had started cropping up on the plateau outside the territory. It was mostly just the large advance parties and scout teams belonging to other clans coming in from different directions, but there were still four more clans said to have reached the plateau itself.

Right behind them were the reinforcement groups of not only Bygones WERE Bygones but also the monochrome clan, Thirteenth's reinforcements, and even a sibling clan of B1G M0N3Y. Two of those four groups had officially named Tragedy's Traveler's as the enemies of their clans and even posted bounties worth real money on the forums asking for us to be level-dropped.

They were only offering like ten dollars per level lost from any of my teammates, but I myself was now level sixty-eight. If I was actually dropped sixty-eight levels, Fallen Monochrome would supposedly pay out six hundred and eighty dollars. In other currencies, that was thousands if not tens of thousands to level-drop just me alone.

I was honestly sorely tempted to go on the forums and make a rage post claiming Fallen Monochrome was too scared to fight my freshly started clan themselves because they would just end up as my personal army of plague pups but instead decided against it. I could already tell that they and the bygones would be waiting outside of the territory for the opportunity to attack Tragedy's Travelers en masse. I could just prove to the world then and there that they were nothing to be concerned about by anyone in the game.

However, who would I have been if I let these piss-ant wallet warriors swagger around like they owned the place while threatening my people? Instead, I made a post on the forums offering a legendary thousand-layer 'basic' magic alloy sword that did damage in the lower nineties in exchange for a video of somebody chopping the head from the shoulders of the monochrome guild's leader and free blessed one-hundred-layer swords to anyone who posted videos of themselves killing regular monochrome clansmen.

Okay, I know that 'an eye for an eye' and 'a tooth for a tooth' just leaves the world blind and starving but they tried to target us with the public player base first. If they had kept things between our three, or four if counting Duality, clans then I would have kept things between just our clans. However, they tried to put a bounty on me!

I was only offering one sword per video… potentially per member, which was a tall order coming from just myself, but it was more of a warning shot than anything else.

Looking at it this way, it was a decent counter. They were paying people through the official forums to outright reset our characters while we were only claiming a single life which was worth about ten percent of a level. However, we were also arming a private militia equal to their guild's numbers.

If I put out a set of semi-legendary medium armor per reset, as many people as swords I previously sent out will rise to the occasion. Right now, I just wanted to see how long their bounty would last and who would try to collect. With my entire team together under the mobile fortress and applicable suit synergy affects, I probably would not have to recall the plague dragons.

Not only would we be swatting flies away from the proverbial pie, we would also be able to add unreliable clans to our trading and alliance blacklists. These clans would never have a hope of buying our goods through proper channels or receive our help in these raids or against world bosses. I had yet to see any world bosses, but that was mostly due to the location being the most civilized Imperial Continent.

Everyone in the betas included bits of gloating and bashing about how the main continent had the best access to 'world' reputation rankings while having harshly limited access to world-type bosses. We even had less dungeons despite increased events and instances, but we still had them. However, the blacklist would certainly die if we were participating.

After spending half an hour skimming through the forums looking for general magic techniques. After realizing how long it took just to find a way to make ice and rock walls, I needed to find a few pre-fabricated skills to mooch off of. It was fine enough in my opinion that I forced a high level NPC to awaken my magic and teach me 'the basics' of elementalism.

Even though I could combine my skills and spells almost freely despite increased costs thanks to the cost and cast and efficiency buffs on my magic, having access to stronger magic was always a plus.

Giving in to the emptiness of my belly and fullness of my digestive track, I retire from my office-slash-bedroom to the bathroom where I continue going through the forums on my phone. I had previously only managed to grasp the principles of 'true' ranged spells for the ice, fire, and lightning elements before rushing to the porcelain throne, now I needed to look at the branches of the earthen elements as well as water and wind.

Popular opinion maintained that wind was the most sword-supportive element there was because it came with the ability to not only enhance attacks and defenses with utilitarian properties but also had the ability to assist and enhance the other elements in a variety of manners. The first element most swordsmen in the game were advised to master was wind.

Fire, water, and wind were considered the basic elements while ice, lightning, and earth were the intermediate to advance elements. Light and darkness, of course, were the elite elements because they could branch into spatial and void magics. I still had no skills for light and dark but their principles could be sought through the game itself.

After taking care of myself in the bathroom, I walk back to my room in nothing but a towel and get dressed in some casual clothes before heading downstairs.

"Welcome back to the world, Sleeping Beauty," my father says enthusiastically from where he and my brother and sister were gathered at one end of the table for breakfast.

Looking up excitedly, my siblings started rapid-fire asking questions about my 'zombie dragons' and trolls and all of the different monsters that I could create or control. After rushing through some brief explanations of what little I knew and how little I actually knew, I was left glaring at my father who was watching his tablet which displayed a variety of small but familiar video clips.

Was this not the so-called administrative device? I know I had started asking Melpomene to track my combat accomplishments a while back because of how good Papi's videos looked but how soon did they have access to it? How much did they actually have?!

After explaining away the zombie dragons, my mom ever so helpfully brought me some food so that I had an excuse to avoid questions for a few moments before giving in to being pestered about the territory, trolls, and all of the monsters that I had managed to capture so far.

I slowly but surely learned how much of my gameplay they had access to as well as how far- if at all- they had spread. My father had actually been showing clips of my short spurs of fist-fights and group combats with certain mobs in the game in the gym to inspire his customers and trainers.

Many people played games like this during their sleep hours just for the spare time aspect and apparently my character's name was something of a local legend. Not just from my in-game fight-scenes but because of the 'training' videos my father had playing in some corners of the gym. One of the 'entertainment' monitors in the treadmill area in the middle of the first floor of the gym showed a video of me running in the yard on my treadmill while contemplating armor.

When the fuck did my parents take that video?!

Was it even my parents? Was Melpomene stalking me by satellite?!

My mom eventually ratted my dad out about the fact that me doing my version of the one-punch workout had also been recorded. This at least told me that it had been them recording me, but it did not remove the bad taste in my mouth. I could not even remember if I exercised with my shirt on or off but I was quick to ask about censorship.

Thankfully, my mom protected me by having my head censored with mosaic in the gym.

After breakfast my sibling took control of the conversation back from my parents and I by pestering me about how much money I was worth. Currently, I was penniless except for whatever my parents were willing to pay. It would still be a while before the Infected Mortals would be released and the only coin conversion going on right now was being done through the players themselves.

However, I could proudly say that I had made an estimated one-point-one million current gold coins ever since reaching the territory raid. I let a top ten clan owe me a bunch of money, ripped off a top ten clan that supposedly specialized in PVP, and then sold a bunch of items and equipment to another top clan for a little over a million gold altogether. They loved hearing about how I had actually scammed money out of the clan I turned into zombies.

By the time I had satisfied their curiosities about my powers and achievements they had quickly turned their attention to our parents like sharks that smelled blood. They immediately started whining and begging to be allowed to play the game as well.

While it would not be impossible for them to play since they were only five and seven years younger than me, the game's combat aspects would be harsh on them since they only had basic unarmed self-defense classes from the gym itself. The gym offered 'advanced' self defense classes to the public that accommodated the basics of common weapons but only basics and my youngest little sister had little interest in actual fighting.

They were both begging and promising to only play as healers since they were already aware of their own weakness as it was. They had been expressing the desire to play the game ever since my father actually agreed to sponsor me with his gym but it was not likely they would be allowed to. Even I could not promise to protect them from exposure to trolls and generally bad people in video games.

On the other hand, though, it looked like my mother was actually close to caving in.

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