We got to the top of the hill, and I led Sam into the mausoleum.

  “Wendy? You awake?” I called out. The blue sparks emerged from the stone coffin and condensed into the blue ghost.

  “Aenara? Welcome back, dear. That armour suits you,” she said, walking around me. “We commissioned it for our granddaughter, only to find out her husband was the mage and she, a Paladin. It’s good to see it being used. Now, who is this handsome, but somewhat battered young man?”

  “This is Sam, he is looking for a sail and the tiller connector?” I questioned the last one, turning to look at him.

  “Linkage, I found a long-abandoned cutter in a cave on the next isle over. The ship’s log said that the sails and tiller linkage got damaged in a storm and were brought to this isle to be repaired. I was hoping to find them or replacements here if I can.”

  “You found the Curiosity? She is Commander Daniels’ vessel… had to be abandoned when the Explorators out this way were recalled… must be going on about five years ago. Can you sail, Lad?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Grew up on a similar vessel, got my captain’s license before I was 19.”

  “Very well. If you can return the ship to Landing, Daniels will definitely reward you for it. I repaired the sails myself; you can find them in the Sails Loft, the first warehouse if you follow the right-hand path down. Locker… 14.” She then looked down at the other casket. “Francis reforged the linkage. If you are lucky, it will be in the Forge on the 2nd tier.”

  “And if we’re not?” I asked.

  “He stored it, and you will need to restore power to the town to be able to access the vaults.”

  Sam and I looked at each other, coming to the exact same conclusion.

  “So how do we do that?” he asked. Yep, we definitely had come to the same conclusion.

  “Check out the forge first. If it’s not there, you will need to clear the rest of the town and claim it. That will give you authority to access the maintenance tunnels. You will need to descend through them to the geothermal power plant. I’ll explain how to do that once you have claimed the town. Neither of you are strong enough to solo even the docks, so the pair of you will need to learn how to fight together. The weaker beasts get pushed out of the Undertown by the stronger ones. So if you find the docks hard, expect the tunnels to be harder. I suggest you make your way down the town, fighting together to get used to relying on each other, otherwise the tunnels will be impossible for you.”

  We stepped back out in the sun, and I checked out Sam’s health, back up to fifty per cent.

  “Is there anywhere I can cook something? Being [Well Fed] should speed up my health recovery.” He asked. “I also think we should both have that buff for this…”

  “I built a cooking fire over there when I first got here.” I pointed up towards the house. “I also found a wood fire oven in the kitchen while I was exploring.”

  “Kitchen? That should give me bonuses to my cooking.”

  I gave him a quick tour of the downstairs of the manor house before realising what the time was.

  “Sam,” I said. “I need to log out for a meeting for a few minutes. I’ll grab lunch while I'm at it. Would this be a good time for you?”

  “I’ve already eaten… but that will be fine, I’ll cook us some food in game, hopefully get some of the bonuses cookie talked about. Probably take me half an hour just to get this oven hot enough.”

  “OK, cheers…. err, while I think about it… Upstairs in the bedroom, in the closet, there is an armour set I got as a quest reward, not sure if it will be a good match for your playstyle, but feel free to use anything you can find there that you think will help.”

  “Really? Thanks. I’ll get this oven lit and then go and check them out.”

  I opened the pod and got to my feet. I felt heavy. I gave myself a stretch as I considered getting dressed, but decided to be lazy. It was only going to be a short time out of the pod anyway. I slipped my dressing gown around my body and headed down to the kitchen. It would be voice chat, not like they are going to see anything. I made myself a beef and horseradish sandwich and connected to the group chat.

  “About time you got here!” said Jacobs when I connected in.

  “I got distracted. Another player arrived at my island. You all waiting long?”

  “No, we weren’t,” said Peachy before Jacobs could be Jacobs. “Our dungeon finished just a few minutes ago. How did you not go down with the ship?” she demanded of me.

  “I was up on the quarter deck when the ship went down,” I replied. “Cut the line holding me to the railing and managed to float back to the surface.”

  “I got that from the video… but how were you on the deck?” she insisted.

  “How many Tokens did you have?” Kenda asked

  “Sixteen in total. Fourteen of the wooden ones, a silver one and a gold one.”

  “You could get more than six?” Voice asked, with surprise. “I got my six and then went to see the captain.”

