Two hours after we left my usual spot next to the gate, we were travelling back to it. We had been to no less than four different patches of sour joys. Personally I had picked almost three thousand flowers, and Nise just a bit less than that number. My Herbalism skill had levelled up twice, while hers had levelled up thrice. That damn 11% penalty to XP was hurting me.

Of all the attempts to gather the sour joys, a little less than twelve hundred had not dissipated into useless flecks of lights. Over half was of very poor quality, which meant they were useless to me. However, they would work just fine for handing in the quest ten times. I handed a sack with two hundred flowers to Kira, Ed and Blaze as payment for escorting me, while Nise handed Robin and One-Eye a sack each.

The others had hit level 5 while we were out galavanting and playing with stinky flower-looking weed. Luckily, when placed in an inventory, they stopped smelling. There had been a few situations where I was afraid that one of them would die, but they had cleverly used the stench of the Sour Joys to get rid of aggro.

Them hitting five of course led to them unlocking the Satiety and Hydration system. Robin asked what it was all about, and Blaze started explaining, “It means you need to eat or drink, or you get some major debuffs. That’s at least how it’s in games normally.”

Robin turned to me, with a questioning eyebrow race. Chuckling I explained the system to them, “He’s not completely wrong. You’ve two new pools that are capped at hundred each. Every sixth minutes you lose one of each, so ten per hour. You need to eat and drink to refill them. Not really that complicated.”

“Sounds straightforward,” Robin conceded.

“There’s got to be debuffs if you run out, right?” Blaze ventured.

“Yup. If you run dry, all your regeneration is halved, if it’s both pools the regeneration is halved again, and you lose a health point or two every six minutes,” I then took a moment to formulate the rest of the explanation, “However, the real purpose of the system is to make sure people don’t get too many buffs from food and drink.”

Blaze basically shouted, “You can get buffs from eating and drinking? Why haven’t you told us that?”

“Because they’re negligible at my current level of cooking and without better ingredients. But yes you can get buffs, though you can only have one food and one drink buff active at a time, and you need to be careful. Say that you’re at ninety five satiety out of a hundred. You want to eat this awesome meal that provides a buff. However, it also fill twenty six satiety. That means you overfill your satiety pool by twenty one. If you overfill by more than eighty percent of the meal’s satiety, you get a debuff. That makes your regeneration four times slower. Same for drinks and hydration,” it was a bit long winded, but they seemed to understand.

After a few minutes of silence, as they dispatched another four rabbits in our path, Ed asked, “How soon can you’ve more manastones ready, and what is it going to cost me?”

“Depending on my luck, as short as ten minutes and as long as two hours, can’t really say when things are decided by RNG, even when you’re using manual mode.”

“What is RNG?” Nise asked with a distracted tone, and immediately started blushing when she noticed everyone was looking at her.

“Random number generator,” I provided the answer, and turned back to Ed, “And they should go for five silver if they can’t be recharged. A few extra copper if they can be recharged.”

“How can you make them so cheap? That’s a fourth of the price I paid earlier.”

“Manastones are cheap, but time consuming to produce, but there’s a large demand on them. They’re the power source of almost everything.”

“I see,” he muttered and ran over to help the others handling a few rabbits that was on an intercept course.

When we arrived back at the gate, I immediately set up my tables. While Nise dealt with the players that wanted to buy food or sell rabbits. I noticed that the Bears were out in force, and had increased their numbers to twenty something. And my group got the stink eyes from quite a few of them.

The first task was transforming some of the flowers into a viscous acidic liquid in an alchemical cauldron, which should take about ten minutes. Then I would add a dozen of the slime cores the others had retrieved from the Sewer Dungeon. I could also use the horns from the rabbits, but I had other plans for them. The liquid would melt the cores over the course of ten minutes, and then you would have a manastone solution of a specific element. If successful, I would have a hundred uses in one portion.

The good thing about the whole thing was that the process was automatic, except for putting in the ingredients. So after setting up the alchemical cauldron I had bought back at character creation, activated it with the fire manastone and thrown fifty Sour Joys of below average quality into it with a bit of water; it would take care of itself for the next ten minutes. Before doing something else, I checked the overlay.

