It took a while for Ed and Robin to retrieve the dropped loot from the Bears. So it was almost half an hour later when we made our way back towards town. Instead of fighting our way back, we used a lot of sour bombs to clear the way back. Halfway we were met by the four that had died.

“Blaze!” was a shout we had not expected to hear from Nise, especially not with such warmth after their earlier interaction in the day.

“What did I do?” he asked in a panic, before he was hit by a sobbing Nise. She hugged him tightly. What was funny was the gaping expression of panic on Blaze’s face. Coupled with him turning beet red.

“What happened?” Kira asked, “We thought you were goners as well, but when you didn’t respawn for five minutes, we thought we should head out to find you.”

“Yeah, the last thing I heard was someone shouting ‘Train!’,” One-Eye added, “And Blaze was talking about some rabbit zerg or something. Didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Ed explained in detail what had happened after they had died. I was walking in the back of the group, kind of trailing behind. I was feeling down about what had happened. I winced when Robin fell back to join me.

“Listen, you don’t need to tell me,” I said before she got a chance to say anything, “I panicked. Didn’t know what to do. This is exactly why I’m not out there fighting. I tend to freeze up as I analyze things, and I overanalyze.”

“I was just going to ask if you’re okay,” she said softly.

Taking a deep breath, “I’m not. I’ve fucked up. I goaded the Bears time and time again, and who knows what’ll happen when the big guilds move against us.”

“Do you really think they’ll make a move? I know that someone in Dawnguard put out a bounty, but it was retracted.”

“Just a ruse. They’re going to try something less overt, but even more damaging to us,” I laughed ruefully.

“How do you know that?”

“It’s just like corporations competing, just more directly and cutthroat. We’re small and without a stable foundation, making us a prime target for takeover, hostile or otherwise. And we’re attractive because of that damn achievement.”

“Couldn’t we lose it somehow?”

“We could, probably, but that’ll mean rolling over. If we do this now, we’ll never establish ourselves as a trading partner they need to take seriously. If we don’t stand our ground, we can never negotiate with them except from a position of weakness.”

She thought it over for a minute or so before replying, “But we are weak.”

“Yes, no doubt about it. But we’re also in a spot that’ll make it more of an inconvenience to actually do something about. One week by travel, or having to reset your character. It can be done, but will the time lost be worth it?”

Getting no answer, I continued, “That’s the only thing saving us right now. We need to expand, but we’re limited by the guild points you guys are getting in.”

“How many do we have right now?”

Pulling up the data, I relayed it, “One thousand and twenty five. Meaning we can only take on two more members before we lose our level.”

“Couldn’t we find someone with a few level under their belts, and make a two man party to start with?”

“I only know of Petals that still want to join, is there anyone else?”

“There are a few that’ve asked repeatedly, but not sure if they want to sign the contract.”

It was a problem, a big one. We needed more players to earn more guild points, but to get more players we needed more guild points. With only 25 guaranteed guild points a day, it meant we would only get one new spot every four days in game.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Robin said after a few minutes of silence.

“Don’t be. Never knew her, and for all I know she might still be alive.”

“You were an orphan?”

“Yup, grew up in Miss Elleby’s orphanage, until I was adopted by this really sweet older couple when I was ten. It’s funny, I never thought of them mother or father, but I still called them my parents,” I said.

“She never said anything about how she knew you,” Robin harrumphed.

“Of course not, didn’t you notice she never told you any names, showed any pictures or told anything that could identify someone?”

“Now that you mention it, I always found that a bit weird.”

“She never shares information about those she took under her wing, not even former charges,” I smiled at the fond memories of the old woman who had raised me.

A while later, Robin asked in a quiet voice, “Are we going to help her?”

“Most definitely,” I said with conviction. We lapsed into silence once more. After we arrived back in town, Ed distributed the loot between the five of them. One-Eye got some new armour and a sword, while Robin lay claim to the arrows. After selling the rest, we tried once again to execute the plan. Get sour joys and logs, followed by a trip to the Rabbit Warren.

The next day I found myself standing in the back portion of the temple building, where they had the guild warehouses and the Exchange. The last twenty-four hours had gone pretty much as planned. We were not ambushed any further by the Bears, but we did spot them out hunting with the wooden clubs provided to broke respawners. Many of them dressed in the starter clothes you always respawned in. If looks could kill, we would have all died a thousand times over; at the very least. The trip to the Rabbit Warren had been a bit of a let down. We had been dropped in a mountainous area, with far between the enemies and resources. We were also unlucky, receiving no further time dilation.

