Today was the rare day in a month where Finn could come home from work when the sun was still high. There were still quite a lot of the elderly and the little kids who came out from their apartment rooms to partake in the lingering light of the sun. While the district where he lived in wasn’t quite a dark district, the light of the sun would only reach the ground only in a certain hour, and only on the day where the sky is cloudless.

 

He walked through a gang of kids playing around and chasing each other and stopped right in front of the door. He looked between the dark hallway that was sparsely lit with dim fluorescent light and the sunlit courtyard of the apartment complex. After hesitating for a couple of seconds, he decided to spend the rest of the day outside.

 

There were various storefronts on the first floor of the complex, remnant of the time when there were no high-rise buildings cutting off the sunlight from touching the ground. Among those storefronts, there were some that belong to the store selling cooked food and various drinks. They made use of the rare cloudless sky to bring some of their tables and chairs outdoor so that people could eat and drink to their fill while appreciating the sunlight.

 

Finn walked to the nearest eatery, a noodle house with a clean but worn out wooden sign saying Imp broth above its door. It was a place that was famous locally for having a tasty combination of firm noodles, spicy flavorful soup, and the synthetic meat that was cooked skillfully to get rid of its distinct artificial taste.

 

There were a couple of waitresses who were walking to and fro, taking orders and carrying it from the kitchen inside the store to the outdoor tables. Finn stopped one of them to order a spicy beef-flavored noodle before finding a place to sit. Finn only glanced briefly at the tables and chairs inside the store before walking to find a seat among the chairs outdoor.  

 

The outdoor seats were almost fully occupied, but there was still one or two vacant seats in between the tables. Finn knew most of the customer that occupied the seats by their face, but only spoken in a complete sentence – that wasn’t greeting or meaningless courtesy – to one or two of them. Among them, the only one with a vacant seat nearby was the pair of sisters who lived in the same apartment building as him.

 

The little one, a twelve-year-old little girl called Siris saw him walking their way. She gave Finn a gap-toothed smile while the hand that was not holding utensil went to grab her sister’s right sleeve. Her older sister Rida – who was using her right hand to eat using a chopstick and her other hand to play with her phone – only glanced briefly at Finn when he sat down in front of her.

 

“Are you actually eating or just enjoying the sun, Siris?”

“Can you see the bowl in front of me?” Siris smirked at Finn, “Of course, I’m sunning this bowl of noodle.” After gesturing at her bowl, Siris used her spork to stir the noodles and scooped its soup.

“Haha, I thought your bowl was just for viewing...” Finn laughed and sat back while the waitress came to put his order on the table.

“Well...” Siris paused to sip on her noodle soup before continuing, “If you want to keep conversing with me, then the bowl would truly be just a decoration.” Siris raised one of her eyebrows before scooping the noodle soup again.

 

Finn smiled before lifting his chopstick, intent to start eating. Siris kept to her leisure eating pace while Rida ignored both of them. Soon there was only the sound of eating utensils meeting the bowl coming from their table.

 

With his fast eating pace, it didn’t take much time for him to demolish his portion of food. He finished almost at the same time Siris finished with her half-full kid portion noodle and spent sometime after to converse with her.

 

Finn went back and entered his own apartment room an hour or so later. He only spared some time to change his clothing and drink a glass of water before walking to his bed. the VR device was still in the place where he last left it, tempting him to enter the game once again.

 

 

....

 

“I didn’t spend much time to find out where I was when I walked out of the cave, but now I realized that I was in a different area than where I went in. The forest in this place had a different species of the tree compared to where I dug the hole. After climbing up a tree to get a higher view, I found out that I was still on the same side of the cliff where I entered the cave network. Nice. Looks like even if I can’t go back in – due to those dangerous monster inside, I could still walk home.”

 

...

 

“I found a river and big waterfall around the area. There was a lot of big and plump fish swimming without a care on the stream. Usually, fish would swim far away or hide behind obstacles if you get close to them. These fish were so unwary, they only moved a meter or so away and kept swimming around. Is there no predator around here before?”   “I still have a lot of those cave-dwelling herbivore’s meat in my gem’s space, but I would not be opposed to eating a grilled fish. Those big fish with shiny scale, they look really tempting. Maybe they would taste really good and juicy after being roasted over a fire.”

