Gaming Sanctuary Exterior, Paris

I arrive at the internet cafe to find my surly sidekick for the day waiting for me outside. The air still smells vaguely of cigarette smoke, though she isn't currently using one. To say that Sherry is pleased to see me would be a massive lie, even surlier now than last night - though in all likelihood the downward trend in her mood has more to do with her friend leaving the country a few hours ago rather than my brief showing at the party last night.

I hold out a paper bag toward her, which she eyes suspiciously.

"What's that?"

"Leftover pastries from the cafe I live above. Peace offering," I open the bag and show her the insides.

Pawing through and selecting an almond twist, she relaxes a fraction, "Thanks."

Waiting for her to finish eating, I unshoulder my backpack and retrieve my Pane, poking through until I bring up a self-drawn map of the various important features in the vicinity of Meteo City. Not my finest work, but enough to communicate the point.

"Come here a second," I wave the device at Sherry. She approaches reluctantly.

"This is roughly where you want to be going today," I point to a place west of Meteo City labelled 'Liggit Mine'.

"Liggit Mine? Alright. Where are the nodes exactly?"

"I'm not entirely clear on specific positions, but they're in the basin area, not the mineshaft. On that note, actually, stay out of the shaft entirely," I warn.

She looks up questioningly, "Why's that?"

"There's a Reminiscence further down, but the tunnel leading up to it is infested with Level 7 Elites who don't give a flying fuck about any stealth ability possessed by a Scout, so you don't stand a chance without a proper group," I explain, "I plan on going there once I'm done with this scheme and Winfrey's able to play again. Miner's Nightmare is the second-best dungeon in the area for low levels, and has decent drops in contrast to Farmer's Folly."

"Interesting," there's that greed again, "What's the best then?"

I raise a finger to my lips, "Secret. For now. We're not ready for it in any case, it's Level 9 Iron-ranked."

Sherry recoils a little, no doubt remembering that Farmer's Folly, while not terribly difficult, is two whole Tiers lower. Indeed, The Farmer's Secret is a real bastard for starter classes to complete, and I don't say that lightly. It's like a rite of passage Meteo City players have to complete before they hit Level 10 and complete The First Step. Anyone who does it afterwards is likely doomed to mediocrity by their cowardice or incompetence. If you can't handle an Iron-Dungeon, for all intents and purposes the basic Tier of difficulty for dungeons thanks to the introduction of difficulty modes, when it's level-appropriate, there's really just no hope for you if you don't clean up your act.

Sherry looks off to the side, then back, "Anything else I need to know?"

"When you come back to the city with the haul, knock thrice then twice on the back door of Stone Arsenal. Henna will let you in, since the front will more than likely be absolutely swamped with customers like the past couple days have been. I'll mostly be trying to keep them in line and out of the forge area so you can use it, just make sure to ask Henna's permission first or the crafting station will be locked out. Finally, I've already scrounged together 10 stacks of tin ore, so leave 11 spaces free in your bag for smelting," I instruct, "It's 10 Copper Ore to 5 Tin Ore per Ingot, so the math is up to you - just don't try to do it all in one go."

"Three knocks, two knocks, 11 reserved spaces, shitload of copper, don't go in the mineshaft monsters will eat me," Sherry summarises the information, holding up a finger for each point of import, "Got it."

"Then let's get to it. Daylight's burning," I head down the staircase, Sherry trailing after me.

---

 

Stone Arsenal, Meteo City

The situation out front is perhaps not as extreme as previous, thanks to the mass sale of gloves and yesterday's chausses, but it is nonetheless quite busy, with a few dozen interested patrons loitering around and making the street a pain to navigate for the unconcerned. They've also finally taken the hint about crowding the front door and in the forge area, so I will be able to save my voice the stress of yelling at them for not obeying simple instructions or holding to standards of the most basic of courtesies.

Today is the second to last day before the full sets go on sale, which means, of course, that I need to drum up as much hype over them as I possibly can. So, while I am selling boots once again today, I am selling 10 reserve spots at 50 Stone Silver each for the finale, that will grant them the use of the back door prior to the public opening for the people camped out front.

Unfortunately, I can't actually attempt to auction any of the things I'm selling - which is honestly annoying, but the system will only allow the auctioning of items at officially recognised Auction Houses - something that doesn't exist in The Empire of Stone outside of the Hall of Excellence in Grandour City, several regions north of Meteo City. If I tried, a bunch of City Guards would 'coincidentally' arrive with a warrant for my arrest. It's already happened to some other unfortunate entrepreneurs from a few complaints online I read.

Changing the subject.

Henna isn't doing great, now that she's got a dead body to her name on top of the prior stresses and trauma built up since the disappearance of her father, but for the time being she's at least holding steady and make a small amount of improvement as time ticks by. Overall, Henna comes off as pretty conflicted over it, but unless she wants to talk about it or else takes another nosedive in her mood, I'm not going to push her on any of it as long as that improvement continues.

Other than that, she's been exceptionally helpful in pulling this scheme off, and although she offered to give a larger share of the profits to me, I refused both on principle and because I feel she needs it if she's going to turn the aftermath into momentum for her own improvement and getting her to accept any form of assistance from me otherwise will be asking for trouble when she doesn't ask for it.

Depending on her decisions going forward, I may end up recruiting her properly as a Follower, now that matters have progressed to this point - so I would greatly prefer to stay in her good graces in case that comes up. Not something I would have expected when I was doing odd jobs for her the first time around, and only a tentative possibility this go through when I was drawing up my initial plans for development.

