The name of the shop was Leyline. This was proudly proclaimed by an illusion-enhanced wooden sign above the entrance that gave it a unique neon effect. In a modern shopping center or movie theater, it would not have seemed out of place. But in the modest row of sword-and-sorcery era shops on Preparation Street, it couldn't help but catch the eye of virtually all passerby.

The front door was Made, a custom, detailed skin, out of oak, a testament to the establishment's success. A sign just above eye level tacked onto it proclaimed the shop as "CLOSED" also with illusion-enhanced letters. Both illusions were ostentatious affectations, I knew, but in the world of advertising I'd found ostentation to be a virtue. Below the sign were several notices I'd also tacked on: "Scrolls up to ⑥ Available” “Coin and MS Cards accepted” and one larger than the others, carefully placed to be the most visible, in large blocky letters, “BY ORDER OF THE PROPRIETOR, LEYLINE WILL BE CLOSED DURING TIER ASSESSMENT.”

To the right of the door, the shop windows displayed several posters advertising that in the month prior to Tier Assessment, all scrolls for spells of the 4^th Circle or lower were on sale 50%, that is to say all scrolls that could be produced by the NPC assistant mage-scribe I had hired as the front man for Leyline. The scrolls of spells of the 5^th and 6^th circles had to be Made by me and would continue to sell for full price.

Naturally, I didn’t need to be standing outside of Leyline to describe all this. After all, I owned the place. I had put up those signs myself, even the main sign with a bit of levitation, and my magic powered the illusion spells that were laid on it and the store’s “open/closed” sign. I’ll be keeping quiet about who I am outside of the Game for now, the name I’m known by in the Society, but in the Game I’m known as the Sorcerer Veralix, Level 89, Maker of Magic Scrolls. Tier E…for the moment. A rising star of the Game and the Society, and all at the tender age of 25, only a few years an adult in the Society’s eyes. I’m sure my parents, my father a Keeper Supervisor (a very prestigious Vocation) my mother a Caretaker Instructor (not as prestigious but greatly respected due to high demand) would be very proud if they knew that I had already achieved two Society Merits though success in my own Maker Vocation.

But I was absolutely determined to keep the identity of Veralix’s player a secret, and thus had taken almost no advantage of my enhanced tier benefits. Neither had I displayed the two pips on any of my clothing as I was entitled to do. I well understood this is far from typical Society behavior. But in the Society, as in all of the Earth Colonies, people do what they want to do—what makes them happy. And to me, leading a double life was exceptionally fun and gave me immense joy, so by our own values, my behavior, odd though it is, is nothing but praiseworthy.

In the one world, masquerading as an ordinary—if proven to have been adept as a student—young man content to take the merit-less default vocation of Multiverse Player, or perhaps Professional MS Player (MS being by far the most popular “sub-game” in the Game, that had once existed as a paper and ink trading card game.) In the other, the Sorcerer-Scribe Veralix, a pillar of his District’s server-planet community, provider to said District of scrolls in the Advanced Circles of the Arcane and Holy classes of magic, and surely someday even the Expert circles of my chosen Primal resonance, Cosmic. Rare was the day that I didn’t wake up completely giddy over the whole thing.

Today was no exception. I synched into the Game as soon as I was ready, and switched to 3^rd person view, to admire the avatar I had created ten years ago. Sticking with the same character since I was a teenager had contributed greatly to my early success. There were over 10,000 possible character creation combinations to use when starting up, and those in charge of the Game were still adding more options even to this day—though at a gradual pace. And that's not even getting into the advanced customizations you could manipulate when making your character if you knew how.

