“We got a problem” is not words you want to hear shortly after logging back into the game. Especially not coming from Martine who had a crucial role in finishing the building quest. When I heard the words, I flinched. It was an instinctive reaction, I could not help it. With a worried frown, I asked, “What’s the problem?”

“We don’t have enough iron to make the lift like you and Phil designed. I’ve only enough iron for making one and a half of the load bearing columns,” she answered.

“Fuck,” I swore.

“Watch your language, you’re a father now,” Nise quipped from nearby, drawing laughter from Mason and his group who were passing by.

“Ugh,” was my most brilliant answer. I turned my attention to Martine. “I thought we had enough, even when accounting for failures in the smelting process?”

“There were a lot more failures and partial failures than the percentages would suggest,” she said with an apologetic shrug. “Even if it had been right on the money with the percentages, it would have been a tight fit.”

Such was the life of crafting sometimes. I let out a sigh. There was nothing for it, we only had one option. “Let’s go find Phil, he hopefully has enough magic-infused ink to make another blueprint. We’ll just have to change some things around and see what we can come up with.”

We found Phil in the middle of setting up the corral. He happily abandoned the project when we told him the problem. We found a table and some chairs and sat down. Martine put the blueprint we had made earlier on the table.

“Okay, so what options do we have?” I asked as I looked over the original plan. The original plan called for two iron pillars anchored in the cliffside going all the way down to the beach. The pillars would have indents for some cogs to move the platform up and down. On top of the cliff, there would also be wooden beams with rope running to the front part of the platform, providing extra stability to the platform. All of it would be run by some simple magic runes.

“Can’t we just run it with one pillar?” Martine asked. I shrugged, I was not sure.

Phil shook his head. “No, the numbers I’m seeing are untenable, at least if we want it to be more than a one-person lift.”

“The goal should still be that we can get at least handcarts up and down from the beach,” I said with a frown.

“But we don’t have enough iron for two pillars, so what are we going to do? Make them out of wood instead?” Martine asked with a huff.

“Won’t work,” Phil immediately said. “If we made the pillars that the lift moves on out of wood, it simply deteriorates too fast.”

“Okay, doesn’t change that we only got iron enough for one pillar,” I said before Martine could retort. “If we use just one column anchored to the cliff, it won’t work, you say. Why is that?”

“It has to do with lifting power. We planned on having four cogs doing the lifting, but now we’ll only have two,” Phil said.

“Can’t we do three, I mean there are three sides of the pillar which are free?” I asked.

“It would help a bit, but then the pillar would need more indents for the cogs to propel the lift up and down, it’ll become too weakened,” Phil explained.

“We got the extra iron, we could make it thicker,” Martine suggested.

Phil looked irritated. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Martine and I just shrugged. Phil made a shooing motion. “I’ll make a new blueprint at once. Then we can start on construction.”

We left him to it and walked back to what we were doing earlier. For me, that entailed making manastones. Just normal ones, which I would need a lot of for the upcoming harvest. Not to do the harvest, but to transmute all the by-products into seeds. Speaking of manastones, I was also looking forward to the new recruits arriving in the village this evening. At least that was the plan.

Among them, one of them, Sergei, would become my newest victim—ehm—mentee. He would focus on alchemy and the manufacturing of gemstones. Something we would need a lot of in the future. With the first building reliant on manastones being built soon. With the village up, I should also be able to slow down and focus on providing magic equipment for the guild members. As it stood now, I had barely time to keep the high levelled ones equipped. Much less the new members of the guild.

With a new mentee, I would also be able to push my Mentor skill to level 20 and apprentice tier. What I was really looking forward to was getting my first skill to journeyman, which would most likely be Butchery. Speaking of Butchery, I was running low on upgrade points. However, I felt it would be wrong to divert some to myself from the two quest chains. I did not really do anything to earn them. Runesmithing the lift hardly counted, compared to all the work done by the rest of them.

