Deyana’s incredulous look was countered quickly by Don’s laughter. When he finally recovered enough to talk, he explained, “I knew you were confident, but that still gets most people your level killed.”

She tilted her head to the side as the post-combat windows started to appear. “Fair, I suppose.”

Combat ended!

+235 Experience, +24 Credits

[Goblin Soul Fragment] Obtained. (1/200)

Level Up! (x4)

HP: 22 (+8)

Mana: 30 (+20)

Stamina: 11(+4)

Don spoke after a short pause where his eyes were obviously scanning in front of him. “When you said you were a raider I was a bit worried that I’d be staring down two of the buggers running at me after violently removing you from the premises. Gratz on the levels, by the way.”

“I mean, if you’re just going to stand around and let things hit you, you deserve to be killed even if you do usually have backup and someone standing by to heal you when you get hit like a moron.” Deyana responded, getting up and looking around. “I got the first of the frags, too.”

Don snorted. “You’re going to be a while on those. What kind of raider were you, that you actually know that?”

Deyana weighed her response carefully, not wanting to give away that she wasn’t actually a member of any of the guilds, since that would peg her for one of only a very few unaffiliateds on the front. “The last portal raid I did was a red-orange.”

Don’s appreciative whistle was a little confusing, until he responded, “I knew a couple of people in those guilds. Tough sons a’ bitches. What role did you play?”

“Absorb-based revenge tank?” Deyana said, the intonation in her voice making the wording of the statement sound like a question. “Never really did formal roles.”

Don looked at her, then shrugged. “Fair enough, at those levels. Anyone who couldn’t hold their own pretty much anywhere would be screwed, from what I hear of the linebreaking stuff there. On to the next?”

“On to the next.” Deyana confirmed, then walked towards a group of four goblins out in the open. “When they aggro on me, shoot one down to draw a couple your way, then I’ll try to cut in.”

She got about fifty feet from them before the first one responded, a grunt coming out of its mouth followed by some linguistic-sounding noises, then the entire group charged the lone human walking at them.

With four this time and no obstacle to dodge around, Deyana started stepping quickly backwards, facing the group and moving towards Don only slightly slower than the shorter goblins. When they had closed the majority of the distance, she stopped, setting her feet to defend and waiting for her ranged support.

Her half-second of patience was rewarded when a slightly repositioned Don shot the goblin to her far left, making the two that were to their downed comrade redirect their focus towards revenge. As those two struck out at her in passing, the third rushed her while guarding with his makeshift blade, attempting to redirect her focus.

A quick, uncharged strike to the blade of the one guarding with her superior strength (anyone who said that size doesn’t matter has obviously never been in a fight) broke his stance long enough for her to turn and jab one of the ones going for Don in the back of the unprotected neck, killing it as she charged the blade.

Deyana turned back to the one that had rushed her, now attempting to hit her as the other continued to run for the archer. Choosing to trust him, she stepped forward and blocked the goblin’s shortsword with her own, the rusty blade ringing off of the flat of her own. Two steps brought her inside even the shorter humanoid’s reach, and hitting him with her knee knocked him backwards and onto the ground with visible force. A stomp on his chest kept him down for the second it took her to bring her blade down upon his neck, activating it once more.

Quickly turning to Don, she saw that he’d already taken down his own opponent some five feet from himself with an arrow lying in the ground behind it.

Combat ended! +300 Experience, +30 Credits Level Up! (x2)

HP: 24 (+2)

Mana: 35 (+5)

Stamina: 12 (+1)

Deyana grinned as she walked back to her fire support’s position. “You think you could handle a couple more than that?” she asked, winking. “I’ve got probably two-kay of these to kill, and if we change to the higher-level invasion once we get some stuff here…” she trailed off, letting him fill in the rest.

“Yeah, I got you. Lots of power-levelling opportunities. I’ll stick it out.” He paused. “I dinged ten, too. Splitting the regen two to one mana to stamina.”

