Next day ingame, I became extremely popular, when I informed the independent players about the new quest that would help them get the horns they needed. Personally though, I was on pins and needles, waiting for Nise’s carrots and thyme to finish growing. I seriously hoped she got a good roll when it came to using Harvest on the two crops, otherwise she might end up needing to use most of the harvest to make new seeds.

The first couple of hours of the day was just plain terrible, I was so focused on what I would make with the new ingredients that I did not even register when a white rabbit provided me with its foot after butchering it. It was two rabbits later I suddenly realized that I had gotten the foot. The second since I had made my Lucky Charm. Either it worked, or it was just the law of average coming into play. Either way, two new feet from less than sixty rabbits were good.

I was not the only one waiting anxiously for the fields to mature. Nise was looking over at the fields at least once every minute, probably checking the timer. With a chuckle I said, “Waiting is the worst, especially when it’s close.”

“I know, it’s frustrating,” Nise sighed, “Only seventeen more minutes, and thirty five seconds.”

“We’ll just have to suffer for that time then,” I smiled and turned my attention back to the rabbit in front of me. Time moved ever so slowly. First one rabbit butchered, then two rabbits butchered, and it was time for Meditation. Staring at the crops growing, I almost convinced myself I could see them growing, but I knew that was not true. Not unless Nise had gotten her hands on a Plant Growth spell. It was a good spell, but useless for low level characters. The mana requirements were just too high to be effective with anything less than five hundred mana, or a high tier Meditation, where you were able to channel non-combat spells while meditating.

“The carrots are ready,” Nise half-whispered, sounding unsure, “What do I do next?”

“Well, it’s time to pull the carrots out of the ground and put them in sacks,” stating the obvious like the sage I was.

“I mean, is it like Herbalism where it rolls for each carrot?” a bit frustration was noticeable in her voice.

“No, when you pull the first one out of the ground, you’ll unlock a skill called Harvest. If I recall correctly, you just need to pull and put them in sacks. When you’re done with the entire field, it rolls for the result. Determining how much of the crop you keep, and what the quality is.”

“That means with one unlucky roll, I could lose everything?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s a shitty system,” she pouted, but bent down to pull out the first carrot.

“Write an angry message to the developers,” I continued to offer helpful advice.

“You’re just full of bad advice today,” she complained. She was quickly working through the field. Pulling out a carrot every second or so, she would be done with the small one square meter field in only a few minutes.

“I do my best,” I laughed. I should really not sit around and watch her. I had finished regenerating my pools, but I was just too interested in what the outcome would be.

For a few seconds after she had put the last carrot into a sack, she was just staring into space, when she let out a squeal and started jumping up and down, “I rolled an eight!”

“That’s great, congratulations,” I smiled at her exuberance. It only lasted for a few seconds longer, then it looked like she realized what she was doing, and she stopped with a mortified expression on her face. I tried to school my expression when I asked, “So how many carrots did you manage to get?”

“One hundred and six out of one hundred sixty. But it seems I can’t get any better than that with a level zero skill. Did get five hundred and forty XP for Harvest, as well as a fifteen hundred XP for both Farming and Horticulture,” she answered, excitement overriding her embarrassment.

“That’s great, so that means you’re level five now,” I confirmed, “Just in time to test out some new recipes if I could buy those carrots. And the thyme, not to forget the thyme.”

“Ehm, I need to convert some of the carrots into seeds, don’t I?”

“Check your sacks, they should have separated the tops from the carrots. Love video game logic sometimes,” I grinned. When I noticed her eyes unfocusing, a sign of interacting with the interface, I asked, “How many kilos of carrot tops do you have?”

“A bit over three.”

“You need one kilo to attempt to make seed once, so you have three attempts. The good news is that you got a twelve percent chance of having them come out below average quality, the bad is that I only have manastones right now for two attempts,” I explained.

“Uhm, okay. I think I understand how the whole Lesser Transmutation works, but would you still look me over the shoulder? Making sure I don’t make a mistake?” she looked vulnerable when she asked.

