Had she been making a push for quick levels, hitting twenty-five in the first day would have put her in the upper ten percent of speed, though well below what she knew what she was capable of.

As it actually stood, she was quite frankly astonished when the level-up notification appeared, and only her prepared reaction to it and the fact that there were a lot of people around got her to quickly confirm her selection, the monodirectional health to stamina conversion, before a bunch of people surrounded her and Geria, mostly thanking them for the raid help.

Neither of them were particularly adroit at fielding that, and they awkwardly deflected a lot when asked about her level, making allusions to it being around seventy.

They didn’t need to lie about her intention being there, at least; powerlevelling was a readily accepted excuse, and while they had to fend off a few joking attempts to get her to do it for others as well, it was mostly all in good humor.

When they finally managed to get out, Deyana came to the realization that she remembered maybe half of it.

“Sorry about that, and the um. Grabbing thing. I should have set that up the way you actually wanted.”

Geria’s head tilted, and her eyes flicked to the side for a short moment. “Wanted or asked for…” there was another moment of pause. “But it’s fine. I know you didn’t really mean anything by it.”

Deyana chose not to address that. “I have been meaning to say, I guess; we’re going to have to keep you separated from the guy I was with for a while. If you show up out of nowhere he’s going to have a lot of questions we don’t want to answer.”

“I see,” Geria responded, as they crossed the line between the are they were in and the world proper.

Deyana’s response was lost as her quest window popped up again.

Rune Quest |Merge|

Phase 2/20: The Best Way to Learn

Complete!

Phase 3/20: Proof of Concept

Complete!

Kill or assist in killing a boss monster that grants unreduced experience that has been damaged or been prevented from damaging an assistor by someone using a piece of gear enchanted with the |Merge| rune.

Phase 4/20: Growing Understanding

While you have possession of the rune scroll, you have been temporarily granted a |Merge| Specialization. Learns its options.

“We blasted through an extra phase on that.”

“I see. What is the next quest?”

“Not something we can do tonight, I don’t think. I’ve got a temporary specialization to play with.”

“Ah. That was going to come up at some point.” Geria said, nodding.

“It was. I was wondering, what are your specializations? It seems a little bit odd that you didn’t bring it up before… When I was making something, at least.”

For some reason, she looked embarrassed. “Well, ah… I didn’t really want to impose…”

Deyana glared back, though there was no real heat in it. “Come on, I’d want to choose the stuff so you can be more comfortable or more effective.”

“Minor Power Link, Major Wall, Minor Manifested Force.”

Deyana winced. The first two, Geria had handed her. That last one, though… “You specialized in a blue?”

Geria nodded, swallowing once. “It… seemed like a good idea at the time. It… is one of the more powerful options.”

“It is,” Deyana answered, most of her attention directed to what she could do about that.

It wasn’t the worst of the blue options she could have said. It wasn’t in the highest demand, nor was it the rarest drop in that tier. It was, however, one of the more powerful options for high-mana builds to use, because it could have a wide variance of different effects depending on the other runes surrounding it, while also being less affected by the resistances and magic of higher-level enemies and caster-types.

On the other hand, it was mostly effective at providing a magical equivalent to a physical surface, so it had all the same restrictions that those would have– minus any opacity, at least. That made it much less effective in harm reduction strategies and building damage than it was at completely stopping hits or directly injuring a target, though it was at least immune to most forms of “authority,” where a higher-rarity air effect could go straight through or even subvert a lower-rarity one.

It was, however, still a blue, and that meant about a day’s worth of farming credits, including selling any rune drops, for a level 100 player. For a player of Geria’s level, it would be about six straight hours– if she could find an on-level group, which was both unlikely and dangerous.

Deyana’s could, though, shortcut that– all it would cost her was the chance to get a full starters’ pack from the Runewriters’ guild.

It wasn’t even a contest.

“I can get one. Probably save me a lot of credits later, too.”

If pressed, Deyana wouldn’t really be able to describe the sound that came out of Geria at that moment. If required to give an answer, she probably would have settled on “a squeak of shock and aggrieved happiness.”

“I can’t possibly… How would you even get one?”

Deyana grinned. “I got a Runewriters’ Credit.”

Geria blinked twice. “They won’t like that…”

“They won’t say no, either.”

A Runewriters’ credit was one of the more open-ended ‘favors’ that was offered in the game. While she’d initially intended to use it to get a starters’ pack of 30 or so runes, circumstances had changed.

She no longer needed most of the basics, and she had a fairly reasonable path to acquiring more runes, without necessarily needing to buy them personally when that wasn’t feasible. She hadn’t planned to take advantage, really, but having the alternative option so readily available in the form of a higher-level player meant that maxing out her efficiency by spending it on a blue was better than using it to accelerate her progress through the early ranks.