The regen he was mentioning was one of the step-style rewards of levelling. Instead of implementing a system where players slowly gained power of every type as they levelled, the developers had decided to place milestones at certain levels that sharply increased the combat effectiveness of the player. Level ten, the first of these, marked what some people referred to as the “class selection”, because it marked where the player selected where to put three points of regeneration- mana, stamina, or health- that would define the user’s playstyle.

“So you’re staying a ranged class?” Deyana asked. His placing of two of the points into mana regeneration would allow him to continue to fight and deal damage over a period of time, and the stamina would allow him to continue to move, but not putting any points into health would mean that any damage he took would remain until after combat was done.

Don shrugged. “Tried and true. Nobody blames the DD.”

“Fair enough,” Deyana responded, “Unless you try to do anything but damage.”

Don laughed. “That’s why I don’t.”

Now that Deyana was only slightly, instead of extremely, underlevelled for the area, she found the simplicity of combat cathartic. Simple motions that tricked the simple AI of the goblins, and the pure and simple DPS race that epitomizes early-game combat in any leveling system. It was easy, a matter of her weapon being strong enough to one-shot the enemy more than any residual skill.

Drawing groups of four to six with Don was entertaining enough, but also simple enough that they were talking more than focusing on the fight. She was actually surprised, when she found out that his story was almost a mirror of her own, though with something else as the inciter.

He’d been a moderately-long-term member of Greased Wheels before a change in the guard had had them repeatedly kill his character for some of the more powerful weapons and armor he’d had made by their resident crafter, on the basis that he objected to the increasing frequency of PK within the guild. Deyana tried to hide her reactions when he told the story.

Apparently, this new character was his attempt to get into another of the big guilds. While their recruitment had required levels, experience on the outward-pushing wave that characterized the current high levelled players was worth more than a few levels to recruitment.

Though she was loath to tell what the last character name she’s used was, she also understood that not speaking at all would be rude, and instead decided to tell him some of what she’d seen recently, including some of the bigger raids she’d been a part of.

“Yeah, I know some of them stream while they do it, but it’s not something most guilds do when they have mercenary-types with them. They like to take advantage of the radio silence to kill people before they have to pay them.”

Don laughed at that, some of his own stories having corroborated that it happened. “It’s honestly a shame. Those mercenary people at the front have to be twice as good as anyone else, and yet they get fucked over by the guild leaders? Where’s the justice?”

Deyana blushed a little bit. “I’m sure they care more about their own guilds than any justice. It’s not like players put up statues of her.”

He laughed again. “Yeah, they’d much prefer to put up statues of Greed.”

Some half-hour of combat later, choosing to battle the larger groups as Deyana became more able to fight them, she finally dinged ten to Don’s twelve. With the window sitting in front of her, she knew she had a choice. Go with the style that she found most entertaining, forsaking the ability to fit into most parties… or place them in a generalist manner, like she would be expected to in most raids.

Quickly, she glanced over to her temporary partner, watching him absorb himself in chat while she visibly stared at windows.

Finally, she decided to go back into that build that had served her so well for levelling before, even if it was something that most guilds thought of as stupid. One point in health, two points in mana. Each point of regeneration would give her one percent of her total capacity back every second. This setup was often called an “assassin” build, because not having any points in stamina would require the user to either get out of combat quickly, to avoid using all of their stamina, or stop moving and hide.

Of course, that wasn’t what she’d actually do, but until she hit level twenty-five, that is what the build would look like.

With their new experience totals, each group they pulled would no longer be a full level, so she was itching to move to the larger area, where they would likely be joining a PUR, or pick-up raid. Not the best environment for anything difficult, but extremely useful for quick leveling in high-density areas.

“You think we’re ready to move on?” she asked her erstwhile ally.

“Yeah. Want to stop in and pick something else up for ranged combat?”

“Eh. I’m set up one-two-zero. Ranged isn’t really my thing.” She responded, waving a hand in the air flippantly.

Don’s stare was incredulous. “You sure you were on the front as an assassin?” he asked, though he did begin to walk towards the bus stop. “That’s a PvP spec.”

