SPECIAL THANKS TO JAKESONFIRKEN

my Math Advisor. YOU DA BOM!

“An ore trade?” Obelisk asked skeptically. “Well, sure, why not? If the terms are right.” Obelisk smiled indulgently and watched as his partner turned around to watch the exchange.

“I’ll give you one of my twenties if you give me three of your tens.”

He laughed. “The way I see it, I’m basically just handing over ten extra percent.” He chuckled, and looked at the other orc, whose name Aya still didn’t know, in playful exasperation.

Aya smiled, glad to see her childish appearance at least had the benefit of grown-up indulgence.

“Yes, that’s true… but! Didn’t you yourself say… some percentages aren’t worth their weight back to town? That’s my fee for halving your weight.”

Obelisk stopped smiling, caught off-guard by the point she made.

“I guess I’d never looked at it that way…” he said. “Suppose I agreed with you, but thought your fee a bit sharp. What’s the best you can do for me? Four of your twenties for nine of my tens?”

“Suppose I thought yours was a bit low,” she countered, catching hold of the bargaining gleam in his eye. “Five for fourteen.”

“Five for eleven and a half.”

“A half?” She asked, shaking her head. “I can get as many “halves” as I want. You just told me that yourself!” She pointed accusingly at the discarded junk ore.

He smiled ruefully in reply. “I had to try,” he said. “Alright, then five for twelve.”

“Four for eleven.”

“Two for five.”

“Three for eight.”

“Five for thirteen.”

“Two for seven then, but that’s as low as I’ll go.”

“Done!”

They shook hands, making an agreement. Both were smiling widely, happy with the deal they had just made. That’s when the third party in the room decided to make her presence known, cackling so loud the echoes filled the cavern with the sound of a laughing audience.

Tears were streaming down the large Orc’s face, and she bent over clutching her stomach. Obelisk and Aya eyed the woman in surprise as she wheezed, trying to catch her breath. When the laughter didn’t stop, a slow frown made its way onto Obelisk’s forehead.

“What’s the matter with you, Tundra!?” He asked with a sharp undertone in his voice.

The woman slowly managed to bring her head up long enough to look at her friend before she burst out laughing again, bringing new tears to her face.

Obelisk just stood there stoically, crossing his arms in annoyance.

Eventually the laughter died down and the woman composed herself enough to say, “Geez Obie. The mite totally pulled one over on you.”

The Orc looked suspiciously at Aya before turning to his partner, “And how’s that?”

“Two for seven man!” she gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth as a grin erupted. Tundra snorted while Obelisk scrunched his face in concentration. Aya watched in silent apprehension. It had seemed a good idea at the time, caught in the haggling frenzy, but watching Obelisk’s expression morph from concentration to understanding, she wasn’t so sure anymore. The man’s eyes hardened as he stared her down.

All moisture left Aya’s mouth as the large Orc approached her. Aya’s eyes darted around, looking for some kind of rescue, but the moment a fuming Obelisk came to a halt before her, she knew it was on her. She shrank into her small frame, trying to look as pitiful as possible with a forced hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile. She was going for cutely rueful but it was about as fake as a politician’s ideals.

“I had to try…” she said in a voice that came out barely louder than a whisper.

She swallowed and tried again.

“... Right?”

Aya cringed at the squeak in her voice and watched Obelisk carefully for a reaction.

The Orc narrowed his eye, slowly began to lift his clenched fists, making Aya shrink away in fear as he settled his hands on his hips, threw his head back and laughed. Tundra watched with a grin on her face as her friend burst into laughing tears as she had only minutes before.

“Hey kid!” she yelled across the room. “I’ll take you up on your initial offer. One for three.” She grinned as the announcement only made Obelisk laugh harder. Shaking her head with a smile of her own, she turned back around, lifted her pick up above her head in an easy graceful arch before it lunged down with deadly efficiency.

Clack.

Your mind for commerce has been acknowledged by your gatekeeper.

