"The Great Herald Stone returns! " I raised my arms, stretching my Mardukryon body as if I had just woken up—which I did. “Should I legally add ‘the Great’ in front of my name? Is that allowed?”

The Mardukryon night sky high above didn’t answer my musings. I gazed at it while crossing one of the many bridges snaking through the part of Kurghal Village built into the towering cliff walls.

The sky looked magical, far more beautiful than any I had seen on earth.

To be fair to real skies, I mostly stayed in cities, so I couldn’t see squat with the smog and light pollution. Here, hundreds, maybe thousands of differently colored stars were visible. An occasional meteor or two streaked past the large blue moon.

Staying at an altitude this high helped. And I might have an even better view if there were no golden crystals lighting this area.

Mardukryon nighttime was rare to catch because it occurred during the wee hours of my time zone. As my doctor advised, I was usually asleep at this time, trying to have eight hours of rest to reduce stress. The nights on this mountain were also brief, only a few hours long. When I logged in to the game after having my morning coffee, it would already be an hour or so past sunrise on Mardukryon mountain.

However, I went to bed early last night, so I also woke up early today—at three in the morning. Too early that I wanted to go back to sleep.

But remembering my brand new Ocadule and my Mardukryon Cidule about to Rank up jolted my groggy brain. No washing my face to relieve the sleepiness, no brushing my teeth to cleanse my morning breath. Instead, I immediately picked up the AU VR-Helm on my bedside table and wore it. I didn't even put on a neck pillow to avoid a stiff neck.

Waking up this fast at this ungodly hour meant a headache would come knocking around lunchtime. It might be a good idea to avoid coffee today.

I was supposed to play MCO yesterday evening to check Bawu’s gift to me—a copy of her Akhos Poison Research Ocadule. But I was tired from entertaining my family and touring them around Egret city.

Correction: it was the heavy traffic that made me tired.

We probably spent a couple of hours in total sitting in the car, trapped in a sea of other vehicles, as we went from one tourist attraction to the next. But I’d never get tired of talking with my family, for I was Herald Stone, the Dutiful Son and Caring Brother. And I was also Herald Stone, the Etiquettely Good Host.

Is ‘etiquettely’ a real word? It should be.

Several times our conversations came dangerously close to the topic of our old home. Sawyer and I were ready to steer it away and distract Mum with something else. My sister even tried to get me to talk about MCO, but Mum would probably think I was being childish and wasting my time with it, so I didn’t—she’d technically be correct from a societal perspective.

However, my view was that time one enjoyed was never wasted.

We eventually settled on discussing my health. Just as a general topic. I wasn’t going to needlessly worry her by mentioning that I was hospitalized a couple of weeks ago because I fainted in the gym and hit my head on a dumbbell rack. And I swore Nelly and Sawyer to secrecy about it.

Mum pounced on it as a mother should and fussed over me; she hadn’t done it for a long time. She even suggested I try a yoga workout this famous actress did. I settled for promising that I’d jog every morning.

I know, I know…jogging in a game didn’t count. Having four legs didn’t matter. Herald Stone, the Dutiful Son, was going to jog for real after brewing my first poison.

Lvl. 1 Research Akhos Poisons: Learn to create the five basic Akhos poisons. Inflict incapacitating effects, and make your enemies suffer. For each skill level, the crafting success chance increases by 3%, the chance to poison increases by 2%, and the poison duration increases by 3 seconds.

Brewable Poisons:

Morabodry – (22+3)% Success Chance. Ingredients: (20) Limerian Toad Skin, (2) Majalis, (1) Amberite, (1) Poison Bottle.

Requires: Enlivened Mortar and Pestle, Bronze Cauldron.

Five basic poisons? Would I unlock a different kind per two levels? Or was this skill capped at only level five?

In any case, I didn’t have the faintest clue where to get the ingredients for the poison. I should check if some were sold at the auction house. If they were dropped by low-level monsters nobody bothered to kill, I’d have to farm them myself.

As for the required brewing tools, Bawu told me I could buy them at a store here, on the fourth level of the Mardukryon settlements on the cliff wall. She didn’t want to give me any, not even her old stuff. In comparison, Mehubanarath happily gave me hand-me-down equipment.

Good Grandma Bawu isn’t so good after all.

From what I noticed walking around this place, the ‘Cliff Village’ had more Mardukryons living in it than the settlement below. Here, there was easy access to the precious golden crystals the Mardukryon drew power from, with boulder-sized ores jutting out of the walls of rocks every several meters or so.

I wasn’t an expert on Mardukryon architecture and engineering skills, but based on the ruins I had come across, they seemed to have built quite grand cities in the past. Unfortunately, the Great Quake was a hard reset on their technology, with a handful of survivors struggling to rebuild their civilization.

The structural integrity of the ‘Cliff Village’ was very questionable. I couldn’t see how they secured the pinecone-shaped tiered structures that housed Mardukryons onto the hard rock. It looked like a Medium Quake, or a Not-So-Great Quake could knock them loose. They likely used magic, powered by the bountiful golden crystals around, to help with construction.

