A week had passed by quickly as we stayed at the ruins. The time was mostly used for levelling up our newbies. Those who had been drafted into the old parties were between level 15 and 17, while the two newbie squads were level 13 and Mason’s squad was level 12.

The second reason for us staying a week in the ruins was to give me time to grow Fireblooms. We needed a lot of it to have a chance of defeating the boss. Even with Ed at level 40, the 20 members of the guild that were going up against the level 45 boss, would have an impossible task. With the poisons and substances I had made, it merely became a hard task.

For the week, we had let the Knights stick around in our camp, when theirs ran out. We also let them have loot transported back by Kira’s squad and the two newb squad when they went to get their classes. After the week at the ruins were over, Kira and the two newb squads headed back to Blackport together with the knights.

Yesterday we had left the ruins and made our way to the hidden entrance to the glade, and put up a new camp outside. It was to keep the Phils, Mia, and myself safe while Ed, Robin and Mason’s parties went inside to deal with the boss. While Mason’s squad was the lowest level, they would serve well in the capacity of providing debuffs with the burnable substances I had crafted.

The XP would be a boost to them, and the subsequent harvesting of resources in the glade would be even more so. Another reason why I elected to have them here instead of one of the other newbie squads with higher levels, was because today was also the day we would be adding the new players. We needed some more firepower around Blackport to keep our people safe.

Though severely outnumbered, my members had levelled more quickly by using the ruins than the DLA could back in Blackport. Kira and One-Eye were already level 37, with Hei and Robert trailing at level 34 and 33 respectively. If any of the DLA was above level 30, I would be surprised. Coupled their high skills levels with their combat techniques, they were frightful powerhouses.

While the distance between level 30 and 33 might not sound like a lot, it was a difference of 51 skill points. Even if all of them came from Apprentice tier skills, it was still 25 skill levels, which was nothing to scoff at. The difference between 30 and 37 was 133 skill points. At least 66 skill levels difference between the two.

I was sitting together with the three party leaders that would be going into the glade to fight with the boss. It was time to share what I knew about the boss. “The boss you’ll be fighting is a giant animated tree. It’s just barely sentient, it got the mind of a wild animal which lashes out at everyone and everything.”

“Does that mean it’s stationary?” Ed asked.

I nodded, but before I could continue, Mason said, “What’s the big problem then, we just have to retreat if it gets too dangerous.

“Because it’s a magical tree that can control the roots of itself and other trees in the glade,” I replied. “There’s nowhere in the glade that is outside of its attack radius. And before you say retreat out of the glade. That’s simply impossible. As soon as the fight starts, the entrance will be blocked by roots. You’ve to be sure everyone is inside the glade before you attack, or they’ll be forced to wait for the fight to end.”

“Okay, so we need to be careful about spreading out, and getting too close to the edges of the glade,” Ed said. “What else?”

“It regenerates health from water and ice attacks, so you all need to lay off those spells,” I said.

“Marion isn’t going to be happy about that,” Robin mumbled.

“Nothing for it, she needs to rely on her fire attacks. Damage dealt by fire will not be regenerated,” I replied and started taking things out of my inventory. “You need to know that it has a powerful wind attack. It basically summons a storm, which has enough force to send you flying towards the edge of the glade. Here you’ll be entangled by roots. The worst part is that it summons a rain cloud as well, which heals it at an insane rate.”

Ed looked thoughtful as he took in all the information. “Is there a way of stopping it?”

“Not that I know off.”

“Fuck,” he mumbled. “We got quite a few attackers that can deal fire damage, but it’s probably not going to be enough.”

“Which is why you get these,” I said and pointed to the glass vials and clay jars.

Mason picked on up. “What are they?”

“The small vials contain poison. Unlike normal poisons, there is only one use in each vial, not five. However, they work one hundred percent of the time, as long as the target has an organic body. The effects last between seven and twelve seconds, and make the target susceptible to fire damage,” I explained. “Each application of the poison increases damage by one to two percent and they stack.”

“That’s something I guess, but not a lot,” Robin said with a frown.

“True, but with the trees inherit weakness to fire essence, then it doubles the effect of the poison,” I said. “I’ve prepared forty-four of them.”

