It seemed I was the only one who had ended up on the ground. The others, even Ed who was bigger than me, had better balance. Either it was a side effect of their training or their Agility attribute. It was Ed who asked, “What’s Dhin Daruhm?”

“It’s what the dwarves called their wizards who had mastered the four basic elements. Directly translated it means Four Enslaved, but it translates better as Master of Four,” Ilat answered.

“So they have four arch wizards guarding the nodes?” Ed asked, before mumbling, “That’s just great.”

“Only one,” I said as I got up from the ground.

“Correct,” Ilat said with surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Since I wasn’t fighting I got a look at them, they were either copies of the same person or quadruplets,” I fibbed a bit. It was not an outright lie, I had noticed that detail, but it was more because I knew.

“Observant. But yes, the Dhin Daruhm can separate into copies of themselves, each one wielding a different element.”

Robin looked at Ilat suspiciously, and asked, “How do you know what we were fighting?”

“When the portal opened, it allowed me to cast a quick Scry spell into the room.”

“Since you teleported us out of there, couldn’t you just have teleported us in there in the first place?” Blaze asked with a groan.

“Unfortunately not, it’s shielded from incoming teleports, but not outgoing teleports. I cannot even cast Scry on the room normally, but was able to because of the portal,” Ilat answered. “Now, moving on to more important matters. Thank you for completing the repair of one of the nodes. It’ll mean that the slimes in some of the sewer is not out of control, and will do their job.”

He proceeded to open a pouch, and a couple of gold coins floated to each of the members of the party. I only received a prompt, but I was more than satisfied with that.

Quest Completed

Sewer Repairs

Reward

250 Free XP

+31.5 Reputation with Ilat Baisley

+12.6 Reputation with all Blackport Factions

+18.9 Reputation with the Lord of Blackport

25 Guild Points

There were five prompts informing me of the reputation increase with different factions or people, but I just dismissed them without taking a look at them.

“Can we go again?” One-Eye asked, which immediately earned him some stern looks from the others.

“Unfortunately not. Though there are four more nodes and the central node, the Lord has decreed that we should allow as many Travellers as possible to help with maintaining our sewers. So I can only allow you to repair one node per day, even if you’re the only ones who gets here regularly. However, if you’re interested you can repair another node tomorrow,” Ilat apologized.

“Okay, thanks for explaining, we’ll be seeing you tomorrow then,” Ed said as we started to walk away.

“Time to divide the loot, what did we get?” Blaze said eagerly as we were walking towards the main square.

“One crossbow worth fifteen gold, ninety nine gold coins and the two gems from the dungeon. The coins from the quest doesn’t go into the pool,” Ed answered.

“And two Monster Cores, of very poor quality. They’re worth a gold each,” I added.

Kira frowned and said, “One gold for five free XP seems a bit steep.”

“True, but if I’ve ten of these, I can transform them into one of poor quality. The poor quality Monster Core provides fifty one XP. Might not sound like much of an increase. But there’s a rounded down twenty five percent increase for each tier going up,” I explained.

“How many tiers are there?” Ed asked interested. He was not one to normally pay a lot of attention to crafters or crafting related topics.

“Ten,” Robin answered before I could.

“That means one of the highest quality will provide over six billion XP,” he stated.

“Yeah, but it’ll also require a lot of resources, one billion very poor Monster Cores, and lots and lots of manastones. Luckily the higher tier monsters has the same chance of dropping one of better quality. And there’s always a chance of failure, so you might need even more Cores,” I said.

“What I want to know is why you didn’t freeze up this time in combat,” Blaze challenged.

Sighing, I stopped and made sure no one was within earshot, “Because I’ve been analyzing combat with them a hundred times or more. I’ve seen countless battle videos, and I’ve written guides on how to best defeat them. The reason I froze in the fight with the Bears is that I did not have a strategy. If I already know what’s going to happen, I’m good, but if not I get stuck overanalyzing things.”

“So you helped design them?” he asked.

