After finishing the first six rabbits, I started to meditate. Both to regenerate my stamina, which was down to twenty, and my mana which was zero. As I was sitting there, waiting for my pools to refill, I noticed something peculiar. A petite woman in shabby clothes came down the street, and was about to enter the shop, when Blaine shook his head, almost imperceptible. First she frowned, and then she spotted me. Immediately she turned around.

It was weird, but I focused on Blaine, observing his technique. That was when I spotted another peculiar thing. Every tenth piece of meat or so, would be thrown into a bucket, instead of the crates for meat. Though it intrigued me, I decided to keep my curiosity in check. Being nosy could end in one or two ways; either you got a quest or lost reputation. And the AIs controlling the Natives was highly sophisticated. They would remember the tiniest slight.

When my pools had regenerated, I went back to butchering the last six rabbits. It was while I was on my ninth rabbit that the next event of note happened. A squad of blackcloaked guards entered the shop.

“What do you’ve for us, Butcher?” the guy in charge said. Since there were ten of them, I figured I might as well use Observe on them. Like Message there was a cooldown on it. It was just a day instead of an hour.

The guy who spoke was the highest ranking and levelled among them. His name was Tatroz Yellowclaw, was a corporal and had reached level 34. The rest of his men were privates, ranging from level 21 to 26. Fairly average levelled for normal guards.

“The sixteen crates over there are from yesterday,” Blaine said and pointed to some crates that had been stacked to one side of the property.

“That seems a bit low, are you taking a larger cut for yourself?” Tatroz squinted, he seemed to be doing some mental calculations.

“Just a bit unlucky, had to throw away some of the meat.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Maybe you’re getting worse on your old days. Maybe it’s time to find a new butcher to handle the Lord’s business,” Tatroz adopted a threatening tone towards the end.

“I assure you, I’m the best butcher in Blackport,” Blaine sounded angry. From where I was working, I could not see his face. However, I could see his neck was getting flushed.

“That remains to be seen. See to it that you’re more careful. It’s not so easy to get our hands on monsters for you to butcher. Every single one of those carcasses was obtained at great peril of a guard. Just be glad some people are willing to put their lives on the line, now that we can’t be resurrected,” Tatroz stated, before ordering his men to pick up the crates. Around half of the crates disappeared into the guard’s inventory, and they left the shop carrying the rest. I kept my head down and kept working on the rabbit. No need to rock the boat.

I had just about finished with the last of the rabbit, when the shabbily dressed woman from earlier returned. This time Blaine waved her in with a tired looking wave. She kept shooting glances at me. Even though she whispered, I could still hear her, “Is it okay with him here?”

“He doesn’t know what’s going on. But the guards are getting suspicious, might need to last a few days,” Blaine whispered back, before turning around to me, “Are you done with your rabbits soon?”

“Just need the last cut,” I said, pretending not to have overheard their conversation. With a last cut the rabbit vanished, and left behind a pile of bones. Nothing else. Just bones. A disappointing result. However, that was what you got when the outcome was decided by a random number generator. I also got a prompt telling me that my quest was complete, but since there was no rewards, it was rather uninteresting.

“Okay, grab that bucket and empty the crates with bones and meat into it. While you managed to keep all of it at below average quality, there are little use for low quality meat and bones. Hemela will get rid off it,” Blaine said. He pointed to the bucket where he had thrown the meat into. Shrugging I did as he asked, but while I was transferring the items, I took a peek at the meat he had thrown out. It was all of Good quality.

Which surprised the heck out of me. To consistently produce Good quality you would need to have reached the Grandmaster tier. However, since it was low levelled creatures, you might be able to do it at just the Master tier. That still meant he had reached at least level hundred in the Butchery skill. Not a small accomplishment, and all I could think was, ‘How high is his level?’

However, I was out of mana, so I could not use Observe and Inspect would not give me his level. As soon as I had transferred the last piece of meat, he took the bucket and handed it to Hemela, “Take it to the sewer chute and throw it out. Hopefully old Ilat hasn’t lost control over the runes yet.”

Hemela accepted the bucket, but looked mightily confused. She opened her mouth, probably to ask something. I could see the moment she figured out the answer. She quickly closed her mouth and nodded, before saying her goodbyes.