“Of course,” I said and handed her six manastones, happy that the system now did all contribution points calculation automatically, another benefit of levelling up, “Here you go.”

“Uhm, could I make a circle and draw three short lines crossing the circle somewhere?” she asked, standing with a piece of chalk in her hand.

“You could do that, personally for three intersecting points, I prefer a triangle,” I smiled.

“Oh, right, I could do that,” she muttered and started drawing a small triangle on her table.

“You should draw it bigger, you need to have the diagram big enough to contain what you’re transmuting.”

“I knew that,” she grumbled, “It’s weird having this information in your head, without ever having learned it. It’s confusing. As soon as you mentioned it, I knew that I knew, I had just not thought about it.”

“I know, it’s very weird, and it’ll take some getting used to,” I patted her on the shoulder. I then mentioned I liked to drawing small circles at each point, because it would make it easier for both manastones to touch the point.

When she started channelling the spell, I went back to butchering rabbits, figuring that standing around staring at her for fifteen minutes would be a tad too creepy.

“I did! I rolled a two,” Nise suddenly celebrated while I was meditating.

‘That’s some luck on that girl, she doesn’t need a Lucky Charm,’ I thought wryly, before sincerely congratulating her, “That great. That means you can go right back to planting a new field. And I can buy all of the carrots from you. How much are they worth by the way.”

“Ten copper a piece,” she said and then frowned, “That means I’ve only earned a silver. The seeds were eight hundred coppers and the manastones were two hundred and forty.”

“Short term yes, but on the other hand you got a bunch of seeds as well, which is worth six hundred coppers as well if you sell it to a store. So just on this one harvest you can say you’ve earned one gold and eleven silver,” I started to reassure her, “But that’s if you only look at it short term. You also earned a lot of XP, which will make the next one easier. And you still have tops that you can turn into seeds. I’ll work on getting some more manastones made. And that’s not taking into account what the next harvest brings.”

“I see what you mean. Need to think long term,” she nodded along, and then started planting the new seeds in the same spot.

“Indeed, it’s that way for any crafting skills. The XP is our biggest reward,” I looked at her patiently as she planted the field again. She then took her sickle and started cutting the thyme plants.

“I rolled a two again,” she exclaimed when she finished cutting the last thyme plant, “Oh, it says it’ll regrow one more time on its own, but I can’t fertilize it, but at least the quality is locked at below average.”

‘This is bullshit, her RNG must be broken,’ I complained in my heart of hearts, but I still felt happy for her, and myself, “That’s great, then you must almost be at level one in Harvest as well?

“Yes, how much of the thyme do I need for trying to get seeds?” she asked.

“How much do you have?”

“It separated into the thyme and the flowers. Can I use the flowers for making seeds?”

“I think so, how much do they weigh? You should need a fourth of what you needed for the carrots. On the account that the fields for Horticulture is the fourth of the size a Farming field is,” I mused out loud.

“So you don’t know everything,” she stated with a teasing tone.

Laughing out loud, I said, “No, definitely not. I might know a bit more than the average player, but definitely not everything.”

“That’s not what Kira said.”

“Oh?” I was confused.

“She said she doubted you in the start, but now she doesn’t.”

“Okay,” I said after a few seconds of confusion. Wanting to get back on track, I asked, “So is there enough flowers for you to attempt?”

“Yeah, but I think I’ll wait until I actually need to plant them, since they’re growing once more.”

“That’s not a bad idea, could I buy all the thyme and carrots then?”

“Sure, coin or contribution points?”

“Points of course,” I laughed, a bit giddy at the thought of finally making food with buffs. Immediately after buying her harvest, I put the thyme out to dry. Afterwards I turned my attention to cooking. The carrots got sliced and diced together with the meat, and I made a mixed rabbit and carrot skewer.

