Maxwell

I tried not to wrinkle my nose as I sniffed my clothes. I hadn’t really thought about it, but it had been nearly six days since I had a bath. I might not even have thought about it still if it weren’t for the fact that the blood from an ant-type monster had been splattered all over me. That was how I found myself in the bathhouse I built for the citizens in the evening.

Enjoying the bath was… hard. I knew some places had open baths were people came and went, but for me, I found it hard to bath comfortably with people coming and going all the time. I managed to last four minutes before I got out. Dressing in a new robe that one of the artisans crafted, I couldn’t help but enjoy the texture.

Some of the hunters had found some animals that produced level one cloth. The process was more involved than I expected but thankfully, I only had to nod my head and say good job after they had explained everything to me.

The whole situation was a boon really. I had trained up a woman to be a clothworker more to make sure the clothes we already had stayed in good repair. Thus, when we got back today from our leveling session and was presented with a decent robe, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

The blacksmiths were also hard at work practicing their craft. Steel was quickly becoming our most used metal. The only drawback was that the mine was having trouble keeping up with the requirements of the village. There were still hundreds of buildings that I wanted constructed and using the metal for war was seriously draining my expansion department.

Our hunting yielded close to fifty mana stones. A nice haul until I looked at the cost of level two buildings again. If I forwent any new buildings, I could barely afford to upgrade three of my existing buildings. After the attack by the Worgs and the near attack of the goblins, I really wanted to invest in upgrading the wall, but that was an expense that I was holding off on as long as possible. It might only be ten mana stones, but at the same time it was ten mana stones that could be put to work elsewhere.

Walking out of the bathhouse, I enjoyed the evening air on my flushed face. It was mid-summer here meaning the days were hot. The evening cool was a nice chance of pace that I only noticed today. The longer I was here, the more… real it felt. I knew that this was my new reality, but at the same time, part of me wondered if the rug would be pulled out from under me where I would wake up having not studied for my accounting class test.

I chuckled at my own foolishness. My headset was a low-end model. I would have long since died from dehydration if I was actually stuck in the game. It was possible that I was hooked up to an IV, but even then, anyone could have just turned the headset off. Nothing in it could prevent them from doing so. Plenty of games and books had scared enough people to make sure the headsets were unable to kill people when being used.

Shaking my head, I turned toward the manor. I could have teleported back, but the evening was nice. Not to mention that I had paid for the streets, I might as well get some use out of them myself. The street was comfortable to walk on. I could sense a low-level magic in the background whenever I focused on the walkway.

My citizens waved or bowed their heads with callings of my liege as I walked. I waved back politely. Everyone had a roof over their head and were well fed. My village’s happiness was in a good place. While there was impending war on our horizon, the outlook was good. Razz appeared to be focused on Aurora for the time being. I just had to work hard to make sure I’m ready to take on whoever the winner of the conflict.

Speaking of, I opened my status to look over my gains from the day again. I managed to gain three whole levels. Not bad given the cliff that Rowena spoke about. The NPCs that came with us also gained anywhere from one to three levels. Their required experience wasn’t anywhere near ours.

Unlike a lot of games, there wasn’t a lot of extra. There were no hard stats. I just got access to more mana to play with. Which came in handy when upgrading close to a hundred and sixty people. I was impressed the number had grown so much in just a few short days. We would break two hundred after tonight and tomorrow mornings arrivals were added to the count.

I soon arrived back at the manor. While I worried about sleeping, since my main advisory operated at night, if I didn’t get some sleep, I would find myself regretting it. This game liked realism in certain parts and thus sleep was important. I found that Rowena had already retired for the night. Of the two of us, she had to be exhausted. She stayed in the frontline for most of the day only swapping with Telmu when I had basically forced her.

Retiring to my room, I dropped onto the bed. Staring at the ceiling, ideas, worries, plans, and all manner of thoughts kept me awake even as I tried to drown it all out. Eventually, I got to the point where I pulled open the construction menu and just browsed. There were hundreds of buildings which while I had gone through many of them, it felt like there were news ones every time I checked it again.

The action also made me feel a bit nostalgic from my life before this when I would lay in bed and browse my many apps’ feed. The thought of hours upon hours being wasted scrolling through those now seemingly silly things brought a smile to my lips. Most of it might have been stupid or pointless, but I would be lying if I said much of it hadn’t been funny.

I was about halfway through the list, not even really paying attention when I found a building that I was sure hadn’t been there before. A temple. I guessed that now that there was something that could be worshipped, it had been added to the menu by the system. I thought about the woman I saved from the void.

Our interaction hadn’t been exactly extensive. I had nothing to go on other than she had been sealed and that Voasis was the Goddess of the Void. My fear was that if I constructed the temple to her and it turns out she requires sacrifices, or my people get twisted into some horrific monstrosity.

That said, there was a good chance that Aurora was involved with Rezdona given her dungeon’s title. It might be good to have some holy backup. There was a chance that my city could become even stronger divine ground and prevent her forces from even thinking of entering my domain.

