Non-descript Alleyway, Meteo City
Entering the alleyway, I clap my hands together, "Here we are."
The party looks around, not really understanding what it is we're doing here.
"Uhhh...where exactly is 'here'?" Jade questions, fox ears twitching.
I raise a single finger to my lips in response, then approach a dusty wooden door, inspect it to make sure it's the right one and nod with satisfaction upon seeing the double-banded ring carved into the top of one of the door's planks. Clearing my throat, I rap my knuckles against the door in a swift, practised sequence, then summarily kick the bottom of it hard.
Seconds later, a grouchy, gargoyle-like old Kon opens the door, "Fuck do you want?"
"Out of the city. One way," I hand over thirty Stone Silvers to the man, who immediately shuts the door again.
Angelus frowns, "Did he just..?"
"Wait for it," I hold a hand up to him.
Sure enough, about a minute later the door opens wide, "Get in. Go on, be quick about it."
Motioning with my head to enter the filthy domicile, I lead the group inside and past the clutter into an open floor, dominated by arcane knickknackery and an amateurish ritual circle drawn in chalk on a thick slab of stone that's been exposed through the floorboards.
Shuffling ahead of us, the old man squints up at me, "Where you want sending? Eh?"
"Liggit Mine. Close as you can," I provide helpfully.
The Kon sucks wind through his teeth, "Narsty business, that. Can't put you too close, interference from below, y'understand. Really narsty."
Moving to the other side of the circle, he waves us over, "Come on then, get in the array. Don't have all day, can't be having people notice, y'see. Noticin's bad, 'cos then I gotta move again..."
"You sure this is a good idea?" Angelus mutters as he walks up beside me on the array.
"It's fine, just...don't hold your breath - that means empty your lungs and don't inhale, close your eyes tightly and tense your stomach muscles. Trust me, it's not...pleasant..if you do anything else," I warn them all.
Taking my own advice, the old coot starts a lengthy incantation, and I can feel myself being clawed at from all directions. As he finishes, the pulling intensifies significantly, and all sound and light vanishes for an instant, returning in a different form as I fall gracelessly out of the air about a foot off the ground, hitting grassy soil with a dull thump.
-10
"Fucking hate teleporting with shitty wizards. Arrgh," I groan, accompanied by the pained moans of my companions in the general vicinity of my landing point.
"Where the shitting Christ are we?" Windy blurts out.
After picking ourselves up Jade takes a quick spin around the area, "About five minutes out from the Mine, give or take. I recognise that rock formation over there."
Following that she glares at me, "How come you've been making us walk everywhere when you know a guy who can fucking teleport us?!"
"Three reasons: 1) I'm not made of money. 2) He can only do it once a day and doing it too frequently runs the risk of him getting noticed by the City Guard. 3) I fucking hate doing it, because he sucks at it," I list off, patting the soil off my armour, "We're lucky that we got as close as we did, and didn't get dumped out too far apart. If this weren't important and the path of least resistance, I wouldn't have bothered. As is, I don't want to fight every opportunistic waste-of-space in the city to get out here."
Angelus throws his hands up in defeat, "Amen to that, brother."
I decide to get on to business, "Jade, could you go take a look ahead at the mine for us?"
She gives a thumbs-up, "On it. Back in fifteen."
Drawing her bow and readying an arrow, the Panoplast girl darts off at high speed in the direction of our destination.
After making small-talk about tactics for the fights ahead, Jade returns back with a bemused grin, "Betcha can guess what I'm gonna say next?"
Windy groans, "It's occupied by douchebags, isn't it?"
"Oho-yeah it is," Jade starts giggling, "About twenty of the fuckers, at that. Mostly Fighters, only spotted like, one Hedge Mage. A few of the same idiots I slaughtered before, and they didn't learn their lesson about putting sentries around the top rim, from what I could tell. They've got about eight people down there mining, the rest are either fucking around or on guard duty."
I facepalm, "Fantastic. Just what we needed."
After getting the lowdown on their rough positions, I decide to start off with the diplomatic approach - we're not here for the mining nodes after all.
