(This was a story I was writing for fun, it wasn't originally intended to be an erotic story but my mind just kind of took it there later on down the line. Please bare with me, I'm not a great writer but I do my best to make sure things are grammatically correct)
Within the space of one month, my plans to improve myself were skyrocketing along. My accuracy at archery was improving at an impressive rate, even Matt was struggling to beat me in little competitions of accuracy and distance.
“That’s 3 for 3, you’re a natural!” Matt said proudly.
“I have a good teacher… I was wondering, do you think you could put a good word in with the boss, I’m looking for a job and you know how much I like this place”
“I can ask for you… No guarantees though” Matt answered as he patted me on the back before going to check on the others training.
Working out on the weights, my body was already starting to adapt. In the past it was only once Infinity had launched its second update, altering the combat systems that the world realised that your physical fitness impacted your more capabilities online. Now I had a five year headstart and I wasn’t about to let this go to waste.
“Hey Joel… Boss wants a word with you” Matt said cheerfully, leading me to the back office of the gym. The owner sitting down in her large armchair in my opinion looked rather comical, almost mafia looking yet it was in the back of a gym.
“Joel, I hear you’re looking for a job” The manager said with a rather serious look.
“Yes Ma’am” Joel hastily replied.
“This isn’t a place for you to just chill out and practice your archery. If you want to work here, you work” She said firmly to which Joel hastily nodded.
“Of course. Ma’am”
“You can have the morning shift, You start at 6 in the morning, finish at 12, you okay with that”
“Yes, Thank you” I replied. My mind was already annoyed that I would have less play time with Ethan because of this but it was extra money and there were things I needed to save up for to make Infinity even better for us. Afterall, previously we couldn’t start playing until 6 months after it’s launch due to the price of the VR headsets.
“Good, I’ll see you here tomorrow morning then” She said after filling out the basic forms and motioning to the door to dismiss her new employee.
---
Back home, I was indulging myself in my 2nd new hobby. Infinity was coming out in 5 years, that was a long time to forget things, especially vital exploits that most people never realised until it was too late.
The main fact was that they needed to start in the Elven city of Lunar Bridge, it was the same place they started previously and it was originally Ethan’s idea to start there but since this was the place that he knew the most of, it was wise to begin there again. Before anything, he needed to reach level 3 and pick up the rare quest to raid the abandoned mansion. Only there could he find the hidden dungeon and pick up the Soul Weapon he wanted.
Soul Weapons were a rare sort of weapon, they leveled up as the player leveled up and were incredibly powerful. However, this power had a down side. You could only ever use this one weapon for the rest of your account. Although it doesn’t sound bad at first, there are thousands of powerful weapons in the world of Infinity. At the bottom was the Common rank weapons and equipment, then Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary and Divine. There were also various multi rank items like Saint Weapons which varied between Epic and Divine depending on their rank. Soul Weapons worked the same way, some could be as great as Divine weapons whilst others only as good as Epic weapons. Unfortunately, people only came to realise this once players started hitting level 100 and legendary weapons started to become more common.
Luckily, the Soul Weapon I was after was called [Seven Stars Bow] and whilst it wasn’t the most powerful Soul Weapon, it was the most powerful bow, and it’s greatest strength came from the fact that it was upgradeable. Like most weapons, it could be sharpened, enchanted, imbued with powerful gemstones or even recast into something greater if you had the right materials, but there were a number of weapons, across all ranks which were inertly upgradable, typically using some rare item from the game. I didn’t have the information of what it needed to upgrade but I knew it was upgradable and at the low levels, this weapon would be godly.
"Hey J, I'm back" Ethan called as he returned from home.
"Hey, I got myself a job today at the gym. My shift starts at 6 though so I won't be able to play with you as much" I replied, closing my laptop and keeping my mysterious how to guide for a current unreleased game secret.
"That's okay, if you log on earlier in the evening you can quest whilst it's quiet" Ethan replied cheerfully. "Why don't you log in now, so you can still get some hours in"...
Taking my time to browse through the low level forests I found myself. In comparison to Infinity it was incredibly boring. I understood that this was currently still a great game but it was only a matter of time before Infinity got published and it became the end of all other VR games, nothing could compare to the realism and sophistication of Infinity.
Chapter 6:
Within 6 months, I had easily managed to catch up with Ethan’s mighty Knight character in levels and with my new part time job, I had focused the majority of my money into a few savings accounts. Of course, once I had some money saved up I did attempt to increase our finances through the stock market but my earnings were incredibly low and even big corporations that I know would grow considerably after Infinity’s release had already expensive prices.
