Chapter 35: The Power of Currency

Jaxir felt a sting in his heart when his parents were mentioned, his expression becoming downcast.

The boy, though, didn’t seem to notice.

"Right?" he asked again, as though he really needed Jaxir’s confirmation.

Jaxir nodded. "That’s right."

"Great!" the boy reached forward and took Jaxir’s hand. Well, the one he wasn’t holding his staff with and shook it vigorously. "I’m Marti Torres, I’m a huge fan of your parents, sorry about what happened. Well, I don’t really know what happened. But I saw your name on the Nightmare Dungeon rankings the other day and knew you had to be here.

"Did you really clear a Nightmare Dungeon all by yourself? That’s insane!"

"Uh... right, true." Jaxir nodded again. Honestly, he kind of forgot he did that.

It was pretty easy to when he did something a lot harder right after. When he really broke it down, the Nightmare Dungeon was easy by comparison.

"Do you have a party? A guild? A group? I want to join! I can bring my own equipment, and I have a lot of coin. I can help for sure, for sure."

Jaxir blinked. He didn’t really know how he felt about gaming with someone else right now. This was kind of therapeutic to him and he was used to going at it alone.

However, when he was going to reply, he paused.

It was one thing to not want to join the military or government faction alone with Lue. It was another matter entirely to continue the same recluse lifestyle he had outside in here.

Looking down at Marti’s hopeful eyes, Jaxir chuckled.

"Sure. Why not? I’m going somewhere pretty dangerous, though. Odds are you’ll probably die. I’m not good enough at the game to protect you."

"Not a problem!"

Marti’s heels clicked together, his back straightening so fast his head nearly clipping Jaxir’s nose as he saluted.

"You can count on me! If I die I won’t blame you at all."

Jaxir smiled and nodded. "Let’s head out, then."

It wasn’t long before they left the city and were heading into the forest. Jaxir checked on his map and found that he had a pretty long straight shot from here to his destination.

It took him an hour or so to get from his previous spawn location to the Twinkle Village, but that was because he was being ambushed over and over again.

This time, the dot he was walking toward was dozens of times further. Even if he didn’t have to fight as much, it would probably take him over a day of in-game time. Maybe several days.

Actually, was real and in-game time one to one? He wasn’t sure.

Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t actually sure what would happen when he logged out. There was no way he could do the entire thing in one shot.

"Aren’t you curious?" Marti’s words pulled Jaxir out of his thought. He almost forgot someone was with him, but maybe he should have noticed by the way he wasn’t speaking his mind aloud anymore.

"Curious? About what?"

"Why I’m a fan of your parents. Honestly, I thought you would ask, I kinda really, really, really wanna talk about them."

Jaxir blinked. This little guy’s social skills were really bad. And that was saying something coming from him.

"Sure, why don’t you tell me?"

"Oop―!"

Marti was about to answer when his head turned in a certain direction and he shot out. He left a blur in his wake, moving so fast Jaxir didn’t even notice when he unsheathed one of the crossed swords on his back.

What he did sense, though, was the echo of a blade splitting the wind in two.

Marti was already back and sheathing his short sword by the time Jaxir noticed the twinkle fox had turned into motes of light. The poor guy didn’t even get the chance to yip.

"Oh, that was pretty cool." Jaxir said.

Marti grinned. "I’d better be at least that good with all this gear. Any game is pay to win if you’re rich enough."

Jaxir chuckled. "I guess so, huh? Is currency in this game really one to one with the outside world?"

"Well gold coins are one to one with the Euro, yeah. For American dollars, one gold coin is probably worth about two dollars."

"Mm." Jaxir nodded.

About half a century ago a third world war finally boiled over. The result was yet another large era of peaceful prosperity where alliances became even more important.

These days, Europe was still several separate nations in name, but they functioned like one large empire just as large as America now.

It could basically be said that the world was formed of four main powers now.

The Americas. This was formed of most of North America with Canada, America, and Mexico. However, their alliance wasn’t nearly as tight knit as Europe’s.

The Europeans. This was formed of dozens of nations, and even some of the northern parts of the continent of Africa as well.

It was said that the war weapons used during the war were so wild that they changed the plate tectonics in the region, functionally splitting the once singular African continent into two.

The Easterners. This was formed of a belt of Asian nations and right down to Australia and the oceanic regions. They had even begun cultivating a large amount of Antarctica as well.

Over a century ago, Antarctica was widely considered neutral land. But that was definitely no more.

Finally, the final group was known as the Middle Powers. They made up the rest of Africa and large portions of the middle east.

Geography buffs might realize at this point that South America wasn’t mentioned. And the unfortunate reason for that was tied to the very same reason Antarctica was no longer neutral.

Jaxir shook his head, vaguely recalling the history classes he had stayed awake for and pushing those matters to the back of his mind.

This situation, though, split the world into just four currencies. The Euros were ranked first, the Easterners second, the Middle Powers third, and the American dollar was the weakest and shared by America, Canada, and Mexico.

Unfortunately, that was also where Jaxir lived and the place he called home.

"In my opinion it’s super worth pouring a lot of money in at the start like this. A single gold is like 10,000 copper, more if people really want to stiff you. If you have really good equipment at the start, you can build up a lead and then find good items on your own."

Jaxir nodded. "That does make some sense."

"Oop―."

Marti shot out on his own again and Jaxir chuckled and shook his head. The boy had already done this several times by now.

His senses were definitely sharp. Every time, he found the beast long before Jaxir did. At this point, Jaxir’s hopes of leveling up more on the way were wasted.

Just as he was thinking about whether or not to tell Marti to relax a bit so he could get some kills in too, he smelled a hint of death on the air.

Chi.

Jaxir looked down at his chest to find a blade running right through it.

He blinked.

That blade... wasn’t that Marti’s?