We had just returned from our daily herb run the day after our trip to the rabbit dungeon. The others had been disappointed by the haul from the dungeon, and so had I. However, we had been unlucky and had only been afforded two hours there. If we had gotten an instance with time compression it would be better. The others had learned one thing, the value of the sour bombs, so they were willing to escort Nise and I around to the patches without extra contribution points. They still earned a lot of CPs from the rabbits they killed, so it was not like it was a loss for them.

There were a couple of things we had found that had me giddy, though. The different glowing moss was the major thing. The other was the four clumps of salt I had managed to mine from the second node I mined. It was not enough to really ramp up my cooking, since it was only enough to season sixty skewers. For the moment I would just leave it to the side. With any luck I would have access to a lot of thyme and carrots soon. Just one more day left for Nise’s fields to mature to the point she could harvest them.

However, what I could focus on immediately, was the glowing moss. When I had logged in over six hours ago, I had set course for the alchemical supplier. A run down shop with little inventory with only a basic stock. Luckily, what I needed was basic items. I bought a potion measuring cup, one jar of pure alchemical alcohol and twenty five potion bottles. Which should be enough to get me going. Unless I failed spectacularly.

The first step in making beneficial potions was making the base for the potion. That required a source of holy elemental powder. For that I had the white horns of the horned rabbits. Other places had other sources, such as horned rats or horned cats. There was definitely a theme going on with regards to the monsters in the immediate vicinity of the starting locations. The second would by adding the crushed dried moss.

With sweat dripping down my forehead, I was grinding ten horns from the white rabbits. Not because it was hard labour, but because I was nervous. I only had ten horns and if I failed, I would be unable to make any potions for the rest of the day. Unless I was really lucky with my Butchery. With an eye on the crafting overlay and one on the event log, I kept grinding the horns into a fine powder.

Holy Elemental Powder

Alchemy Level: 1

Lowest Quality: Below Average

Highest Quality: Below Average

Best Possible Quality: Below Average

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 61%

Flawed - 26%

Success - 13%

Base experience: 25 XP

When I saw the entries ticking in on the event log, I let out a victorious “Yes!”, earning a frightened squeak from Nise.

>You’ve finished crafting: Holy Elemental Powder.<

>Rolling for outcome: 3.<

>You’ve achieved a Success. Awarding 47 Alchemy XP.<

“Sorry,” I hurriedly said with a big goofy grin on my face.

She waved her hand, as if to say it was okay, “What happened?”

“Got a success, which is great, or I would have wasted ten silvers’ worth of materials.”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“It gets even better, now I can attempt to craft healing, stamina and mana potions, twenty five attempts to be exact. Meaning there’s more goods for you to sell,” I said the last part cautiously, looking for her reaction. She was a shy one, and I was still unsure how she felt about the whole interacting with customers. I had not observed any problems so far, but you never knew.

“Really?” she perked up a little, and fumbled with the sour bomb she had just finished crafting.

“Yes, I hope you’re still good with being what’s basically a shop clerk?”

She hesitated for a bit, looking around as if to ensure we were alone, before answering, “I actually kinda like it, I thought I would hate it.”

I was surprised, and just had to know, “Oh, why is that?”

She took some time before answering, it did not look like she would not answer the question. Her face was scrunched up, as if she was thinking hard about the question. I wanted to give her the time to think of the answer, so I turned my attention to my own crafting. First I put a fire manastone in my alchemical cauldron, and poured the alcohol and elemental powder in it. Luckily this step could not fail, it just had to cook in the cauldron for at least thirty minutes. It would burn off the alcohol, and dissolve the powder.

I had just started to crush the moss I had dried the day before, when she finally answered, “I’m not comfortable around people, never was. Became worse after I lost my sight. I guess it’s a combination of being able to see again, and maybe missing human contact more than I thought I ever would.”

She took a deep breath, “It’s great seeing them walk away with a small smile after I’ve paid them for the rabbits. And even better is that I can just observe them as they talk. If I don’t want to, I don’t need to interact with them more than necessary to complete the transaction. Or I can strike up some small talk. It feels safe, and I get to decide how much interaction beyond the necessary there is.”