All the methods I knew of for getting quick upgrade points, involved fighting or would take me away from the village and Blackport. It was definitely not the time for that just yet. That left me with just good old grinding.

For the next few hours, I made manastones, right up until I got the messages that my fields were ready to be harvested. I gained another level in Horticulture bringing me to level 19, and more than halfway to level 20. Despite the poor results I got for my Farming plots, five poor and four below average fields, I still managed to gain two levels and get to level 11 in the skill.

Those three skill points were enough for me to increase my level to 37, getting me a step closer on my next skill slot, and a huge amount of class XP. If it followed the pattern established I should get over a quarter million XP. The thought of that much class XP made me drool.

When I got to the fields, I found Mia there. She gave me a bright smile. “Hey.”

Her greeting was followed by a small kiss and hug. When she released my lips, I replied, “Hey yourself.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I cringed. Mia gave a small laugh, “God, talk about corny.”

“Right,” I smiled, face flush with embarrassment. “I’m a bit rusty, it’s been a while since I was in a relationship.”

“You’re doing just fine,” she whispered sultrily in my ear, sending shivers down my spine. It was hard not reacting, and I had to gulp several times, especially when she followed that up with, “Especially in bed.”

“I–That’s to say–I–” I stammered like a fool. I took a deep breath. I tried to be calm as I said, “Sorry about that. I’m acting like a blushing schoolboy on his first date. You just have that effect on me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said with a lovely laugh.

“It is,” I said with a slight smile at the woman in my arms. “However, there’s something we need to talk about.”

“You sound so serious,” she remarked.

Another deep breath. “It kinda is. Why have you told our members not to bother me with questions?”

“Because you’re overworked, or so I thought since you didn’t even take the time to notice my flirting. You never took the time to visit Alicia at all, despite coming around so much. It was always work work work. It’s not like you would have information regarding their questions, which they could not find online.”

“I can see how that’s frustrating, I guess, but that’s a personal thing. Nothing to do with the guild,” I said. “However, I do have knowledge that no one else–”

“Yeah, I learned about that after the fact,” she pouted. “Please forgive me?”

“Of course, but please don’t play games like that. Just tell me stuff, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, still pouting.

I gave her another squeeze before letting go of her. “Now, let’s see if we can get these fields harvested and replanted. Can you prepare the new plots while I Harvest and use Lesser Transmute?”

She reluctantly released her hold of me, and asked, “Where do you want the new fields?”

The day went by and by dinner time in-game, I was starting to get worried. Not about the building quest chain, we had that under control. No, I was worried about the Securing the Village quest chain. Ed and the rest had only been able to find two of the Points of Interest. It would seem the last three were somewhere in the water. Outside of the reef most likely.

While losing the reward for conquering all five points would be a great disappointment, not closing three of them would be a freaking disaster, which would most likely spell the end of our guild. If we did not have it up and running and fortified, we would stand no chance against Marcus and Dawnguard.

For now, they would have very little incentive to go after us. We were so out of the way it was not worth diverting a large portion of the guild to deal with us. However, when they were getting booted off the old continent and sent to the new continent. It would be another story. Especially since they would have to travel by Blackport anyway.

I was in the middle of preparing food when Mia came up and asked, “Why do you look so worried?”

My first thought was not sharing my thoughts with her, however, she was my girlfriend. I should trust her. Of course, I had not yet told her my deepest, darkest secret. I was not sure if I should do that. I was very worried she would think I was certifiable, but I also felt bad for hiding something for her.

However, I could not take that decision without thinking it through some more, so instead, I went with the cover story we had been running. “You know that I got a source of knowledge about the game.”

“Yeah, like you somehow knew about the whole contest thing. Otherwise, you would not suddenly have thrown all our coins into the auction instead of selling it to Perennial like we usually did,” she commented wryly. “I wish you would tell me such things though.”

