Time Twister

The city was quite different from that of Callows City; there wasn't a harmony between technological advancement to that of science here, and it was more focused on magic development and how it can benefit the daily lives of the city people. This didn't mean that there weren't any technological developments here; it was just that the majority of what can see with the common eye would be products by magic, as well as items catered to mercenaries.

Yes, Verdant City, because of its path of development, became the home of mercenaries, their headquarters so to speak, in the entire country of Eta. Yes, they have branches in other provinces, but Verdant City is where all these missions/requests/procurement go to, before being distributed to the branches in other provinces.

Inside a large, quiet and luxurious restaurant, a man was quietly looking outside the large gla.s.s windows of the establishment, observing the pa.s.sing people as he drank his coffee and ate his breakfast. He had a battle-borne face, as well as an aura that was cold and stifling to anyone near him. This added a sense of mystery to the onlookers observing him, attracting men and women alike.

One of the women, who accidentally had eye contact with the man, and she couldn't help but visibly swoon. Even one of the weaker men in the restaurant couldn't help but look away, blus.h.i.+ng.

This quiet but das.h.i.+ng-looking man was Xander Cloverfield, now taking the ident.i.ty of Homer Simpson.

Seeing this, he couldn't help mutter under his breath and rolled his eyes a bit, before picking up his tablet to read the news. In a city like Verdant City, most people still relied on newspapers, rarely would you see someone use a tablet to read the news.

Xander checked the current news in Verdant city, but nothing caught his attention, so he placed it down and began to quickly eat his meals. After half an hour, he called for the waiter for the bill, and quickly paid with his watch, which he modified to place his other bank account as the main payee.

Rather than return to the hotel, he headed towards the Mercenary Center for Greater Development Corporation, or MCGD for short. Yes, the Mercenary guild is a registered company and listed in the stock market. One could even own shares of the company. With the current money Xander had in his second account, he could buy at least 6% worth of shares of the company at the stock price, and even more if he could find someone willing to sell their stocks immediately.

Xander reached the buildings where the MCGD is located at. Yep, buildings. Upon seeing them, Xander couldn't help but shake his head. It was too grand. According to the information he had gleaned, the MCGD had 4 different buildings, and an underground arena as well as a training area. Each of the buildings has their respective purposes: Mission Building, Leisure building, Training Building, and Business Building. The underground arena is basically a casino but its betting on the magicians, mercenaries, and slaves that enter the arena.

Sadly, slavery exists in this world, but only for the prisoners of war. Once one is a prisoner of war, you and the next generations of your blood will carry the status of a slave. Accordingly, they can free themselves of the status if they reach Legendary cla.s.s, or win 100 fights consecutively.

Some magicians and magician mercenaries enter the arena for three purposes: Cheap training, for leisure, and for money. The last purpose is common to those that do not have a company supporting them, or a large clan behind them. The second purpose is usually done by rich magicians who wanted to have real combat experience against other people. the first purpose is done by mercenaries who find the arena as a cheaper option of training than using the training grounds of the MCGD.

What Xander was wondering was why the rich magicians did not just buy a virtual capsule for training, then realized after a few seconds why: There are no commercially available programs for virtual reality available to the public, all of them are usually made by private companies, and are sold in the form of costly monthly subscriptions. Although computing technology has been in Eteria for the past 3000 years, they only managed to progress the quantum supercomputers, without magic spells that have been found in an ancient ruins, mind

A random crash can seem to look non-fatal to the company, but it is when people's lives became involved. When they tried to create virtual reality using the quantum supercomputers, when the system crashed, out of the 100,000 alpha testers worldwide, 40,000 testers fell into a vegetative state, and 5000 others died, their brains liquefying, all their nerves burned out. The remaining alpha testers did not come out unscathed; 30,000 had nerve paralysis, while 20,000 had the symptoms of having a stroke, such as slurred speech and half-paralyzed bodies. The remaining 5,000 were a bit lucky, they only experienced temporary amnesia when the virtual reality crashed and they were booted out. It caused virtual reality development to be frozen all over the world until the problem could be fixed.

When the magic spells from the ancient ruins were discovered 1000 years ago, it caused a drastic change when it was embedded into the quantum supercomputers. Not only did the computing speeds increased, in 500 years, from 80 qubits they raised it up to a staggering amount of 320 qubits, with an error rate of 1.0x10^-49,035,260% per second.

At this point, computer scientists and engineers focused on improving the number of qubits a quantum supercomputer can handle, while still maintaining the error rate, or even making it lower. Right now, they managed to raise the number of qubits to 360, with the error rate lower, being at 1.0x10^-50,000,000% per second. However, at this point, the magic spells that were discovered from the ancient ruins were now hypothesized to be at its"maximum" limit of augmenting the quantum supercomputers, since 7 years ago, any attempt to increase the number of qubits would, without a doubt, fail. It was also one of the projects his father was involved in, and for the past 7 years, it was slowly put in the freezer and replaced with other projects, such as s.p.a.ce travel and superluminal speed travel.