+ 100 Contract Points

Congratulations! Your Manipulation Education Tree has sprouted!

Nurture it well, or it will wither and die!

NOTE: Manic Creatures are attracted to strong and healthy Education Trees.

---

Her love-hate relationship with Obelisk evolved quite naturally after that. After the whole exchange was done and over with, she had about six hundred pieces of barely viable ore. The orc just shook his head in half amusement and half indignation when she saw the growth of her tiny pile through his.

Aya then gathered her ores into the sack once more; it took almost a hundred ores to fill. When she slung it over her back and tried standing, she realized it was the heaviest thing she had ever carried. Obelisk watched gleefully from his corner as he propped both of his arms on his pick, waiting for her to make a fool of herself.

She shrugged and slowly staggered her way out of the cavern. The weight was unbearable, and the rudimentary rope handles of the sack cut deeply into her shoulder, chafing against the rough fabric of the beginner tunic against her skin. Aya was panting profusely and she hadn’t even left the mine yet. Then suddenly, her torch went out.

She felt like throwing it against the wall, smashing it in half. Instead, she calmly inserted the piece of wood under the straps right behind her neck so they would take some of the weight off of her shoulders. It helped about as much as a cork holds a damn, but it helped nonetheless.

By the time she reached the foreman, she was already soaked with grimy sweat that collected the rock dust in the air. When he saw her, his face contorted with both disgust and annoyance, she let hers do the same when she saw the pick he was renting out to another player. A better pick, for a fraction of the price. It was at that moment she fully understood how impossible the task was going to be. She was going to have to find her own pick.

Fueled by annoyance, she didn’t even bat an eyelash when she handed over three low-level ores that would add up to the minimum medium level that he required, which was 30%. It had taken her half an hour to mine out a single copper ore of 20% and another ten minutes of creative haggling with Obelisk. She suspected the man gave in because he felt sorry for her, not because of her wonderful skills of commerce or manipulation, but in the end she was rewarded for those as well. She shrugged, trying to focus on the fact that it was a game and not dwell on the fact that she was surviving through pity people felt for an avatar that wasn’t even her.

After her payment, she was about to leave when he pointed out the remains of the torch on her back. Aya looked him in the eye, clenched her fists, opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind and simply untied her pack and handed over three more low level ores, this time iron. As she tied it back up, she remembered Xavier’s words of shorting him. Sighing, she made her way back to the tunnels. She didn’t bother asking for another torch.

A couple minutes later, she was already growing out of breath again, when she saw one of the caverns that the tunnel broke out into. Obelisk told her that a cavern had a set number of maximum ore that could be extracted from it and that once that number is depleted, another cavern must be dug. He said the one they were working on currently still had about half of its lifespan left. When she asked him how he knew, he had simply told her that it was an eventual bonus of the mining skill when it was high enough.

She had checked her own mining skill progress, which she hadn’t noticed during her mining spree, so focused on the ore. It had reached 4% after almost an hour of labor; mining clearly wasn’t her calling. Thinking about all this, Aya went into one of the caverns and picked up three of the many junk ores that were lying around the cavern. She was annoyed, she was tired and she didn’t want to go all the way back down to the other cavern. If Xavier got upset about three little junk ores, well that was his problem, he had never specified any ore quality. In fact, in his whole helpfulness, he hadn’t specified anything.

Aya tied the knot with great, forceful satisfaction before she carefully arranged the sack on her back with the torch for support. She focused on her annoyance at the players around her who refused to treat her fairly because she was a convict but then turned around and behaved like the real criminals, using it to fuel her trek back to town.

By the time she made it back to the smithy, she was drenched in her own sweat. The three water flasks Donovan had given her on the other hand were bone dry. People gave her strange looks as she passed them, panting, grimy and smelly with sweat. At times, the reality of the game was a bit much.