  “Six got you the quest to go to the Wayfarer for combat training.” Peachy let him know.

  “Sixteen, not the highest,” Kenda said. “I’ve seen streamers who had over twenty this morning… though not gold, maybe that is the difference…”

  “How did you have dinner with the officers?” Peachy asked

  “I helped the First Mate, saved one of his rods and pulled in a fish. That was after untangling his knotted line. Quite a fun minigame… It was turned into a tasty soup that we had at dinner. The whole meal gave me a well-fed bonus, possibly helped me survive… out of curiosity, did you all talk to the crew like they were real people?”

  “Why would we?” asked GoldenFist, “NPCs going to NPC…”

  “No…” Darksider said. “Though thinking about it, they do seem to react better when you do…”

  “I had some pleasant conversations with lots of the crew. Including both Captains…might have contributed to him being willing to have me on deck. I got a gold token for the navigator test on the Wayfarer. That had also impressed him.”

  “I’m not needed here at work tomorrow, so I'll see if being friendly with the NPCs gets me anywhere,” BenchPress confirmed.

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  “Have any of you found the hidden side objectives?”

  “You what?” Jacobs contributes intelligently.

  “Just after I got off the beach, I found a message in a bottle written by an Explorator. His last will was to be buried alongside his wife on the southern side of the island.”

  “Sounds like something you would do…” GoldenFist muttered.

  “I would too…” added Peachy. “That's what got you that armour, right?”

  “Yeah, but in the note it talked about how he had gone to that end of the island to get his deceased wife her favourite fish for their anniversary.”

  “Right in the feels,” Kenda said.

  “So I caught a fish, roasted it, and delivered it to her crypt.”

  “And that’s what got you the fancy armour?” Jacobs asked.

  “No, that’s what got me the Storm school of magic. Apparently, anyone with high enough levels of attunement will leave behind a Force Ghost thing called an Echo; her reward for fulfilling his last regret was to grant me knowledge… It also gave me a wisdom point for discovering a hidden sub-objective. If this reward is anything to go by, they are worth considerably more than the quest reward is.”

  I took the final bite of my sandwich and put the plate into the sink.

  “That title!” Darksider said in comprehension. “The people who spent the night grinding have only just started arriving in Landing. Just started unlocking magic. Because you are a soppy bugger, you beat the curve by several hours!”

  “Yeah, I figured I wouldn’t get to keep it or any opportunities to benefit from it… all my mage titles are social bonuses. That one I will lose the moment someone gets better at Storm magic…”

  “And we’re too old to be grinding shit!” three voices joined in with a line we had said before in games where we didn’t bother trying to keep up with the forerunners.

  “Speaking of…” Kenda said. “Anyone seen any of the streamers work out how to grind skills?”

  “Nope,” said BenchPress. “The people with the highest skills are all people who have had real-life experience of it before. Olympic fencer hit level four in rapier when he fought the Weapon Master. A Michelin-starred Chef got a three in cooking skill.”

  “I really think you just have to learn how to do it, and the better you are at it, the better the skill level will be…” said Darksider. “It seems to reward genuine attempts to get better and improve. What’s magic like?”

  “Volcan got to the Mage academy about an hour ago. It’s all about wiggling your fingers and saying magic words.” BenchPress said. “I’ve had his stream up on the other screen. It’s driving him nuts how much he is getting it wrong. Maybe one in five attempts work...”

  “My first attempts were like that. Then it clicks, and it is so much fun. So much potential. You have to shape your thoughts, get it right, and then you cast the spell. The words and finger wiggling are just ways to shape your thoughts the right way… I only have two spells right now, but the synergy with my Battlestaff…” I chef kissed.

  Can I…? I logged into my TN account to see if I could access my highlights, found I could and shared the video of the fight up the stairs.

  There were several minutes of silence as the channel watched the fight.

  “Damn, dude!” BenchPress exclaimed. “That’s nothing like Volcan’s spell casting. He is taking nearly ten seconds a pop, yours were like a second or two at most… and you weren’t even saying the magic words or wiggling your fingers!”

  “I was… just not out loud.”

  “Huh?” Bench press vocalised.

  “I was told that the point of the words and the finger movements is to shape the spell in your mind. If you can mentally shape the spell, then the words and wiggles become redundant. So I started trying to just picture the spell… and well, yeah, that is the result. Also, training only seems to go so far with the system. You need to then apply it in combat for it to recognise your gains.”