"Windy, you'll go down and talk to them with me. Jade, you stay up top on overwatch with Angelus. Try and conserve your MP and resources as much as possible. If they decide to play nice and let us pass to the mineshaft, I'll signal you down. If they decide to be dumbasses, I'll whistle, which is your cue to take down the Hedge Mages and ranged-types you can see. Me and Windy can handle the other chumps on our own, but if it looks like we're going to start struggling, make sure you're able to get to us with a healing spell, Angelus," I propose, "Any objections or modifications?"
"Why don't we just start off shooting?" Jade complains, "No point in talking when we already know that it's going to come down to a fight 'cos they're fucking idiots."
Angelus nods, folding his arms, "I have to agree. Diplomacy seems like a waste of time on PKers."
Windy also nods along, "What they said, boss."
Outvoted, I accept defeat, "Alright. Then, skip the diplomacy, me and Windy hold a chokepoint near the top, Angelus stays in range of us but out of line of sight and Jade does as before."
"Agreed."
"Yep."
"Works for me, boss."
The fight that followed was, rather predictably, heavily one-sided thanks to the supreme vantage point Jade secured for herself, with close to half of them being picked off before they even reached me and Windy, whereupon they either got kicked off the edge and down a long, painful drop to their demise, or stabbed through the throat, with some gutting here and there for good measure.
It also had the added benefit of being enough to bring me and Jade up to Level 6, all my bonus attributes immediately getting dumped into Strength. Angelus was tipped over the precipice into Level 5 after setting one of the more Infamous players on fire with <Minor Ignite>, but Windy is, unfortunately, unable to level up along with the rest of us, if only barely.
"Y'know, I just realised that we're going to have to deal with these assholes when we want to leave, aren't we?" Windy observes, wiping the blood off her sword and sheathing it.
"That would be less than ideal," Angelus notes, "You all did surprisingly well, but I don't fancy our chances after a few excursions into the dungeon drains our resources and Stamina."
The group looks to me for an answer to the looming predicament, "It's not that bad, really. Recall the bedrolls I handed over? The Elites guarding the tunnel to the Reminiscence will respawn by the time we complete our first run, but they can't approach the Reminiscence, nor will they try. We can camp out in the room without needing to worry about being attacked between runs and leave our Vessels there overnight. When we leave, we'll be close to full strength."
"Uhh, didn't you say we couldn't camp out at Farmer's Folly?" Jade asks, clearly misremembering what I said at the time.
"I said that the NPCs responsible for watching over the Reminiscence wouldn't appreciate us camping out on the farm," I remind her, starting the descent to the bottom of the pit, "We've got Miner's Nightmare all to ourselves, more or less. The goons from before will think we just came for the mining nodes and left."
Angelus hums for a moment, "What kind of rewards are we looking at getting from here, by the way? Farmer's Folly was barely worth the trip me and my friends made."
Jade snickers, "That's because you were doing it wrong, probably."
"What do you mean?" Angelus questions, slowing down a little.
Jade looks to me, and I shake my head, so she only shrugs in response, "Guild secret, I guess."
He turns to me, "You three are a Guild?"
"The beginnings of one, yes," I nod, "Gotten together the monetary requirement from my venture at Stone Arsenal, thanks to Henna's cooperation. Just need the fame and reputation now, and some initial funds for Guild operations. The Empire of Stone imposes a regular tax, for one thing, to say nothing of the Guild's upkeep and development costs just as it's own entity."
"The Empire of Stone taxes Guilds? How much by?" Windy raises a knuckle to her lips, thoughtful.
"Varies pretty heavily. Guild Size, approximate aggregate market value, Star Rating, the Empire's own financial situation, etcetera. If I had to place an estimate for right now, for a three-person Guild with no assets? About five Stone Gold every four months," I guess, honestly pulling the figure largely out of my own ass since I'm not really sure, and won't be until the Guild forms, "Don't take my word on that though, I don't know for certain."
"Hm. That's not too bad," Angelus opines.