Regardless of their prices, it didn’t stop me buying them. And I can proudly say that with 4 years and 6 months remaining till my efforts can even begin to be rewarded, I have a total of 50 shares of several multi-billion dollar companies. These shares were mere pittance to the countless millions of shares that many others possessed, but this was my little slice of the big pie that I was still proud to obtain. However, with my knowledge of the currently undeveloped game, there was far more opportunity to make money in the game than outside.
Infinities heavy focus on realistic combat, meant incurring heavy death penalties. Lost EXP and equipment was just the main loss but after several updates with new and more powerful opponents, various other penalties appeared placing an immense pressure to own strong and sturdy armour and weapons. The last thing you’d want is your item's durability to hit 0 and to find yourself at a disadvantage.
Luckily for me, I had been building my ‘Experts Guide to Infinity’ filled with my knowledge of various maps, the type of monsters present, methods to obtain easy kills, Epic Quest walkthroughs, hidden treasure chest locations as well as other useful information.
---
“Come on J! Gym time!” Ethan called excitedly, as he hastily dragged me from the kitchen down towards his car.
“Alright… I’m coming” I moaned, still trying to continue eating my breakfast.
Ethans excitement couldn’t really be blamed on anybody besides myself, he had always been eager to get me playing with him online but not that I had taken to it so much and stuck with it too, Ethan was relishing the competitive nature between us. In these past six months, both of us have undergone a transformation that in my previous life we would have never experienced. Pushing ourselves to limits in the pursuit to beat the other, Ethan was growing larger as he continued to bulk up, his arms, chest and shoulders growing the most in this time as he could use his sword with greater strength and mobility. I too wasn’t being left behind, focusing more on my core abilities since I knew that most of my time would be spent being more agile rather than becoming a muscled powerhouse like Ethan.
Even as we sparred together, we remained roughly equal. Ethans strength only effective when he could get close whilst, his strength made him tougher reducing the impact of my rubber tipped arrows. Yet with our competitiveness and frankly rather violent sparring battles, we were forced to use special weapons even weaker than what most the others trained with. My foam tipped arrows and Ethan’s soft wooden sword took away much of the risk of causing harm yet our combat ferocity was still something people would often stop to watch.
“Is that all you got J?” Ethan taunted watching as an arrow bounced off the thin metal armour he wore for his sparring battles.
“You know I’m going easy on you right?” I laughed back before pulling the string back of the bow and firing an arrow at the gap between armour plates, the foam tip colliding with his gut winding him slightly.
“That was a lucky shot” Ethan gasped out as he gathered his breath again.
It didn’t take long for us both to soon tire each other out. My body was exhausted from dodging and avoiding Ethan’s powerful sword swings whilst he too was shattered, his body sore from taking dozens of hits to the body whilst also carrying 10kg of metal armour and swinging a wooden sword.
“You did good today big bro” I panted out as he could only manage a smirk and thumbs up before laying down on his back and just staring up at the ceiling till he recovered some energy.
“Good fight today boys” Matt said with a huge smile, always enjoying our sparrings and often using them as a training opportunity to show the archers he trained how agile they should strive to become. Though granted in my previous life I had reached a level of physical fitness that far surpassed this current body of mine, I could only achieve that peak after over a decade of working out in the gym. Currently, I was starting off 5 years younger with detailed information on what I needed to train in and on top of that with my knowledge of my past life I was wielding 20 years of intense combat experience. This final part alone was something that nobody in this gym could compare to, even Ethan who loved his VR games couldn’t compete, the games out at the moment had simple and childlike mechanics. Many people will find themselves with a giant learning curve to overcome when they first log into Infinity which is why the prime time to level up would be right at the very beginning, if not for the standard reasons like obtaining unique quests and collecting rare items before other players saturated the maps.
Chapter 7:
“Hey Joel! Come take a look at this… There’s a new VR game coming out soon, it’s saying that it’ll be the advanced VR game of its generation… It even needs it’s only specially made headset” Ethan called out as he sat at the kitchen table on his laptop. “Infinity… I wonder what it’s like?” Ethan added as I slowly looked over his shoulder to the familiar advertisement.
Four years seem to almost pass in flash, like turning pages of a book, but both Ethan and I were ready this time. Previously I was unfit, unskilled and woefully unprepared for a game like Infinity, and whilst Ethan had surpassed me in every way, currently we stood together as Champions. Ethan may still be stronger having developed into the muscled powerhouse that he had always dreamt to be,but with my huge lead in combat experience I could take him on and win more often than not.
