Chapter Thirty - Side effect of death penalty
Artha knew that the guilds would refocus on lifestyle players soon enough and with support of guilds, these players would soon become apprentices and start making items. When it happened, his monopoly over the market would be lost, so he had to make money as soon as possible.
The price today was obviously more than the double of yesterday's. The guilds could only swallow the anger and pay, including the conversion fee. For his self made high tier customers, he was ready to sell more potions too. They paid the highest, so why not? Then he left a tantalizing offer. He could sell few sleeping bags for credits, available only for select few on first come first serve basis. So, kindly plan for the same as early as possible, thank you. Politeness to the customer is the basic duty of the seller.
This time he didn't rush back to village. While everyone was busy worrying about how to remove debuff without paying coins or purchasing items, and spending time collecting the tasks, he enjoyed a relatively free monster map. There were still few groups here and there, with each member trying to patch up the difference formed due to debuff and few succeeding very well. These gave the push for other players tonform temporary groups. Unfortunately, most of these groups broke up soon. The tempo between the players could not be formed so easily. Most of the time, many if not all of the members would be fighting to be the captain and give orders, each with the firm belief that their orders were the best. Many cooks spoiled the broth. So how could such temporary groups still say cohesive. But due to this, few players synced and formed teams separately, thereby increasing the efficiency of monster hunt.
There were very few solo players. Most of such players were harassing moles or chicks. These below level monsters gave less XP but the chances of death was also less and attack power was increased slightly due to extra attributes. So till they felt better oriented and till debuff went off, they would rather kill low level critters.
Artha bribed one of the better groups to kill steal their prey by giving one HP potion. At the point when extra potion each costed double or more, this bribe actually was too good.
As the time for transfer of potions neared, he received the promise from the group named temporarily as 'Stone heads galore ' to allow him to kill steal in next map too. With such promise given, the group went to rule over the next monster map of roosters.
Artha didn't wait anymore. He started collecting items like a mad person till all his bags including upgraded trader bags, were filled and he hottailed to the hotel.
Next was the same process. Dump all the items and fill in the potions. To prevent suspicions, he was selling potions at different times to different guilds and workshops. Anyways, he would comeback after sometime as his bags would be full. He would do some transaction then.
The players were slowly getting used to limited use of potions and other resources and to debuffs. The progress was hindered too much and they had oversaturated the level 0 and later on level 1 maps.
Still it did not stop players from dying. Some deaths were because the players were too dumb, some because others were dumb and they became collateral damage. Some overestimated their fighting capacity, some could not co-ordinate well. And the PK raised its ugly head in the game officially.
Player 'Single waiting for a beauty ' was the first one to die due to PK(player killing). He got immortalized in the steele at the park entrance. He immediately wanted to go back and fight against those who granted him death.
Unfortunately, he had death debuff. Even when he was a victim, death debuff continued. If there had been a chat option, he would have shown his prowess wonderfully. He was one of the famed keyboard warrior, one who used his words to entice and pull the crowd down the merry path and he was good enough to earn credits from this hobby. He temporarily logged off to enter VR lobby to send posts to forum and complain about PK and no chat feature etc. He felt better after venting and he relogged back near the steele at the village park entrance. He stood up, brushed his clothes and walked around the village centre to entice the players to fight against the violent Red players ( players who kill other players). Entering the VR lobby from game side would make the game character or avatar collapse and fall to the ground as there would be no muscle control, that's why it was recommended to log off partly or completely in safe positions.
The gaming company gave answer to part of the queries raised by various players. The chat function could be enabled inside the game too. Please find the conditions for the upgrade by yourself, thank you very much.
A billion plus players. Millions of posts, still more backseat reviews giving all sorts of explanations, yet none had found a way to enable the local chat feature. Were the players worried? Heck no! They would enjoy the novel period. This is just the second day of the game. Compared to yesterday, they were having more fun today. What is the fun in being a daredevil if you are not betting your life on it?
The experts ran off to different maps. The elite teams searched for the dungeons or bosses in hope of getting better equipments or even skill books. Others in the guild filled the gap- do logistics, gather items, sell items if needed, kill monsters so that there will not be big gap between them and the upper echelon. What if they want support in high level map and you can't even reach there? How useful can you be?
Artha finally grabbed hold of lifestyle NPCs and nitpicked tiny details till they agreed to give quests to be apprentice. Yep. A bona fide quest instead of task.