Chapter 4: Mentorship

Euki stood up from the couch and planted her feet on the floor. M-Megaworld E1 shook. Some players took a break from their tasks to see Euki stride off. Her steps echoed as she moved away deeper into her in-game home.

There was a certain level of awe in some, and plenty of envy in others. Yet, despite what they thought of Euki, in many ways she was similar to them.

For starters, like them, Euki wasn’t actually Euki. She controlled her in-game avatar, but was a person out in the real world. She was a young woman on winter break from her university studies. As she often did, she spent the bulk of her break time playing the critically acclaimed VR-MMORPG Foremost Phantasia, or “FP” for short.

Like all the mentees, this meant her real body had a special headset on top her head that interfaced with her nervous system. With it, she could immerse herself into the game until she either logged off, or 7 hours had passed at which point she’d be forcibly logged off just for health and safety reasons. Of course, the latter wasn’t much of an issue, as aside from a 30 second “cooldown” she could just hop right back into the game--assuming there weren’t any queuing issues of course.

Aside from that, Euki wasn’t the only catgal in FP. Quite the opposite, in fact. The nekojin, or catfolk as they were interchangeably called, were one of the most popular races among all player demographics.

There were a large variety of races to choose from in the game. Players who liked to be short could go with the gnomefolk, assuming they didn’t mind being punted around a bit: Euki thought some probably liked that, even. You also had horned and scaled humanoids with the dragonfolk. There were also the tall and slender elffolk with their pointed ears and graceful limbs. If you wanted fur on your chest, butt, and everywhere else then the lionsfolk existed. If you truly wanted to be a big strong brute, then the ogfolk were available as an option too with their tall, wide, and strong physiques.

Euki’s player almost made an ogfolk. They were the tallest and buffest race, and that was a common mood for her. Alas, the females had a dearth of nose options to her liking. Moreover, no blue skin tones.

It worked out though, as she greatly enjoyed her character’s current form and, well, she didn’t exactly need to worry about feeling short when doing mentor things.

Players created their characters as they did for many reasons. Some wanted to be something wild and different: fantastical. Others wanted something pretty to look at, and thus they tried to make the perfect eye-candy for when they looked at an in-game mirror. Others wanted to create an idealized version of themselves.

Euki’s player figured that last reason contributed to why the most popular race in the game were the jin: humans, basically. She found that a bit boring. She pondered why it was more popular for players to make an idealized version of themselves as opposed an idealized version of themselves, but with horns or a tail too.

It just seemed like an extra cool factor to her, not to mention the utility. Euki’s player often imagined how useful a prehensile tail could be in real life. She figured she could probably hold a soda with it, which would free up her hands to play a handheld-game while waiting for a meal to finish cooking or whatever.

Yes, there wasn’t a single trait Euki had that her player wouldn’t also mind having in the real world. That said, she didn’t design her character to be an ideal version of herself. Moreover, much as she enjoyed her in-game body, in many senses of the term, she didn’t design her character just for lewd purposes. Although she made a body she found attractive, she didn’t max out the boob slider either.

No, Euki’s player mostly just made a body that she thought would be great to play in. And, she was right. Also, blue was one of her favorite colors.

That said, the games collection of player characters was incredibly diverse. Jin were a majority, but only slightly. There were still plenty of the other races running around. Enough that if you entered an in-game room and there were only, say, gnomefolk, then that was both a great oddity and a sign the player should run from whatever cult meeting may have been going on in there.

However, even if there were plenty of other catfolk, Euki was the only character that looked like she did. For starters there were subraces, and the other subrace of nekojin was more popular as most thought it had cooler looking pupils. Alas for Euki’s player, that subrace lacked blue skin tones, so she didn’t pick it.

Additionally, the game had an astonishing amount of character customization options. The odds that any character looked like another on accident, even with many millions of players, was very small. Euki’s Player in particular had fiddled with color sliders for at least 30 minutes to get her skin the perfect shade of blue that wasn’t too light nor too dark for her tastes. The precisely tuned tone alone probably made her unique, but fiddling over ear angles, tail length, and more definitely did.

Euki’s player didn’t agonize over every choice like that though. For instance, setting height slider to max was a quick and easy decision. She knew she personally didn’t want hair too long or in a bun or braid, so that cut off about half the hair options for her then and there.

It was true that Euki stood out from other players in other ways. Most obvious, of course, was that as a mentor she was utterly gigantic to mentees.

However, the entire program didn’t used to exist. It was rather new, in fact.

Euki did everything her mentees did at a point, she just did it out in the ‘real’ game-world. She did it in World 1, in fact, the first world the game ever made.

