Chapter 8

Split the Party

I lifted my head to look at Katenip. “You all right there Kate?”

Kate’s eyes were wide, she was swaying back and forth, and she was muttering to herself, “I love bubbles, bubbles are good, they clean away the bad things, yes they do. Bubbles are my friends.” Over and over. Shit, I would have to deal with that, and that meant getting up.

Shakily getting to my feet I made my way over to Kate and gave her a hug. “It’s all right kid, the bad thing is gone. It can’t get you now.” I mussed her hair, golden suds included, and said, “Just check your notifications, that will make you feel better.”

Level 47 Cursed Kobold King (Boss) Killed!

+10000 EXP! (Shared)

Level 126 Starving Chimeric Blood Phantom (Epic Boss) Killed!

+74000 EXP! (Shared)

Secret Quest: Bad Blood, Mistakes of the Past Completed!

Title: Vampire’s Grace awarded!

No doubt about it now, we were officially the most powerful players in the game, although Kate and Dave really didn’t have the skills to match their new power. I would need to send them to the guilds for training. Hell, I could do with some training myself. All I was using my elemental abilities for was base manipulation, actually exploring the branches of magic open to me would open up a whole new world of options. Sadly, I mostly focused on the darker magics before, I knew some basics for fire and earth, and decay was close enough to corruption for some principles to overlap, but the rest I was fairly bad at. That would have to change. I ignored the rest of my notifications for the moment.

As Kate calmed down, I let her go and checked on Dave, he was getting up and leaning on his sword like a cane but seemed like he would be fine. I tossed the kobold king’s body in my inventory and tossed the scepter at Dave, he caught it with a weak glare at me.

“If you are set on eating metal then munching on that might give you a boost, enchanted iron and copper might make for a new class evolution. Also, if I were you, I would move on from iron now and eat steel, once I sell these bodies you’ll be more than able to afford it.”

That perked him up a bit, but he decided to just sit down again. I collected the vamp skeletons, the tiara, and the staves, before coming back to my small group. I gestured to the tunnel in the wall, “The kobolds seem to have given us a way out, or at least a place to start.” Kate and Dave just nodded.

We took a few minutes to recuperate before heading up the tunnel, we were all ready to be done with this place. We hit a bunch of blocked passageways but there was always another way around, well once I moved a bit of earth out of the way. We only ran into a few kobolds and they were easily taken care of. After more than an hour we finally reached the surface, it seemed this was an alternate entrance from the one we used. The forest was familiar enough though that I could figure out what direction the city was.

We walked back through the city gates finally and started to relax a bit. I found a nice café and paid for a late brunch for everyone.

“Well…that was a thing.” Dave said.

I gave him a look to convey how much of an understatement that was. “I will admit that was a much worse time than normal. That level of evil should be a rarity unless people go poking at things they shouldn’t.”

“You mean like almost every gamer in existence?” Asked Kate.

“Yeah…..” I sighed.

“Hopefully there aren’t any big red buttons.” Dave quipped, “Then we would really be screwed.”

“At least we took out that thing before it recovered its strength, at full power that thing would have wiped out the city and moved on within a day.” Okay, Caelus probably would have stopped it, but it would still have caused massive damage, and if it fled in a different direction….

“Yay us.” Dave said.

“By the way Kate I don’t think I congratulated you on that last spell yet, that was inspired…and very effective.” Kate just looked embarrassed and mumbled her thanks.

We finished our meal with minimal small talk, each lost in our own heads. As the server cleared the dishes away I sighed, “Sadly this is where we have to part ways for a bit, well after we sell the corpses from the mine.”

Kate sat up straighter and looked panicked. “What?! Why? After all we went through?” She looked about to cry.

“Hold on, it’s not that bad.” I try to reassure her. “You guys just need training to match your new levels of power, heck, I need to do some training as well. This game doesn’t just give you the skills and knowledge, you need to work for it, study and train for it. The warriors guild will train Dave and the Mages and Priests will train you, Kate. You both have much more power now but no idea how to use it. I have been only using a part of my abilities as well, if we are going to improve, we need to learn. I know jack shit about priest stuff so I can’t help with that, and I need to do training myself so I can’t train Dave either. We can still meet up for meals and such, I won’t even dissolve the party Kate.”

As I talked, she started to look better, more composed, and I could see a hint of determination in her eyes.

“Well… okay, that doesn’t sound too bad.” Kate admitted.

“Don’t worry kid, we still have the communication disks, we can meet up whenever. I do have to agree with Laz, I need to train, especially once I get my shield and armor.” Dave added.

With that, we went off to the Embalmers and I sold them everything but the Vampire queen’s body. We didn’t get as much for the Kobold King since it was in such bad shape but the interesting properties from the curse magic kept the price from falling too much. I had told Kate and Dave about my idea to start a Guild, and the costs associated with it, so they insisted I keep the larger share of the money. I still gave each of them 20 gold to get equipment and training. Leaving me with a net gain of 237 gold, 63 silver, and 12 copper. The vampire skeletons hadn’t been as valuable as I thought, much of the magic was in the blood and flesh after all. It was still a big step towards establishing a Guild.

