I was finally able to get back to the game, and instead of immediately heading out, I stayed in the bunk bed. I had unfinished business. The rewards from my two new achievement chains awaited me. Pulling up the saved prompt, I first focused on the rewards for receiving the Pacifist class.

One Time Rewards for Achievements Received

Pacifist

1 Class Skill Slot

1 Free Skill, Spell or Ability Scroll

2 Firbolg Essence Shard

First Pacifist in Blackport

500 Class Experience Points

5 Firbolg Essence Shard

First Pacifist in Astia

1000 Class Experience Points

6 Firbolg Essence Shard

First Pacifist in the Empire of the Endless Sky

2500 Class Experience Points

7 Firbolg Essence Shard

First Pacifist in the World

6000 Class Experience Points

1 Firbolg Essence Crystal

I already knew about the Class Skill Slot and the free skill scroll, but I had forgotten how good the rest of the rewards were for being the first to unlock a specific secret class. With all the Essence Shards, I would be able to make two Essence Crystals bringing the total to three, meaning I would be able to gain the first step towards the Firbolg race immediately. If I wanted that, but I did not. However, it was welcome news, because that meant Ed would soon be able to take his first step towards one of the ancient races. Which would probably trigger another world’s First if he chose to do that.

The experience was also a very welcome addition. It could unfortunately only be used for my Class Skills, of which I had only one. However, ten thousand XP meant four skill levels in Runesmithing, almost bringing me to level 11 with just two skill points shy of it.

I turned my attention to the rest of my achievement rewards.

One Time Rewards for Achievements Received

First Secret Class in Blackport

500 Class Experience Points

1 Upgrade Point

First Secret Class in Astia

1000 Class Experience Points

1 Free Attribute Point

First Secret Class in the Empire of the Endless Sky

2500 Class Experience Points

1 Free Attribute Point

1 Skill Slot

First Secret Class in the World

6000 Class Experience Points

1 Free Attribute Point

1 Class Skill Slot

Another ten thousand experience. It would mean another level, and just one thousand shy of level 6 in Runesmithing. If I wanted to go that route, I could also save them, or use them on my other Class Skill as soon as I assigned it. You could either choose a new skill when you learned it, or assign one of your old skills. However, once it had been assigned, it could not be reassigned.

For a moment I considered assigning Greater Transmutation, but I decided to assign Meditation as a Class skill and immediately invested the ten thousand XP in it. The reason for choosing it was simple. I had plenty of attribute points to invest in Spirit, but I was taking too long to regenerate the mana I already had. I could also have chosen Imbue, but Meditation was the bottleneck when creating manastones, which I would need a lot of if I wanted to make runes or use Greater Transmutation. When I reached level 15, I could assign Greater Transmutation or Imbue as a class skill at that time.

That left just one thing, and that was to check the new achievement passive buffs.

First Pacifist in the World

10% reputation gains in the World.

First Secret Class in the World

Reputation Thresholds lowered by 10%.

Both of those rewards were huge. All Pacifist would enjoy a world wide reputation gain, and mine was boosted by the fact that I had been the first, and it stacked with all other reputation gain modifiers I already had, or would receive. For the lowered Thresholds, well that was simply huge. Maybe it would not mean much in the start, but the better your reputation with someone got, the more you reputation you would need to reach the next Tier.

Satisfied that I was done with my unfinished business, I headed out of the Inn. I had three stops I wanted to make before going out to our usual spot. I had to stop by the guild warehouse and pick up all the carcasses from the day before. Then I needed to stop by Fillard’s since I had more or less run out of empty containers for blood and eyes. Again. A luxury problem to have. The third stop was the Adventurers’ Association, to see if there were any quests appropriate for me.

There was also the matter of credit to coin auction which would happen soon. When I had mentioned it at dinner the day before, Phil had volunteered him and Nise to go and note down how much coin was headed to Blackport. I think the primary reason for him to volunteer was to get some alone time with Nise; away from his father.

After completing the first two stops, I stepped into the the AA for the first time since I completed the three starter quests. As soon as I stepped inside, one of the clerks from the Message Service desks came running towards me. “Thank the Gods you are here, come quickly. We almost sent the guards to fetch you.”

Baffled, I asked, “Guards? What’s going on?”

“All your unheard messages are starting to pile up. Our Messaging Artifacts can only store so many messages, and it’s terribly expensive to produce a new one, so please take care of your messages. We’ve arranged a private room, follow me please.” The man talked incredibly fast, I would be surprised if he even took a breath. He pivoted around and started walking towards the wall. Shrugging I followed him. When he got close to the wall, a hidden door opened.

