“The days inside of NEMO were scary, the nights were scarier. The world was dark, far darker than people who grew up in cities filled with lights could understand. The monsters could see you and you couldn’t see them. Until we figured out a way to battle the darkness we had to cling to the cities at night or die in terror and pain.”

  “The Darkness Before the Dawn – The Early Days of NEMO” by Davis Masterson

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 1, 22:10

  The waning light brought with it a torrent of players rushing back to Miller’s Crossing. Hundreds of people fleeing the night gathered in the market area of the city. Enterprising individuals and groups set up an impromptu market fair. Most stood by themselves or in small groups, hawking their wares. A few larger guilds rented booths from the city to display the various goods or to purchase from an endless stream of newbies desperate for a few coppers.

  Inns and taverns surrounded the market, drawing a large share of the traffic. Players eagerly spent hard-earned coppers on ale, spirits and wines. Vendors wandered the market stalls with skewers of grilled meat and vegetables, enticing everyone nearby with the delectable aromas. NPC stalls dotted the marketplace with sundry goods and food often overlooked by the combat focused players. Cloaks, blankets, rations and all varieties of basic goods could be purchased. Casual players found themselves swept up in the rhythm of the world, sinking into their new reality.

  Torgon and his group arrived at the northern gate of Miller’s Crossing shortly after nightfall. They traveled to the market and met with their guildmates to exchange a few stories, and the precious loot they had obtained. The members of Risk of Injury soon spread out for some fun and relaxation after agreeing to meet back at the guild base in an hour to start building the guild hall.

  Hyperia and Torgon wandered the market stalls and listened to the cries of players selling goods. One set of stalls in particular caught their attention. It was made up of four stalls combined to form one large store, and it was staffed by over a dozen people. They were buying goods from players and seemed to have endless amounts of coin. Hyperia nudged Torgon and spoke, “It’s the Silver Heart Trading Company. They’re a concierge guild that procures goods for wealthy clients. They funnel a lot of real money into games and use it secure whatever they’re paid to provide.”

  “That’s perfect. They should be interested in our lair chits. If our contracts with the company allowed us to sell things for real money, we’d probably be affiliated with them. Let’s go see if we can do some business.” They moved to the stall and queued up in the line. A resplendent figure wearing a tabard that displayed a balanced merchant’s scale with one side piled high with gold coins and the other holding a silver heart approached the pair.

  “Greetings, I’m hoping you two are here to trade away lair chits. If you are, we’re interested in buying them and have a lot to offer including gear, coins, recipes and skillbooks. My name is Markus and I’m the lead representative for the Silver Heart Trading Company here in Miller’s Crossing” He led them away from the line and into the middle of the market stalls. “What are you looking for in general and are you willing to trade the lair chits?”

  “Right now, we’re looking for skills and recipes only and we have five lair chits that we can trade” Torgon replied.

  “Five? That’s excellent news. Up front, with the skills, there won’t be any tanking or healing skills. The demand is too high for those, and we’ve used any we’ve acquired. Combat and Magic skills of any kind are expensive. Crafting skills are more available and recipes, well, there are a lot of them that most people aren’t interested in. We have multiples of the recipes for the four primary tool types, Logging Axe, Pickaxe, Garden Hoe and Herb Shears. Since people discovered that you could purchase them from the faction shop for two silvers once you’re at fifty reputation, the demand for those recipes died off. We also have the tool crafting skills to go along with them” Markus shared.

  “Do you have the blueprint for fishing poles and any recipes or blueprints for armor or ranged weapons?” Hyperia asked.

  “It’s a no for the fishing poles and armor. Our working theory is that armor blueprints and crafting skills don’t start dropping until a higher level or a higher difficulty of quest. We’ve heard of fishing pole blueprints dropping but we haven’t acquired any. As for ranged weapons, we don’t have the popular ones. We have three copies of a blueprint for a slingshot that does 1 damage base plus str and skills and one for a Heavy Crossbow that’s too slow to use in the field, but it at least does 2 to 20 base plus agility plus skills damage,” Markus replied after thinking the question over.