I waited for a moment, making sure she had finished her answer, “That’s great. Feeling safe is very important. The others might have told you that I was a teacher?”

She just nodded, so I continued, “I’m an introvert like you. I was also very shy when I was younger. Still am, actually. However, teaching assistant was the only job I could find after finishing my history degree. It was horrible at first. I was horrible. But with time, I learned to enjoy teaching the kids, and broke through my shell. I’m still shy and an introvert, but I’ve learned to set aside my natural inclinations. And my life has become richer for it.”

“You don’t seem shy,” she commented.

“There’s an old saying, ‘Fake it till you make it’. That’s what I’m doing.”

“But isn’t that lying?”

“A bit I guess, I would call it a white lie. Think of it like a work uniform. My job required me to be one way, so I eventually got a personality that fit those requirements. I don that persona when it’s necessary for me to be around other people, or if I want to,” I mused out loud, “However, by now it has become a side of me, more than a suit I wear when needed. I wouldn’t say that I’m exclusively an introvert any longer, it no longer bothers me to be around other people and interacting with them, unless it’s a really large crowd. However, it’s still my natural instinct to be alone.”

“I see,” she commented thoughtfully. We fell into silence, as we worked on each of our projects. Again, it was not an uncomfortable silence, but a companionable silence. Only broken when Nise dealt with a group coming to offload their rabbits.

Grinding the moss into powder counted as Herbalism, which meant my chances was a bit higher than when I was grinding the horns. On account that my Herbalism skill was level 5 versus the level 1 of Alchemy. The result was a bit lackluster, more than half turned into motes of light. And of the remaining, I only had a single powdered moss of below average quality, but not that I had a lot to start with. I also managed to eek out thirteen of poor quality while the last thirty eight was of very poor quality.

It would be some watered down potions I could make out of that, but it was the only player created potion in Blackport as far as I knew. So far, I had yet to observe any of the other players, besides Nise and I, partake in any crafting skills.

I started pouring the ground moss in potion bottles. I decided to focus on healing and mana potions, with only a few attempts at stamina potions. Doing some calculations on possible XP earnings, I saw that it was highly unlikely that I would level up my alchemy skill, so it would not matter what order I crafted the potions in. I picked up one at random, a poor quality mana potion.

Mana Potion

Alchemy Level: 1

Recipe Used: No

Lowest Quality: Poor

Highest Quality: Below Average

Combined Crafting Points: 25

Highest Crafting Points of the Materials: 15

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 65%

Flawed - 22%

Success - 11%

Exceptional - 2%

Brilliant - 0%

Master Work - 0%

Base experience: 50 XP

Looking at the abysmal success rate and limited number of crafting points, I could only grit my teeth. I knew it would be a grind for the first twenty levels until you reached Apprentice tier, then the chances would improve faster with each level up. As well as give access to subskills, which would provide more crafting points.

Picking up the measuring cup, I dipped it in the cauldron, filling it. The cup had a small protrusion at the lip, which made it much easier to pour into the bottle. After pouring the content of the measuring cup into the bottle, I stoppered the bottle and began shaking it.

After ten seconds I noticed a very welcome entry in my event log.

>You’ve finished crafting: Mana Potion.<

>Rolling for outcome: 1.<

>You’ve achieved an Exceptional Success. Awarding 99 Alchemy XP.<

That was unbelievably lucky turn of events for me. With a smile, I turned my attention back to the changed crafting overlay.

Item Name

Crafting Points

Mana

Time

Cooldown

Mana Potion

31

0

60 seconds

300 seconds

There was not a lot of options to invest the crafting points in; there was only three. It would change with more complex potions, but I did not have the skill levels to attempt those yet. I could only change how much mana was regenerated, and over which time period it was regenerated, as well as how long the cooldown period was. You could drink another potion before the cooldown were over, however it would give you a debuff because of potion overuse. Pouring all my points into mana, I discovered it cost 3 points for each increase.

