I spent the rest of the day making manastone, manastone solution, tea, and food. By the end of it, I had plenty of manastones of sufficient quality, the only thing needed was time to charge them fully. Which meant another day before I could really start playing with runes. I also wanted to learn some more runes from the resident Runesmith in Blackport, an eccentric man who experimented with runes on plants. Nonetheless, he was the only one around that could teach me, even if he charged ten platinum per rune.

After logging out and getting ready, I made my way towards the dining hall. Just as I had expected people were standing outside, more than a bit confused. Robert, Edward’s father, was the first to spot me. The temperamental man grumbled loudly, “What’s the meaning of this? You want us here, but we’re locked out.”

“Give me a moment to explain,” I said loudly. “First of all, is everyone here?”

I was looking around and as far as I could see every adult was there. The others took a look around and came to the same conclusion. “Okay, four things. First, because I had heard rumours of the Masters’ press conference, I took a gamble and auctioned off our coins. We made a substantial amount of credits.”

“How substantial?” Andrea asked with a predatory look.

I did not answer her directly. “Substantial enough that it leads me to the second thing. Over the month of February, the guild will grow larger. We plan on adding twenty-five members each week. So by the end of February, we should have at least one hundred and twenty-one players.”

There were gasps of surprise from several people upon hearing that. Excited murmuring started up, which I quickly quashed. “That brings me to the third thing. I’ve paid out a substantial amount of credits as shares. Every adult will receive one share, while officers will receive two shares. A share is equal to ten thousand credits.”

This time the excited chatter was not murmurings, but straight up whoops of joy. It took me nearly a minute to calm everyone down before I could continue. “Now, I know some of you have substantial debt, meaning that the government will take most of the credits. So everyone gets something out of this, I’ve arranged for some chefs to prepare real food for us. Not something made in the replicators, but real grown food, prepared by real people. Enjoy.”

As I said enjoy, the doors to the dining hall opened. My employees, no, my compatriots, looked stunned for a moment, before starting to file in. The children sounded excited. Ainsley and Sarah came up to me, while the rest was waiting to enter.

“How much did this cost?” Ainsley asked with a frown.

“More than I liked, but we needed a celebration, and because of Marcus I don’t dare to take any of us outside to celebrate,” I replied.

Ainsley looked like she was about to object, but Sarah headed her off, “Come on, we all need to relax. As he said we need to celebrate, we all worked hard for this.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she relented and followed her girlfriend into the dining room. With a smile, I followed them as well. Inside the dining hall was completely changed. Gone was the metal tables and benches. Instead, it was one long table with chairs for everyone, made from wood. White table cloth and everything. Six waiters in white uniforms were busy seating people. The children were lapping it up, and so were some of the adults. One side of the room had been transformed into a large kitchen, where five chefs were already preparing food.

I was led to a seat at the head of the table, Alicia on my left with her mother next to her and Ainsley on my right followed by Sarah. As soon as I was seated, the waiter handed me a leatherbound menu. It was a six-course meal. For appetizers, there was no choice though the children got something less exotic-sounding. For the rest of the courses, there were three or four choices.

Since I had entered last, I was asked last. “I would like the lobster bisque for the soup. Then the poached salmon, followed by the lamb with mint sauce. For dessert, I’d like the fruit salad with honey and chilli. For the last, no cheese, just a selection of nuts, please.”

“Very well, sir,” my waitress said, took the menu and moved away.

“Damian, you’ve to come and visit soon. Mister Shell is missing you,” Alicia said as soon as I had handed off the menu.

Mia immediately said, “Sweetie, Damian is a busy man.”

“Mister Shell?” asked Sarah with a huge grin.

“Yes, a giant tort—what’s the word?” Alicia said.

“Tortoise,” I supplied.

“Torto—what he said,” she tried but seemed to have troubles with the word. “Mister Shell is Damian’s favourite animal at my farm.”

“Oh, really?” Sarah asked. “What else do you have?”

Alicia immediately launched into listing all the animals and their names. Kept talking straight through appetizers and the soup. Her mother had to remind her several times that she had to eat. The list was that long and slightly impressive.

Ainsley leaned over during appetizers and said, “I’ve looked through the files with Ed and we’ve made a priority list. As soon as we’re done I’ll set up video interviews.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, only a third of my attention was on that conversation. The second third was on Alicia and the last third was on the food. It was really, really good. Maybe I could ask the chefs for some advice.

