Might as Well - Chapter 401 - Interlude 40 (Patreon)

Magic Unbound, like any game when it became famous, created and uplifted at least a dozen, maybe hundreds, of industries just by its existence. One would only need to look into the industries that dealt with services that made sure people holed up in their homes playing the game would survive.

Cleaning services, delivery services for shops that before never even thought about delivery, and of course, food delivery. It started with the usual delivery companies offering deals related to the game, then subscriptions to people who wanted food regularly delivered after exiting the game.

Then came the delivery companies specializing in making and delivering food said to maximize the gains from the game. Full hogwash, of course, but when there is a scam, there are people falling for it.

Just as people thought that the new gaming pods would transform humanity, allowing them to exercise their minds in-game, while the pod ‘magically’ transferred those exercises into their bodies, so there were people who thought that eating certain foods would boost their ability in-game.

Now, there were naturally foods that did that. After all, a person who ate healthily, with the best quality food, naturally performed better than a person who lived on stale, cheap ramen every day. But that was true in every other part of life.

To the consternation of many players, there were no magical wonder vegetables that allowed them to boost their mind ‘110%’ no matter what ‘experts’ on the internet said. That, however, didn’t stop people from trying to sell diets ‘purposely designed to boost gaming abilities and response times in-game’. Most scammers were lazy, so they just put together some random diet and sold that. Those who were a bit more invested in the scam just took some old fad diet, or maybe an exercise regime, renamed it, and put it on blast.

There were, of course, a very small percentage of these experts who were actually experts. Dietitians, health care professionals who actually talked to their clients and set up diets suited to their bodies, lifestyle, and health.

And that was one industry.

Another smaller industry was the gaming helmet and gaming pod repair service. Most of them were simple: call them, and they go out, check the pod, then repair it. But, as with everything else, a few humans had ideas.

They decided to offer ‘aftermarket’ modifications that they stated were copied from the strongest player’s pods or offer settings that Future Unknown was keeping quiet about because they didn’t want the ‘peasants’ to know about.

Naturally, this resulted in most cases in the modified helmet or pod breaking in short order, leaving the person owning it short of a gaming device, out of money, and the ‘helpful’ service provider nowhere to be seen.

Those were the local services.

On the world scale, the manufacturing of the gaming pods and helmets also slightly rearranged the relationships in the world. Unsurprisingly, a device as advanced as the helmets and pods required some really peculiar or specific materials, parts, and equipment to manufacture.

Some of these were made from raw materials found only in specific regions or countries. Those who claimed those territories suddenly became much richer. Naturally, this resulted in those who envied them going after them. Usually, it was mostly economic attacks, but there were certain countries where those who desired to take over the business providing Future Unknown with the raw materials organized worker uprisings, terrorist attacks, and so on. This had a ripple effect of everyone else reacting to it, which in turn upset the market and introduced some really unwanted volatility.

Most countries solved these issues by letting the earned income finally trickle down a little, pacifying their workers; some, however, kept up with the aggressive tactics, hoping the workers would give up and they could keep everything.

Of course, Future Unknown disliked the fact that they would have a spotty supply chain, so instead of trying to interfere with foreign business, which they were not really averse to, but in this case the PR and marketing nightmare it would cause wasn’t worth it.

They simply changed suppliers.

The first time they did this, the original supplier, who was in the middle of putting down a violent worker uprising, where workers were demanding such things as eight-hour work shifts, free weekends, and proper healthcare, tried to raise a fuss.

Future Unknown just released pictures, videos, and reports of their actions, and suddenly they had much bigger issues.

Unsurprisingly, most of the other entities in the supply chain almost instantly got the message. They suddenly found some middle manager who was doing all those evil, evil things that violated work rights and created health hazards, fired them, then parachuted in a smiling yes-man (or woman, depending on the country) and had them start setting up a better environment for the workers.

And it was not like Future Unknown did these things for altruistic reasons. They could have totally enjoyed the pure profits from suppressing worker rights and such, but some bright bulb with idealistic tendencies decided to run a simulation.

The simulation was based on one question: “What if things continued this way?”

With the advances Future Unknown made in computing and artificial intelligence technologies, it took them months to get a semi-accurate picture of the future, and despite the astronomical profits projected, even the most hard-headed members of the leadership realized that they would need to have at least some guardrails.

Naturally, it wasn’t that easy.

There were meetings.

So many meetings.

Some turning so bloody that they had to wait until the new people were onboarded for the positions to be ready to continue them. But in the end, they came to a compromise.

There were no declarations or large statements.

Instead, the company as a whole slowly shifted its focus to refining its supply chain. The goal was reducing human misery without giving up the smallest amount of profit. And with AI at their beck and call doing the calculations, it was rather easy.