The Ilat guy he mentioned was one of my next stops. He controlled the entry point to the Sewer Dungeon underneath the city. A very unpopular Dungeon. Not a lot of rewards. At least not until you had cleared it fifty times. It was a good thing that my guildmates were under contract, otherwise I might not get them to run a level one Dungeon fifty times.

However, that was a problem for another time. Right now my curiosity was almost killing me. Too many weird things going on. And as far as I could recall, it was not something that had ever been added to Index’s archives.

Throwing caution to the wind, I walked over to Blaine, so I could whisper and still be heard, “I don’t know what’s going on. But that was high quality meat you just had her throw out.”

“You’re snooping in my business?” he growled as he turned to look at me. The hand that held the cleaver turned white as he tightened his grip.

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise on the Gods,” I quickly said, “I’m even willing to accept a quest with harsh penalties if I tell anyone.”

He squinted at me for a moment, while I kept an eye on the cleaver. I audibly sighed with relief when I saw him loosening his grip on the handle. He looked around quickly, before turning his attention back to me, “Fine, I’ll give you a quest, but the penalties will be harsh. As you heard Corporal Asshat say, meat is hard to come by. It was not a problem fighting flameball throwing rabbits when you could be resurrected. But now that any death is final, no one can really take the chance.

“That’s especially true for the craftsmen and fishermen. Most people living in this part of the town used to make their living outside of town. Fishermen, loggers and hunters. The seas are teeming with dangerous monsters. You need powerful runes just to leave the harbour. Which ordinary fishermen can’t afford. The woods are filled with boars and wolves. And just to get there you’ve to get past hundreds of horned rabbits. Their levels might be low, but in the numbers out there at the moment, it’s too dangerous.

“In short, the poor people of this town are starving to death. The Lord and rich are self-absorbed, no help for the poor from them. The Lord isn’t even here, more concerned with matters in the capital. I’ve a commision with the Lord, and I try to siphon off a bit of meat. The bucket Hemela just retrieved. However, it seems the guards are getting suspicious, so I can’t afford to do that anymore. So yes, I’ll offer you a quest. Help us, don’t let the poor people starve.”

Quest Offered

Type: Limited

Hardship in Blackport

Blaine Hardstone wants you to find a way to help the Poor Citizens of Blackport. They’re starving and many of the basic resources needed are unavailable for them.

You’ve also agreed to keep matters regarding his theft of the Lord’s property a secret.

Reward

Scaling

Penalty for Failure

-100 Reputation with Blaine Hardstone and the Poor Citizens of Blackport.

Penalty for Sharing Information

-1000 Reputation with Blaine Hardstone

Failure of quest.

Do you wish to accept this Quest?

I immediately accepted the quest of course, but I was shocked. Rewards was usually set in stone, but since it said Scaling, it meant there was multiple tiers of rewards. All depending on how well I solved the quest. That the quest was Limited meant that it could only be solved once. However, others could get it as well, if they could find the right circumstances to trigger it.

What shocked me the most was that I had never heard about this quest. Though I could not remember all quests, I was pretty sure that I had never heard mention of a Limited quest with Scaling reward available at the start of the game. After a few seconds though, it occurred to me that this might be the quest Almighty Al had completed.

The Poor Citizens of Blackport was one of five factions in Blackport that made up the overall reputation for Blackport. There were the Poor, the Middle Class, the Rich, the Guards and of course the Lord. The average reputation of these five was your overall reputation in Blackport. And while you could earn reputation with the Imperial Soldiers or the Temple, neither influenced your reputation in Blackport.

“I’m glad you accepted this quest,” Blaine finally relaxed and put the cleaver down, “The amount of meat I managed to slip Hemela, should keep them fed for the day. However, unless a lot of Travellers come looking for guidance, I won’t have much spillage to give them.”

“Well, I could always use some more guidance,” I tried. The double XP buff was not something to scoff at.

“Unfortunately, my agreement with the Lord limits me to only teaching a Traveller once. Though if you could send someone my way, I’ll gladly teach them.”

“If I run into someone that wants to learn Butchery, I’ll keep that in mind. Unfortunately most of them just wants to go for the quick loot.”

