It wasn’t exactly difficult to clean up after an area boss attack, it was still almost as long as the actual fight had been. People were automatically distributed rewards in the post-fighting session, but almost everyone was there for some reason or other, looking either for specific drops, credits to spend, or sometimes, rarer, more high-value targets like rune scrolls.

Deyana, unfortunately, was there for all three.

Taking out the King and the remaining goblins on the field had gotten her to level 16, largely due to the difficulty and experience scaling that area bosses could manage by instantiating areas like this, but she was also left in the unfortunate of needing to trade a significant portion of the credit reward she’d gotten to other players trying to sell the goblin soul fragments to save time.

It wasn’t everything she’d had so far, but it was four hundred of her four-hundred-fifty credit gain, with three hundred of Don’s volunteered for the cause, to get the remainder that she needed from the other players.

It was useful that impromptu trading like this tended to be more in favor of buying, at least. Trying to do the same thing within a city’s trading area would have been paying more– enough so that even though she was already getting Don’s soul fragment yield for free, in addition to her own.

Even then, she was trading a lot more on people’s good will than she would have preferred. Even with fifty people there, the fact that there had been enough monsters slaughtered in the area and enough people willing to part with the fragments for below the asking price was still fairly lucky.

Even more lucky that almost nobody wanted goblin souls for summoning and the primary buyers were NPCs, for only slightly more than the four credits per fragment that they could offer.

Laziness won out over the impulse to get more money from each of the fragments, in her favor.

She wasn’t going to complain about that, at least.

Even so, it still meant that she and Don were some of the last to leave the area, the final six people leaving essentially together and collapsing the barrier behind them when they did.

The NPC guard gave them a lazy half-salute-half-wave before wandering off, a ledger in his hand.

That specific area would likely pop up again either tomorrow or the day after, once the area boss’s spawn timer had reset. Then again, it wouldn’t be her problem.

Which was good, because goblins were the worst.

“Thanks again for putting those credits in,” she said, walking next to Don. “You really didn’t need to do that.”

“The way I see it, it was either that or search for some other early-stage crafter willing to build me specialty arrows for material price.”

“I guess, but it’s not like you needed to do it. You could have just paid full price and gotten through the levels fairly efficiently.”

“It’s true,” he replied, “But it’s not like you’re going to run out on me, right?”

That made her blush. She most assuredly was not going to be running out on anyone. Often even when it was in her best interest to do so. “I could, though.”

“Eh, I don’t really think so.”

He was right, but…

She was glad that the conversation was interrupted by arriving at the teleport point, bringing them to the bustling city center.

Even outside the areas where connections could get spotty, there were a lot of people running around.

Luckily, all she needed was the courier’s office– nearby, yes, but not directly inside of the uncomfortable push.

Once inside, she started on the assembly of the goblin soul. It wasn’t the most difficult of processes, but given the possibility of damaging them, particularly when higher-tier souls were involved, the game still had its players manage it manually.

Goblins, though, were not one of the higher-tier monsters, and as such putting together the fragments into shards into a complete soul felt a little bit more like doing a children’s puzzle.

When that was done, she approached the counter.

“What’s the job?”

“Delivery of this,” she motioned to the goblin soul-orb on the counter, “to Dunlap Builder’s Guild, with reward return, as soon as possible.”

“Seventy credits.”

It was most of the eighty she had left, and even then mostly because Henry hadn’t taken the second part of the payment she’d owned him. But a Runecrafter’s guild credit was worth more than that, was worth more than the entire goblin soul probably was, especially when they added on the selection of runes.

Of course, the Builder’s Guild was willing to pay that much not because the soul itself was that valuable per se, but because they needed it all to be in one place and paying someone to go out and buy the individual fragments likely would have been a more expensive proposition, because when you paid a person you paid for their time.

And while they weren’t rare, it also wasn’t exactly the favored proposition of most people to hold onto essentially worthless bits of goblin soul.

“So what is the reward on this?” Don asked, when she handed over the credits and got back the slip with the time marked on it. Apparently, an hour for delivery. Fine by her, but…

“Wait, you were willing to throw in that much without knowing? I thought I’d told you about the reward on this.”

“Nah, I just assumed that it would be worth it. Especially if it means that someone who came up with a void sword on an early time out is going to owe me something.”

She had to keep herself from smiling. “That’s not fair. I only came up with the void sword because it’s obvious if you know just enough to get into trouble and nothing else.”

“Yeah, but knowing enough to get into trouble is the issue here. Lots of people don’t know anywhere near that much when they’re starting out.” Don responded, an eyebrow raised.

“Okay, fine, fine. The reward is a Runecrafter’s credit and a few runes. Nothing particularly special.”

“More than I’d expect for a gob soul.”

“DMQ is friendly to newbies now.” Deyana said, deadpan.

He laughed at that, “Favorable, maybe, but friendly? I’d rather deal with an IRL government building. At least you’re less likely to be exploded.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Less likely to come back from being exploded, too.”

“Matter of degrees. I figure if it happens, it happens, where here I’d almost be disappointed if they didn’t need to rebuild part of the place monthly.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay mister ‘I want the in-game terrorists to be active.’ You can have your wish. Oh, and it’s going to be an hour before they get back, so I’ve got some time to kill.”

He waffled for a moment, then smiled at her. “Well, I’ve only got an hour and a half before I was going to get out of the game, so… ice cream date?”

She blinked for a moment, looking at his face for the smirk that would come with it being asked jokingly.

It wasn’t there.

“Uh. I… Wouldn’t want to… I mean, it’s the game world.”

“It isn’t like there’s a huge roleplaying community, and you’re not really acting the part anyway. It’s just an hour, maybe a few extra minutes, and I don’t have anything I’d really prefer to do in that time frame.”