  “Picturing the spell? Does that mean you could multicast by picturing multiple yous wiggling your fingers?” Peachy asked. I was about to say no… but was that right? Could I?

  “Surely not??” Jacobs exclaimed. “That would be totally broken…”

  “I’ll give it a go when I’m back in…”

  “So gear sets are confirmed?” Darksider said.

  “Vax sent me links through chat to his gear set… Explorator Mage set. Seems strong compared to the stuff we have managed to scrape together.” Jacobs announced.

  “Yeah, each item had its own bonus, and there was another for the set. It looks like there are also several different variants of mage gear with different effects, which can be combined and still get the set bonus. There was also an Explorator Dragoon set, which seems more aimed at skirmishers. Which gives me reason to think there is a lot of choice. Some mention of Paladins...” I added.

  “The couple of streams I’ve seen of Landing would support that.” BenchPress contributed. “Volcan had a look in a blacksmith’s shop on his way to the Mage trainers. High prices. Looked really shiny. Lots of damage resistance.”

  “Didn’t the reveal also talk about player-made gear?” Voice asked. “I’d love a really in-depth crafting system!”

  “If it is anything like the cooking, it is going to be ridiculous,” Jacobs said. “I added salt to the soup I made; it improved the taste.”

  “I slipped and poured in half the shaker,” said a depressed GoldenFist. “It tasted horrid. I’m leaving cooking to others!”

  “So, how far are you all from getting to Landing? You need to grind rep?” I asked.

  “We are in a place called Seahurst,” Darksider explained. “We’ve come to realise it's some kind of undersea theme park being run by a crazed AI. When we first got there, though, we thought we were dealing with these strange Merpeople who insisted we needed to earn our keep.”

  “It’s got people doing cleaning work, maintenance, and farming resources out in the depths. There is a dungeon you can run where you need to kill off crazed machines. Basically, everything you do pays you credits, and you need to earn enough credits to clear your oxygen debt and the train fare to the mainland.” Jacobs added.

  “Oxygen debt?” I asked.

  “5000 credits for the air you breathe because we trespassed."

  “6000 if you didn’t make it to one of the gates in time,” added GoldenFist. “Drowning isn’t fun.”

  “Peachy and I are two dungeon runs from having paid off our debt,” Darksider confirmed.

  “Same for me if I do some quests between dungeon pops…” Jacobs said.

  “Three for me,” Kenda and Voice said over each other.

  “I, maybe, a bit longer.” BenchPress muttered, “I tried to sneak onto the tram and tried to run along the path with some of the others…”

  “There are fines for breaking the rules.” Darksider supplied. “What about you?”

  “Not sure. The ship to get us to Landing needs sails and some other parts, which, if we are lucky, will be in the forge… if not, which is what the other player and I are expecting, might need us to clear the whole town, and then dive deep into its underbelly to get the power back on.”

  “Fun!” Jacobs responded. I could hear the grin.

  “Hopefully,” I replied

  We chatted about some of our other observations before I excused myself and headed back to the game. They had about another thirty minutes before the cooldown on the dungeon expired. I decided, if at all possible, I needed to be seated at the exit from that place when Jacobs arrived.

  I found Sam decked out in his new armour, practising with the new weapons by the simple expedience of hearing gunshots and inexplicably going towards them. He had found a target dummy somewhere and had set it up behind the house. I’d been wrong in my earlier assumption. They weren’t gunpowder flintlock pistols despite the appearance. They were powered by mana, took about ten seconds to recharge while holstered in the brace, and, judging from how he was missing more often than not, about as accurate as you would expect from a smoothbore barrel.

  “How is the fit?” I asked as I approached.

  “Like it was tailored for me,” came the response. “My family was hugely into re-enactment when I was growing up. Apparently, how my grandparents met. This really feels like some of the outfits we used to wear…”

  “Is that how you got so good with the sword?”

  “And the pistols… not having to reload them is the best part… though it does reserve half my mana, whether I use them or not…” he sheathed the blade and then rapidly fired the five remaining pistols. “Can’t decide if I'm better off spreading my shots out or rapid-firing them in quick succession of bursts…”

  “Only one way to really find out…”

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “We go find something to shoot that isn’t made of straw and see what kills them best.” I got a grin in response.