Her comment on being one of the first people to go through the early levels was, unfortunately, poorly timed. While it wasn’t as though he would necessarily be able to place her, specifically, among the first million players, the fact that she was fairly young (and was therefore unlikely to have moved all that far since launch), on the west coast of the Americas, comfortable in a feminine body, and on the bleeding edge of levelling did. Even mostly shutting up about it beyond sharing the very generic stories, Don seemed to be getting a lot closer to her former identity than she was really comfortable with.

Luckily, the beetlemen were a decent distraction, and Don didn’t ask her too many questions about the early stuff.

If she were being honest with herself, it wouldn’t have been possible to level up at the rate they currently were for those early players. While NPC Runecrafters did exist, they were almost universally working on standardized gear for the militias and heavy weaponry for use against the world bosses, with very little time to train up an entirely new subset of people who had no intention of taking over for that part of their jobs.

That left them with crafters who barely had any runes, and all of them worked up straight along the staircase. Now, Don had just straight-up bought a bow with a [Projected Durability] rune, well before they managed to clear anything above level 30, where it could be expected to drop more than almost never– and that was a repeatable action up until nearly level two hundred.

Past that point, most of the guilds were fairly cagey about their absolute top-of-the-line runes and formulations, partially because they wanted to maintain a stranglehold and partially because they hadn’t managed to get any players to 200 yet.

The relative quiet, though, also allowed her to begin the testing of the specialization she’d been granted.

Not much, because Don was still there, but the “squishiness” of rune specializations was familiar enough to her by now that only touching them a little bit was neither a new skill nor particularly difficult.

It was a little strange, still, because it didn’t quite feel like any of her previous specializations had.

Instead of having very defined places where “pushing” on the mana mentally made things happen, it was squishy all over, with certain places giving her stronger responses than others. Even more annoyingly, she couldn’t even tell what those pushes would really be affecting, even by cost– where all of her previous specializations had modified the rest of the “shape” around them as she pushed or pulled, this one utterly refused to change “radius,” more like a putty than the balloon she was used to.

Giving in to her annoyance took several more groups of beetlemen to really kick off, but while Don was dealing with a beetleman that made him watch in the other direction, she finally decided to just throw her thoughts behind one of those areas, shoving as hard as she could.

The projectile spun in midair as it launched forward, rotating end over end and carving a gash into the back of her hand as it flew forward. There had still been quite a bit of energy in the projectile, and even without the point, it noticeably cracked the beetleman’s shell as, instead of piercing through it, the stone spike nearly exploded on the front side of its armor.

Even though it wasn’t ideal, it was still enough. The beetleman rocked back, making that weird screeching, scratching, yelp for only a second as she stabbed into the weakened part of its armor, dragging the sword through the now-weakened chitin.

Turning around just as Don finished off his own opponent, she brushed aside all the other notifications for the one she was actually looking for.

Level 30 Reached.

Please select which stat to gain focus in[1]:

Mana

Health

Stamina

[1]: Each focus on a stat will increase it by 10%, multiplicatively with additional focus and rounded down.

This was one of those choices that was theoretically distinct, but even she admitted that it was more like one good choice, one decent choice, and one total trap.

Mana was the easy choice. And that held true even for tanks and most damage dealers. Ten percent wasn’t really enough health to prevent most instant kills, even when on top of with the damage reductions that most people playing tanky styles stacked. More to the point, mana was required for those damage reductions to begin with. Stamina was useful, of course, but when most damage dealers had already put at least some regeneration into it, it wasn’t exactly the end-all-be-all to have a little bit more there.

All of which meant that nether she nor Don had to ask where the other had put their focus.

Though, to be fair, she’d be putting her second focus into that total trap. A single health focus wasn’t the most efficient choice she’d ever made, but the way that it boosted what was, for her, essentially stamina regeneration, was invaluable.

The silence as they made those selections was nice, because it meant she had the time to re-check the other notifications, noticing in the process that they’d somehow landed two rune drops.

“RNGesus has blessed us on this day,” she said, noting what they were. One common major and one common minor. It wasn’t that those runes were particularly fantastic, but even getting those two this early in their farming was more than she would expect from even a lot of higher-level areas. “Well, that, or this is a setup for fucking us at some later point.”

Don guffawed, rolling his eyes. “With as much experience as you have, I’d’a thought you know it’s always that second one.”

Deyana pressed her lips together, preventing a smile from creeping onto her face. “Of course. You can sell the [Bolt], but Cone’s a new shape for me.”

Don nodded, and they opened the loot assignment window, pushing the {Shape: Cone} over to her and the [Bolt] to him.

“I really wonder where you got some of those runes, but you’ve gotta have contacts, now that I think about it.”

Deyana bit the inside of her cheek for a moment, then shook her head. “Some, but less than you’d think. I’ve been trying to keep a cleaner break. I’ve got these runes, but there’s a limit on who I can talk to without telling people about my new character.”

“So you’re building a spy character, then? A runecrafter’s a good way to do that, I guess.”

That got her to actually smile. “Would I tell you if I was? Besides, it’d be a little strange to do that on a hybrid playstyle, wouldn’t it?”

Don raised an eyebrow. “Which makes it all the more believable.”

She just rolled her eyes. “Stay here to forty or leave a bit earlier than that?”

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight. I’m limited on time, a little.”