“You need to do the interviews with the crafters though, I don’t know what professions you want them to take up,” she pointed out. I replied with a single groan. I had hoped I would not be needed for that part, but I guessed it could not be helped.

For the rest of the meal, I did think about what we would need. We would need more crafters, no doubt about it. However, what we needed right now was actually not having our crafters waste time on collecting resources. Sure some of those that were going on Ainsley’s squad were picking up gathering skills, but they were not a priority.

So instead of taking five crafters in the first batch, we should take five gatherers. Gathering skills were easy to learn, so they did not need to waste the free skills on those. However, if I waited to recruit the crafters, they might be snatched up by other companies looking to field a guild going into the game.

That made me realize, we knew how many we would hire, so what about we locked down the contracts at once. It would only cost an extra one hundred credits per week if they remained at the facility. Yes, they might not be happy about having to be put under again, but the fact that it was only for a short time should help soothe over any bruised egos.

I informed Ainsley about the change in plan, which made her groan. She had eighty people to hire, while I only had twenty. With everything planned and settled, I turned my full attention to the lamb in front of me. It was absolutely delicious.

From the comments around the table that I was able to hear between Alicia’s excited talking, it seemed like the bonus payout and the party was well-received. Just looking at all the happy faces told me the money was well-spent.

There would be a feast every time a new group of players joined us during February. Of course, it would not be with a waitstaff and personal chefs. It would be buffets where there were tasters of all the different items on the menu, and the mealcubes to order the food had already been paid for.

I knew I had gotten a very good deal, since all five feasts would normally run at much more than 10,000 credits. However, the hotel would earn good credits on our new members as well. Especially considering that we still paid for the full month, even though some of them would only join in the last week of February.

“Damian, are you listening?” Alicia suddenly asked, interrupting my thoughts.

I looked at her with a guilty grin. “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere. What were you saying?”

“Mean Lady is complaining about me not sending any animals to the butcher, says my level won’t increase if I don’t start doing it,” she said and then started to complain about how the Mean Lady, the game’s guide slash tutorial, was trying to get her to do things she did not want to. I could only sit and smile through it all. Agreeing and disagreeing at the right moments.

The interviews had taken longer than I had expected because some of Ainsley’s top picks had already been picked up by other employers. Nevertheless, we managed to get the ones I had marked as especially interesting. A lot of the people I had talked with were ecstatic at getting employment, though a few were very dissatisfied with the fact that we had to put them back in for one to three weeks. Though not enough to throw away the opportunity.

A great thing about the whole process was that we could see what other companies had approached them for a job, meaning that Marcus could not slip in spies that way. Not that it would help anyway, because each new member would save two platinum of his starting money, and pay for the contract. He could still have made us waste credits on duds if not for that feature.

Ed grumbled a bit when he suddenly had five extra members to supervise, while Kira was ecstatic having more people to train. Her family had run a dojo after all, and she had been poised to take over, before the accident that claimed her parents and legs.

The new gathering squad was led by a guy named Mason, and every member took a couple of combat skills, a healing skill, and Imbue. Then we specialized each member. Mason would take Leadership, the rest took one of the following skills: Cooking, Brewing, Camping, and Tracking.

Tracking was not only good for finding animals but could also be used for finding plants and so on. It was just best at finding animals until you started getting subskills. Finally, each of them would learn Meditation, Herbalism, Logging, Mining, and Butchery. With that complement of skills, they could go on extended resource gathering trips, and keep a squad or two healthy at the same time. At the same time, it would enable me to stay in town when the squads went adventuring. Every time we went out, it paused the progress for most of my crafting skills.

When I could finally log back into the game, it was almost midday. I spent the rest of the day making fertilizer, cooking, brewing and most importantly, imbuing all the manastones I had made the day before.

On the morning of the day 65 in-game, I took stock of my Runesmithing supplies and the runes I knew. I knew the Power, Store, Release, Input, Output, Compress Volume and Suspend Decay. In regards to manastones, I had 46 with twenty-five mana in each and 44 with fifteen in each. That meant enough to attempt to make another 45 meal tokens to store food in.

