There were two major parts to the full VR gaming rig: the neuro-virtual headset and the bio-cradle.

Technically, the virtual world could be accessed just by the NV headset. To allow the user to connect to a virtual simulation, the NV headset induced a state of trance reportedly somewhere between a meditative state and a deep sleep state.

This trance was the reason why some Halfworld players had been able to log up to 50 hours nonstop on virtual platforms, at least until recorded health risks had virtual gaming companies forced to institute hard limits on log-time within their systems.

This was a compromise between companies and the government, intended to maintain the health of the user.

The bio-cradle was designed to reduce the stress the use of the virtual system placed on the body, as using the headset without the bio-cradle for more than the allotted amount of time induced massive muscular disorientation when disconnecting plus muscle strain and stiffness.

It was a fancy recliner-type chair, with the outer appearance curving like a snail shell.

With the bio-cradle and headset together, the user was allowed 20 hours of virtual time before the system turned unresponsive for the remaining four hours of the day.

Without the bio-cradle, the virtual hours allowed to the user of just the headset fell to 12 hours total per day.

Eli had no plans to compete for the top player listings.

After living in war-ravaged land for years he had no wish to contribute to the wars. Redlands may be a game, but he had only played that game for a week before the NPCs became flesh and blood.

He was not averse to killing; it was needed to survive in Zushkenar, after all. But to cut down people just for quest rewards? He’d feel that he was nothing more than the bandits he greatly despised.

Even if the Redlands NPCs were code right now.

Unfortunately, he needed money.

And the most lucrative craft in Redlands at present was war.

The craftmasters of the previous iteration of the game were skilled and established, but the crafting and battle systems had not been integrated.

Yet.

There was some speculation in the future over the late craft upgrade, why it came ten months after the Masters of War expansion was introduced.

Some thought the war expansion was offered uncompleted because there was a problem with the integration but the company forced the release anyway.

Others thought the expansion was released early because another popular game was planning an upgrade at the same time, and RSI wanted to cut them off.

Still others thought the late update was to give the battlers a chance of a foothold in a world that crafters already dominated.

There were other rumors but he’d only skimmed the forums. No one knew definitive facts anyway.

He only remembered because when he joined the game in the last timeline, already months after the craft upgrade, the mood was still high. The craft classes and subclasses that used to be important only to role-players and adherents of Craftmasters suddenly were so imperative to the efforts of war.

But he couldn’t choose crafting now, not full time. Even if in the future crafters would be as important as battlers, he needed greater battle skills to be able to protect himself in Zushkenar.

The craft update would be in eight months.

That was too little time to level up a crafting class to where he would be able to profit from the advantage of that knowledge. Not to mention, the middle crafting levels were a moneysink.

And he still didn’t have a gaming rig.

Eli grimaced.

The only high-level skills he had were leatherworking and forestry. A consequence of being forced into drudgery after transmigration.

He breathed deep the old rage at the thought of Findrakon, that damned guild that used their fellow transmigrators like tools until they broke.

He’d really been too trusting.

Well, if they were created in this timeline again, he’d been part of a successful slave rebellion once, hadn’t he? His sharp smile grew wide enough to show teeth.

This time, he won’t be so helpless.

“Who needed a guildclan’s protection anyway?”

He could do this on his own.

Eli didn’t want to battle other people, didn’t want those instincts ingrained into him, but he had no qualms about mass killing the fantasy beasts that roamed Zushkenar.

None at all.

In Redlands, the beginner quests often started at monster hunting. Becoming part of an army or a war clan was more lucrative so few remained as monster hunters after leaving the starting villages.

That meant there would be little competition for prey.

It would be difficult, even then.

There wasn’t even a subclass titled ‘monster hunter’.

He’d be mostly making it up as he went along.

Eli thought about it.

Why not?

It sounded fun.

It would also take best advantage of his forestry and leatherworking skills.

It sounded very fun.

He decided. “A monster hunter.”

Let’s do it.

After eight months, the war clans would create hunter-crafter subguilds to take advantage of the update.

Before then, he had to be established. He had to level both battle skills and craft skills to a usable level.

A challenge.

Eli had no plans to compete for the top player listings, but he needed to be a high-level player when the Quake came. Realworld skillsets gave a player an edge in Redlands, and in-game skills were massive advantages in Zushkenar.