Basic Acidic Alchemical Liquid

Alchemy Level: 0

Lowest Quality: Below Average

Highest Quality: Below Average

Best Possible Quality: Below Average

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 64%

Flawed - 24%

Success - 12%

Base experience: 10 XP

It was the best I could do. I actually hoped for a flawed outcome, because it would make the quality Poor, which would make the chances of success higher in the end. While the first attempt was underway, I decided to cook a few skewers. Mostly to benefit my guild mates.

I was lucky with my first attempt to create the Liquid and got a Flawed Success. However, I was not that lucky on the next phase of crafting the manastone solution. It turned out to be a failure and wasted almost half the fire slime cores that I had. The second attempt at creating the Liquid was met by a failure, while the third turned out to be a Success.

While a Success should be celebrated it was not really what I wanted, because it cut down my chances of success by six percent. I weighed my options. A fire manastone solutions was my ultimate goal, because I needed fire manastones to run the alchemical cauldron. However, the low success rate scared me. Because I was using a below average quality liquid, I would be crafting at a higher difficulty, even if the best outcome possible was poor. In the end I threw in some earth cores instead of the fire cores, which I had far fewer of.

Manastone Solution, Earth Aspected

Alchemy Level: 0

Lowest Quality: Poor

Highest Quality: Below Average

Best Possible Quality: Poor

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 64%

Flawed - 24%

Success - 12%

Base experience: 50 XP

Of course I was met with a success, which was great, but I was still cursing myself for not throwing in the fire cores. Nevertheless, I was now able to create earth aspected manastones for Ed. I managed to create a water aspected solution as well, but it was of very poor quality. I also managed to somehow botch a second attempt at a fire aspected solution. Meaning I would have to invest a whole damn gold coin in it.

“Sorry Ed, I can only make some earth manastones, or some cheaper water manastones with a lower mana pool,” I informed him, as I packed away the alchemical cauldron and then turned to my manastone kit.

“Earth will be fine, they make the best tanks,” he grunted. Nodding, I got down to the business of creating the manastones for him. Out of five attempts I managed to get two flawed successes, which put them on par with the manastones he was already using. With a bit of help from Nise, I had both of them imbued in less than half an hour. Regenerating the mana put Meditation over the top, and it levelled up. Cobbled that with the level up to Butchery I managed to achieve while waiting for the cauldron to do its work, it meant I had just hit level 4. I was catching up to the others.

“We’ll go run the Sewer Dungeon now, but it would be nice if there were more manastones ready by then,” Ed grunted, a bit distracted.

With thick sarcasm, I replied, “Sure thing boss.”

I saw a quick wince, before he hurried away. The others trailing after him as fast as possible. Nise looked at me after a few minutes, “He seems rather upset with you for some reason.”

“He think there’s things I’m not telling him.”

“Are there?” she asked quietly after a minute.

“Yes, but I can’t tell him the specifics he wants. Simply because I don’t know them, but I trust the person who told me some secrets about the game implicitly,” I admitted, after making sure there was no one around to hear me. She looked at me for a few seconds, as if she was looking for signs of deceit or something. With a nod, she turned her attention back to looking at the players fighting rabbits.

Looking in the cart, I saw I had more rabbits than I could possibly hope to butcher, so I sent out messages to nearby players telling them the shop was closing down for now. Turning my attention to Nise, “I’m going to close shop, I got enough rabbits to keep me busy for the rest of the day. You should take a stroll around town and get acquainted with it. We meet at the main square shortly before ten pm.”

“Okay,” she replied and walked back to town, with her shoulders a bit slumped. I know it sucked, but the skills she had taken did not lend itself to a very active playstyle. If she had gone the animal training route, it was a different thing. However, they needed a lot of feed, which she would have to grow first. I pulled up my character sheet and distributed the attribute points in the same pattern that I had done so far.

Name

Damian Heosphoros

Race

Human

Class

Locked

Level

4

Skill Points

0/5

Upgrade Points

0

Skill Cap

10

Skills Learned

11

XP Penalty

11%

Health

100/100

Stamina

360/360

Mana

50/50

Unassigned Attribute Points: 0

Strength: 14

Agility: 10

Dexterity: 18

Endurance: 18

Vitality: 10

Spirit: 10

Resonance: 10

With a lot on my mind, like how to make the new girl feel useful, and the drama with Ed, I turned my attention to butchering rabbits and making manastones.

