Chapter 3: Into the Library and doing research

Libraries are one of the best sources of information that one could find as they contain all sorts of fiction and non-fiction books where the non-fiction books are more or less factually accurate to the knowledge the world had at the time. This also meant that he could look into this world and its history as well as the so-called alternate realm, and they usually also contain computers that will allow him to get up to date information about current events that are going on in the world and do his research easier. But most importantly their free, as yes he did have his wallet with him but all the money he currently had would be useless in this world.

Joe quickened his pace as he hurried towards the Library hoping that it wasn't too busy inside and that no one asks too many questions like, "Where are you from.", "I need to see your ID.", or anything to do with the alternate world as the people talking about doing stuff there was all about his age.

He approached and entered the library without any hassle and found to his relief that there weren't many people here, or on the ground floor at least, the library was large with row upon row of bookshelves lining the ground about 12 meters in from the entrance and down the centre line of all the bookshelves lead to a staircase that leads to the upper floors. There were people sparsely populating all the different rows and isles choosing different books on the shelves to either check out or two read in the reading areas that was down the far left and right-hand walls leading back. stand-alone chairs or chairs around tables to study at lining the area with people using them to read or study, there were even a few where a group of people were quietly making plans and strategies on how to go about combat or beating a dungeon judging from the maps they were constantly pointing to and making gestures at.

He turned to the counter that some people were checking out books at where there were 4 librarians standing, three were dealing with other peoples request so he went up to the 4th. The Librarian he went up to was a woman that seemed to be in her mid-thirties with long red hair that was tied into a ponytail at the back and had looks that were again a bit above average, She wore brown rounded glasses as well as a blue and white striped shirt with a dark blue cardigan over the top as well as a pair of jeans.

As he approached the counter he asked, "Hey, are there any computers here I can use?"

"Yes, they are up on the second floor along the back wall, " she replied instinctively.

"Ok, thanks," Joe replied back respectfully, as he was about to turn to leave.

Sensing that he was about to leave she casually asked, "I haven't seen you around before, have you moved here recently?"

Somewhat put on the spot joe calmly replied, "yeah"

"I just moved here today in fact," Joe stated truthfully as he did technically just move here today, just not by choice.

"Looking at you I'm surprised you're here rather than levelling up at home or something like the others." She stated questioningly.

"well it shouldn't be too surprising, there are other groups here as well, " Joe responded pointing out the other groups that are currently in the library as he continued, "Anyways, I'm here to do some research on the alternate realm, so I can at least be a little bit prepared before I go in."

"Well those groups are always here, but I have to say that the main world is mostly the same as the tutorial stage other than the fact everywhere is much bigger and that the levels of the monsters aren't limited anymore so be prepared," She stated matter of factly trying to be helpful to the newcomer, "Anyways, welcome to Allbroke"

After bidding each other farewell, Joe turned and made his way upstairs to see the second floor that seemed to have tables for studying at the back half of the room and more bookshelves at the front half. There was a door inside the staircase to the right of where he was facing that had "Limited access, staff and premium members only" written on it that he assumed went to the staircase that lead to the third floor. As he entered the second floor he could see more people studying and groups making strategies, creating enough noise to be comfortably ambient but still being quiet enough to do your own thing at the same time. Without breaking stride he turned left and walked to a computer that was at the far side of the room in the corner. Thankfully not many of the people were using the computers at the time giving him some privacy in his research.

He quickly sat down and began to familiarise himself with the keyboard, which was thankfully mostly the same as he was used to with some of the punctuation and syntax moved around so was easy enough to figure out, however meaning that his touch typing that he could do would be ineffective here. With that, he quickly logged on as a guest and opened Rinefall, this worlds internet web browser. 'where to start, where to start,' Joe thought to himself, 'Before anything else let's start with the very basics, time.'

After some quick checks, he found that time was the same as he was used to. After that moving to gathering facts about the planet. He found that the planet that he was on was called Cardashia and that it was roughly 1.5 times the size of earth, that about 67 % of Cardashia's surface was covered in water, And he found that again he was in Allbroke, which is the capital of Benegal the 3rd largest country in the world by land area, Cardashia has a population of around 8.2 billion people, and has roughly the same technology as on earth though a bit more advanced. Throughout his research, he found that he couldn't really search for one topic without the other as it seems that Cardashia and the alternate realm have been severely interconnected since 70 years ago when the alternate realm was first introduced to this world.

70 years ago when the alternate realm was first introduced to this world everyone heard a voice in their heads that said, "the alternate realm is now available, to enter and exit please state' entering or exiting the alternate realm' to the alternate realm servers, this function may be limited during combat and special circumstances, have a nice day." Some people were scared and afraid, others just ignored it, the Governments of all the nations in this world had an emergency conference to discuss the matter, after the conference ended they all gave statements to their respective nations that the governments of the world will investigate this alternate realm and that others should avoid going there, for now at least. Some however were curious as to what the alternate realm held and delved in any despite the governments' advice, so they and the government agents that went in were brought into a world of intrigue and mystery that was in a medieval-type setting and soon found the beauty in the game as well as the graphic scenes of violence and horror in this world that felt like their own however with a 30% pain reduction, many of whom fell in battle with the beasts of that world and discovered that they would revive at the nearest restriction point either being a cathedral, church, or the initial spawn point if they hadn't reached level 10 yet. There was a death penalty however of having their level reduced by 1 to a minimum of one and had a resurrection weakness state applied to them that reduced their stats by half for 24 hours in-game time. Given all this, the governments gave a statement saying that the general public over the age of 15 can enter the alternate realm as some of the things seen inside isn't suited towards younger people.