“I see. Well Damian, you were a good student, and I hope to see you around here, “ he offered me his hand. After saying goodbye I headed back towards the square. A little over an hour had passed, so I should still have about an hour and a half before the others would be done. In the time spent with in the shop I had earned 50 Observe XP and 318 Butchery XP.

Five minutes later I arrived at the square, and saw it was pretty much empty of players. Most of them were probably at the guard’s training area or out hunting. If they were smart they started with the crabs and seagulls down at the beach. Sure many of the rabbits was also just level one, but there was a difference between a normal mob and a magical mob. Even a level one mob throwing fireballs at you were dangerous. Especially for low level players.

After ten minutes of meditating next to the Soul Well, my mana had regenerated and I was ready to spend some money. Not that I needed mana for shopping, I just liked having mana enough to cast Observe, and grind some XP that way.

Taking a quick look around to see what stores were available, I ended up choosing the general store. There I spent some money buying a cauldron, a woodcutter’s axe and a hatchet. 13 gold pieces poorer I headed towards my next stop. A wheelwright. From him I bought a hand-drawn cart for another 10 gold. It had a maximum inventory space of 500 kilos. Nevertheless, I would be lucky if I could move it with a hundred kilos in it. My strength score was simply just too low.

Seeing that I still had forty minutes to kill, I headed towards the beach. The island that Blackport was on, was a bit special. It was actually part of a sunken continent, as was most of the other islands between the two continents. When players got to a high enough level, and had access to water breathing potions, there were a lot of ruins below the sea for them to explore. However, the monsters down there was in the level hundred and upwards range.

Blackport Island was actually the top of a plateau on this sunken continent, and the town itself was placed on the southwestern tip. Which meant that the lowest point on the island was still twenty meters above sea level. The beach and harbour was something artificially created by magic, and you got from Blackport to sea level by using one of the few lifts at the southside of Blackport. Or one of the stairs. However, with my new cart, it had to be one of the lifts. Which cost two coppers for “Maintenance”.

The view from the lifts was just as breathtaking as I remembered. I had never seen an ocean in the real world, and even if I did it would be nothing like this. The real world’s ocean was filled with trash. Nothing like in Carn. Clear water as far as the eye could see. A few large beasts coming up for air in the distance. Too far away to see what they were. Down below was the harbour, or more like docks.

The two wooden docks only reached twenty meters into the ocean. One of them was for the larger fishing boats of the town. All of them tied up, and not a single boat to be seen out on the water. The other was for merchant ships. Until the old continent got wiped, Blackport would not see more than two to four ships a week. A few guards were patrolling the docks.

The beach was on the southside of the island, stretching a kilometer to the east. I could see that a few players had already migrated down to hunt here. It seemed like three lone players.

Getting to the bottom of the lift, I thanked the operator and placed my cart somewhere I would be able to keep an eye on it. I then started combing the beach for small rocks, with a radius around half the length of my thumb. Unless I started mining a stone or metal node, I could only find poor quality. Which would have to do.

The rocks themselves were worthless, however, they could be turned into manastone. The thing about manastones was that they were not that complicated to make. You just needed the right alchemical solution, grind them down to a uniform size and shape. And you had a manastone. As long as you imbued at least one mana in it within a minute of applying the solution.

And that was where players had a large advantage over Natives. Only one in a thousand Natives had access to mana, while every player had mana. Which meant that there was always a market for manastones. Of course low grade manastones made from rocks were not worth as much as manastones made from gemstones.

“Hey guys, look at this moron. Collecting rocks,” someone suddenly shouted. Frowning, I looked up at the closest of the three players.

“He’s even in a guild,” one of the other laughed.

“Probably some kind of hazing. Rocks are worthless,” the third guy shouted. He then activated Block making his shield blur from his side, moving his arm up and blocking the dive of a seagull. The seagull squaked and flapped its wings to stabilize. A second later another seagull dive bombed the player. Hitting him right in the face, making him scream, “Damnit, Block is still on cooldown.”

“That’s why I like magic. You just pepper them with firebolts,” one of the other laughed. Firing a firebolt at a giant grab. Immediately attracting the aggro. The player moved backwards as the crab closed in. However, he had to stop after five seconds to cast another firebolt. He cursed as the crab caught up to him and started nabbing him with its claws.

