Chapter 2: Reincarnated, or am I?

Chapter 1

Reincarnated, or am I?

 

June Allen, a gamer first, everything else a distant second. She spent many nights inside the latest digital world, finding fun in her own way. Tonight was a serious endeavor, as June was deep into another crafting session in her new favorite MMO, Duneria Online.

The most fun she could often have came from crafting and economic systems. Her favorite moments in games were when players came to her for complicated commissions. She enjoyed spending hours plugging away at the crafting UI, making items for keen adventurers. And when an MMO allowed her to flex creative muscle, all the better. Being able to put digital art skill to work in games was a rare delight.

Today, she was making Summoning Brand templates. Summoners who wished to bind minions to their will used these. A rather simple thing to make, it was just tedious. And with that tedium came a lot of mental drag. The crafting was rewarding in-game, but was sometimes as dull as death.

June carved another Rune into the eighth scroll she had made that night, a simple circular pattern meant to focus the Mana of the user. This was a slow process, but not overwhelmingly so thanks to the semi-automatic process of applying Runes. The game always saved Runes you had used previously, speeding matters up. With practiced hands, she moved the Runes into position on the representation of the scroll within the UI before confirming their placement with a click.

As June scrawled the fifth Rune on the current scroll, she got a familiar feeling. A heaviness pulled on her eyes and a repeated yawn interrupted her thoughts. June knew these signals well, they were a cue to pack it in—she was being told by her own body to go the frak to bed.

June was finally done with the last Rune on the scroll as the crafting bar for the item filled to completion. A blitz of blue and yellow sparks fluttered across her computer monitor, and the reward window notified her of her latest completion of the day.

 

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