Assassinate Wonderwind [Book 1 Completed!]

Veyra: “So I told Aurinn about the competition…”

Assassin: “Is she joining?”

Veyra: “Well, she is joining...”

Veyra:“Not our team though >.<”

I sat on my new bed in my otherwise empty apartment, and pulled up the list of participants for US Masters. Five new names had appeared, four being the core members of Zenith Protocol’s B-team, Henrift, Aurinn, CrazyPizzaMan, and Ducky2.

Those guys combined already created a tougher line-up than Team Sleepy Dads from the Worlds three versus three. Perhaps they were doable. Henrift wasn’t that threatening to me, but I’d never fought the other three. They were known all around as extremely solid players who had played together for over two years now. We’d need to somehow disrupt their teamwork to defeat each member individually.

Their fifth member, though… She scared me a little bit.

Eirael, the rank one frost mage, 25th on the global leaderboard and widely considered the best crowd control player in the game. If Eirael was on the battlefield, it was almost guaranteed that over half of the opponents were either [Slowed] or just outright [Frozen].

We’re looking less and less prepared, aren’t we? I leaned back, but the thought also put a little grin on my face. Not because I was confident or anything, but because this meant that Veyra and I would be fighting as just Team Solo Mage again. It had been way too long since we’d entered a tournament together.

I definitely wanted the win, though. Veyra was literally double-casting spells now. Surely, that practice could show results. Even if we were fighting two versus five against some of the best in the scene.

Another reason for me to be smiling was that it was Saturday right now.

Veyra: “I’m about to board the plane in a bit. I’ll sleep through as much as I can. I should be there in like 22 hours.”

Assassin: “Cant wait <3”

Veyra: “I’ll close my phone now, see you then! You better meet me at the airport in time lol.”

I sent her a salute emoji. She reacted with a heart, then went offline.

Twenty hours, then. That was how much time I had to work on my apartment before she arrived to laugh at my undecorated walls—because now that I thought about it, her jab at me being the type who lived in an empty white box was kind of spot on. I didn’t really see a problem with the way the apartment was right now, except for the lack of a table to eat on, but that could always be done on the bed if I was careful enough.

If I imagined myself in Veyra’s eyes, being someone who paid attention to detail… Well, the apartment literally had no details to examine. Blinds had come pre-installed to block sunlight, at least, but that was about it. I had some work to do.

***

Most furniture stores in today’s day and age were turning to just furniture warehouses. Much to the dismay of older generations, VR wasn’t about to disappear anywhere, and online shopping was one of the first things that deep-dive headsets trivialized. The culprit was an app called, “My Home Builder.”

All I had to do was take pictures of my apartment from different angles. With the pictures uploaded, I logged into Home Builder, into a near-perfect replica of the real world apartment. If not for the world outside the windows being completely black, I would have been hard-pressed to tell the difference.

Just like in Sims, the menu was filled with furniture choices I could add into the space. Thousands of them. The popular furniture stores were partners with the app, which allowed all products to be available in one clear list. Community-created pieces were also available, but those were often impossible to obtain in real life, so I filtered products that could arrive by one-day-delivery.

I clicked a leather couch, and it popped into existence in the middle of my apartment. I reached out my hand, and by levitation, I could move it around exactly where I wanted it for a preview of how it would look in real life.

My grandparents hated this, saying that this was too impersonal compared to the old way. Their opinions be damned, My Home Builder was overpowered as hell. Nothing else offered such customization and immediate feedback when furnishing an apartment. And it wasn’t like I was using AI to furnish anything. That was also a feature, but I agreed that AI interior design felt too impersonal.

I picked all of the basics on my own. A nice cotton couch big enough for two people to lie down on, a kitchen table with chairs, a TV with a stand and some speakers—the app let me listen to speakers within the room’s acoustic to see what sounded the best—and why not a subwoofer as well.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I was hesitant to add carpets since they were obstacles for wheelchairs. Luckily, the app had a feature to test wheelchair accessibility as well. Silly though it felt, I spawned a wheelchair for myself and tested some different carpets to see if they were annoying to cross. Most of them could be felt as bumps. For now, I decided not to get any. With my testing, I noticed that the kitchen table was too high to reach from a wheelchair, so I picked a different one with lower legs.

With all of the furniture arranged…

The apartment still looked like crap. At first, I thought it was because of my plain white walls, until I noticed a pop-up in the menu.

[Interior Design Evaluation]

[Inadequate Lighting]

[Recommended products for more atmospheric lighting: Floor Lamps, Table Lamps, Overhead Lamps, Wall Lamps, Reading Lamps]

“Hm,” I said to myself. I had to agree with the system. The problem became pretty obvious: the only light source I had was one overhead cleaning lamp that brightly lit the whole room. I fixed that by adding a dimmer to the overhead lamps and by spreading smaller lamps across the room here and there.