“No, I’ve already told you, and to be frank I’m getting tired of all this open hostility. I should’ve put a stop to it earlier with Ed, but didn’t. If anyone wants to leave, they’re free to quit as the contract states, but I’m not selling your accounts to any other guild, and you better remember that the NDA applies to all discussions about how I know things,” I said with a flat tone, and stormed off.

A bit immature, but I had had it. I could understand their frustration when I was lying to them and withholding information, which was why I had not really forced a confrontation. And to be frank, I did not like confrontations. I could understand it was far fetched tale, but being constantly confronted about it was frustrating.

After picking up my items at the inn, I made my way to the crafting hall where I rented a room for an hour. First order of business what pumping some of all that XP into Greater Transmutation. I ended up investing 2,817 XP in the skill, bringing it up to level 2. Even though I had XP enough to bring it up to level 4, I choose not to invest more at the moment. I had other low levelled skills that could use a boost as well.

I drew up the diagram, and got ready to make three new Lucky Charms. Hopefully luck was with me this time. The chances had been improved somewhat.

Rabbit Foot Charm

Greater Transmutation Level: 2

Recipe Used: Yes

Effect of Lucky Charm: +1%

Effect of Titles: +1%

Combined Crafting Points: 90

Highest Crafting Points of the Materials: 15

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 56%

Flawed - 28%

Success - 14%

Exceptional - 2%

Brilliant - 0%

Master Work - 0%

Base Experience: 90 XP

Mana Cost: 45

The first attempt was a Flawed Success and so was the third, while the second was a Failure. If I had not levelled up the skill, the third attempt would also have been a Failure. Luckily even a Flawed Success had enough crafting points to make a Lucky Charm, the only difference from a normal Success or an Exceptional was the amount of XP I would get.

Two out of three was not too bad, and would allow both Nise and Phil to get one. It also netted me 320 XP for Greater Transmutation as well as 14 free XP. It was not a lot, but it was better than nothing. Completely worth the investment.

Leaving the crafting hall I set course towards the east gate. Walking through I saw only one kid stationed there. It would seem that there were not as many players needing horns any longer. I also saw that Nise and Phil was not there. Thinking it through it would make sense that they were out gathering resources. Shrugging, I set up and started grinding down bones, since I was all out of rabbits to slaughter.

Two hours and a level up in Alchemy later, the rest of the guild arrived. Petals and Marion had joined the trip to the forest. Looking them over I noticed that Marion had reached level 5, and so had Phil.

“We’ve some rabbits and a couple of foxes for you,” Robin said, trying to appear as if everything was normal, but I heard a bit of strain in her voice.

“Great, what level are they?” I asked.

“I assume you mean the foxes, they’re level nine.”

“Okay, I can’t give more than fifty contribution points, because they don’t really offer a lot in the way of loot. Like the wolves, they don’t have any magic in them,” I said.

“We’re going to run the Rabbit Warren, want to join us?”

I did not want to be in another dungeon with them right now. Though it was a wasted opportunity, I shook my head, “Nah, I got some crafting to catch up on.”

Robin nodded her head as if she understood what I was thinking. Looking at the others, I saw Kira and Ed was the only ones looking at me besides Robin. One-Eye and Blaze had gone to great trouble to turn away from me when they started their private conversation. The four newest members of the guild just looked confused at our frosty exchange.

Ed spoke up, “What can you tell us about the Wounds and Exhaustion system that opened up when me and Robin hit level ten?”

I noticed that even Blaze and One-Eye looked interested to hear the answer, but tried to act like they were not. “Well, it’s a system meant to stop non-stop grinding. You accumulate Wounds the more you’re healed through magic, no such problem with potions. Generally it’s one wound per ten health point healed. Higher tier healing spells will lower the rate of gaining wounds. Wounds lowers your maximum health until they’re cured.

“Exhaustion is the limiter on magic users. Every ten mana regenerated grants a point of Exhaustion, which lower your maximum mana instead of health.”

“Sounds to me it’s best to have a ranged build,” Ed pointed out.

“Most ranged abilities is a Spell Ability, meaning they require both stamina and mana, so they’re limited too. And require a fair amount of each,” I said.