Or I could ignore that for the moment since we only had three guilds who used my magic lunchboxes and get some new runes. The Squirrel Knights, the Otter Pirates, and ourselves. Though we had just gotten someone else with the Cooking skill, setting up camp and cooking in the wild was quite the hassle. Prepackaged food that came out the same way it was stored was a great time saver in the wild.

I considered what runes I could take. Because of the limits imposed on me from my skill level, I could not make a lot of magic items. Though there were a few that sprung to mind. Simple damage or armour increases would be the easiest and would be welcomed by the fighters. Even if it was just a single or a couple of point increases, such things were always welcomed by gamers.

The latter seemed like the best option, so I set out to find good old Ilat Baisley. Not that he was hard to find, he was always in the same place. The gazebo at the edges of the island, overlooking the ocean. He was also the one that controlled access to the dungeon beneath the town. It was to start with just a sewer with a lot of slimes that needed killing, but when you had run it enough times you got access to the next dungeon. Which was an ever-changing one, where you had to repair the slime spawn mechanism.

Most only ran the slime dungeon once or twice, because the reward was really shitty. One needed perseverance to build up the reputation needed with Ilat. However, we had shared the secret with the Squirrel Knights, so they were running it once or twice a week, while we ran the dungeon the rest of the time, since it had a limited number of entries per week.

“Ah, young Damian, it has been a long time,” Ilat said as I stepped up to his gazebo made entirely of plants. The old man was meditating in the classic lotus position, except for the fact that he was floating in the air.

“Hello, Master Baisley,” I greeted back. “Yes, things have pulled me away from time, but I’m back now, and I hope to learn a few runes from you.”

“For the simpler runes, the price starts at ten platinum,” the man replied with a wide smile.

“I remember,” I said. “I was hoping to make some simple damage enhancement. You need the Power rune of course, and I guess one that increases damage. Anything else?”

“No, but I would recommend that you put in a trigger rune as well.”

“Why—” I started to ask when I remembered why. “Because if there’s not a trigger rune, it’ll have to run constantly.”

“Exactly. Damage Increase is a simple rune, but Trigger On Hit is more, so twenty platinum for that one,” he said sagely.

“What about increasing armour?”

“Another simple one. I would recommend using the Trigger On Hit rune again, for the same reason as above.”

“Okay, three runes then,” I said and pulled 40 platinum out of my pouch. “Here’s the coin.”

“Thank you, now bow down so I can reach your head,” he said and the coin flew out of my hand and into his pouch. I did as he asked, and prepared for knowledge transfer. It was something with a high mentor skill could do, and it was painless but very confusing. I usually felt a bit dizzy afterwards.

This time was no different. I mumbled a “Thank you” and then left on unsteady feet for a minute before the dizziness disappeared.

Walking through Blackport on my way back to the guild house was a little different than normal. Because of the fact that no long-distance teleportation could work on the island, so you had to sail for a week in-game to get anywhere, the island was sparsely populated. Because of the changes, I had made in the timeline, by being the First Recognized Guild and so on, we already had more players on the island than in my previous timeline.

However, since the Challenges had been announced, the town was now bustling with newbie players. Dressed exactly like me. Despite having plenty of coins, the clothes I wore normally were just the normal starter clothes. Only when I went to the auctions did I change into a nice set of clothes I had bought.

“Hey, did the griefers get you too?” someone asked me as I walked through the main square.

I stopped and looked at the player who had spoken to me. “Excuse me?”

He looked me up and down, “You’re dressed in newbie clothes, no equipment. You just got ganked, right?”

“Eh, no. This is how I’m usually dressed,” I answered.

“Oh, had hoped I wasn’t the only one and we could team up against them,” he said a little crestfallen.

I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I know someone who’s willing to help you.”

He looked up hopefully. “Really?”

“Sure. If you go to the Imperial Soldiers’ Training Ground, you’ll find an Asian woman named Kira. She’ll help you,” I said and gave him directions to the training ground. Kira would love to whoop someone’s ass. She also had four new members of her squad that needed some combat training.

“Awesome, thanks dude,” he said and turned to jog away.

“See you around, kid,” I said.

Smiling, I continued on my way. I heard him shout behind me, “What’s your name by the way?”

“Why don’t you use Inspect?” I called back and continued on my way.

A few seconds later, I heard a loud gasp. “Holy crap, you’re the Awakener.”