All of them were using assisted combat mode. Scoffing, I turned my attention back to collecting rocks. When the clock showed it was ten minutes to nine, I packed up and headed back to the square. In total I had managed to gather 18 rocks. Sure I had found more, but they had been larger. And while I could also turn those into manastone, it required a larger and more expensive kit than I had bought.

When I returned to the square, I saw that the others had already arrived. They stared a bit at my cart, and of course it was Blaze that asked, “What’s with the cart?”

“Need it to haul loot and carcasses around,” I said, indicating that they should follow me.

“Carcasses?” Robin frowned.

“Yeah. When looting rabbits, people will on average get around a silver to a silver and a half’s worth of material. I’ll offer to buy unlooted rabbits for two silver. Plus an extra five copper per level above one,” I told them as I stopped in front of the Adventurers’ Association.

“Won’t you just be throwing our money away then?” Kira asked nervously.

“Not really, with the right skills you can turn the loot they drop into other products worth more,” I left my cart, it was empty anyway, and led them into the Association.

Inside almost looked like a modern bank. With counters and teller windows along all sides, except the front. To the left half of the signs above the windows said “Available Quests”, while the other half was “Quest Completion”.

The right side was all either “Incoming Messages” and “Outgoing Messages”. The counters in front of us mostly consisted of “Sell Your Loot Here” banners. A handful of windows to the side was “Administration & Registration”.

It was the latter I steered us toward. Not all of the windows were manned, which was understandable, since there was no other players than us in here. Sure there was a handful of people, but from their equipment they looked like high level Natives. All of them were in line to one of the “Incoming Messages” windows. We could clearly see the Natives talking with each other, but we could not hear anything.

Something Robin noticed, “It’s weird we can’t hear what they were saying, even though we walked right past them.”

“When you step up to the counter, a cone of silence triggers,” I said, just before stepping up to a counter myself. Even though it had been silent before, it became even quieter after the magic silence effect took effect.

A young man was behind the counter, and was smiling, “Hi, welcome to Adventurers’ Association, how may I help you?”

“Those five are with me,” I indicated the youngsters behind me.

“—y should I be careful? He’s inside the magic bubble, he can’t hear that I made fun of him,” Blaze was saying.

“Sure I can,” I turned around with a big smile.

“Wait, what?” he exclaimed.

“Greetings to all of you,” the clerk quickly said, “Welcome to the Adventurers’ Association. Do you wish to sign up?”

“Yes, we all need to sign up. We also want to register our guild, Blue Lotus, and Ed here wants to register his party,” I said.

“Okay, do you all wish to take our Starter Quests package?”

“N—” Ed started saying.

“Yes!” I interrupted as soon as I heard him speaking. I knew why he wanted to say no, but it was a bad idea.

“Okay, just put one of your fingers on this gem,” he said and pulled out a green gemstone the size of my first. Someone had spent a lot of time faceting it, and I could see runes inscribed on every facet.

I put my thumb on the gem, and it flashed with a bright light for half a second. The clerk smiled, “Welcome to AA, Damian Heosphoros. Here are your starter quests.”

Quest Accepted

Type: Repeatable (5x)

Horns, Horns, Horns

The Adventurers’ Association would like you to deliver 10 horns from the Horned Rabbits.

Reward

2 silver coins

+5 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

Quest Accepted

Type: Normal

Holy Horns

The Adventurers’ Association would like you to deliver 10 horns from the Horned White Rabbits.

Reward

5 silver coins

+10 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

Quest Accepted

Type: Repeatable (10x)

An Odious Task

The Adventurers’ Association would like you to deliver 20 sour joys.

Reward

10 copper coins

+4 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

“Next,” the clerk had already moved on, as I dealt with the prompts. I made sure that Ed went last. As he finished registering, the clerk said, “And now for your party. Place a finger on this gem.”

He took out a blue gem this time. Bigger than the green by at least a half. After Ed did as instructed, he quickly turned to me, “It’s asking me to choose between Military, Explorer and Support. What does this mean?”

“Pick Explorer. It’s meant for PvE, while Military are for PvP and Support are for crafters,” I instructed. Immediately the non-gamers asked what that meant, but Blaze answered those questions in a whisper. Which meant if we had not been inside a cone of silence, the entire room would be able to hear him.