“Okay, but how do we get rid of them?” Robin asked.

“By resting in a camp or inn, or even quicker by sleeping. Food and potions can help regenerate Wounds, while drinks and potions can help you get rid of Exhaustion.”

“Okay, can you make drinks?”

Shaking my head I said, “Not yet. Or well, I could easily pick up Brewing, but I don’t really have anything to work with. Neither tea or ingredients for making beer or wine.”

“I see, but can you make us some food that heal Wounds?” Ed asked.

“Sure thing, how many do you have?”

They gave me their numbers, which was pretty much the same at 24 and 22. Looked like Ed had taken a bit more damage, but I figured most of the damage was from the fight against the Dhin Daruhm with his AoE attacks. Making food that healed Wounds was pretty easy. Every five crafting points invested healed a Wound. At least up until you reached five wounds healed. Then the cost doubled. With only two to four wounds healed per rabbit skewer, they would be stuffing their face. Any excess points I spent on lowering the amount of Satiety it filled so they could eat more of them.

Ten minutes later, Ed’s party had left for the Rabbit Warrens, while Marion and Petals was hunting rabbits nearby. Phil, Nise and I settled into our normal crafting routine for a short while before I interrupted them. After having made sure no one was within earshot.

“Phil, Nise. I got something for you if you’re interested. Might cost you a lot of contribution points, but it will help your crafting,” I said.

“What is it?” Phil asked.

“Magic item that increase your success with all crafting attempts,” I said and handed them each a Lucky Charm. “But please put them into your inventory at once, less the curious neighbours sees them.”

Doing as I bid, the charms vanished into their personal inventories. Nise got a faraway look in her eyes, before exclaiming, “Oh, this is the magic item you invented? Who knew r—”

Phil interrupted her before I could, “Best not to talk about it.”

“At least not here,” I said with a wry smile. Nise looked embarrassed and nodded.

After a few minutes of silence, Phil said, “Damian, I went and bought a manastone kit like yours. I have two free skill slots, and both Nise and Ed have said you’re having a hard time keeping up with the demand. And to be frank, I want to use all of my skills. Barely used Imbue yet.”

“That’s a great idea,” I offered, secretly relieved that he had decided to pick up that skill.

“Not sure you’re going to think that about the other skill I want to learn.”

“What else do you want to learn?”

“Painting.”

Mulling it over for a second, I said, “I can see that. It’ll be useful down the road. And it’s better to get started right away.”

“I thought you wanted me to focus on making money,” Phil said.

“It would be optimal, but you got a versatile skill in Carpentry. Many ways to earn money there. And Painting can bring in a lot of money, just not yet. That said, I hope you keep focus on Carpentry.”

“Yeah, need to do that. Paint is not cheap,” Phil chuckled wryly. “Anyway, do you have some extra manastone solution?”

“Sure,” I said and handed him a jar with normal manastone solution, as well as one for earth manastones.

“Thanks, I’ll get started on these.”

“No problem,” I said. We once more settled into our companionable silence.

The rest of the day had passed by without any further event of note, with the exception of a new level in Cooking and Gem Cutting. I had logged out and headed to the dining area. As always my meal consisted of a large NutriShake. While it was being replicated, I took a look around the room. It was empty, except for my guild. It had been like that since my wrongful arrest slash kidnapping. Either we had been moved to a new floor, or the other occupants had been moved to a new floor. Whether it was one or the other, I could not say, but the result was the same. I had not seen anyone but my guildmates since my arrest.

Liam and Masuro sat a few seats separate from the others, not saying much. Edward was sitting opposite Ainsley and Sarah, the three of them looked to be having a discussion about a very old game. Well mostly Sarah talking and Edward grunting in an accepting or dismissive manner, with Ainsley looking bemusedly on. Kira and Petals sat next to Edward and Kira was explaining different combat moves to Petals. It occurred to me I did not know her real name, though we had a signed contract. Pulling up the contract on my wrist device I saw her name was Rose Svensson. So there was a reason for the Crimson Petals gamer handle.