Yes, she knew the lands intimately and, in fact, still played in them! World 1 still existed. It was an entire game-world just like the ones the mentees were playing in, only it was actually to her scale: the normal scale, as only mentor worlds were shrunk. She had leveled in the areas the mentees did, fought the mobs they did, and grinded out all the exp they were trying to do now themselves. The only difference is that she didn’t have some giant player to beg for help now and then.

The actual, non-mentor game worlds had some differences. They had the latest expansion areas, for instance, and players could earn another 10 levels and finish the last parts of the current game story. But, otherwise it was exactly the same, only bigger. Normal sized.

Euki didn’t want to be a mentor at first. It seemed like a lot of work, and she was the type of player to go out of her way to avoid helping others whenever possible for all the entanglements and time-sinks those actions usually were. Despite that, she volunteered to mentor for a very important reason most of all.

The exclusivity of the role was nice, but that wasn’t the main reason. It wasn’t to lord her sheer size, power, and progression over others either, as nice as she found that to be when she thought about it. The zril stipend mentorship paid was trivial to her as well.

No, the reason most important was simpler than all that: a mount.

Mounts were what players used to get around the wide open world. With them, you could move faster over the landscapes. At a certain point in progression, with enough grinding, you could even fly across the regions, moving at the max speed the game would let you.

With enough mentorship points you could buy, among other things, a special mount.

Euki of course didn't *need* that mount. She'd probably never use the mount more than once to make the 'new' indicator go away from it. It was ugly, and she had rarer ones to flaunt when she felt like flexing on others. However, she *could* get the mount, and until she *did* there was a slot in her mount collection where the mount could go. So, simply put, she *had* to have it and, unfortunately for her and her mentees, the mount was exclusive to the program.

So, for that reason she put up with the Mentor Requests, questions, and general monitoring of the worlds and megaworlds under her care. That’s all not mentioning the occasional zril sink they were when she accidentally bumped one off the table or forgot to cover her face for a sneeze.

As to the mentees themselves, well, many fully leveled players that knew of the system sometimes wondered why anyone would put up with it as a mentee.

Why would anyone put up with someone like Euki? Why spend a good chunk of the game’s story--the majority of it, really--leveling and grinding at the literal feet of a comparably titanic brat? A condescending, careless, self-centered tomboy more interested in milking you for rewards than actually helping you enjoy the game or figure out a problem.

The answer is quick and satisfying to anyone who plays the game.

Double Exp.

That’s all it took for the program to be one of the most popular player-based programs in the games history. Speeding up the grind to level any and all classes by double is just too good a reward for most players to pass up.

On top of that, if you haven’t yet subscribed to the game, it’s the only way to play it for free.

The whole program started due to a flood of players. Other VR-MMORPGs attempted to break into the market, but none caught on. Though the headsets were compatible with all, the other games integrated far less well with the player. The game tech and design was worse, basically.

In some cases, it was even dangerous. The only other serious competitor, a western VR-MMORPG, lost the vast bulk of its players after a small subset of subscribers suffered nerve damage due to an improperly tuned raid encounter. Of course, it was transient and curable, but still scary enough to tank the sub count.

Simply put, it was the only VR-MMORPG of its kind. It simulated everything from pleasure to temperature and even some pain. If focusing, you could even feel your in-game heart beat. It was the only game of its kind where you really felt like you were your character.

So, it exploded in popularity. As players flooded in, customer support was swamped with new players asking trivial questions. The major game worlds, too, were utterly overloaded with players. Veteran players were complaining about long queues to log in and stability issues once inside, while new players were getting a bad experience due to all the tech troubles and server strain themselves.

So, the developers made mentor worlds, denoted with a leading “M-” prefix. By making it so free trial players *must* use these worlds, and throwing in the exp bonus, every new player was tripping all over themselves to get into one. And, once they hit 70, they could head out into a real game world to join all the other players. Mentors and mentees were bribed with the in-game boons and rewards, and thus strain was taken off game staff and servers in one fell swoop.

Alas, the problem was the program’s own success. It wasn’t a technical problem: shrunken worlds were just as detailed, but did take up less space in the game itself. Moreover, the inside of a house was instanced: that is, separate from the main game world. Its own mini environment, in a sense, which, through complicated means like hardware and legacy code reasons, meant it was far less effort to have mini worlds in it than a normal world standing on its own.

No, the thing is, there were very few qualified mentors.

To be a mentor you needed a few strict criteria.

Firstly, you had to finish the current story. There was a rather long story to get through, with days worth of cutscenes. Any max level player has done this, though, and Euki was no exception.

The game had many classes, and of the combat classes there were those that could tank, heal, and do damage. Tanks held the attention of an enemy, healers healed damage, and so-called ‘dps’ did lots of damage to the enemy.

One other requirement for being a mentor was having a max level class for all three of those roles.

