Maya sighed and tucked away her class objects. Right now, her luck was to the positive and she had a general idea of where to look. She'd already promised to spend the day working, so worst case scenario she spent the entire day searching around the forest — and the village, and the creek, and everywhere imaginable — without success and walked away with only her 80 copper advance.

Still, that would get her the mysterious orb and leave 65 copper left over for discretionary spending. Not enough to buy anything impressive, but perhaps she could find some cheap quality knives that were affordable. She did not like feeling so helpless in a fight. Having enough hit points to flail about at the other people and hope they dropped before she did was better than nothing, but not a form of combat she enjoyed. She definitely preferred to keep foes at a distance whenever possible.

What she really needed was magic, but so far she'd found no hint of it anywhere. Even the quest to bring some to Harold seemed a distant impossibility. Much less enough to actually learn spells.

With a sigh, she stood up and set out to begin wandering the region. She fingered the hundred-sided trickster die in her pocket, but as tempting as it would be to try her luck again, she knew she'd been fortunate to end up with +2. The more times she tried, the worse her chances would get. It wasn't worth the risk.

She searched hollow trees and under boulders. She searched sheds and hay fields and wagons, she searched the construction site itself, she searched the wreckage of the old dam, and still found no sign of the wayward tools.

She tried not to feel bad about it, since they had been hidden by another trickster with the intention of deceiving the Trickster himself. But it also galled her. What kind of a class encouraged its members to make each other's lives harder? Well. Possibly any of them. She didn't know.

Maybe this whole game was based on trolling and being horrible to each other. After all, publicly available quests that can only be completed once? If that wasn't a danger signal she didn't know what was. She should've seen it earlier. This was probably the sort of game that she would've hated if she’d had any choice of what to play. But she was stuck here now, so better make the best of it.

As evening began to darken the sky, she made her way around the last sweep of the village and back to the log from which she'd summoned the trickster. She gave the log a firm kick, setting an angry squirrel to chattering at her, then slumped down to sit with her back against it.

This was not how she pictured her first day in the game going. Getting almost killed by a group of thief children with apples, and then spending the rest of the day running around like a fool searching for something that hadn't been meant to be missing in the first place. She wondered if this was going to be her life from now on, constantly having to deal with the fallout of fellow tricksters.

Another part of her cackled gleefully at the thought that once she was high enough level, she'd be able to do the same. Play tricks on them. Perhaps that's why she hadn't given up yet. Aside from the fact that it had only been one day, not even, she couldn't help but look forward to the day when her luck came up high. It had to be worth it in the end. After all, she could always reroll until things were bearable. And she only had to roll high once. The game might as well be rigged in her favor. She just had to hold on.

The squirrel continued chattering at her angrily, and she irritably looked around to find something she could throw at it.

Then she immediately thought better of it. She wasn't really so upset that she would throw things at a poor innocent squirrel. After all, she’d kicked its home where it was probably storing nuts or something. She knelt and peered into the hollow tree. Maybe she could offer some of its nuts back to it as a peace offering or something.

And of course, there, sitting amid hundreds of nuts, was the pile of builders' tools. Some strapped together by their work belts, some lying loose. The whole time, they been right there. She'd be willing to bet that the Trickster was laughing.

Maya wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry, but she was too tired to do either, utterly weary of this nonsense. She just wanted to get her tasks here over with. She gathered up the tools and trudged back to the village.

Construction took all night. No other players came along to interfere, thankfully, and no other unexpected holdups manifested.

Halfway through the night, her luck flipped from 12 back to -100 and she received a system message.

Quest failed: Trickster Day One. -5 favor with The Trickster.

She belatedly realized that there were any number of minor disagreements which had taken place all throughout the construction process, in which she could have sided with the losing party. But she'd been too focused on finishing the seemingly endless construction projects and hadn't noticed them until afterwards. Now it was too late.

She hastily rolled her die before any dreadful disasters occurred.

-30. Unacceptable. She rolled again at once.

+18. Good enough. After two penalties of -5 each, that still left her with +8 which was better she'd had the day before. She didn't look at her new quest yet, hurrying back to the construction tasks.

