“There is a preference for crit builds,” said Paritor. “But the recent surge in player population will provide a decent consumer base for your Lesser Precision Aura.”

“People like crits over normal attacks?” I said. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I couldn’t say for sure that crit builds have the highest ceiling among DPSers,” said Kezo. “I’ve heard of Accuracy stackers reaching mind-boggling numbers too. But ours is easy to start and shows immediate results. People love to see fast progress.”

“I suppose it's also appealing whenever a crit is rolled,” I said. “The sudden burst of damage is like winning the slot machine. People also love… not necessarily gambling… but getting lucky.” I couldn’t believe I was psychoanalyzing the appeal of critical strikes in RPGs.

Kezo nodded, smiling as he stared far off. He probably reminisced about his own experience. “That’s true, Herald. But only at the start. The goal is to have a high crit multiplier and to crit consistently. At that point, there’s not much difference between crits and other DPS builds.”

“If all attacks are critical strikes,” I said, “nothing is.” Now, I was philosophizing about crits. Fighting hundreds of Maggroths might’ve pushed me to a higher plane of enlightenment.

“If you plan to sell that Shard,” said Kezo, “do it now because there are plenty of new players. Demand will be high, but supplies will be low. Not until this batch of new players reach quests or areas where monsters drop Rare Shards.”

“Sell it now or lose it,” said Nitana. “Uh, wait. You’re not going to lose it. Like, lose its price or something. I dunno, I was trying to make it sound catchy.”

“I get what you mean.” I flipped the screen back to me. I noticed the cost of using [Lesser Precision Aura]—or what I assumed to be its cost. Reservation… ten percent of my highest secondary resource. That meant Ancestral Shroud, right? What was this about?

Over a decade and a half ago, auras in RPGs I used to play didn’t cost anything. They just switched on, and that was it. They were more like passive skills. I didn’t want to ask my party mates about this reservation mechanic because it was probably basic knowledge for long-time players, and I was pretending to be one.

“By the way, where did that Unidentified Shard come from?” asked Kezo. “I can’t recall Maggroths dropping Shards. Did you really get it from them?”

“Yes, I did. But not just any ol’ worm.” I told them a short version of how I came to meet Mommy Maggroth—I didn’t call it that while storytelling. “And it dropped the Shard along with other loot,” I said. “Disappointing that it’s just Rare Quality.”

“Greater Demon Maggroth? I didn’t know there was something like that,” said Kezo.

“What other items did you acquire from it?” asked Paritor. “Did it drop Ichor? A Kruos Ichor Sliver?”

I hesitated, weighing if I should reveal it. Paritor knew about the [Kruos Ichor Sliver], so it didn’t seem like a big secret. However, I could tell from how he spoke that it was important. “Yes, I got one,” I said. After thinking for a moment, I added, “This is my second Ichor. How many do you have?”

“I possess five,” Paritor said. “Impressive that you obtained two before passing the tunnels. The Ichors in my inventory are all from this side of the cliff walls. I rushed my early game, that’s why. I doubt I could double back and find those around the village. Quests and circumstances have changed since I progressed the main story.”

“You got five?” Kezo flashed his thumbs-up again. “I have six. Only one more, even if I’m several levels higher than you. My old party didn’t intentionally hunt Ichors—we focused on rushing the hardest content. But after my friends changed races… I still didn’t go around exploring,” he added with a sheepish grin.

“Huh, you guys have much of that stuff,” said Nitana. “I only have one.”

“Me too,” chirped Megan.

“We found ours from the Frost Imps,” Nitana explained. “We started by attacking a small Frost Imp camp near the second Totem waypoint, past the clump of trees to the right. Megan wanted to kill every single one of the imps because she just broke up with her—”

“Shush, you!” Megan covered Nitana’s mouth. “They were shooting arrows at us, so we had to—”

Nitana peeled her best friend’s hand off her face. “So why did you go for their other camps? If you let the Frost Imps be, their chieftain wouldn’t have shown up. Man, that guy was a pain in the butt to kill.”

“I agree with your assessment of that foe,” said Paritor. “Fortunate for me, I have my summons to act as bait for his long-ranged attacks. Otherwise, it would’ve kited me to the ends of the earth.”

“The Frost Imp’s leader drops an Ichor?” I took mental note of where their camp was. The waypoint Nitana mentioned should be ahead; I recalled seeing it when we hunted the Rotten Cedarlyon mini-boss.

Paritor nodded once. “In fact, it was my first Ichor obtained.”

“Megan and I died a few times to that cackling git.” Nitana sighed, shaking her head. “I was ready to forget and forgive—like, we kinda destroyed its home and killed its family—but Megan really wanted to finish it, so whatever. There went my weekend afternoon… and many potions.”

“But we got an Ichor,” said Megan, opening her inventory. “Wait a sec. Why do I have two?”

“Where did you get another one?” said Nitana. “Are you doing secret missions without me?”

“Maybe I got two from the Frost—Oh, I remember now. I was farming the mini-boss of the Hoarfrost Yew area for a Relic wand.”

“The ice elemental wand you ended up not using?” I recalled her story of why she had many Hoarfrost Yew materials. I needed those to make [Frigid Yew Salve], and she gave them to me for free. No one was kicking Megan out of the team while I was here—my divine protection was upon her.

