Eli padded out his door on too noisy feet, toweling wet hair.

He was getting too used to Krow’s nearly silent stride.

He stretched, then paused at the sight of Jori and Zee  in his living room.

It was just past nine in the morning.

Didn’t they have work?

They were walking Bel through the advanced basics of a VR headset.

Oh good. He’d be able to connect Bel with his virtual workspace.

He sounded a wordless greeting, moving to the kitchen.. “Hungry, you three?”

“Morning,” Bel looked up. “I added some things to the grocery list.”

Eli nodded, perused it.

These were…fresh food?

“Ugh, cooking.” He frowned slightly. “Aren’t you studying still? Leave the cooking to other people. My non-cooking habits are well-documented in the nearby grocery delivery network.”

“I need the exercise.”

“Then visit the gym with me. You can walk the treadmill and laugh while I try to follow that stupid aug-trainer.”

Jori raised a brow at that, slightly disbelieving. Zee only smiled.

But they said nothing, which was slightly unnerving.

“Where do you go?” Bel asked.

“The park gym nearby. They put walls on, it’s not too cold.”

“Alright.”

Eli nodded. She’d already seen his schedule for the last few days, so she could join in her time.

He removed the cooking ingredients, noted that there was only a small amount of meat on the list, most was vegetables, tofu and …cheese?

He looked for foodpaks with those ingredients, and several fruit packages and green salads. He kept the cheese on the list. 

A thought flitted through his mind, and he paused before sending the order. “Do you actually want to cook? I wouldn’t want you to stop your usual stress-relieving hobbies just because.”

Jori smirked at him for some reason. Eli ignored him. Who knew what went through that mind?

Bel blinked. “Oh. No, cooking is not my…but it’s fine if I cook.”

Eli added several types of bread to the order and sent it off. “Just use the shopping account attached to the apartment if you want anything.”

His mom preferred baking, and neither of them used the kitchen for more than that. Because of that, he had a ton of loyalty points at the grocery stores and a pretty nice discount.

Then he set his eyes on the two who had been suspiciously silent, their eyes moving fascinated between him and Bel.”So? Hungry? I got cereal or foodpaks. Take it or leave it.”

Jori shrugged. “I’m always ready for free food. Where are your cereal boxes, Crewan?”

They gathered in the kitchen, arranging themselves on the stools.

“Don’t you two have work?”

“Half day,” Zee reasoned.

“I am at work,” Jori poured a whole container of cereal into his bowl. “And no one is saying otherwise.”

Eli was baffled. “Who’d we tell? I don’t even know where you work.”

“No reason for you to.”

True enough.

Bel and Jori, the heathens, took their milk on the side.

Zee, in a complete affront to decent cereal-loving people everywhere, ate his cereal with the flavored milks that shops tossed in free with a certain amount of purchases.

Eli glanced at the carton. 

Watermelon-Apple milk? What even.

“So, suddenly you needed an extra headset?” Jori crunched on his dry cereal.

“Bel’s helping me with work.” Eli poured actual pure milk into his cereal, like the world was supposed to.

“The tour maker thing,” Zee nodded.

He was friends with the guy who recommended Eli, so him knowing wasn’t surprising.

“What tour?” Jori downed the cereal in his mouth with a swallow of milk. “Does the city have some new attraction I haven’t heard of?”

Eli couldn’t help his smirk.

Jori was the kind of gamer who lived the game. A true fan.

“Virtual tour coordinator,” he rolled the words off his tongue slowly. “For Redlands.”

Jori’s spoon paused. “Oh you better be joking.”

Whoa. Eli had only seen eyes like those in Zushkenar, before a fight.

It only made his smile widen. He shook his head.

Jori lowered his spoon. It clanked against the ceramic bowl.”We’re going to be dodging tourists now?!”

Eli shrugged. “A good test of your DEX.”

“A good test of–?! Zee, don’t stop me, let me at him! Crewan, just when you were starting to be tolerable…”

Eh?

Was Jori saying he was semi-tolerable now?

Actually, Eli thought so too.

But he only blinked, widening his eyes in innocent surprise.

Jori’s eyebrow twitched.

Actually, after arguing for a bit about various methods, it seemed the higher ups had come down on high with an edict: they were going to instance the tourist areas.

Eli got the message yesterday.

So the gamer world was going to exist slightly separate to the tourist areas – mingling in some places and side by side, but in most places, they were half a dimension apart.

Like some of the contained dungeons in the game.

The reason for the near-separation was the transport tickets only available to the tourists, which could be used to access different tour locations. Even across continents and kingdoms.

Eli wondered how Norge felt about that.

The game creator had been pretty insistent in interviews that the only instant transportation method in the game would remain the Gates in the gate-cities.

Oh wait, that registration chamber was accessed by portal too, wasn’t it? Something like a portal anyway. Eli wasn’t actually sure.

In any case, instant transportation was limited in Redlands and Zushkenar.

So far only the Marfall and Amvard Gates were in use. 

When were the Mer City and Jaquergar Gates discovered again? Eli couldn’t recall. But they, along with the Isles of Night Gate, were opened before the Quake.

Norge had always said the number of Gates was fixed long ago.

The tourist thing must be pretty important, if RSI got Norge to concede even this much.

Still, the basic tour plan had Norge’s fingerprints all over it. Most VR tours so far were less elaborate than what the VR tour unit of Redlands was doing.

Too bad for Jori.

It looked like the feature was here to stay.

Jori leaned forward, eyes intent. “You’re actually not serious, aren’t you? You’re just messing with me.”

“Why would I do that?” Eli kept a straight face as he put the bowls and spoons in the dishwasher. How many times did the guy ask that question? Six? “Is there some reason I would do that?”

A sound of frustration answered him.

Zee hauled the severely annoyed Jori away. “We just came to see how you two were doing. We actually have somewhere to be, so see you both late–“

The door closed behind them.

There was a short silence.

“I remember you mentioning the tour areas would be restricted against players.”

Eli nodded. “No weapons and no armors allowed in the tour areas. There are already game areas where those rules are enforced, so players are used to similarly restricted areas.”

“That doesn’t stop people from fighting.”

“There are no safe zones,” Eli agreed. “But if you think about it, neither does Earth.”

It took centuries before laws became enforceable enough that protected ‘safe zones’ were created for the citizenry. 

With the increase of fighters in Zushkenar, guards and protectors and enforcers would also increase. Guildclans would create safe places for themselves and their allies, and start laying the groundwork for peace.