Hey guys! Get ready for the first chapter of the first webnovel ever written on Steem!
Synopsis:
2050, AI has taken over the vast majority of jobs in the world. However, one new job appeared that was humans-only - gold farming in VRMMOs (Virtual Reality MMO). Satoshi worked as a gold farmer in the popular fantasy VRMMO Avantheim. However one day, he while gold farming in Avantheim, he was suddenly teleported into another VR world. How will he fare in this unfamiliar world?
Farmer of Avantheim
Satoshi took a last slip of coffee and put on his nerve gear. His lunch break was over, and he would start his afternoon farming as usual. Satoshi let out a small sigh. Truthfully, he hoped his lunch break was a bit longer. It's not like he wasn't used to gold farming; and he didn't particularly hate it either. After all, even though VR has been around for a few decades now, seeing and experiencing the fantastical worlds within the nerve gear was always exhilarating.
However, he had just finished a big job request from a client this morning. After a month of preparation, Satoshi pulled two all-nighters in a row to track down the three divine items the client had requested. The pay had been good; it was enough that he could go on vacation for the rest of the month. But he could not slack off, not while his little sister is still in the hospital.
Besides, gold farming is a competitive business. After super-human AI replaced humans in most jobs during the mid 2030s, society was split into two classes: the owners of these super AI, who all became extremely wealthy beyond imagination, and the rest of the people, who became unemployed. At first, there was at lot of unrest, but eventually people found that they could become gold farmers in VRMMOs (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online games).
Of course, it wasn't as if AIs couldn't farm gold in games. Of course they could, and much more efficiently than humans. But it was precisely because of this reason, that AI players are banned from most of the popular VRMMOs. Players have to go through very thorough identity verification in order to register an account for these games. Since rich AI owners had plenty of money and free time, there was a lot of demand for currencies and rare items in popular VRMMOs. Still, Satoshi did not want to lose his clients.
Having gone through the authentication process, Satoshi picked the game of his choice, Avantheim Online.
loading, please wait...
Satoshi patiently waited for the game to load.
...
Even though VR games with such realism was extremely complex and took a huge amount of computing power to run, hardware improvements have been more than sufficient in keeping up. Loading times were normally very short, and very smooth. But...
Darkness. All around Satoshi, there was not a single ray of light. Satoshi was completely surrounded by darkness. This has never happened before. Satoshi tried to calm down. Panicking was the worst thing to do when the unexpected happens. Perhaps he was still loading, and he will arrive in Avantheim Online in a few more seconds.
Still nothing. After what felt like an eternity, Satoshi was still stuck in the darkness. It seems like he won't be getting out without doing something. Satoshi tried to reach for the controller. In the darkness, he didn't know where the controller was, or whether he was even moving. Still, he put all his mind to it, and started furiously waving his hand, like a person mashing their keyboard hoping to fix an error that showed up.
Light.
...
Satoshi opened his eyes. Finally, he managed to get out of the darkness. Satoshi breathed a sigh of relief. Slowly, Satoshi started looking around. This doesn't look like the place he last logged out... In fact, it doesn't even look like Avantheim Online. Floating cities were everywhere, and could be seen as the symbol of AO, yet there was not a single one to be seen.
"Master, are you all right?"
Satoshi looked in the direction of the voice. It was Demis, his lv 120 strategist. Beside him was the lv 120 mighty warrior Silva, and lv 120 assassin Suleyman. Satoshi calmed down at the sight of these three. It was extremely difficult for a single player to fight bosses and obtain rare items, so most players in Avantheim owned a few NPC servants. There was no limit on how many NPCs you could own, and some of the rich players had hundreds or even thousands of high level NPCs. However, having so many NPCs requires a huge amount of upkeep, which doesn't make sense for a gold farmer like Satoshi.
Other than the three max level NPCs, Satoshi had 6 maids; they each specialize in smithing, crafting, enchanting, cooking, alchemy and inscription. These maids were only around level 30-40, as there was no need to have max level crafters, and higher levels costs higher upkeep.
"I'm... all right, Demis. " Satoshi spoke, as he tried to make sense of what was happening. "Do you know where we are?"
"I'm afraid I don't, master. But since there is not a single floating city in sight, I suspect that we are no longer in Avantheim anymore."
Sorry for the slow start, I will get into the actual story soon!
(Art from Wikimedia, creative commons)