“Couldn’t you be, like, leveling for your whole deal?”

“I said prefer, you know. If you say no, then I can go back to killing monsters.”

She was fairly recently single, and…

“Sure, as long as you don’t expect much out of it,” she replied, her reflex betraying her before her better judgement caught up. She wasn’t too terribly against it, at least. He was cute, if not usually the kind of guy she would date. A little bit more cocky, and a lot quicker to do things at the very least.

That was fine, though.

“Cool, I know a place.” He was walking before she quite caught up with that, and she had to take a few big steps to catch up to him.

“Hmm? You’ve taken some girls out before, then?”

He raised an eyebrow at her, then shrugged. “A few, yeah. Not many as pretty as you, but…”

“Ah, getting your undeserved flattery in early, then. I can respect that.”

He rolled his eyes at her, and she just smiled. It was as good an answer as any.

 

---

 

The ice cream shop was as strange a place as anything in the VR world. Many of the standard amenities that one could expect in the real world were there, but a number of them were much less technological, using magic in their place.

The freezers, for example, weren’t running off of electricity; instead, the NPC working behind the counter placed her hand on the lines running around the outside, momentarily paling before she shook it off and went back to dealing with customers. It was only every 15 minutes, and a more insulated construction would last much longer given the difference in heat loss as well as the lack of reason to have a barrier impermeable to air-conducted heat over top.

That part wasn’t even really necessary in this case, and probably a waste of mana, in Deyana’s eyes, but she wasn’t going to mention the over-design of random city objects to the NPCs.

She was, apparently, going to focus on them so much that she missed what Don had said, needing to be pulled out of it by repeated mentions of her name.

It didn’t help that it was a new one, either. They were apparently already at the table, having gotten ice cream.

It was a good thing that her automatic responses were good enough to get something she liked in the mint chip, at least. Don had… something whiteish-yellowish with at least three different colors of stuff in it. She wouldn’t be asking, and not just because it would give away that she hadn’t really been paying attention to him.

“Sorry! Sorry. Just looking at the rune effects.”

“Wow, you really are a crafter-type at heart, huh?”

“Who knows? I was a fighter well before and much more effectively than I was ever a crafter. It’s new to me, actually.”

“Hard to see that from the way you get wrapped up in it. I would’ve expected someone on your level to be making the change to a crafter on your main, not a secondary.”

Deyana’s face quickly went red, and she had to look down at the table between them to avoid suddenly looking around wildly.

“Um. Probably. I should have done that. But… I would have had a tough time of it.”

“In a guild that can take red-oranges? Really? They’d love a crafter with two specializations.” Don looked entirely too skeptical of her, so she tried to explain.

“Three. But it’s more… if people already know you as a fighter, could you really make the switch over? And I’m not even sure I want to make the full switch, changing priorities that hard… I’d rather just make stuff for myself and a few friends or when I need the credits for some new rune.”

His face had changed a few times in what she’d been saying, but he seemed to have a realization, and his eyes flicked up and down before coming back to rest on her face. “Like I said, any guild would support that switch, but… That’s an interesting way to go. Any big reasons why?”

“The game hasn’t really been nearly as fun for me since… a while ago. I was still playing, but it was… just because that was what I did. Didn’t really want to play so much as I was just playing, y’know?”

“I think I get it. If you’re playing past when I am, is there any chance you’ll make an effort to wait up for me?”

She had to consider that for a minute. There wasn’t much chance that she’d be getting that much ahead of him anyways, especially given that unlike him, she’d be spending a rather significant time investment on crafting, and she explained as much before adding, “Not that I wouldn’t be willing to at all, I guess? I just think you’d end up waiting for me more often.”

“That’s fine by me! I’ll just spend any waiting time trying to get noticed by some of the guilds instead of crafting. Schmoozing with people indirectly connected to power to not draw up suspicions and all that.”

She had to half-smile at that. It was the most effective way into most of the bigger guilds. “Good luck to you. With that, I mean. But don’t mention me to ‘em, I won’t be joining.”

He nodded in response, looking solemn or at least flat, she couldn’t quite tell.

The remainder of the time before his logout was fun, mostly talking about some experiences in the game and some real life entertainment. She wasn’t too big on anything but the game, but she did at least attempt to hold her own.

She wasn’t too successful at it, but she made the attempt.

Still, she did stutter for a moment when LJay sent her a message in the middle of talking and she pulled up her menus to respond, splitting her attention.

‘Good chance I can’t meet you. Geria got away from her followers, though, so if you can tell me where to send her?’

‘How am I supposed to know it’s not a trap?’

‘Why would I trap you now instead of just not giving you the rune’

‘Because you’re trying to get it to a rival guild, not me.’

‘A rival guild that would immediately get poached or broken by the Alliance, or one that I wouldn’t have needed an intermediary for?’

That was an annoyingly good point.

‘Tell me a timeframe for the Dead Valleys area.’

‘Checking.’

He nearly instantly followed that up with another message. ‘Half-hour unless it’s Sefond. Then a full hour.’

‘I’ll say in 15 then. gl’

‘Stay under the radar.’

“–I seem to remember something about you needing to go, though?” she finished, capping off her statement to Don. “Wouldn’t want to keep you over professor stories.”

“Nah, I’d be willing to stay and listen to you tell them,” he said, then sighed. “But you’re right. Try not to get more than ten levels ahead of me?”

“I’ll make sure that you’ll be able to catch up in a few hours,” she promised, instead. “You’ve certainly paid for way more than you’ve gotten so far.”

“I think I’ll get my money’s worth,” he said, then logged out, right there in the middle of the shop. His body changed posture slightly, walking out. It would be somewhere neutral when he logged back in.

She waited out the rest of the time, then sent the message to LJay. ‘Courier’s in Torail.’

‘Got it. Passing it on.’