I had died. Quite intentionally so. Sacrificed myself to buy time for the others to kick the living shit out of the bird. Sure the damn XP lost hurt. Hurt a hell of a lot. However, this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I did not mean the class evolution. It would be good if I wanted to leave behind my crafting stuff and become a meat punch bag instead. With thorns. The Martyr class became more powerful the more damage you received. The class skills were preordained from the start. I would lose all benefits of my old class, but I would regain the same number of class skill slots that had been emptied. However, they would already be filled with new class-specific skills.

No, I was talking about the prompt that followed my rejection of the class.

Your actions have impressed the Gods and despite rejecting their offer, they still wish to reward you.

Since your action lives up to the greatest of the Birdkin heroes of the past, your reward shall reflect that.

You have received the following:

10 Birdkin Essence Crystals

1 Blank Essence Crystal

I had known that unlocking the class would get me some Birdkin Essence Crystals. It was a steep price to pay, but it was worth it. More so since I was the first person to do so, since the reward was higher than I remembered it should be. Almost double, and that Blank Essence Crystal had never been mentioned.

The thought of taking the class had only crossed my mind for a moment. In the end, I had decided to reject the idea. The few Pacifists that had taken the class in my previous timeline had ended up rejecting it. So had a lot of craftsmen. The Martyr class did not really become a thing until someone posted how to unlock it and the benefits of the class.

The Martyr was at the same time one of the best tanks and healers. However, you had to be a true masochist to enjoy playing it and get the most out of the class. The more damage that was done to you, the better your defence, taunts, and heals became. There were also some skills that reflected damage back at people, you got a skill that decreased the effectiveness of striking vital areas on you and much more.

You would keep the class benefits provided by such classes as Carpenter that gave you Free XP or Class XP every time you finished a Carpentry item. However, it was not the same for Pacifist. As a pacifist, I did not have any type of crafting that I got extra XP for making, meaning I would lose all the class benefits. Not worth it.

The Essence Crystals, however, was well worth the sacrifice. I also hoped that the sacrifice would inspire the rest of the people to work together a bit more. Since I could do nothing else but wait, I decided to log out of the game, but not the pod. I could not really get anything done before I could log in again. I would need every hour I could get my hands on, to make up for the lost XP.

However, counting my Blank Essence Crystals, I was only two races more away from getting the first level of High Human. Something I was looking forward to a lot.

I chose to spend my time in my virtual office, get some research into things I remembered. The discussion a couple of days ago about Agamemnon and the Immortal Knights had made my mind go into overdrive. I had just not had time to research stuff.

When I entered my office, I looked around aghast. My only thought was, ‘What the fuck is this?’

A week or more ago, I had given Mia permission to set up my virtual office. She had not thought it right that I was just using a white space. Her argument had been that as the head of the guild, and thus the company, I needed to project some professionalism. Not just a sloppy white space. She had made a good point, so I had given her permission to alter my office. With just one instruction: Keep it simple, give it a nature theme.

What I was looking at was far from simple as I could picture. The whole thing screamed ostentatious, arrogant, selfish bastard with a hint of psychopathy that a capitalist had to possess to be able to thrive in a system built for and by sociopaths and psychopaths.

First of all, there was no nature anywhere to be seen, unless you counted the dark mahogany wooden desk, or the black leather couches and recliners. The view was of skyscrapers, including the World Congress. Sure it would be a view most CEO’s would have people killed for, to get their hands on. Nevertheless, I did not want it, not even virtually. The whole thing just screamed compensation for being a shallow human being.

It drove home the major difference between Mia and me. She was very much a woman that worshipped at the altar of material things. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes I got the sense she was one of the fanatics. I sighed. I had to wonder if it had been a bad idea to enter into this relationship, one that was mainly based on lust for Mia and affection for her daughter.

