The Grandmaster had been happy with my explanation of my meal token system and had taught me the seven runes I needed for it to happen. It had taken me almost two hours learning the seven runes. Nevertheless, it was two hours I had happily spent because it would open up a lot of possibilities for me.

Before leaving I had also received a quest.

Quest Accepted

Type: Unique

The Lost Library

You have gained the attention of the Lost Library, as well as received the schematics to build the access key. Do so, and be rewarded.

Reward

Membership of the Lost Library.

The schematics that had been implanted in my head contained some high-end runes. Unfortunately, I could not learn them, because they were encoded, meaning it was more of a DIY kit with an instruction manual. It did not explain how things worked, or what things were, it only explained how you gathered the pieces.

It was not all I received. I also received a Curse, which explained why it was more likely that I had not heard about the Lost Library than it was a change in the game that Marcus had hinted at.

Curse of Secrecy

You are unable to speak to anyone about the Lost Library, except for other members and the Steward.

The Gods know that Travellers have other means of communicating, and will search your memory every time you come back to Carn. If you have violated the Curse, suffer the consequences.

Consequences

Your avatar will perish, and you will be unable to enter Carn ever again.

It was a harsh Consequence, and sure I would like to share my discovery with the guild, however, it was not really that important for them to know about it. It was not like it was something I could do any time soon. I would need to be level 100 in Runesmithing and have upgraded to the Master tier before I could even attempt to make the item needed to enter the Library. Even with the schematic in my head, I did not know what it was.

After leaving the auction house and getting back to my physical body, I consumed a few pieces of fruit and drank some wine to replenish my Satiety and Hydration, while listening to the dozen messages or so the others had left me, asking where I was. As soon as I stepped out of the VIP lounge I spotted the female clerk who was waiting for me.

“Sorry. Important meeting,” I said, feeling a bit bad about staying so long after the auction was over.

“No worries, Mister Heosphoros, when important people like the Grandmaster and the Empress wants a meeting with you there is little you can do,” she said with a smile. “If you do not mind though, we got an irate Captain waiting inside the warehouse.”

“Of course,” I said and followed her down the corridor. Instead of going out of the normal doors, she opened a secret door behind the counter, which led to the warehouse.

As soon as the door opened, I could hear a loud angry male voice echoing through the warehouse. “What do you mean he’s still not here? It has been two fucking bloody hours we’ve delayed leaving for this shitbird!”

“Captain, please calm down,” someone asked in a clear voice.

“I will not! Get your manager out here this second, this is intolerable. We departed two days early so we could be here today and ferry your items out, and now you delay us even further because of some Traveller wanting to switch an item out?” the Captain bellowed. “This is unheard of, you don’t change the items once the auction is over.”

“I am the manager,” the woman I had assumed was a normal clerk said, as we stepped into view of the entrance to the warehouse. A small thin man was standing behind the lectern, trying to look imposing, which was a bit hard when the man in front of him was over two meters tall and built like a brick house. Had to be at least a half head, if not a head taller than me. With all his facial hair, he resembled a big angry black bear more than a human.

“Finally, what the hell is the meaning of this?” the angry bear—man roared.

“Calm down, or this will be the last contract with the Auctioneer’s Union you’ll be having,” the manager stated calmly.

The man took a few deep breaths, seemingly trying to calm down. Whether it worked or not, I could not say, because he still looked like a pissed-off grizzly. When he spoke again, his voice was still loud and angry, but it was clear that he was trying to restrain himself. “We’ve been delayed two hours, we’ve missed the optimal time for leaving. We will still leave, but it’ll cost us more time to do so. We’ve been set back half a day already.”

“Well, let us not delay you further. We’re here to change one small item, and you can be on your way,” the manager said. “Did you bring back the package in question?”

He produced a small leather pouch from his personal inventory and held it out for the manager to take. “Package Blackport dash One Double Zero Two A Eleven Twelve.”

The manager looked it over for a moment, before nodding. “Thank you.”

She turned to me and asked, “Would you please change the Charm?”