Deyana thought about how she was going to word her response. “Usually, maybe. But I’m going to take the twenty-five trade skill health to stamina exclusive.”

“Why?”

“It’s what I’m used to, for one,” she said, a little bit hurt that he seemed so against it. “But it’s also really good in longer, raid and large-party fights.”

He shook his head at that, like trying to clear the ridiculous out of his ears. “So you’re like, an assassin, but with sustain. So not an assassin at all.”

“Exactly!” she responded, grinning. The cheer in her voice wasn’t entirely felt, but it was still entertaining to inject it. “I knew you’d pick it up.”

They reached the transport point a few seconds later, and they agreed to meet back in the town square in an hour without dissolving the party. Don said that the reason he needed so long was to check which of the early-levelled players were any good at runecrafting. She didn’t argue the point, because it allowed her the time to buy some extra runes from around the town.

Now in the raucous player-filled market, the surety that Deyana had felt at the new course of action was dwindling. It felt like someone had taken the worst Earth-market and decided to bring it up to eleven, though certain videos she’d seen in the past told her that there was no way that was the case. Even if the players were packed in so tightly that it was possible to see the occasional lag-artifact as people moved around.

The noise was almost overpowering, but she still managed to slip through enough of the crowd near the front, selling pieces of armor and weapons from new crafters. Guns, swords, and armor, of the medieval, renaissance, and modern varieties, all stewed together in anachronism soup.

It was in the middle of reminiscing about the last thing she had bought in a market like this– that set of armor that was both intensely effective in PvE and had let her down the instant PvP came into the equation– that she had an idea.

Turning back, Deyana slipped past a few people arguing about the effectiveness of some weapon or another, and found one of the levelling fighters who had said something that tickled at her memory.

“You said you have runes for sale?” she asked, looking up at him. It was a pain, but she had to be rather closer than usual to him for him to hear over the din of the player-market.

He looked down quickly, before taking a half step back and leaning on his back foot, arms crossed. “Yeah, I picked up a ‘Form’ Major rune, and some other minor stuff. I don’t do crafting so…”

She paused for a moment before trying to explain what she wanted. “Did you happen to pick up a ‘Shape’ minor? Maybe a distance applicator?”

“No applicator, but I did get a ‘Shape: Cylinder’. You good for it? Seventy-five each.”

“You really want to wait in here for another crafter out to buy commons? I’ll do seventy for the major, fifty of the minor.” She replied, staring him in the eyes.

He glanced away slightly, then turned back to her. “You look like you’ve got a plan. What for?”

She weighed the pros and cons of telling him, then decided it would just be easier to say. “I’m going to buy a durability minor from someone, then use Form, modified by linked durability, Air, and Shape: Cylinder set to high-radius low-height with a down-displacement, and set it on a set of Major-Durability boots or shoes, I haven’t decided yet.”

He stared at her. “In simple terms. I hit things.”

She smiled, aware that the tech-talk was more a matter of figuring it out herself than any attempt at communication. “Run-on-air boots.”

He appeared to think for a second. “Friend me, I’ll go find you that durability and displacement.”

Deyana sent the friend request to him reflexively, even as she spoke. “What?”

“Make two of ‘em and you’ll get the runes free. That sort of thing would cost about two hundred, but you need my stuff. Since you tried to talk me down, I’d bet you have… maybe one-seventy?”

“One-sixty. They’d probably be a bit under two, these won’t be the type you can just leave running, you’ll have to explicitly turn the Form set on and off.”

Her customer’s nameplate filled her in as to his name when he accepted the friend request, telling her that she was speaking to… Henry Meta. “Nice name, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’m levelling another character for a ranged build, what with all the changes with the new portals. Here, take these, let me hold on to a hundred.”

In front of her, a trade window opened, the two runes that they had discussed popping into it less than a second later. Matching the offer on her side only took a quick glance and a thought, and almost as soon as all the items were visible, the window disappeared. Another flick of the eyes confirmed the two scrolls in her inventory before she went to look for this city’s Runewriters’ Guild.