He headed inside and I followed. The room was a small office with a comfortable looking chair behind a desk and a lit fireplace. The clerk gestured to the desk, “Feel free to use the paper and ink if needed. Free of charge. The bell is if you want to send any replies.”

As soon as he closed the door, the entire room became filled with the balls of light that were messages. Normally they were the size of a closed fist. To accommodate every message, the size had shrunk to that of my little finger nail. There were thousands. Really overwhelming.

It was however not the first time I had to deal with a lot of messages in the system, so I knew how to make this quick. In my previous timeline, when a few silver for a message no longer mattered, I was receiving thousands upon thousands of reports each day. With a single thought I sent them all to the ceiling, before I sat down behind the desk. I then mentally ordered one of them to come down. When it was in front of me it grew to its normal size.

Touching it, I soon learned the content. It was some idiot accusing me of cheating. With another thought I ordered all similar messages to separate themselves from the big mess under the ceiling. What looked to be less than ten percent of all the messages separated from the big mess above.

‘Delete, and block all similar messages. Automatically block these senders,’ I thought, which would allow the AI running the message system to set up a filter. Gesturing, not because it was needed, but because it felt more natural, for another to float down to me.

This one was a request for an interview, but it was almost a week old, ingame time. Ordering similar request to appear I saw there were a good hundred or so of them, but all of them were at least four days old. I asked the system to delete them, because if they wanted an interview, they could just choose Blackport as their destination when logging in. Not going to waste coin on sending them a reply.

Next came guilds who wanted us to join them. Deleted over ten percent of the messages when I deleted all similar messages. Then came the guilds threatening to declare war if we did not disband so a real guild could get the honour of being the First Recognized Guild. Those were deleted, but I knew better than to block them. They equalled almost twenty percent of the total.

Then followed a few handfuls of congratulations, some from individuals, others from guilds. All of them tiny guilds with a handful of members or two. From what I could recall all of them were active on the other islands, and there was also info about where the message was sent from, which helped place them. I wrote down their names and guilds, not on paper but in the note taking interface. Kindness should be repaid, so I spent a gold sending replies.

There were also a mess of spam, in fact almost sixty percent of the messages fell into that category. Request to lend money, investment opportunities and all sort of useless junk. Next came people who wanted to join the guild, which I forwarded to Robin. I also got messages from some guilds that had formed after they had seen my interview and thought they could do the same. They received a reply basically stating I was honored, and wishing them luck.

Then came some of the most heartbreaking messages I had heard. They were from people who wanted me to help their loved ones out of the coffins. They had joined with the same hope, but were failing because it was hard to be a one man show and make enough.

I spent some coin to send a few encouraging words to them, and steer them towards the guilds that had the same motive. All in all I had spent a bit over four golds to send messages.

After nearly thirty minutes there was finally only one message left. It had somehow not gotten lumped in with any of the others. Curious I called it down and touched it.

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,” came Marcus’ emotionless voice. Shivers went down my spine. Looking at the time and date it was sent after my latest achievements.

‘I wonder how he’ll take Ed’s and Kira’s achievements,’ I thought with a bit of fear in my heart. The man was clearly insane, but quoting poetry to warn me was just plain weird. Yet highly effective. Especially since I had seen what he had done to Amber. Finishing up, I left the private room and finally made my way to the windows where you could pick up quests.

“Hello, how may I help you today?” the old clerk asked, peering up for a second before looking down again. He sounded like he was a bit bored.

“I was wondering if there’s some quests that does not involve the killing of sentients.”

My answer made the clerk look up at me. “Well that’s an unusual request. Let me see what I can find.”

He started leafing through the piles and sheaves of paper on the desk in front of him. Finally he pulled out two pieces of paper. Clearing his throat, he said, “I do indeed have two. One is a repeating one that pays well for every fiftieth fish you can bring. Since the Rupture the sea has become a hostile place, our fishermen doesn’t dare to brave the sea. The other is—”

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a long loud blast of a horn. Since it could be heard even within the cone of silence the Association used to ensure privacy, meant that it was a Horn of Warning, used by the guards to warn everyone in range that the town was under attack.

I could only think of one thing that it could be at this stage of the game, and that was a wave of rabbits from the Rabbit Warren. How big it was would depend on how many crystals the players had found so far. Blue Lotus had only found one.

My mind immediately went to Nise and the Ewers outside of the gate. Indecision started to take hold. I would only be in the way at the wall, there was nothing I could offer. However, I wanted to know that they were okay, and despite it being a wave, the town would be mostly safe. Unless something went horribly wrong.