The rest of the day went as normal, with a lot of crafting. Phil did not talk a lot while working. He was just as focused on his work as me and Nise. He did ask where to get some glue and feathers. I made him some, and gave him the feathers I had. I also put in a special request with some of the newer players around the plain. If they brought me fifty seagulls I would throw in some free food, including a skewer that buffed Strength or Resonance.

They grumbled about the price I was paying for seagulls was not worth it, but the fact was that the seagulls only really had one thing I wanted: Their feathers. Until they could hunt the level twenty plus hawks that hunted around the forest, I could not pay more than silver for a bird. Despite their misgivings, I got my birds and I was able to provide more feathers for Phil. It quickly became obvious that he was pretty adept at fletching arrows.

Since we did not have mandatory training during the night, I had stayed logged in and grinded my Alchemy, literally. I had been grinding bones to bone meal and making it into glue. In addition to that, I was also able to make several manastone solutions, manastones and wasted ten horns from white rabbits on a failed attempt to get some holy powder to make more potions. It had been a busy but very fruitful day and night. I had levelled up several skills, putting me just one skill point shy of hitting level 7. And the skill likely to push me over the threshold was Meditation, it was only 20 XP from levelling up.

Name

Tier

Level

XP

Observe

Beginner

1

1213/2000

Lesser Transmutation

Beginner

0

0/1000

Greater Transmutation

Beginner

0

151/1000

Imbue

Beginner

2 (+)

656/3000

Message

Beginner

0

535/1000

Meditation

Beginner

3

3980/4000

Butchery

Beginner

7 (+2)

149/8000

Gem Cutting

Beginner

1

676/2000

Alchemy

Beginner

2 (+)

1372/3000

Cooking

Beginner

5 (+)

1525/6000

Herbalism

Beginner

6 (+)

4224/7000

Mining

Beginner

0

244/1000

Unassigned XP: 0

Upgrade Points: 3

It would be easy to put me over the top, but I had things to do. The weekly auctions would start soon. There were also many daily auctions, however the weekly had better items. I did not intend to sell or buy anything in it, simply because right now it would be a bad idea. The items bought at the auction would have to be transported, and without teleportation gates, Blackport was a week’s wait to get your item. Not many people wanted to wait that long. Not yet at least.

The reason why I was interested in the auction was because of the credit to coin auction that preceded the weekly auction. It would give a good idea of where a large amount of coins would appear.

First things first though, was selling most of the coin we had gathered over the week. Well to be fair, that Ed’s Gold Squad had gathered. All of the coins they got from selling the Bears items to the merchant was donated to the guild. It was a bit over fifteen platinum total.

Eleven of the Bears had lost all their equipment, and the last twelve had dropped two items each since they had been the aggressors. It was a vicious and brilliant plan formed by Ed. Making sure that a lot of them were killed by the rabbits made it that much more painful.

I had only donated around one and a half platinum in pure coins, too much of my coin went to buying new material to grind my skills and make more coins. It was a slow process, but it was starting to take off. Especially since I had gotten my Lucky Charm. I had already managed to get another nine rabbit’s feet, however I was missing a black one. They could be quite elusive, being the rarest of the six colours of rabbits. Though not rare enough to raise the rarity of its foot.

Stepping up the counter that served as the Exchange in Blackport, a clerk materialized out of nowhere. The young man was dressed like a priest, but he was not one. It was to help immersion, he was in fact an employee of Perennial. It would be the only time, unless there was an issue, that I would interact with an employee when using the Exchange.

“Greetings, Damian Pryce, my name is Victor Salis and I’m an employee of Perennial Entertainment. Since this is your first time using the exchange, I’m here to explain how it works. Next time you’ll be dealing with an AI— er, I mean a Native,” he said, blushing a bit when he slipped up from his script. I nodded my greeting.

He must have taken that as a sign to continue, “You’ve two options. You can either sell the coins you do not need directly to us. We’ll pay one credit for each silver. The other option is to enter the lot into the auction which starts in fourteen minutes. We’ll of course take a thirty percent transaction fee for the latter, while there’s no fee on the former option.”

“What about taxes?” I figured I might as well play along, though I knew the answer.

