“I am off tomorrow, but you’re six hours ahead of me. Mind making it lunch time?” Daisy asked.
“I’ve still got a few hours before I need to sleep. Would you mind if I put another group together and pushed a few more floors on this tower?” George asked.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“Me neither,” Sam agreed.
“Go for it. We didn’t start this one, so I don’t think we can claim it as ours… I think if we are going to do that, we need to do it as a guild, start early and put the full day into it… After we get that island up and running,” Voice said.
The Warden base seemed busier as we made our way over to the organiser to report our progress. We were directed into one of the back offices where a svelte brunette with her hair pulled into a tight bun, in a heavy-looking Warden’s armour, sat behind the desk.
“Hello, I’m Warden Tanse. Floor completion?” she asked in a no-nonsense tone.
“Tower 46, floors five through ten,” Voice responded. Her eyes snapped up to us.
“Six floors? Excellent work.” Her eyes scanned us. “Full guild group as well.” She pulled a form from out of a drawer. “Floor five was reported to be a boss floor. Is that correct?”
“It was. Nothing special.”
“Needs some maintenance, though, to make it back into a park,” I contributed.
“Communal area?” she asked, and then continued after I nodded, “not really our concern, we’ll send teams through to clear it occasionally, but leave the restoration to whoever takes over the tower. Floor six?” She pulled out a new form from her drawer.
“Twenty bedsit apartments, a communal store, lounge and public entertainment library. All cleared. Power partially restored. The stores need a rewiring job. Lighting seems functional, but the other services were reporting errors from the central plant.”
“That’s perfect. Thank you,” Tanse said as she quickly filled in the form. “Floor seven?...”
“...And there was nothing else on floor ten but the elevator and the stairwell?”
“Full open plan office.”
“Well, that concludes the report. Excellent work. Just need a copy of your mapping data, if you could just place your hand here.” She indicated an Orb on her desk, and as the closest to it, I placed my hand on the thing. It lit up. “Thank you. Full reward for the six floors, I see two of you are on their majesties FastTrack, bonuses will apply to your full party. I’ll also authorise an additional bonus for the efficiency of your reporting. Bringing your reward bonus to 10,000 rep points and fifteen gold, each.” She passed over several slips of paper, which we split between ourselves, a chitty for the rewards. “Hand these in at the Requisition office. Thank you for your service.”
“Ten K…” George muttered as we walked out of the building and headed for the Requisition office. “That's more than the thousand a floor we were getting before.”
“Some of it is guild bonus.” Voice said. “Jacob’s has been investing some of the rep they’ve been grinding in the guild, but I think a big chunk of it is coming from these two and their Fast Track thing… I think I might invest in that now…”
“I knew it gave some rep bonus, but I wasn’t expecting it to benefit the full party. It’s nice that it does.” I said.
The Requisition office turned out to be the largest of the buildings here. It was split into different areas. The largest room had a series of vendors around the edge offering different services. Armour vendor, weapons vendor, potions, etc. On the other side, there was a medical service. Between them, a secured room with a barred window. We joined the queue at the window.
“Getting busier,” George commented. “Last time I was here, there was no queue.”
After handing in our chits and getting the rewards, we headed towards the vendors.
“Thanks for today,” I said. “I’m going to head to bed. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, if you want to group up again.”
“I should as well,” Sam said. “Today has been fun.”
“I need to get to bed as well. I’ve got a meeting in the morning, but this has been too much fun,” Voice said. “I’ll be on around lunch time.”
“It’s been a lot more fun. I’m glad I joined you,” Daisy said.
“Thanks for the party!” George said. “You guys were so much more fun than most of the teams I’ve been with. Hope to do more with you.” Turning to Daisy, he asked, “Up for some more runs? Should be easy enough to round up some more people.”
“Sure.”
“El, don’t wait around for me tomorrow, grab Peachy and Jacobs and go get that teleporter core,” Voice said as he accessed his HUD to log out. “Oooh, upgrades! Don’t forget to check your gains before you log out. I keep forgetting the pop-ups don’t always show if it would distract you.”
I opened up mine on the progress page, and I had indeed made some gains from clearing those floors.
‘You sensed incoming threats early enough to respond promptly, Perception point gained’
‘You realised the folly of trying to cast the wrong spells through a restricted tool, Wisdom point gained’
‘Your work with your melee weapons, strengthened your arms, Strength point gained’
‘You’ve gained practice in battle, keeping your attention on where it needed to be, despite distractions, Focus point gained’
‘You kept your wits in the fight, and dodged blows which surely would have killed you, Dexterity point gained’
‘You kept fighting even when others would have taken more of a break than the occasional sit-down. Endurance point gained.’
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
‘You logically solved the problems before you, Intelligence point gained.’
‘You identified an enemy’s weakness and took advantage for your party, Wisdom point gained’
‘You saw the patterns in the machines, and found a way to bring them back online, Intelligence point gained’
‘You feel a bit more confident in your control of a spear, Spear skill gained’
‘Your blows lack the strength of your peers, but your steps allow you to position yourself to make use of what you have, Dexterity point gained’
‘Your mastery of your magic has increased the strength of the Aether within. Aether point gained.’
‘Your practice with the scythe has shown real progress, Battle scythe skill gained.’
‘You try to avoid getting hit, but it still happened. What does not kill you, makes you tougher, Constitution point gained.
‘With the defeat of a level 10 boss, you feel you have gained a better understanding of the system, Attunement point gained.’
‘Your Battlestaff is becoming almost second nature to you, Battle Staff point gained’
“Sweet stat gains!” I laughed. “Goodnight.” I wished them and hit the log out button.
