Prologue

Year 2411.

Technology has advanced enough to render old customs and occupations obsolete. That didn't mean people were starving without pay, but quite the contrary. Everything was managed and automated with bots to a point where any average Joe could enjoy food and comfort for free. Like getting a monthly pension just for being born as a human.

The power of the world shifted to the 0.001% of people, and the rest were average Joe enjoying the utopia made possible by the futuristic technology. The point was people had a lot of time on their hands, and they could sit and eat whatever they wanted without getting sick.

Most people would just fully immerse themselves in video games to feel the craving challenge of life. Games where you would just dive inside a virtual reality generated by AI by linking your neurons directly.

I was only 65 years old and had a century more to live, thanks to the biotech advancements. It was time I tried one of the new games, which claimed to start you off with a skill closely based on your real life.

"Old World: Remastered. ...Scanning Complete."

"Base Form Set: Human."

"Starting Gear: Acquired."

"Skill: Dirty Politics."

"What??! That's a skill?" I spoke to myself while spawning in a lush field with no clothes equipped. "What does it even do?"

Indeed I was a politician in the real world and a damn good one. But that was decades ago, and politics is not a thing anymore. AI made better decisions for the future of mankind.

"But I thought this game was about grand-scale battles and whatnot," I said to myself while putting on clothes on my teenage body set by the game. The starting equipment was medieval pants and a white hooded robe.

"Not bad," I complimented myself. "Looks pretty cool."

Suddenly, another player spawned next to me. A naked elven girl with yellow hair. As she stood up and put on her starting gears, it was clear that the base elven forms were a lot taller than humans. Her username popped up: Eve495

She greeted me as I greeted her back. The game was said to apply the starting presets based on the player's real life. So I would say she is pretty ugly irl.

Then I looked at my username: player111

"What? The game never asked me to change it!" As it was unchangeable now, I was feeling frustrated. However, it was probably my fault since there were over five million players, and only another 110 players didn't change their names aside from me.

The skill description mentioned it was only usable during certain events. As I was figuring things out, another player spawned beside me.

A fully equipped human dude with the username: GlitchHunter_

"First time playing?" He smirked after checking my username.

"Yeah. You seem to be an old player here."

"No. Just joined. This is a new player zone. None comes back here after the tutorial phase ends."

"Then how do you know that?"

"I research what I get into beforehand."

Looking back at me with glowing blue eyes, he left the field, spam dashing towards the forest area. After a slight pause, I started moving in the opposite direction where a town was situated.

After some time, I reached the gates, where I was greeted by two NPC guards wearing silver armor. They said that I skipped the tutorials. Well to be honest, I wasn't too heartbroken.

As far as the game's core mechanics go, large groups of players form armies to battle and capture and plunder areas. So with my particular skill, I thought it would be better to just stay above the mass. There were villages governed under towns, which were under capital cities across the five different regions. There were about five designated capitals in every region.

This was literally called the "Newbie Haven" town, mainly governed by NPCs and can't be taken or ruled by any player. There were more guards with stronger stats than usuals to keep things in check.

I reached the tavern to rest the night, which was tagged 40 gold. I started with 80g. So I should be fine for now. I asked the manager NPC for a room and some of the new players sitting at the table seemed very surprised.

"It seems you were given a bit too much, my friend," The tavern manager said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Not everyone can afford a room on their first day," The manager smiled.

"So, how much do they give you?"

A player beside me interrupted and said, "I got only 40 at the start and used it up first night, and now I'm broke. Killing wildlife only got me 6 gold after all day today. How much did you get?"

I paused for a moment and lied, "Oh, I also got 40."

The tavern manager then said, "40g is the average amount you start with. It goes as low as 20 and high as 100, which is very rare."

It somewhat made sense. I wasn't given a skill that would apply in combat so I could earn the gold thus, I was given more to start with. The game had three currencies. The first and the most commonly used is gold, the second is ruby, and the third is the dragon scales. Both gold and ruby can be stolen or taken by force from players' inventory, but dragon scales act as a utility that can't be taken without the players' consent. Ruby and the scales were rare and I imagined they would be required for grand purposes. The starting amount was always zero for those.

But there was another factor called Rep, short for reputation. According to the tooltip, it influenced a lot of the things in the game and increased or decreased based on the players' actions. Sleeping in a room increased the rep by 5 points but sleeping outside in the open decreased rep by 10.