Rabbit-Carrot Skewer

Cooking Level: 4

Recipe Used: No

Effect of Lucky Charm: +1%

Combined Crafting Points: 30

Highest Crafting Points of the Materials: 15

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 52%

Flawed - 30%

Success - 15%

Exceptional - 3%

Brilliant - 0%

Master Work - 0%

Base Experience: 20 XP

I spent five minutes cooking the first ten skewers, because I only put one skewer on every thirty seconds. That way I had time to distribute the crafting points, and make new recipes without ending up overcooking the next ones. It would seem that Nise’s luck had rubbed off on me, and the first skewer was a normal Success. I immediately spent 25 points on adding a buff to Strength. The initial duration was 3 minutes, but each additional point added another 3 minutes. I decided to call it a Hearty Skewer.

Item Name

Crafting Points

Satiety

Other Effect

Duration

Hearty Skewer

0

15

+1 Strength

18 minutes

It was pretty damn good this early in the game. I decided that I would just make two different ones. The Hearty Skewer that boosted Strength and the Skewer of Clarity that added to Resonance. With only one attribute increase, they would do most good as damage increase. If sold directly to the NPC vendors it was worth 25 coppers, but since I was selling to the darling players, they would have to cough up forty.

The next skewer I made was a Flawed Success, which only provided 23 points. That meant I could not add any buff to it, so they just became filled with Satiety. Unfortunately they were only worth four coppers, sold for five to the players, meaning I took a loss. However, a little bit recouped was better than a total loss.

The third skewer I made was an Exceptional Success, meaning I had 38 points to play with. After adding the buff to Resonance and adding 9 points to duration, I discovered something disconcerting. The price to increase the duration went from one to three points, but the duration increase also increased to five minutes. Having spent 37 points total, I used the last point to decrease how much Satiety it filled. Counter intuitive with food, but this piece of food was not meant to be filling, but provide a buff. The less Satiety it filled, the better.

The best part was that it was worth 35 coppers, but would be sold for fifty. After that, I settled into a real rhythm and cooked a total of twenty skewers with carrots and thirty without, though half of them failed. Since most of the players had melee or ranged weapons, I settled on three-two split. Three Strength buffs, then two Resonance buffs. Which should be enough to satisfy the early birds.

In the end I managed to create eight skewers with buffs, which was pretty damn impressive, if I had to say so myself. And after sending messages to players in the field, they were sold in the blink of an eye. Though a bit expensive, the extra oomph to their damage was highly popular. Especially combined with a boost spell. Boost Strength and the likes provided a percentage based buff, not a flat one like the food, meaning that if you increased your Strength before the boost was applied, it boosted the attribute more.

It was a less than an hour later when the party and Phil arrived. He was dragging his own cart this time around. Waving to them, I shouted out my greeting, “Hey guys, here for some grub?”

“What’s grub?” I heard Blaze ask.

“Food,” was One-Eye’s short answer.

Robin called back, “Yup, we’re here for food.”

“I’ll fire up the grill then,” I said, and started to cook some rabbit skewers without carrots. Looking at them, I asked, “So was the rewards good for the crystal thing? I mean besides the one hundred guild points I saw ticking in.”

“Yeah, it was pretty great,” Kira grinned.

“Great?” Blaze mocked, “It was fucking awesome. Two plats each.”

“Ten platinum in total?” I asked for clarification.

“Yes, it seems it goes up to a total of twenty platinums, but then it has to be just right before the wave is released,” Ed answered.

“Hey, did you get any carrots from the field?” Kira asked Nise.

“Yeah, but Damian already bought them. He can make food with buffs now.”

“Really?” Blaze and One-Eye asked simultaneously.

“Yes, but it’s pretty expensive, and we don’t have a lot. The duration is also limited, so I would rather save it, and sell it. We do need money to sell soon, if we’re ever going to get some credits for the real world,” I explained.

“Damn, bland rabbit skewers again,” Blaze muttered.

“Speaking of money, we agreed and put in a platinum of the reward each, so there’s a little money in the guild coffers now,” Robin said with a bright smile.

“Wow,” I was floored, needing a few seconds to process what to say, “That’s great. I hope to soon do the same, but I seem to be tossing money out almost as fast as I get them these days.”