Twelve hours of playtime a day wasn’t enough.

He needed a full rig.

He opened a tab for the RSI website.

He stared, then grumbled. “Since when did people become so brazen, openly robbing others in broad daylight?”

Since RSI purchased Redlands, they also had released a few Redlands-themed NV headgear.

Redlands NV-headsets cost in the range of 5000 to 40,000 ecru.

Five thousand ecru was enough to buy a studio apartment in one of the cheap areas of the city.

In Redlands, it was easier to earn money as a new player than all the other virtual games in the world. But not enough to justify the prices of the gaming gear.

This was why leveling was so important to many players. Only top players profited from Zushkenar. A gamer in the top 100,000 rankings could earn thousands of ecru a year by just playing the game.

It was comparable to the salary of the average office worker in a large company. And that was before the money that could be earned by taking advantage of the dedicated Redlands video portal.

It was the media portal that gained the attention of the world. RSI set up a dedicated site just for Redlands players and encouraged them to post their battles and their in-game exploration.

It was a great idea.

If Redlands players had posted their videos on Flashbang, the most popular video portal in the world, their efforts would have been lost among the thousands of other incredible videos on the site.

On RedVisor, the RSI media site, all the broadcasts showed off the truly extraordinary visuals of Redlands. And with the incredible fight scenes against that backdrop, which viewer couldn’t be interested?

With the viewcount on the media portal increasing exponentially with every day, businesses started circling like sharks smelling blood in water.

The idea of sponsorships for the top players was already starting to circle in corporate rumors and the business pages.

Eli shook his head.

Redlands wasn’t popular enough yet to gain sponsorships for the elite players, but it was only a matter of time.

In a few more months, those headsets would be selling like hotcakes as more players started to profit from the game.

He paused when he saw the description box for one of the headsets – it would give an additional subclass slot. The Lazybones headset looked like it was geared to appeal to the old players of craft-heavy Redlands, many who boycotted or stopped playing when the first advertisements of the Masters of War expansion appeared.

Eli might have played Redlands for just a week, but even he knew that in the face of a game where battle was encouraged, the subclasses were mostly considered useless.

But not in Zushkenar.

All the transmigrated players had their skills transferred according to their levels and proficiency.

But the subclass levels of each player were enhanced by a magnitude, and those subclasses were the reason many of the low-level players didn’t die within the first year.

Eli, as the player Scare, had only survived those first few confusing weeks in another world because of the automatic knowledge that his class skills gave him.

That meant, in this game, he needed to gain as many subclasses as he could.

It didn’t even matter if he leveled them in-game as long as they would be useful to him after the transmigration.

The character creation page offered the player 3 subclass slots as primary, which was more than enough for most players. If a player wanted to actively level all subclasses, they’d be running around the place all day every day and wouldn’t be able to keep up with leveling their battle class.

In Redlands, the most effective builds for gaining cash in the shortest amount of time had a near-singular focus on the battle classes.

Which was why the forum recommendations gave only two choices: be a battler or a crafter. Leveling both at the same time was stupid. Especially when leveling them at the same time from the beginning.

“Ahaha….”

It looked like Eli was going to be stupid about this.

Hunting monsters in Redlands wasn’t that lucrative, really. Not before the update. Also, some monster materials didn’t keep long. He needed to use them to craft something before they degraded.

There were reasons Eli didn’t want to accustom himself to killing people. When the players transmigrated, many continued the path they knew. That is, leveling and battling.

It was unknown how many transmigrators died because they continued the inter-faction wars after the Quake.

When Scare died in Zushkenar, the common consensus was that only two thirds of the transmigrators were still alive. That was only because many of the elite players sued for peace about a year after the transmigration, nearly simultaneously from every land in Zushkenar, confusing the locals greatly.

Every race and nation in Zushkenar had Earthborn players in it, and with that intangible bond between them managed to calm a good deal of the bloodlust between warring factions.

Then there was Findrakon, which exploited the low-level players and the former NPCs, but the bastard at the head of the group was an immortal cockroach that knew how to lay low and keep away from the major conflicts. It was the reason the exploitative guild hadn’t been decimated by the faction wars and the fact that players could no longer be resurrected.

If he was a full battler and met those beasts….ah, he didn’t have the time to fight against an entire guild.