“I guess,” I said a little defensively. “Anyway, there’s a major upheaval coming to the game very soon.”

“More than the competition already did?”

I nodded. “The old continent will be cleared of all players and NPC in a cataclysmic event. They’ll be forced to evacuate to the new continent.”

She gaped at me for a second, then got a worried look. “What about Blackport?”

“Blackport and the string of midway islands will be unaffected.”

She cocked her head. “What are you worried about then?”

“Dawnguard.”

“They’ve been little more than annoyances, you’ve outsmarted them at every turn,” she said with a bright smile, one that made me feel five metres tall.

However, that was not true. “Yes, so far. However, we’ve only dealt with peripheral forces of theirs. We might end up dealing with the main guild now.”

“Why?”

“They hate us for the glory we stole from them. The way they put pressure on us in the real world too is worrisome. When they get booted to the new continent, they’ve to sail to make their way back, there’ll be no teleporters,” I explained. “At least not until new beachheads have been conquered and built. The way to win the competition will be revealed and it’s on the new continent.”

“So you’re worried that since they’ve to sail to the new continent they’ll make their way here and deal with us?” she asked, sounding concerned. A worried crease had appeared on her forehead.

“Exactly.”

“Are you sure they’ll do that? I mean, it seems like a lot of hassle,” she asked, doubt in her voice. Not in me, but like she could not fathom a big guild would care about a small guild like ours.

“Hei has confirmed that it’ll be the most likely course of action. Aragoth is a vindictive bastard, trust me on that,” I grumbled at the last bit. When I said Aragoth I really meant Marcus, but I could not very well reveal that.

She looked around at the buildings we had already finished, and those that were still in progress. “Will this all be for nothing then? I mean they’ve tens of thousands of members.”

I shook my head. “As I said yesterday, it won’t be easy for them to get permission to attack our village. It’s also why the shipyard and Philmore are so important. Sure they can blockade our village, so we can’t go inland. However, they won’t have the capabilities to build boats or ships up and running for a while. Which means that we can still go to Blackport or elsewhere to level up and gather materials.”

“But that’s a week’s sailing away,” she pointed out.

Again I shook my head. “No, roughly twelve hours in a north-easterly direction is the Storm of Memories. It’s a perfect place to hunt, level-up, find treasures and materials.”

“Oh, I thought it was farther away.”

“It’s rather close.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “If you’re that sure we can weather the Dawnguard storm, why are you looking so worried then?”

“I’m worried they won’t find and be able to conquer another point of interest. If they don’t within the next nine and a half hours, we’ll lose the settlement token. Without it, we’ll not be able to weather the Dawnguard storm,” I told her bluntly.

“Oh,” she replied. Her face sported a worried frown now. “Shit, now I’m worried too. If we lose the settlement token, does that mean we can’t earn money and we’ve to go back into the coffins?”

“Some of us. We would be hunted all over the place by Dawnguard, and it would be hard for us to earn money to sustain the guild,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t worry, I would find a way to keep you out of the coffins. Alicia won’t need to lose her mother a second time.”

“Are you sure?”

I just nodded in lieu of an answer. If worse came to the worse I would sell myself to Marcus. I would stop trying to win in exchange for money for Mia and Alicia to live a long happy life in each of Marcus’ lifetimes. I was certain he would go for it. Or at least I hoped. If that failed, I still had enough knowledge of how the game evolved that I could eke out a meagre living for the three of us.

With that, we fell into a contemplative silence. One that we often found ourselves in, since we were used to working side by side for so long. However, not all were as it used to be, there was a small undercurrent to our chemistry. The side glances got a little longer when we went past each other with a small touch. It was not awkward, it was just different than we were used to.

By the time I had finished dinner, everyone was back for a new top-up of their buffs. Ed did not look happy. “We’ve not found it yet, but I think we’re closing in on one of them. We might have to stay in-game and hunt during the night though.”