“I think we’ll do the sour joy and lumber run right away, and then head to the Rabbit Warren,” Ed informed me. I was not against the idea, it sounded like an effective use of our time.

A few minutes later we were packed up, and heading for the nearest patch of sour joys. Blaze was being his usual charming self, hassling Nise. That only went on for ten minutes before she screamed, “Why are you being such a disgusting pig?”

“Wh—” he stammered, confusion clearly on his face, “I’m trying to be nice to you.”

“It’s not being nice to talk about how great my ass looks, or what you want to do with it!” she continued shouting at him, any traces of her usual shy self gone.

“Bu— but that’s how my brother talks, and he’s popular with the bit— I mean ladies,” he protested weakly, “I thought you were just playing hard to get.”

Ed interposed himself between Blaze and Nise, “Blaze, you need to stop acting like your brother. He’s dealing drugs and running illegal brothels. The girls have to like him talking that way, but no woman with a choice would prefer being talked to like that.”

“He’s no—” he started to protest, but then deflated. Looking around at the females in the guild, “I’m sorry. I’ll try to stop, but please give me some time.”

Kira and Robin nodded, but Nise just turned her back to him. Clearly still beyond miffed. Now that Ed mentioned it, I recalled there had been talk in the teacher’s lounge about Blaze’s older brother. I had never had the pleasure of teaching him, so I had not paid a lot of attention to the gossip.

We were almost at the sour patch when Robin urgently whispered, “There’s a large group heading in our direction, around twenty or so.”

We all looked back, and saw the group approaching rather quickly. However, they were too far away to Observe, at least at the Beginner tier. It would make no sense for the independent players to group up that many, unless they were heading for the dungeon. Which was not in this direction. That meant it could only be one thing. Frustrated I shared my conclusion, “Blood Bears.”

“Fuck, didn’t they learn their lesson?” Kira grumbled.

“We need to get to the sour joys ASAP,” Ed snapped, and started throwing out sour bombs to clear a path. We followed him and were soon standing in the reeking patch of flowery weeds. The Bears had gained on us, since our party had killed most of the rabbits on the way here. They had come within range of Observe, and it turned out my prediction was correct.

“Listen guys, they’re most likely after me, I’ve done most to piss them off,” I started saying, having found that there was really only one way out of this, “So take my cart and run away. I’ll see if I can stall them for a bit.”

“Damian, we’re not going to leave you to be killed by those bastards,” Kira stated with confidence.

“You’re good, but the five of you can’t fight off over twenty guys on your own. It’s better that only one of us losses their XP, than all of us does,” I rejected her idea.

“Just shut up, and buy me a few minutes,” Ed commanded, and took out a manastone. He summoned an air elemental, he immediately sent floating away from the Bears.

“I thought you were out of all but earth manastones,” I commented.

“Bought a few different ones last night, tired of only having one kind, now shut up and let me concentrate. Try and keep them out of the patch,” he rudely demanded. His eyes turned completely white. I had seen that a lot in my previous timeline; it meant that he was using Shared Senses. Which allowed him to command the elemental from afar. At higher tiers he could even take manual control over the elemental.

Only a minute later, the Bears had killed the few rabbits standing between them and us. They looked for a moment like they wanted to fan out to surround us, but then they would have to kill more rabbits. Iron Bear stepped forward, a shit-eating grin on his face, “Well, look what we got here boys. A few damsels in distress and some phat loot.”

That got him some cheers, but most of the Bears looked wary. One-Eye and Kira was standing in front of us and Ed, with Blaze and Robin a bit to the side, so they had clear firing lines. Phil and Nise had ducked behind one of the carts. Something I wished to do as well, but I figured showing such prudence, would not be in the best interest of the guild at the moment.

Stepping forward, I stood between the siblings. As I did, One-Eye took a step forward as well. I reckoned his intent was to keep me slightly behind him, which would enable him to easily block any attacks against me. With a deep breath to calm my nerves, and block out any thoughts of the pain I would be feeling soon, I said, “Fancy meeting you guys here. Have you taken up Herbalism as well?”

