Hikari: Rise Of The Weapons Master

"How is your game going?" Mia asked as the two siblings were eating dinner. This was the only time they would talk with each other since Zack was busy playing Hikari.

"I am still ranked one sis. I just need to wait for 15 more days and once that's done, I will be able to get you cured." He replied while finishing his dinner and looked at his sister with a smile.

The latter smiled back as she picked up the plates and started doing the work.

"You go ahead and do that then. I will take care of the things." Since she was busy doing the dishes, she didn't look at Zack while talking. He just nodded and went back to his room.

But as soon as he went away, Mia started coughing. She covered her mouth with her right hand and when she removed it, she saw a few drops of blood staining her palm.

"Only a few more days huh. I should keep eating the medicine then." Mia muttered as she rummaged around in her pockets and took out a pill case.

The pill case gave out a blue pill which she quickly swallowed and put the case back in her pockets.

Mia knew that she could have told Zack about this but there was a chance that he would be worried over her health and rush some things.

Mia had instead gone ahead to meet the doctor and after a few check-ups, he had given her the blue pills in case she ever cough blood.

She would have to regularly eat one pill a day until and unless she was treated but for that to happen, Zack would have to first get the money.

'I just have to endure till then.' Mia thought with a resolute face as she got on with her work.

***

"The food pills should be released tomorrow," Zack muttered as he was scrolling through the forum.

An official post had said that starting from the next day, food pills would be made available.

Food pills were little orange-colored pills that contained the nutritions of a day's worth of food. There was also a blue pill that was for completing the water need.

Both of these had been checked by various companies before they had gotten the right to be sold publicly.

But now that they were available in the market, there would be huge hordes of players trying to buy. However, he and a lot of other top players had received something called pre-order.

They just had to state any number of pills they wanted and the companies would provide them for free. This was a huge step considering that each pill was 100$ a piece.

However, this was actually a hidden scheme set up by the companies.

All the players would have to go to the nearest place where these things were selling and there, a company advocate from all four companies would be waiting.

They will all hand the respective player the pills before giving them a contract to sign exclusively with the company. The contract both restricted and gave players more freedom in different ways.

And Zack knew that if he wanted to survive in the real world, he would have to sign a contract with one of these superpowers.

After all, he needed business partners to survive in the real world. Money alone was not going to make him get all that he wanted.

"Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day." Zack thought with a small smile as he logged into Hikari and spent the night playing the game.

***

An alarm approached Zack when he was playing the game. He had set this alarm to make himself aware that it was time to stop playing and go take the food pills.

After getting ready and eating his breakfast, he was ready to leave.

"I am going out sis. I would come back by afternoon." He told Mia before wearing his shoes and leaving the house.

Nobody on the street paid him any attention but if they knew that he was about to earn 500 million dollars in one go, they would latch on to him like hyenas on pray.

This was why the custom character creation card was useful. Many top 100 players had to move away and were even assaulted because of the money they might have.

As Zack had known, the companies had soon run out of the custom character creation cards in real life and more were now available in-game.

This meant that if someone managed to get their hands on a whole lot of cards, they could sell them for a lot of money.

And that person would be none other than Zack.

After reaching the nearest tech store near his house, he couldn't help but stare at the Doogle logo on the shop. As if it was a hidden message, he smiled before entering the place.

He had already decided which company he would choose to have a contract with and for now, he was just going to make all the companies think that they had a chance at hiring the top player.

"Hello, I am here to pick up my pre-order of food pills." Zack went ahead and talked to the person at the reception.

The person looked at the him with narrowed eyes before pointing him towards a door in the right section of the store.

"Go there and enter your player id." The receptionist said and got back to whatever he was doing on his computer.

Zack walked over to the door and entered his player id in a small hologram floating beside the doorknob.

The moment he entered the last digit, alarms started to go off in the entire store. A red light started to flash across the entire store as Zack raised his eyebrows.

The door in front of him opened and he entered the room without a second thought.

However, police had appeared outside the store and had now started guarding the nearby area. Even though no one else knew the player id of someone, the police had received a special order from their higher-ups to guard the store.

This was because the companies knew that no matter what, they could not lose someone as important as Zack in any case.

As for the person who had caused this, he was sitting on a blue couch blue themed room.

'So it's telsa first.' He thought with a sigh as the representative of telsa, a short 5 foot 3 inches man with glasses, walked inside the room.

"We would like to offer you to work with telsa and we will give you…"

The man continued to go on and speak everything as Zack barely prevented himself from falling asleep.

After the man was done, the representatives from the other three companies arrived and told him about what things he would get and what he wasn't allowed to do.

"Ok, that's enough," Zack said when the representative of Miscosoft was halfway through his speech. "Can all of you guys come up here?"

A few seconds later, all four representatives were standing together in front of Zack. He sighed before looking at all of them one by one.

"If you want me to work with your companies, ask your CEO or whoever is at the top to come and meet me. Then only I will sign a contract."

"Um, what do you mean?" The person from orange asked.

"I meant that I will only sign a contract with the big bosses. So give up on this and tell them to come here and talk to me personally."