[Bonus chapter] Exercising The Fam

Signing out of the game after a small celebration of wine and early evening picnicking in the warmth of the small lava field with just my party, I simply leave my character asleep in a hole in the stone ground surrounded by familiars only to sprawl out in my gaming chair.

I spent a full half an hour once again enjoying the massage functions of my chair to help loosen up my body before finally slowly getting up and going over to my computer. After sitting down I opened up the game's homepage and then spread out a couple of tabs with different destinations. After sorting out the forums and clans and general game new, I set to work randomly skimming and scanning general information going on in the last day or so since the update.

Not much had actually made any real difference besides a few random people and even some niche professional players who were hunting down migrating and settled mobs in the wild. There had already been almost two dozen settlements found scattered across the Imperial Continent alone but the migration paths were taking up everybody's attention.

Their migrations actually came paired along with a variety of relative quests from some factions like the universal adventurer's association and various class or even noble factions. The only faction I currently had any relation to was a fallen noble name and its newborn inheritor name and I was a hundred miles away from them.

Aside from the discovering and tracking of these update critters over the past four in-game calendar days there was little else of interest besides changes taking place in the NPC economy with the new and sudden currency. The biggest changes were that the players had begun branching out from private shops and similar mercantile groups to auction houses.

With the application of level restrictions, the NPC population and even smaller military groups were now the main clientele of the player's upper crafting echelon. Even though players now had to procure materials instead of weapons, the NPC organizations were only too happy to buy up all the items level seventy and above.

Why were these weapons so desirable? Because NPC did not have the same information freedom that players enjoyed or universal abilities. Even though the materials could be a simple steel-copper alloy for armor plating, the average player was able to and could perform a few material enchantments while having the materials to place skill enchantments or even inherited stats. Even if an NPC craftsman or shop had the ability or the access it was uncommon for them to have both.

The general quality of a decent player craftsman's goods was usually above the average NPC's. This was mostly entails to the population size and availability of diverse materials. Villages, towns, and small cities all had fairly limited availability of resources while the player networks were already far reaching around the continent in their trade routes.

Currently, the average recommended level for traveling the wilds in a small party of ten or less was level fifty depending on what regions you traversed.

Anybody from the original release wave should be at that level after having already played for a few weeks in the game. In a place like Sierra, though, players had only having level thirty as their goal so a good half of the first wave population should be looking at level forty while the other half were looking toward sixty.

The above average players of my shortened generation of players were probably also looking at level forty right now while everybody else were at the twenty through thirty bottlenecks. As for my party and I, we were lucky enough to abuse the survival challenge style dungeon so that we could speed level toward thirty. Alongside a gathering and training of basic familiars, we also battering rammed our way through to level forties and then fifties traveling to Winter Wood.

Digging deep through the forums and makeshift marketplace to discover the higher grade materials available to the public, I look through my own character's inventories as well as the clans to compare. The clan itself had been barraged by donations of everything from nonsensical trash to rare herbs and monster parts and our players themselves were spread out in all the cardinal directions around the Imperial Continent.

However, we only had a few samples of materials in B and A grades while nobody had stumbled upon an S grade substance as of yet. In the clan, that is. There were currently over a dozen S grade alchemy and crafting components being offered around the continent and served varying purposes.

As much as we might have had physical tons of upper grade demonic materials and synthetics, those were something of a one-time binge. Aside from previous speculations with friends, there was no known way to acquire these materials or even the same type. We could not bandy these about even if I could reproduce soul crystals and some other materials.

The clan itself was being vaguely organized by a few of our core members who had chosen to take the time. We mainly had three groups that could work in tandem with each other in various fields. We had craftsmen, dungeon runners, and huntsman as the division among the Clan Fodder and Elites.

All of them could also fulfill each other's roles, alloying us to have spent the last few days cycling the activities of our groups and maximizing experiences and loot gains with the organizing. Original our lowest levels during the update were in the twenties but over the past couple of reality days those lowest levels had risen by ten per day thanks to basic clan resources.

Our rankings had also changed, rising from the top thirty to the top twelve with the twelfth place on the clan combat ratings. This increase was almost solely based on numbers but the ranking it afforded us was no less impressive. Even if we only brought these players together to use as a battery pack, we couple hundred could clan wipe a couple of thousands at a time.

After sending out a few messages to contact certain related parties concerning their advertised materials, I just switched over to skimming the forums for another few minutes before finally checking the time. It was well into the afternoon, now, and my siblings at least should be about home from school or on their way if not. I also could not longer ignore the need to use the restroom.

Using the bathroom and then taking a shower before grooming myself as part of a wake-up and relaxing process, I go downstairs in search of something to eat and find that my family were all in the living room watching a movie. The movie was only a year or so old so we had all already seen it enough times to remember it.