Not when the Quake was a year away. A year and four months.

Eli thumped his fist on the counter rhythmically, eyes far in the distance, shaking the memories away.

It was a moment before his attention returned to the Redlands netsite.

The thought of joining a player guildclan caused something to twist in his gut.

No. He didn’t have to think about it.

Being a monster hunter, until the craft update there’ll be no one willing to party with him anyway.

He tapped the image of the Lazybones headset, opening a greater description and comments.

>>even if you slash prices to ¼, rsi, who’ll buy it?<<

>>uh, it’s just the added subclass slot that’s different from the base headgear? aaaand…it’s nearly the same price as a MarkIX?<<

>>Yes. The Redlands gear are all just themed merchandise. Better to buy original from the manugfacturer, sis. It’s cheaper.<<

>>***k, this trash, y even still on list?<<

>>so…you’re all new players huh…<<

>>[eyeroll.pix]<<

>>from the manufacturer? little noobie idiot, you don’t know wat you’re saying. you’ll lose the redlands bonuses if you do that.<<

>>Roll. Roll into a fire and die.<<

The comments degenerated after that, and Eli didn’t want to pick out the data from the name-calling. He closed the tab and checked the prices for bio-support recliners, also called bio-cradles. The cheapest that wasn’t an older model was a cool 11,500 ecru.

Whoa. Maybe he could get one secondhand?

The Lazybones headset cost 6999. A quick calculation, rounded up for unforeseen problems, and he whistled at the price.

Even at his old company job, it’d take him three years max to save that much.

Where to get 20,000 ecru in a hurry?

His phone pinged.

Eli glanced at the display. It was the coupon code for a Redlands discount from Zee.

He quickly sent his thanks.

The expiration date of the coupon was tomorrow. Tsk.

He tapped into his financials. Why did he keep so many accounts after he’d been fired?

Oh. Right.

The Eli of nine years ago had been confident that he’d have a regular job sooner or later that he hadn’t been that frugal. Eli closed the extraneous accounts, transferring the contents to a single bank.

He spent a few minutes filling in a form, and all his money was converted to ecru.

1721 ecru.

Hm. Disappointing. “It’s lower than I thought it would be.”

Then he remembered that he’d prepared pretty extensively for the HI interview, even buying a brand new business suit. Tapping to the account history, he nearly choked when he saw the suit and various accessories was 600 ecru. He’d forgotten about that extravagance. That was ten times his monthly food costs, wasn’t it?!

600 ecru was 60,000 golden drax in Redlands. That could buy some of the best NPC-made armor currently in the game shops.

Eli flopped over the counter, groaning in regret, then flicked the offending page closed with a finger. He covered his eyes in despairing shame.

He’d really thought he had a chance at Hareon Interplanetary, didn’t he.

Haha. This was the kind of embarrassment you should feel when finding yourself back in your teens. Not your mid-twenties. What a fresh and uncomfortable experience. Negative review, would not recommend.

Eli stood abruptly, went to the fridge. He twitched when he realized the shelves were bulgingly full of cans – cola, cold coffee, energy drinks, milk drinks. Now he knew why Zee had given him a weird look yesterday when he opened the thing.

He noted that all the cans had the ‘extra-sweetened’ label somewhere. What the hell, old me? Was there a sale at the supermart?

The thought of drinking something ‘extra-sweet’ made him think of the Zushkenari addictive drugs given to the war slaves.

“Why did no one stop me?” he muttered at the wall of drinks he probably wouldn’t be able to drink now.

He held his phone up to one can, and the data on the product was automatically presented. “Apparently they’re limited edition. Can’t be ordered online.”

Eli stared at the can in his hand.

“Limited edition…”

There was only one response to that, for a poor person like him: online auction.

He counted the cans, took pictures, and posted the data on the local shopping site. He cleaned up, and wandered about the house.

Thirty minutes later, he had more stuff posted on the shopping site, and a ping told him that the drinks had been bought at what he thought was the super-high asking price.

He checked again. It was bought and the funds already in escrow.

Huh. Maybe he should’ve gone higher.

He went to find packing material, and connected to a local delivery site. Fifteen minutes later, a delivery drone hovered at his window expectantly. He placed the package of drinks into it.