I reckoned the last point was better spent on time instead of cooldown. Not that it made a lot of difference in the grand scale of things, but I had the spare point, so I might as well invest it. In the end I ended up with a Mana Potion that regenerated 10 points of mana over 59 seconds, with a 5 minute cooldown. The best thing was that it was worth 10 silver and 1 copper if I sold it to a store. I could easily get fifteen silvers or a gold for it if I sold to the players. Extra mana in a fight could mean extra spells, which could be the difference between life and death.

I quickly moved on to the next potion, another poor quality mana potion. After ten seconds, I excitedly kept an eye on the event log, when the bottle exploded in my hand. The pain was intense but brief, it was more the shock that had me screaming like someone was killing me.

Shards of glass were embedded in my hand, but after a few seconds they turned to motes of light, and the cuts visibly closed in front of my eyes.

“What happened?” Nise asked anxiously.

“I failed,” I muttered. I had known I would fail, but I had forgotten the part about potions exploding when failing. With a 65% of completely failing, I would have to be prepared for that to happen more often. Looking at my health, I saw that it had shaved 5 points of health, dropping me to 95. I could only fail another 18 times before I had to stop. With a wry chuckle I thought, ‘At least Ed and his party can practice their healing magic on me.’

After I finished all of them, my hand hurt. Not really hurt, but just the mere thought of the potions, made it ache with phantom pains. A total of sixteen potions had exploded in my hand. Meaning I had 9 potions of different success and quality. Four healing potions, two stamina and three mana.

If I sold it to a store, I would do so at a loss. The store would pay me 4 gold, 3 silver and 19 coppers for those 9 potions. Meanwhile I had spent 4 gold and 10 silver in materials to create them, not counting the four mana drained from the fire manastone. The good news was that I should be able to sell them to the players for a bit more; almost six gold. Not a huge profit, but for a first attempt with shitty materials, it was not bad.

Turning to Nise, I showed her my creations, “I’d like it if you could sell these for me. I know that I gave you half the coins for whatever food you sell, but I would like to change our deal. Instead I’d like to pay you ten percent commision on anything you sell. I know it’s a step back on the food, but if I can buy those carrots and thyme you get tomorrow, I can begin to create more expensive food.”

“Uhm, sure. That sounds okay,” she hesitated a bit, “It’s not like you’re selling a lot of food.”

“Should change when I start selling food with buffs,” I grinned. I then told her the prices I wanted for each potion, before sending a message to some of the nearby players, advertising that we had a limited amount of potions for sale. The prices I charged was between ten and twenty five percent less than the NPC stores charged. And they had a very limited amount of products for sale as well.

The players that received the message all stopped fighting the rabbits, and like a stampeding herd descended on poor Nise. Or at least that is how I imagined it looked like for her. Chuckling, I went back to do what I did best: Butchering rabbits.

Two hours later, I saw Ed’s party approaching my little stall, a sixth guy following them. He looked familiar for some reason. Medium height, stocky build, red brownish hair and small goatee. When I checked his name with Inspect my arm stopped moving. I just stood there staring, with a cleaver in hand and arm raised, preparing to chop the head off the rabbit on the table. I was looking at Phil Ewers.

‘What the fuck is he doing here?’ I thought, while my mind was racing through the memories seeing him brought to the surface. Ewers and his father had been legendary craftsmen in my previous timeline. They had started on the new continent and been successful shipwrights.

As far as I recalled they had not joined the game until after the Challenges were announced. By the time the main continent was destroyed, they already had a booming business, but afterwards when the importance of ships and airships increased, they really took off. All the big guilds wanted one of their ships, but in the end Dawnguard managed to snatch them away. Aragoth had convinced them to join Dawnguard, and I had met father and son a few times.

Realizing how stupid I looked, I completed my downswing, and hurried through the last steps of butchering the rabbit. Not caring one whit what loot I actually got. Trying to appear normal, I greeted them in what I hoped was a casual manner, when they reached the stall, “Hey guys. Done with the dungeon runs?”

“Yeah, and almost out of manastone, do you have any?” Ed asked.

“Only two earth manastones, I was just about to craft more,” I handed him the two I had ready, and the system deducted two hundred CPs from him. He just grunted.

