After a moment of laughter, Paul and Adam fell silent and looked at each other.
"What are your curre..." Adam began, but Paul's annoyingly loud voice cut him off.
"Bloody hell! Then how am I supposed to get a weapon to kill monsters if there are no NPCs and everything is handled by players like in the real world? So at the start there won't be any shopkeepers, or some village chief to give me a quest so I can earn the money for a weapon?" Paul shouted as the consequences of the game's mechanics finally hit him.
"Haha, that you don't need to worry about. Every city has a system room where you can buy items directly through the system," Adam said, trying to calm him. Then he added, "And as for money - look to the top-left corner where your HP is."
At that, Paul tilted his head to the left and looked up at the sky, where a cloudless blue stretched out and the sun poured down its rays.
"I'm looking at the top-left, and all I see is perfectly normal sky."
Adam pressed a hand to his forehead and massaged it, trying to stay calm.
"Don't stare at the scenery, idiot - look at the system window in the top left. Don't move your head at all; just shift your eyes and focus, and try to see the system UI instead of the world."
Paul froze in place, stiffened his neck, and squinted, trying to concentrate.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Both of them stood in silence.
He's a tough case… Adam thought as Paul failed to spot even a basic HP bar.
"Maybe if you..."
"I DID IT!" Paul's excited shout echoed down the damp alley.
"Look! I did it! I can see a green bar - it's full!" he cried, pointing as if that would show Adam exactly where it was.
"Even if I wanted to, I can't see your HP bar. No player can, unless you're in the same party or guild…" Adam answered his excitement levelly.
"Parties? Guilds? So there are the usual MMORPG mechanics," Paul said, adjusting his black top hat, which had slipped when he'd been rummaging in the bin.
"Yes. It's still considered an MMORPG, so there are plenty of familiar or similar systems - but let's leave that for later," Adam said, glancing toward the curtain embroidered with the golden rose before looking back at Paul. "If you can see your HP bar, you'll notice the number 100 next to the green line. That's your total HP. When it drops below 60, the bar turns orange, and below 20 it turns red."
"And that's it for the HP bar. Look just below it - you'll find a gold coin icon with the number 1000 next to it."
Paul focused his eyes beneath the bar and saw a gold coin engraved with a bull's head; beside it, the number 1000 shone in white.
"Woah, why do I have so much money? Did I accidentally trigger some hidden quests by jumping across rooftops?"
"No, your idiotic roof-hopping… or people-hopping… had nothing to do with it. Every player gets the same number of gold coins at the start," Adam replied.
"How did you even come up with the idea to run around on rooftops? I didn't even know that was possible…"
Paul shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.
"Isn't it obvious? If you can jump across rooftops, you do it. You never did that as a kid?"
Adam regarded the brown-haired man for a beat, unsure whether to take it as a joke or a serious statement.
Before Adam could answer, Paul raised his right hand, took off the black top hat, and waved it in front of Adam's face.
"But look what I found on one of the roofs. Isn't it beautiful? Now I just need a suit and a classy cane and I'll look like a mafia boss from the thirties."
"Or his poorer cousin," Adam shot back, eyeing the slightly faded hat.
Paul was about to retort when he noticed Adam suddenly cover his left eye and mutter something under his breath.
Adam's eyes widened in surprise as he looked at Paul.
"It's true. It really is true that fools are always lucky," he said, an ironic note in his voice as he shook his head in disbelief.
"All right, enough of that… let's go buy weapons before you 'find' something else on a roof."
"Oho!" Paul straightened his hat proudly. "Sounds like someone's jealous of my style."
"Style? More like an invitation for thieves to fleece an unsuspecting idiot. Take it off before we go to the main street," Adam said, pointing at the hat.
"Eh, seriously?"
"Yes. If players see that thing on your head, I promise you'll have hundreds of 'fans' within the hour who'll want to 'befriend' you. Better not draw attention - put that damned top hat in your inventory."
Paul sighed theatrically, as if asked to hand over his own child. Reluctantly he took the hat off and stood there holding it for several seconds.
Adam frowned, realising what he was waiting for. In a slightly irritated tone he said, "Say 'Inventory,' tap any empty slot with your hand, and look at the hat while you do it."
Paul gave him a grateful look and followed the instructions.
"Inventory."
A blue system hologram appeared in front of him - thirty empty item slots, identical to the one Adam had used.
He reached out, tapped a middle slot, and looked at the hat.
At once, the hat vanished from his hands and a small top-hat icon appeared in slot fourteen.
Nodding in satisfaction, Paul closed his inventory and looked at Adam.
"Is that hat really so valuable? Why all the precautions?"
"You'll thank me later for making you stash it. Now enough nonsense - we need to buy weapons. We've wasted more than enough time," Adam said, heading toward the mouth of the alley and waving Paul along.
Seeing Adam walk off, Paul jogged to catch up, and the two of them set off to buy their weapons.
***
Meanwhile, in the real world, an older man in an elegant black suit walked at a calm pace down a completely white corridor - spotless, not a speck of dust or stray scrap. The only feature was a steel door at the far end.
After a short, unhurried walk, he stopped before the door and scratched his neatly trimmed beard.
"Authorisation," he said evenly, gazing up at the camera above the heavy door.
A moment later, a machine voice answered tonelessly from the camera:
[Access confirmed. Welcome, Director.]