“What about the jars?” Mason asked.

I picked up one of them. “These are primarily for your squad, Mason.”

“Oh?”

“They contain a thick oil that is highly flammable. Throw it at the tree, then ignite it and you have applied a high damage over time debuff,” I explained. “They’ll burn for between twelve and thirty seconds. Doing eight to ten fire damage every second.”

“With this, it should not be any problem killing the boss,” Mason said.

“It’s not that easy, it is a Superior mob,” I pointed out.

He looked confused. “What does that mean?”

It was Ed who answered, “It means that it’s five times stronger than a normal mob in terms of stats. At level forty-five we or a normal mob would have received two hundred and twenty-five stats points to distribute. This one will have received eleven hundred and twenty-five points. And I assume it has high starting stats to start with.”

“What the fuck? That’s impossible to beat!” Mason exclaimed. “We can’t possibly beat that.”

“Yes, you can. I got the utmost confidence in all of you,” I said without hesitation. “With this poison and Firebloom Essence Oil you can do it. I’ve also prepared some health and mana pots for you.”

As I was pulling out all the potions I had made, Ed started talking, I had already briefed him in private about the boss. “Robin, I need you to be in charge of the archers. You’ll be given the poison. It’s of no use for the melee fighters to have to stop and apply poison all the time. It’ll be too dangerous.”

“Of course,” she replied and scooped up the poison bottles.

Ed continued. “Mason, you guys are in charge of throwing the jars at the boss. I also need you to focus on anyone who becomes trapped by the boss’ entangling roots.”

“But we won’t do a lot of damage to a boss that strong,” Mason protested.

I spoke up this time, “You five are probably best equipped to dealing with the ensnaring roots. They’re not part of the boss, but counts as a tree, and since all of you have Logging—”

“We’ll do extra damage,” he finished for me. He had understood the implications.

Ed nodded. “Exactly. Your felling axes are made for that job. It’s important that you focus on keeping yourself free, then the healers, then the archers. When they’re free you can free the casters and melee people.”

“Okay, I got it,” he said and then looked at the mountain of potions I had put out. “Wow, how many potions are there? There must be hundreds.”

“Only one hundred and eighty-nine,” I said with a wry smile. “One hundred of them are mana pots, of varying efficacy. Same with the health pots.”

Robin frowned. “You must have spent a lot of money on all this.”

I gave a short laugh. “Oh, I have. In materials, I’ve probably spent close to eight platinum or more. These pots alone would sell for close to five platinums. The fire poisons are worth another two platinums, and the essence oils are also worth another platinum. Those prices are if I sold to the merchants. I could probably sell all of it for twelve platinums or more to the players.”

“That’s a crazy amount of money, boss,” Mason whistled.

“Eh, I’ll recoup it from my quest reward,” I said with a shrug. “The XP, race essence crystals, guild points, and reputation points are much more important.”

“Speaking of race,” Ed commented. “Who are we giving the shards to?”

“The fair thing would be spreading out the shards equally,” I said and held up a hand when he looked like he was going to protest. “However, that won’t benefit anyone. So instead we’ll give two players half of them each. It’ll be enough to take the first step towards becoming a spriggan.”

“What’s the benefits of the spriggan race?” Robin asked.

I collected my thoughts for a moment before answering. “The spriggan race is where trees come to life so to speak. The more spriggan you are, the more features of a tree you’ll get. Like leaves for hair, bark for skin and so on.”

“What about stats?” Ed asked predictably. He always wanted to know the numbers.

“There are three different benefits, and three weaknesses like most other races. The ones I can remember off the top of my head for benefits are an increase in all skills and spells related to nature, armour-like skin. Must admit I can’t remember the last one,” I replied with a frown.

“What about weaknesses?”

“One of them is of course weakness to fire damage, one decreases the effect of non-natural weapons and armours,” I replied. “Which means things that are mostly made from iron, or created by engineers. The last one is a decrease in agility.”

They absorbed that information for a while. Robin immediately said, “Maybe we should ask Deena. No one else on my team would be a good fit.”

I agreed with that one. It was one of my own suggestions, however, I wanted them to make their suggestions first before I interfered. “Spriggans make for good druids.”