“What should I pick next? The list is pretty long.”

“Take the Dungeon Delver option, and then choose a name for your party,” I said.

“Asskickers!” Blaze immediately shouted.

“How about something a bit more mature,” Robin scoffed.

“Fists of Awesome!” was Blaze’s attempt at a more mature name. Immediately rejected by all.

“How about ‘The Five Samurais’,” One-Eye suggested.

“No,” Kira groaned, “How about we just let Ed decide?”

“Good idea,” Robin agreed, and everyone turned their attention to Ed.

“Fine, but don’t complain then,” he warned and looked a few extra seconds at Blaze, “Gold Squad.”

“What, seriously?” Blaze exploded, “So lame!”

“That’s a bit tame, yes,” Robin winced at the name.

“No complaints,” Ed reminded them, “And it’s fitting. We’ll be going into the Dungeons to earn gold. Anyway Damian, what is next?”

“You’re going into your first Dungeon.”

“No offense Damian, but I don’t think we can fight our way through all those horned rabbits just yet,” Ed frowned, probably thinking I meant the level 3 dungeon on the outskirts of the nearby forest.

“No, another one. And you’re going to be very familiar with it,” I said and ignored their questions. Bidding the clerk goodbye we headed outside.

After I had grabbed my cart, I led them west, towards the highest point in town. The spot where Ilat and the entrance to the sewer dungeon was found. On the way there, Ed finally asked, “Why did you make us take those quests? If we just sold the material to them, we would double the money.”

“Just trust me, when you’ve completed them, it’ll make sense,” I knew I was being a dick. However, I could not remember exactly what the reward was, but if you completed all three quests, until they could not be repeated again; there would be a reward that had made everyone ignoring the quest complain. The details escaped me though. All I could remember was that it involved Guild Points.

Guild Points were needed to become an official guild and level up. It was not until we had levelled up to a level one guild that we could accept guild quests. Which generally had better rewards than individual quests. At the moment we needed 600 guild points to level up. The amount of points was based on the number of members you had. One hundred per member. If someone left the guild, the points they had earned vanished. And everytime someone joined, the bar would be increased. So if you had 600 points exactly, and invited a new member, you would lose the guild level.

“You’re frustrating, you know that?” Ed growled.

“Sorry, I don’t know the details, but my friend said it was best we did it,” I apologized. Had to remember that even though we had a contract and they were my former students, they were now adults; and I should treat them as such.

“Fine, what can you tell me about the party system then?”

“Well, as I said before. There’s party’s specializing in PvP, PvE and Crafting. Dungeon Delver that I made you pick means that the party earns experience by clearing Dungeons. It also has some special perks that can be chosen when the party levels up. Such as the Escort feature, which I need you to pick when you get the first level.”

“What does it do?” Kira asked.

“It allows me to join you as a non-combatant in Dungeons. I can still be hurt, I just can’t hurt the mobs, disable traps. I can only gather loot and mine resources, if the Dungeon has any.”

“I see, so instead of us picking up some trade skills, you can do it for us,” Ed commented.

“Exactly, it’ll maximize our profit from each run. Of course, you have to spend a party point on it, which you could have used for something that increases damage against Dungeon mobs.”

“Interesting system, from the other names I saw, I gather that Scouts would earn XP from going places no one else has been?”

“Yup. Discovery of new resources and places, and so on. That one is most useful on the new continent,” I answered his question, and we fell into a companionable silence. Well, me, Ed and the girls did. One-Eye and Blaze was discussion party names that would be much cooler.

Five minutes of increasingly ridiculous names we finally arrived at the hill. Though it was not a steep hill, I vowed to increase my strength as quickly as possible. The cart was a drag to pull up.

“Wow, so beautiful,” Kira exclaimed in front of me. Robin just nodded, and even Blaze was just stood there looking. And it was a beautiful sight. The hilltop was a giant open plaza. Only a small hut was built on top of it, off to one side. The plaza was right at the western edge of the island, offering an unrestricted view of the ocean.

