Delayed Transfer

The next day arrived and the children were occupied by their tutor Rendira. Mark was glad that the boys accepted the fact that three days a week, their mornings would be spent in schooling and even Liriel joined her brothers although she was just either napping or playing with her toys while listening to the boys being taught. Of course, the last thirty minutes were exclusively for her and because of that Liriel could now speak very short sentences.

Rendira told Mark that she suspected that Liriel was able to speak as early as one year old but stopped due to what happened to her. Since she was now living with Mark and the twins surrounded by love and comfort, her possible mental trauma, if there was really any, was now healing.

While the kids were being taught Mark headed directly to the Internet Café since it was the opening day of the café.

When he arrived there, there was already a long queue behind the stall that served as the sign-up sheet for Internet café but Mark could see that the line was moving very fast since the only thing a customer would do was pay the required mana stones and their name would be listed. Since there were only eight available computers and each customer would occupy each computer four hours at a time, he knew that soon the list would be filled.

Mark also saw that the customers who could afford the price for the café were only the rich so most of them were the young sons and daughters of rich folks from Narcone or the powerful adventurers capable of earning their own mana stones from the dungeons from the dungeons of the said city.

All of those customers had the scary fanatic looks on their faces that made Mark shiver and knew that these were the die-hard fans of the movies. He also got an inkling that if someone truly started a cult that centered around the concept of Star Wars, these would be the core believers. Of course, he was just letting his imagination run but looking at the faces of these kids, Mark couldn’t help but imagine the possibility of that situation happening.

Mark went directly to where the servers and the generator were located to check them for any issues and there were none so he entered the Internet Café. He saw that the eight computers were occupied by new customers. The difference was the elven sisters allowed each of the customers to bring two others with them.

The sisters added two chairs beside the one playing the game so their two friends could watch their friend play. Mark was glad that the tables were long enough and the internet café was big enough to allow three people per computer without them feeling squeezed by each other. The seats were still comfortable.

He decided to distribute two more headsets to each of the computers and connect the three headsets using an adapter. This would allow the customer and his two friends to hear the game as well.

When he interrupted the customers, at first they were irritated at him but when Mark said that he was distributing the headsets, the main customer’s friends who were relegated as viewers were thankful.

He wondered how those people could just watch their friend play the game without wanting to play as well but Mark knew that more than likely they were either the customer’s sycophants or servants since if they were truly friends they would be rich as well fully capable of purchasing time for their own gaming.

The elven sisters noticed what Mark was doing and let him be. While he was watching the customers play, Hamil entered the café and walked straight to Mark.

“The Internet Café will let us earn a lot since we’re charging them mana stones instead of gold coins. I’m not still sure how sustainable this place would be but due to the hype surrounding the films and the upcoming Star Wars convention, I’m not seeing any decline in the interest in this game in the upcoming future. Once we move on to a huge new city, you will be able to connect a brand new source of customer base to the warp gate network and that would probably allow the café to earn more mana stones.”

“Just remember that right now, I can only add one more door to the warp gate network so you will need to choose wisely which city you would like to connect.”

“I thought you could add more?”

“I could, but more than three warp gates would be a burden to my mana and I will not be able to support it. Right now the mana expenditure for supporting the warp gate established here and in Narcone is negligible but if I add one more, I could support it but I definitely will be able to feel the burden on my mana pool. We could probably add another one on top of the third gate if you limit the opening of the warp gates to twice a day, like one in the morning and one in the evening.”

“I see. Let me think about it then,” Hamil contemplated.

After that, Mark called the three sisters.

“What do you need?” Mentorra said.

“I want to ask if you encounter any issues with the game or any of the hardware?”

“Hardware?” Eilintraee asked.

“I’m sorry. Hardware is the physical equipment like the computer, keyboards, mouse, and headset. The programs inside the computers like the game itself and the one that you’re using as time monitor for each computer is called software.”

“We haven’t encountered any issues with any of the hardware so far but you did mention that if we did, we just need to call you and you’ll be able to replace it in a moment. Regarding the game itself, some of us did encounter issues like getting stuck in a specific place but we followed the document you gave containing the credentials for a game master account and followed the instructions on how to unstuck the player. It was easy enough as long as we followed the instructions. Aside from that, we haven’t encountered any issues,” Solinae said.

Mentorra then gave Mark a small magic item that was paired with another one like it. It looked like a palm-sized stone with runes written on it.

“It’s a communication tool that will allow us to contact you as long as you remain in this realm within three hundred kilometers so if there’s any emergency in the café that you need to solve, we can inform you immediately,” Mentorra said.

“I was able to purchase that from Narcone when I went there yesterday,” Hamil added.

“I’ll be giving this to Melina since she has a magic tool that will allow her to contact me even if I’m in another dimension so she can inform me of any issues that you encountered,” Mark said.

The three sisters stared at him and Mark could understand why. A communication tool that was able to connect to someone that was in another dimension was incredibly powerful and the fact that he had something like that was incredible in itself. Fortunately, Hamil and the three elven sisters didn’t ask any more questions about the interdimensional communication tool since they were already aware that Mark was able to produce magical items from out of nowhere.

After their talk, Hamil left since he was incredibly busy managing the whole circus and the three sisters went back to managing the café meaning playing the game. They were already around level thirteen or fourteen and they were actually very proud of it.