A Meadow, Southern Province, The Empire of Stone

"I take it you know how to set up a tent?" I ask rhetorically after choosing our campsite for the night.

"Of course," Horizon looks mildly offended I'd ask, "Are we not setting up our own?"

"I'm going to take a quick look around for any obvious signs of danger and set up a simple countermeasure against potential intruders," I explain, dumping some supplies out, "So if you get started, I'll be back in a few minutes with some firewood as well."

"Alright," she doesn't seem all that enthusiastic but doesn't argue the point. It's not like I'm trying to get out of work.

Exhaling, my breath is pretty clearly visible in the cold. No danger of rain tonight, I don't think, but I wouldn't find a bit of frost unusual come morning. Oddly liberated, I stroll off to a roughly 15ft perimeter and start walking in a complete circle. There's little in the way of interesting features out here, and the small overhang we settled on is perhaps a little more exposed than I'm comfortable with, but as far as I know, there shouldn't be any threats to our Vessel's safety during this first night spent outside of the city.

We're still in an area that's maintained by the regular if spaced-out patrols of the Empire's military for now, so until we get further north we don't need to be too paranoid. Just the basic precautions will be enough when we're maybe three or four hours walk away from the next town. Were it not for the curfew and the gates shutting for the night, I might have pushed onwards after a break so we'd have a roof over our heads tonight.

Even so, this is a habit I don't want to lose. So, as I walk I am also leaving a vial of artificial 'scent' which will deter most monsters from approaching so long as they're not desperate. It's a commonplace product in the belt pouch of any traveller produced by alchemists using local ingredients to simulate the presence of a strong predator. It won't affect certain kinds of monsters or those lacking the related instincts, nor will it bother The Ignorant, but it's better than nothing.

Ideally, it is preferable to travel with a caravan that has a dedicated Trapper on the roster to prevent disturbances from reaching the campsite or at least giving advance warning. But as Trappers are the least common Class, and highly valued by the nations' militaries, that's not always possible unless the caravan master is well-connected and wealthy. And even then they're likely to be left with the dregs.

So, what is a traveller to do but make do with what they can?

For starters, they can hire an escort through a Guild, most commonly the Pioneers' Alliance. You can't always guarantee their trustworthiness, but it's considered preferable to foregoing sleep to maintain a watchful eye throughout the night. Monsters become more active during this time, and members of Guilds carry a certain expectation of professionalism, so it's statistically more likely that a monster will attack you than your hired muscle betraying you. Sure, in the wilderness it can be hard to determine a murderer's work at play when they turn up at their destination without their client, but their employers aren't stupid, and credibility matters for both the bodyguard and the people they work for. Foul play will be eventually discovered and dealt with, one way or another, made more certain by specialist spellcasters called Tuybencge - roughly translated from Silvadha as Hunter of Falsehoods, which is sister to Tuyalaneh - Hunter of Facts, or Truthseeker, which is where I got the idea for the guild's name from.

Unless you have the misfortune of hiring a Syndicate, the criminal underworld equivalent of an Official Guild, in which case, you're literally handing your ass to them on a golden platter and deserve everything you have coming to you. After all, why on earth would you, an ordinary schmuck with valuables on you, ask the murderers/thieves for hire to escort you safely? More likely they'd rob you on the spot and leave your corpse in an alley for the vermin.

The so-called 'Ferrymen' are under no circumstances to be trusted, and the more sensitive your situation, the less you should. I speak from personal experience on the matter. If the risk of aiding you outweighs the reward of delivering you into the loving embrace of a Bounty Hunter or whoever else, they'll already have decided upon it before the conversation is over.

Maybe you'll get lucky and run into a Syndicate who are all about that 'noble demon' aesthetic, but I wouldn't count on finding many of those, because that kind of organisation tends to have enough sway that they can get away with it, or else made an Official Guild with similar principles. Guilds aren't clean either, despite the distinction between them.

I would know, from personal experience.

---

 

Winfrey

Winfrey's Room, Matthews Manor, Florida

Cocoa. Check.

Blanket. Check.

Video call to Uncle Eric prep. Complete.

Snuggled into my worn old armchair, I feel more tired than I actually am. After a day spent in virtual reality cleaning a house that's not seen the touch of a living human in decades, I feel like if I go to sleep now I'll be seeing dirt-caked floors in my dreams. I didn't even do a very good job of it, and had to watch in embarrassment as Morn stepped in after me to catch that missed spot or scrub a little more thoroughly than I did.