Inside the smithy, Xavier was hammering away at a piece of metal the same way as when she had left. She held her ground, stubbornly stoic, refusing to wield to him the way metal did. The cords cut into her shoulders and the torch had given up its usefulness a long time ago.

Eventually, he turned around to face her while he wiped his hands with a stained rag. He eyed her from head to toe, but didn’t comment on her change in appearance, instead, he merely held out his hand and motioned her forward to the table between them.

Moving slowly, she deposited the ore, by letting the sack slam down in front of him. He gave the individual pieces a cursory glance and nodded.

“Stack them in the corner,” he said. “You’re still forty nine short.”

Xavier turned around, not bothering to point out which corner, and went back to shaping hot metal. Aya struggled to move the ore sack on her own. Having it on her back meant one thing, but trying to carry it out in front of her created a completely different monster. Her short stature basically ruined her fight with the physics of leverage. Eventually, she managed to drag the ore to the corner. It was empty. A couple steps to the side stood a large crate, stacked neatly with ore. Apparently Xavier did not want to mix hers with the rest of his. Refusing to care, she went to the corner and carefully organized the ore, even taking the time to sort them by purity. Her need for order surfaced the most when everything else around her fell into chaos.

Sore from the walk, she stood up with creaking joints. Turning toward Xavier, she noticed a massive barrel of water in the corner of the room. Her tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth, she desperately needed water, but as she watched the smith hammer away at the metal, she quickly left through the door before she grovelled at his feet. The empty flasks dangled from a basic belt she had fashioned by slicing up one of her failed attempts at pelt extraction. Banging against one another as she walked, they kept emitting hollow sounds, a constant reminder of their lack of water.

Without the ore weighing her down, her steps were much lighter and she quickly found her way to the marketplace once more. Talking to NPCs left and right, she sold off most of her loot. The only thing that remained five minutes later were the pelts she would need for her quest with Will. The exorbitantly high water prices established by the township were her only choice. She knew players used transportation portals to create a water trade, but there was no time to waste on finding a player not prejudiced against convicts.

In the marketplace, she approached a potbellied man sitting on a misplaced throne, wearing crimson clothes. They shined with luxurious splendor, held together by a gold sash tied in the unfortunate place under his belly. The tight outline the stretch of the clothes created made it seem like quintuplets were on the way. His comparatively skinny arms even rested atop his gigantic belly like those of a proud mother. The line in front of him consisted mainly of NPCs but she attached herself to the end of it anyway. She watched as the man treated each citizen with demeaning contempt, making them kiss his shoes. A set of six guards stood watching stoically, forming a gleaming barricade of gleaming steel.

The haggard faces around her were etched with irritation that disappeared with practiced ease when they approached the man. The blanker the stares the man got, the more demanding he became. It reminded her of the real world, the separation of the rich and poor. The incessant need the rich had to instill that divide, to clarify that they were different, somehow superior to the rest. Clenching her jaw in frustration, she waited for her turn to deal with the man’s pettiness.

Her turn came soon enough but the moment he saw her, he changed his tune. Suddenly, he only cared about business. His face slipped into greasy friendliness andAya heard the whispers about outworlders’ special treatment behind her. There were obviously ulterior motives involved but she couldn’t see them from where she stood on the board. Her curiosity was piqued, but she knew she couldn’t afford any side, or even main, projects just now. She knew the man had some kind of link to the mysterious drought in the region, which in turn was the whole reason she had chosen Durrenheim. Knowing that she couldn’t do anything about it yet, not at level four, she decided to pursue it later.

With forty-nine trips for ore left, she was bound to end up at the man’s feet more than once. Aya took all the water she could buy, barely enough to fill two flasks. The man’s fake friendliness did not extend to price reductions. Making her way out of town, she was a little annoyed she couldn’t immediately pursue the mystery so when she overheard the words of two women walking in the crowd in front of her, she fell into step behind them.

“Water is getting more and more expensive,” said the one on the right. She was carrying a flask tightly under her arm.