“If you’re selling on your own, the standard thirty percent tax, as well as Tax Delinquency Payments, is deducted upon completion of the transaction. If you’re selling for your guild, and it’s incorporated. the standard corporate tax of five percent applies. Does this answer your inquiry?”

The way he talked and follow the script, they might as well have had an AI run it. Smiling I just nodded, indicating I was done asking questions. A small sigh of relief escaped him, and he quickly tried to cover it up by asking, “Do you have any coins you wish to convert?”

“Yes. Blue Lotus wish to convert twenty two platinums into credits. We’re selling it straight to you,” I informed him, and handed him the coins I had just withdrawn from the warehouse a minute earlier.

“Very well, after taxes a total of eight thousand three hundred and sixty credits has been transferred to Blue Lotus’ corporate account. This transaction is non-refundable,” he informed me and then gave further instructions, “In the future when it’s the Native controlling it, just tell them how many coins you want to transfer. And whether you want to transfer directly or auction them. The game will then send you a prompt with the details. Try not to break the immersion and the Natives by talking about the real world. Thanks for your business, and have a good day.”

With that, he poofed out of existence. Not that I really cared, I was more focused on the fact that I now had enough money to add another member to the guild. There was no discussion on who it was going to be, since the order had already been decided. Blaze’s brother took care of himself and their mother. His brother hated him though, so Blaze would be getting no help from his brother. Kira and One-Eye only had each other. Ed’s father was in the boxes and so was Robin’s girlfriend. Nise’s parents both had jobs, barely making enough to keep the three of them out of the coffins, so they would be happy to have one less to support.

The first on the list was Robin’s girlfriend, followed by Ed’s father and then newcomer Phil’s parents. To be honest I really wanted to take out Phil’s father because I knew what he could end up contributing. However, the latest incident with the Bears had shown me we needed more fighters. I had been too optimistic that we could focus on crafters almost exclusively. Especially because of my personal blunder that attracted too much attention. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

However, Robin’s girlfriend would have to wait a few more hours. I headed towards the lift leading down to the docks. Right next to it, there was a large warehouse. Pretty nondescript. Looked like the other warehouses, except it was just bigger. The main entrance was closed, which meant that an auction was about to start. Down an alley running the length of the warehouse was a side entrance, which was guarded by two mean looking guards. One male, one female. Their armour gleamed red in the rays of the rising sun. They did not carry the emblem of the Blackport guards or the Imperial Soldiers. Instead their emblem was that of a fist clenching a fistful of coins. They were guards of the Golden Auction Society.

When I stepped up to the door, the male addressed me, “You’re about to enter the property of the Golden Auction Society, any tomfoolery or attempts to steal or damage property will be dealt with swiftly. You can place your cart right over there. No one will mess with it.”

“Thank you. I understand, I’m merely here to observe and maybe spend a little coin if there’s something good,” I said. I knew no one would mess with it. Not if they valued their lives. Both guards were level one hundred. Probably some of the highest levelled people in all of Blackport.

Stepping through the door, the room I entered was only four or five meters wide, but ran the entire length of the warehouse. The floor was gleaming dark wood, with nice, and expensive, looking rugs creating a path to follow. There were booths up and down the entire length of the room, affording privacy to those that participated. Across from the door there was a nicely made counter. It seemed to be carved from the same white stone that the temple was made of. An extremely attractive black haired woman stood behind the counter. As soon as she saw me, her face lit up in a smile that seemed genuine, but was most likely just very well practiced, “Good morning, are you here to join the Traveller Auction?”

“Good morning to you as well, and yes I am,” I replied.

“Splendid,” she said before muttering a few words. A ball of blue light appeared in front of me. Gesturing to it, she said, “Please follow this light to your booth, there you’ll find written instructions on how to join our auction. Do not, I repeat, do not hassle any of the other patrons of the establishment. The Traveller Auction starts in three minutes, and following it the Sahrot Draco Auction House will be holding a big auction at seven.”

I thanked her and followed the floating light. Passing by the booths I noticed most of them were empty, but I did spot two booths with closed curtains. Stepping into the one the light indicated were mine, I closed the curtains as I took in the booth. It was exactly like I remembered. Comfortable seating around the booth done in a dark red leather with golden threads for accentuation. A pedestal with a glass globe in the middle of the room. The globe was filled with a grayish smoke, and an occasional flash of purple energy would appear.