An hour later, he had an additional 180 ecru in his account and an added 5/5 star rating on the local shopsite.

That was really fast.

It wasn’t even mid-morning yet.

He laughed. He’d gotten used to deliveries that could take days or weeks in Zushkenar that this speed was almost godly.

Good humor restored, he paged to the Redlands site to register.

He bought a year’s premium subscription and got one month free. With the coupon code and an unexpected new account bonus promo, he had a total of 35% off the purchase price.

Excellent.

He now had an account but no way to play the game.

Mm. How depressing.

He rolled about on the couch and frowned at the screen showing the RSI Redlands NV headsets.

An advertisement popped up.

He growled at it, then paused. It was an advertisement for a GatesTech MarkIX version NV-headgear.

GatesTech was the company that pioneered the virtual gaming headgear, and their dominance of the market continued for decades. They were coming out with a MarkIX version of their incredibly popular NV headset series around this time.

“The MarkIX…”

He remembered it because Zee was an avid virtual gamer and he’d nearly talked Eli’s ears off the last time around.

They had a fight in the last timeline, after Zee was accepted into HI and Eli wasn’t. He’d accused Zee of deliberately sabotaging his interview preparation, always talking about VR games and GatesTech and whatever popular gear he was always muttering about nonstop.

Shame suffused Eli’s being at the thought that he’d been formerly someone who placed the blame for his failures on other people.

Even if he could blame other people, Zee was particularly unsuited to be a villain. He was the kind of idiot who would be attracted to heroics.

And yet, at the last time they’d met in the other timeline, there was an edge to Zee that he hadn’t been used to.

After experiencing Zushkenar, Eli wasn’t averse to the idea that the wars of Redlands had honed certain aspects of survival in the players. After all, one of the early uses of virtual reality was military combat training.

The last time he saw Zee, he was more confident, the steel in his spine more evident, and that was one reason that Eli even tried the game.

What did he have to do, to gain that kind of confidence?

When Zee moved his sisters out of the building to a better living space, he knocked on the apartment and asked Eli to help him with an upgrade to his GatesTech MarkVIII headset because his hand was hurt.

Eli had been lonely enough to agree, despite the dubiously bandaged hand Zee had been waving around, and the fact that they barely spoke to each other anymore.

So he spent a day learning to jury-rig a neuro-virtual headset and listening to Zee talking about how in the GatesTech MarkV to MarkVIII, the premium and regular versions had similar software, only the outer shells and the hardware were markedly different.

Zee had given that headset to Eli.

Eli sat up, the idea refusing to die, slowly forming into a concrete plan.

Zee had bragged that his personally upgraded MarkVIII had a nearly similar performance to the MarkIX, and even outperformed the MarkVIII premium version.

Eli didn’t know about that. But the upgrade had been remarkably simple.

Everything else was gravy.

He smiled.

He searched the Internet. MarkVIII headset cube upgrade.

There was nothing.

Eli laughed, triumphant. There was a path forward.

He owed Zee a few great dinners for this.

“Call, Joven Rigaton.”

His phone acknowledged.

The call was picked up.

“Crewan? This is you, right?”

Ah, right. They had each other’s number, but never called each other before. “Yeah. Can you help me with something?”

“Calling that favor in so fast? Good.”

“I need to rent a space for a couple of weeks. Semi-large, enough for several long tables and an industrial synthprinter, plus extra. Oh, soundproof, if you can.”

“…is a basement alright?”

“Yes. If the ventilation’s working.”

“Sure. Just for you, 800 cash.”

“You know I said ‘rent’, right?”

“You think soundproofing’s easy?”

Eli considered, then shrugged. “That’s about ninety ecru, isn’t it? Alright.”

There was a surprised silence.

“What?”

“Something really is wrong with you. When Zee called, I thought he was exaggerating. You haggle prices with everything and everyone. Wait, are you really sick?”

Eli ignored the last question. “Will it be available today?”

There was an impression of surprise and a shrug over the call. “Sure. Nothing exciting happening today anyway. I am,” came the suddenly sarcastic tone, “entirely at your service, lord and master.”

“Great!” Eli’s lips curled upward. “I’ll see you…maybe late afternoon. Minion.”

He ended the call.

There were things to be done.

Hunting monsters wasn’t going to be easy, after all.. And it was something he’d been doing soon enough.