I wanted to warn our fighter’s, but they were at the training area, which was out of range of Message. Even after being levelled up twice, it only had a range of 300 meters. Also, the soldiers would surely tell them what was going on. Yes, they would figure it out on their own.

Gulping, I came to a decision, and ran out of the Association. I headed for the east gate, but almost forgot my cart, which would be bad. Left unattended with all the guards focused on the wave of rabbits, I would lose a lot of money if anyone had the inclination to rob me.

Arriving at the gate I saw the guards herding the players in behind the wall. Mostly under protest it seemed. I spotted Nise and the Ewers easily enough.

“What’s going on?” Philmore asked as soon as he saw me.

Groaning, Phil said, “Dad, the guards told us. A wave of rabbits is heading towards the city.”

“There’s not rabbits enough out there to threaten us.”

Deciding to intervene, I said, “Normally you’re right, but the Rabbit Warren dungeon have just released a potentially massive number of rabbits. Could very well be upwards of ten thousand of them heading this way.”

“T-ten thousand?” Philmore stammered.

“What about my fields?” Nise asked with worry in her voice.

“Yes ten thousand,” I said absentminded as I tried to think of a way to save Nise’s fields. Only one thing came to mind, but it could be a bit expensive. “How many sour bombs do you have?”

“A lot, since people have become high levelled they don’t use them much anymore,” Nise said.

Before I could continue, Phil said, “I see where you’re going with this. Sweetie, give me the sour bombs, dad and I will try and use them to keep the rabbits away from your fields with them.”

Nise looked absolutely terrified at Phil’s slip of the tongue. Even more so when Philmore muttered, “Sweetie?”

With a groan Phil said, “Later. Come on Nise, let dad and I do this.”

Obediently she started handing over the sour bombs. A voice boomed over the din of the protesting players, asking for our attention and silence. Looking over I saw a guardsman standing on some crates or something similar, to raise him above the heads of the others. Pulling up his name, I saw it was the sergeant who had greeted me when I entered Blackport the first time: Tirsho Redscale.

“Travellers, the Rabbit Warren has released a large wave of rabbits. Expect there to be at least eight thousand rabbits, since only one crystal was received. For your help in protecting the town, the Lord generously offers a reward, depending on your contribution,” he said with a voice enhanced by a spell. Immediately following his words, two prompts popped up.

Quest Assigned

Type: Event

Defend Blackport Against the Rabid Rabbits

The town of Blackport is being attacked, help defend the city and be richly rewarded according to your individual contribution.

Reward

Scaling, depending on your contribution.

Guild Quest Assigned

Type: Event

Defend Blackport Against the Rabid Rabbits

The town of Blackport is being attacked, help defend the city and be richly rewarded according to your guild’s contribution.

Rally your guild and protect the town.

Reward

Scaling, depending on your guild’s collected contribution.

Events were always good for gaining some good rewards, especially for the guild quest. It would involve some Guild Reputation, which was extremely hard to come by. Unlike personal Reputation, there were no tiers to unlock by reaching a higher count. It was simply a counter. The higher the better. Since it meant that there were a larger chance of a guild quest being offered to your guild.

However, that could wait for later. Immediately I pulled up two leaderboards, made them transparent, moved them to the side where they would be unobtrusive and limited them to the top ten, plus myself. Not that there were ten guilds. I saw only six names on the guild leaderboard. Blue Lotus and Blood Bears of course, but also Team Asura, The A-Team, Knights of the Squirrel and Almighty Al’s Assembly of Adventurers.

I had not been paying a lot of attention to the players the last few days, meaning I had completely missed that more guilds had been formed in Blackport. The first three did not spark any memory of any kind, but Almighty Al had been semi-famous in Blackport, because of the statue of him in the poor district. Which were bad news for me. It meant I had competition for the quest to help the poor people of Blackport. And I knew he had been successful in my past.

“Okay, dad and I will try to keep the rabbits away from Nise’s fields,” Phil said in the silence that followed the quest prompts. They turned around and headed for the wall.

The noise level returned and reached a new record, since the players were excitedly and loudly discussing the event. Nise leaned in close to ask loudly, “What can we do?”

“Not much for me, but if you’ve a lot of sour joys left, you should work on some more sour bombs. At least they’ll help,” I answered, almost having to shout to be heard. She nodded and immediately set up to craft more sour bombs. Me on the other hand. I had nothing I could help to contribute with. There was not a single one of my skills that leant itself to support the defence.

I was just about to grab my cart and head back, when the fighters of our guild came running from the north. Ed seemed to spot me, because he was heading directly for me. Calling out when he was within shouting distance, “I need more manastones.”