It took five seconds for me to change the Charm, and the Captain looked even more pissed when he saw me changing the item for one of the same kind. The only difference between the two Charms was that the one I put in the pause said that it was the first to be successfully created.

“You’re kidding, the Traveller cost me half a day for this shit?” the Captain shouted, and before I knew it, something collided with my chin, sending me several steps backwards, before I fell on my back.

Dazed, with ringing in my ears, I looked at my health bar and saw it had dropped by more than 75%, meaning whatever had hit me had done over 150 damage, and I had received a Concussed debuff. Gingerly I sat up and looked around, I was worried the Shadowguard had attacked me again. However, all I could see was the manager, male clerk and the Captain.

The male clerk looked scared, staring at the Captain, while the manager looked like she was scolding the Captain who looked a bit taken aback. The ringing faded together with the debuff and I caught the last of what the manager was saying, “—press of the Eternal Empire, do you?”

“No, no of course not. I did not know,” the Captain said, sounding suddenly afraid.

The manager turned to me. “Are you alright Mister Heosphoros?”

“What happened?” I asked as I slowly got to my feet.

“My apologies, I lost my temper,” the big man said, somehow seeming smaller than before. “I didn’t know it was done at the behest of Her Imperial Majesty, and not some shi—Ehm, Traveller with a too high opinion of himself.”

“I’m glad I invested some points in Vitality, or you would’ve taken my head clean off,” I mumbled.

“I’m real sorry about that, let me pay for a healer to look after your injuries,” the Captain offered.

I waved it off. “No need, I’ve fourteen or fifteen people in my guild with a healing skill that could use some training. Please just don’t hit me again.”

“Of course not, I’m so sorry.”

The manager looked me over before asking, “Should we call the guard? You’ve been assaulted without reason. Nearly killed.”

I noticed the Captain duck his head a bit at that. If it had been in the real world, sure. This was only a virtual world, and I would not suffer any permanent damage, though if I had died I could possibly have lost a hell of a lot of XP. On one hand, I felt he needed to learn a lesson for assaulting me, on the other, it seemed to be a misunderstanding without any real malicious intent.

“No need,” I said with a sigh. “The ship won’t sail without a Captain. More delays will just keep the customers waiting on my Charms.”

The Captain stepped forward, with a hand extended. “Thank you. My name is Regulus Roughbark, Captain of the vessel Wavebreaker. If you need anything shipped, you just need to ask and we’ll figure something out.”

Your Reputation with Captain Regulus Roughbark has been increased by 275 points. Your Reputation makes him Like you.

Raise your reputation to 450 for Friendly

Lower your reputation to 224 for Acceptance

Current Reputation: 275

I shook his hand a bit hesitant, the man had after all just about taken my head off with a single swing. Out of idle curiosity and politeness, I asked, “Where are you heading next?”

“New continent, a city called Dogfaruhm. Do you know off it?”

The name sparked a bit of recognition. It was the main seat of the Empire of the Deep on the new continent. Amongst the players, it was known by the lovely moniker Dogfart. It also gave me an idea.

To the captain, I said, “Yes, I’ve heard of it. Since you’re going to the new continent, do you expect to have a full cargo load on the way back, and are you sailing over Blackport on the way back to the old continent?”

“Yes, we’ll be back in Blackport in about twenty days. And I expect to be mostly full, depending on a lot of things. Why?” he asked with squinted eyes.

“Mining is a bit hard to get done around here, not a lot of nodes. So I was wondering if you could bring some rocks of Below Average quality back with you?”

“I can probably find some room to squirrel some away. How many do you need and what sizes?”

“I need them for manastones, and all four sizes they come in, but mostly big and large,” I said and then turned to the manager. “Is it possible I could get my earnings now?”

She nodded and pulled six leather pouches from her inventory. It was with a little tremble in my hand that I took all six pouches. Each one, except one of them, contained a hundred platinum coins, which was a lot of coin at this stage of the game. Unless you invested a lot of credits in the credit auction. Before putting the last pouch away I took out ten coins, which I handed to the captain.

“Just how many I can get for that if you got the room for it,” I said.