I smirked as I switched back to normal view and cast several illusion spells, putting enough Power into them to last for my entire session. Now, I appeared to be a fairly normal looking, though youthful, human sorcerer. This was the appearance I’d carefully configured for what I called “town sessions” in the game. I called sessions when I went out questing, leveling up and gaining wealth through heroic combat “adventure sessions.” I had a different set of spells that disguised my stats rather than my appearance for those—ones that didn’t cost as much Power, since I’d need it for fighting. But today I’d use my Power to keep up Leyline’s stock of spells in the Fifth and Sixth circles. Of course, as much as I’d like to offer every spell in those Circles in the game, no player or NPC possessed the knowledge or skill to cast every single spell from all four Primal Elements, though in Cosmic magic, there were very few spells of those Circles or below I didn’t know, and I knew a good number in the Seventh and even a few in the Eighth Cosmic Circle, though it would take nearly 1/3^rd of my max Power to cast from the 8th a single time. And I liked to ensure that Leyline ran out of stock on any of the Advanced Circles as little as possible, not even a single spell that I offered in 3 out of the 4 Primal Elements--Holy, Arcane, or Cosmic. The final element, Infernal, was the element I had chosen upon character creation to take penalties on in order to gain Cosmic Resonance. This made such spells virtually unusable to me in order to offset my greater prowess with Cosmic spells.

So like I said, today in the Game, instead of fighting, questing, and hunting for treasure and exploring areas of my District’s server-world where my knowledge was still incomplete, I’d scribe new scrolls, perform administrative tasks as a shop owner, and shop myself to prepare for more adventuring later. A day on the town, basically. But today was going to be a little different. One of my best customers had made an appointment with me to discuss a special order request. I sometimes took on such requests, usually bulk orders of scrolls in the Mid to Expert circles, usually from entire Clans but sometimes from high level players of non-spellcasting Classes who had plenty of Crystals saved up. It would have been foolish and rude to refuse such requests, because every time I got one it meant a major windfall for me. But it also meant that I’d have to go against my usual routine in order to Make the particular scrolls needed, so I only took them by appointment, using that appointment to come to an agreement on the content of the order, the payment, the time of payment, and the delivery deadline.

That appointment would be later this evening, close to closing time, so after one last check of my altered appearance, I walked down the stairs from my login location—the owner’s apartment at Leyline—into the shop’s backroom. There was no reserve stock at Leyline, so the backroom served as my office and the scrollmaking workshop for both myself and my NPC assistant, who did the scrolls for the 1^st through 4^th Circles, with occasional help from me when we needed to Make a particularly large amount of such scrolls. There was a musty atmosphere that, before I had graduated, had comforted me after hours spent continuing to further my education in the sterilized atmosphere of the Learning Center in the real world. It continued to cheer me now.

From the back wall where a set of stairs led up to my in-game apartment, it was barely 2 paces from the stair’s foot to my personal writing desk. Like the front door and sign, it was Made, acquired more recently than either of the storefront Made objects and as expensive as both of them put together. At the front, carved scenes of epic magical duels were arranged by quarter, and at the center was an expert depiction of the face of Prandis, the Archmage of Cosmic Magic. Actually, it was more expensive than both of the other Made items in Leyline put together—a Masterwork that cost me roughly 100 Crystals. My liquid savings from 10 entire years of playing the Game with my current character, 5 of them with Leyline as a source of income, didn’t amount to much more than five times that. But I really, really, wanted to own just one Masterwork item at least, and things like weapons and armor of that class could only be afforded by the strongest players, ones who had been advancing their character for decades or else took pure Player vocations, letting their entire lives be subsumed by the Game.

I had made my own additions to the desk, too. I had enchanted the locks on the drawers heavily enough that if a thief could successfully break into them, they’d be at such a high level that they could readily kill me first, if it weren't for the fact that PvP was disabled in the town. And even if that did happen, unless I updated the status of the drawer’s contents with what I intended to take before removing something from them, or from the storeroom in my apartment, in the magical log I kept in my own inventory—a location that couldn’t be stolen from except in combat—that log would alert the city, who would then send a squad of level 100 Elite guardsmen to apprehend and PK the thief. If a thief could overcome THAT, there wouldn’t be a darn thing I’d be able to do to keep them from doing whatever they wanted to me anyway.

At least not personally, but anyone getting that far would be flagged as a criminal, with a bounty posted that would start at a certain minimum provided by the game itself based on the face value heinousness of the crime, then the controlling Territory Holder of the town’s fief would decide on an additional amount to add on as a punitive measure. Since my shop was such a big help not just to the players in my town, which had an equivalent kingdom in the Game, but to the entire District, it was likely this amount would be extremely large, since such solidarity would curry favor with my local King, the direct superior of the town’s Territory Holder who doubled as the mayor of my physical town, and even with the Planetary Ruler who acted as our District Governor in the Society. Large enough to get Clans who weren’t even interested in becoming my clients, who had enough advanced mages of their own to not even need my services gunning for them.