The guild, while it had set the rules originally, had misunderstood the difference in value between the higher rarities, and was now in the process of releasing themselves from the legal requirement to keep their offerings at the same level.

Or, in other words, the devs had noticed the disparity in reward levels and were planning to patch it, but wanted to give people the time to cash out early. Doing so at the soon-to-be-removed rate, though, would incur minor negatives in standing with the guild.

“Still, though, you could get a couple of greens or a whole collection of yellows and down, and they’d be fine. You shouldn’t annoy them on my account.”

“Call it an investment in the future,” Deyana said. “And leave it at that, ‘cause I can use it for my stuff too. Also, add me to your friends list.”

Geria froze for a moment, then nodded. “Oh. I forgot about that.”

This time, Deyana did actually giggle, sending the friend request in the same moment. It was accepted before she finished the sentence that followed. “We would have been able to meet again either way; I do have LJay added, obviously.”

“Yes.”

Deyana blinked, then shook her head slightly. “I do need to send that stuff to Don and log out, though.”

“See you tomorrow, then?”

“I will. Thanks for… well, everything?”

“Mm.”

Geria’s eyes glazed over and she started walking away, the automatic systems taking over for the player who was no longer present.

Deyana sighed, then pulled up the private messaging system and sending something to Don.

‘I got to 25.’

‘Got a few runes along the way, so if you want some special arrows made, pay me the material costs.’

With that done, she logged out herself.

It had been years since the issues with transfer back into one’s own body had been ironed out, but Alex still felt a violent shiver go over her whole body as she stood up, her balance maintained only through long practice.

Granduon claimed as much, at least. She was somewhat skeptical that they’d all been solved, but there were no longer any reports of people developing horrible body dysphoria by playing a character different from themselves in the games that were coming out, so it was at least better.

The house was quieter than she’d have expected from her housemates, typically, but it was 5 A.M.

Instead of immediately laying back down to bed, she did the responsible thing, walking around the house, putting together something to eat, and generally doing those real life maintenance things that could only be done by the truly expensive and large VR systems.

Other than getting her proprioception completely retuned by spending half an hour awake and aware, at least. Even the most expensive systems still couldn’t manage that in short order. Some of the medical versions could, but based on her reading, that was because they created a second, “pseudo-VR” that…

Alex stopped herself. She was tired, and that was leading to strange thoughts.

Instead, she directed her attention to the last day or so.

As far as Rune went, she was off to a good start. Better than she’d been expecting, even, which was both good and bad.

Good because she was going to get to the more fun content more quickly.

Bad because it meant she’d get noticed. Especially because the big guilds would look at her splitting her time between levelling and crafting, while staying up to par with some of the faster levellers.

Awful because if she got noticed, they were likely to send PvPers after her to “convince” her to join a guild. Which would combine with the thing with the Alliance…

She was going to need to start planning. Maybe pull Kalis in, too, if they were still up for it.

That would burn some of her good will, though, and that was a limited resource now. She couldn’t exactly do a lot of favors for the people who’d owed her things from the other character at this point– or at least, favors that wouldn’t come with extending that Sword of Damocles onto yet another axis.

Not that she wouldn’t. It was just something to minimize.

The next fifteen minutes, she dedicated to thinking through that reality while she got ready for bed, categorizing who could be tapped as an ally.

It was a problematically short list. A lot of her former guildmates were in positions of power in other groups now, but they also had something of a grudge against her in a lot of cases. Her leadership had essentially been a failure, when the context had changed on them, and many of them had lost months of work.

The second hadn’t even had the beginnings of camaraderie that she could pull on, though there were a few individual members, like Kalis, that were exceptions.

Pulling in Spearpoint’s strategist might be enough, at least. And if it wasn’t, she’d do what she always did, and make something up.

On her way back to her room, she passed her electronics class textbook, drawing her attention for a few seconds.

It was a good thing that class was graded on practicals, because she barely understood half of the nonsense in that book.

Not that that was unique to her; most of the engineering professions had become a lot more about the human involved’s intuitive skill for leading AI to the right solution than actually coming up with that solution themselves.

Which meant that, even though basically her entire class could actually deal with the material on their own and she couldn’t, she scored higher than all but two of them.

Not that she’d ever admit that to them, the carefully manufactured veneer of confidence convincing them that she actually knew the material they were supposedly learning instead of magic-ing her way through the only graded parts of the course.

And there was another test tomorrow, around noon. She should have studied, should have put in the effort to memorize a bit more of the material that she was constantly told was imperative to directing the AI effectively.

Instead, Alex flopped down onto the bed and fell asleep.