Megan winced. “Ouch, don’t remind me of that. Yeah, ice spells aren’t good when surrounded by ice monsters. But I did get my second Ichor there. While waiting for the mini-boss to respawn, I’d burn down the Hoarfrost Yews out of boredom—”

“Psycho arsonist,” Nitana cut in.

“—and I somehow got this Ichor,” Megan continued. “Like, probably one of the demon trees dropped it? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“No, that’s not it,” said Melonomi.

We all turned to her. She had been keeping uncharacteristically quiet while we discussed Ichors. I thought it was because she didn’t have any. As a mix of a merchant and a healer, she wouldn’t be killing secret bosses on her own. She had mentioned that her friends used to play with her, but, like Kezo’s situation, she’d have to convince them to go out of their way to hunt Ichors.

“Do you know how to get the Ichor from Hoarfrost Yews, Melonomi?” I prodded when she didn’t continue with an explanation. Keeping a secret, eh? She’d spill it soon enough with Herald Stone, the Interrogative Interrogator interrogating her.

“Uh… I’m not…”

“None of us know how to do it,” I said. That’d bait her. We had known each other briefly, but I knew which of her buttons to push.

“The-there are specific Hoarfrost Yews to kill,” she began to say. I looked her in the eyes, nodding intently. She continued, “The ones that don’t attack. Even if you hit them first, they won’t fight back. Eliminate all of them.”

“Oh, those!” Megan exclaimed. “I always wondered why they weren’t doing anything. I burned them because they were crying.”

“You burned crying trees?” said Nitana. “Psycho-arsonist, really.”

“The crying thing upped their scariness factor!” Megan vehemently explained.

“And when you kill the pacifist demon trees,” I said, trying to get us back on track, “they drop Ichor?”

Melonomi shook her head. “First, the mini-boss changes forms. It gets stronger, sort of going to take revenge for the Hoarfrost Yews. If you kill it in that form, it drops an Ichor.”

“Thanks for the info, Melonomi,” I said, clearly saying her name. “We couldn’t have known it without you.” That’d make her feel like she contributed to the whole group, even if it was mostly me who wanted to know about it.

Adding a couple more layers of compliments would make her open up more. But it might also make my bait cake too obvious.

“By the way, Melonomi,” I casually said, hoping my subliminal name-trick wasn’t becoming annoying, “how many Ichors do you have?”

“Fi-five.” She glanced at Paritor. She cleared her throat and confidently said, “I have five.”

She has more. She bumped down it down to a number she thought was more reasonable. But why would she lie? I shouldn’t ask her further questions; I had to divert before circling back to her.

I narrated to my party how I got my first Ichor. Frost Feral Macaques guarded the Peely Fruits I was supposed to gather for the NPC Yusa, who wanted to make a fruit wine reconciliation gift to Pathfinder Gibil. I talked about their love story before springing the next hook. Are hooks sprung?

“What are Ichors for?” I asked, turning to Kezo, keeping Melonomi in my peripheral vision. “Do you know? I haven’t seen any put up in auction.”

“That’s because you can’t sell them,” said Kezo. “The NPCs at the auction house won’t accept it. They’ll call for guards, and you’ll be imprisoned for a day.”

“Really? Wow, that’s harsh,” I said. “But that makes sense, lore-wise.”

The [Kruos Ichor Sliver] was the crystallized blood of the Mountain Guardian, killer of thousands of Mardukryons and warden of their icy prison. Why would the villagers want anything to do with Ichors? Amusing that the game would have something consistent with the story like this while it also had some nonsense like Chief Nogras selling Shards with Blighted skills for the world quest shop. Hey, the government has to make money somehow.

“Players can trade it among ourselves,” said Kezo. “It’s not a quest item bound to you. In the game's early days, there was a craze of buying and selling Ichors and the secrets to finding them. Whales snapped them up, and prices got out of hand. It all fizzled out when no one discovered what Ichor was actually for.”

“No one knows?” I said. “How about you, Paritor? Why were you collecting them?”

“I wasn’t intentionally doing so,” he replied, confirming my suspicion. “The truth of the matter is I was giving myself a challenge hunting ‘hidden bosses,’ if that’s the right term for them, to prove the mettle of my build. Merely coincidental that they dropped Ichors. I consider them my hunting trophies, but I’m unaware of their true purpose.”

“Its flavor text says it’s the Mountain Guardian’s blood,” said Kezo, “so it must be connected to leaving the mountain. We got many hints from NPCs about Ichors, but no definite answer. If there was, SpartanDonkey would be buying it… or selling, if he had already discovered it.”

“If SpartanDonkey knew, he’d hoard all Ichors he could find,” I said, “before selling information of their use. It’s sad that we have a hint right before us, but we don’t know what to do next.”

My eyes flicked to Melonomi. She stared at her hooves.

Either her friends hunted Ichors, and she just came along, or she hunted them herself. The latter scenario would explain why she had a lot of Ichors. And why would she collect them unless she knew something important about them?

I decided to gamble a hook—I suck at these analogies—and said, “Maybe Ichors can be turned into… potions? What do you think, Melonomi?”

She squinted at the ground for a second. Then she looked up and nodded. “You’re right. They can be used for potions.”