However, I did not get to wonder that for long, because there was a request for someone to enter my virtual space. Shrugging, I decided to deal with my love life, and the horrible office, at another time. I opened the gateway controls. I frowned when I saw that Anna, or HannahVixen, appeared in the blocked list. With a quick thought, I removed the block on her, and let Denise enter the office.

She materialized, looking much like she did in the real world, just with her eyesight restored. She blinked her eyes several times as she looked around. Almost as if she was not believing what she saw. Hesitantly she said, “Nice office.”

“Hey,” I greeted her, grimacing at her comment. “Not my idea. Going to change it. Did they send you to make a report? Was Mia killed since you’re coming? We didn’t lose the settlement token, right?”

Denise shook her head. “No to all of the above. I came on my own volition. Not when I left, and no, we successfully defended against the wave.”

It was my time to blink my eyes, as I processed what she was telling me. I gestured for the couches. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She sat down and I followed. The couches and recliners looked expensive, might even look good, but they were slightly uncomfortable actually. Denise took a deep breath before starting to tell me what was going on. “Mia threw a tantrum after you got killed when Kira learned what happened she got angry as well. Last I saw they were screaming at each other. Ed and One-Eye were going to try and calm them down.”

“What the hell for?”

“Mia blamed everyone, but especially Mbali for your death.”

“That’s crazy, I did that on purpose.”

Denise looked at me like I was crazy. “Uhm—why?”

“Because it’s the first time I was in a situation where I fulfilled all the requirements to unlocking the Martyr class—”

“Wait, you’re changing class?” Denise interrupted.

“No, but I got rewarded with a lot of Birdkin Essence Crystals,” I answered. I was not going to mention the Blank Essence Crystal. As I saw it there were two explanations why I got it. One was that I was first, the second was the theory that the game went out of its way to provide me with opportunities. I went on to tell her what the class did.

“This might be worth it for Mason and his guys,” she suggested.

I shook my head. “They can’t get it. The requirements are pretty specific. One you can’t have received any XP from combat before. Two you can’t have any defensive or offensive skills. Three, which might be the hardest to find. You’ve to sacrifice yourself to save a group of at least ten people, half of them have to have combat skills. All of them have to be out levelled by the enemy five times. Fourth, after your moment of death, the people you protected can’t take more damage from the creature you protected them from.”

She looked thoughtful. “That should be easy to arrange.”

“There’s the catch. Arrange. It’s one thing knowing what you’ll get from your action. It’s another if you’ve purposefully arranged the situation,” I said. “The system is quite harsh about that.”

“Okay, you know best I guess,” she said. “One question though, why is it associated with the Birdkin race?”

I smiled at that question. “There were two races making the skies their home. Draconians and Birdkin. Draconians were physically and magically superior, so often the Birdkin would sacrifice one or two people to get away when they fought. The Gods rewarded them with this class.”

“I see. Anyway, I hope Ed and One-Eye are able to calm things down. We’re going to take the boats down. Or rather William is together with Robin’s party. They’ll bring your equipment and all the hawk carcasses for you.”

“Good thinking, I was about to ask you to dispatch Kira and her team, I didn’t think of the boats at all. Remember to distribute contribution points for them. Add another ten thousand to anyone still alive. I’ll throw fifty thousand to those that died.”

“I’ll do that, but we need some guidance. Especially in regards to the building quest. What kind of buildings do you want? And where do you want them?” she asked.

I conjured a map from memory of the village and started pointing out where she could put a group of houses. We would put up five shared houses for the two groups that were hired to be guards for the town. They already had the location for the guildhall. Next came the five other basic buildings, which needed to be defensive in nature.

“We should have enough logs to build a palisade following this line,” I said, showing on a map where I wanted it to go. It would follow the very edges of our current perimeter. “Put in a gate here, and towers in these five places. Then tear down our current towers except for the one next to the lift.”

“What about advanced buildings?” she asked.