“It’s ridiculous,” said the other, no flask in sight. “Eldera already moved to her mother-in-law’s in the Parrantine region.”

“Wait… that old bat!? Der hates her! Why would she—”

“Look around,” she said in a quieter voice that almost didn’t make it to Aya’s ears. “Things aren’t as they should be when…” her voice dissipated in the air. Her face was turned to her friend so Aya could see that her lips were moving while she furtively looked around, but her words remained out of reach.

“It’s his fault!” the other said in a much gruffer voice. “Ever since Petin took over from Tamaba, we’ve had to—” A large cart rolled by, creaking its wooden wheels on the cobbled ground, masking their voices for a while.

“... don’t have a choice when—” A particularly loud merchant shouted declarations and promises concerning his goods, drowning out the voices she wanted to overhear.

The conversation continued in much the same way while she followed them down the busy streets; unfortunately, she didn’t discover anything she thought pertinent. Eventually, the women turned off into a quieter alley and Aya decided to continue her own quest. She would have more chances to talk to the townsfolk later.

Aya followed the same path on her way out of town, jogging past dilapidated buildings, ragged townsfolk and gleaming guards. She pursed her lips and compartmentalized the problem for later. The more pressing issue was ore, stat grinding, money, leveling… pretty much everything else. Caught in her thoughts, she almost didn’t notice when she ran into a small pack of Meatigs.

They immediately readied themselves, facing their tusks in her direction. Their coarse fur slowly bristled, displaying their markings more clearly. Meatigs lived in packs, each one having a certain rank. Donovan told her about how the beast’s fur automatically shedded to reveal a new pattern if it managed to defeat its direct superior in a tusk fight. The ranked beasts were always conscious of the beast directly below them in rank, the only one allowed to challenge them.

Aya had to face the challenge of all of them, but thankfully the pack would attack successively. The weakest attacked first and she accidentally finished him off with two blows. They had been one of her first opponents and she knew their weakness well. When either of two small bumps, one behind each ear, were damaged, the Meatig would be paralyzed for a minute or two, depending on its level. She attacked the weakness first and then killed it with a second stab right into the heart. It was an easy target on a motionless beast. Unfortunately, she gained EXP.

With blood on her hands, she turned to the next-ranked. The attack came swiftly, much stronger than the first. Aya managed to step aside at the last minute on her second attack, stabbing its right bump as it dashed by. It immediately fell to the ground in twitching paralysis. Its limbs hardened and she looked for a way out. She couldn’t keep killing mobs, not when she couldn’t level up, but at the same time, she needed the money for water.

Squeezing the dagger in her hand, she felt the iron stickiness of drying blood. The pack would never let her get away, not after she killed one of their own; unless she killed their leader. The only way to get to the leader was by killing all the others first and if she did that, she would definitely level up. She watched as the beast continued to twitch on the ground. She could finish it off in one swift movement to the heart; it would bleed out in seconds.

Aya’s face tightened as she considered her options; there weren’t many. The only way she wouldn’t ruin her plans was if someone else killed the beasts or nature somehow intervened. Wishing for a Rockyno stampede, she looked around, beyond the encroaching pack but she knew there were no Rockynos to be found. This wasn’t their stomping ground.

“Why can’t you just have a spontaneous stroke or something!?” Aya screamed as she kicked the motionless beast. Its health even fell by a point. Face twisted in hopelessness and teeth bared in annoyance, she kicked at it ineffectively until her breath became ragged and she sank to the ground beside it. Her dagger still in hand, she jabbed it sloppily at its heart, barely nicking it.

It didn’t die, but blood bubbled up around the dagger. Her hands were a bloody mess and she pulled the blade out, squirting blood everywhere. Backing off, she watched as a pool of blood grew around the beast and its health quickly fell.

You have learned a new Skill!

Bleed:

Creates a gash that can bleed the opponent dry, long after you are gone.