  Torgon and Hyperia conferred a minute then Torgon presented their offer. “We would like four copies of the tool crafting skill and five copies of each of the four primary tool type recipes, we can take all the weapon crafting recipes and if you have a weapon crafting skill we would be interested in that too. Any alchemy or cooking recipes and skills are also needed.”

  Markus smiled broadly and answered, “We do have the weapon crafting skill plus two alchemy skill books and a cooking skillbook. The only potion recipes we have are three grape flavored basic mana potions. For cooking, I have several different basic foods like oatmeal, rabbit stew, wolf stew etc. I can trade all of that for the five chits and an agreement for the right of first refusal for any future chits you might find. I think we can do a lot of business together in the future”

  “Deal” Torgon grinned, and they all shook hands and exchanged the goods. “We’ll be out hunting more when the sun comes back up. It’s time for us to head back to our guild base and put some of these crafting recipes to use. Good luck with your sales.”

  Markus waved them away, “I look forward to seeing you again soon. Not many people are pursuing crafting yet, it’s too time-consuming and too expensive. If your guild keeps at it, the Silver Heart Trading Company might be in the market for specially produced goods.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Torgon turned over Markus’s words in his mind as they returned to the guild base. Crafting is almost always extremely expensive early in games and only occasionally profitable. There are always too many people pushing for skill raises and not enough demand for goods or goods that are too durable. Resources often carry more value than the finished products. The time element weighed in the favor of Risk of Injury, however. The tourist players will log out during the night to preserve their available time, but Risk will be online the entire time and if they aren’t sleeping, they might as well be crafting.

  Arriving at the base, Torgon added the Lair Cores to the guild stores and began construction on the Basic Guild Hall. Blocks of stone and pieces of wood began slowly moving into position all around the base. Construction would take approximately eight hours and finish at the start of the next day. He met with Chef Bridges and handed her the cooking skill and the various recipes the team had procured. She eagerly moved to begin preparing meals at the minimalist cooking station that the unranked guild base provided. Everyone could look forward to eating rabbit stew, wolf stew, oatmeal and other dishes soon. The basic rations were filling but drained the soul to exist on.

  The alchemy skill books were given to Dusty and an older teen girl named Stabitha. She was the guardian of one of the children in the program and wanted to be an alchemist. The healing potion and one of the mana potion recipes went to her. Chef Bridges and Stabitha directed children to plant and harvest food and herbs necessary for their concoctions. The children had acclimated to the world quickly. Running around forests and fields apparently appealed to the children far more than being stuck in hospital beds. The children attacked the game world with dedication that outstripped the older members. Maybe it was the chance to be active and pursue real goals, maybe it was having their bodies whole again. They were happy and productive, and it was pushing the guild along faster than they expected.

  Torgon and the rest of the leadership party began working on basic tools for guild use. Success was not guaranteed. Every tool required 600 seconds to construct. Each related level of skill and each blueprint level subtracts six seconds from the total. The basic crafting skill, the tool crafting skill and the tool blueprint all at level one reduced the craft time to 584 seconds. The success rate was a base chance of 50% plus 1% per skill level and 2% per blueprint level giving them a 54% chance to successfully craft the tools at the start.

  Torgon took the wood block in his hands then smoothed and shaped it into the form of a rough pole. He used plant fibers to make fishing lines. Helpfully, the wood block gave him hard wooden hooks to use with the line. The completed fishing pole reminded him of the cane poles he used when fishing in streams with his grandmother as a kid. Every attempt became easier as he familiarized himself with the game’s crafting process.

  “So, Torg, our guild has dozens of children, right?” Allestor asked.

  “Yeah, about 90 kids overall including the older teens that are related to the kids in the program. Why?” Torgon asked with a curious tone.