Robin then introduced me to Phil, “Damian, this is Phil Ewers. He contacted me earlier and said he was interested in joining. He’ll even sign the contract if we can ensure there’s room for his parents.”

“Hey Phil, pleasure to meet you,” I offered my hand.

Shaking it with a strong grip, or would have been if he had more than ten strength, he said, “Pleasure is mine. I saw your interview yesterday, and reckoned I would give it a try. My parents transferred all their credits to me before they went into the boxes. They expect me to come up with a way to earn enough money to get them out of there. You seemed confident that you had found a way to do it.”

“Well, I can’t assure it, but I’m confident of a high degree of success. Though I can’t guarantee it’ll be immediately, I can promise that we’ll work towards it. Family members have priority as we get the credits. Right now we’re just starting up—”

“So a lot of resources gets reinvested into getting more, I get it.”

He was straight forward, just as I remembered him to be. We had not been friends, but I had met and talked with him from time to time. He was more interested in art and design than actually building the boats. That was his father’s domain. I still could not believe that I had a chance of getting the Ewers & Sons Shipwrights to join my guild.

“So you find that acceptable?” I queried, actually nervous that he would decline. The truth was that we did not need more members before we had a more solid foundation, but having the chance to hire the best shipwrights before they became famous was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“I’m still not sure if it’s a feasible idea, earning money in game, but from the follow up interviews they did with your guild mates, it seemed like you invested your entire fortune in this. Meaning you’ll be in the boxes next to me and my parents if it fails,” he answered with his no-nonsense attitude.

“You’re not wrong.”

“Since you’re in the same boat, I’ll throw in my lot. I already picked up the skills your lady friend there—”

“I’m not his lady friend!” Robin protested.

However, Phil ignored her and continued, “— said you recommended for all crafters. I asked the guy or girl, whatever that thing was, in the library about them, but I can’t figure out why you’d recommend Imbue?”

“Most tools you’ll end up using will be magical in nature, meaning they need manastones to run. With Imbue you can recharge them yourself, not have to pay people to do it for you,” I answered and shot an apologetic smile at Robin who was fuming a bit.

“I see. Do you have any questions for me?”

Realizing the snafu I almost made, I quickly asked, “What skills are you interested in?”

“Well mostly interested in arts, sculptures and that kind of things. Family lore tells that we’re descendants of some great shipwrights in the eighteen century or something, so might pick up that. I know my father will definitely want to build ships. He’s obsessing over them.”

“We don’t really need boats or ships, we should get more fighters instead,” Ed commented.

I shot Ed a dirty look, before looking back at Phil, “Don’t mind him. He’s right we need warriors, but we also need craftsmen. And there’s not a single skills for sculptures—”

“I thought I read somewhere you can make sculptures,” Phil interrupted, brows furrowed with concern or frustration.

“Oh you can, but there’s not a single skill governing it. If you want to make a sculpture out of stone you use Stone Cutting, if you want to make it out of wood, you use Carpentry. If you want to build ships, you start with Carpentry and then take sub-skills like Keel Construction or the more general Shipwright.”

“I see,” Phil nodded, “Well, if you want a carpenter, I’m your guy.”

“Welcome to the guild,” I grinned and shook his hand once more, as well as inviting him to the guild.

Ed grumbled loudly, “I must protest, we need fighters, not more crafters.”

“Ed, this is tiring. Look at your weapons, their structure rating must be low by now. You need new weapons soon, instead of buying them in the shops, you can get them from our own crafter,” I said in a harsh tone. I would definitely need to talk with him soon. I considered doing it during the next break, but he would barely talk to anyone in the real world.

“Fine,” he turned around to walk away.

“Not so fast Ed. First we need to get some trees cut down for him to work with, and then we should do another run at the Rabbit Warren,” I said with authority.

“But it’s—” he started to protest.

“No buts, we need to maximize our efficiency and work together. Remember the contract, it’s not a request but an order. While the first run at the Rabbit Warren was not that lucrative, if we get one of the better time dilations it’ll allow us to grind faster.”