I have to say, it doesn't feel fantastic. I'm not holding it against her, though. It's clear that the problem is with my own lack of experience, though I don't expect there'll be any occasion where this exact set of circumstances will come up again in the future. So, there's that at least. I have to say, though, for a former - extremely well-paid - administrative assistant, she's bizarrely efficient at cleaning a house as big as ours, like instead of doing paperwork all day she was just a Head Maid to that Hadrian prick.

She wasn't, probably, from what Morn talked about during her interview. Still strange, though. Not that I'm in any position to complain when she's doing most of the work while I just...exist in the general vicinity trying to be productive. I almost feel like our positions in the guild should be swapped around, honestly. Even with the file which Alex sent over providing a sense of structure, I don't really see how I'd do a better job than Morn would in my position for most of it. I know that it's fine to rely on the others, but I still feel like I'm not doing enough, well enough.

Like, I'm not pulling my weight. Because I'm not. I don't think so anyway.

Over the next two weeks...that has to change. Hell if I know how, just that something needs to. Never mind this time traveller bullshit, Alex put his trust in me to lead the group in his stead, and I'd hate to betray it. Not like he's a great one either, objectively speaking, but he's trying, and from a certain point of view, coasting along pretty well since the only person that really feels the need to disrupt the group's flow is Sherry, and even she doesn't argue when he gives an order.

As much as she bitches and moans about him - to his face - she still listens when the chips are down. Which has to be some kind of miracle or witchcraft, seriously. Girl will argue with a coffee shop drone for a literal half-hour against it's pre-recorded responses about getting the wrong coffee order - they're functionally a brick wall that dispenses caffeine.

Only stopped because the cops showed up to kick her out.

My tablet starts buzzing, right as I finish that thought, Uncle Eric finally calling me three minutes late. Probably got distracted by something and panicked, knowing him. Off the clock he's so relaxed it's jarring how much of an absent-minded goof he is in comparison. Stress will do that to you I guess.

"Hey, kid, how's it going in sunny Florida?" he grins after I pick up the call.

"How's the weather in Fremont?" I fire back, glancing at the rain speckled window.

"Shit," he chuckles, "What else is new?"

"Nothing different over here either," I take a sip of lukewarm cocoa, "Weather-wise. Different story in Astral Reckoning though. Although the weather there is actually worse somehow, but that's neither here nor there."

"You wanted to talk about it," Uncle Eric nods along, "So, slay any maou-samas or heavenly demons?"

"Not exactly?" I err, "Not far off though as it happens."

His face brightens, "Oh, this sounds like a fun story. Go on, set the scene and let me live vicariously through you while I write my quarterly~"

I snort, "Please, like you do anything other than try to take over the economy every time you play an open-world game. What do you care about life and death battles against nigh-omnipotent demons for fame and loot when you could be setting up scams and making ~money~?"

"Hey, you've been through my bookshelf, you know what I like," he acts offended, "Besides, I want to hear about my niece the hero, is that so bad?"

"Nice recovery," I smirk, then proceed to catch him up on our adventures.

Uncle Eric listens with rapt attention, not saying a word throughout in a remarkable show of restraint from him. By the time I finish, he has a thoughtful look on his face, after the subject of our current circumstances and me being left in charge of the Guild come up.

"I've got to say, I'm impressed with how much you've done in such a short time," he speaks after a minute, serious businessman mode switched on, "But, how to say it...? It's a rather hollow thing in the end. You've gained for yourselves a very good leaping off point for future profit, but you don't have the capital, the workforce or the customer base to make good on it. Which is all well and good if your friend is right about his prediction for a turnaround in Astral Reckoning's fortunes, but it's not enough. You need those things to already be in place to take advantage of - as it stands the only thing you can do is haemorrhage funds until there's nothing left, with no good way of making it back to solidify your foundations. It's like there's only a cup's worth of gas left in the tank and you need two cups to make it to the next station to refuel and make the rest of the trip to complete delivery."

"That's something I'm worried about too," I agree, smiling anxiously. There's a reasonably hard limit in place for how much we are able to milk the likewise limited playerbase in Meteo Town. Without a steady flow of new players to consume our goods and services, our only customers will outgrow the need for it and fly the coop very soon. Many already have, either quitting the game or leaving Meteo in search of even the tiniest breadcrumbs of content they can take on at their Level and progression. This is also assuming they even care, and aren't just getting fake-drunk in a bar.

