The priest gave Arthur a light tap on the back.
"He’s a nice guy, don’t be afraid of cleaning the shop for him. It’s better than being homeless. I really hope you can get a better life, kid. If you need any more help, you can always come to the church."
The words moved Arthur. They had just met, yet the priest was so kind to him, even helping him land a job as a blacksmith apprentice. Well, that was if he actually managed to impress Bram. For now, he was just a cleaner.
Arthur smiled and thanked him for the words. Then he followed Bram into the shop.
The moment they stepped inside, Bram instantly said, "Change the sign to closed, please."
"Closed?" Arthur frowned. "But the day just started."
Bram didn’t elaborate.
"Just do it. Remember, I hired you. Find the broom and start cleaning everything. I’ll be upstairs sleeping."
Bram passed through the shop’s main area, staggering from side to side like a drunken man. Each step made the wooden floor creak. He grabbed the handrail and went upstairs.
Arthur stood alone in the shop’s main room. That was the area where the counter was, and where the forged items were on display for customers to come inside and buy them.
He walked over to one of the wooden displays. It had glass on top so that everyone could see the item inside.
A shining silver dagger with runes etched into the blade. Arthur didn’t try to open it. It was locked, obviously.
He lowered his head, then ran his finger across the glass.
"...So dusty."
The shop looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a long, long time. A few empty liquor bottles lay on the ground in corners where customers might not see them. That is, if the shop had any customers at all. Everything inside told him otherwise.
He looked for the broom. Bram hadn’t even told him where it was. If the whole place wasn’t such a mess, finding it would’ve been much easier. It took Arthur five minutes just to locate it.
Then he started cleaning. He grabbed all the junk scattered around the shop and dumped it into an empty wooden crate he found.
Cleaning with that much clutter around felt impossible at first. Once he’d cleared enough of it, he swept the entire floor with the broom, then grabbed a piece of cloth to wipe down the dust coating the displays.
While he worked, he decided to record it. Recording and taking pictures was a nice feature the game offered, one that plenty of players used to their advantage.
Some earned real money selling items, information, or anything else the game could offer. Others made their income by posting on the game’s forum and getting paid through ads and promotions. Most tried to do both, chasing the highest income possible.
For now, Arthur wasn’t planning on selling any information. No one would trust him yet, and even if they did, sharing something this early would only make him look suspicious.
No one should know things this fast. Perhaps the beta testers could get away with it, but those were rare, and the company had prohibited them from sharing anything during the first month anyway.
Every other player was out there exploring, testing how realistic the game felt, fighting monsters outside their beginner villages, grinding for valuable EXP.
Arthur, meanwhile, was cleaning a random shop in a place no player could even access. Boring footage to record, sure, but maybe it would earn him some views down the line.
’There are no shops like this in the beginner villages where all the players are. Me being here should spike some curiosity...’
The only thing that worried him were the game masters. They might come looking for him. But from what he remembered about the company, the game was so real and so unique that it functioned with its own internal life. The GMs couldn’t interfere with or target players without cause.
If Arthur had a special class since level one, and had been placed inside a locked kingdom before anyone else, all they could really do was accept it.
’The GMs will check the logs to see if I used some bug or glitch. When they find that’s not the case, they should leave me alone...’
The shop was still filthy when the server closed for the night, and he hadn’t managed to finish.
A golden light appeared around Arthur, and his body disappeared.
Back in his apartment, Arthur pulled off the game helmet and got up from the bed. A few slices of leftover pizza sat in the microwave, his dinner before he crashed for the night, hoping tomorrow would come faster.
The next morning, Arthur had eggs and bacon for breakfast, then spent the whole morning killing time until 1 PM, when the servers would open again.
He thought about visiting his family, but according to the hospital, the only time he could see them was in the afternoon. Arthur didn’t want to lose any play time.
He had already spent years sitting beside their hospital beds in his first life, watching them remain unchanged. Visiting them again would ease his heart, but it wouldn’t wake them up. What they needed was a cure — and finding one would require more money than Arthur could currently imagine.
’Once the servers stay open for good, I can play in the mornings so the hospital visits are easier to manage...’
At 1 PM, Arthur logged back into the game, appearing inside the shop.
Because of the time zone difference, and because time inside the game never stopped, it was 1 AM when he returned. Bram sat in a chair drinking liquor when Arthur appeared out of thin air, golden light fading around him.
For the first time, Bram looked genuinely curious about the young man.
"I noticed you vanished, and when I went asking, no one had seen you leave. Tell me, how can you vanish like that?" Bram asked, frowning.