I had to think for a moment about that one. “We’ll do a runesmithing hall here, next to it we’ll put in a transmutation hall. With the primary focus being on Lesser Transmutation. Then we’re going to need a leather workshop over here as well as a tailor.”

“Wait, won’t the runesmithing hall count as a basic building since it’s only good for one thing?” Denise asked.

“I forgot for a moment you’re not Philmore, something I think Phil is rather happy about,” I said with an embarrassed grin. “Anyway, normally you’re right. I had talked with him about the runesmithing hall before. We’re going to do a secondary focus on Gemcutting.”

“Okay. Anything else you want me to convey when I log back in?”

“Yeah, tell them to behave, or I’ll have them write for hours on a blackboard,” I said with a comically stern look, eliciting a giggle from her. After she was gone, I looked around at the damn office from hell.

There was no salvaging it. With a wave, everything disappeared and left behind a white space. I would have to start from scratch. A good thing I still had fifteen minutes to go. I would at least get something basic and functioning designed in that time.

When I finally logged back in, I found myself back in Blackport. It felt weird having an empty inventory. My ever-present satchel and pouches were gone. Well, not gone, gone, but I did not have them on me, so for the moment, they were gone from my sphere of influence.

I saw several of my members standing around with forlorn faces. Most of them were newbies. Though I found a couple of members with levels closer to twenty. There was also a single of the older members, Rose’s father.

“This sucks,” he said.

“Come now Eric, it’s not that bad. As the tank, you sometimes die,” I said as I walked up to him. He had not seen me respawn.

“Damian, what are you doing here?”

“He obviously died,” Antwon replied on my behalf.

I nodded and pointed to Antwon. “What he said.”

We waited another five minutes, but no more of our people respawned. I looked around at my people. “I know it sucks dying, I really do.”

“Obviously, you’re here,” Antwon commented dryly.

“Exactly. However, the important thing is that our village is still intact. We’ll be picked up tomorrow morning, and we’ll be back there tomorrow evening. Then we can help with finishing the quests,” I said. “For now, let’s go and see if Brandt has managed to brew some alcohol! If not, I’ll go and buy some.”

That got a round of cheers. We made our way to the facilities the guild had in Blackport. Hopefully, there should be some spare weapons and stuff that the warriors could use. They would just have to be satisfied with running the sewer dungeon and hunting on the beach.

It was just after nine in the morning, so only a few stragglers were in the tavern part of the building. Mozart popped his head through the door opening leading to the shop side. He just waved in our direction without seeing who had entered. He hollered, “Just find a seat, I’ll be with ya in a jiffy! Got a customer in here.”

I looked at the people inside the tavern. There were seven of them, two of them were Otter Pirates, the other five were independent players, who seemed to have formed into a group of three and two. I nodded a greeting to each of them, getting raised tankards in return from the Otter Pirates.

“Let’s see what’s on tap,” I said and walked behind the bar to take a look.

“Oi, you better not try anything funny!” one of the players from the group of three shouted as soon as I stepped into the forbidden area behind the counter. He was a small guy, pale skin, blond hair, and most likely a spell slinger from the way he was dressed and lack of shields and weapons. He stood looking murderously in our direction.

His friends looked away as if to signal that they did not know him. The other group of independent players looked confused, while the Otters sported amused smiles.

“Excuse me?” I was a bit confused too.

“You steal anything or try to sabotage or something, I’ll witness against you with the guards!” the player roared.

“I’m—” I started to try and explain.

I was interrupted by Mozart storming into the tavern, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “I swear you Twilight Fucktards will be hunted down by the guards, over and over again if you try any—Oh, hey Damian. What’s going on? Why are you here?”

The shouting player had sported a victorious grin, which quickly turned to a confused frown. I gave Mozart a smile. “Problems with some beasts, the lot of us were the ones that got killed.”

“Man, that sucks. Wait why did you die, you’re not a fighter?” he replied with a sympathetic look that morphed into confusion once more. The independent player sat down with a sheepish look on his face.