 

...

 

“After spending a couple of days or so easily catching them, the fish started being slippery. They would disperse every time they saw me walking over, but it was not such a big deal. I could hide with stealth and spear the fish from the side of the river.”   “Incidentally, the fish still can sense me if I used stealth in the water. Using stealth would make me hidden, with no visible and audible sign, having no scent and other clues to give away my existence. The only problem was I still displaced water if I went for a swim.”

 

...

 

“There was a bear monster coming from upriver since a couple of days ago. He knew that I knew he was there, but we went out of our way to not interact with each other. When I went fishing he won’t go near the water, and when it played in the water, I would walk away to find a new place to fish.”   “Inbetween my fishing trips, I would check the situation inside the cave. I walked gingerly, sneaking all the way, never trying to have a confrontation with the restless herbivore. Anytime I felt something was not right, I would do my best to walk out of the cave.”   “Until this time, there was still no consensus on what these tunneling creatures should be called. People on the forum were split on calling it a huge rat, sheep rodent, and cave tunneler. I really wish the dev would just divulge the name of all the creature and monsters promptly upon sighting, instead of finding it through the report written by NPC authorities. I guess this is one of the downsides of a game without traditional HUD.”

 

...

 

“I’m still only halfway through the tunnel leading to the rift valley. Just why did I think playing with the herbivores is a better way to spend my time instead of just packing my stash and walked away... Oh, I remember, the gem’s space’s capacity for free players is only half of the PtW player. The evil of microtransaction, it knows no bound.”   “Nowadays I spent my time sneaking around the cave network and fish in the riverside every time I got stressed from exploring the cave. But the bear monster is getting weird, it started to watch me do my daily activity. I fortified my underground sleeping place just in case.”

 

...

 

“Looks like the bear is trying to kill me, I wonder what set it off. I was almost caught in surprise when it charged toward me. Only through a quick-thinking did I escape it’s killing attempt, by climbing the biggest tree around.”   “I think it has a set of different organs compared to the cave dwellers. It could approximate the location where I hid when I entered stealth. I am now deliberating on my chances again the bear. I could just relocate and find other places to enter the tunnel, but I don’t run away from every monster that tried to kill me.”

 

...

 

Finn took off his VR device and let out a deep sigh. He furiously rubbed his hair before walking away to the terminal and sat down. After pinching his philtrum for a while, he turned his terminal on.

 

‘I thought I had a chance against the bear... it didn’t even look that strong, just why did that bear be hard to put down?’

 

Finn put the weight of his chin on his left palm while he used the finger of his right hand to trace the contour of the terminal. He sat transfixed before the screen for a couple of minutes before he remembered something and plugged his VR device in.

 

‘My current avatar only had one last life left... how old is my mental model AI NPC?’

 

The game only allowed for one avatar per each person, but it gave the player – even the free player – a spare avatar that they could use if their current avatar died. The spare was made by copying the player thought process - refining them through putting player in a complex simulation of various situations and circumstances. It was a digital mental model copy of the player that was almost similar in their thought process to their original source. It would allow seamless switching if their current avatar died, and it would also give their copy history and connection to the world surrounding them.

 

But the free players had a lot of limitations, not including that they only have one copy instead of at least 2, and have no control over when it was created. Back then, he was lucky to be included among 100.000.000 people who had their character started at the age of ten – he thought it was just a sensationalist announcement to make him interested in trying to play. Though because of various circumstances, he only started playing after the world reached its six-year progress in-game.

 

He started to play because he was bored with the other games he had and thought that he should at least checked this game before deleting it. He also never planned to immerse himself playing it, that’s why he never bothered checking the state of his mental model copy. But now that he decided to keep playing, it would be better if he checked how old his copy was to plan for his in-game future.

 

‘My copy is only 10 years old? My avatar is about 21 right now, so it means that the copy was created one year after the game started. Well, ten is okay... after all, I don’t plan to kill off my current avatar in the near future. I need to at least wait until my copy is at 15 before switching to using it.’