And they were off.

The first thirty minutes were uphill, but they could already see a village to rest at near the top. They had a couple of hours of daylight left, but they still decided on staying there tonight and utilizing it the same way they had Brunner’s farm, to get a head start tomorrow.

Livia was walking besides Harold, Kalle and Oscar who was mounted on his ostrich. They were the originals, but their small group had grown like a tree which sprouted a new branch every month. It was a good feeling, being surrounded by friends and colleagues; it did a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the loneliness at bay.

Livia needed all the help she could get. The anniversary of her kidnapping was coming up.

But the most important thing was keeping busy, and looking ahead to better times. Even if you had to work hard to create them for yourself.

They had certainly gotten plenty of things done in Dormata. A few levels, and even capstones, but mostly they had focused on being prepared to build as soon as they found a location with the right balance of short- and long-term potential. Somewhere to create something new. Now they left the capital an even larger and more different group than the one who had left Salcret. She'd found a fellow Earther–and one from home at that–and witnessed a new side of this future humanity, as they experienced the art and studied the markets and the Classes all around. It was a target they planned to figuratively conquer in the coming years, one way or another. It needed to improve, and fast, but Livia felt like she had found it in far better shape than the desperation of Mr Beard and his future master’s ambitious project had caused her to expect.

But to Livia, the question remained: When would things start to go wrong? She had an ominous feeling that things were going too well. Maybe that's good, it's true we should stay on our toes.

The [Guild]'s small farewell-party had taken longer than expected, but with having spent most of the morning in the recruitment center and the day being mostly gone already, Livia made it clear she did not mind it. None of them were likely to be back for the next six months, and some would need to stay put where they settled even once they did launch a trading mission.

Felix had shown up at one point, looking worn-out and worried about something–but he had barely shown his face all week, since he entered the Enchanting academy of the Albernautics–so everyone had just assumed he was finally busy learning to master the Skills of the Class that had been denied him for so long. He seemed to anger his sister Elin for some reason though–but their oldest brother just kept waving a piece of paper around and insisting she look through it again–however, even when she did she had ended up even madder. Alfred, the youngest of the siblings, tried to intervene and calm things down, but they were seemingly getting nowhere.

Eventually Felix stormed off, but Elin didn’t want to talk about it when Livia came to check on things, so Livia just decided to give her and Alfred some time and space to consider if they wanted her advice or not, whatever the issue with Felix was.

Margaret had come by to see Livia off as well, and to wish her luck, but she’d also gotten into a deep discussion with Redd over something. Mhm, right. They talked a lot back at the auctions too. Maybe he’ll tell me later if it was important.

Moa, their [Warrior] addition, had bid farewell to her brother, and even Celeste’s parents had come to see the aspiring [Witch] off on her first adventure, both shedding tears but looking happy at their confident young daughter, who did drop the act for a minute to hug them both goodbye. The other recruits seemed more ready to just go. The two cousins had each other to rely on, and their new veteran [Carpenter] was used to working with new groups.

Looking over the group, Livia felt a swelling pride. All in all they had turned out just about the way she had hoped when they entered the capital prepared to take on some new faces, even if the future recruitment of experienced Casters had proven a tough not to crack. That was to be expected.

As they got further up the hill they stopped for a minute and looked back at the city that had fulfilled so many of their hopes and expectations, but it had started looking a bit foreboding behind their backs, certainly compared to when they had first arrived on that early, sunny morning. Although this was through no fault of its own; rather it was the darkening sky above that provided the ominous effect.

They hadn’t had rain all week, most days not even clouds, with the summer sun shining intensely to get the day started every morning. That image changed dramatically however, as they watched the clouds arriving like a living, willing storm. Within minutes they saw the city get soaked while they remained dry, there were a few minutes left before the shower reached them where they watched from close to the hill's top.

Hyde got curious at the Humans' strange reactions, there was even a crowd from the village up ahead slowly forming. So what? It was a bit of rain. But what the [Guild] saw happening next made no sense, not to anyone really except for Kalle, who had lived in Dormata up until a mere five years ago, and the other natives.