With that, things started to look more than decent to me. I ran through the lists again to see if I needed something. A washing machine and a dryer would probably be necessary. Also, more plates and glasses and a smoothie machine, a microwave, and maybe a laptop in case I ever needed one…

Soon enough, the virtual apartment was starting to look like an actual place to live. I stood there and admired my creation. The only problem still left was the plain white walls, utterly undecorated and without personality. I checked the app’s selection of posters.

As I scrolled, though, I found my lips twisting in dissatisfaction. There were plenty of good looking posters and decorations, but just filling the apartment with nonsense wouldn’t be meaningful. I could imagine Veyra making fun of me about that.

She’d probably also make fun of me for not having any decorations. Ideally, I’d want to add at least one item to liven up the place.

That was when I spotted something. The plushie section.

The neurons in my brain activated from the list of the goofiest plushies I’d ever seen. The plushes were categorized as toys. Sure, I used to play around with plushies; I was the type of kid who wrestled against giant teddy bears instead of doing homework. Growing up, though, I had to appreciate how creative artists were with plushies these days. Any one of these dumb things could have worked perfectly as a shelf decoration.

I eventually settled on a black cat standing on two legs with oversized orange eyes, looking like it had committed a crime and was trying to hide. The little guy was definitely cute enough to distract Veyra from the lack of any other personality in my apartment. I added a wall shelf for it that I could fill later.

With that, I closed all the menus and examined my work.

Honestly, it didn’t look bad. I’d left enough space to turn a wheelchair in multiple spots, while not sacrificing practicality or looks for myself. Really, I was quite proud of how things worked out.

I opened the checkout, and froze.

$29,497 dollars.

“What the fuck?” I blurted out.

It turned out, audio stuff was the most expensive, costing over fifteen thousand total. That’s what I get for picking the best of the best, I guess. The couch was three grand, the washer and dryer another two each, and all the miscellaneous stuff brought the total up to the insane number of twenty nine grand.

I stared at the number for a minute. Clearly, I could have chosen cheaper products. There was no way the total should have been even ten grand. Still…

Whatever, this is a one time investment, I thought. Compared to my car, this was still barely anything.

I paid another five hundred total to have everything delivered asap and built inside the apartment, because there was no way I’d have the time to pick up stuff from the stores and build everything before Veyra got here. If I just played Wonderwind during that time, I’d earn more than five hundred back anyway.

I placed the order and logged off.

***

The delivery man arrived with the couch three hours later. He didn’t seem to recognize me as he got into the apartment and began the heavy lifting of screwing all the bolts in the right places to assemble the mess of cushions into a couch.

Not ten minutes later, while he was still at work, the buzzer rang again as a second delivery man from a different store arrived, this time with a table. He laughed as he spotted another man already building a couch, and the two made some idle chatter, only for a third delivery man to appear with the television stand and a wall shelf.

“Hold on,” the third man said, being the first whose expression clearly changed when he spotted my face. “No way, right? You’re Assassin A, right?”

“Yep,” I told him as he stared at me in shock.

“Who?” the table guy asked.

“Oh my god!” the third delivery guy said. “This guy is a legend. Don’t get into a fight with him, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Oh, so like a virtual gamer?”

“You really don’t know him?”

That continued back and forth, until the buzzer rang for the fourth time. Now two delivery guys arrived at the same time, one carrying a subwoofer and the other with a cart pushing a washing machine. “Goddamn!” The dark-skinned man with the subwoofer burst out laughing as he spotted everyone. “Whole ass party over here! Joe, you’re here too?”

The man building the couch rubbed the back of his head with an awkward laugh.

One more delivery person joined in. She was a younger girl carrying a plushy, who froze at the door as three different “Hellos!” came from all the men crammed in the apartment to build furniture. She gave me the plushy quietly and awkwardly stood in shock, facing me.

“All good?” I asked.

“Yes!” She grabbed her phone and showed me her phone case. “Uhm, can I have an autograph?”

“Oh, sure.” I grinned and drew my signature in the heart design I’d copied from Veyra. I gave her a nice tip, and she left with a smile.

It would have been funny if another man suddenly appeared, but the apartment was cramped as was. The television appeared late after everyone else had left, and finally, the lamps and miscellaneous stuff appeared by the final working hours of the day. The delivery guys had the picture of the layout I’d set in place in Home Builder, so they knew where I wanted everything to be set in place.

By the end of it, the apartment looked just about as I’d arranged it, with only minor discrepancies here and there, like my microwave being grey instead of the black I’d chosen. That was whatever. Most of the items were acceptably close to what I’d paid for in VR. I wasn’t sure if the speakers were worth fifteen grand, but they did sound awesome.

I found myself rather tired after the day. The satisfied type of tired. I played some music on the couch and ordered takeout before collapsing to bed, dreaming of showing this all off to Veyra tomorrow.

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