After five hours of grueling work, butchering over a hundred rabbits, I found myself out of glass jars to store any more rabbit blood. In fact I had to throw some out. It had been almost a day since I had last visited the poor district, and I figured I might need to pass through. From the conversation I had with the Barauk and Firan the day before, I had gathered they had some food stored away, but it would not last them long.

I decided I had to do better, and on the way there I intended to go by Fillard’s Sundries to sell some of the loot and see if I could pick up some extra provisions. On the way there, I went through the inventory to take stock of my gains for the day. The most exciting was the two rabbit’s feet I had managed to gather. Both of them came from red rabbits. Since my Butchery level had increased, the chances of getting the feet had finally changed, to 0.6%. After checking on how many horns I had, I noticed that I actually had enough loot to hand in all three quests. Which meant that Fillard would have to wait.

First stop would be the Adventurers’ Association. AA, a ridiculous acronym really. And then I would shop, before going to work on the quest in the poor part of Blackport. As I went I rearranged my inventory, dragging the correct sacks from the cart to my personal inventory.

Inside the Association, I found a handful of players at the windows to pick up new quests, but no one was there to turn in quests, which meant that only a single clerk managed that section of windows. I recognized all of the players, since they had all sold me rabbits. To be honest, most of the players in Blackport had at least sold me a few rabbits. Even the Bears, before Kira kicked their leader’s butt.

Stepping up to the window, the clerk said in a bored voice, “I know I’m not doing anything, but I can’t give you any quests. You’ve to queue up over there.”

“Well, I’m not here to pick up quests, but turn some in,” I was a bit irritated by the clerk. She might have been dealing with impatient players, but that was no excuse for behaving unprofessionally.

“Oh,” that perked her up, “Which quests are you here to turn in?”

“An Odious Task. Horns, Horns, Horns. And Holy Horns,” I put up the sacks in order as I answered, and quickly took in the system prompts as I completed the quests.

Quest Completed

An Odious Task (x10)

Reward

5 silver coins

+40 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

Quest Completed

Horns, Horns, Horns (x5)

Reward

10 silver coins

+25 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

Quest Completed

Holy Horns

Reward

5 silver coins

+10 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

It was exactly what I had expected to pop up in front of me. What I did not expect was the cascade of windows that followed the last one.

You’ve unlocked the achievement Completed All Starter Quests.

The previous achievement has been upgraded to First to Complete All Starter Quests in Blackport.

The previous achievement… in Astia.

The previous achievement… in the Empire of the Endless Sky.

The previous achievement has been upgraded to First to Complete All Starter Quests in the World.

Do you wish for the Individual or Guild Reward Package for your One Time Rewards?

Another prompt popped up, but I minimised it while staring at the prompt in front of me. I was stumped. Sure I had known that most people would steer clear of the starter quests, heck even the beta testers did, because this achievement had not been in the beta. So to the beta testers the quests would have you operate on a loss, and there were easier ways to grind reputation with the Association.

I pondered the decision for a moment. The Individual reward would probably mean XP I could assign to my skills, which would be a big help since I was sporting that 11% penalty. On the other hand the Guild reward would probably include Guild Points, the guild system’s XP. It was a tough decision, but in the end I chose the guild over myself.

Completed All Starter Quests

1 Upgrade Point

+25 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

First to Complete All Starter Quests in Blackport

1 Upgrade Point

+50 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

50 Guild Points

First to Complete All Starter Quests in Astia

1 Upgrade Point

+100 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

100 Guild Points

First to All Starter Quests in the Empire of the Endless Sky

1 Skill Slot

+200 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

200 Guild Points

First to Complete All Starter Quests in the World

1 Skill Slot

+400 Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association

400 Guild Points

That looked like some good rewards, but before I could even process the spoils, a new cascade of prompts assaulted me.

Your guild, Blue Lotus, has levelled up and is now a Level 1 Guild. As the guild leader you need to visit the nearest Temple to activate the guild’s reward.

Your guild, Blue Lotus, has unlocked the achievement First Recognized Guild in Blackport.

The previous achievement… in Astia.

The previous achievement… in the Empire of the Endless Sky.

The previous achievement has been upgraded to First Recognized Guild in the World.