Everybody also had a bunch of snack foods gathered around as if they intended to slack on healthy foods. This behavior was usually reserved for Mondays but I currently had no idea what day it actually was. At this point, I could not even remember the calendar day in the game.

Finding myself an old serving tray to pile high with drinks and snacks, I go ahead and join my family for the movie while stuffing myself and multitasking on my phone. Underneath all the player based media in the forums were the localized news and even weather forecasts for individual regions from the game itself.

It only took a minute to filter through regions and cities to find the 'latest news' about the noob city of Sierra. Apparently, they were gearing up for their first city-wide event whose initial phases revolved around small but diverse herds of numerous animals and beasts being misplaced and chased throughout the forestry.

Taking in volunteers from various groups and the general player base as a whole, the city had already enlisted over two thousand players which were simply divided between scouts and defenders.

The general consensus of the city's more popular players were speculations about some kind of force or entity behind these animals herds that behaved as though being pursued. Some mixed beast groups had actually ran straight up to the walls of the city over the past few days. This was unheard of behavior in the game even if roaming beasts were now a thing.

Sierra itself had also formed a welcoming committee of sorts working with NPC class trainers and the adventurer association to welcome the newest impromptu wave of new players. There was an obvious gap between these thousands who were too low to participate properly in the upcoming event and those who had already signed up.

However, experience points were literally being thrown at the city walls so anyone with a brain were setting up large scale camp sites a mile or so out from the city. The previous noobs of Sierra were all over level thirty in the level twenty region while the new guys were only recently hitting their teens and even twenties in some cases.

More surprising than any of this was how popular auction houses and chambers of commerce were becoming, they were even receiving real ad banners in different parts of the forums as well as player recommendations. When I saw this I immediately gave the Golden Ferry a shout-out and told everybody to say I sent them. I made sure to inform them that it would not help them get a discount but it will help them receive better treatment.

After having exposed myself in Sierra's city forum my advertisement post went crazy with reactions and even comments that came with small donations. Most players were making outrageous claims and challenges while others were seeking answers to general gossip. However, a few of the local popular kids or group leaders wanted to know when I would 'come home' and if I would be in time for the city's mysterious event.

At first I wanted to say nothing but apparently there had been server announcements about The Lost Divinity which had exposed the involved clans.

From there it would not be hard to figure out that we were in the raid and the raid was over as well as who Tragedy's Travelers were. In the end I wrote a brief sentence about being able to come home soon and then distracted everybody with some thoughts if there were any signs of magic in various scales behind the herds' traveling routes and the likelihood of human or even imp involvement in the cause.

Like I expected, there were independent player groups who had done their research into tracing the herds paths and finding scattered areas of the forest where the flora and fauna were ruined. However, there were never any remains left behind despite some signs of lost animal lives.

Simply put, something numerous had entered the ecosystem and upset the natural balance but the sites themselves were generally too clean to have been done by other beasts. Especially with magic involved. It was decided that intelligent life was behind the cause of these bestial disturbances within minutes.

After this I quickly turned a blind eye to the local wanted ads and went back to browsing the markets. The highest grade materials available in Sierra were B and they were valued in singular or double digit numbers of new gold. They were also imported, which meant that we could make some good money if we still had any alchemy materials left.

Of course, that was something we could easily remedy while traveling back through Winter Wood.

When the movie was finally over half an hour after I finished engorging myself on two thousand calories worth of healthy junk food, my siblings were finally released from their mandatory participation and swiftly switched the TV over to playing streamed footage of all the videos I had made for my little brother and sister.

Only a few minutes into this, my siblings were falling over themselves trying to reenact my fight scenes that were slowed down by a few frames for their use. If not for how serious the expressions on their faces were as the rewound back and forth to switch roles between my opponents and myself, it would have been cute and funny to watch. As well, they did not look bad.

Sure, they lacked fluidity because their bodies were not used to moving in certain ways but they were still very young and at the perfect ages to start learning martial arts. Their bodies would easily adapt to flexibility and what they can do in reality could literally be amplified in the game.

I was honestly considering restricting them to unarmed tactics only since our starting region was dominated by small humanoid mobs like goblins and imps. With enemies like those, their unarmed combat skills and the foundations for their future martial arts abilities would be perfected. I might even withhold magic from them for a while.

After getting tired of watching them tire themselves out for more than fifteen minutes, I decided to take them outside for their workouts. Then we spent the next hour together in the late afternoon sun. I spent my time enjoying the sun while jogging for miles on my old treadmill while my little brother and sister took turns doing sets of ten push-ups every couple of minutes.

*