"It isn't but we won't be that small forever, so it's going to get exponentially more expensive unless we get enough Guild Fame and Reputation within the empire to negotiate some concessions with the higher-ups of the government - but that will probably necessitate being made into an Official State Organisation under the empire, and that really doesn't appeal to me," I grumble, not entirely sure how sustainable my dream Guild is going to be without some financial wizardry to keep our income flowing. One of those situations where there's only so much an amateur like me can do, particularly when I'm one man who will doubtless have other things to take care of.
Eventually, the Guild will gain enough power to functionally annex The Empire of Stone, much like what happened in the original timeline to several of the nations in existence today. The growth of the playerbase is simply leaps and bounds faster than they can keep up with the more time goes by.
"Hey, boss. We're here," Windy nudges me out of my internal monologue.
"Just call me Silver," I shake my head, "I'm not your boss yet."
"Getting in practice," She smiles innocently, catching me a cold stare from Jade.
I look back at her, apologetic "...This has nothing to do with me. Angelus, could you start up a lamp?"
"Give me a minute," Angelus agrees, kneeling down to get the light going.
I pat Windy's shoulder, "Use the patrollers up ahead to familiarise yourself with their fighting style. Remember to aim for the spears."
"Gotcha," Windy gets her sword and shield out at the ready.
"As for you," I turn to Jade, "You don't really need to do anything yet, so just save your ammo, alright?"
She gives me a thumbs-up, "Can do will do."
"Ready," Angelus stands up with the lit lamp, it's radiance damped by the afternoon sun.
"Whenever you're ready then, Miss Tank," I gesture to the tunnel entrance.
Advancing through the wide tunnel, through a few meandering side-paths, the echoing taps of stone upon stone brings our cohort to a halt. Seeking confirmation from me, Windy glances over and receives a nod in response, raising her shield in front and running around the corner to meet the first of the patrolling Shards of Terror in battle, the rest of us hurrying along after.
The creature keeps it's speartip extended, aiming at Windy's face, it's stance simplistic and unrefined. The pair are in something of stand-off, Windy slowly approaching the Shard side-on with her shield ready to block, sword kept to the side. After perhaps a step too far, the Shard quickly jabs at her midsection, Windy's shield coming down hard on the tip at a slight angle, forcing the spear to miss, giving her an option to slide into it's territory, smashing her shortsword into the spear with a vertical sweep upwards, shoving it even further to her left, and spelling the doom of a more standard humanoid target of flesh and blood with the follow up she could perform.
Rather than take the chance though, she steps back into her original form and position, "Not going for the dude holding the weapon is going to take a bit of getting used to."
I draw my sword, "It's enough to give me an opening if you're not confident in handling it by yourself. Team effort, and all that."
The Shard, heedless of our casual commentary, thrusts once more in an easily countered manner, repeating the same results as the first attack, but instead of bashing the spear aside, she slides back and smashes her sword down on the spear once, then twice with the upswing, sliding to the side to bring her shield back into position.
"Can you just leave the ones out here to me? I want to get this down before we go in," Windy requests, not feeling any real sense of danger.
Putting away my sword I grunt approval, "As you wish. Don't get too caught up in the idea of a one-on-one duel, though, they come in groups, so we'll handle the last one together."
Cleaving through the brittle spear with one final combo, she breathes deep, "Aight. Do these things drop anything?"
"If you blast their shadow form with magic without damaging the spear, they can rarely drop their spears, and breaking the spear gives a chance to drop a dagger. The spear is rarer, but also cursed," I supply helpfully, "Also a chance just in general to drop chunks of Terrorstone, which is useful to a few crafting subclasses. Mainly for the schematics that drop here at B Satisfaction and above - that's 60% in other words."
"How about the miners?" Angelus follows-up as we move on.
"Lamp Oil and Terrorstone drop very seldom off them. They also don't give any experience at all, so no exploiting the respawns. The Shards give more experience than might be normal to compensate, so the next one we kill should bump Windy up to 6, right?" I pass the conversational baton over to her.
"Looks like it, only three points off," She comments, perking up at the approach of a second Shard, "I'm just going to go fix that, k?"
"Get'em girl," Jade cheers her on a little awkwardly.
