NewLegacy (2)

Oh how much I'd rather be online right now. My aunt was glaring at me from across the table. I suppose I should give her credit for somewhat making sure I wasn't dead in some alley once a month.

Tonight was the usual professional gaming isn't a career. You're a genius, you could do anything blah blah blah speech. Oh well I only had to put up with it for an hour and I got a free meal out of it. She had only started to "care" about me when I had been deemed as smart.

NewLegacy had plenty of ways for players to earn real money though. It had over eight billion players. Professional gaming was totally a real career. I already had over five million in savings. Not that I'd tell her that.

After she had finished her speech we parted ways. I made sure to send her money every month for looking after me once she started caring. It was the bare minimum since she had left me for five years in an orphanage. How she didn't connect the whole money to my gaming life was a mystery. I really didn't care though.

I entered my apartment and after cooking some rice and veggies with dumplings I sat at my computer and pulled up NewLegacy. I thought again about whether I should get an actual dive system for the game. After playing by keys so long though I didn't need the extra effects to outperform the other players.

Login: RoyalBlue

Password: ********** (blueisepic what no that's totally not my pass, I'll never tell you .....)

I entered the game.

[you have 1 new message: Sender: Decimal]

I opened the message from Deck. Yep the nerd had made his gamer name into a math symbol.

I scanned the letter briefly, like usual he was trying to persuade me to join the SnowLeopards. I ignored that part and instead headed to his location.

The evil swamps. The game creators were not exactly creative nor uncreative with their naming skills. Some places sounded foreign while others seemed like places for villains from children's books.

I slipped from tree to tree in the swamp to avoid the speed reduction affect. I traveled for five minutes before stopping at my destination. A large clearing was filled already with several players. Most of them belonging to parties of larger guilds.

I hung out in the shadows while waiting. A team from the cat guild arrived. Each guild had a shortened nickname for ease of use. I spotted Deck's tanker shield character among them. I noticed him waving at me when he used locate on me. I shot him a glance.

Yep I had even mastered all the keyboard shortcuts for standard emotions. Not even an eye roll would slow me down compared to dive players. Not that dive was really that different. They still used keys to activate skills so it wasn't a true dive like in animes.

Although the system had been developing the technology, which would be available in two week. I couldn't wait to virtually master my daggers.

A rumbling was heard as a giant snake monster rose from the swamp. Lame, it was a lesser boss. If I had of known that I probably wouldn't have bothered. NewLegacy spawned bosses in certain locations but at different random difficulties. And sadly the difficulties also determined the drops. A waste of time.

I jumped back onto a tree branch and just watch the others kill it.

"RoyalBlue, nice to see you." I turned at the message appearing. Blank stood on a branch not far from me.

I ignored him and continued to watch the fight.

"Why'd you leave last night during our fight suddenly, did you get scared?"

"Bad connection" I replied deciding to humor him for a moment.

"You want a rematch?"

"No keep the silly sword."

"You're totally angry about it."

I glared at him. He was obviously enjoying this. He had slipped up at the beginning of our fight. It should have been an easy win for me, but no luck favored him.

I decided not to amuse him any longer.

"Aww come on Royal." He said. His black haired avatar tried to put its arm around my shoulder.

I shoved him away till he fell out of the tree. He really made it too easy. He was lucky I wasn't a player killer type. My avatar winked at him on the ground then vanished as I used a teleport to nearest town function.

In a half second my avatar's dark blue haired form reappeared and I slipped into a nearby shop. My dark black clothing with royal blue trim wavered around me. Figures he even tried to follow me. I watched from the window as his avatar had appeared and was looking around.

What was his deal? He was so weird sometimes. Sometimes he was normal others mean and sometimes even downright stalker. I wouldn't put it past him to try to steal some of my items. I was the richest of the solo players.

I opened the NPC's shop function wondering if he'd notice if I changed my outfit. The shop didn't have very good options though, what a letdown.

I waited until he entered a shop then slipped out and away. Once I was quite a bit of distance off I relaxed again. I didn't trust anyone in power. The leader of the strongest guild was no exception.

I did my usual amount of running around the game until an ungodly hour of the night then logged. Today was the start of Saturday. I could sleep in.

Freedom sweet freedom. Sadly classes came around to ruin my NewLegacy marathon. Cursed class and its participation credit. I slept through it. The class after had a test so I showed up just to show off a bit. Easy A.

Maybe I should just build a spaceship and call it good? Deck loved to code and was good at it. I could code as well but it wasn't something I would do specifically unless it was ….. totally not to hack a game. If I built a spaceship would they just give me my degree? So bored.

I stared at the wall watching the clock and waiting for Deck to finish. Where I would do everything perfect to make an A, he would always go above and beyond. He was probably critiquing and rewriting the code for NASA's security as his final project. Overachiever.

He finally stumbled out of the building muttering about how he ran out of time to add the finishing touches.

"Hey Royal did you hear? They decided to move up the final sentencing of the hacker guy."

"So? Why do I care?"

"His sentencing will affect hackers everywhere! I mean he crashed the entire electric grid for a week and killed thousands with it."

"Then he deserves to die." I muttered.

Deck rolled his eyes at me. "But it's still interesting to watch!"

"Will you shut up if I watch it with you?"

"Yep"

"Fine whatever."

I watched him pull out his laptop as I sat down against a building out of the sun.

"Also did you see how well I'm fitting in with the cats? Blank's totally the best. Well I mean uh, unless you're not part of the guild." Deck glanced at me remembering our little rivalry.

"Blank's Blank" I muttered. "Idolize him all you want, he's just another fame seeking guild leader."

The screen opened for the sentencing hearing. Why was it even being broadcasted like this? Did the government want to use it as a warning to hackers? Eh probably.

"I'm amazed with your background that you ended up as such a righteous citizen" Deck looked at me, "I thought for sure you would be a classic case of revenge seeker or something."

"You're the hacker, you tell me first why you're not hacking the CIA or something." I muttered back.

"Shush it's starting!"

I watched his face as he watched the hearing. It they didn't end with him on death row I'd be disappointed in the government.

It ended exactly as I thought with him deemed partly crazy but still sentenced. He hadn't gotten out on a mental state. I assumed his AI taking over the world rant was linked to trying to be deemed insane. His last words haunted me a little.

"Even if you kill me, just believe me, someone has to do something about M.A.N.G.O." The fear in his eyes sunk into me. It didn't feel like a lie. I was usually super good at reading people. Why did this feel so real? The guy must be an expert liar.

"What Mango? Is he hungry?" asked Deck.

"Honestly did you even pay attention? M.A.N.G.O isn't a Mango it's what he kept referring to that AI as." I rolled my eyes at him.

I still couldn't get that fear in his eyes out of my head. When he heard he was going to die he seemed almost relieved. Something was really wrong with it all.