Princess Medea’s carriage was right on schedule and Corwin didn’t have to wait long. Surprisingly, he was invited to ride with the princess. He was a touch nervous about holding his own in conversation with a member of the royal family but was nonetheless happy to accept. Much to his comfort the princess preferred a very informal conversation. She mostly wanted to hear tales of his adventures and he was able to talk about the divine trials he’d been through and some of the monsters he’d slain. Medea predicted he’d become famous in the future, and he tried to find something modest to say in response, but ended up just going along with it. The travel was otherwise uneventful, with no ambushes this time.

Corwin knew they were near the capital when the carriage encountered traffic on the main road. The city was on high alert and everyone and everything entering or leaving the city was being searched. Finally, the carriage arrived and something quite unexpected happened. The guard immediately said “Alert the king, she’s been found.” Corwin turned to look at Medea, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I sort of snuck out... but I left a note. This is quite the overreaction.” “Fathers can be overprotective, King’s especially. And you did nearly fall to bandits, after all.” Medea had the good grace to blush, she seemed to be slightly ashamed of her actions. Corwin was curious what was so important that she snuck off to Avignguard, but knew it was a bad idea to get entangled in royal politics and thus refrained from asking.

Eventually, the Princess’s carriage was let through and a portion of the guard escorted it to the palace stable. Corwin and Medea were immediately summoned before the king. On the way there, Medea told Corwin “It’s best if you stay quiet until you’re asked something, I’ll handle this.” Corwin nodded assent. It’s rare for the king to meet an adventurer he thought to himself. He wanted to make sure not to make a fool of himself. He thought he needed to talk a good game to get rewarded and he desperately wanted the main-hand sword within it.

Trumpets rang as he entered the great hall. At the end of the hall was a hard black stone throne and on that throne was King Alfred the Wise. Corwin and Medea both knelt before his majesty, the king of Orleans. “Arise” the king addressed them directly rather than nodding to an advisor. This meant, rather unsurprisingly, he’d be taking a personal interest in the matter. “Medea, Medea, Medea. What am I to do with you? Sneaking off to god knows where for god knows why, you had me worried sick.” Medea let out a sigh and paused nervously before answering, “I’m sorry father, it won’t happen again.” She paused again before deciding to say what was necessary for Corwin to be rewarded: “I found out you were right to be worried though, I was waylaid by bandits. This man here, Corwin Swordborn, saved me and escorted me back to the capital.” King Alfred shook his head and composed himself before speaking: “You’re right, it won’t happen again, your guard will be doubled and you’d do well to listen to them on matters pertaining to your safety.” He turned to face Corwin. “Corwin Swordborn, you’ve done the realm a great service and that service shall be rewarded. The royal armory possesses many items useful to adventurers. You may take one of them. Darvin will accompany you for the selection.”

The treasurer escorted Corwin out of the room after a brief goodbye to Medea, and a bow to the King. Corwin breathed a sigh of relief as he was worried he’d have to talk the King into giving him the reward he wanted and wasn’t sure how to do that in the royal court. He talked to the treasurer, an elderly man with a white flowing beard. Darvin was a rather boring man, mostly interested in matters of coin. He talked while Corwin listened, mostly complaining about some vagaries of collecting tax from villages in the realm. Finally, they arrived at the armory. Darvin spoke “You may take only one item from here, let me know when you’ve made your selection.”

Corwin glanced around the room and didn’t see the sword he was looking for. He started to get nervous as he took a closer look. He eventually found it tucked away in a corner, amongst some shabby rusted weapons. It seemed likely they had misidentified it. It was clear there was a better armory he wasn’t given access to, but their mistake became a rare opportunity for him.

Corwin picked up the shabby looking sword and told Darvin he’d made his choice. He gave the sword a nice viewing:

Longsword of the Swordsman – Main Hand Weapon.

Divine Tier Growth Item. Currently Trash Level 0

Damage 5-10, Durability 5/5

Use 1 Magic Crystal to Evolve.

Use 5 trash main hand swords to upgrade.

Corwin needed some magic crystals before it would be worthwhile to equip the sword however as right now he could only evolve it once. He refrained from doing so in the palace, just in case they wanted to take it back once they saw it was something special. Darvin then had a guard escort Corwin out of the palace.

Corwin contemplated his desperate shortness of magic crystals further. He not only needed to upgrade his items, but magic crystals were useful for a number of things that would become available in the next few patches. Perhaps he’d have to miss out on those things for a while. He upgraded his sword once before heading to the shops.

Rarer ingredients were much more common in the capital and as such Corwin finally had enough ingredients to make a few arrays. He manufactured a few array scrolls, but unfortunately did not reach apprentice inscriber.