“I think that’s going to be our game!” I said with a grin, watching as his eyes lit up.
“So the competition is come to an end then”
“Now we fight for real. Winner is guild master” I added, my own smirk growing wide as I knew that my training was coming to a close, with everything I had built up over the last 5 years I was in an incredible position to take the world of Infinity by storm.
“I’m sorry little bro, but you won’t beat me. However, I’m looking up these headsets and they ain't cheap. Even if I start saving now, it’ll be awhile before I can buy us two”.
“How much are they?” I questioned, feigning innocence for the sake of keeping my cover safe, now was the time I really did have to start being careful about what I said. It was easy to just not mention Infinity since nobody else knew it would exist but now, I had over 20 years of information all compiled into an expert guide which countless millions would probably kill to obtain, to know about quests and locations before the games release would undoubtedly cause problems.
“$3000 each” Ethan almost sighed out from despair, knowing full well it would take at least 5 months to save up that sort of money, maybe less if he sold some of his possessions.
“That’s not so bad, I have some savings” I chuckled.
“You? You have $6000 saved up, didn’t fancy sharing it did you?” Ethan said in shock layered with a hefty amount of annoyance.
“Just under $4000 actually and I was saving it up for this very reason. It was inevitable that VR games would improve their hardware sooner or later, the combat in Fantasy World is rather clunky. But I didn’t know they’d be this expensive” I told him, creating what I believed to a rather decent lie.
“Fair enough then, with your $4000, I can easily get $2000 before this game is released” Ethan replied, his excitement building as he continued to read through the advertisement. Yet with what I knew of the future, his excitement would only continue to grow as more and more details are released.
“Sooo… When’s our big showdown?” Ethan asked eagerly after soaking in all the information the advertisement had to offer.
“The day before the launch… I’m going to need to scrape together every once of training to secure my victory” I stated confidently, keeping Ethans excitement on full pelt as I finished up cooking a simple pasta dinner for us both.
“Sounds good to me, but I’m afraid you'll need another year's worth of training if you aim to defeat me”.
---
The next few months were a bit of a blur, Ethan was a bit shocked that I handed in my notice at the gym on the final month, but I stated that I was going to dedicate myself to the game, to try and earn a living through the game making gold and trading it for dollars.
“You’re going to earn a living in the game?” He asked in almost disbelief.
“Yeah. Whether I am the Guild Leader or Vice-Guild Leader, the guild is going to need a lot of resources, crafting materials, weapons, equipment, gold. I aim to gather enough to push the guild forward and earn a living on the surplus” I answered him confidently.
“Alright, but don’t look blame me when you go crawling back for your job”
“Don’t worry, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the forums about this game, it’ll be a rush to take the lead above the other players but I’m confident we can gather enough rare quests and items to succeed”.
“Oh yeah, this game is going to be massive, there’s going to be a swarm of players at the beginning, where we start will be critical”
“I saw you looking at the various starting maps before, anywhere in mind?” I asked curiously.
“Actually yeah, I’m assuming that most people will pick a human city since apparently there’s going to be a big emphasis on reputation, so I’m thinking that if this game is as realistic as they claim it will be, I’m suspecting that human cities will give you more quests, but the dwarven city will give better equipment and weapons as rewards and then the Elven city offers magic orientated stuff. So seeing as you're an Archer and I’m a Knight, I’m thinking of the Human city of DragonKeep or the Dwarven city of Hammerfall” Ethan stated confidently, though my own mind was quickly trying to come up with a reason to dissuade him.
“Wouldn’t that make the Elven city the best choice. That’s a great assumption, one I suspect thousands will come to. The Elven city might seem like the worse choice but if there’s less players there then we’ll have better pickings of quests, plus even if there are less quests, each one should grant reputation in that city so we won’t be at a real loss against the human cities. Maybe the magic rewards could help us level faster, like potions or enchantments” I offered as a counter suggestion.
“Fair point, but it’s a risk. The last thing I want to do is get stuck behind the masses, everybody knows that those who level up first end up better off”.
“Personally, I’d say that the human city is out, so it’s between the Dwarven city or the Elven. I’m swaying towards the Elven city since I’ve got a gut feeling that it will be emptier” I told him, knowing from experience that this would be the case.
“Alright, we’ll go Elven. They’re known for having advanced combat styles, so it might be beneficial for me yet”...