More than a few players were starting to eye me. Including some of those belonging to the DLA. While a single death would not be much of an inconvenience for me, because of my class, 2 hours would still be annoying to lose to just waiting on respawn. So I picked up my speed.

When I got back to the guild house I took a moment to look at it. It had been adequately sized before, but with twenty-five new members it was getting cramped. It would be even more cramped as time went by. Meaning that getting the guild village up and running was becoming more necessary. Then the guild house could be torn down and rebuilt, with more crafting points, and be turned into a shop slash newbie hangout spot as they trained in the more appropriate levelled environments.

“There you are,” I heard a voice say. A voice I immediately recognized as belonging to Mia.

“Here I am,” I replied lamely. “What’s up?”

“Been looking for you, you got some orders to fill.”

I did not know that. “Oh?”

“The Squirrel Knights want some magic lunch boxes filled,” she explained. “They don’t need food for satiety or wounds, but something that can boost their stats. They’re going to the castle dungeon.”

I knew that people would start picking up Cooking and Camping skills on their own, but the skills had been overlooked in the start, so in regards to Cooking I had a head start. “Okay, I can do that I guess, how many do they need? And when?”

“They’re up to twenty members now, all martial focused, so just strength buffs, two meals a day as long as you possibly can provide. They leave tomorrow,” she replied.

“So six days at the most, meaning twenty-four cauldrons of stew. That should be doable. I’ll do it tonight to extend the shelf life as long as possible,” I mused.

“They also asked if you could do it with the tea. Even though tea will last almost a day before expiring, they don’t wish to take up more auxiliary skills as they put it.”

I thought about it for a moment, but so no problems with it. “That should be easy, just use a kettle instead of a cauldron or the tray.”

“Then they’re going to need the same in that regard,” she said.

“I guess I got my work cut out for me then,” I said with a grin. “Could you go and buy fifteen kettles?”

“Sure, anything else you want me to do? Fetch your dry cleaning?” she asked sarcastically.

Taken aback at her tone, I looked at her. “I can do it myself, sorry I asked.”

“Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that,” she apologized immediately. “It’s just that in the last couple of weeks, I felt like I’ve done important work helping to run the guild. Now suddenly I need to fetch. I guess it’s all part of being an assistant, it just felt like a demotion for a second.”

“You’re doing important work, and will continue to do so. I asked because I’ve plenty of stuff on my plate. You can always delegate the job to someone else,” I said.

“But I’ve no one working for me,” she countered.

“No, but there are plenty of kids outside that love to earn a few coppers,” I pointed out.

A frown spread on her beautiful face before it turned into a bright smile. “You’re right. Don’t worry, I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you,” I said and headed into the house. I immediately set a course for the kitchen. Not that it was my final destination, but the stairs in the kitchen led to the basement and my alchemy lab. Which was also the space I used for Runesmithing, and just about everything else.

On the table, I already had Kira’s new equipment. We would be replacing equipment one person at a time. We started with Kira because she had won the raffle we had held to determine the order. Everyone got one lot for free, but you could buy extra lots for 10 contribution points. Kira had gone overboard and bought two hundred, while the others only bought ten. It was just a way for us to bring down the amount the guild owed our members a little.

Her equipment was a pair of tonfa and leather armour. The armour consisted of a chest piece, bracers, and boots. Meaning a total of seven pieces that I needed to create runes for. Not that it was a complicated procedure. It was just that my skill was still pretty low, meaning any magic item I created would be a bit underwhelming.

First I picked up the tonfa. They were created by Phil and had not yet been used. Unlike her normal tonfa, there had been added a pommel-like circle on the handles, where she could slot a single small manastone in each, to power the runes.

Looking over the stats of the weapons there was only one stat that had any interest for me, the damage stat. The tonfa did not add directly to damage like for example a sword would. It enhanced the damage dealt by the wielder’s strength. A sword would, for example, add ten damage at this point in the game, on top of the wielder’s strength. The tonfa instead multiplied the wielder’s strength by 20%. As Phil’s skills rose, so would the percentage of damage.

The rune I had learned would influence the damage stat directly, so I wondered if it would increase the percentage, or just add a flat rate of damage to the weapon. Despite having already lived through the game once, I could not recall that fact. I had never played as a runesmith before.