I decided to put it on hold for the moment. My trusted advisor was asleep and this was something that could heavily impact my village’s development. I’d rather get her take on the matter. Continuing down the list, I came to another building that sparked my interest. It was the Adventurers’ Guild.

Looking over the details, I could hire people to complete various goals. My problem was that it appeared to require gold. Both for its construct and for hiring people. I wrote it off and continued down the list. There had to be something that I could use to really make a difference in the situation I was in.

After a bit of browsing, I came to a structure called the Rune Works. The initial cost was twenty mana stones which blew me away. That was quite the investment. That said, it would allow us to enchant our weapons, buildings, hell, even the people. One path that could be taken was Runic Tattooing. An applied tattoo could increase various stats permanently.

I hesitated for a few minutes debating the pros and cons of it. In the end, I decided that it was a worthy investment. We needed something like this to give us an edge. When I selected the building, the map came up like normal only a myriad of lines crisscrossing over head were also shown. With nothing to go on, I assumed the lines were needed for the runes. I held my breath and chose a spot that had seven lines nearly touching.

I hopped out of bed before getting dressed. I was wide awake, might as well check out my new building. I teleported over to the structure and admired it from the outside for a minute. Three crystals the size of a full-grown man floated over the building. They were changed together, and I could feel the energy being pumped into the building. The structure itself stuck to the village aesthetic with slightly purple runed metal forming a three-story building.

Walking inside, I found dozens of worktables and benches with tools I had no idea to what they did. It all looked fascinating though. I walked over to the nearest bench and picked up what appeared to be a schematic book. As opened the book, a prompt appeared in my vision.

Learn Rune crafting?

I hadn’t given much thought to that area of the game yet. If I remembered correctly, I was limited to one craft at a time. You could unlearn a craft, but it was expensive. I bit my lip before taking the plunge and clicking yes. Another prompt appeared.

Choose Specialization

Individual

Company

Extra- Void

A few basic runes flooded into my mind that appeared to be for everyone. I had to take a seat or risk falling over from the headache that assaulted me. I selected Void. It hadn’t led me wrong yet. If I steered far enough into the skid, I might unlock something truly amazing. Or get myself damned for eternity. I hadn’t written that off as a possibility.

Picking the book back up, I skimmed through the initial runes. They were all personal runes that you would draw on your clothes or weapons to briefly increase your strength or speed. Useful, but not what I was really looking for. After the initial ten runes, I came to a purplish-blue section.

Void Rune – Imprisonment

Void Rune – Silence

Void Rune – Anti-Life

Void Rune – Toxin of the Beyond

I tried to turn to the next page, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the page to turn. Giving up, I figured I either needed to level up my craft or the building. I glanced at the building’s cost to upgrade and nearly coughed blood. A whopping two hundred mana stones and more of the Vix crystals that the Gate needed. I decided that I would play with the Runes I got for the moment before looking for even more.

~~~

I stirred back to the wakeful when a ray of light landed on my face. Groaning from stiffness, I found myself laying on the workbench. I must have fallen asleep sometime during the night while going over my new skills. I yawned and cracked my back as I stood up planning to head to get some breakfast.

Before I left, the door opened and Bearus, the man that had been a scholar in his previous life walked in. “My liege. I must say I was surprised last night.”

“Huh?” I tried to remember what all I did after I learned my runes. It came back to me after a few seconds. I had made him and a few others into Runesmiths. They had to have high intelligence, not to mention, it had cost a considerable amount of mana to transfer the proper skills and classes to them. “Don’t worry about it. I trust you’ll make the best of the situation.”

“I shall. I also have a message from Lady Rowena. A gentleman named Razz is at the gate and would like to speak with you.”

That woke me up! I rubbed my face to remove the last traces of sleep before teleporting over to the Gate. It was times like this I was glad about which specialization I chose. I might only be able to teleport to places I’d been before or that were within sight, but even that was a blessing.

Appearing on top of the gate, I found Telmu and Rowena standing tensely. Looking out from the gate, I found Razz and only a small party of goblins accompanying him. The only issue was that they were all players. While they all looked like they hadn’t seen much sleep, Razz looked like he’d just come from the battlefield. His armor was in tatters. It appeared as if something with very large teeth had used him as a chew toy.

“Maxwell! Good morning!” Razz called up.

“Is it?” I asked actually feeling a bit bad of the man. He gave me a terse short laugh.

“No. I guess it isn’t.” He exhaled a long slow breath. “Listen. We need to talk.” He reached out and a table appeared from nothingness. You had to love the storage system of the game. Though to store something like that, he has to have upgraded his just a bit. I could barely hold a few spoils from out hunts let alone an entire table. He even pulled out a few chairs.

I debated walking down or teleporting down and decided to teleport. I might be giving up a card, but him knowing that I could use such a power, it would be a strong bargaining chip. Muttering the spell, I appeared under the gate. I smiled when a few of the other players jumped a little. Rowena used Greavefeather to fly down and join me.

“Thought you could use some emotional support.”

I gave her a high-five. “Thanks. You are not wrong.” I turned back to Razz and made my way to the table. Let’s see what was in store for us.