“This guy is just stupid,” Iron Bear said to his friends, but loud enough for us to hear. This drew laughter and jeers from his guild. He then turned back to me, and snarled, “No, we’re not sissies prancing around in flower fields.”

This garnered him more meritment from his guild. Shaking my head. Of course I knew that was not the case, I was just stalling for time, since Ed had asked for it. With fake confusion I asked, “Why else would you be here? It couldn’t be because of the incidents?”

“That’s exactly why we’re going to kill you and skull fuck your corpses,” he shouted. He was a short tempered one. Just the mention of the prior incidents made him trigger.

“You do know that we don’t leave behind a corpse for you to skull fuck?” I asked. I knew I should not be needling him. Nevertheless, I could not help myself, and a fight seemed unavoidable.

“I—” he stammered, “Fuck you and your mother!”

“You’re into necrophilia now?” I asked.

“What?” was his stupefied response.

“Since you want to fuck my mother, who’s deceased, you must be a necrophile,” I reasoned out.

“You’re disgusting,” he screamed, even more red in his face, “Kill them.”

Hearing that, I quickly shouted, “You’re making a mistake.”

The players who had been about to rush us, stopped for a moment, maybe they recalled the last two times I said that. Alas, the pause was momentary because Iron Bear shouted, “I said kill them. Acid, paralyse the freak. I want him to watch us kill his friends.”

With a roar the Bears charged at us. Before I could do anything, ropes of yellow energy shot forward, encircling me, binding me. I had been hit with Shackles, an inferior version of the spell the guards had used on the Bears, since it required continued channelling.

Unable to move, I could only watch as the barrage of spell struck One-Eye’s shield, only a few actually managed to hit him. Kira evaded the spells aimed at her by using Leap and landing in front of the charging players. I saw a few red blurry streaks of light as she started hitting the players in front of her, but then she was lost behind the players that swarmed around her, hiding her from my view. The first to rush at One-Eye was met by the edge of his shield to the throat, followed by a quick stab to his stomach by the sword in One-Eye’s other hand.

A couple of players tried to circle around One-Eye, but the first stumbled to the ground, with green ropes of energy around his ankles. Robin’s Shackle Shot. The other was driven back by Blaze’s spells. For a short while, probably only a handful of seconds, but seemed a lot longer, it seemed like my guild had stemmed the tide.

As soon as I thought that, I jinxed us. Someone managed to trip One-Eye, who fell to his knees. Though he continued to block with his shield and deflecting with his sword, he was in a bad position. It was also at that moment the spell holding me in place was released. It happened so suddenly that I stood for a second looking around like the idiot I was.

An arrow slammed into my stomach, first making me double over from the intense pain, then crashing to my knees. A glance at my health bar showed that I had lost a fifth of my health bar.

Looking up, I saw One-Eye was turtling beneath his shield, when I was hit with another arrow, which had a root spell on it, almost like Shackle Shot; locking me in place once more. Things were looking bad; one of the Bears had slipped past One-Eye. It was at that moment I heard a panicked shout from the backline of the Bears, “Train!”

Looking past the fighting players was hard, as they moved around rapidly. However, I did catch glimpses of Ed’s air elemental rushing the Bears, with a horde of rabbits behind it.

“Tanks to the backline,” Iron Bear ordered, panic making him high pitched, and for a moment all pressure on One-Eye let up, as all of the players started to move back. Iron Bear shouted, “Not all of you, you idiots!”

One-Eye was on his way back to his feet, when a shield bash blindsided him. Stunned, he could not put up a fight as the mages pelted him with spells, stealing away the rest of his health. Someone shouted, “Target the archer. Their mage is out of mana.”

A few players were rushing to my left side, where I had last seen Robin. The earth in front of them started shaking, and an earth elemental shot up in front of them. I think it was the shock of the sudden appearance that made them stumble. The human sized earth elemental started pummelling the nearest players. Each hit reverberated from their shields. The wood groaning from the impacts.