Corwin used some of the earlier items he had bought, using trash main hand swords en-masse to upgrade the sword to level 12. He also realized he had been too greedy in his gear upgrades, regretting the fact that he couldn’t level down without becoming substantially weaker. The trial he was about to face would be much easier if he lowered his level to 7 (using the XP costs of the elemental ring) the expected gear would go down and thus monsters would be weaker. Unfortunately, Corwin had shut that door and would need to deal with the more powerful enemies going forward. Corwin simply wasn’t used to having the option to level down and cursed himself for making such an amateur mistake.

To prepare himself, Corwin visited the potion master’s shop in the capital. There were several expensive potions that were of interest to him. The intermediate agility potion would raise agility by 5% for 2 hours. There were similar potions for strength, constitution, intelligence and even charisma. Unfortunately, the potions were 5 gold each. Still for Corwin the gain would be over 35 points in one of his main combat stats. Corwin reluctantly bought 10 each of the strength, agility, constitution and intelligence potions. He was exercising a lot of extravagance in taking out 200 gold for temporary buffs. Nonetheless, the trials would be difficult, and if the potions could make the difference between success and failure, it was money well spent.

Before heading out, Corwin bought up all the supplies he could for bronze and iron gear and upgraded the time manipulation skill 3 times, reducing his experience by 126,000,000. The next upgrade would lower his level so Corwin held off. Time manipulation improved moderately:

Time Manipulation – Tier 0, Level 3 -- For a 1-hour and eighteen-minute real time duration, make time slow down by a factor of 2.3 in an area of up to 115m radius resulting in 1 hour of real-life time for every 6 hours 54 minutes in game. Requires 1 minute to cast. Upgradeable for 384,000,000 XP.

Corwin found a private workshop he could rent and activated time manipulation. He then crafted for the whole duration, producing his full range of bronze and iron gear. Lastly, he went to the auction house and placed 25 of each bronze equipment for auction, with a starting bid of 1 gold. He figured he’d have 24 hours of selling bronze-tier equipment before needing to move on to iron gear for best results. Anyone in the kingdom could build, and the kingdom had 20 cities, each of which had 5 villages. With 100 starting villages, each of which supported 20,000 players, there would be up to 2,000,000 players in the kingdom. He hoped that would be enough to make 25 of an equip very scarce. He mainly knew he’d be selling to the top guilds as no one else would be able to pool enough money. Fortunately, money buying was open and plenty of people sold currency for real world cash while currency was scarce.

Finally, with his money-gaining plans in progress, Corwin left for the next divine trial. This one was a level 1 divine-trial 3 hours south of Edencourt.

Corwin arrived at the gate just as a figure disappeared inside. While it was only a level 1 trial, it appeared Corwin would be racing to finish it.

Corwin Swordborn

Spoiler : Level 10: 25% of level 11

Str: 723(base:25)

Agi: 788 (base:70)

Con: 723 (base:25)

Int: 409 (base:25)

Cha: 409 (base:25)

Lck: 197 (base:5)

Cnc: 197 (base:5)

Sta: 197 (base: 5)

Def: 1851

MDef: 1405

HP:9230/9230 (base: 1000)

MP:6090/6090 (base: 1000)

Gear:

MW: Iron Tier Level 7 Longsword, +14 Str, +14 Agi, +14 Con

Base Damage: 56-64, Durability 24/25, Requirements: 42 Str

OW: Silver Tier Level 12 Shortsword +48Str, +48Agi, +48 Con

Base Damage 108-120, Def 120 MDef 108, Durability 96/96, Requirements: 96 Str

MA: Iron Tier Level 8 Plate, +16 Str, +16 Agi, +16 Con

64Def,32MDef, Durability 48/48, Requirements:36 Str

LA: Silver Tier Level 8 Plate Cuisse, +32Str, +32Agi, +32Con

128Def, 64MDef Durability: 64/64 Requirements: 64 Str

B: Iron Tier Level 6 Plate Gloves +12 Str, +12 Agi, +12Con

48Def,24MDef, Durability 30/30, Requirements: 36Str

G: Gold Tier Level 12 Plate Boots +96Str +106Agi(10 Gemstone) +96Con

384 Def, 384MDef Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192Str

H: Gold Tier Level 12 Helm, +96 Str, +106(10 Gemstone) Agi, +96 Con

384 Def, 384MDef Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192Str

RR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Hidden Attributes (+192 All base attributes, +192 All Hidden Attributes)

LR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Elements (+192 All base attributes,

Ignore 2.4 Levels, Ignore 2.4 Equip Levels

AM: Iron Tier, Level 8 Amulet (+16 All base attributes)

Skills:

Time Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Space Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Air Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 2

Thunder Slash, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Wave Chop, Rare, Tier 0, Level 0

Wind Charge, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Disrupting Blow, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Double Slash, Uncommon, Tier 0, Level 2

Slash, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Pierce, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Parry, Common, Tier 0, Level 2