In short, you’d have to be very powerful and very stupid to try to burgle the Leyline, allowing me to expand my total inventory significantly beyond the means of my Level. That was the advantage of owning a domicile in the Game. Whether a shop apartment, a manor, or a simple cottage, it was your own space that you could use as storage, a place to rest and regain HP and Power without being charged a fee (unless you rented or camped out of course,) and you could even set up your own crafting equipment to Make in-game items, more cheaply and of higher quality than items Made using public crafting facilities.

As I sat at the desk, my eye was drawn to the pile stacked at its upper-right corner. One of the drawbacks of owning property in the Game. It meant you had a public address. Direct text, voice, or video communication through the virtual interface in the menu could be readily restricted to only people you wanted to contact you, and official communications from the Game and the Society. But anyone who knew your address could send you in-game mail, and Leyline was famous all over the District. For a while an entire bag of mail arrived to me daily, but after replying to almost none of them, it had dropped off to something resembling normal.

What was left these days were mostly requests for me to join clans, requests to duel or team up in PvE efforts, the occasional letter of gratitude to Leyline, and a few people who still hadn’t given up trying to ask me what my identity in the Society was, which were by far the most annoying. There were also letters of complaint and of course requests for appointments—for many, especially for players from other Districts, which happened about as often as special orders from my own, it was much more convenient to make an appointment by letter than in person, but my helper could almost always handle those.

Every so often though, someone wrote me a letter proposing to trade information about the Game, or a request to trade MS cards. These I would give due consideration, and there were two such letters today that I set aside to deal with in more detail after the others. After sorting the entire pile, I got up and went to one of the shelves nearer to the door to the Leyline shop floor. I opened the box labeled “form letters” and picked out enough of each type to reply to everyone. (I had really struggled with replying to people who would be unreasonably annoyed by the lack of one until I’d figured out how to just have one letter printed a bunch of times.) Then I stacked them on my desk and sorted them according to which type of reply to send to which type of letter, stacking the sorted pile. Then, scooping up the pile in my arms, I headed for the front of the room, to the assistant’s work desk, and put the pile on it where he’d take care of mailing them before opening the store tomorrow. For a Mid-Circle scrollmaker NPC to also take on general assistant duties like that meant paying out extra, but it was worth it. That was about 20 letters I wouldn’t have to send myself.

Once that was done, I checked the time. About 20 minutes to Hour 16, Society Griyag District Time. Each of the servers that represented a single World in the Multiverse kept time perfectly synched to that of the physical locations they represented. Travelling to my planet in the Game, in that regard, was exactly like travelling to my town in real life. There was an issue of scale—it was a little awkward to live physically on a planet with disparate time zones, and then go to a planet that was all one single time zone, but in practice Game worlds tended to be nowhere near the actual size of a planet, even with a sizeable population of NPCs to add to the players.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to deal with the two remaining letters and still go shopping, even take in a show in town, before the appointment at Hour 20. I discarded the first letter after getting through about half. The sender was offering an information trade, but it was related to the location in the wild of the Green Wellspring nearest my town—information that I’d already discovered and confirmed for myself. Masters of the Multiverse was in many ways too complex to compile completely perfect information on it, and its environs frequently changed (though not to the point of moving Wellsprings) as the game was continually updated. Legitimate information and strategy advice, therefore, was valuable, but this person had come to the wrong buyer.

As I read through the second, my pulse quickened. This person was from another District altogether. He had learned of me and my address not through Leyline, but from my public MS Card Trading List. And the card he was offering from that list was one I’d been looking for to improve my deck for a long time. He wanted slightly more value than he was offering for it, but this card was particularly difficult to track down through other means.

The most powerful MS decks had individual cards in them that were worth more than Leyline. Cards that were not only incredibly rare to obtain but were useful in certain ways outside of the card game itself, too. Mine was nowhere near that strong, but in MS a clever player could outwit rare and powerful cards with lesser cards, used correctly. And a clever player with less rare cards could defeat another clever player with rarer cards, because the power differences were tightly balanced in the card game. In practice though, many people tried to acquire the super-rares anyway, because their powers were far from similar in that alternate use.