Okay, there was one thing I could do, but it would hardly bring many contribution points to me nor the guild. However, it would enable Ed to fight. It was one of the downsides to choosing the Pacifist class, I had to rely on others.

Grabbing the items needed out of the cart, I left Nise to look after it and followed them to the battlement. It was not a tall wall, only slightly over four meters tall. For the rabbits though, it would be like a vertical mountain. One-Eye shouldered some of the players out of the way to make room for Blaze, Robin and Marion. Ed just needed to be able to peak over their shoulders to summon his elementals. He could use Shared Sense while meditating, meaning he could Imbue some of the manastone himself.

I quickly sat down and started working on the first manastone, which was a Success, imbuing it with as much mana I could before handing it to Ed. Normally the manastone would bring me 105 contribution points to the guild, but it only brought me 5 contribution points for the event.

While meditating, with my back against the battlement, I listened to the players around me chatting excitedly. The excitement changed to palpable fear when the wave finally arrived. I heard someone nearby mumble, “Oh crap, look at how many there are. There’s no way we can hold that many.”

Then the arrows began being released, shortly followed by the casting of ranged spells. A cacophony of people shouting activation phrases sounded all along the battlement. A few seconds later, the sound of spells hitting the wall and battlement could be heard, followed occasionally by a short scream or grunt when someone was hit on top of the wall.

“Just like shooting kittens in a barrel!” someone shouted, laughing at his own joke.

“It’s fish in a barrel, you idiot,” someone else corrected him.

“Why would fish be in a barrel?”

“Why would kittens?”

I ignored the back and forth, concentrating instead on regenerating my mana. After a few minutes One-Eye complained, “This is boring.”

Looking at him, I said, “Please don’t jinx us, let us hope it keeps being boring for you. If it suddenly becomes exciting, it means that the rabbit has dealt enough damage to the gate or wall to punch a hole in the defences.”

“If you put it like that,” he mumbled, and turned his attention back to whatever he was focusing on. After thirty minutes the first casualty happened a few meters away from us. Suddenly there was silence as the people standing next to the deceased, eyed the possessions on the ground. Nearby there were a few of the Bears, who started inching closer. Excitement, most likely of greed, shining brightly on their faces. Unfortunately for them, the guy who died had a group of friends that quickly scooped it up. However, it was that incident that led to the shenanigans shortly after.

Suddenly an angry voice shouted, “You’re blocking me, I can’t dodge!”

“We’re just trying to kill some rabbits,” the reply came. Turning to look in the direction, I saw an independent player, who had been casting spells from a nearby position, surrounded by Blood Bears, all crouched low to not be hit by the spells. The independent could not do the same, because the Bears were crowding him, leaving him no room to maneuver.

The player got bombarded by spells that should have been easy to dodge, and soon he turned into motes of light, leaving behind all his items. One-Eye who had seen the incident as well, called for his sister, Robert, Petals and Elize to follow him.

Players around the deceased player started protesting, but did nothing to interfere as the Bears laughingly gathered up their ill-gotten gains. The laughter turned into a scream, when One-Eye slammed into one of them, sending him over the battlement. A brief scuffle, and soon the two others followed him to their deaths below.

The other Bears started shouting insults, and I saw one of them darting off. One-Eye looked like he was about to start a fight with the rest of them. There was no reason to make it worse than it was, so I shouted over the din, “One-Eye, stand down. Unless they try to do it to someone else.”

He did so, but not without a few complaints. A few minutes later Sergeant Redscale arrived with the Bear that had ran off. The sergeant looked angry. “What’s going on here?”

“They killed three of my men,” Iron Bear complained loudly.

“We only did it because they were purposely getting other people killed and stealing their items!” One-Eye shouted.

“Lies!” the Bears started shouting.

“Enough!” Tirsho bellowed. “I’ve noted your complaint, but don’t have time to deal with it now. Be at the Temple an hour before sundown. Absence equals guilt. Now get back to killing rabbits, instead of each other.”

The Bears complained loudly, but to no avail. One-Eye was sulking as well, but there was nothing that could be done about it at the moment. Motioning One-Eye over, I said, “That was impulsive, but what is done is done.”

“I did nothing wrong,” he pouted.

“I agree, but you and the four others have to be there, if not, your punishment will be much worse. We’ll be there to support you.”

“What punishment can we expect?” Petals asked nervously, having overheard.

“Probably a fine, since they did what they did. The guild will support you no matter the outcome. It was a rash decision, but it was well meant,” I said.

Before they could say anything else, there was a loud splintering sound and a cry went up, “The gate is gone!”