Chance of success depends on various factors like level of skill, level of adversary and circulatory system of adversary. Current skill level: 0.01

Reading the interface about the skill made her remember something Donovan had said about targeting her opponents correctly. Watching the health bar continuing to sink below the mob label above the beasts head, she realized she was still targeting the beast as its label glowed a crimson red. The health points were nearly zeroed out by the time she scrambled to untarget the beast.

The icon stopped glowing red and turned to blue instead, the normal untargeted label color, before it almost immediately blinked to a lifeless gray. The second Meatig died and Aya did not receive a single experience point. Hope for her plans crawled back and she burst out laughing. She took down the third Meatig in three moves, one to incapacitate, and two Bleeds. She learned to activate the skill by thinking about it in synchrony with her attack. The beast didn’t stand a chance; she had come a long way already from her Donovan-aided attempts that morning and she was just then realizing the difference in her strength, however small it might seem.

The skill was a life-saver and she quickly finished off the other Meatigs in the same manner. Bleed turned out to have another surprising effect: the loot of blood. Having an empty flask, Aya refused to waste it. In less than five minutes, she had looted all of the beasts. The fur of her first victim was completely mangled, but instead of discarding it, she stripped it into six furry straps which she then fixed to the sack, removing the rough ropes that gave her the burning welts on her shoulders. With three straps on each side, she hoped the weight would be distributed more evenly.

After her new skill appeared on her interface, she was reminded of the ones her Halfling race granted her. AllFours seemed pretty useless right then, but after talking to Donovan about her strengths, she knew it would prove quite useful in future. Equipped with SharpSight, she could quickly spot mobs on her way to the mine and with Bleed she could finish them off without leveling up. Her meticulous collection of loot continued all the way to the mine.

She made her way past the foreman; his solid face was sculpted into a look of disdain. After winding her way through the tunnels, she found the cave once more. Tundra was nowhere in sight, but Obelisk was still steadily mining away in his corner. As she packed her ore into the sack, he told her about how Tundra had left a while back, taking her own load of ore into town to be processed. She could tell he had grown lonely in the time his friend had left because the words spewed out of him like a fountain. He babbled on about how Tundra’s baby monitor had gone off on her way back to the mine.

“It usually takes her less than an Era hour though,” he said. “she’ll be back soon, so— ”

“I will too,” she cut him off, using the new straps to lift the sack and leave the nook.

‘He’s okay and all, but I’m not about to get stuck under tonnes of rock with a mopey old man.’

The weight distribution plan worked just like she thought it would and instead of the torch, she bundled up all of the pelts, placing them as a buffer between herself and the sack. Closer to the exit, she finished filling the sack, about a fifth of it, full of junk ore from one of the already-depleted nooks. Her lip twitched and she bit it, hiding her excitement from nothing but her conscience. She had a theory to test.

On the way out, the foreman didn’t even bother to look her way and she quickly made her way back to town again. She couldn’t run with almost fifty kilos of ore strapped to her back, so she settled for walking quickly, which, with her short legs, wasn’t all that quick. Instead of using SharpSight to find and target mobs, she used it to avoid them. Keeping tabs of the exact path she was taking, she began creating a detailed map of the area with the pencil and notebook she had taken from Curiana.

In high school, art had kept her sane. It had been her escape from childhood problems, but it had also been what had gotten her involved with Eddie in the first place. For a long time, she had blamed it for everything that happened. It had been her one pleasure in life, so she had given up on it, a form of self punishment. That time was past and she couldn’t believe how good it felt to finally let her hand flow across the paper again. The first couple of sketches came out a little rough and disproportionate. The years of hiatus were showing themselves quite clearly as her fingers locked up and fell short, never quite transmitting what she wanted to the paper. Slowly, as the sketches added up, the pencil began to move more freely, yet still nowhere near as well as she remembered.