Right across from the curtain, lit by two magic lanterns, were instructions carved into a plaque. I did not bother reading, since I remembered perfectly well how the auction system worked. Had spent a lot of time in them, gathering data to analyze. Sitting down, I leaned forward and touched the globe. The purple energy seemed to transfer to my hand, which now glowed with a faint purple. Leaning back, I closed my eyes. With my eyes closed I could not see what happened, but I knew the energy would start travelling up my arm, and when it reached my head, my spirit would be transferred to the auction house.

The transition was mild, almost imperceptible, especially compared to teleportation. Opening my eyes I found myself inside a boring concrete warehouse, sitting on a hard plastic chair with a paddle in one hand. Though I was in spirit form I could still feel how uncomfortable it was, since it was a spirit construct as well. Exactly like I remembered. The auctions selling credits were the worst, nothing compared to the fantasy luxury provided by the game’s auction houses. Large screens was all over the place, which showed the podium. The room could contain upwards of a million players, but at the moment it felt rather empty. Sure there were at least ten thousand players, but the enormous size made it feel empty.

Every time a new player joined, a new seat materialized a second before the player appeared. Everyone looked like shadowy figures, providing an anonymity not offered in the game’s auction houses, unless you paid a lot for a private balcony.

A few minutes later, a gong rang out signalling the start of the auction. At the same time I saw the clock slow to a crawl. The auctions were held at a ten to one time compression compared to the game. Making it twenty to one compared to the real world.

Appearing behind the podium I saw my friend from the Exchange, it would seem that the good Victor Salis had more than one job. With more confidence than he had earlier, he began the auction, “Welcome to the first Credit to Coin auction. Today we’re auctioning off one hundred seventeen million silver coins, which will be sold in batches of varying sizes. The minimum bid is one point five credits per coin.

“Following the last batch we’ll start the second part of the auction. Here players will auction of a total of two million and four hundred thousand silver coins. No minimum bid. To start off the auction, we put up a batch of ten thousand silver coins. Do I hear a bid of fifteen thousand credits?”

What followed was a mind boggling boring auction. Most of the coins sold between one point seven and two credits per coin. What I was more interested in was the location they were heading. After each batch was sold, it showed the city it was purchased at. A lot of coins flowed to the city of Helrihm, which I knew was the Silver Lords main staging area. What really surprised me was the batches heading to Blackport.

One of the smaller batches of five thousand silvers was the first heading to Blackport, which was followed by another, then another. In total over one hundred thousand credits was spent on buying coins destined for Blackport.

Doing some quick calculations, I came to the conclusion that a total of 61,000 thousand silver coins, or 152.5 platinum coins, was headed to Blackport. Who would want to invest that much money in a backwater place? I simply had no idea. Though it was a small amount of coin compared to the total, it was still a lot of money for a city that barely had over one hundred players.

The rest of the auction crawled by. The players that had chosen to auction instead of selling to Perennial got shafted. The prices for those batches was often sold at little more than one credit per silver. The batches was simply too small for the big guilds to care. In the future that would change. When the importance of Carn Online got revealed, the players selling coins wised up, and started auction instead. The prices they would get would often be five credits or more. That point in time was however still almost three real world months away.

When the auction ended, I found myself back in the booth, half an hour had passed. Meaning it had been a six hour long auction. I decided not to hang around and wait for the other auction to start. The influx of coins meant I had to find out what was going on, and I needed to arrange things with the hotel and Robin. Bringing in her girlfriend would require a bit of prep, including getting a double room for them.

Stepping out of the booth, I hastened towards the exit. Up ahead a man was entering one of the booths that had been closed. Casting a glance as I walked by I saw it was filled with the Bears. It seemed that they had gotten their hands on some of the coins heading to Blackport. They did not see me, as I quickly moved on. When I reached the exit, another man was walking out with a female companion. When they saw me, they snarled at me. Confused I pulled up their names. Neither meant anything to me, and they were not part of a guild, though they seemed familiar somehow.

Shrugging I waited for them to exit, so I could get out. As soon as I was out on the street I grabbed my cart and headed for the training area where the party should be. I had actually not checked up on them, I had just trusted them. What surprised me was Petals was right there with them.

Luckily they did not disappoint me. They were in full training mode. Which meant poking Blaze with sticks. He was blindfolded and wielded his staff. The others were wearing a small bell on the hand they held the sticks in. It was amusing to watch as they poked him over and over again. He cursed everytime it happened. Whenever he parried one, either by luck or actual skill I could not tell, he would start cheering. Kira punished that by hitting him with a fist instead of poking him.