“Blaze, if you’re out of mana, use your staff and help the elemental,” Ed ordered, and stepped forward into my view, almost casually dodging a Bear’s Power Thrust. A few hit from Ed’s staff later and the spear wielder disintegrated into motes of light.

When the entanglement spell stopped, I was prepared and quickly got to my feet and ran to the carts. When I ducked behind the cart, I pulled the arrow out of my stomach, which hurt almost as bad as it did going in. Nise was crying, clutching her arm that seemed scorched. The dress would repair itself as soon as the combat was over. Phil was looking grim faced as he said, “This is not going to end well. One-Eye and Kira are dead.”

I grunted my agreement, and peeked over the cart. Ed, Robin, Blaze and the elemental was only fighting a couple of players. The rest of the Bears was focused on the rabbit horde behind them. Doing a quick head count, I saw that there were only eight players left. No nine, I suddenly realized as I saw a distortion moving slowly in the air, heading in the direction of the carts.

“Stealther”, I shouted, pointing in the direction of the distortion. Ed and Blaze looked back, and clearly saw the moment the stealther dropped whatever skill or spell he had used.

“Fuck,” the stealther cursed as he appeared, and started sprinting in our direction.

Ed barked something I could not hear, but Blaze and Robin immediately started in our direction. A Shackle Shot slowed down the stealther, but he was still a lot closer than they were.

I was frozen with indecision as the stealther rounded the carts closest to Nise. Phil reacted instantly, and interposed himself between them. With no fighting skills or any weapons though, the daggers of the stealther poked him full of holes, and drained his health very fast. Both Phil and his cart turned to motes and dissipated.

The cart was the one concealing him from Blaze and Robin, so he had to dodge an arrow, before he tried to stab Nise. Blaze threw himself at the stealther with a Terrifying Shriek, catching the dagger in his chest. He did not seem to care, as he hugged the other player, turning him around to give Robin full access to fill his back with arrows.

The stealther had a hard time at first to find somewhere to stab Blaze, but Blaze’s low Strength and Vitality score could not hold up to repeated dagger strikes, not even with the damage debuff on the stealther from the Terrifying Shriek.

Blaze dissipated, leaving the stealther free to turn around with a snarl. Only to be met by an arrow to the forehead, crackling with white energy. The white energy signified that Robin had used Power Shot. The stealther had a dumbfounded look on his face as he also turned into motes of light.

Robin turned around after giving me a look. It was unreadable, but I think it might be a bit of disgust in it. Or maybe I was just reading into things, as I felt disgusted with myself for not doing anything.

“Don’t kill them, just keep them outside the patch,” I heard Ed shout.

“Why not?” Robin asked.

With a laugh Ed answered, “Because if we kill them, they only drop two items because they’re the aggressors. But if the rabbits kill them, they drop everything.”

“I’m going to kill all of you!” Iron Bear screamed, accompanied by a scream of agony which was cut short. Looking over the cart, I noticed there were only three Bears left. They were sandwiched between the rabbits and Ed’s elemental. The elemental was not striking the Bears, just pushing them back every time they tried to move away.

Seeing that Nise was still crying, I moved over next to her. Kneeling, I gathered her into a hug, which was met with a bit of a struggle at first, but then she turned and sobbed into my chest. Shortly after the sounds of fighting died. Looking up, I saw Ed and Robin moving towards us. Ed was shaking his head, “I fucking hate PvP.”

“That was—” I started, but then stopped when I saw his look.

“A shit show, we need more fighters. Especially if we’re going to piss off the large guilds. Even the local trolls are a problem,” Ed said with a harsh glint in his eyes. Sitting down in the lotus position, he gave his orders, “We’ll rest. Then use some sour bombs to drive away the rabbits, pull a few, kill them. Rinse repeat, until we can get our hands on the loot. All that loot should hopefully make up for the lost XP four of us suffered.”

I did not argue, because I agreed with him. Seeing that we were already here, I reckoned I might as well pick some sour joys, as soon as Nise calmed down.