“Got it. Let’s rush what we can.”

She knew that the equalization would be coming, eventually, but it apparently wasn’t going to be right then, because just a little while later they picked up another common minor rune. This time, a {Storage: Bleeding Heat} that went directly to her without her even asking for it.

From there, drops mostly fell to the wayside as they spent another hour lightly chatting in the process of killing the beetlemen. Being fairly simplistic enemies, and their luck holding out and not sending them against the area boss, they didn’t really need to be too concerned about dying or even really being threatened by the enemies, regardless of the fact that they were higher level than either of the players farming them.

“Fucking hell,” Doug said as she finished off another one of the beetlemen. “game’s trying to make it so I can’t sleep.”

As much as the statement itself didn’t apply, she definitely agreed with the sentiment. Somehow, in those last few kills to level up to thirty-eight, the game had decided to dump a Rare scroll on them.

Greens weren’t the highest rarity she had any of, but if she excluded the credit and those runes she’d gotten from Geria that she couldn’t even begin to afford, they would be.

She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice so that Don didn’t feel particularly pressured. “We can sell it if you’d like. Even half the credits from that’ll get me a bunch of yellows and oranges.”

He paused for a while, visibly considering that, then screwed up his eyes for a moment and sighed. “No… no. That’s not… necessary. Make me something with it while I’m offline, though.”

Deyana held herself very still. “You sure? You could get three of four items with greens on them for that price.”

“Yeah,” Don said, “I’m sure. You can beat that price, even if it takes a while, and even a non-crafter like me knows that accruing storages are like, the basis for really strong stuff.”

She smiled wanly. “I’m not sure I can, long-term, though that’s more a facet of the fact that we’re going to be picking up more of this level of stuff eventually. Plus, it’s electricity, and neither of us are using that yet.”

“Yet.” Don said simply. “If you make me a mage I’m going to want to strangle you.”

“Ki–” she stopped herself, blushing. “How about an archer with a minor in magery?”

He scoffed at her, then laughed. “Like literally everyone else here, you mean?”

“Fair enough. You want to head out to town so you can sell those offline?”

“Sounds good.”

With that, they started to head back into the city, and she messaged Geria to that effect before they’d even left the area.

‘Alright. Will I see you there?’

‘If you want. After Don leaves.’

‘Yes’

She didn’t exactly rush their goodbyes, but Deyana was still fairly sure that it was obvious that she wanted to get over to crafting a lot more than she wanted to keep talking to Don. Luckily, he did need to leave, so that probably wasn’t too insulting, though she could never actually figure that kind of thing out.

Maybe it helped that part of what she’d be doing was upgrading his gear? It was difficult to say.

Either way, even if he was a little bit insulted, he was gone as soon as he finished setting up the ranges for his character to make the sale at while he was offline.

There were disadvantages to selling that way– chief among them, the inability to bargain for non-credit payments and the ten percent tax on all such transactions, but she and everyone else who had a limited amount of time and didn’t want to spend it playing hawker for the marginal gains.

Plus, doing it offline let you trade with people from other servers, which sometimes made up the difference.

She was already in the runecrafting room before Geria caught up with her, and she had to wave her friend slash benefactor through so that she could actually get into the room.

“How’d it go with the Courier Rats?” Deyana asked, distracted with activating {Storage: Accruing Electricity}.

Rune Learned

{Storage: Accruing Electricity}

Parameters: Maximum Storage, Accrual Percentage, Accrual Flat

Geria stepped slightly into her field of view to make a “so-so” hand motion, pulling up a display window as she did so.

In front of her, an extra window appeared, listing off eight runes. One was an uncommon Geria had given her the day before, and one of the commons was the cone shape, but there was a bunch of new ones in there, too.

Including a rare, [Transport].

Deyana nearly choked. “You were actually hunting Courier Rats, right? Not buying runes to show off?”

Geria gave her a strange look. “No. Only caught three. Annoying.”

Deyana coughed out a laugh. “’Only’ three, she says. I expected you to get maybe one when you said you were hunting them.”

“Oh. I am good at hunting Courier Rats.”

“Apparently!” Deyana said, and let the roll of her eyes combine with a more complicated half-shrug. “But [Transport]. That’s a hell of a roll. Good luck selling it.”

“Selling it? Geria asked, quizzically. “I was going to give it to you.”

“No, uh-uh, no way, holy shit.” Deyana said, pulling some of the other runes she’d gotten out of her inventory and frowning slightly as she watched the counter. She was getting very close to the third milestone and needing to pay the fee…

That was fine, though. “There’s no way I could take that. [Transport] is like, the central rune in most non-instant teleportation. It’s a green, but it only drops from creatures with four or more legs and is worth more than most blues.”

Geria paused. “Ah. I see.”

The first order of business was an arrow for Don that would benefit from being bound.

The binding system would only really let him recover the arrow after firing it. First, dismissing it could be done mentally after it hit the target. It would need a little bit of durability to reduce the chances of breaking at that point, but it shouldn’t need to last all that long. Then, the ten second cooldown, and finally, he’d bring it back to his hand. Though it couldn’t be charged at range, it would, technically, remain charged while dismissed, which meant–

A trade window opened up in front of her.

“It’s an early payment, then, for the teleportation item and [Manifested Force]… thing, you’re going to make me.” Geria said, nodding. “After you’ve finished that project, of course.”