Euki had *every* class max level, including those that just crafted goods or harvested materials to be made into said goods which were sold for zril at typically irrational prices. This took a bit of time, but Euki was far from the only player to achieve this feat. The amount of players who did this was small percent wise, but still in the many thousands given the millions and millions that played the game. Those who had a class for every combat role were even more plentiful.

There was one last requirement for being a mentor though. It was by far the hardest, and most exclusive. In order to be a mentor, you needed to have an in-game house. This is cause you needed furniture with a surface--tables mostly--for mentor worlds to be placed on.

Getting a house in FP was very, very difficult. Although the inside of a house was instanced, the outside was not. It existed in a neighborhood, and neighborhoods were limited. There were tens of neighborhoods in a game with millions of subscribers, and each neighborhood only had about 30 houses of varying sizes.

To actually get a house, you typically had to wait outside a vacant house and compete with others to try and buy it before anyone else. This process took hours, as the exact time it would go on sale was unknown by design. Someone leaving their house was very rare, too, so you could guarantee there’d be entire mobs when a house freed up.

There was another way to get a house and it was the one Euki used: simply be playing the game before most everyone else. Back then, getting a house was as easy as just walking up and outright buying it. Few had the zril at the time for a house, as they were the big anti-inflation measure at the time of release.

Many players had the long-lasting goal of getting a house. There were many reasons to get one. Not just the mentorship program and its exclusive mount, but also the ability to grow plants to sell in a backyard, or to decorate an interior to match one’s personality or some desired theme or function.

Yes, a player could call themselves very lucky to have a house in Foremost Phantasia.

Euki had 12. Twelve houses, that is.

There was a time when a character could have more than one house to themselves, and it was a time Euki played. The developers didn’t think it’d be an issue, as houses were so expensive, but Euki had a surplus of zril to spend, so she kept buying houses until cut off.

There were once talks to limit people to one house. That meant Euki would have to give up 11 of them, but she and other multi-home-owners complained till they got an exemption made for themselves. Though they couldn’t buy more homes going forward, they still got to keep the excess they had.

Now, of her 12 homes, Euki spent most of her time in just the one she ran the mentorship program in. Two other houses were decorated, but the other 9 were essentially empty, with only junk housing items the story quests threw at it lining their halls.

She still kept them though, cause they were special. Owning a house was rare, so it was special. And anything, be it an item, a status, or a home, was made all the more special, in her eyes, when others couldn’t get them. The harder it was to get, the more special it felt to her.

So, with so few home owners, and not all of them interested in the mentorship program, there was a huge issue making sure every mentee could get into a mentored world.

When the program first started, mentors were limited to one world, and the worlds were big enough that the mountains on the mini Anuzea landscapes stretched inches in height. The mentee players then were, too, much bigger in comparison, even if still less than bugs overall.

Indeed, the worlds were so big that they could only be placed on large meeting tables. They often had entire rooms dedicated to the table and the world. Accidents and “accidents” were much fewer back then as a consequence.

They still happened of course. After all, mentors back then still got curious if their thumb could move a mountain: it could, it always could. The real question was could they avoid pushing their thumb too far forward and flatten that nearby settlement or leveling party as well: they seldom could.

But, that situation wouldn’t do. There were far too many mentees. So, the first thing the developers did was introduce “megaworlds”, which was just a fancy term for putting three worlds side by side. A megaworld “M-Megaworld E1”, for instance, just meant a megaworld where the first world was “M-World E1”, and it contained “M-World E2” and “M-World E3” as well.

This tripled the amount of people who could get into a mentor world, but that helped for about a week at most.

So, developers just upped the cap for the worlds a mentor could oversee. Then, the mentors complained they didn’t have enough table space for the worlds. If they wanted more, then they had to buy or craft more tables. This bugged them, even if it meant more Mentor Points.

So, the developers made it so you could shrink the worlds and megaworlds down further.

The demand for mentors still continued while supply remained the same. As time went on, the amount of worlds a mentor could house kept increasing, and the minimum size for worlds kept decreasing.

It reached the point where Euki was: she had tens of worlds under her ‘care’, and the size she could shrink them made her seem like she was many, many miles tall.

How many miles? Euki didn’t think of that too much. She figured she was probably 10, maybe 15 miles tall to them. Maybe 100 miles or more. It didn’t matter that much to her to know the exact amount. Similarly, she didn’t know how small her mentees were in absolute terms. She never cared too much to math that out yet. She didn’t care too much for math in general, which is part of why she “mained” a tank class: that is, playing it more than any other combat class.

The way Euki ran her worlds was that she always shrunk them as much as the system would let her. That way, she could fit more on the furniture about her house, and thus fit more into her home overall. More worlds to mentor meant more Mentor Points rolling in.

Euki knew she’d get that mount, even if it cost 9,999,999 MP.