World Online

"What is brother thinking? What is this weird place?" Michael mused as he dragged himself behind Nolan.

For the entire day, Jake left him in this strange place, completely foreign to him, and the only thing that he had to do was listen to Nolan\'s orders?

This old man? All he was doing was talk to people and sign things. All day, it was getting boring. The reason that he skipped school for this was that this was supposed to be interesting.

And the frustration on his face was showing.

Nolan noticed this and sighed, shaking his head.

"Fine. I will entertain you for a little while." He said as he beckoned Michael to come a little closer.

"Star. So then. You have seem me do things all day. What did you see me do, and what do you think will happen because of the things that I did?" Nolan asked.

"Well…. Sir, you went to this hot place where you make the equipment for the players to use. So you can sell them for higher right?" Michael said.

"Well, it isn\'t as simple as that. Let us talk about how the guild that you see here works." Nolan started walking, and Michael closely followed.

They were in the basement at that particular moment, and they had passed the forge and were going toward the training hall of the Praetorian Guard.

"For all of these people, you need good items. And to buy that equipment will be very expensive on the long run, so we can just make our own equipment instead." Nolan said.

"But why in the long run? You can just buy the equipment, use it, and after you are done with it, or if you want to use something better, you can just sell it right?" Michael pointed out.

Even though he was young, he wasn\'t dumb. And the last few years, he tinkered around with his older brother\'s headset that was lying around, and he had his own time with games online.

"Haha! Looks like that Shadow King didn\'t send me a complete buffoon." Nolan chuckled.

"Any other game and we could try what you were talking about. But that is not the same here in World Online. In World Online, once you use some equipment, it will start showing some wear. And once a piece of equipment has some wear and tear, it drops in value by way too much." Nolan said.

"Then you can just repair it right. Those blacksmiths that you hire can fix the items. There should be someone with that skill." Michael said.

"And you are right. There is. One person among the hundreds that we told to take the blacksmith class, and even then, this one person chanced upon a rare class one day. It is not easy to repair items. We can\'t just waste his time on some random item. Only the best will be put into the que." Nolan said.

"Wow. So that means that if you can get the most number of repairers, then won\'t that mean that you can buy the items for cheap, repair it, and then flip them for a profit?" Michael pointed out.

"Wait, what?" Nolan stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at Michael.

He then bent down with some effort, leaning down on his cane, and looked closely at the much shorter Michael.

"What are you? Are you really just ten years old? Or perhaps you are actually older and you just look like this." Nolan asked.

"No! I am eleven. Stop staring at me like that." Michael stepped back.

Around him, the players from the Praetorian guard looked at the young boy that was accompanying the chairman with interest. This was a new face, a face that they had never seen before.

He was definitely not the chairman\'s grandson. That man was older. But not too old as to have a son this young. So who was he?

"Get back to work. What are you doing, staring at someone else?" Nolan looked at them with a fearful glare on his eyes.

"Sorry Chairman!" The Praetorian Guard apologized in unison as they all went back into swinging their swords, or their weapon of choices, again.

"What you said boy, it is going to be really interesting if we can pull it off. But it is hard to find so many repairers." Nolan said.

"Yeah. Rare classes are hard to find. Brother said that as well. He told me that if I found a rare class, I should tell him immediately so that he can help me prepare for it." Michael said.

"Interesting. Do you know what class your big brother is in?" Nolan leaned in, curious to know more about this Shadow King that he knew nothing about, other than the fact that he was the guild master of Bright Horizon.

"Brother told me not to tell you anything about him or me. He told me that the only reason that I am here is to learn." Michael stuck his tongue out playfully.

"That is too bad. Well then, you will open up sooner or later, I am sure of that. So then, let us look at something else then, and see what you think about it." Nolan nodded and they turned back to walk to the center of the corridor so that they could go back up.

"I wonder, Sir, if you have so many people who are ready and so skilled, why don\'t you send them to the grinding zones. It is much more efficient than just putting them here and making them swing their swords." Michael asked.

"If you send them to the monster hunting zones, then they can swing the same sword, and they can get whatever skill points you want there as well, right? Why make them do this here?" Michael asked.

"Because the stats that they get here are bonus stats. Stats that will be added on top of their regular ones. Now that you think about it, won\'t it help me if I just make you train with the Praetorian guard when I can\'t have you tag along?" Nolan smiled.

Michael looked up to see his mentor smiling, and he felt a chill behind his back.

Surely, this was going to work out fine, right?

"Right Brother?" He thought to himself.

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