It looked like Dormata was being flushed of all color somehow, every building was running with mixing shades of blues, whites and purples–crimsons, maroons and reds, even teals and black, and gold.

Every painting they had seen over the course of the week seemed to be slowly melting off of the buildings and into the hungry lake that waited on the northeastern edge of town, where the harbor ran thick with pigments and ruined visions of beauty.

Nearly all of them stood slack jawed, mutely picturing all the art that had been so suddenly lost.

And that’s when Kalle spoke up in the silence, after gathering their attention with a cough. “Hrrrghm. Right, I forgot to mention, that happens… If you’re worried about your favorites, then don’t take them being lost for granted. The best pieces get Enchanted to remain, but yeah. Every time there’s hard rain like this the art scene gets reset and the artists go insane for a couple of days in a rush to get all the best spots. A couple places even keep standing commissions with artist to be the first in line when they start the new season,”

Livia was honestly perplexed, how had no one mentioned it? She’d spent so many minutes admiring different pieces one by one, now they might all just be gone…? At least she had to assume the library one would remain, that seemed like a given. But what about the cornershops and signs? Was even Lotta’s happy little leather piece from the wooden poster dying in the gutters right at this moment?

But that was a consideration for about 10-15 seconds before the real horror struck her; where are they getting all those paints?

“Suppliers, trading routes, seasonal shortages, did anybody look into paints at all?” Uhm. All the closest lads shook their heads, and even Elin, Alfred and Albert had to shrug their shoulders and shake their heads. Damnit, is that the market we should have been focusing on? How much paint do they spend every time it rains, if they cover all of Dormata and even the outlying towns like that? "Damn it, damn it. Why didn't I think of this, I just saw how every building was painted already and assumed it had taken years of gradual work," Livia was seeing dollar signs, but also such a missed opportunity.

The rain reached them by this point, and seemed to be arriving to wash away their opportunity. Thankfully Lena spoke up to mention her new Skill to Livia, [Transmute Dye - House Colours], and then she explained what she'd learned over the course of her week: “I don’t know for sure about these art paints, since they run from mere water, I presume it cannot be the exact same–but dyes at least were inexpensive mostly–with but a few rare exceptions. I’m struggling with the exact figures, and I’m sure it fluctuates a bit as Merchants come in? But as I recall black was a tad worse than the standard 2 coins a pint; then there was gold which was up there with the rarer varieties of red, blue and yellow. Call those 3 silver. But I remember silver being one of the most expensive ones, and apparently always high quality stuff too, apparently there's no way to make it cheap and non-toxic?” Lena tried to think of what else she had seen. “The top shelf was filled with pretty surprising colours, honestly not even the best, but apparently hard to get. I didn’t recognise them from anywhere else, and I’m frankly coming up short on the name, ehm. I remember a natural variety of purple, much deeper and with a specific glow in the sun that mixing other colours just couldn’t match, but then, hm… Damnit, they talked my ear off all week while I tried to focus. Was it rubens? It was sort of orange, but a bit of extra red, and yellow mixed in? Salcret Crackers, I can’t explain well, it was closer to amber but with more of a fiery orange. Sigh. There.”

Livia had lapped it all up and really appreciated the effort, but it mostly made her self-conscious about her own reaction. They had already done so well, and here she was blowing up over missed opportunities... There was no denying this clearly being worth keeping an eye on however. Whether they found sources to provide the market from out in the wilds, or if they just noticed discrepancies in the market and sent someone to trade and take advantage near the source... This added another objective to the future agenda.

Natural resources. That’s where Livia figured there was an unexploited abundance to be found. Whether it was magic in nature or not, if they could get a proper raw resource to harvest in addition to what they grew and crafted... They were set to get into some real business.

After that it would be almost exactly like with their Classes; all about finding synergy and stacking advantages until the way they played the game started feeling downright unfair.

For now they turned their red and gold covered animals and dragged them up the last bit of road into the dreary village, and that’s when they saw some people outside the houses, with arms stretched out to greet the long due rain, and with some surprising first words to greet them with, at that.

“Welcome to Dormat! Thank you for bringing the rain, the crops were begging for it!”

Wait, did we accidentally head back east?