In the past 30 years, there have been a lot of organizations with their own dedicated virtual reality programs internally used, or sold for others to use, such as the program used by Grand Hyatt University. As the problem states, there is no virtual reality that is similar to the arena, or the coliseum, existing for the public, global use, because it violates some tenets of countries, including Nema. This is also considered one of the points of conflict between Eta and Nema: One believes that such programs are actually helpful in training people, as well as reduce the issues of psychological problems popping out in magicians and other civilians. The other, however, believe it merely makes people have a taste of killing, which would sooner or later translate into real violence. Companies like MCGD, MineKaft, ML(Mobile Legens) manage to circ.u.mvent these by creating realities limited to the country alone, creating data servers in countries with a potential market.

However, because of the expensive price tag on their programs, only the new or old rich could afford such a thing. Which goes back to what MCGD, and a lot of other multinational firms did. To entice more members to join the company, they have their own set of virtual reality programs, offered at a discounted price of 30% of its original value, if one manages to be a Mercenary with an A rank and above.

When Xander first entertained the thought of being a mercenary, he realized that mercenaries had ranks.

Mercenaries were cla.s.sified from F to SSS+, a total of 18 levels. Everyone starts off as an F-cla.s.s mercenary, limited to taking no-rank missions to E-rank missions. If they progress to the next cla.s.s, F+, they can take any rank missions below them up to E+-rank missions; and so on until they reach cla.s.s. From that point on, they have to complete 2 mandatory mission of the same rank as their cla.s.s every 3 years, or else they would be demoted 1 cla.s.s lower. They have greater benefits at this point as well; not only will the connections of the MCGD will start opening up for one's use and needs, and the higher their rank above A, the more connections they can use.

It gets tricky. To advance to the next cla.s.s, not only do they have to do at least 5 missions with rank the same as their mercenary cla.s.s, but they would also need to take a qualifying test, ranging from foraging rare materials and hunting magic beasts, to kill a certain amount of wanted criminals. If they succeed in the test, they only have to pay 0.3% worth of shares of MCGD to proceed to the next level. so if they reach SSS+, they need to own at least 1.5% of MCGD shares. With 25% of shares on default locked to the current CEO, there can only be a maximum of 50 SSS+ mercenaries. The tricky part is this: if all 50 slots are taken away, how do you acquire 0.3% worth of shares when you are trying to advance to? The answer is simple: Fight the SSS+ mercenary. Only a single round. Both sides bet, with the SSS+ mercenary betting 0.3% of shares, while the challenger bets the value of the shares in money. If the SSS+ loses, they lose their cla.s.s and get demoted to SSS-cla.s.s; the shares are automatically transferred to the newly mercenary. If SSS+ mercenary wins, however, he gets to keep 80% of the money, with 20% going to the MCGD.

The SSS+ mercenaries combined have the same voting power as the current CEO. The stocks were basically divided into 2 types: 50% pure stock value, for the global stock market. Another 50% for the internal stock value. The CEO has 25% pure stock and 25% of the 50% internal stock, so that's 37.5%. The mercenaries have a combined internal stock value of 75% of 50%, so 37.5% pure stock value. Although theoretically, the mercenaries can easily vote against the decisions of the CEO or even kick out the CEO, they would never succeed because out of the 50 mercenaries, 10 have always been SSS+ since the start, and they belong to the CEO's family, so their actual power is at 30% pure stock, with the CEO having 45% pure stock power.

Of course, this information isn't available online for public view; he received it when he had entered the Business building of the MCGD to sign up as a mercenary. It was actually quite automated; you only needed to choose an empty seat, open the computer terminal, fill out the forms, and print them out, submit the online forms, and submit the hard copy to the attendant by the entrance of the floor, before leaving.

When Xander sat down and touched the terminal, he commanded the system to hack the databases of MCGD and connect his watch to their databases. Immediately, all the information about the company, the dark secrets, failed or sc.r.a.pped projects, as well as current top-secret projects, were stored in his watch, and if he ever loses the watch, he still had his System perpetually connected to their database until I say so.

He began filling up the forms, using his watch, he just copy-pasted his information to the terminal. He filled in the text boxes that asked, "What do you aspire the most? bla bla bla" with spiel that fit the persona Homer Simpson had according to his government records.

After submitting the online form, he printed it out and was shown a notification on the screen that it was successfully sent. It then told me to proceed to the counter to send the physical copy. The attendant on the counter was a young lady, roughly at her early 20s, and she was obviously bored out her mind since she was just playing with her mobile phone. When she saw Xander approach, she immediately stopped playing and showed her professional smile, before saying,

"h.e.l.lo, welcome to MCGD. My name is Dana. How may I help you?"

"I'm here to submit my mercenary application."

Xander submitted the papers and after scanning the first page, Dana nodded before putting the papers in one stack on her desk.

"Alright, Mr. Simpson, your application has been verified and is now being processed. If there are no problems, such as incomplete forms, you would be alerted in your smart.w.a.tch whether you are a bonafide mercenary. Once you are accepted, please head to the Mission building, the building to the right of this building, and peruse missions you would like to take."

Dana bowed and then said, "Thank you for doing business with us!"

"Not at all. See you around." Xander calmly spoke, his voice deep.

Xander exited the building, and after walking a bit, he sighed. The first step is complete. Hopefully, 6 days is enough to explore a bit of the Delta province, Xander muttered to himself.