Seeking Elena’s Player Avatar

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I had just asked the guide spirit to find my daughter through the player search function, which allowed anyone to search for players through their names. It was an easy way to add someone as a friend without always having to be in person with them, I believe. It was simple to use but guide spirits seemed to be special assist A.I.s made exclusive to help you do all these things for you, so I just let him do it for me instead. He was amazingly fast at searching and more, so he found what I wanted right away, but there were a lot of people called Dark Reaper with many variations, it seemed to not be an original name.

Why did my daughter just choose such a weirdly common name? She should have chosen something more specific and rarer! I mean, amongst the entire server there was nobody called Planta, actually! I guess there were not that many Spanish players? Well, even Spanish players would think that "Planta" was a dumb name so yeah… Maybe she wanted to sound cooler.

"Let's see… There are many players with a name like this, it is insane… However, if we use the filters you said, such as a female character and being near level 200… Um, I guess the number goes down tremendously, despite what you may think, there are a lot of casual players that never reach that high of a level, or take a long time leveling, so those close to 200 are not everybody… But there is a good chunk, however, if we filter it by females there are… Oh wow, that's surprisingly short!" he said.

"H-How many?" I wondered.

"Three people left! There is DarkReaper2015, DarkReaper678, and DarkReaper2.0…These are all Female characters with a level close to 200… The first one is an… an Oni with the Samurai Job Class, a Human with the Assassin Job Class, and lastly a Moon Elf with the Necromancer Job Class… There's a lot! Okay now, you have to choose who, or we could just send a message to all three," he said.

"No, no! Wait… If I even send a message, what can I even send? I cannot just go and say: "Hello my dearest daughter!" or something! I am supposed to not reveal my identity! I need to find a way to contact them, know who's my daughter, and then befriend them and get closer to them all while not revealing I am my daughter's mother infiltrating in a game for her sake!" I said.

"Damn it, you're really so annoying with this stuff… Okay, then what do we do?" he wondered.

"People in this game resemble their real life appearances, right? Is it due to the scan thing?" I asked.

"Mildly, but the race can change the appearance a lot, a simple beard can make someone unrecognizable sometimes, or having a different skin color and horns, or for example, you're covered in leaves all over your body for example," said the guide. "Nonetheless, do you think you can recognize her based on appearance alone?"

"Yes! Is there a way to see their appearance?" I wondered.

"Well, this game has a thing called Ranker Live, which is an option for people to do Live Actions while playing, all these three players are high leveled players that do Ranker Lives showcasing their bossing and mobbing while leveling up and gaining more power," said the guide.

"Bossing and mobbing? W-What is that?" I wondered.

"This game has special monsters named Bosses, you already fought one, right? They're super strong and there are certain areas of the world map where these bosses spawn every few days after dying, so people can go proactively to kill them and gain more drops from them, slowly accumulating them. They have chances to drop amazing crafting items, give good EXP, and more, so every player at high level goes "bossing" every week, and it is one of the end goals of the game to be able to defeat some of these bosses to gain loot," said the guide. "Mobbing refers to grinding, the act of killing a lot of normal monsters that players refer as mobs. Players work towards the ability to kill many monsters at the same time and go to special areas infected with miasma and dark energies where monsters spawn at insane rates to gain more EXP and Gold."

"I-I see… That's a bit complicated, do people have so much time to do this?" I wondered.

"Hardcore Players dedicated their lives to games, they usually have ways to make money out of the game through selling items themselves and more," said the guide. "Also, there are several functions that work like real life pages, Ranker Live is a System function that serves like Youtube or Twitch, people in the game show livestreams of them playing, the more people watch, the more views they get and the more ads the game developers can show to people, earning money out of it, which is given to the live streamers as well, well, only a little part of it, but that's enough to make a living."

"So that's how it is! That's pretty interesting… Is there any other ways to earn money through it?" I wondered.

"There is also the subscriber options and membership options, to subscribe to someone you really like, you can do it for free and always get notifications when they start doing something, and the membership option is people that use either large quantities of Gold or real life money to pay someone every month to get some benefits, such as special chat emojis, or even being able to contact the player personally and become their friends!" he said. "There's a lot of fanservice involved."

"C-Can I become a Live streamer then? It would be fun and I can make money out of it!" I said. "My dream is making money out of the game so I don't have to work so much every week…"

"Hm, well nobody watches newbies, so I doubt it will help." He sighed. "But you could try? Anyways, these three DarkReaper Players all have their own Ranker Live Channels, so let's take a look at their latest video and let's see their faces."