Phil ignored the by-play with Ed, seemingly unfazed by his unwelcoming attitude, “I didn’t buy any tools, not knowing how to best allocate the resources. But if we’re going to fell some trees, I’ll need an axe, a saw and a wagon or something.”

“That can wait, I got everything we need to cut down trees. You can borrow mine until then. Since you’re starting out and haven’t gotten a level yet, stick to level one trees.”

“The trees have levels?” Blaze asked with an incredulous tone.

“Yup, determines how much durability they have, how long it takes to cut down and so on,” I explained and started prepping the cart by removing everything Phil did not need, turning to Robin I asked, “Can you teach him the basics of Message and Observe and all that on the way there? Oh, and Meditation as well.”

“Sure,” she said.

Turning to Ed, I said, “Stick to the edge of the forest, don’t enter. Even just skirting the edge you risk being attacked by wolves, foxes and boars. Maybe even a bear.”

“Level range?” he asked with a frosty expression on his face. The others had drawn away a bit, welcoming Phil to the guild.

“Anywhere from five to low twenties if you’re unlucky. Take some of the sour bombs if you don’t already have them.”

Maybe I was a bit overbearing, because he snarled, “Don’t tell me how to prepare for PvE or dungeons.”

Seeing an opportunity, to snarl back without the others easily overhearing us, “And don’t tell me how to run the guild. I agree we need fighters, but we also need the support to outfit you. Understood?”

He actually stepped a few steps back, looking a little taken aback. He nodded, before going over and welcoming Phil to the guild, though it sounded a bit forced. Shaking my head I went back to pulling out items from the cart. I was surprised by the low number of rabbits. It looked like Nise was not buying that many.

A few minutes later, it was only me and Nise left at the stall. I reckoned I might as well get clarification on the issue, “I see there’s not a lot of rabbits here.”

“Uhm, they’re all looting them to get horns. They want to complete the starter quests,” she stammered.

“Sorry if that came out a bit abrupt, not your fault. I was just wondering,” I apologized quickly, before realizing that it was not entirely bad, “I guess that means I’ll have time to work on my other skills when we run out then.”

We settled into the companionable silence that was becoming customary for us. I decided to knock out a few more manastones. Ed was using them a precipitous rate, but the more he grinded the skills the better.

Despite the sour turn everything with Ed was taking, I was still feeling quite happy. Having hired a legendary crafter, or budding one at least, was a major milestone in securing the future of Blue Lotus. It would seem that something good had come from my major screw up the day before. Of course it had only been a couple of days ingame, and Dawnguard already had a bounty out on us. Who knew what other trouble that small mistake would lead to?

“Hey Damian, I was hoping for a few comments,” the plain looking male standing in front of Nise asked, before his and his companion’s form shimmered, revealing Hannah and Milena.

A lot of trouble, would seem to be the answer to my question. Suppressing the urge to groan, I tried to smile pleasantly, “Hannah, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Just a few follow up questions really, mostly regarding Dawnguard’s bounty.”

“Well, it was an expected response,” I shrugged.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the way most larger guild deal with smaller guild that achieve something, even if by mistake,” I answered and then turned to my manastone kit, “You don’t mind if I work?”

She looked relieved that I was standing with a rock in hand, instead of the rabbits. She shook her head and asked, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The bounty has been retracted, it turns out it was the work of one the vice guild leaders. It was not sanctioned by the rest of the guild,” Hannah explained.

‘Bullshit, more like the Bears fucked up so spectacularly they became trending, and they mentioned the bounty and Dawnguard. Now Aragoth needs to distance himself from those idiots,’ was what I wanted to say. What I ended up saying was, “Well, I’m relieved to hear that Dawnguard is not out to get my small guild.”

“But didn’t you just say that’s how large guilds deal with small guilds?” she probed.

“I said most. Most mean that it’s not all,” I clarified, and decided to try and brown nose Dawnguard a bit, “It lifts my spirit to know that Dawnguard rises above such barbaric practices. We look forward to seeing Dawnguard rise to become the number one guild in this game, as it has done in so many other games.”

I somehow managed to say that without gagging. When Hannah opened her mouth to ask more questions, I sighed and settled in for another interview sessions. I already hated it.