New players started with 50 rep and it was visible publicly. Yet most inside the tavern had lower rep points than they started with.

After going through the entire in-game guide on that night, I could say most of the mechanics were very basic but they seemed to be well-balanced nonetheless. In the morning, my rep was 55. Almost better than every other players in the tavern. But I was short 40g.

I found the noticeboard and saw a village needed help guarding it from a potential bandit invasion. It was way over the newbie level, even if I had the skills to take it on. But I had a different idea.

My skill card suddenly lit up and I received a passive boost.

"Hey, are you still broke?" I asked the guy from last night.

"Yep, and you should be too if I'm not mistaken." The guy replied.

"Not really," I replied with a loud voice so everyone else can hear us as well. "You see, I contacted with a bandit leader and we are in mutually beneficial business."

"That's bullshit," A guy with a dwarvish form dismissed me. "Bandits don't do business with players."

"Yes, that's true but I can still benefit from their works. So it's kind of mutually beneficial," I smiled a bit.

The dwarf had 30 rep while I had 55 rep. The other players were still struggling to believe my blatant lie.

"Here, friend. Today's drinks are on me and my mutually beneficial business," I signaled the tavern's waiter. "There were 10 different players on that noon. That particular drink would cost exactly 40g in total I had left."

Everyone knew how tough it was to get 80g as the starter and to blow it on others would be unbelievable unless the player had made a lot. So, they became quite curious and sat next to me with the drinks on their hands.

"Making money in this realm is easy as a pie, guys." I bloated to gain some more attention.

After some more lies, they formed a party under me as their leader. The main goal was to take that village's contract. Even though with our combined force, we wouldn't stand a chance and they knew that too. But also believed that I knew the bandit leader. Although it's a bit immoral to lie to them, but the chance of a potential attack would be even lower with 11 guards present in that village.

So our party agreed to start the contract. If it was successful, then we would all get an equal share of the reward, which was about 200g each. But either way, the party leader would always get 100 rep points for taking on the quest.

Therefore, we went to the nearby village and stood guard for six days straight. No activities.

But on day seven, the worst happened. The bandits did come. And they came with heavy troops. Our party's wizards were taken out first, then one by one all the close-range combatants fell. Even with their valiant efforts, there were still 10 bandits and looters standing strong. They started killing them while the looters plundered the village left and right. Fire started spreading, mothers and youngs started crying, as I stood and watched everything unfold horribly from afar.

Amidst the flame, a silhouette rose in a silver armor. Facing the bandit's leader, the silver warrior had glorious red hair. A human female player with the username: SaberQueen23

As she thrust forward with her broadsword, the bandit leader stood still, and in a heartbeat, he countered her by taking a swift sidestep. He grabbed her firey hair and slammed her to the ground.

"Traitor!" She shouted the birds away, while her face pushed on the ground.

The bandit leader smirked and wiped a drop of blood from his face while holding her with his knee. Turned out she did land a scratch, but didn't quite matter.

Looking from a distance, I noticed his username for the first time: Lordrekkk. The bandits were supposed to be NPCs, not players. It seemed very strange back then.

Before he put her own broadsword through her neck, she muttered something. Then Lordrekkk laughed and responded, "I'm immune to poison, you twat."

But his laugh soon turned pale blue. His subordinates started to murmur around him an within half an hour, he went insane from the fear of the unknown poison that he couldn't cure. He even killed some of his subordinates out of madness. But his time ran out, and he went out in suffering.

According to the game's script, players spawn in the resurrection shrine after getting killed and start over with -1000 rep. Most players quit at that point as there was only grind beyond that.

The rest of the gang quickly looted the scene and tried to leave. But that was my chance to call in the reserve, which was just a couple of night wolves I had a tamer tame for me while we spent last six days in boredom.

Five bandits with loots vs two-night wolves. In a straight fight, wolves would stand no chance against them. But the evening was dark, and the bandits were exhausted.

"Time to go, boys," I whispered to them.

I climbed up a roof, as I saw the bandits were spread out thin for the last swipe.

"This should be easy," I thought.

It was going according to the plan, but for some bad luck, a few of the bandits escaped while one of the wolves got cornered and killed. The other got his left eye bleeding in the process. If they knew, there were only two wolves rather than what they thought swarming night creatures taking them out one by one, they would have stuck around and taken the loot with them after finishing the last wolf.

This was it. The somewhat victory was ours... or mine in the end.