“I’ll try and appease the fearsome Kira,” I replied. “Ed, you need to find one more lair. If we lose the settlement token, we’re done for.”

“I’m aware,” he hissed with a clearly irritated tone. “Sorry, uncalled for. It has just been frustrating. Even more, so that people have realized that we most likely won’t find all the points of interest, meaning we won’t get the big reward.”

“I know that sucks, but the normal rewards are not bad either,” I said. He grumpily agreed and took his bowl of stew and went over to eat with his party. Looking around, I noticed that there seemed to be a bad mood among the members. Dark looks, some angry mutterings.

Suddenly someone shouted, “I’m so sick and tired of stew. Stew three times a day, every fucking day.”

“Oi, pipe down. We’re all grinding up our skills so that they can provide some variety,” Robin shouted back. The guy mumbled something, which made Robin spring to her feet. “Repeat that, you fucking twat!”

The guy in question also stood up. It was Antwon, one of the members of one of the guard parties. “I said that you were a fucking dyke cunt, and that it’s your fault we’re going to fail the quest.”

Sarah immediately shot to her feet. “You fucking ungrateful pig, we busted our ass to get you out of the Coffins, and this is how you fucking repay us?”

The screaming argument started to spread, other people, giving air to their grievances. This was getting out of hand. In a loud authoritarian voice, which boomed across the village, without me actually shouting, I demanded, “Settle down everyone. Everyone needs to stop speaking for a moment.”

I repeated myself a few times before everyone quieted down and looked in my direction. I gave them all a sad look, one I had used often on my students when they disappointed me somehow. “I’m ashamed of you. All of you, you act like squabbling little kids, not the adults you’re supposed to be.”

“You can’t talk to us like that,” someone grumbled loudly.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak, please sit down. To answer your question, yes I can. You forget I’m your employer, I’m the main reason you’re not in a Coffin right now,” I said in a stern voice and with a steely glare. The young woman in question, Verona, gulped and sat back down. I looked around at all of them in turn, most people did not meet my eyes. “First, I apologize for the food. I’ve been eating NutriShakes without flavour for months to save a little credit, to be able to afford to get more of you out of the Coffins. So the stew is a huge step up. However, it’s clear that I should have made sure there’s some variation.”

People blanched at the stark reminder of what I had sacrificed to get them out of the Coffins. I continued, my voice filled with disappointment, “However, that is no excuse for devolving into hateful neanderthals shouting at each other. I’m not angry at you, I’m disappointed in you. And myself. It’s clear that I’ve failed in my duties as the guild master. I’ve allowed us to be consumed by our success.”

They looked confused at me when I said that. “We’ve been too successful and lucky. We’ve not really met any setbacks. This game is hard, don’t for a second forget that, with hundreds of billions of credit on the line. You didn’t think it would be easy to win those, did you?”

Looking around, everyone averted their eyes. “We’ve become used to winning and succeeding. Finding and conquering five points of interests in an area of almost seventy-nine square kilometres is not an easy task. Less so when almost half of that is in the sea. It’s not Robin’s fault that she has not been able to track down all five.

“Succeeding should not be measured on getting the bonus reward, but on completing the quest, which only requires three points to be conquered. You’ve already conquered two of them, and I’ve got all the confidence that you’ll succeed in conquering one more. Why, you might ask? Because failure is not an option. Failure means that people are going back in the Coffins, which is a scary thought for any of you.

“However, if we fall apart with internal strife, we’ll equally fail. We’re all in the same boat, and we need to work together to make sure it reaches land and doesn’t sink on the way. Prove to me that you’re adults and not children. That I did not make a mistake when I rescued you. A feat I could not have accomplished alone.”

Silence reigned for almost a minute before a bashful Antwon stood up. “I’m sorry, I was feeling frustrated. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I accept your apology, but someone else is more deserving of one, right?” I asked.