Pencil, pen, paintbrush, whatever it was, didn’t used to matter. All she had to do in the past was envision the image and it would appear the exact same way. She wondered if she would ever be able to work herself back to that. As she continued her heavy hike, she took notes on the mobs she saw. The notes were made in order to remind herself in future trips, so as to avoid them more easily.

Unfortunately for her, she ran into another pack of Meatigs on the way back. It cost her some precious time to dispose all of them, having to be constantly aware of the sack she dropped. Players were going by all the time and she did not want to lose her load to someone who had it out for convicts. After that, she added in as many notes of the mobs’ whereabouts as she could. Even if the game drew on an incredibly advanced AI, there had to be certain patterns the mobs followed and she was intent on discovering them. There was no time to waste.

On the margins of her drawings she took the time to draw out a Meatig, a Thorndilly, a Rabidunny and any other mobs she came across. There were so many of them, it was hard to keep track of their names, appearances, weaknesses, levels and pack sizes. Those margin drawings quickly became too elaborate and gained their own pages. Devising a referencing system with the pages, Aya was quite satisfied with the way her notebook was shaping up. The drawings also served the beneficial purpose of helping her stretch her artistic muscles again. Landscapes had never been her forte, but people and living things had come as easily as breathing. By the time she reached the town walls, she was almost sad to put her notebook and pencil away. Even Donovan would have approved of her project; drawing turned out to have the surprising additional benefit involving a stat, precision.

----

The next four hours were spent in much the same way. She followed the same tiresome cycle, over and over and over and over, to the point where she basically entered the autopilot mode she had perfected as a cashier. The only difference was that there were a couple more steps in this particular routine.

Organizing ore in the corner of Xavier’s smithy (her stack was much more organized than his, sorted by type and purity. It surprised her to find trace amounts of junk silver ore in some of the abandoned nooks.)

Selling off all of the loot (with the exception of the pelts she needed for Will’s quest and the blood for which she could not find a good price.)

Spending time in line for the water (She tried to overhear conversations pertaining to the drought, the new mayor or anything that could be remotely relevant but those conversations were very rare and far between.)

Buying as much water as she could afford that trip.

Heading back to the mine while hunting and looting mobs.

Filling her sack with increasingly junkier ore (Xavier had never specified a minimum threshold for ore purity and after she ran into him giving another player the assignment of five stacks instead of fifty, she did not care if she passed on a sleazy technicality. ESPECIALLY since the other guy got water from the damn barrel every time.)

Mapping out the region with annotations which grew in detail as she ran out about mob information (After five runs, she had the fastest route mapped out and kept track of the time it took her to complete each round. Five runs after that she even started seeing a pattern in the players of the region.)

In the beginning, it took her almost twenty minutes to deliver a load but over time she managed to cut that time down to fifteen. At one point, she even maxed out the stat points for level four which had happened much faster than she expected until she realized that she was training stats she hadn’t really bothered with until then. The growth rate tapered off slowly, but she continued making incredible progress and even finished Will’s quest to level up to five. New bag in hand, she took even more ore with every trip.

Refusing to let Xavier catch her on a the technicality of the number of trips, she found a semi-secure place along her route. It was a little off the route, adding a minute or two, but worth it in terms of other-player density. They rarely veered into the territory; the only mobs in sight were low-level chicken-like things called Layhens. Aya killed one of them once by accident; they became quite vicious when you picked up the black eggs they laid. They were very well hidden;, she only came across one because of her meticulous stacking of ore along the remains of a stone wall.

The crow-black creature had attacked her quite furiously, jumping out of nowhere to peck at her with its bright orange beak. It’s feathers were leathery to the touch and the only reason Aya refused to call the creature a chicken was the lizard like tail it used to secure itself to her arm with while it attacked. It was not a pleasant experience, especially since she gained no loot and practically no EXP. There was absolutely no mystery why other players avoided the area. The moment she stepped into one of the Layhens’ hidden egg territories they would start their attack and she would hightail it out of there. She used that to her advantage and mapped herself a passage to her hidden ore stash; it was only possible because she had killed off the reigning Layhen.