  “Well, if we have that many kids available, why are we the ones doing the sweatshop stuff? I mean couldn’t we use them for child labor while we relax and enjoy some nice snacks?” Allestor grumped.

  Torgon facepalmed. “Dude, we aren’t making shoes or electric cars and we’re getting valuable experience.”

  “You know, the kids are out mining for us. They’re like our own labor gang.” Ovarrix added unhelpfully.

  “You’re right! That makes me feel a lot better.” Allestor returned to making logging axes with a smile on his face and whistling a jaunty tune.

  Four hours of work allowed them to produce over a dozen tools of each of the five types including fishing poles. They earned 20 xp for each successful craft with 50% applying towards the blueprint, 40% towards the crafting tool skill and 10% towards the crafting master skill. After the 10th completion the blueprint skill leveled up to 2, slightly speeding up each craft and making them more likely to succeed.

  The system notification read, “Congratulations! Your Fishing Pole Blueprint has leveled to 2. Your chance of success increases by 2% and your crafting time decreases by 6 seconds. You will receive a bonus to your primary attribute of Agility every 10 blueprint levels and a bonus to your secondary attribute of Willpower every 20 blueprint levels.”

  Allestor kept working on logging axes while the rest of the group switched to making Heavy Crossbows and Slingshots. The slingshots used plant fibers and a bit of wolf hide in their creation. The crossbow was made of a wood block fashioned into a stock, firing limbs and more plant fibers made the string. Only Torgon had learned the weapon crafting skill and he worked on the crossbows. The next four hours saw the successful construction of a total of 35 slingshots and 13 Heavy Crossbows. Torgon received a notification with his 10th successful craft.

  “Congratulations! Your Heavy Crossbow Blueprint has increased to level 2. Your chance of success increases by 2% and your crafting time decreases by 6 seconds. You will receive a bonus to your primary attribute of Agility every 10 blueprint levels and a bonus to your secondary attribute of Willpower every 20 blueprint levels.”

  Crossbows were given to the primary scouting party and Torgon’s group kept one each with the rest going into the guild stockpile. The slingshots were distributed to parties giving each group an actual ranged weapon option, even if it did low damage.

  The guild just needed more blueprints. There were over a hundred members and less than a tenth had access to useful blueprints. Combat helped, but producing goods and trading them to the time poor groups would be the way to get ahead. Right now, they were unable to cover their internal needs but perhaps after another day or two of farming and grinding real progress could be made. So many problems and the biggest solution is finding new and interesting monsters to kill and loot. Finishing the first major guild quest would be a relief and give everyone a nice boost. Plant fibers were still being gathered to make all the fishing poles and that would be possible in the near future.

  The entire guild gathered to watch the final seconds tick by until the completion of the Guild Hall. A modestly sized stone keep with wooden interiors appeared in the center of the guild base. A series of gray rock walls encircled all the houses in the base. It rose to a height of a dozen feet and was topped with walkways and crenellations.

  Notifications filled the visions of everyone at the base.

  “Congratulations! Your Guild has completed a quest!

  Quest Completed: Basic Guild Quest: Rise or Fall. You have successfully constructed a Guild Hall at the Basic Level. All Guild members are awarded 100 free experience points and 10 guild contribution points. Access to control slots has been granted. The guild now has 2 control slots for properties in the main game world of New Era of Man Online.”

  “Attention: Now that your Guild Hall is constructed, raids will happen at your guild base every Sixday. Your first raid will occur in 5 days, 23 hours. It will consist of 5 waves of 200 attackers with a Boss monster in the final wave. Defend your Guild Hall or lose buildings and reputation with the surrounding land.”

  Torgon raised his hands up and adopted a concerned pose.

  Hyperia laughed and poked him in the ribs. “Looks like we’re going to need to work even harder. No napping in wolf pelt blankets for us.”

  The team found over a dozen of the youngest kids surrounding them looking way too excited for anyone’s good. “Does this mean we’ll get to fight too?”