‘Oh crap, what the fuck did I just do?’ was my first thought when I saw the last achievement. I actually started to hyperventilate. In my previous life it was Dawnguard that had been the first guild, in fact I was surprised they had not already completed it. Aragoth had to have been racking up quite a few first achievements by now, and Dawnguard would have been grinding guild points.

“Congratulations Sir, you’re the first in the world to complete all starter quests completely. We’re very happy that you’ve earned such an achievement for our Association,” the clerk practically beamed and the sudden shift in her attitude shook me out of my shocked stupor.

“Uhm, thanks,” I mumbled. Pulling up the minimized prompt confirmed my suspicion.

Your Reputation with Astia’s Adventurers’ Association has been increased by 850 points. Your Reputation makes them Like you.

Raise your reputation to 1000 for Friendly

Lower your reputation to 499 for Accepting

Current Reputation: 850

That was a whole lot of reputation at once. The higher your reputation the more quests there were available. However, while the Association was united across all kingdoms and empires, each kingdom had its own branch. And you would need to build up your reputation with each of them separately.

After bidding the clerk goodbye, I made my way out of the Association on unsteady legs. What had just happened would have serious ramifications. I could not even start to fathom how this would affect my plans. It should not change the outcome of Carn Online, Dawnguard would still manage to grab that victory. At least I hoped. I needed for them to win. Otherwise Silvertech might choose another path. And I had no way of predicting what they would do then, nor have any way of revealing it.

While it seemed like it most likely would not change the outcome, it could have severe consequences for Blue Lotus. The spotlight from just one fight had made dozens of people want to join us. Though no one wanted to sign our contract, except Nise, but that was for another reason.

With an achievement like that, the attention we would be getting was incalculable at the moment. And probably set off another discussion with Ed. He wanted to expand the guild, and the fame would make it very easy to do. However, as I had explained to Robin, we did not have the foundation for a rapid expansion. And I was wary of people joining the guild. I had a lot of secrets, and I needed people invested in my mission, not in the fleeting fame of being in the first recognized guild in the game.

It would also make us a target for the other guilds who had been racing towards the achievement. Me personally as well. While they could not know for sure that it was me that triggered it, but by looking at the timestamps of the achievements, it would not require much of a leap of logic to connect the two events.

The big guilds could take different approaches, but few of them would be aligning with my or Blue Lotus’ interests. Which meant I would be pissing off the big guilds when I declined them. Which in turn would make us an even bigger target. I could see all this as probable outcomes. However, I could not accurately predict their response without a lot of data that I did not have in this timeline.

The headache I had intensified, and my vision started to get blurry, when I suddenly felt a shove from behind. Not a hard one, but it still caught me by surprise and sent me stumbling forward; almost falling flat on my face. Looking back at my assailant, I noticed I had stopped in the door. The guy who had shoved looked at me with a frown, “Sorry, you were blocking the door. I tried asking you to move a few times.”

“I’m sorry,” I blushed at my blunder and hurried toward the Temple. I was almost halfway across the square when I remembered my cart. Irritated at my self, I made my way back to the cart and splashed some water on my face. It had no ingame benefit or mechanic. It was a purely instinctive thing I did without thinking, all in an effort to get my concentration back on what was in front of me. Not lost in hundreds of different what ifs and what nots.

The temple was a large stone building. It was made from white stone, maybe marble, and done up like the classic temples of the Roman Empire. Lots of tall columns on the front of the building, each of them around two and a half times taller than me. A stair with a handful of steps led up to the doors, which was at least three meters tall, and wide open.

A man was standing on the bottom step of the stairs, and looking in my direction. He was old and bald. I was bad at guessing ages, but I would put him somewhere in his eighties or older. Yet he brimmed with strength, and did not seem frail at all. If not for all the wrinkles and the air of wisdom, he could easily have passed for a much younger man.

When I tried to use Observe on him, I got nothing but question marks. Not even a name. That was when I remembered that you could not gain any information on the servants of the Gods. Even though I was still twenty meters or so from the temple, I could see his smile widened as I used Observe.

As I got within a few meters of the temple, he stepped down and greeted me, “Greetings, the Gods informed me that you would be coming by. On behalf of the Pantheon, I would like to congratulate your guild on your accomplishments.”

“Thank you, the notification told me to come to the temple,” I said. To be honest I did not know what was about to happen. When I was in Index, they did not care about the guild level, and the information regarding the guild mechanisms in the game was handled by someone else. By the time I joined Dawnguard, it was already levelled up to a high level.