Joe also discovered that everything was going fine between the 2 worlds until after a year passed and on their 1st of January a server announcement rolled out. The cardashians were used to these server announcements, however, this one gave them a shock as it stated, "tutorial stage set to merge with alternate realm main stage in 6 days, please wait patiently and continue to level up." The world was shocked at this development, they had assumed that they were in the alternate realm main world already but it turned out that they were in the tutorial stage all along. This made some people scared of what there was in the main world that needed as tutorial stage and those that were curious as to what the main world contained.

When those days elapsed they found themselves in various large cities that were in a similar style as the tutorial world that they were in previously, with the familiar setup that they were used to by now however monster level in this world was not capped at 50 and could be much much higher and found themselves back at the bottom of that world only taking what they collected in the new world and continued on as they did in the tutorial stage only finding that levels got exponentially harder to get as they levelled up. The interesting thing however was that anyone that logged in for the first time after that found themselves in the tutorial area that had been reset from before and over the next years they discovered that every year the current tutorial world merged with the alternate main world as a new tutorial was made for newcomers to not be overwhelmed by players or monsters that were tens or even hundreds of levels above them.

The next thing that people discovered was that after level 50 the abilities that people displayed in the game world could be used in their world as well leading to the formation of the Bureau of otherworldly affairs being created to handle anything from the alternate Realm that found it's way into this world. They called anyone that could use their in-game power in this world shifters as they could shift some of that power to this world. They found that anyone that had a level over 50 could awaken the innate talent of anyone that hasn't been in the game world yet so it was decided that it would be in the best interest of the children entering to get their innate talent activated before entering the alternate world as it gave them an advantage over others. These talents had grades like most other items in the game in ascending order being, F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS grades, with talents being chosen at random with the higher the grade being more powerful the talents, like all the sss grade talents that Joe read about people getting in the webnovels he read before coming here, With it being common to get a C or D grade talent, unlucky to get F grade and increasingly rare to get any above a C, with modern-day calculations being that there is a 1 in 10,000 chance to get B grade; 1 in 100,000 chance to get A grade; 1 in 10,000,000 chance to get S grade; 1 in 100,000,000 chance to get SS grade with there only being 72 people known to have had it to date; and a 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of getting SSS grade with only 3 people that known to have it to date. As a result, the Bureau of otherworldly affairs made what is called the innate talent awakening set to the date that the tutorial stage resets, so not wanting to miss the opportunity to get their talent awakened and everyone wanting the maximum time possible to get ahead in the tutorial stage, they all waited for their awakening and then went home to login to the new tutorial stage, well after discussing what they got and ridiculing anyone that got an F grade of coarse. One thing that did make Joe frown is that now anyone that hadn't awakened their innate talent and found out would have a history of constantly being looked down on and presumed to not have a future for themselves so were constantly trampled on and used by others, otherwise known as those that couldn't get their innate talents awakened. The rising stars however would be sought after by colleges and institutes that could give them huge support and resources to develop that were either government-run or highly subsidised by the government by large amounts for higher rank the person's rank was and then the one's that achieved the best in the tutorial stage as they have high growth potential. The students strive to get into the top rank institutes as they provide large befits to whoever gets in with the highest among them getting full scholarships, with anyone from the big 3 being automatic sought after by the big guilds. With the top ranking institutes in Benegal being, the Allbroke institute of advanced shifter development, the young shifter development association, and the santon university of shifter growth

The last thing to note about the worlds themselves would be that after people started being able to use their game world skills and ability in real life obviously there were those that used them to commit crimes, different countries came up with different solutions to this problem. Most countries came up with something along the same lines as Benegal's ministry of shifter compliance that dealt with those kinds of situations, as well as countries creating laws that were similar to the shifter power use act that only allowed those that were granted permits to use their ability within 5 kilometers of a settlement, and depending on the power level of the skill ability or spell used they would be given anything from £500 fine to being constantly reset and traped in a death spiral in-game until level 1 and then kept under level 10 while under constant surveillance while put in prison in both worlds for those that used their ability with intent to seriously injure or kill in real life, with the exception to this being the use of passive abilities as people can't control them or those used to heal others, purely defensive abilities when justifiable, or in special areas or arenas with a minister of shifter compliance rep there to oversee usage and to make sure no one dies.

'Ok, that is defiantly a lot of things to take in but seems to be more or less along the lines of the worlds from other types of similar novels' Joe thought to himself, before checking the clock on the computer and seeing that it's already 3:47pm. He was surprised at the time and looked around to see that the people that he saw when he came in were mostly replaced with new people. Thinking that he should probably know more about the game system that's in place so as to try to see what to look out for when he entered, he decided to spend the next hour or so researching about that.