The doors slid open with a hiss, revealing a room blazing with light - people, cables, and blue screens everywhere.
One might call it a controlled chaos.
Dozens of men and women in white uniforms sat before holographic panels, their glasses and tired eyes reflecting the glow. The steady rattle of keyboards, soft commands, and clipped system prompts filled the air. The room hummed with servers and the low drone of cooling units.
"Sector three: synchronisation successful," called one woman without taking her eyes off the display.
"Neuronal stability for player number 251 up three points," someone answered from across the room.
"All right, block the interference signal in the northern section… Now… done."
It all sounded like music - composed of orders, technical jargon, and rhythmic clicking.
The moment the Director entered, the sound seemed to dim - as if the whole room held its breath. Some people straightened automatically; others adjusted their uniforms. The man in the coat walked straight down the centre, steps measured, each one echoing off the metallic floor.
"Director!" a young technician, no more than thirty - called, pushing back from his station. He held a transparent tablet full of scrolling charts and data. "How did the conference go, sir?" he asked, trying to hide his excitement. "We watched the stream the reactions were fantastic. The world's gone mad for the project."
The older man stopped just in front of him.
"No formalities, Carter," he said coolly. "The conference proceeded as planned. More importantly, it's time to focus on what matters."
"Yes, sir!" Carter straightened nervously. "All systems are stable. Player synchronisation completed successfully. We're analysing the inputs now. Of the fifty thousand slots, forty-two thousand are already occupied."
The Director nodded, glanced over the graphs on the tablet; for a brief moment, his brown eyes reflected the screenlight without a hint of pleasure or concern.
"Good," he said at last. "Back to work. I'll go to my office. I'm a bit tired after all those journalists' questions."
Carter nodded, a little surprised the conversation ended so quickly, and stepped aside to let him pass.
As the Director moved by the stations, whispers followed:
"He's really going to sleep in his office again?" a woman murmured to Carter, watching the Director head that way.
"You know he's over eighty," Carter answered, glancing after him with worry. "From what I hear, he's got a chronic condition. Most daily tasks are exhausting for him."
"Even so, it's thanks to him that, for the last twenty years, we've had consciousness synchronisation with artificial reality and he's the founding father of every artificial world to come," said another young man, looking at the Elder with a touch of fanaticism.
Carter smiled faintly and rapped him on the head with his tablet.
"That's enough chatter. Back to work. Remember any mistake could cost us dearly, or worse, cost some innocent person their life."
At his words the rest of the team nodded and returned to their stations, eyes sharp for the smallest oversight or fault.
***
When the heavy lab doors closed behind the Elder, the clamour of keyboards, voices, and machinery cut off like a knife.
The corridor to the office was as white as the rest of the complex sterile, silent, almost unreal. The only sound was the steady tap of his shoes on the gleaming floor.
At the end stood another set of doors, larger than the others.
Above them, a small engraved plaque read:
"Director General - Authorised Access Only."
He paused, smoothed a hand down his black coat, then raised his wrist.
A pale-blue light flared on his watch.
[Private authorisation - Director.]
[Access confirmed. Welcome back,] replied a woman's voice from the watch.
The doors slid aside, revealing the office within.
The room was surprisingly modest: grey walls, a single large desk, a Persian rug from the nineties, holographic monitors switched off, and behind them a panoramic window with a city stretching to the horizon. To the right of the desk stood a simple single bed.
At first glance, it could have been any elderly official's room with a few modern touches.
The Director closed the door behind him, turned the lock, and walked calmly to the desk. He bent slightly and pressed a button under the desktop.
The carpet slid aside without a sound, revealing a metal plate with a touch panel.
[Security active. Clearance level - Sigma,] announced the watch.
"Activate the passage," the Director said quietly, rubbing his beard with his right hand.
The floor opened up, revealing stairs leading down.
A cool draft flowed up from below, smelling of metal and ozone.
He checked his watch, pressed a button on its right side, and descended, step by step, until he reached a large underground hall.
It was dark, save for a single source of light: a massive screen spanning an entire wall.
Across it scrolled thousands of lines of code, neural maps, and in-game data synchronisation graphs, brain-wave readouts, players' biological parameters.
At the room's centre stood a transparent capsule, like a laboratory sarcophagus.
Inside, a faint glow pulsed, and the cables floating within throbbed like veins.
The Director stopped before it and looked up at the screen.
"Time to implement the second sequence of the plan," he said calmly, swiping a finger over his watch.
"New World."
The watch hissed, and a synthetic female voice followed:
[Order confirmed: 'New World.' Initiating Omega-class emergency procedure. Do you wish to proceed?]
"Yes."
A red prompt flashed on the screen:
[Emergency Procedure Active]
At the same moment, several floors above, the laboratory erupted into commotion.
One of the technicians lifted his head, frowning at his display.
"What the…? The room pressure's rising…"
A loud alarm blared from speakers throughout the facility.
Errors began spilling across screens, and the corridor doors slammed shut with a metallic snap.
"The system is locking down!" one woman shouted. "I can't disengage the block!"
"A hacker attack?!" a man called, staring at the multiplying errors.
"Impossible! No hacker on Earth could breach our systems. They were built not only by specialists, but by the world's best hackers specifically for this," Carter yelled, terrified, sprinting toward the main control terminal.
He didn't make it to the keyboard. From the ceiling vents and the air-conditioning units, a thin, milky mist began to seep into the room.