Phil and Denise were keeping quiet, sitting next to each other. Seemingly taking in the discussion around them. I did notice something that was a bit of a surprise for me. They were holding hands. Under the table, away from prying eyes. I was only able to see it because I was not at the table. They were both quiet and kept their heads down when we worked, so I had not seen that coming. However, I had been spending a lot of time running dungeons, leaving them time to converse without me around. Some might frown at the age difference of a couple decades, but in a time where people often lived to become well over a hundred years old, I did not see any problems with it.

Grabbing my NutriShake, I walked over to the others, sitting down next to Peta—Rose, making sure to give Phil and Denise a sense of privacy. Rose looked at the NutriShake and shook her head. “Yuck, I don’t understand how you can choose to eat that. I mean you earned enough money to get Marion out of her coma, so there ought to be enough for proper food.”

“I wish. Sure, I might be able to siphon off a bit of funds for mealcubes, but it’s more important getting people out of the coffins,” I said with a shrug. And proceeded to drink some of my disgusting meal.

“Speaking of the future, what’s your plan for the guild now that we’ve access to the second Sewer Dungeon?” Ainsley asked from a few seats away. The conversations around died immediately, as everyone turned their attention to me.

“Well for the immediate future, we should continue to run them. You five can decide if you want to run the normal Sewer Dungeon. There’s still some guild points to be gained there,” I said and looked at the five in question. None of them seemed receptive to that idea, so I asked, “But all of you are closing in on level ten, correct?”

“Yeah,” Kira answered, while Masuro and Liam just nodded.

“Good, with level ten under your belt you should be able to contest with the forest. The mobs there are high level, but the loot they drop is not as valuable as the rabbits.”

“Why is that?” Sarah asked.

I kept the answer short, because most of the others had heard it several times, “Because the rabbits are magical creatures, there are many uses for the things you can butcher them for. Not so for normal creatures.”

“Why would we go in there then?” Liam asked with a frown.

“Because the mobs are higher level. That means more XP, both skill specific and free XP. And there should be some quests for materials you can only find in the forest.”

“So we need to bring some gatherers?” Ainsley ventured.

“Yeah, but I’m not really interested in trudging around in the forest the entire day, I’ve way too many things to do at the moment. It’s one thing with the dungeons since there’s a possibility of further time compression, and it serves other purposes,” I said.

Ainsley looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “I’ll pick up Herbalism then. I had considered picking up Healing Magic. But since I’m going to make a new exploration party at some point, it makes sense that every member on the team has a gathering skill. In case we find some useful ingredients.”

“That’s a very good idea,” Edward said quietly.

Thinking about it for a second, I said, “I agree, but maybe instead of Herbalism you should pick up Butchery.”

“Why?”

“You’ve put a lot of points in Endurance, right?”

“Yeah,” she answered, dragging it out making it sound inquisitive.

“More than Sarah will, so it makes more sense for you to let her pick up Herbalism while you focus on one of the other gathering skills.”

“How many gathering skills are there?” Phil asked.

“For what you can find in the wild there’s four major ones. Logging, Mining, Herbalism and Butchery. Oh, and Fishing and maybe Harvest could be useful as well. If you run into any wild fruit trees.”

“I guess it makes sense if she take Herbalism,” Ainsley said with a frown.

“I’ll pick up my thirteenth skill early then, and I’ll teach you Butchery,” I said. Then added with a sigh, “Damn, here comes the XP penalty again.”

“Maybe we could wait until you’re level ten as well?” Ainsley ventured.

“Would be helpful, but we might miss some quest completion though.”

“You can still pick without having the skills, right?” Sarah asked.

“Sure, but the success rate is abysmal, and the quality poor.”

Leaning forward, “But that doesn’t seem to matter for the quests, does it?”

Feeling like an idiot, I said, “You’re right, I just thought about what a waste it would be without the skills.”

“Then we wait,” she said with a cheeky grin.