The first step in creating a magic item with Runesmithing was to crush the manastones into a powder. Normally that would explode the manastones, but since I had the Runesmithing skill I could delay that reaction long enough for me to finish inscribing the rune. For the job, I selected two manastones with 25 mana each. The more mana the manastone held, the more crafting points I had to play with when finalizing the item.

When the manastones had been crushed into powder, the energy that prevented the explosion allowed me to lift it out of the mortar. With it, I transformed the powder into the shape of my maker’s mark, which also contained the runes if the attempt was successful, preventing others from altering or stealing the runes. My mark was the motif the ancient Egyptian had used to depict the blue lotus in their art. With a thought, I sent the energy down to one of the tonfa, placing my mark at the side of the tonfa where the handle met the stick.

My perception changed as it always did. The world around me turned black, and all I could see was the tonfa in front of me, and above floated the different runes I knew. I could not move but with a single thought, the runes would respond to my commands.

The first thing needed was a power rune, which I placed at the pommel where Kira would place the manastones. Next came the Damage Increase and Trigger On Hit runes, which I spread out across the entire tonfa. Then I connected the two runes to the power source. The Power Rune would not let the Damage Increase rune draw power unless the Trigger On Hit rune was activated. Which was a passive rune, meaning it did not draw mana but was active only when there was a manastone inserted.

With that out of the way, the crafting overlay determining my chances for a specific outcome popped up.

Runesmithing

Runesmithing Level: 11

Effect of Lucky Charm: +1%

Effects of Titles: +1%

# of Runes: 3

Minimum Mana: 33

Mana Used: 50

Possible Outcomes

Failure - 0%

Flawed - 50%

Success - 40%

Exceptional - 8%

Brilliant - 2%

Master Work - 0%

Base experience: 300 XP

Mana Cost: 40

That were some pretty good odds in my opinion. With the mana cost, I would be able to do two attempts before I had to meditate. With another thought, I channelled the 40 mana into my mark.

>Roll for Outcome: 68.<

>You have achieved a Flawed Success.<

>Rewarding Runesmithing XP: 360 XP.<

>Rewarding Free XP: 18 XP.<

Well, that sucked. With only 38 crafting points to play with, what I could do was limited. The first thing was to ensure that one hit did not drain one mana. So I had to invest in the Power Rune. At the moment it cost 1 mana per hit. For just 1 CP, I could decrease the cost to 1 mana per 2 hits. The next decrease cost 2 CP, then 3 CP and so on. By the time I had invested 10 CP, the tonfa was able to do 5 hits for each mana drained from the manastone.

Next came the Damage Increase itself. From the start, it sat at 0%. To increase it to 5% it cost me 5 CP, the next increase would cost 10 CP, then 15 CP. Meaning I could only increase it with 10%. If I had just had 2 CPs more the increase would have been 15%. Still, better than nothing. Since I had 8 CP left over, I increased the number of hits from 5 to 6 per mana.

‘Maybe I should’ve started with the damage increase,’ I thought to myself after I had finalized the tonfa. However, thinking about it further, I think Kira would have agreed with me. She preferred speed over strength, so the more hits the better.

I picked up the next tonfa and did the same. The only difference was that it was a normal Success instead of a Flawed one, meaning that the increase was 15% to damage, and 6 hits per mana.

The same process applied to the armour pieces, except that it was much more expensive to increase the hits per mana. The cost started at 10 CP, so I was leery of increasing it. Also Kira dodged a lot, so it would be better to make a large increase in Armour Points, instead of being able to take a lot of hits before the mana was drained.

The Increase Armour was also expensive. Starting at 5 CP per Armour Point. The next was 10, then 15. Meaning that I was able to make armour that provided 4 extra Armour Point, except for the left boot that only provided 3. Damn that Flawed Success. The chest piece had turned out great though, with an Exceptional Success. But with only 13 extra crafting points, and the next armour increase costing 25 CPs, it was a non-starter. Did up the hits per mana drained to two though.

Happy with the outcome overall, no failure since it was not possible, I paid attention to my surroundings once again. I was surprised to see that there was a stack of kettles next to me. She must have just delivered them, while I was finishing the chest piece. Or that was what I told myself. Truth be told, I had a tendency to get absorbed in my work.

I grabbed the first kettle and got back to work. I would only need to enchant two of them to start with. Once again, work consumed my focus.