I rolled out some parchment for a handwritten reply. I happily accept your offer. Please send further reply with next convenient time and date for you to execute the trade. Set date and time prior to Assessment, please. Location will be the MS Dome Trading Center in Larivel, Kingdom Agin, World Griyag. I hope to hear from you again soon.

--Veralix

Then, I went back to the store boxes and got an envelope, already stamped. In no time, my reply was ready to go, and in the mailbox just outside the store’s back door. Then, I decided to do something I didn’t do very often. I eschewed going further into the city from the back door, turned around and went back inside, and opened the back door into the sales floor of Leyline. My NPC helper Wirliin, a typical wizard looking type with a silver beard that extended down to his belly, looked up at the sound. “Ah, so the mage of mystery deigns to walk among us mere mortals this day!” And then, to a customer near the front of the store where the counter was, “This is the owner of Leyline, Veralix. He hardly ever comes out here.”

“Thank you for the introduction, Wirliin. I’m in a good mood, so I thought I’d check on the front line before heading out.”

“A good mood, sir?”

“A major piece of my MS puzzle is falling into place. I’d rather not say more just now.”

Wirliin chuckled. “And they call us wizards cryptic. I’ll contact you if anything requires your attention, of course.”

I nodded, and cast some looks at the two customers currently in the shop. I smiled at one eyeing the Circle 6 Holy scrolls. Those had been difficult to keep in stock this month, and cost no more or less than scrolls of the same circle from any other magic type—500 gold, equal to half a Crystal. And even though they weren’t on sale, they were selling like hotcakes. That’s the Assessment event, for you. Everyone’s eager to acquire any advantage they can to try and improve, or at least maintain, their Tier. And in the Society, as you might have already guessed, one’s Tier is especially important.

I twirled my finger behind my back and murmured, “Scan.” A tiny circle of light appeared around the finger I twirled, and a 2D data readout appeared in front of me that only I could see. Their level was in the lower 60s. And from the resplendent armor, and the cross pendant around their neck, I guessed their listed class of Templar Knight was similar to Paladin. “If Great Recover is looking a bit expensive for you, I’d recommend Fast Regeneration, from the 5^th Circle. Wouldn’t be much use if you get into trouble, but that’s when to use healing from your own spells. You do have 4^th Circle healing spells, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Fast Regeneration has a net HP gain nearly equal to Great Recover. It’s awesome if you want to keep on grinding without spending your own Power, and at 250 gold it’s cheaper than the equivalent potion. As long as you can get yourself in a position where you can take a break from fighting, you’ll see a big bump in your monster kill efficiency in the Assessment. It’s not a spell a lot of folks go for, and I don’t really see the reason why. Even I use it when I’m confident I can go another round with just a top up, and that’s casting from my Power. If I made scrolls for myself, I’d use it all the time. And it’s not one of our more popular items so there’s plenty in stock. Of course, that’s probably one reason I’m giving such a big pitch for it, haha.”

“If it works as well as you say, I’ll take four.” He held up a jagged, faintly glowing transparent stone smaller than a gold coin—a Crystal.

“Awesome! And feel free to come back for more later if you want, there’s still two weeks until the Assessment starts. No one else is likely to snap ‘em up, they’ll be available for ya.”

“I might be able to grind enough for say, two more…thanks.”

“But hey, if you want ‘em, I don’t handle the transactions. That’s all Wirliin here. Nice meeting you!”

The other customer was already gone long before this conversation was over. No doubt he hurried his purchases and rushed off to apply his fresh grist to the community rumor mill about what I’d mentioned about my MS deck. I wasn’t good enough to be considered truly a pro at the card game quite yet, but I wasn’t bad, and known as “one to watch” at least in my town. Well, soon enough the rumors would be laid to rest at the MS Assessment Tournament series. This year, I was going to the District Championship at Griyag’and, the royal city of Griyag, the District Capital city in real life, and World Authority Kingdom in the Game, of my District. There everyone would see just how much my deck has grown.