“I’ll tell you in the break. Anyway, we’re here until someone comes to pick us up. We’re going to dip into the armoury for these guys. Just some basic stuff so they can do something while we wait. I’ll probably go help Brandt in the kitchen. First, I promised these poor souls a drink—” I said and got a quiet boo from Antwon. “—or two on the guild.”

“That’s cool,” Mozart said and moved behind the bar to the cheering of the others.

“Now, where’s Brandt and what’s this about Twilight Fucktards?” I asked as he started pouring some ale for the others. I declined any.

“They’re morons that got roped into trying to create trouble for us by those Dust Dicks, they’re low-levelled players that use their account as throwaways,” Mozart complained. “They tried stealing our beer, beat up an NPC we had running the bar. Still paying her and got her healed. However, I don’t want her to get killed. The locals are keeping an eye out. So are the regulars.”

“Have they paid yet?” I asked quietly, indicating the group of three players. Mozart shook his head. “Good, one last thing. Where’s Brandt?”

“Oh, right. He logged out to talk with Nise, she wanted a meeting in the real, or in virtual, I guess, outside of the game anyway. Probably waiting for the timer to log in again runs out.”

“Thanks,” I replied and made my way over to the table with the temperamental guy.

As I approached the loud guy kinda tried to make himself smaller in the chair, as if he could just vanish. One of the others quickly said, “We’re really sorry about Bjövulf, he didn’t notice your guild tag. He didn’t mean nothing by it. Please don’t kick us out of the rooms Mozzie has been letting us stay in.”

The normally vocal Bjövulf turned taciturn and just grunted and said nothing else. I looked back at “Mozzie!, raising an eyebrow. He just shrugged and went back to serving. However, I could feel his interest in how it was handled.

I looked at them, Bjövulf, Perseus, and Aeneas. I could not help but appreciate the literary, cultural, and historical reference. I wondered if they were friends outside of the game. Deciding to have a little fun, I asked in a serious voice, “You’re staying here? I didn’t know we ran an inn.”

“Uhm, well, you’re not, but we’re a bunch of players who try to earn enough to keep us and the fam out of the coffins,” Aeneas said, clearly the leader of the three. “Mozzie been kind to us, let us stay here so we don’t have to pay the steep prices at the inns, or risk getting stabbed to death and robbed.”

“That’s very independent thinking of him,” I said with a frown. “How many of you guys are there?”

“Well,” Aeneas said slowly, clearly hoping someone else would take over. He looked to Mozart, who just waved for him to go ahead. Reluctantly, he did so, “There’s the three of us, the two at the table behind us. Then another three groups between two and five people.”

“I see. This is very serious,” I said sternly. “I would like to extend the offer to any unaffiliated players that as long as we’re not using the beds, they’re welcome to see if we got a bed empty.”

“Really?” the girl from the table next to the three ancient heroes.

“Yup,” I said with a big smile. “Furthermore, because you were willing to stand up and help Mozzie, even if it was a bit misplaced, I appreciate it. So breakfast is on the house today for all five of you.”

“T-Thank you,” stammered Bjövulf. I just waved it away, as I saw Mozart slip back into the shop part of the building.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked.

“Go ahead, it’s your tavern,” Perseus grunted his response.

“More like it’s the guild’s, and Mozart runs it,” I replied with a smile. “I haven’t been around for the last week. Busy with a project. So there’s been trouble?”

“Aye, some newbies were recruited and formed the Twilight Rangers. Bunch of hooligans, they’re already barred from many stores,” Aeneas explained.

“Hmmm. It would seem we need Kira back in Blackport to clean up a bit. At least it should make her happy,” I mused.

“I saw her fight against those bears,” the girl interjected from the neighbour table. “She’s fucking badass.”

“That she is. We’re just busy out in the wild. I hope to get some news to cover what we’re working on soon,” I commented.