However, that was not what was so breathtaking. It was the gazebo built right at the cliff edge. It was large enough to accommodate ten people without problems. It looked like it was made out of plants, twisting together to form the gazebo. The roof of the gazebo was a myriad of flowers. Furthermore it was surrounded by water, which fell down the cliffside. It should have been emptied in seconds, but the water seemed calm.

Ilat was a powerful runesmith, and had spent a lot of time crafting this little slice of heaven. It was more beautiful than I remembered though. He was also in charge of maintaining the runes in the sewer. Speaking of Ilat, he was sitting in the gazebo. Or more like floating, while meditating.

Again, I knew you would be more successful with the Natives if you were respectful, so we stopped near the edge of the water; waiting for him to acknowledge us. Which took almost five minutes.

“Greetings, I’m Ilat the Wise, are you Travellers?” he spoke, without opening his eyes.

“Indeed, we are,” I answered, and then presented all of us.

“Good. The Rupture wreaked havoc on the runes in Blackport’s sewers, and I’ve not been able to repair them. They keep breaking. The slimes have become difficult to control. If you wouldn’t mind helping and old man, I could use your help in clearing out sections of the sewer?”

Before he could offer a quest, I quickly said, “My friends would love to. I’m afraid I’m just a crafter, I would be a liability.”

“Very well, I’ll offer the quest to your friends.”

After a moment Ed whispered, “Only a silver and five Guild Points seems pretty shitty. And that’s for the entire party, doesn’t seem worth it.”

“It is, in time. I’ll award five silvers per Guild Point. You need to clear the Dungeon five times today,” I said.

“Five times?” Blaze sputtered.

“Yes. That’s the limit on how many times a party can clear this dungeon per day. And it can only be cleared a maximum of fifty times per day.”

“Damian, it’s a waste of time to clear a level one dungeon that many times,” Ed complained.

“Trust me, there’s a good reward when you’ve cleared it ten times.”

“Ten times, you mean we have to do this again tomorrow?” One-Eye asked.

“No,” I grinned at him, and making sure my voice was low. Did not want Ilat to overhear me, not on this.

“Good, seemed a little excessive,” he groused.

“I need you to do it today and the next nine days. A total of fifty times.”

“Fifty times, what the fuck?” Ed cursed.

“It opens up the next dungeon, which is more than worth it. You’ll also each get a spell scroll after clearing this dungeon ten times. It contains the Message spell. As soon as you get it, learn it.

“However, that’s for later discussion. In the Dungeon you’ll be facing level one slimes, and that’s all. You just need to kill all of them. The red ones are fire slimes, the clear ones are wind, the brown ones earth and the blue ones water. One-Eye, use your club instead of your sword.”

“But I do more damage with my sword, and already got the skill for it. I can’t learn a skill for the club as well, if you want me to keep the tenth slot open.”

“It sucks, I know, but it’s for the best. While the slimes are acidic and will break down all materials, they just melt iron faster than wood.”

“What about my armour?”

“You need Ed’s elementals to be the tank.”

Ed protested loudly, “I can’t keep wasting money like that.”

“Ed, don’t worry. I’ll start producing manastones later today, and they’ll be much cheaper than what you can buy them for elsewhere,” I tried to reassure him, and then turned to the others, “When you’re done running the dungeon, I recommend that you go hunt some seagull and giant crabs at the beach. Each seagull will be worth eighteen coppers, nothing for the crabs at the moment. Just remember to bring me the corpse, and not loot them. I’ll be by the east gate. Any questions?”

“Why are there slimes in the sewer? Shouldn’t it be rats or something?” Blaze asked, loudly.

Before I could answer, Ilat chuckled and answered for me, “The slimes are summoned by my runes. Normally they’re docile. The earth slimes removes any useful items from the sewage water. The fire slime dissolves the rest, and the water slime purifies the water, before it’s sent into the ocean.”

“What about the wind slimes?” Robin asked.

“Why, they remove the bad smells,” Ilat chuckled, before turning serious, “Are you ready to go into the sewer?”

With one last look at me, Ed said, “Yes.”

“Good, come and join me then,” Ilat waved a hand at the water, and a series of stones started popping into view, building a bridge across the water. After my five guild mates had stepped into the gazebo, there was a flash. When I could see again, they were gone. Somewhere underneath my feet, in the Sewer Dungeon.