Ed nodded. “I’m thinking maybe Petals or Trung, though I’m leery of having a frontline tank be susceptible to fire damage. Also, both of them use iron weapons.”

“Those are good points,” I said. “However, a spear will count as a natural weapon as long as only the tip is iron. Don’t ask me why it is so.”

“Then Petals is an opportunity,” Robin added.

Ed grunted. “However, weakness to fire and decrease in agility will be a hard sell to her. She prefers to move around a lot when fighting.”

Mason had stayed quiet for the discussion, but he suddenly asked, “Will that increase to natural skills and spells affect auxiliary skills?”

I gave a large smile. “Indeed. Logging, Herbalism, Butchery, Camping, Fishing, and Tracking all count as natural skills as well. So you’ll get an increase there.”

“Then I would like to request that Curtis gets the opportunity,” Mason cautiously said.

Ed nodded. Robin looked thoughtful for a moment, before adding her agreement. “I can’t see why not. We don’t have a lot of fighters using nature aligned spells and skills. So it makes sense.”

“It also sends a good signal that we value our new members,” I said. “They entered the game just fourteen game days ago and will receive a race promotion. That’s quite good. However, we should have the discussion with the entire group. That way someone can make a case for why they should have it instead.”

“I’ll see to it,” Robin said. They all got up from the ground.

“One last question,” Mason said. “How come you know all this?”

“Alpha-tester,” Ed answered for me. He was a much more convincing liar than me.

“Oh, makes sense,” Mason said with a nod, and they headed towards the rest of the camp to share the plan with everyone, and make the final decision on who should have the spriggan essence shards. I had considered keeping them for myself. They would be enough to cover me up to step 3 of High Human, if I could get the rest of the crystals I needed. However, I decided not to be greedy. There would be plenty of other opportunities to get the spriggan crystals, while I gathered the other crystals I would need.

An hour later, the twenty man raid group had gone into the secret glade, leaving the Phils, Mia, and I in the camp. The Phils were busy carving toys. It was not something they sold, but apparently it gave good XP, was easy to transport, and made them very popular with the children in the poor district. Or more precisely, Nise, who was the one handing them out. Mia was busy working on her Leatherworking.

Which left me. For once I was not doing something. I was feeling restless, nervous in fact, waiting for the results of the raid. It was imperative that we succeeded. While I could absorb the cost of a failure easily, the time it would take to mount another attempt would not be acceptable.

Even if I was not afraid of the Dead Lotus Alliance, if we had to launch another expedition, they would have the opportunity to make life difficult for us. With twenty-five new players we would need to focus our attention on protecting them until they could level up. Failure would also push back the plans for the village.

Frustrated, I turned my attention to the skill panel. I had gained a lot of skill levels in the last week. I was only a single skill point from reaching level 30.

Name

Tier

Level

XP

XP Needed

Imbue

Apprentice

20 (+5)

3,959

21,000

Meditation

Beginner

19 (+2)

18,992

20,000

Runesmithing

Beginner

14 (+3)

8,074

15,000

Unassigned Class XP: 0

My Meditation was very close to levelling up. An hour of meditating would actually allow me to level up. Maybe I should do that. The fact that Imbue had overtaken Meditation was a bit mind-boggling. However, as soon as Meditation became Apprentice tier, it would receive more XP per mana regenerated, as well as doubling the amount of mana I could regenerate in ten minutes.

Name

Tier

Level

XP

XP Needed

Butchery

Apprentice

41 (+10)

2,739

42,000

Cooking

Apprentice

33 (+5)

6,601

34,000

Brewing

Apprentice

25 (+7)

2,942

26,000

Harvest

Beginner

19 (+7)

5,981

20,000

Alchemy

Beginner

16 (+5)

4,706

17,000

Herbalism

Beginner

15

13,245

16,000

Gem Cutting

Beginner

15 (+5)

4,814

16,000

Horticulture

Beginner

15 (+5)

11,800

16,000

Mentor

Beginner

15 (+7)

518

16,000

Lesser Transmutation

Beginner

7 (+2)

0

8,000

Farming

Beginner

6 (+4)

3,836

7,000

Greater Transmutation

Beginner

5

2,150

6,000

Observe

Beginner

5 (+1)

1,709

6,000

Message

Beginner

3 (+1)

12

4,000

Mining

Beginner

2

0

3,000

Unassigned XP: 1432

With the increased strength of Ed’s party, they had been able to push deep into the forest, getting me higher levelled bears, making my Butchery skills soar again. It was also because of the high levelled mobs that Mia had been butchering that allowed Mentor to rise so quickly. Those had been the skills that had risen the most in the past week.