“Indeed. Please follow me,” he said and started walking around the temple, “Now that Blue Lotus has reached level one and has been recognized as an official guild, you’re gaining access to the guild warehouse.”

“Oh,” was all I said. It made sense actually. The temple ran the guild warehouse as well as the Exchange. The Exchange was the place you went to sell your coins for real life credit. The guild warehouse was not that useful later on, because of its limited size. However, for a small upstart guild it would be fine.

“The space available to your guild depends on the level. You can store a hundred kilos worth of items for each level of your guild,” the priest explained as he led me to the back of the temple. Here was another, less grand, entrance. It was big enough to allow horse drawn wagons to enter. There were no doors, so you were able to see into the large room.

The inside of the room was probably thirty meters wide and twenty meters deep. Meaning it was half the entire length of the temple. Immediately to the right was a long counter for selling your coins. The rest of the room was pretty much empty. Under the rafters you could see close to a hundred globes of light. If you looked closely, you could see translucent, almost invisible, figures holding them. As soon as we stepped into the room, one of the lights floated down.

It stopped a bit off to the side, and without prompting from the priest I made my way to it. Now that it was on its own, it was easier to see the figure. Up close it looked like a quarter sized human with wings. The priest started his explanation, “This is an access globe. It reads what items in the guild warehouse you’ve access to. If you touch and think about opening it, you will see an inventory grid like you’re used to. If you focus on an item, it will tell you how many contribution points it will cost. It’ll also automatically award contribution points when putting items in.”

He then went on to tell how the Unseen Servants would fetch items from the vault beneath the temple, or put them there. The vault could not be entered by living beings, and was only accessible by teleport if you knew the coordinates and had clearance. After ten minutes of instructions on how to set permission and so on, I thanked him and left. I should probably have checked what permanent benefits the different titles provided, but I was already working on an information overload, and could not process any more.

I had just returned to the square when I saw Ed and his party standing on the other side, looking around for something. Nise was also with them. Blaze was the one to spot me, and he pointed me out with a shout before taking off in my direction. A small bitter thought entered my mind, ‘Great, just what I fucking need. More talking, sharing of information. I just need some time to process!’

“Whatever you did, it’s totally awesome,” Blaze shouted as he almost slid to a stop in front of me. The others had followed in a more sedate pace, but had still jogged over.

“Yeah, what did you do?” Ed questioned with a slight wheeze. It was probably more of an instinctual wheeze, because unless you ran out of stamina or was submerged, you should not have trouble breathing.

“Uhm, completed all the starter quests, and it seems I was the first. Got a lot of guild points as a reward,” I smiled sheepishly. I might not want to deal with them, but there was no reason to be impolite.

“You don’t say,” Ed scoffed.

Robin just smiled, “Congratulations.”

Kira chimed in, “Yeah, now that you’ve completed all the starter quests can you tell us what we get?”

“Sure, you get an upgrade point and twenty five reputation points with the Association.”

“That’s a good reward,” Ed commented, and then examined me through squinted eyes, “Why would the beta testers be recommending not to complete them, saying they’re not worth it?”

“Obvious they want to keep it to themselves,” Blaze rolled his eyes. Ed looked like he was about to counter that argument, but instead stopped and just stared suspiciously at me.

“What does this mean for the guild? And do you have horns enough for us to complete the two other quests?” Robin asked.

I actually groaned hearing that question, drawing a few wondering looks. With a sigh I said, “As for the horns, that’s a negative. I’ll put in as many as I can tomorrow. To what it means for the guild, I need to process. We can talk about that after training. Right now, I need to show you how the guild warehouse works. Then you don’t need to track me down to get contribution points for them. Or pick up items.”

I spent ten minutes showing them the warehouse and setting up permissions. Afterwards they went back to what they did before. Kira and Nise went into the temple proper, while the rest of Ed’s squad headed out to hunt rabbit. I headed off to feed the poor. As I stopped in front of the Butcher, I suddenly remembered that I forgot to buy more provisions.

“Fuck!” I cursed my own scatter brainedness out loud, drawing me more than a few odd looks. Ducking my head, a bit shameful that I cursed in front of children, I started setting up for another round of marathon barbecue. Still without the sauce.