By the time they finally finished, the sun was beginning to lighten the horizon, the stars disappearing with its radiance, and Maya was thoroughly exhausted. She wanted to find someplace quiet to lie down and rest.

She collected her payment, thanked her fellow workers, and headed back to the city.

The first thing she did upon arriving in town was to stop by Harold’s shop to claim the mysterious orb. Out of everything she'd done that day, it seemed the most important. Yes, she'd done mundane quests and earned mundane rewards, but this had the potential to be something incredible.

She didn't want to look into it today though. She planned to save this until the day that her luck came up high. Someday, if she had 30 or 40 or 50 luck, that would be the day that she'd try to figure out the mysterious orb that may or may not connect to another deity. For now, she stuffed it in her inventory and forgot about it.

She reluctantly parted with 1 silver for a month's rent in an apartment in the basic new player building she'd seen the day before, collapsed into her bed, and fell asleep.

Maya slept only for a few hours, awakening well before noon. Fully rested and reinvigorated, she opened her trickster quest to see what nonsense he had in store for her this time. She was unsure if she really wanted to compete for his top favourite, but on the other hand she always had been a bit of an achievement chaser. If there was a competition to win, especially one that didn't involve going toe to toe with other players, she had every intention of winning it.

Trickster Day Two. Lose a fight to another player in PVP.

Hah hah. Well. If she had to fight other players, at least the quest didn’t care if she won. But before she pursued that, she absolutely had to find either some throwing weapons or magic. And from everything she’d found out, one of those would be much easier to obtain than the other.

She returned to the marketplace, which looked basically identical to how it had the previous day. She did notice that Shary's apple basket was full and the elf boy stood beside her, smiling at passersby. He waved cheerfully when he saw her and Maya grinned back. He was still adorable.

This time, instead of asking for directions she wandered from stall to stall looking over the goods for herself. They all had the same sort of cheap insignificant starter items that wouldn't amount to much in the long run. One sold cheap jewelry, probably painted wood, with maximum stat increases of 1. Some of it actually was polished wood with no attempt to disguise it as anything else. There was also a baker, a candy maker, a pet store… shops that sold basic tools or simple clothes.

Finally, she found a blacksmith working at the far end of the plaza away from the others. It was hot and noisy, and she could see how the other shop owners may not want to be right nearby. She had to shout to make herself heard, but once she got his attention the lizardine man stood cheerfully to greet her.

"Don't get many visitors these days," he commented. "What can I help you get? Looking for blades?"

"Yes, in fact. I am looking to get as many throwing knives as cheaply as possible. I have the skill, just nothing to throw, and I've been attacked enough times that I really need something to defend myself."

"Throwing knives aren't the best thing for defending yourself with. They're more an attack weapon than something I'd suggest for self-defense."

Whatever happened to 'the customer is always right'?

"Better to have a weapon that I know how to use, rather than something where I'll just flail around uselessly," said Maya.

"I do take your point. How much did you have to spend?"

Maya put two silver on the counter. "I don't know if this is enough, but if so I'll take as many as this will buy."

After some haggling back and forth, she ended up spending 3 silver for two dozen basic throwing knives. Finally armed, Maya left the shop and headed back for the east gate to check out the massive quest board.

A lot of the quests had changed during the night, including the three that she'd completed. There were the same number now, in the same difficulties, but the specifics had changed. The top-tier dungeon Forest of the Twin Queens had been replaced with the Chasm of the Fire Hydra, for instance.

She couldn't remember all the previous quests, and she noted the changes with only mild curiosity. She was mostly looking for new construction quests. She had some thrown weapons now, but not enough to last. Walking out on the melee combat training session was really starting to feel like a mistake. The lack of readily available magic turned out to be more crippling than she had anticipated.

A red and brown blur almost knocked her over for the second time in as many days. This time, her reactions were quick enough to reach out and snare the back of the player's armor before he could disappear.

"Oy! Watch where you're running!"

"Let go of me, noob. I'm busy."