He nodded and turned to Robin. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean it. I respect you and Marion a lot. You know that. I got a foul mouth on me, and when I get frustrated, I let it spout off things I don’t really mean. Please forgive me.”

Robin's reply was a bit frosty, “I accept your apology.”

“We don’t need more drama in public, so Antwon I’d like to speak with you for a moment,” I said in a relaxed and friendly tone. “Now, I promise that I’ll include more items on the menu, tomorrow morning will most likely still be stew. We’re still getting food production skill levelled up. Anyway, finish eating and get back out there again. There are three points of interests, points of delicious XP and guild points. I don’t expect you to find all three, but at least one more. Otherwise, we’ve failed. I’ve got all the confidence in the world that you will not fail.”

I got a round of promises that they would not fail. A depressed-looking Antwon followed me as I walked away from the rest of them. Before I could say anything, he immediately started begging, “Please don’t send me back to the Coffins. I swear I don’t think ill of Robin and Marion or any other lesbians. I just got a temper and a foul mouth.”

I put a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. “I’m not going to send you back to the Coffins, but—”

“You’re not?” he exclaimed, looking up at me with surprise in his eyes.

“I’m not, but—”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I swear I won’t let you down again,” he said with a big smile.

I gave him a curt smile. “But, it’ll serve as a warning. We can’t have a repeat of this. It—”

“I swear it won’t, Sir,” he interrupted me yet again. It was a little annoying.

“Don’t interrupt me again, please. It also comes with a requirement. Clearly you have some issues and you need to deal with those. Next time we make a payout to the members, I’m going to withhold some of the credits,” I said.

He looked crestfallen but he did not interrupt me. So I continued, “The reason we’re withholding some credits is to pay for therapy. No reason to pay tax and then have to pay for treatment.”

“Therapy?” He looked confused.

“You said it yourself, you got a temper. We need to deal with that through therapy. That’s the requirement, do we have a deal?” I asked.

He nodded solemnly. I gave him a warm smile. “Now, put on a smile. The others are pretending not to look over here. Curiosity is killing them. This is not the end of the world, it was just a friendly discussion about how we improve. I do have one last serious question though.”

Antwon cocked his head in a questioning manner. With a huge smile, I asked, “Is the stew really that bad?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Not really, I was just frustrated. But if you can vary the menu a bit, it’d be appreciated. Uhm, is it true that you ate nothing but unflavoured NutriShake?”

“Yes,” I replied as we made our way back to the others. “I’m almost as broke as the people we get out of the Coffins, as broke as you. I didn’t take a payout when everyone else in the guild was paid, despite being entitled to twenty thousand.”

“Why not?” he asked promptly. “Wait, sorry, that might not be alright to ask.”

“I brought up the subject,” I responded with a shrug. “And the reason is simple. I could either get twenty thousand for myself, or I could get another four people out of the Coffin. It was not a hard choice or sacrifice to make.”

He got a thoughtful look on his face. When we got back to the group, he said a soft, “Thank you.”, and went back to his stew. People were looking curiously at him. His party members were already asking questions.

The mood was still a little sombre, a little pressed, but I thought I had headed off the worst of the discord amongst the members. Especially when Antwon told them what the conversation had been about. As dinner was winding down, all of the newer members went by me one by one and said, “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

It was quite touching. When everyone had gone back to work, I felt a pair of arms encircling me from behind. Mia whispered in a sultry voice, “That turned me on. I like it when you’re being all bossy.”

I felt my face flush, and certain parts of me tingle from the way her voice and breath caressed my ear. With my face flushed, I teased back, “You want me to be bossier in the bedroom?”

I felt her shake her head against my back. “No, I like to be in charge there. Maybe I need to tie you up to exert my control?”

A small groan escaped my throat at that image. It sounded tempting being at her mercy in that way. I took a deep breath. “You’re quite distracting, you know that? We should get back to work.”

She laughed and released me. It felt good having someone to share your life with. Making mana stones became less of a chore with her around.