Arthur was quickly thrust into the endless white room as usual, where he was then able to slap the logout button and escape the virtual world.
His body was shocked awake shortly after, and he spent a short period of time waiting within the capsule while allowing his body to adapt to the real world once more. He felt the machine slowly turn upright before the capsule opened, revealing the outside world.
Arthur slipped out of the machine and started making his way to the briefing room, he noticed that other machines were starting their wake up procedures too.
He made his way into the briefing room, greeting the developers who were sitting around while compiling information. Eventually a large group of people began funnelling into the room, with Arthur's usual friends making their way to him, the briefing started shortly after.
"Well, starting off. The most interesting topic about today's briefing is that wave three is going to be starting next session." The developer started speaking. "The third group of players, time sure does fly by."
The rest of the briefing was small, and the announcement of a new group of players really was the only thing interesting about that briefing, but then came the next part of the briefing, the leaderboard.
"Starting off at fifth place, at level five with one soul, Nora." The developer spoke, which surprised Arthur's group somewhat, but they all congratulated Rowan on breaching the top five.
"At fourth place, at level five with one soul, Zankoku." The developer continued, Zankoku got his own congratulations but nobody was that surprised. "At third place, yet another level five, but this time with two souls, Typhoeus."
"Maria, you've got a pretty solid experience advantage." Arthur remarked. "How are you keeping above Acai so well?"
"Honestly, I just get more kills because I attack faster." Maria replied, shrugging her shoulders. "It sort of just turned out this way."
"Oh, that makes sense I guess." Arthur nodded as he turned his attention back to the developer who just started reading out Maria's score.
"At second place, at level five with two souls, Snowbunny." The developer spoke, which got Maria her own round of applause, although they knew it was coming. "And finally, at first place, the first level six with three souls, Merlin."
"How do you level up so fast compared to everyone else?" Maria asked. "You should have twice the experience requirement but have kept the top spot since the start, what gives?"
"Honestly, there's no real secret to it. It's just big quests." Arthur responded. "I get a lot of my experience from quests, for example I'm currently doing a questline with very high experience rewards."
"I wouldn't recommend farming mercenary guild quests for experience, but they're very good for money." Arthur continued. "I find that unique quests, or quests that involve some action from the player to find, give a lot more experience as a reward."
"Oh, alright. That makes sense." Maria remarked.
"Alright, that brings us to the end of this session. We hope you have a great week and are looking forward to seeing you all next week." The developer concluded the meeting there. "The next group will be here in a couple minutes, please make your way out of the building as soon as possible."
Arthur's group began talking as they made their way out of the building, Arthur was giving them tips on what would give them levels faster, such as not just grinding monsters, and how to get better quests out of NPCs. He also briefly covered stacking quests and other methods of maximising questing efficiency, but these sorts of things were obvious to anyone who had played an mmorpg before.
The group eventually went their separate ways, Arthur walked over to Donovan's car and entered the passenger seat, greeting him as he put his seat belt on.
The two had a brief conversation on the drive home, but then the topic of school starting was brought up, reminding Arthur that he had another year to go through again.
The drive eventually came to a stop as they arrived home, Arthur thanked Donovan and made his way inside his house. He started going through his usual routine before dinner, where he heard school mentioned once more.
After dinner he made his way back to his room, and while getting ready for bed, he was visited by Anna.
She suggested that they do some back to school shopping, although it was less of a suggestion and more so a statement that they were in fact going shopping and that he didn't really have a say in the matter.
Arthur just agreed as he finished off his nightly routine, when he was done, Anna seemed to have vanished back to her room.
"School starts next week." Arthur sighed as he jumped onto his bed. His eyes glanced at the medication sitting on his bedside table that Doctor Hudson gave him.
"I would have preferred the power to skip forward in time." He groaned while picking up the book on his bedside table. Arthur read until he found himself falling asleep.
Later in the week, he was forcibly dragged out to go shopping with Anna, he picked up some essential supplies for school, and then waited around as Anna ran around the confectionery aisles again.
"You bought so many snacks last time, how have you eaten them all already?" He asked, only to receive a shrug in response. The two ended the shopping trip and made their way back home safely.
Later in the week, Arthur received a phone call from Maria, she seemed rather worried about something.
"Hey Arthur, I need your advice." She muttered.
"How can I help?" He responded in a concerned voice.
"So, you know how it's Holly's birthday soon?" She asked, "I'm not sure what to get her as a birthday present."
With that one line, Arthur immediately knew that this call wasn't as serious as he first though. Well it wasn't serious to him, but it was clearly a big deal for Maria. He listened to her ramble for a little while before commenting.
"Ah, so you've figured out that she doesn't like receiving expensive gifts I see." Arthur said with a less concerned voice this time. "It's good you're paying attention. I've made that mistake before."
"I guess her feeling guilty about receiving your gift would really put a damper on your plan to date her." He teased, "Smart move."
Arthur heard an awkward cough from the other side of the phone, and it seemed his teasing worked.
"Well, why not get her something meaningful?" He suggested, "That way your gift would have a lasting impression on her."
"But what would that be?" She asked.
"Did you hear about that new museum opening up in the city later this month?" Arthur asked, "I heard that it's going to have several pieces credited to her parents."
"If you pulled some strings and got your hands on two tickets to the opening night, I think that'd probably be one of her favourite gifts." Arthur continued. "I doubt it needs to be said, but the second ticket is yours, make it a date."
Maria went back to awkwardly coughing, so Arthur just continued.
"And my best tip for you would be to not look bored." He concluded. "If she is having fun, she will start rambling. If you want to make her happy, pay attention to her and ask a question or two if you can."
"Alright... Thank you." Maria said with a soft voice before saying goodbye and ending the call.
"I'd be really good as a matchmaker." Arthur mumbled to himself, throwing his phone onto his bedside table. "I wonder how Doctor Hudson and Emily are doing."
The week eventually ended, and it was nearly time for the next session to begin. Arthur was driven to the facility by Donovan once more, and he saw an even larger crowd than before. There were plenty of fresh faces around, all of which seemed extremely excited.
'I get the excitement, but that's like a forty minute wait until it's their time to join.' Arthur thought to himself as he walked into the building.
The morning briefing was, in a word, brief. It covered a few things that were mentioned at the last briefing, such as the new wave of players.
Eventually everyone was lead into the capsule room, but while everyone else was allowed to jump in, Arthur had to stay back and get a personal briefing.
He was informed that the streamer setup had been successfully installed on his machine. He was given a brief rundown of what to expect and how to operate the streamer controls from within the game. This was all information that he already knew, but he listened anyway.
"So the commands are all under system stream, gotcha." Arthur said while nodding.
Before he jumped into his capsule, he sent a message to the group chat with Quinn and Holly, telling them that he will be streaming gameplay of New Genesis in a little while. He didn't end up getting a response from either of them before the the capsule started up, but it was likely that they would see it and check in with his stream when they could.
He went through the login process, first ending up in the white room before launching the game, and when he opened his eyes once more he was in the thieves guild where he left off last time.
"Nobody tried trapping me in furniture this time around, awesome." Merlin muttered as he checked his surroundings. It was the same as usual, drunkards and gamblers hanging out around tables, and the elf in his favourite spot at the back.
