The Willow Guard. That was the name of our brand new guild, paid for with the money we made on the dungeon run. It was nice and lore-friendly, without being too edgy or anything. It was also a pretty damn good descriptor of who we were and what we did.

With the incorporation of our guild, the tree and a nice chunk of the area around it was considered guild property. We could rest easy knowing our tree was safe from griefers and a certain guild of assholes.

I should really say it was an inn now, though. In the two weeks since we created the guild, we completed the base building. That means the main taproom, the kitchen, the two private dinner rooms, the public bathroom, and fourteen guest rooms are all ready to go.

Right now the Willow looked like three huge hockey pucks stacked on top of each other, the bottom two of which were made of stone, and the upper one was made of wood. It looked kinda boring right now, if I was honest. Hopefully we could get some more finished over the next two weeks. After that, the expansion was dropping and we needed to get moving.

During the dungeon, gold and a ring weren’t the only things I got out of it. The final boss awarded me a nice chunk of experience points, which bumped me over the line to level 28.

I put my two stat points into Dexterity, putting it at 21, then looked at my stat sheet again. Not much had changed in most places, but my new ring had doubled my Focus score. I had a feeling I’d be speccing into that stat more in the future too, considering that the poison from the ring’s ability had damage that scaled off it.

As for my ability point, I had one new skill unlock—Faerym Language Proficiency. I placed a point in it just to be safe, but I would leave it at level 1 until I actually had more need for it.

My smithing level was also coming along nicely. I’d reached level 5 in the trade skill, and it allowed me to finally break out of the realm of everyday items and into things that were much more interesting. I only had one point to purchase a new smithing guide, which after a whole lot of deliberation, I spent on Vambraces. It was about the only proper armour I could wear without my class getting angry at me. The tankier branches of my class might’ve been allowed to don some sweet samurai armour, but not me.

I couldn’t begin work on a pair of vambraces just yet, though. We still needed to build my proper workshop. It took us a day or so to figure out where to put it. In the end, we settled on the rear of the tree, where a particularly long, stout branch could hold up a stone structure. It was half a floor lower than the foundation of the main inn building, which made the tree look a little like a ship with a large central deck.

It was balanced at the front of the tree by two more huge branches that were almost like arms. Actually, if they were arms then the one at the back was like a tail. Anyway, that was the current project we were all working on. We were still at the stage where we were placing the foundation stone blocks and fusing them together with magic and moss.

At that very moment, Noah and I were in our small flying forms, holding up a huge chunk of stone while Paisley pinned and glued it into place. This particular chunk was set to be part of a supporting arch that would hold the structure up in the air.

“I will never get over the fact that our tiny little asses are on lifting and hauling duty,” Noah commented, shifting slightly to give his arms a bit of a rest.

“It’s because small is power,” I said, like it was some sort of deep and fundamental truth.

He grinned over at me and nodded, trying to match my false-severity while failing utterly. What can I say? My japanese features may as well have been a perfect poker face for all other races could read from them sometimes. It made jokes delivered with a deadpan particularly effective.

“How’s the welding coming?” I called up to Paisley. “This isn’t exactly comfortable!”

“Not long!” was her reply.

Hours later, after many more blocks being welded together, we finally finished the foundations for the smithy and workshop. It was going to be a rather cosy operation, unfortunately. The whole place was about twelve metres in diameter, meaning we’d have everything we needed to make things, but nothing big. No enchanted power-hammers here.

“God, this is taking so much longer than I thought it would,” Noah grumbled, kicking his shoes off.

“Oh, you thought building a small inn and supporting buildings on top of a walking necro-tree would be simpler, huh?” Paisley teased him, rolling over on the stone so she could look at him directly.

The stone foundation was nice and warm after the exertion of the day, so we were taking advantage of it to rest our tired muscles. Noah laughed in reply to Paisley’s teasing and groaned, then stretched languidly, shaking with the effort.

“All this strength training has me gaining stats even though I don’t really need it,” Noah pouted.

“There’s ways of adding portions of your strength total to other stats,” I said, rolling over to look at him. “There’s a hidden dungeon with a robe that does that.”

“And if you don’t like the robe, we could try and pay to have the enchantment moved to a different item,” Paisley continued.

Noah stared at her with a look of growing excitement. “You can do that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s expensive as hell and requires an item of greater quality than the one that has the enchantment, but you can do it. Only people who have a build based around a niche enchantment ever do it, because usually it’s easier to find something similar from another source.”

“This game is great,” Noah said.

I had to agree with him. In the century since video games had been invented, design practices had gone through many phases, including too many hit games that forgot the quality of life improvements from the past. The devs of Rellithesh hadn’t made the mistake of forgetting history, so we had a great number of nice little improvements. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.

“It’s pretty good, yeah,” Paisley agreed. “It has some less than great qua— ah! A raindrop just hit my forehead.”

“Let’s get inside, then,” I said, and hopped to my feet.

To get up to the main building we had to take a set of stairs that were still missing a roof and a handrail, and they were slick with the clouds that had suddenly collapsed out of the sky. I guess Noah and I could have tried to fly up, but I wasn’t confident in my wings. They were sluggish when they got wet.

The main room of our new inn was a warm and welcoming space, with wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling and a large fireplace dominating one wall. Ethan was busy at the hearth, starting a fire that would soon blaze high enough to heat the whole room. Mum had already decorated the walls with colourful tapestries depicting scenes I didn’t understand but they appeared to be gaming related, while several rows of tables and benches filled the centre of the room. The tables were made of a special type of wood, taker’s oak. When enchanted with a spark of mana, it would slowly regenerate back to a perfect state.

At one end of the room, a long bar stretched across the wall, waiting to be stocked with a variety of fine wines, ales, and spirits. Hopefully. Around the edges of the room a few small alcoves were set into the stone walls, providing private areas for our future patrons to drink and talk in private. We couldn’t let folks like Ross down, they needed places to brood properly, after all.

The three of us trudged over to the table closest to the fireplace and pulled up the rudimentary seats. They were the cheapest we could find until our workshop was up and running. Soon, someone would be making furniture to train their carpentry.

As the fire grew stronger and the room began to warm, Ethan finally stood up and dusted off his hands. "There we go," he said, grinning at us. His eyes fell on Noah. To anyone else, it’d look like his smile barely changed. I could see the interest there, though, and I noticed just how close he pulled his chair to the shorter boy.

"This place feels so cosy already," I said.

“It’ll be even more cosy once your mum is done decorating,” Ethan remarked, getting comfortable beside Noah. Not too close, mind you.

I tried not to laugh when Noah went bright pink and glanced up at Ethan, then down at the table, then over at me, then up at the ceiling before finally blurting, “Gods, I need a drink. Have we stocked this place with booze yet?”

"Let me go and see," Paisley said, standing up from her seat.

Oh dear. I’m pretty sure I did see some bog standard ale sitting down in the cellar. Tonight might get interesting.

QuietValerie

CHIRI AND I GOT AN APARTMENT. WE'RE SAFE FROM THE CRUEL ANGY WORLD!!! I'm so excited for our new house too! We're going to get to do so much fun things and when our girlfriends get here we'll be all cosy and shizz. As for writing, hopefully I'll have way more energy to put words down now that the biggest most anxious things in my life have been solved. Ahhh I am so relieved. Thank you so much everyone who has supported me over the years, especially my patrons! See you all in the next chapter!