“Hey guys, sorry to interrupt,” I called out after a few minutes of observing.

“Hey, want to join us?” Kira grinned evilly.

“Definite no,” I said with a shudder. I had enough of her training in the real world, and I did not want to ruin my chances of unlocking the Pacifist class.

“You’re no fun,” Kira blew a raspberry.

“Sorry, but I’m here on a more serious matter. Someone just bought a lot of coins at the auction, some of it was definitely the Bears, so you need to be careful,” I said gravelly. I had already told them about the auction, but not that I was going to sell most of the coins we—they had gathered.

“Shit, just what we need,” One-Eye cursed, “We had just beaten them down.”

“Yeah I know, the rest was bought by an unknown party. Anyway, the reason I came was that I need you to run the Sewer Dungeon as soon as you’re done training.”

“Nise and Phil need new material,” Ed frowned.

“Yes, but it’ll have to wait. We got things that need doing today, so please just do it,” I cut off any further argument.

“What things?” Robin asked curiously.

“A surprise,” was all I said before taking my leave. Since I did not have any rabbits in the cart that needed butchering, and I had run out of small rocks of poor quality; I headed to the beach. Needed more rocks for manastones.

An hour later I found myself walking out the east gate, after spending a minute talking with Barauk, who was one of the runners waiting for rabbits. What met me there was a surprise. And not a good one. Nise and Phil had already set up, but Nise was staring daggers at a couple of players.

The players were the man and woman from the auction building. They had set up a fancy looking stall across the road from ours. They had large signs and banners. They advertised cheap food and bought rabbits for at least ten coppers more than I offered. The sneers they sent my way, it made it clear that I was being targeted by someone with money.

Not that it would impact my business just yet. Since the players were still sending their rabbits to the Butcher via the children. Phil looked at me when I sat down the cart and started putting out tables, “Well, it seems you’ve some competition.”

“Let them, if they want to throw away money, let them. We’ll find some way to get around them,” I said with feigned confidence. If someone was willing to throw that many credits away just to hinder me, I was not sure if we could weather whatever storm was coming, but I would certainly try.

For a moment I considered altering the plans of getting Robin’s girlfriend to join us. It occurred to me, I could not remember her name. She was just Robin’s girlfriend. Robin might have mentioned her name, but I had forgotten. Too busy thinking about other stuff.

“What are we going to do?” Nise asked with a pointed look in the new merchants’ direction.

“Business as usual. They seem to be targeting us, so expect them to start copying the products you put out, but to a cheaper price,” I said with a sigh.

“So we’ve to lower our price?”

“No, that’s what they want,” it was Phil who answered her question, “We’ll just have to rely on quality and reputation to compete.”

“Exactly, just carry on like normal. They might have money, but we’ve a level head start, which translate into more reliable production rates,” I agreed with him, and then sat down to meditate, needed to recover the mana spent on Observe. After a few minutes, Meditation levelled up to 4, providing the skill point that allowed me to become level 7. Pulling up my sheet I wondered where to put my attribute points. Dexterity and Endurance was still too expensive. A single point in Strength put it in the same boat.

Spirit would be wasted, since my Meditation only recovered 58 mana in a ten minute period. It might sound weird, but meditating more than ten minutes was inefficient. Because after ten minutes, no matter how empty or large my Stamina pool was, it would be full. Meaning you were only recovering mana. Resonance and Agility was not skills I would need, which left Vitality. Sure I did not plan on getting in a lot of fights, but the events the day before had shown me that it did not care for what I planned.

Name

Damian Heosphoros

Race

Human

Class

Locked

Level

7

Skill Points

0/8

Upgrade Points

3

Skill Cap

12

Skills Learned

12

XP Penalty

0%

Health

140/140

Stamina

400/400

Mana

55/55

Satiety: 70/100

Hydration: 85/100

Unassigned Attribute Points: 0

Strength: 20

Agility: 10

Dexterity: 20

Endurance: 20

Vitality: 14

Spirit: 11

Resonance: 10

I was getting closer to hitting that golden level 10, which would be a great turning point for me. Robin and Ed was already level 9. I must admit I was a tad envious. When they hit level 10 and got a class, it would make levelling much easier for a while.

Dreaming about what future levels would hold was a waste of time. I needed to be productive instead. Pulling out the manakit, I turned my focus to creating manastones.