He smacked her with the back of his hand so fast that it knocked her sprawling, though despite its strength it dealt no damage. Before she could react, he'd darted away up the stairs. A moment later, another quest disappeared from the board, replaced by a new one at the bottom of the mid-level section.

Hissing angrily to herself, Maya stood and brushed herself off. Of course, the one player she encountered had to be a very rude one.

She stalked over to the leaderboard and tried to remember what it had looked like before. But it had changed significantly from its status the previous day. There was no way of telling which player kept running by. Even the two leaders had reversed position. Domitius, Vampire, Level 53 was now listed higher than Shardlord, Felinis, Level 52.

To be that far ahead of everyone else those two must be power leveling like crazy. She wondered just how long the server had been active. Months? Years? How long did it take to amass that kind of personal power, enough to unbalance the whole server?

Maya sighed and reopened her missions list. The Trickster’s quest for her today was to lose a PVP fight. Shouldn’t be hard. She was still the lowest level player. But she didn’t like the idea of losing on purpose. She’d find someone she could beat, or fight to a draw. That way, when she inevitably did lose, she wouldn’t feel like a complete failure.

And today she had 8 luck. That had to mean things would be better than yesterday.

Maya Starborn Average Androgynous Harpy Level: 3 Affinities: Magical Physical Tier: 1 Class: Trickster Specialization: Path of Life Total Base Items Modifiers Sturdiness: 8 8 0 0 Momentum: 12 9 0 3 Agility: 9 8 0 1 Control: 8 8 0 0 Attunement: 10 9 0 1 Focus: 9 8 0 1 Intelligence: 11 9 0 2 Flexibility: 9 8 0 1 Luck: 8 18 - -10 Unassigned: 3 Health: 93 of 93 Will: 18 of 18 Stamina: 56 of 56 Energy: 58 of 61 Speed: 82% Switch penalty: -52%, 10.2 secs Stealth: 78% Chain bonus: +4% Awareness: 66% Cooldown: 95.5% Max abilities: 3 Abilities Abilities: [3 of 3] Wind Whisper

[5 energy] Blow into cupped hands, then push the air toward the target.

Creates a light breeze, a quick gust, or a damaging slash.

[Overcharge: +5 energy, +0.2 sec cast time, +50% force/duration/dmg] 2.2 sec

5 dmg

(wind) Throw Knife

[5 stamina] Throw a knife at a target with high accuracy. Requires a knife. 1.1 sec

3 dmg

(physical) Sense Balance Discern if an area is lacking in or has an excess of any materials, creatures, etc. Equipment & Inventory Item Name Slot Stu Mom Agi Con Att Foc Int Flx Newcomer's Tunic Body Newcomer's Leggings Legs Trickster's Mask (Mage) Special Money: 1 Silver 65 Copper Quality Item name Details Soulbound Trickster's Dice Soulbound Trickster's Orb 3/5 uses remaining Flimsy Shary's Orchard Brochure Normal Apple x2 Consumable Special White and Blue Orb 3/3 uses remaining Special Key - Arrival Plaza Apartment Expires in 30 days Normal Basic Throwing Knife x24 3 damage (physical) Missions Mission Description

Time Reward Trickster Day 2 Lose a fight to another player in PVP. 12h 41m Trickster's Reward

??? Windy Creek Reconstruction Complete all Windy Creek reconstruction tasks. DONE 3 silver, 25 copper

25 reputation with Windy Creek village Reconstruction Prerequisite Locate the missing workers' tools. DONE Access to Windy Creek construction missions Damaged Dam Construct a new dam to redirect Windy Creek to the mill run. DONE 1 silver Windy Creek Cleanup Clear the wreckage of the old Windy Creek Dam. DONE 70 copper Building Bridges Complete construction of the new Windy Creek bridge. DONE 85 copper Trickster Day 1 Side with a person who is losing an argument or disagreement. FAILED -5 reputation with The Trickster Missing Delivery Find the overdue delivery boy. Ensure his safety and the successful delivery of apples to Shary's Produce Stand. DONE 5 copper

3 apples

+10 reputation with Shary and Elaph