“Mighty trusting of you,” he commented. “You got yourself a deal, if I got room for it, I’ll bring some rocks back for you. If I don’t use all of the coins, you’ll get it and the rocks when we get back to Blackport.”

“If I’m not in town, just any member of the Blue Lotus guild will do, we got a guild house in the north-eastern section of the town. Near the Butcher.”

The captain nodded, and then bid us farewell. As he put it, “Already lost half a day, no reason to lose more time.”

As we watched his back retreat, the manager cleared her throat once. “Thank you for not reporting him. Would cause some trouble with the Shipping Syndicate, and we need them.”

“I would not gain anything from it, except delaying the shipment even further,” I said with a shrug.

“We would also like to thank you for offering up your charms on the Monthly Auction, unfortunately in the future, we will only allow it to be sold at the daily or weekly auctions,” the manager said, bowing her head in an apologetic way at the end.

“I understand, the Monthly Auction needs a certain quality and value in the items, and the Charms as I can produce them right now, don’t have either. It was one of because it was something new.”

“Exactly, but they will be a great draw at the weekly auctions. Especially since the Empress bought one.”

“I will see if I can get some more made,” I said with a smile before bidding both a good day. After exiting the warehouse I set off to find my next partner in crime: The Blacksmith. If I remembered correctly his smithy was somewhere behind the crafting hall. After a few minutes, I found it, unfortunately, I had to wait a bit since he was closed down for lunch.

I was sitting in front of the smithy meditating when the blacksmith and his apprentice returned. From the looks of it, his apprentice was also his son or at least a male relative of some kind. Their resemblance demanded they had to be related by blood.

“What can I do for you?” the burly smith asked. He was shorter than I had expected, a full head shorter than me. Though he looked strong enough to snap me in half if he wanted.

“I need to custom order a lot of cauldrons, trays and some small tokens,” I said.

“Don’t really do a lot of custom cauldrons, not a lot of customization options on those. You want one with a gold handle?” the smith said with an indulgent smile. His apprentice snickered.

“No, I need a holder for tokens and manastones added, and I need the cauldrons to have the possibility of adding three runes to them,” I said patiently, completely ignoring the fact that he was making fun of me.

As soon as he heard that, he turned serious. “A runesmith?”

“Yes, and I’m going to make some magic cauldrons, you can customize a lot with those,” I said, giving him a flat stare.

“Right, sorry. My mouth got the better of me, please come inside and let us discuss your needs,” the smith said, and then turned to his apprentice. “Stoke the fire, we need them roaring.”

He invited me into a small soundproof room next to the open-aired smithy. He had two chairs and a desk between them, with some papers on the desk. “So what do you need?”

“I’m intending to make a three-part meal storage system. The meals themselves are stored in small tokens, which need to be slotted into the trays or cauldron. There needs to be space for manastones of course. The meal tokens themselves should not be too big or weigh too much. If you could make them of the cheapest metal possible, then it would be great, since they will be one use only,” I explained. I then described in greater details how it would work.

“Never heard of a three-part system before. Normally you just store it in one item,” the smith mumbled but started to draw something on the paper. “What size cauldron?”

“A ten portion one. If I was an Apprentice runesmith I would not need it, but I’m only a Beginner with a limited number of runes available,” I said and watched as he drew a cauldron. When he finished what to me looked like a normal cauldron, he added a piece

“We make the tokens have this protrusion on the back which flares out at the bottom so that it can only be put in here,” he said and pointed to a drawing. “Then you slide it down to lock it in place here. On the other side, you got a holder to put a manastone in. I’ll make it a leather pouch so it’s easy to get out again. We’ll do something similar to the trays, though we don’t need a pouch on the side, just a small divot will do.”

“That will work,” I said as I looked it over.

“Now comes pricing. We can do the token in copper, no problem. However, we need to use Average quality to ensure that we can get three slots for runes on there. That means I need to charge you a silver per token.”

“A bit expensive, but it is what it is.”

“Now the cauldrons, on the other hand, will be four gold, just a single gold more than a normal cauldron, while I’ll charge two gold for the trays. Are those prices fair?” he asked.