Though they did feel a little stupid when, after the first wave of ‘reduction’, production had shot up as people happier with their lot simply worked more efficiently.

A bit of an egg on some people’s faces.

It was not a universal solution.

But many considered it a step in the right direction.

Some analysts had a small aneurysm while auditing the company's logistics system and found that some companies with the best human treatment ratio shared one majority owner: AFK Company.

However, while these actions were purposefully concealed from the general public – after all, nobody wanted the public to get ideas – they didn’t happen in a vacuum.

The ripple effects were spreading…

Another industry that was majorly affected by the release of Magic Unbound was the art industry. Specifically, the cosplay industry.

Oh, as was customary when anything or anyone got famous, there were videos, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and who knows what else made in their image. And Magic Unbound didn’t lack in these areas. There were even several websites specialized in displaying digital art related to the game and nothing else.

Of course, where digital art was made, other less… impure genres followed… But in the grand old tradition of the internet, they were shoved into the dark corners of the internet, and nobody tried to think about them.

However, one of the biggest upsets of the release of the game was the cosplay industry.

Due to the fact that Magic Unbound prided itself on the freedom it provided to the players, it didn’t have ‘main’ characters the cosplayers or players could focus on.

Oh, there were hundreds, even thousands of beautiful women or handsome men NPCs, but none of them were important important.

This caused a bit of chaos in the community.

If there were no important NPCs, who should they dress up as?

It didn’t take them long to figure out the answer: famous players.

“Did you really have to drag me here on a Saturday morning?” Sam grumbled as he looked down at the conference center’s floor, practically full of people in all manner of costumes, while a veritable maze of stands and exhibitions surrounded them.

They were in one of the VIP rooms, and Lucy was in the middle of unpacking some kind of costume.

She chuckled. “You needed to get out of the apartment and your head,” she told him. “This was the best place…”

Sam frowned. Looking down from the windows, he could see at least a dozen people dressed as him, the quality ranging from bargain bin to ‘dear-god-how-much-did-you-spend-on-it’. Most of them were male, but he had seen several genderbent versions, including sexy ones. Of course, there were people dressed as Lucky, in full-on costumes, or some kind of interpretation of the shadowy wolf.

There were hundreds of other people dressed up as other famous players, or as their own character. Naturally, as this was a con, there were still people who dressed up as pop culture or literature characters. Or simply as household items…

Sexy cheese, why?

Lucy had convinced him to attend this shindig, and now he was here, waiting for his costume as one would await their execution.

“Ahh, found it!” Lucy exclaimed and spun around, holding an entire set of entirely familiar gear.

“Lucy. I love you, but I’m not dressing up as myself for a con. There is egotistical, and there is that…”

Lucy just smiled winningly. “Come on! Nobody is going to suspect it’s you! I will dress up as Lucky, and we can walk around without anyone recognizing us!”

Sam stared back at his girlfriend, then down at the one-on-one recreation of his in-game armor, including his sword. Granted, this one was blunt enough that it wouldn’t cut butter, but it was still very realistic.

“How much did you pay for this?” he asked as he carefully took it out of Lucy’s hand and examined it by running his hand over it.

Lucy grabbed her own costume, which was a black suit with fur at strategic locations, including a hood, and plastic fangs, as if someone had reimagined Lucky as a person, and chuckled. “Barely anything. They sell that as a package on most cosplay websites. I just gave them your size, and it was delivered the next day.”

Sam took a deep breath, then let it out.

Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were walking hand in hand through the crowd, marvelling at all the costumes, checking out the stalls, and occasionally stopping for someone to take a picture, or so they could take a picture.

Arguably not a fan of dressing up, Sam still found it hilarious when they found a group that was cosplaying as Dan and Clarissa, who in turn just met with a pair of women dressed up as Katie and Isabella. Lucy and Sam joined them for a group picture, barely able to hold back their laughter.

Walking away, Sam grinned. “Can’t wait to show it to the others!”

Lucy laughed with him. “Already on it…” she mumbled as she was rapidly typing into her phone. “There. Sent.”

Instantly, the phone began to buzz, but she just laughed again, muted it, and put it away. She grabbed Sam’s hands and began pulling him. “Come on! I heard they are selling plushies over there!”

Five minutes later, after they managed to break through the rather dense crowd, Sam let out a groan.

“Lu… why does AFK have a stand at this con, selling plushies of our familiars?”

Lucy winked at him. “Money, of course…”

And she was right; the crowd, or rather, mob based on how rabid they were, were practically wrenching the plushies out of the hands of the people working the stand.

There were, of course, plushies of Lucky of every size, from the small golfball-sized ones for keychains to the ones bigger than a person. There were fire birds based on Dan’s familiar, small tree stumps with shadowy appendages for Isabella’s familiar, and the geese turned ronin in both forms for Clarissa. Some of those were plushes that you could turn inside-out to transform them. However, unsurprisingly, the most popular ones, after Lucky of course, were the plushies of Puffball.

