Delayed Transfer

“I find it a bit weird that Narcone didn’t oppose the construction of the Warp Gate. Aren’t they a little afraid that it would be used to attack the city or something like that?” Mark asked everyone.

“The wizards of Narcone are very confident in their power. They wouldn’t be afraid of a measly warp gate and based on the results of the three archmages that investigated it, a spell from any archmage would be able to disrupt the warp gate,” Mentorra said.

“Besides, a lot of the higher-ups of Narcone spoiled their children and those children were clamoring to watch the films. We basically control the future of Narcone now!” Hamil exaggerated and laughed.

The others just rolled their eyes when they heard what Hamil had said.

“What is that contraption,” Lorendo the magician asked.

“It’s called a desktop computer. It’s a more robust and powerful version of the laptop that you all have been using. I was about to talk regarding Star Wars and our next plan moving forward and the desktop computer is a part of it. In my country when the original three Star Wars films, Episodes IV to VI were first shown their popularity was unimaginable just like what is currently happening right now. There were several key differences though. One, our country can reach a much wider range of audience than you could ever imagine. Two, the length between the showing of the films was very long. The first three movies were shown a year apart and the next three films were shown after three decades and then more years before the next set of films in the franchise. That meant that the original die-hard fans of the films became old and because of that in their minds, the original three films were the best since their experiences as a child or as a young adult and the excitement that came with it was part of the original films. That meant that their expectation for the films was very high and according to the majority of them, their expectation wasn’t met when the next set of films were shown.”

Mark paused to serve his guest some drinks then continued.

“The films did earn a massive amount of wealth for the creator though and the franchise spawned not only the nine films, there’s also stand-alone films and a bunch of television shows. The main difference between us and my country is that our audience doesn’t have to wait decades to watch all the films since I have all of them. I will give you a list of all the resources that I have regarding Star Wars so you can check them out and plan carefully on how you can release them but I have a requirement. Gold doesn’t do anything for me so that meant that I would only be interested in mana stones.”

“Why are you interested in mana stones?” Eilintraee asked.

“I’m not really sure but I think it’s the only thing that I can trade with powerful wizards to learn how to portal back to my country and once I reach my country, my own ability would allow me to travel back and forth. The main reason I wanted to be able to go back was not to stay there but to make sure that I could update my movies, novels, television shows, games collection, and even my gadgets. My country’s citizens' desire for entertainment is quite robust and that meant that the amount of media content that was being released on a daily basis was unimaginably massive. I know it’s shallow of me to desire something so mundane and simple but that is who I am.”

“You don’t have to explain to us about what you’re interested in. We understand completely since we’re also a part of the circus, an entertainment group. But I am interested in your country. Can you invite us to go there once you’re able to create a portal to go back?” Solinae asked.

Mark smiled and answered that it shouldn’t be a problem. He could also see that his announcement of the huge amount of Star Wars entertainment sources excited Hamil, Lorendo, and Dozon.

“It’s a pity that we only have access to one major city. If the warp gate could connect to more than one city, our customer base would increase hugely and we would earn unimaginable amount of wealth,” Hamil said.

“Regarding that, I told you that my warp gate spell is still growing. To be honest with you I can create more than two gates but my mana will not be able to support more than three right now. That meant that we could add another city to our warp gate network without any issue,” Mark mentioned.

“That’s good! Once we arrive in the next major city we can expand our customer base!” Dozon said.

“By the way you didn’t answer my question regarding that desktop computer,” Lorendo asked.

“In my country, we have shops called Internet Café. Its main purpose was for customers to enter the café and access computers to connect to the internet to do a lot of things but mostly to play games,” Mark said then he invited everyone to check out the video clips of the Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG gameplay.

“What are we watching?” Solinae asked.

“It’s called a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and this one is based on Star Wars. A player will use one computer to create his character. That character could be a Sith Inquisitor, a Jedi Knight, a Bounty Hunter, and more. There are exactly four classes under the Empire and four classes under the Republic. As you can see in the video, the characters are those classes that the players chose. Now the character classes have two advanced classes so if you select Sith Inquisitor you can advance to either a Sith Sorcerer or a Sith Assassin and it’s the same with the other classes. Each class had a set of skills that a gamer could use to battle the monsters on different planets or use them to kill other players in a player-versus-player competition. A player’s character would begin as a simple level one character on the class planet origin and once he or she completes a mission or kill monsters in the wild the character’s experience will increase and the level will increase as well allowing the character to increase its power and learn more skills.”

Mark then continued explaining what the players could experience playing the game and told everyone that the game would mostly appeal to rich idle young people who were currently enamored with the Star Wars film franchise.

“The reason I’m telling you this is I plan to open an internet café here and I want to do that to earn mana stones. I planned to use eight computers first for the café. What do you think?”

“Can we test out this game?” Hamil asked.

“Right now I haven’t set up what we call a server where the players could connect to be able to exist but I installed a single-player game so you can try out a Star Wars game. This one is called Knights of the Old Republic.”

Mark then instructed Hamil on how to play the game on the desktop computer and he could see that the circus leaders were interested in the game.

“This game is very interesting. Why did you say that only young people would enjoy it?” Dozon asked.

“Well, since I’m planning to charge a very high price, I’m thinking that only those who are very rich and with nothing to do would be able to play the game. If the internet café fails, it’s not going to be a big deal to me. I just want to try it out since I also miss playing what we call an online game. The main difference is even with the eight computers filled with players, it meant that there would be only eight people in the game compared to where I’m from where the game had thousands of gamers playing in a given time so the game was very lively. But the good thing about the Star Wars game is the story of the game is very robust and even if the players played alone they would enjoy it tremendously.”