“It’s what it is. I’d like fifteen cauldrons and fifteen trays, as well as two hundred tokens,” I said.

“That comes to—” he said and started to add numbers on the paper.

“Five platinum,” I supplied.

He looked up for a moment, but continued to add the numbers, before finally saying with a frown, “Five platinum.”

“Indeed, and I’ll pay upfront. When can I expect them?”

“We can have a couple of cauldrons and trays done tonight, as well as a few dozen of the tokens. The rest at midday in two days.”

“Sounds good, I’ll be by before sundown to get them,” I said and handed him five platinum. Happy I made my way toward the guild house. Since I did not know where any of them were, it was a little foolhardy to cast Message, for all I knew they were out of range. Really needed to get that spell levelled up a lot more, so that distance would become less of a hassle.

It turned out they were not out of range. At least not all of them. I found Ed’s party in the main square, lounging around. It was Blaze that spotted me first.

“Finally, where the heck have you been?” he asked.

Robin immediately said, “We were afraid you had been killed.”

“Almost were,” I said without thinking. Their immediate reactions were to inch their hands closer to their weapons.

“Who?” asked Ed in a serious tone.

“Just a slight misunderstanding with the Captain of a ship. All is good, though I could use some healing, only got forty-six hp left.”

“Slight? That’s damn near your entire health pool,” Robin protested.

“It all worked out,” I said with a shrug, followed by a sigh of relief as Marion cast Lay on Hands on me. Healing spells felt good, gave a warm pleasant tingling, it could be quite addictive. In fact, some of the seedier player establishment were healing pleasure houses. Akin to the opium dens of the old days.

That was beside the point though, and I asked them, “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Ed said as if that was obvious. “We need to collect the others for a resource run if you want to come along? And then we hoped to run the ancient outpost, so we can finally get the Rabbit Warren run out of the way.”

“They’re all so boring,” Marion sighed. “When are we going back to the ruins?”

“I need a few more days to get everything sorted here. Three more days and we’ll head out,” I said.

“Well, I think we need to foot most of the bill ourselves at that time then,” Robin said.

“Why?” I asked as Marion healed the last of my damage. Now I just had fifteen points of Wounds meaning my max health was 185 instead of 200.

It was Rose who answered, “The Dusts left early this morning. Took along most of the player population, they were heading for the ruins. Only the Squirrel Knights remain of the high-level players. Otherwise, it’s only low levelled players left and us of course.”

“Yeah, there’s been a few low levelled players asking Nise if she’s going to sell food at some point,” Blaze said. “The Knights have asked us as well.”

“Well, let us not wait around here then. Let’s round up the others,” I said.

Three and a half hours later I found myself back at the spot that was so familiar, but yet I had not been there for a week. It was weird, being there with only Nise and Mia, the Phils were back at the guild house finishing the last furniture. As soon as I set up, players started approaching our little stall.

“Give me a moment to start cooking properly,” I said loudly, almost at the point of shouting, as soon as I heard someone question when there would be food available. “Anyone who wants a piece of food that buffs talk with Nise about pricing, and tell her what attribute you want buffed by one. I recommend sticking to Strength or Resonance for a little extra damage since we only increase an attribute by one.”

I started out with just making normal skewers until I had a feeling of how many wanted buffs. Most of these new players could not really afford it. After finishing the first ten skewers, and having put over the next batch, I looked up and saw someone that looked familiar. Red hair and a fair complexion. It looked like the woman in tight leather who had been complaining at Fillard’s the day before, and this morning at the auction hall.

However, she was not dressed in black tight leather. She was carrying a bow and was dressed in leather armour and starter clothes, yet I could swear it was the same person. Keeping an eye on her, I quickly picked up on the four guys in her party. All seemed to have a very stiff posture, almost as if they were guards. Their eyes moving around all the time.

Who she was, clicked a couple of minutes later with the arrival of another party of five. One woman and four men again. The woman was the spitting image of the one I had been keeping an eye on, but this one was definitely the one I had run into two times earlier. Her black leather outfit left little to the imagination as to what was underneath it.

