Bloodlines Online

After witnessing the advertisement Ezekiel continued to his job, when he entered he saw a drastic change in the chateau.

At every table was a screen that would be used to watch streams.

The walls were covered in art that depicted advertisements for BLO as well as many other virtual reality games from previous platforms.

The booths were now much more comfortable with custom tables that would hide keypads underneath the them.

Even the registers got an upgrade.

The chateau was made to look like an old style French restaurant but his uncle had managed to overhaul it into a modern internet Cafe without ruining the restaurant.

Ezekiel went through the restaurant to look for his uncle until he finally decided to check the managers office on the second floor.

To reach this office one actually had to go through the kitchen since the stairway was kept away from the public.

When he got to the second floor he saw a number of young people waiting on seats with their phones but they did not seem to be doing the typical social media scrolling or media browsing.

These young men and women were looking at data!

They glanced at him occasionally but when he entered the office they all stared like he had just committed a crime.

”Excuse me! I said wait- oh! Ezekiel I’m sorry my boy, come on in and close the door.”

He saw his uncle sitting there with a young woman who had a set of screens open and connected to her phone, on these screens was information about a character from BLO.

”I’m doing interviews for more staff that will be focused on the streaming aspect, I managed to get Yggdrasil to agree to a contract so we will have the right to only show our employees here when they stream!”

”How would that work?...”

”Well we had to set up something called a closed network for the stream but if what they said is true then when streamed from devices here the only ones that will see them are those in this restaurant or the BLO development team.”

Ezekiel wasn’t sure how that was possible but if Yggdrasil said it was then he had no reason to argue.

He sat down next to the woman and politely greeted her.

”Hi I’m Ezekiel, what’s the thing you used to check that info?”

”Oh it’s a new app that Yggdrasil made, it let’s you connect your phone to your pod while you were in the game and it saves a snapshot of your character when you leave.”

He thought about it and nodded.

”That is pretty useful yeah, I wish I had known about it...”

”They’ve had it on their website since day one...”

”You can’t be serious.”

”OK Ezekiel, what did you need from me today.”

His uncle must have gotten tired of the back and forth so he focused on the reason he came in.

”I actually wanted to try to become a permanent streamer for the restaurant since I can show off the most for the game.”

”Oh yeah? What could you possibly have done to say that.”

”Well I actually met the devil queen.”

He had a smug look on his face and his uncle looked astonished... until the woman applying for a position started to laugh.

”You? Do you mean you’ve seen the devil queen?”

This made him stumble a bit but he continued.

”No, actually I have gotten very close to Lucretia since I’ve known her.”

The young woman laughed again before continuing to speak to his uncle.

”Well as you can see from my status as well as my achievements I would be a great talent for your restaurant. How often will you get the opportunity to have a streamer that has completed a hard mode dungeon?”

”Uncle if I bring you my status after the next server pause will you consider me for a full time streamer promotion?”

His uncle sighed and gave the woman a smile before turning to Ezekiel.

”If you have good achievements I will consider it but I can’t open many spaces for it quite yet, remember that you will be competing with the rest of these fine players.”

He sighed and nodded before leaving.

His uncle would likely not believe that he was doing well without proof but the proof would take two days to obtain.

As he left the restaurant he wanted to go out to relax but the town didn’t have a lot of activity centers.

All it really had was a park where people would go skating.

With the lack of ideas he simply left for home so he could relax with a movie.

~

Throughout the world a change had been occurring.

This change started within the core as a strange energy began to permeate the world.

As the earth began to grow saturated it caused changes to the material of the world.

It would take many centuries to truly affect things but by the time mankind was soaring through the sky the first signs had been detected in the studies of the planet.

Volcanic activity was the first to reveal this change as world governments locked down active volcanic regions to study this new energy.

Through their studies they determined that this energy was similar in function to radiation, it would permeate the area which caused objects and materials within this area to start changing.

Metal that contained this energy was denser and stronger.

Minerals would react more.

Gemstones that had been saturated were suddenly more conductive than gold.

Governments began to look for excuses to strip mine these regions and they turned to the same thing they always went to.

Conquest.

At the time of the twenty twenties the world was thrown into a third world war, the energy war.

Countries fought over regions that had the easiest time reaching the inner mantle while in other regions people sought out mass plots of land to try to study how the energy would affect the surface.

Every geologist gave a similar estimate of when this energy would start to radiate from the surface, the twenty thirties.

It wasn’t until a powerful country ended their own internal conflicts that the leader finally asked a question that changed everything.

”What happens if this energy harms the world?”

Advisors in the scientific field had tried to explain this concern to every leader but it was only when an enemy no longer existed that someone took this concern seriously.

This energy had been consistently compared to radiation before and it was known to cause changes to that which it saturated, but no one knew what it would do to biology after exposure for a long period of time.

This world leader after expressing these worries finally got others to consider the same dilemma.

It was known that when money was involved people hid the negatives and the concerns but this time they could not hide it because this leader could not be bought off.

This leader had also survived an assassination attempt so the worry about their message being taken by others grew even further.

The only thing that could be done was to work together, the economic value of the energy was high while the potential dangers were even higher so the governments of the world came together to start the process of unity.

The first step was to create games that made the concept of countries feel irrelevant.

By the time the world began to experience the changes on the surface an individual appeared before this world leader.

She explained what they had been so worried about was actually an awakening of the world which would allow it to enter a new step in existence, there was danger however.

They had been right to assume that this energy would react unpredictably with organic life because if life was not already accustomed to this energy then it was in danger of horrific change.

She called this energy mana and gave them the chance to survive what had the potential to be an apocalyptic event for their society.

~

”They are doing quite well.”

”Yes but they will soon start to experience the awakening.”

”Are you sure it was a good idea to use our power to block mana from this world?”

”It will get over itself, the chance to see what a world without mana will do is quite exciting don’t you agree?”

”They reached their moon and created space travel... perhaps mana holds back the world?”

”Maybe... but you know there are humans suffering in this world while they would have been at the top if mana had existed.”

”They will make their way to the top with their talent anyway but this also means there will be individuals who are motivated to grow due to their success in a magicless world.”

”A world without magic but they have achieved more than every other creation of ours... do you think they will apply magic to their technology?”

”It is a possibility, they do have people that have become experts in their coding which would make magic easy for them.”

”They may even grow to be more advanced in magic than any other civilization we have made.”