//------------------------------//
// Two Weeks Later 
// Story: ELO: Knight's Hall 
// by MoonGuard97 
//------------------------------//


February 5, 2020


The morning sun glared through the window, burning through my eyelids and forcing me to face the fact that it was time to get up. Groaning as I forced open my eyelids, I was greeted with the same sight I had been every morning since the game began: my room at the Everfree Stable. 

Stables were Equestria Legends Online's version of inns and taverns in other games, where a player could go to rent a room and get something to eat. The food only satisfied your hunger virtually, obviously, but players did need to sleep and, while you could really sleep anywhere, sleeping in a bed was not only more comfortable, but also had greater benefits in regards to health and magic recovery.

It had been two weeks since this game of death began, and more than twenty players had fallen to Discord's schemes. As if bragging about his accomplishment, a large granite slab had showed up outside of town hall shortly after the God of Chaos made his declaration with the names of every player in the game inscribed upon its surface, each in a different font. The names of the players who had died had been struck out with bright colors.

The game had also become considerably more difficult. Safe zones were still safe, but areas outside of town were anything but. Monsters were stronger than they had been before, often wandering outside of their normal areas and packing together in greater numbers. Night time was even worse, with monsters becoming still stronger, smarter, and more numerous. As a result, not many players left their stables at night, even in the safe zones.

I groaned and rolled out of bed, landing on my hooves and stretching. I didn't really need to stretch, of course; the system ensured that even if you sleep on the ground you never wake up stiff or achy, but something about stretching your back and limbs in the morning just felt...right. Back in the real world, the first thing I would do when I got up was always to crack my back, neck, and knees to help me loosen up.

Another groan came from across the room, and I looked over to see Goober roll out of bed as well, but he got tangled in the sheets and fell off the edge, landing hogtied with his legs in the air. The two of us just looked at each other for a second before bursting out laughing.

"Morning!" Goober greeted cheerfully.

"Morning."

Yeah, we had a shared room. From what our new friend Rex had said, each stable had at least two shared rooms, varying in the number of beds depending on the quality of the stable. Due to the lack of privacy, they were cheaper per player than individual rooms, so my team had decided to rent those out first before getting individual rooms, that way the cost was minimized.

After managing to untangle Goober, we headed downstairs to the stable's small dining area. Over the past two weeks, I'd come to realize that living in a virtual world did have its benefits. For example, morning breath and other dental problems didn't exist, so you didn't need to brush your teeth. Same with bedhead. Also, you never had to go to the bathroom. Your inventory also meant that you didn't have to grab anything on your way out the door, so you could literally just get up and go.

In the real world, I was always the first one in my house to get up without fail. That hadn't changed here. Ever since our first night here, I'd been the first one up on my team every morning, so it was no surprise when we got down to the stable's main area that we were the only ones there. We sat ourselves down at a table, prompting the NPC waitress to come and take our order. We input what we wanted--an egg and cheese bagel for me and a big bowl of fruit and oatmeal for Goober--and the food appeared instantly, the appropriate number of bits being removed from our wallets automatically.

Speaking of bits...

Still chewing on my bagel, I opened up my player menu and took a look at my funds. Ever since the Lunar Knights had joined up with Jupiter and his group of Canterlot-bound players, the entire group had been working to raise the bits necessary to get a place to stay.

Actually, this was the main reason we were all still in Ponyville. Without a home or stable to sleep in at night, it was very difficult to completely regenerate your health and magic, with the process taking an entire day with beginning HP and MP levels, and that's assuming you don't take a hit or cast a spell at all. Because of this, everypony would want a place to stay once we got there. We could pay for rooms at the local stables, but according to Jupiter, they were twice the price there as in Ponyville, and since nopony knew how long they would all be in this game, it'd be a smarter move in the long run to just stay here for now, save up, and pool everyone's resources together to buy a home big enough for everyone to stay in.

Unfortunately, Jupiter had his sights set rather high. According to him, the most efficient way to accomodate all sixty-five players travelling to Canterlot would be to go for the Canterlot palace, valued at 1.5 million bits. When he first told me this, my jaw hit the floor. One and a half million was actually a pretty low price for a castle in the capitol city, but at the beginning of the game, it was absurd. Ponyville was the starting area for the entire game, so the quests around here were designed for beginners and didn't reward much. Monster grinding was the same way. All the mobs around the town were pretty basic and dropped common loot that couldn't be sold for much.