But to meet Alex's demands we need more money than we can get from them, so I'm left pretty stumped as to where exactly we're going to conjure all these extra people from.

"To start with, you need manpower, and badly," Uncle Eric assesses, "Thankfully, you've opened a pretty consistent revenue source by opening up that large-scale dungeon of yours. Even if the players won't care for long, you can still vendor the things you can't store away to NPC merchants, can't you? But to make that work you need enough hands keeping busy to supply it and not so many you can't afford the expense of keeping them on your payroll. Fortunately, you've also built some prestige along the way, so as long as you play that up, you can attract more people - say, offer your services out to people as 'boosters' through the dungeons for a cut of the rewards? If they're wallowing in their own shit too scared to get it done themselves and you need warm bodies, why not drag them along yourselves?"

"We thought of that already," I finish my drink surreptitiously between sentences, "The two groups we partnered with have expressed interest in having some of us tag along to Wolf Lord's Remains, but it's not going to be consistent. There's maybe one other we can talk to but I don't think we'd have enough people between us, and either way, we'd be splitting the profits. I don't think we can get another 25 people to join in the time we have that would be ok just beating their heads against the same dungeon for two weeks. Maybe another ten people as recruits tops."

"Win, it's fine, even advised to practice some modesty and restraint in business," Uncle Eric sighs, "But you need to temper it with a little bit of optimism if you're to have any hope of improving. You're already taking a big risk on this, and you're going to have to commit to it if you want to have results that will impress me by the time limit I set out. I don't mind giving you advise, but it's not going to amount to anything if you're going to refuse to see and seize an opportunity. Every start-up has problems before opening for business."

Which is all well and good for the multi-millionaire to say, I think bitterly to myself.

"I know that we don't need to do everything on the list, but it's still a fact that we lack the up-front investment to get the manpower needed. Mercenary prices in Meteo right now are sitting at around 2 Stone Gold a day, and we don't have a whole lot that'd motivate them to work cheaply for us specifically," I grumble, rejecting the optimism, "It'd be fine if our new Headquarters was in good repair and had some facilities on site we could rent out, but the 1-Star Training Hall in the basement was ripped apart and the core components taken when the place was stripped bare. I don't know what the repair costs are like, but it's going to take most of what we have at a very conservative minimum. And that's still not really going to do much. The local players just aren't interested in self-improvement, and their spirits have been pretty thoroughly broken by our example, the lack of solo content and DDA being jackasses to stave off their own boredom."

"DDA?" he tilts his head.

"A bunch of PK groups that ganged up together and occupied one of the dungeons. They're extorting a toll from anyone who wants to go down there and attempt it, and that's if you make it past the other groups along the way without being ganked," I explain briefly, "To be honest, they're the biggest problem overall, but there's little to nothing anyone can do about it."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because they're the largest organisation in the area and they operate outside the walls, where the guards can't readily step in," I huff, getting irritated, "And so long as it's outside of said walls, the guards don't care about you coming back in carrying 12 murder victims' worth of crappy gear, and even if you die, you resurrect in five minutes and you can run their dungeon to get the level lost back. So they keep doing it because it's easier for them than actually going into the woods or a dungeon."

Suddenly, he starts laughing, "Well then. I think the solution is rather obvious, no?"

"Errr...no?" I squint, wondering what scheme he's cooking up.

"You remove the problem in a way that gives you what you want as well, duh," Uncle Eric cocks his head, a pitying gaze in his eyes.

"Did you not hear me when I said that they're the largest organisation and there's nothing we can do about it?" I scowl.

"I heard you, I just find your lack of creativity disappointing," he smirks condescendingly, and I feel a sudden highly rational urge to punch his smug face, "You have allies, you have an enemy that's fairly notorious and a bevvy of facilities under your control. Plus, since the Guard are, according to you, not as powerful as they used to be, you can persecute them within the walls as well without fear of repercussion if you play your cards right. Moreover, do you know what the NPCs can do for you? You have options, Win, you just need to open your mind to the possibilities and look for them."

"Problem with the first idea is that Alex was clear he didn't want another feud," I point out, feeling stubborn, "And he made a statement to that effect about Rambling Rose. If we suddenly declare war, at best he'll look like a hypocrite, and at worst, he gets pissed off that we went over his head to do something he didn't want."

"So, talk to him," Uncle Eric says, mildly frustrated, "I've given you what help I can, it's up to you to talk it through with your friends now. Have some faith in yourself, and in them, Win. You're all in this together, after all."