There were ordinary ones that were barely different from a normal black cat, but there were some where someone worked long and hard to make sure the cat looked eldritch. Proportions were off; the mouth was bigger than normal. Its eyes were filled with a sea of stars. And so much more…

The stand also sold other merchandise related to the company. Anything and everything imaginable emblazoned with the company and guild logo, including t-shirts, hoodies, and, for some unfathomable reason, tea towels.

Lucy grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the line. “Come on! Let’s buy some!”

Sam followed her reluctantly. “Why? Couldn’t we just get some from wherever they store these?” he asked in a low voice as they stepped into the line. Before them stood a person dressed as one of the krakens that attacked Deepanchor, and behind them the line continued with someone dressed up as him, but in rainbow colors.

Lucy just gave him a look. “It’s not the same…”

Sam thought about arguing about it, but then just shrugged. “Fine. If you want to spend your Saturday standing in a line, then we shall stand in that line like professionals.”

She grinned at him and gave him a hug.

Almost an hour later, they were walking through the convention with Lucy hugging an almost person-sized Lucky, while Sam was carrying two bags filled with their own merchandise. Lucy insisted it was to check the quality, but he had a hard time believing her after she literally squealed when she saw one of the plushies made of the wooden spirit.

“What’s next?” he asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Future Unknown also has a stand deeper in. One of the biggest. They are also selling merch, plus they put out a statement that they are going to announce a new line of helmets.”

“Do you want to check it out?” Sam asked, already dreading the crowds.

Lucy shrugged again. “I’m game…”

Sam nodded. “Alright, where to then?”

They arrived at the biggest exhibit and stand in the convention, and it took them barely half an hour to get into a position to see the stage that had been set up. An MC dressed in generic fantasy clothing was on the stage, warming up the crowd, but even with the badly tuned microphone in front of him, they could barely hear him over the noise the crowd was making.

“Alright, people! Are you ready?” the MC exclaimed, and the crowd roared in approval. “Hell yeah! So before we get to the announcement you are no doubt eagerly waiting for, we prepared a little surprise for you!”

The crowd, naturally, lost their minds. Nobody knew what it was, and more than likely it was some kind of advertisement, but with how the mood was, everyone seemed excited.

“So here we go!” the MC yelled and stepped aside as the lights dimmed and a projector activated.

It started on a black screen, which gradually lightened until it showcased an icy environment, the wind blowing harshly, carrying snow and misery with it.

The screen switched and showed an old manor, covered in decay and destruction, where a woman stood, covered in mystical energies.

The camera spun around to reveal a group of adventurers, arrayed in front of the woman, ready to battle.

“What…” Sam gasped, his voice fully lost in the crowd’s excitement.

He watched as their fight against that raid boss was cut together in a cinematic way, until at the height of the battle it cut away to another raid, where another group was battling, quickly continuing to switch between a sequence of high-octane fights. While the switches were rapid, he recognized several of his and his team’s fights.

After a full minute of fights, people spamming magical spells of all elements, weapons slashing, crushing, breaking, and destroying, the video slowed down a little, showing a tropical island from a bird’s viewpoint covered in lava, obsidian, and noxious gases.

There was a crossfade, and now it was covered in a lush forest.

The camera rapidly zoomed in, and before it could ‘hit’ the mountain, the scene switched to inside the volcano caldera, where heat distorted the air, and a very familiar group was fighting against a demon.

They played a few cinematic scenes of the fight, then, just as Dan was ready to unleash his ultimate spell, the screen whitened, and the title of the game appeared.

There was a beat of silence, and then the crowd broke out in applause.

The MC grinned and stepped forward as the lights returned to their previous strength. “Alright folks, give it up to our editing department! What you have seen here was one of our new promo videos! Feel free to share it with your friends!”

Sam turned to Lucy. She looked back at him.

“Now it makes sense why they sent such a big check…” she said into his ear.

Sam just let out a sigh while the MC began to introduce some new edition of the gaming helmets and pods. It was mostly external changes, but there were a few upgrades to the software and hardware, too.

He didn’t really care. Future Unknown, after his ‘little’ accident, made sure he always had the newest and best equipment, set up with high-grade medical equipment. His hands twitched a little as he thought about how close he came to death.

Lucy squeezed his hand, seemingly knowing where his thoughts were taking him. She stood on the tips of her toes and yelled into his ear. Even then, with the crowd around them, he could barely hear her. “Come on! Let’s check the booth while they’re distracted with the shiny.”

Smiling at her, he squeezed her hand back, and the two of them began the arduous journey through the crowd of costumed people.