That Harvest had reached level 19 made me happy as well. It meant higher yields from the fields, and if Horticulture and Farming would raise a bit quicker, I might even switch to average quality instead of below average, making the XP earned increase a lot.

Looking at the unassigned XP I had, I thought about it for a moment, and then thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m doing it.’

I immediately assigned 1,008 XP to Meditation, which increased it to level 20. With the extra skill point, I became level 30. What followed made me very happy.

You have reached level 30, and has been awarded:

1 Skill Slot

1 Class Skill Slot

2 Upgrade Point

You have reached level 30 without losing your class. Your dedication to your class has impressed the Gods, and grant you two rewards:

64,000 Class XP

128,000 Class XP

Continue to follow the path you are already on.

‘Holy fuck,’ was the only thing that was going through my mind. That was enough XP to bring a skill from level 0 to level 19. I wondered if the next milestone at level 40 would bring about 256,000 Class XP?

If I made Message or Mining my new class skill and invested all the XP in them, I could become level 31 immediately. However, that would be a waste of XP, to be honest. Both were skills that could be useful in the future, but they were not important.

There were 4 skills that I considered important at the moment. Alchemy, Gem Cutting, Greater Transmutation, and Lesser Transmutation. With a higher Alchemy tier, I would be able to start making some much better manastone solution, combining the basic elements. Making lightning manastone solutions for example. It would be a great boost for Ed’s combat powers.

Gem Cutting would allow me larger success when creating manastones, but it was really only relevant after Alchemy had risen higher. Greater Transmutation would allow me to quickly get to the point where I could use average rabbit feet to make a new luck charm, one that gave +2 or maybe even +3.

Lesser Transmutation might seem like the worst choice, however, my Horticulture and Harvest skill was quickly approaching the point where I could consider using average quality seeds. With Lesser Transmutation, I would be able to transform the waste from harvesting into seeds, saving a lot of money.

More importantly, if all went well, we would be entering the secret glade soon and start harvesting uncommon and maybe even sparse resources. The greater chance of us getting seeds from the waste without wasting the precious resources was a great temptation. In the end, the choice was really only between Alchemy and Lesser Transmutation.

The choice was easy. Alchemy would be a great boon, but it was to a certain extent dependent on skills like Horticulture which Lesser Transmutation helped with, in an indirect way. So to make a ranking of the four skills in the order I could make them class skills would be Lesser Transmutation, Alchemy, Gem Cutting, Greater Transmutation.

Having come to that choice, I made my selection and I now had two empty skill slots to fill. Next order of business was taking out an Upgrade Token and upgrading Meditation to apprentice tier.

Meditation - Level 20 (Apprentice)

Use this skill to recover Mana.

Current Effects

Recover 10 mana every 60 seconds

Recover 40 mana extra every 300 seconds

XP Gain: 2 XP per mana regenerated

Progress: 0/21,000 XP

Those were indeed good effects, just like I remembered. With it, I could regenerate 180 mana in 10 minutes. After putting every single Attribute point I had in Spirit, I had a mana pool of 110. The next goal was to get Meditation to level 50 and the journeyman tier so I could get the subskill, Profound Realization. It was a subskill that increased the mana pool by 1% per level. A subskill anyone who used mana would want.

The last task I had was pouring all my class XP into Lesser Transmutation, directly raising it from level 7 to 20. Which made 3 out of 4 of my class skills level 20 and apprentice tier. I put the remaining 12,000 XP into Runesmithing raising it a single level as well. Meaning I was just 2 skill points from reaching level 31. Quite the meteoric rise.

At that moment, Mason came out from the secret glade, shouting, “All clear!”