I think perhaps the best part of this scheme is that despite several players professing the intention to oppose my blatant profiteering over an artificially maintained shortage, there's literally nothing they can do about it while Henna is on my side and preventing players from using the crafting stations i.e the forge with her authority as the owner of the workshop/store. Their only other option is to go to the Pioneer's Alliance, but even if Geronil has a vested interest in seeing the both of us sink, he's too much of an elitist to lower the entry requirements to let random novices into his facilities or get his pet artisans to compete directly by underselling us with the same product. He'd much rather continue to milk his monopoly on higher-grade equipment sales to other NPCs.

The Newborn simply aren't worthy of his attention or his business. Or so I speculate from what I know of his character.

Not that it's stopped people like the wiseguy in front of me trying to cause trouble.

The idiot in question is a Firm male, one who clearly put his height and musculature to the maximum allowable in character creation, dressed in the finest of starter combat garbage gear and waving a sword in my face.

"-ou listening to me? Huh?" I just barely recognise that he's been mouthing off at me this entire internal monologue.

"No," I inform him bluntly, "In any case, I believe it's time you left. I give you about another ten seconds or so before a City Guard arrives to handle the situation."

Honestly, I don't even need to draw my sword to deal with this bozo.

His face twitches uncontrollably, obviously affected by my complete apathy to his pathetic attempt at intimidation, "You lookin' down on me, skinny? Huh? Don't you know what's good for ya? Just give us the goods and we walk away nice an' 'appy."

I hold up one hand, then close my fingers one by one.

"The hell're you do-" His confused muttering is immediately and abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a uniformed man - A City Guard Lieutenant, right on cue.

"Stop right there, lowlife! You have broken Imperial Law, and your freedoms are forfeit until your sentence is served. Come quietly or your sentence may be extended," The Guard speaks with unshakable confidence.

"You can fuck off man, do you know who I am?! I'm a member of the Bloodhungry Ghosts!" The oversized Level 1 dismissively swings his sword at the Guard.

Welp.

"<Rule of Law>!" The Guard shouts, his officer's emblem glowing brightly in response. The idiot Newborn stops in his tracks, completely paralyzed save for the screaming of his vocal chords as he experiences the ultimate in magical taser technology. Attacking a Guard trying to arrest you at a lower level than the Guard will inevitably lead to this end - Rule of Law is a system-tier enforcement spell used to keep weaker players in line and cannot be blocked, mitigated, evaded or otherwise prevented in any way. The only exception is that when the NPC in question is acting as part of a Quest and normal duties, the spell is disabled - it is for the exclusive use of NPCs acting under the direction of the system.

A few seconds later, the idiot fades out of existence as he's teleported to Meteo City's jail cells, where he will stay until his sentence is over, unable to access his inventory, status, spells or train. He will also have a -50% experience & skill proficiency gain penalty for one level and any goods identifiable as stolen confiscated - with a further extension to the incarceration if any are.

I've been dealing with dozens of these edgy moron collectives over the past few days, and even with this being the fifth person to rouse the attention of a City Guard, they just don't seem capable of learning their lesson. This is the second person from the same unofficial Guild to try threatening me in the shop - do they just not care? As Henna's Apprentice - nominally at this point anyway - I'm treated no differently from an NPC employee in the shop by the system while working like this, after all.

Whatever the case, the Infamous in the area are small fry and will remain such for the foreseeable future. If anything, despite being a nuisance they'll be feeding me some ok experience points if they try fighting it out with me outside the city walls - maybe an item or two as well.

If this was Taladi's Waystation or The Town of Forgiveness, conversely, I might actually feel a little anxious. The Infamous there actually know how to fight other players and have access to gear that doesn't suck.

Clearing my throat, I address the spectators to the incident, "A reminder that causing a ruckus is only going to backfire seems appropriate since it appears that people are incapable of pattern recognition. Stone Arsenal's employees are not intimidated by ignorant fools drunk on a misplaced sense of superiority. The City Guard likewise do not give a damn about who you represent should you ignore this reminder. By all means, try your luck if you feel like spending the next week in a cell."

After a mock bow, I return to my spot, laughing all the while.

---

 

Jupiter

Cells, Meteo City Jail

With a 'pop' and a truncated scream, I am suddenly notified by the addition of a new prisoner to one of the nearby cells. From what I gather of some of the recent schmucks, they tried starting shit with Silver Nosster and well, the results are rather self-explanatory, no?

Shifting uncomfortably in my shackles, I wonder how long I have until I'm brought to a quiet little interrogation room for another beating by corrupt thugs in the skin of City Guards, ostensibly to find out who I'm working for. Which, as it happens, is nobody save for myself, yet they seem convinced I'm some sort of spy sent from another city in the Empire of Stone to suss out the aforementioned corruption.

And I mean, they're not entirely wrong, I'll give them that much. But it doesn't make my sincere explanations that while I am in fact looking into the suspicious activity in the City - such as the disappearances of various non-Firm NPCs - I am not from another city nor am I a spy. If anything I'm acting as a private detective.

It does rather leave the problem of what exactly I'm going to do about my seemingly indefinite imprisonment, though. Even if I were confident of my escape from my bindings to this cell wall, I'd still have to get past a fortified building full of City Guards who have a particular interest and a legal obligation to prevent any attempts of that nature from succeeding. Along with all the ones in the city proper.

My best bet as it stands is that someone manages to break me out - but the only one who'd be even vaguely interested in such a heist is currently scamming the populace with his monopoly on a low-level gear set and 'inviting' more guests to accompany me in here. I'll admit, I appreciate the thoughtful gesture of sending such high-quality clowns to entertain me during my imprisonment, but I'd appreciate a speedy rescue all the more.

Point of fact, does he even know I'm in here?

Welp. I'm fucked.