With time her second stash grew and a couple hours later she had already made twenty runs. Close to maxing out level five, she took a bit longer to make it back to the mine. She would be able to level up soon and when she thought she had her cycle down to a science, the unthinkable happened.

The foreman and her still gave each other a wide berth every time she entered the mine. With time she found out from Obelisk, who Aya still paid a visit from time to time, that the position was hired out on a contractual basis with the town mayor. It was a surprisingly well-paying position but it required a ridiculous amount of reputation with the mayor.

Aya watched him as she approached the entrance of the mine for the twenty first time. He handed picks to two players she hadn’t run into yet and turned to lock up the tool cage. She had long found out that he had rented her the worst pick of the lot. In fact it was so much worse than the rest, she had no idea how it still had a place in the cage with all the others. Every time she saw him interact with other players she fought to keep her emotions in check. For years she had been so good at controlling her emotions in the real world, but in the game, her pretenses were quickly falling apart. Her real self was suddenly so close to the surface.

She steadied her pace, readying herself to ignore him once more when suddenly the earth shook with a large thundering sound. Twenty feet away from the entrance, she was almost knocked over by a dust wave that followed, flowing out of the opening in one big gust. Coughing, she bent over, trying to get the dust particles out of her eyes, nose and mouth. By the time the dust settled a couple minutes later, she sported a completely new layer of grime. Laced with all the sweat, different mob bloods and smithy soot, she looked quite a sight. The dust settled on her, sticking to the lower layers of grime and making her skin look like cracked clay.

Clearing her eyes of dust she looked up to find the foreman gone. Aya walked up to the entrance and looked around inside. All of the torches had gone out and the darkness overwhelmed her. By then she was used to navigating the dark tunnels but she took out one of the foreman’s torches and lit it anyway. Something had happened in the mine and things were bound to look different. She did not want to end up in a hole somewhere with a broken leg. She knew all too well how the game did not go easy on the pain experience.

Looking around, the dust particles were still floating in the air when she kicked some kind of small object that scraped across the floor in a metallic symphony.. Using the torch to light her way, she followed a path in the settled dust to find a set of keys, the foreman’s keys. He wore it on his waist at all times and she had only seen him take it off to touch the tool cage. Standing up, she faced the closed cage. Her eyes wandered from the cage, to the keys, and back again.

“Are you the foreman?”

Aya jumped when the sudden voice interrupted her thoughts. She turned around to find not just the speaker, but four other players, all orcs, looking at her. All of them eyed her condemningly after looking at her prisoner status. Stiffening her spine, she brought her hand to her hip in a ‘Yea, so what you gonna do about it?’ way. They keys she still held in her hand jangled with the movement.

“Who's asking?” she spat.

“We are, obviously,” said one of the orcs, condescension dripping off her tongue.

It triggered an interesting reaction from two of her teammates, who eyed her accusingly.

“Sorry about Sheryll here,” the initial orc said, moving his hands placatingly. “She doesn’t know when to shut up sometimes.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. It was quite a charming and compelling expression, even coming from an orc. Having spent quite some time with Obelisk and Tundra, Aya knew that the game made it hard for subtle expressions to be made with an orc character. The guy was obviously in charge for a reason.

They were all dressed like their levels were in the low twenties . She had spent quite a while analyzing other players with her sketches on the way back and their gear was quite different from the customary gear in the area. The local NPCs had not provided them with it, which made Aya think that they had just migrated from a different region.

“That’s ok,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Some people told us to find the ‘rock dude’,” he said eyeing her flakey skin. “We were wondering about mining permissions,” he said motioning at the keys at her waist.

Aya looked down, feeling the weight of the keys in her hands, then she looked back at the group of five and said, “No problem,” a sleazy car salesman grin spread over her face. “Actually… we have a special deal going on right now.”