I’d been there a few times—on any given World, the royal city of the World Authority Kingdom, the capital of the World, was allotted some very good quests. Of course, it was worth going at least once just to sightsee, once you’d advanced in the game enough that such travel wasn’t prohibitively costly. But to go there for the District Championships would make the name of Veralix even greater, while keeping my Society name shrouded in mystery. Since I had finally managed to reach this point by finishing in the Top 16 of my Kingdom (town) level event for the first time ever, I wanted to do well. And a result there that was better than mediocre would earn me standing in the Assessment.

I headed out myself, toward the end of Preparation Street. My equipment was already as up to scratch as it was going to be, but I needed to replenish my stock of potions, in the shop at the front end of the street. From there, I went to Craftsman’s Row, where the town’s Makers of equipment and things like alchemical weapon items had set up shop. Mostly just to browse, but on a whim I decided to pick up a few attack items that covered elements that I couldn’t with my spells or abilities. I’d be playing it safe until the Assessment was over, but after that I’d be far from the only one willing to take more risks.

My next stop was the local MS Dome. Its exterior was small, smaller than the town’s PvP arena, which wasn’t one of the larger ones on Griyag. If this was the royal city Agin’as, which corresponded with the town of Agin in which I physically lived, both those facilities would be grander and larger. But I’d bought my shop in a town close to the kingdom border between Agin Kingdom and an NPC-ruled kingdom. It was both cheaper and had easier access to areas in my server world that were interesting to explore.

I played a couple of practice games to keep my hand in, using the deck as I’d had it during the 2^nd round qualifiers at Agin’as, and bought half a dozen packs on the way out. They weren’t cheap—an entire Crystal per pack, and that was for the most recent sets—but compared to what it would take to buy desirable singles, it was even possible to make an overall profit buying packs. By the time I left, it was two hours until the appointment. I debated swinging by the Larivel Arena, but there weren’t any tournaments going on and there wouldn’t be until the Assessment began. I might have been able to catch a couple rated duels, but the tournaments were where the most serious fighting that I could analyze was done.

So instead, I headed back to Leyline, this time entering by the back door, which was more of a side door in an alley. I quietly entered, sat at my desk, then took the magic log from my inventory. I deducted 10 sheets of anti-theft treated parchment, parchment that I’d harvested, then made myself from the skins of magic creatures. Even before I wrote a single rune on it, the paper had to receive infusions of my magic at each stage of the manufacturing process, because without such enchantment, any attempt to infuse it with a spell would result in nothing but a bit of paper with scribbles on.

Tedious steps like that were why Maker of Scrolls was not a common Vocation in the Society, or indeed the Game, but I found the process relaxing, especially what I was about to do—actually scribing them. Particular runes had to be set in particular places on each scroll and at particular sizes, with an enchanted quill pen that could conduct my magic power, and in magic-infused ink. The runes required were different for every spell, and for the Fourth Circle on, the penmanship had to be impeccable. I’d heard a while back that for the Seventh and Eighth Circles, scrollmaking quills would explode under the pressure of the power needed to scribe them, so an enchanted brush was needed instead. I'd been taking calligraphy lessons once a week for a couple years in preparation for this.

If you messed up the process bad enough at this point, the scroll you were trying to make would quite literally blow up in your face. But that hadn’t happened to me since my first year in the store, back when I was working for the previous NPC owner of the shop to learn how. NPC shops couldn’t make scrolls past the Fourth Circle, so Leyline was a lot more popular than it had been, and I’d kept Wiriliin, said former owner, on as my assistant ever since. To most people, scribing magic scrolls was both tedious and risky. But to me, it was incredibly relaxing. First one line, then the next, then the next. My entire world, my entire Multiverse of both the physical world and the game, contracted into those little strokes of ink.

By the time I was finished with all 10 scrolls, there was half an hour left to the appointment. I always added the scrolls I scribed to the shelves myself. This time, I’d done four different scrolls of Circle Four spells, two in Circle Five, and four copies of the Circle Six spell Great Recover, which was a hot seller year-round, let alone right now. The shop floor had quite a few customers when I went to stock the fresh scrolls. No surprise, since we’d be closing early for the appointment. After stocking, I went ahead and helped Wiriliin with the customers. The last one left with her purchases with just under ten minutes to spare. I bade Wiriliin good night and sat at the front counter, making sure everything that I’d set as manager was still the way I needed it.