“Well, if it isn’t my little sister, willing to concede your defeat. I mean, having to resort to buying low-quality food from other players,” the newly arrived twin said. “How pitiful.”

“Fuck off Dawn,” the twin with the bow said. It was when she said the name it clicked for me. Beautiful twin girls, red hair, the bodyguards. The middle of the first month. This was the Airgead twins. They were supposed to have their competition on the island of Kieale further to the south.

“Now, now, Aoife, don’t talk like that. Less the peasants think you’re one of them. Mother raised better,” Dawn said before walking away.

The Airgead twins were daughters of the guild leader of the Silver Clover guild, a large guild routinely placed somewhere in the top 30. He was much older than his wife and had gotten his daughters very late in life, and was looking to retire. However, the twins hated each other with a passion, so he had proposed a competition between the two of them. The twin who managed to create the largest guild with just her starting coin and with the help of four bodyguards would be the new guild leader.

The competition had been almost as popular, at least in the news, as the Challenges themselves, since their competition led to some truly epic guild battles and sieges. In the end, Dawn had allied herself with the Silverlords and won the title. From what I remembered she was a conniving little bitch that would betray you in a heartbeat, which had happened to many smaller guilds that she had allied with. Aoife, the other twin was a bit better, but she was still not to be trusted, having made some duplicitous moves in my last life as well.

It was something that could turn into a big problem. Nevertheless, I could also see great advantages to be made, if we helped one of the sisters. It would just have to be backed by ironclad contracts both in and out of the game, otherwise, I and Blue Lotus would end up being screwed over. If I could secure a long term permanent alliance with a top 30 guild at an early juncture, it would be a great victory.

I barely registered what Nise was telling me with regards to the food ordered. I was preoccupied dragging up whatever memories I could of the two, and the competition, as well as thinking about how to approach an alliance. Especially since the competition between them was not common knowledge yet, though it would soon be.

I was so preoccupied that Mia had to stop me. “Damian, unless it’s for yourself, there is no more need for food.”

“Huh?” was my brilliant reply. When it registered what she said, I looked around and saw that no one was waiting for food. With an embarrassing smile, I said, “Ooops.”

“You seemed to be a million miles away, what were you thinking about?” she asked.

“An opportunity for the guild has just presented itself,” I replied. “And also going over the idea for my meal token system.”

“Meal token?” Nise and Mia asked at the same time.

“Right, haven’t had time to tell anyone about it. I learned some runes finally, and I’m thinking about creating meal tokens. Basically, I make some food and then store them on these tokens that are the size of a coin. It’ll only compress the size, not the weight, so they’ll be heavier than they look,” I started explaining.

Taking a deep breath, I continued, “You put the token into a special cauldron or tray, and the food comes out, as fresh as it was when it went in. Even a few days later.”

“That’s pretty cool, we should be able to earn a lot of money on that,” Mia said.

“More like lose some,” I said with a cringe. “The tokens are expensive. Costs me a silver apiece, and that’s before I factor in the time and manastones needed to create runes on them. A token should be able to hold five portions of stew or ten skewers. So unless we’re talking about food with buffs, we’re most likely going to lose money on it.”

“Why do it then?” Nise asked.

“Because I don’t like creating stuff just to throw it away. Sure I could have asked to learn some other runes, but until you upgrade to Apprentice in Runesmithing, what you can make is severely limited,” I said. “Also long term storage of food is something that will free up time for me. I don’t necessarily have to go with the party to the ruins and so on, or I don’t have to stop everything just to come and cook food.”

“Why not have one of us take up Cooking if it’s a burden then?” Mia asked.

“It’s not a bad idea to have a backup, but all of you are concentrating on other areas and I like Cooking. While my idea will be a bit costly, it would be just as costly if I had learned most other runes and tried to create a lot of other magic items. Might not outright lose money on a sale, but they would be a lot harder to get rid off,” I said.

The discussion died out after that, and I concentrated on butchering rabbits and trying to create manastone solution of Below Average quality instead of Poor like I had been doing so far. If I wanted to do some proper Runesmithing I would need some better manastones.