I'll Give You the Old House, Give Me a New One

Warm sunlight spilled through the wide gap of the window, across a high ceiling and the elegant works of art hung along the walls. The bed was plush enough to swallow me whole, and the softness of a quilt woven from the finest silk announced that it was a pleasant morning.

"Mmm."

I rubbed my eyes at the clock the system put up for me and stretched, long and slow.

"Haaahm."

More sleep could wait. I got up, went into the bathroom, turned on the water at the antique sink, washed my face, and came back out. My room sat at the far end of the second floor. I opened the great door, and the interior of an enormous mansion opened with it—works of art and porcelain dressing the walls and pillars, as always, a ceiling that climbed toward the sky, and paintings worked all across that ceiling. In a house vast enough to have belonged to the Middle Ages, NPCs of every race served as butlers and kept the place running.

"You're awake, Master."

"Master! Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, yeah."

I answered them in passing, took the stairs down, and headed for the front door. When I opened it, a cool breeze blew off whatever sleep was left, and a bright, wide-open plain filled my view. All the way out to the horizon, a neatly kept garden sat among the sightlines, with flower beds made for walking, a small pond, and a stream circling the mansion, nature laid out in easy harmony.

"Damn..."

I ought to have been used to it by now. I wasn't. Every time I looked, the awe dragged a holy fuck straight out of me. Me—a man without a scrap of aesthetic sense to my name—and I'd made a mansion and a garden this fine. NPCs who actually knew the work had helped, and all I'd really done was throw out ideas, but it was still my thinking in it, still my mansion, and I didn't have a single regret on that score.

Ten minutes of simply looking around the grounds wasn't enough to see it all. The place was that big. A broad road ran out from the flung-open front gate. Past the garden, a high wall kept outsiders from coming in, but even that had been threaded with nature so it wouldn't spoil the view, and the whole of it sat together beautifully. I followed the vine-covered passage along the side of the mansion, and a greenhouse larger than the house itself was there to meet me, with automated farms spread out beyond it. Every day the water refilled and sprayed on its own, and the nutrients and fertilizer the crops needed were dispensed automatically too.

"Master. You're here?"

Here, as everywhere else, the NPCs who tended and grew the crops stayed on duty around the clock, guarding and managing the greenhouse that was the root of this whole estate.

"Nothing going on?"

"Of course not. Harvest is in three days. Will you be aging this batch into wine again?"

"We've got plenty stockpiled, don't we? Age whatever's left over."

"Yes, sir!"

The great warehouses stretching out beside the greenhouse were all material stores, places to keep the crops and the resources I'd gathered. Those warehouses had multiplied until there were five of them, and alongside them, more modestly, a little village of my own making: a smithy, an alchemy shop, a potion shop, and the rest. Centered on the mansion, the village might as well have been a world that belonged to no one but me. From that center, the lands of this world that I had opened up kept spreading. I'd laid roads, cleared the surroundings until they were safe, and developed them into mining ground.

Farming World. A virtual reality game that had been out for quite some time, named for exactly that—a world where you farmed items. You could play it solo, or go multiplayer, choose a world of your own, farm the map, and raise a kingdom that was yours alone. When it launched, the freedom and the realism were so high that for a little while it sat at number one among VR games, shoving RPGs, FPSs, and MOBAs aside alike. It had been that popular. These days VR gaming itself had collapsed past the point of saving, so all of that glory belonged to the past.

Anyway, I had been playing Farming World for a full ten years, ever since it opened. Day and night. No special reason. Plenty of people played it multiplayer, but solo, you didn't have to watch anyone's mood. Alone, you could build exactly the world you wanted, exactly as far as you wanted. It wasn't like the games that stressed you out competing with other people—RPGs, MOBAs, FPSs.

Did that mean I was bad at games? Not exactly. The RPGs and FPSs I'd tried for fun were never my best, but before Farming World came out, I'd made enough of a name that it reached other people's ears. It was just taste. Once I started Farming World, I dropped every other game I'd been playing.

So this is what I've been living for. With that thought, I dumped my entire damn life into Farming World. I was twenty-six. Leave out the early years that weren't even in my memory, and it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say I'd spent more of my living life inside Farming World than outside it. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠This was the result.

My record, raised on this game's highest-difficulty map. Unlocking a map only cost about ten dollars, something you could open even on the day you first started, so I had picked the final-difficulty map from the very beginning and played it for ten years. Difficulty being what it was, survival had obviously not been easy. Now I had a huge mansion, a large farm beside it, warehouses, a smithy, a village I'd built with my own hands, and countless NPCs under me. At the start, though, I had begun on a truly empty plain with nothing but one small hut. I died, and I died a lot. Resources were plentiful and their rarity was high, but the monsters and traps scaled to match, and just getting to them took an enormous amount of time. I ground through a mountain of tedious labor, too. So those ten years were, in the end, my achievement, melted into this mansion and this farm.

"Nothing left to do."

Only then could I say those words in this game. Was there anyone else in Farming World with the standing to say them? Not the monsters that spawned on an empty plain like this one—once monsters started appearing in reality, Farming World went under, of course, and even MOBA games like Legend of League were wiped out, while the sports genre imploded completely. In the middle of all that, there was no way crowds of people were still logging into a VR game just to unwind and heal. Even so, pride was pride. I didn't have to grind anymore. The map was still vast, and a few unknown places I had never visited remained, but I had left those alone, like snacks I was saving for later. A map I could clear to completion whenever I felt like it.

Of course, I had no intention of quitting. I had melted that much time away for this moment. Why would I fold? Reality was a shabby, garbage life, but here, in my refuge, I was the king of the NPCs, an infinite-money cheat switched on. Sleeping in the mansion, waking up, and spending an unhurried day was happiness enough for me. So I had never, not even slightly, intended to hand this map ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over to anyone.

A message that had come in not long ago. It hadn't arrived by email. It had been stuck in the mailbox at the entrance of my mansion, the one that existed so you could receive quests. At some point I had finished every quest, and the mailbox had been sitting idle as decoration. Mail after all that time had me opening it in a good mood, and then it did nothing but ruin the mood.

Is this a quest, too? The letter felt like some hidden quest kept back for someone who had already achieved everything, the kind that opened something beyond even the final-difficulty map. I would have been lying if I said I wasn't curious. Even this map overflowed with resources, rare enough that I could take things I had only imagined and make them real—virtual reality, yes, but real all the same. Unmeasurable grade, SSS rarity. How good would the resources be?

But being told to sell the map left a bad taste I couldn't shake. If they had simply been opening it for me, I would have gladly started a new map. I could have left this place as a retreat, come by once or twice a day to unwind, and taken on a fresh challenge. But give them this map, and receive a new one? This was the map ten years of me had melted into. Farming World was unmistakably my life, and if a hidden map really existed, part of me did want to challenge something new. Even so.

"Am I getting old?"

Ten years. With a higher difficulty, it might take even longer before I could build it up to this. Could I start over on the same fire I'd only had because I was a teenager, and keep it burning until I was in my mid-thirties, or my forties?

"It's a shame, but..."

I'd put in too many years of living to go back to that fucking grind. The seven-day limit ran out today.

Dong— dong—

The noon bell, announcing twelve.

"I'll refuse."

I figured I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could just ignore it. That's what I was thinking.

"What?"

The whole world went dark.