At five minutes to the hour, I heard rapping on the front door. I opened it, and there in the clear calm night stood Andrew Mendelia, better known in the game as PsychoPenguin. Don’t let the name fool you—as an Avian, he was perfectly capable of flight, unlike actual penguins. He wore a pressed scarlet tunic, NPC made though still very nice, and as was typical for Avians, his taloned feet were unshod. He spread his wings for a moment in greeting, which flashed with a faint light as he did so. He was a major figure in the District—District MS Champion 3 years running, ranked highly in the entire Society in Arena PvP, and clan leader of Soaring Minds, a clan that had made heavy use of my scrolls. And his avatar was level 109 and slated to get higher still. It gave me no small satisfaction to have his patronage.

“Please, come in.” I led him into the backroom, where I’d set another chair in front of my desk for him.

“I’ll keep this brief,” said P.P. when we were settled in, “I need a hundred scrolls of Great Recover, by a week before the end of Assessment.”

“Tricky, for several reasons,” I began, “I’m not expending Power on scrollmaking during Assessment, no way. Delivery will have to be before Assessment instead. I can make that—just—but I won’t be able to keep up my regular stock, and not just on Great Recover. All things considered, it’ll take a lot for what you’re asking.”

“Well, how much is a lot?”

“125 Crystals.” This would be enough to fuse into a Yellow Crystal, the 4th most potent Fused Crystal. It was an opening offer, I figured he’d haggle me down to about 100 normal Crystals, which was still double the normal rate—

“Done.”

“Well then!” I did a poor job covering my surprise as I sprang up from the desk and over to my forms, retrieving a special order contract form before coming back. On this form, there were spaces for the quantity and types of scroll, for the agreed payment, and for our signatures. “I wrote in “100,” “Great Recover” and “125 €” in the fields, then signed it at the space marked “Merchant.” I handed it off to P.P., and a moment later he handed it back to me with “PsychoPenguin” affixed in the “Customer” space.”

He left with barely a word other than to state that delivery would be to the Soaring Minds Clan HQ building as usual. But I was left with a strong impression that this was not usual, even for a special order. He’d agreed to a pretty unfair price without blinking. I mean, it was no secret the guy had the cash to spare, even without his Clan’s treasury. There were rumors that he had fused nearly enough Blue Crystals to make a Violet, a feat which few outside the major Clans like Gaia’s Hand could accomplish. A Yellow wouldn’t have been much more than a drop from his bucket—a dribble from it maybe. But still, he usually brought any deal he made with anyone to a fair price. What was going on?

While pondering this, I went back into the storefront and checked that we were indeed out of stock on Great Recovers again. I wrote up a notice and magically adhered it to the place they usually went: “Out of Stock due to special order.” I’d have to write up another one to put on the front door warning people that more than just that spell would run out before long—I’d have to put all my Power into this order for days on end, which meant I couldn’t replenish any Fifth or Sixth Circle scrolls at all. Then, I went into the upstairs apartment, and then the bedroom, set my avatar to rest, and logged off.

Back in the real world, I called for an autocab to come and take me to my favorite Maker of Food. As an adjusted C Tier, I could have gone somewhere a lot more classy, but again, I wanted to keep my Adjusted Tier a secret, and besides, I loved the atmosphere at Garo’s. Like my workroom, it wasn’t as whitewashed as a lot of places in the Society.

As I ate, my mind still wouldn’t leave behind the question of what the heck was going on with this order. The first odd point was that he’d asked for delivery near to the end of Assessment. If he was distributing them to the clan members, he’d have asked for what I gave him anyway—to get them before Assessment so the clan could use them throughout.

While that didn’t make sense, the only other explanation didn’t make any sense either. 100 scrolls could be intended to supply a company of War Golems for use in a Territory Battle. But Great Recover was overkill for the usual War Golems. So, by the time I returned home and went to sleep, I was no closer to knowing what P.P. was doing.