With that we went our separate ways, promising to meet up for dinner at the same café. At least one of my goals was checked off now, there was no way that fight didn’t make it onto the highlight reel. The next three days game time could be used for training, and that meant heading back to the druids.

I really needed to get over my hang-ups about druids, especially since it looked like I was becoming one. Last time I had a bunch of really bad things happen to me and my friends because of druids, a group of them even led one of the crusades against humanity. Enough shit went down that it left me with a ‘thing’ about druids. A ‘thing’ I was going to have to get over quickly it seems. I had mostly been using my magic as a blunt tool to whack people with, I hadn’t been actually using the associated magics for the most part. I cringed, now that I thought about it even Kate was doing better at embracing the magics of her class than I was, I just looked more impressive. Time to step up my game.

Making my way to the Druid Tree, I managed to set up a meeting with a trainer for life magics. I spent the lesson learning about the balance between life and death, when growth should be encouraged, and when rot and decay accepted. This was very different from my old magic training, cultist training tends to focus on domination of forces or bargaining with powers, and mage training deals with changing affinities, building spell forms, and of course raw mana manipulation. Druid training was about understanding and working with nature, the elements, or whatever your particular brand of Druidry dealt with. Mine seemed to be a diverse focus at the moment since it was all over the place, dealing mostly with the natural world or something. One of the things I had to work on was figuring out my classes and understanding their purpose. One of the reasons my conjured earth couldn’t trap much was that I had to actively spend mana to reinforce it, if I could gain the blessing of earth then that could change things. Hell, just actually learning earth magic would make a huge difference.

I spent the rest of the day meditating and communing with the trees in the forest, something I learned to do from the trainer. I decided my task after dinner would be to try to form a connection to the earth. That would be a good foundational element and probably wouldn’t skew my class that badly since earth forms the base for most of nature.

The meet-up for dinner went without a hitch and Kate was much more lively chattering on about what she was learning from the priests. She and Dave then logged out for lunch in the real world. I went back to taking various classes with the druids and trying to commune with the land, that part wasn’t going very well. On the other hand, a rotten tree that I communed with proved quite useful. The rot was fairly friendly, and I learned a lot about it. It also introduced me to its friends, the mushrooms. This whole talking to nature thing was strange, but it was a lot more interesting than I had given it credit for. The mushrooms were cool and really helped me with some understanding of the balance between growth and decay. As I started to accept more of the teachings from the trainer, I finally got a popup.

Nature Magic Level 1 Learned!

This finally unlocked my Magics tab, something that could be unlocked by learning any branch of magic. I have been relying so heavily on elemental manipulation though that I hadn’t taken the time to do that, it was frankly embarrassing. The next morning, I learned basic life magic and a minor healing spell. Coupled with the ‘Sapping Shrooms’ spell I got the night before I was doing pretty well. Once I was more familiar with the druidic spell matrices, I should be able to tweak them as I wished.

I also spent the next day training with the druids, I even ran into one of the people I had seen in my class quest. The man that had been planting flowers turned out to be named Pithhelm McBees and as a real-life beekeeper, he was pursuing a bee-related class. He played with his bees, I played with the trees, one was more active than the other.

It was towards the end of the day when I was again trying to commune with the earth while meditating that I got smacked in the head with a stick. Opening my eyes, I saw Caelus standing there looking innocent.

“What was that for, old man?” I asked.

“You are doing it all wrong, you view the earth as an object or element” He reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt, holding it on his palm it transformed into a roughly humanoid shape and gave me a wave, before crumbling and blowing away. “When really it is alive. You will never connect with the earth, or any element until you realize they are alive. It may not be the type of life you are used to young one, but there is life nonetheless.” The breeze that took away the dirt giggled at me.

I felt like an idiot, I was so used to thinking about the ground as an object that I was trying to make a connection with something that by its very nature could not communicate back. I was blocking the other end of the connection myself. The moment I realized this I felt satisfaction from the earth flowing back through the connection I had made.

Blessing of Earth 1 Gained!

Woah, that was intense. I just learned a lot about dirt and rocks in a very short moment, what’s more, I understand the earth a bit now, it has wants and desires but they are so esoteric I can’t make sense of them.

Caelus smiled at me, “Now you will learn.” He stated and walked off into the trees.

“Thanks. I appreciate the help.” I know he heard me since the wind swirled around me for a moment. I guess that is the next element I should try to befriend. “Hi there wind, I know you’re here, would you like to be my friend?” I extend a connection into the air around me, just dangling it like a fishing line. With a giggle, I got a bite and my connection was answered with amusement, the wind is flighty and does not like to be contained. Just like that, I gained the Blessing of the Wind.

The rest of the evening I communed with Earth and Wind, I learned the benefits of not rushing things from my druid trainers so I decided to hold off connecting to the other elements till the morning.