Perseus grunted, and his hoarse voice commented, “We haven’t seen a lot about Blue Lotus lately, HannahVixen barely makes any mention of you. At one point it was all she could talk about.”

“We’ve been a bit boring lately,” I said with a shrug, not really feeling that was the truth. However, I did not know why Hannah had stopped coming around. “Anyway, do you guys know each other in the real world.”

Bjövulf shook his head and Perseus grunted in a way that conveyed the same response, while Aeneas spoke on their behalf, “No. However, all of us started playing because of what your guild is trying to do. We thought we might be able to do the same. All of us started here because of you guys as well. The three of us bonded together over our love for history and mythology.”

“We’re married,” the girl interjected. I looked at her nameplate, BestWaifu, and her husband was YoungMaster.

“Okay, so you came together, have you considered joining a guild?” I asked.

“No offence,” Aeneas quickly said. “We appreciate what you’re doing, but we just wish to concentrate on earning credits. Not to be embroiled in your guild war.”

I waved away his apology. “No worries, no offence has been taken. I was just making a slight offer, however, joining a guild would be your best bet at earning the credits you need. If you want to sell the coins at auction, bigger batches are better. You don’t have to join an existing one. You can start a sub-association, a club really, under the Adventurers’ Association.”

“Then you got fees and everything,” Bjövulf protested.

“True. As a member of a sub-association, the AA will withhold one percent of any monetary rewards of quests taken through the AA,” I explained. “At the same time, you can just drop off your coins at the temple. It’ll hold all the coins until you decide to auction it. The system will keep track of individual contributions to the pot, and disburse the credits to each of you individually based on your contribution.”

They looked flummoxed at that. It was a little known function in the game, it never got really popular in the past timeline. Everyone wanted in on the big challenge, or so it seemed at the time. There were actually a lot of players just trying to provide for themselves and their family.

“How is this different from a guild?” BestWaifu asked.

“You won’t get a guild tag, but there’ll be an indicator that only members of the club can see. You can’t be both in a guild and a club. Guild functions you obviously don’t get access to, neither do you get access to guild quests, but there are a few quests available only for sub-associations,” I explained. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for standing up for Mozzie. As a thank you, this meal is on the house.”

As I left the table, I heard them talk in hushed voices. With a smile on my face, I made my way into the kitchen. I took stock of the larders, noticed that there was a lot of meat, but all of it below average quality. It was hard for Brandt levelling up Butchery when all he had was low-level critters. I poked my head outside and saw that the smokers were empty.

Next, I checked the carcass room and saw that he had everything well organized. The room was sorted into eight quadrants. That way you could see roughly when a carcass had been killed.

“Antwon, could you do me a favour?” I called into the main room.

“Sure, what is it?” he called back.

“Could you see if you could buy some salt of average quality at the Sundry store?”

“I’m your errand boy now?” he scoffed.

“No, I could just use the help,” I countered.

One of the new farmers that had joined, her name was Ashley, spoke up—well, more like whispered, “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Ashley, just tell Mozart you need the coin.”

Speaking of the non-singing bard, he poked his head in from the shop. “Tell me what?”

“Ashley needs some coin for buying some ingredients for me,” I explained. “Also I need whatever manastones you’ve got that needs to be filled. And whatever rabbit’s feet Brandt has managed to get.”

“Anything else?” he asked with a small frown.

I guess it was a disruption to suddenly have the boss around when you’re not used to it. I just shook my head and went back to the kitchen. I set up the area, but because I did not have my Lucky Charm, it felt wrong to start butchering until I had made a new one.

Just as Mozart came in and delivered what I had asked for, Brandt came down the stairs. He just stared at me. I gave him a smile. “I’ll just be here for the day, I hope you don’t mind sharing your kitchen with me. Do you plan on using the smokers?”

He just shook his head. I guess that was the only answer I was going to get. Shrugging, I started crafting. The first step was making a new Lucky Charm.