I understood Jupiter's reasoning, though. With sixty-five players in total, going for smaller homes costing an average of about 300,000 bits each and each only housing a miximum of ten players (for the most expensive ones), it was definitely cheaper overall to go for the castle, which was well defended and could house at least 150, and the number of players going meant we only had to raise about 25,000 each, so, while still difficult and annoying, it ended up not being as bad as I expected. After two hard weeks of quest and mob grinding, I was sitting at roughly 22,000.

"Hey Goobs," I said, prompting him to lift his face out of his oatmeal. "What's your bit count at right now?"

"Let me check." He wiped his mouth and opened his menu. "Looks like I'm at almost twenty-three five. You?"

"Twenty-two." I grinned, closing out of my menu. "We're almost there man!"

"Well, not everyone." Goober started as the rest of the team walked through the door. "You and I are pretty far ahead of everyone else, by at least 2K, I think. Mary's too scared to go hunting outside, so she's just been doing the in-town quests and selling whatever she can find, so she's only at around seventeen or eighteen thou. Plus, you, me, and Grammar are the only ones who have been hunting at night, so we've got a fair amount extra from that as well. I'm pretty sure everyone else is hovering between nineteen and twenty-one."

I nodded as our table suddenly found itself filled with ponies. Goober had brought up a good point. Everyone in our group had their own way of raising money. For most of them, it was a mix of hunting and questing. However, Goober got itchy feet if he stayed in town doing peaceful quests for too long, and I wanted to level up my conjuration skill, so he and I usually picked up whatever hunting quests we could find and spent our days in the field going up against whatever monsters we came across. Grammar came along as well since a party of three was safer than two. We were also the only ones who risked hunting at night, when the monsters were more rewarding.

Goober's player ability also helped considerably. You see, at the start of the game, each player is given their own powerup. The way these work is that the the system analyzes a player's race, name, and cutie mark and then chooses a special ability from a massive index of pre-prepared powers that would compliment that player's profile. For example, since my character is night-themed, I was given the Lunar Power ability, which increased my stats by 15% whenever the moon was out. Goober, an adventure-themed character, had the Treasure Hunting ability, which increased his chances of getting more and better monster drops and treasure chest contents, as well as giving him a boost in bits earned/found.

"Well," Grammar interrupted my thoughts. "No matter how you look at it, we got another day or two of grinding before we get there."

Shadowkat sat down with an omlette. "On the bright side, all this grinding has made us some of the highest ranked players around."

She was right. A lot of players had decided that leveling up quickly was the best way to survive, but with two weeks of nothing but eating, sleeping, and grinding under our belts, and a few of us fighting the night mobs, my team and I may not look like much, but we were some of the highest-level players in town. Being friends with the admins and getting tips about the best hunting spots didn't hurt either. 

The rest of breakfast passed with friendly chatter between the team. Before long, we were all finished and heading out into town. Ponyville had a board outside town hall where players had been posting where to find good renewable quests, so that where we started every morning.

On the way, I took the opportunity to look around town as we walked. For only having been two weeks, Ponyville had already changed visibly. For starters, there weren't near as many players as there had been. The game had started with a little over a thousand players, but like I said earlier, we now had roughly twenty-five less thanks to the whole die here, die there thing, which pissed me off, but there was nothing I could do about that other than honor their memory by fighting. Additionally, roughly three hundred players so far had left with some of the admins as they spread out over the map. If I recall correctly, Appleloosa, Cloudsdale, and Trottingham were already settled, with another group about halfway from here to Manehattan and the group bound for Canterlot leaving in the next few days.

The streets had changed as well. After the launch, NPC shops were the only ones to be found. Now, you could see several player-owned stands popping up here and there. Even those players who had refused to take part in this death game had quickly come to realize that money didn't last forever. IF they wanted food and beds, they had to raise the money for it. Thus, the player shops: places where players could sell whatever they grew, made, or found (or stole). Most of it was common stuff, but hey, you had to start somewhere. Actually, if memory served correct, Noah had a weapon stand somewhere.

We reached town hall. No new quests had shown up, but some of the old ones had been renewed, so we added them to our quest logs and spread out, ready for another long day.