And like that, the guide showed me a few videos of the three girls, they were all playing the game rather interestingly, the first one to see was DarkReaper2.0, who was a Moon Elf, a purple-skinned girl with sharp and long ears and long silvery-white hair, her appearance was like that of an adult woman in her late twenties to early thirties, so she was certainly not my daughter, she was soloing a giant Boss resembling a scorpion in the middle of an arid desert, wow. And she actually beat it at the end by using her abilities as a Necromancer. She attacked the boss with all sorts of Undead summons until it died.

Secondly, Reaper678 was a Human girl, she was the one that looked the most like her real life probably, but she had long pink hair and was wearing tight black clothes over her body, she was using her two daggers as her only weapons, which seemed to be infused with large quantities of dark energies. And she used them to slash hundreds of monsters by running over a volcanic land, the enormous golems made of lava dropped dead into pieces as she ran around with her daggers, it was a spectacle to behold…

So these were high level players, they're just completely different, aren't they? And well, her appearance was not like my daughter, she looked like someone Asian, although Asian women usually look younger than they are, she certainly didn't look like my daughter.

And lastly, my only last hope, there was a "Rising star" Ranker that had become high level incredibly quickly, in just a few months after starting her new account, she had reached Level 190 already, and was slowly getting to level 200 already. This girl was dark, blue-skinned Oni, with a big vertically positioned red eye in the middle of her forehead, and two long and blue-colored horns coming out of her forehead, around the vertical red eye…

She was quite tall, and slim as well, and she wore beautiful samurai armor that was crafted using various materials dropped only by Boss monsters, she also wielded a powerful katana that was able to unleash blue flames for incredibly powerful slashing attacks, she was an amazing player that fought incredibly well, and she even had a friend with her most of the time, that could summon a Phoenix—Wait, she looked a lot like my daughter, if we took away the skin color, horns and that third eye!

"T-That's my daughter! I know she's her!" I said.

"Incredible, the discerning power of a mother knows no limits…" said the guide.

"Fufu, of course! A mother has to always know and recognize her daughter no matter what!" I said pridefully.

"I see, well, as you can see, well, this girl is amazing though, she already surpassed the Million Subscriber mark in just like three months since she started? And she got around two hundred thousand membership users that are all simping for her. Your daughter has an awful lot of fans! And they're all creeps," said the guide.

"Ugh… So my daughter has become that type of person now? O-Oh well, it is not so bad! R-Right?" I wondered.

"Y-Yeeaaah… Anyways, she's earning an awful lot of money, does she tell you this?" He wondered.

"No! She hasn't told me anything like that yet! It is a bit dangerous for a girl her age, at only almost 16 years of age to go around with an awful amount of money… But she doesn't seem to be spending it around on weird things or wasting it either, she's probably saving it, she hasn't even told me about it though, maybe because she could think I would disapprove of this as a career…" I sighed. "Well, maybe she's saving for her future, I believe my daughter is mature enough for that."

"Wow, did you just figure out all her mind and thought process in just a few seconds? Mothers are really incredible!" said the guide.

"Yeah, I know my girl more than anybody in the world," I said. "I know how she is, despite showing a cold expression and exterior, she's a sweet girl that's also very intelligent and mature."

"I see, well, how are you planning to get closer to someone so popular in-game? I am pretty sure she got so many fans that she has her DM's disabled," said the guide.

"Well, let's try sending her a message…" I said.

I quickly wrote something down.

[Hello! My name is Planta, I am a Dryad/Farmer newbie that just started playing, I wish I could have a high level ranker player to be my coach or something! Would you accept me as your friend?]

It was simple but it had some charm to it, so I sent it to her.

And then…

Ding!

[This Player had disabled Direct Messages from non-friend Players]

D-Damn it.

Then I'll send her a friend request!

Ding!

[This Player has disabled Friend Requests from Players below Level 170 Range or that are not related to an already added Friend]

You've gotta be kidding me! What was this?! Elena! Why would you be such an asocial person to do something like this to your mama?! This was awful! Why?! Ugh! Agh… Ahh… Sigh.

I looked into the video, seeing Elena and her friend Anna beating down a powerful boss in the shape of a giant wolf made of darkness named Fenrir, the two girls were demolishing it until nothing was left out but materials…

"Sigh… I guess I am going to have to do it the hard way. I'll try to find another way, somehow… But how though?" I sighed.

"Hmm… Well, you could try being a Live Streamer, if you get popular enough, she might try to befriend you," said the guide.

"Oh! Good idea! Seems more doable than just leveling all the way to 170!"

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