I didn’t take much rocking to get to sleep that night.
The next morning, I must have slept poorly. I felt like the day before I had done a full body workout and today was supposed to be my rest day. Everything felt stiff and sore. I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and then headed for my virtual office.
It was a Monday, and before I could lose myself in the game, I just needed to double-check nothing was outstanding for my old job, or anything was needed for my new job’s onboarding.
HR had been on the ball, just after seven this morning, they had sent me the confirmations that everything was now complete and my final pay would be in my account by the end of the day. There was also an email from my new employer that all checks had been completed satisfactorily, welcoming me onboard and inviting me to attend a meeting for all staff tomorrow morning. Supposedly a meet and greet, and an introduction to the virtual school.
I opened my eyes in the Requisition Office. The hustle and bustle was still going on, and I was glad I had the foresight to log out, out of the way. I checked the guild tab, surprised to find I was the first one on this morning. I checked the Warden’s stores. Gear-wise, it was largely sidegrades. Different options, but nothing suited my playstyle better than what I already had.
First things first. I needed to plan what I was going to achieve that day. First on the list was the Teleporter Core. Voice’s suggestion to drag Jacobs and Peachy along sounded like a solid plan. I sent Jacobs a message and got a reply from Peachy telling me they would be on in about an hour.
Second, I’d completed all of the mage quests; swarms were surprisingly awesome for grinding out those kill quests. So, I needed to go hand them all in. In fact, I should probably go take care of that while the others were getting up and on. I got myself onto the main road back to the lift and pulled up my spell list. It was translucent enough that I could walk and read without worrying I would walk into someone.
Let’s see, I had Shocking Grasp and Burning Touch; I should be able to make an Arctic version of that. I had all three bolts. I had enough Arctic spells now; I was confident I could isolate the Arctic component, which means I could get the other schools' equivalents to Ice Blade and Fire weapon. I could probably do something with Fireball and Ball Lightning in the other schools…
I was tempted to open up my spell book and start trying to build those new spells… but a road as busy as this one was probably not the best place to start experimenting with unknown magics…
As I moved closer to the city centre, I saw increasing numbers of players and NPCs. The prior standing out by their increasingly tutorial ship appearances. It reminded me that most of the players in the Warden’s camp had been decked out in Warden armour, though enough were also in Explorator that I hadn’t stood out.
I enjoyed the ride up the cliff. Particularly, the gasps from some of the newer players as they got that amazing view over Landing. Honestly, I don’t think this sight will ever get old.
The ride over, I headed straight for the second floor of the Mage school, pausing at the top of the stairs to consider who to start with. I sighed, turned right and headed for Shiva’s room, 211.
“Enter,” the commanding voice called out in response to my knock. The white-haired woman was sitting behind her desk again, and briefly looked up as I closed the door behind me.
“Ravenscroft,” she said nonchalantly. “Have you completed the task I set you?”
“I have.”
She put her pen down and got up from the desk. “Show me.” She waved her hand and an ice simulacrum formed.
I walked down from the door and equipped my Arctic Staff and then silently cast
“Efficient and clean. I hadn’t expected you to make such progress in but a day. Good work.” Shiva pulled something from her desk, signed it and then offered me the slip, for a spell from the Lost Archives. Come and see me once you have chosen and can cast that new spell.”
“I have managed to pick up some other spells in the Arctic school.”
“System granted?” She showed interest.
“One of them.”
“Which ones?” She demanded.
“Ice Bolt,” I started, a flash of disappointment showed on her face, “and Hail Storm.”
“Show me Ice Bolt first.” She waved her hand and a floating ice target appeared.
It shattered when my bolt hit it.
“Adequate, she acknowledged, passing me another slip.
“No quest to cast it 100 times?” I asked in surprise.
“No. Your bolt held sufficient force to shatter the target. I doubt you will make much more progress in a hundred uses of it. Now, Hail Storm is a rank five spell. I’m assuming this will push your mana capacity to its limits?”
“It took about 20% of my mana a second…”
“Yes, at your limits. OK, I doubt you have yet learnt how to manipulate the size of the spell, let’s move to the Spell Forge.” She put her hand on my shoulder and snapped her fingers.
There was a flash of light and we stood on the field near the Spell Forge.
“Professor, I need to use the forge for an assessment.” She called out to the Mage manning the test range.
“As you will, Lady Shiva. Do you need the entirety of the range?”
“No, the others can continue their practice.”
There was no queue and half the stalls were free, so we moved down to one of the open ones. There were only a handful of players watching while their mana regenerated, but I think some might have recognised me or, at the very least, thought this interesting enough that they repositioned themselves to get a better view.
I thought about the spell; its pattern came to mind, and I focused on the far side of the range, putting as much distance between us and where I intended to cast it as I thought I could get away with. I took a breath and cast the spell.
Dark clouds formed over the area I had targeted. I heard Shiva take a quiet gasp. The first of the hailstones fell and hit one of the dummies there. Then another, and another. Soon, the area was thick with the balls of ice. Visibility had decreased to near nothing. I let the spell last two seconds and then killed it. With the power supporting it gone, the spell collapsed, and the dark clouds faded as if they had never been there. The dummies in the area were knocked over. Some showed signs of being broken in parts.
The people in the spell forge had gone completely silent.
“My apologies, Professor, but I am going to have to leave this mess to you to tidy up.”
“It is my honour, Lady Shiva. Rare is the opportunity to see one of the stronger spells cast so well.”
“Indeed,” she acknowledged as she snapped her fingers and took us back to her room.