If I were an aspiring Mardukryon homeowner, I’d rather buy a house on the ground. The houses inside the village proper were squat structures inside dugout bowls, almost like bunkers. While I loved to have electricity, that didn’t mean I’d live next to a power plant. Less so if the power plant was stuck on a cliff.

“This feels stable,” I said, gingerly stepping my hoof on the bottommost plank of a narrow, rickety ramp.

Through the gaps between the slats, I spotted NPC Mardukryons walking back and forth on the level below, talking to each other, pretending that this whole place was bustling.

When did our kind sleep? Our nights were very short—shouldn’t they be all in bed by now? It was probably hard to sleep, constantly showered by the light from the massive golden crystals.

“Here goes,” I said, looking up and confidently walking across the ramp to my destination on top of it—the store for brewing equipment. I swept aside the dirty curtain covering the store’s entrance and walked in. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

"Someone is here!" boomed a cheery voice from deep within the store. "That someone is me, Arakmad! Come in, come in."

I walked down the cramped aisle to the counter, taking care not to snag any of the items squeezed onto the shelves. The phrase 'bull in a china shop' came to mind—a bull centaur in my case. While that phrase referred to someone who breaks things or often makes mistakes, Sawyer told me that a real bull wouldn't destroy anything in a store because they'd instinctively avoid the stationary shelves.

"It's seriously cramped here," I said as I reached the end of the aisle. "And wow, you're huge! I can't imagine you moving around in this small place. Haven't you thought of expanding? Reducing your inventory would already work wonders."

[Lvl 36 Mardukryon|Shopkeeper: Arakmad] was framed by numerous items for sale stacked high on both sides of the counter. The ceiling was so low that he needed to hunch down, or his horns would scrape it. There were also various trinkets tied to strings hanging from the ceiling; some of them got tangled with his horns.

"Wonderful that you managed to reach me without toppling anything over," he said. "A youngling's frame sure comes in handy with a small store like mine. Let me tell you a secret, youngling." He leaned forward, his massive forearm nudging the dangerously teetering pile of junk beside him, and whispered, "I've been trapped behind this counter for a very long time. I almost forgot the feeling of the sun on my skin."

"You know what? I believe you." We both heartily laughed. This guy might be an NPC, but I decided to like him nonetheless. "Do you need me to dig you out of there before you can sell me anything? Or what do you need...?"

"My heart thanks you for your concern, youngling. But worry not, for I am perfectly contented in my spot. A shopkeeper, that's who I am and who I'll be, as my father before me and his father before him. My grandfather died tending the family store during the Great Quake. If my ancestors come to fetch me someday, they'll find me right here."

"That is some dedication. How do you eat if you're stuck there? I suppose people can deliver food and water. But what about po—?"

"Enough about me!" Arakmad said with a chuckle.

"You're right. That's probably enough information."

"I'm a shopkeeper through and through, and I have wares to sell to you. Do not ask me what I need. I’ll ask: what do you need?"

A screen appeared, showing a list of the items he was selling and their prices.

I scrolled down until I reached the [Poison Bottle] priced at fifty Artas each—I bought thirty of them for a start. Next, I purchased an [Enlivened Mortar and Pestle] for twenty-seven thousand Artas and a [Brass Cauldron] for three hundred and thirty thousand Artas.

There were no [Limerian Toad Skin], [Majalis], or [Amberite] offered.

But I did spot a [Magic Slag Cauldron], which costs twice the one I had just bought.

To use it, a player had to be level twenty and have fifty points in Sense. The [Amberite Cauldron] that costs five million Artas had a requirement of player level thirty and eighty Sense. Out of all the cauldrons Arakmad had available, I could only use the brass version.

Other brewing paraphernalia, such as cucurbits, alembics, and special flasks, were also available. They all had similar requirements. Sense must be the attribute for crafting and the like, in the same way that Vigor was for tankiness, Might for physical DPS, and Spirit for the magical side. To brew higher-leveled poisons, I'd need more Sense—an attribute I had neglected because I had no use for it before.

Players intent on becoming mainly crafters could invest all the free attributes they'd gain into Sense. But that wasn't possible for me because I wanted to go all-in on Vigor as a tank. This was similar to armor pieces requiring a certain amount of Might to wear. In the same way that I had gear that gave Might to make up for the deficiency, I'd probably need a sort of 'crafter's set'—equipment with a ton of Sense stats that I’d use only when brewing.

"A bronze cauldron?" Arakmad said. "A fledgling Brewer, are you?"

"Yes, I am. By the way, do you know where I can get Limerian Toad Skin, Majalis, and Amberite?"

"Limerian Toad Skins from Limerian Toads, of course!" His laughter rattled the stringed trinkets near him. “Plenty of those loud creatures by the Eternally Unfrozen Pond some walk down the frozen one."

"I know where that place is," I said. "I fished there before."

"The Amberite you can obtain from the mines, although it might be better to buy them from Miners. But as for the Majalis...now that's a difficult one. It's a secret not many Mardukryons know."

"Can you tell me this secret?" I could sense where this was going.

"If you do me a favor first.”

I groaned. There it was—time to be an NPC lackey again. “What do I need to do?”