Liam decided to be an ass again, “That’s all well and good, but what about your long term plans? And now that Ed got Imbue there’s no reason to escort you in the second Sewer Dungeon.”

Frowning I stared at him. “You’re partially right, but if you force Ed to spend time imbuing, you lose a fighter. I also offer better chance of extra loot, and an extra set of eyes looking for secret doors. I’m also earning reputation faster than any of you. And the Sewer Dungeon gives a very important set of reputation. For the Lord of Blackport. When I get to Accepted, we can get a property in the city.”

“And what good will that do?” Liam scoffed.

“Well first of all, we can stop paying five silvers a day for staying at the inn. I’m also working on a limited quest that could give very good rewards. With a property we’d need help to maintain it, and we could hire some locals to do it. Nise could grow herbs, if not crops, inside the city instead of having to be outside the wall,” I started explaining.

The last thing I had said reminded me of something, “Oh by the way, we can probably expect a rabbit wave in the next few days. The crystals that allow them to leave takes about two weeks ingame to mature.”

“But we found it not that long ago,” Masuro protested.

“Yeah just one. I think there’s around seven total, and I don’t know if any of the other people running the Warren have found any,” I elaborated.

“Okay so guild property is on the program, what else?” Sarah asked.

“Well in nine days, in game of course, I get a large shipment of materials for making magic items, I plan to make quite a few for the guild, but sell the rest at auction, which should bring enough money for us to get the rest of our family out of the coffins,” I said.

“Sounds all well and good, but what will Luck do for fighters?” Liam asked.

“Not a whole lot, since you’re using manual mode. You don’t rely on the system and RNG when fighting. So nothing to be frank, but I’m getting other kind of trophies that’ll allow me to make charms that provide damage or protection.”

“That sounds nice,” Kira said, shooting Liam a dark look.

“Got the perfect one for you,” I said to her with a grin.

“What?”

“Rat tail.”

“Yuck,” she fake gagged.

“Don’t knock it till you see it. It relies on chance to give the target you strike a disease that drains stamina. And it stacks. With how fast you hit, you can put on some good stacks that’ll drain their stamina fast.”

After pondering it for a few seconds, she broke into a big smile. “Okay. That does sound pretty awesome.”

“What else is there in the works for the guild?” Ainsley asked.

“Well long term, I hope we could start our own village deeper in on the island. Though we’ll never find end-game monsters on the island, we should be able to find upwards of level forty to fifty,” I said.

“Why not go elsewhere? To the main continent,” Rose asked.

“I’d like to develop away from the big guilds. We’ll be an easier target if we go there. And when we’re ready for bigger adventurers than the island provide, I’m sure there are lots of opportunities out on the sea.”

“I guess that’s a good point, even if Dawnguard has retracted the bounty,” she said after thinking it over.

“They might have retracted it, but they’re still out to get us. Pretty sure that our competition is bankrolled by them.”

“Why would they do that?”

It was Sarah that answered, “Because he, no we, embarrassed them. Sure they might not do anything overt, but they’ll definitely try to retaliate covertly.”

Rose looked at her teammate with confusion. “But why?”

“If we had been a big guild, they might let it go. But a new guild no one has heard about? Yeah that’s a slight they’re not going to take lying down,” Sarah explained, and then launched into a longer explanation of the psychology behind guild politics in gaming history. She sounded well read on the subject, but I did not listen long. A message on the wrist device informed me I had a visitor. A lawyer representing BIS, who was here to discuss compensation for the false arrest.

Finishing my NutriShake I took my leave and stepped into one of the elevator pods. After a short trip in the pod, I arrived at one of the hotel’s meeting capsules. Stepping into the room, it was just as bare and stark as all the other rooms I had seen in the hotel so far. Decorations was a luxury that cost credits. There were a single table, with a chair on each side. The one on the side of the room I entered looked uncomfortable compared to the other. Someone had paid to have the room furnished such.

Sighing, I sat down, wondering if BIS were petty enough to want a meeting with me and play power games like that. I did not have to wait long, because the door opposite the one I had entered opened soon after. Striding in was the man who had killed me: Marcus.