by Dakota Krout
“Let’s see… neutral, dark, water.” Joe followed the path to Tatum’s altar just as he had before, but was surprised to find that it was closer to the center and more ornate than it had been previously. He touched it, expecting to find himself away on a mountaintop temple in the next instant, but was instead given a notification.
System message: Hello, Joe. You are the Chosen of Tatum, which is why you are being shown this message at all. The Deity Occultatum is under review for his actions to this point. He has spent too much divine energy in too short an amount of time. Not only that, but he directly resurrected King Henry of Ardania using you as a medium.
As such, certain passive bonuses will be unavailable to you. Specifically, you cannot be granted an extended mana pool, though your ability to resurrect others will remain. You are free to choose another deity to serve during this time, or you can work to pay off Occultatum’s debt of 13,000,000 divine energy.
“Good lord, Tatum!” Joe muttered to himself, shocked at the vast deficit. He continued reading through the message. “What did you do?”
As you know, each place of power connected to a deity generates divine energy for them. There are five different standard types of divine sources as buildings. In order: Altar, Shrine, Temple (small), Temple, and Temple (Grand). Followers will also generate divine energy at a lower rate, and less consistently as they may shift allegiance. The choice is yours to make!
“Well, obviously I’m not gonna turn my back on a guy who destroyed himself to get me to this point.” Joe sighed and rubbed his bald head. “Hold on, Tatum. I’ll figure out a way to help you out or else I’ll see you whenever the current temples pay out enough.”
Quest Gained: Paying a Great Debt. By choosing to remain faithful to your chosen deity, you have agreed to take on their debt. Find a way to pay off 13,000,000 divine energy. Followers generate up to 25 DE a day. Altars generate 50 DE a day. Shrines generate 100 DE a day. Temples generate 250, 500, and 1000 DE daily in order of rank. There may be other places of power that can be converted to your deity, but you will need to find that information yourself. Reward: Interaction with Tatum unlocked, Unknown. Failure: Tatum remains locked away.
“Sheesh, they are not making it easy on me.” Joe patted the altar, “Sorry, big guy. Even if I make this my mission for a good long time, I think you are stuck for a while. See ya when I see ya.”
Joe found that the fast-travel system was still in place and that the altar had a built-in connection. Excellent, he had been worried that he would need to go to the town square in order to teleport back to the Wanderer’s Guild. With a tiny clap of air being displaced, he vanished from Ardania and appeared in the unnamed town that had been taken over by the Noble Guild. Instantly, he felt slightly queasy. “What in the…?”
He looked at his stats and noticed that the teleport had taken a full eighth of his mana. Normally, that was such a small amount that he wouldn’t even notice it happening! Heck, by the time he noticed the loss even now, his mana was already regenerating. Just one more limiting factor he hadn’t even needed to observe until now.
“Are you Joe?” A man came running up to him wearing light clothing and winged sandals. “Looks like they were right! Just wait in the egg-shaped Pathfinder’s Hall, and ol’ Joe will pop out of nowhere. Neat trick! I have a message for you. There is a guild leadership meeting starting in about twenty minutes. I know it’s late, but I wasn’t the one who set it up.”
The messenger handed over a small missive, gave the guild salute of a fist banging on his chest, and ran off once more. Joe hadn’t even gotten a chance to respond! Some people’s kids. Joe turned over the letter and pondered it momentarily. “At least they gave me warning. Not like I have anything else to do right now. Sleep would be nice, though.”
After regrowing his leg—and attending to Reggie, the traitor mage—Joe had left for the capital right away in order to claim whatever reward the King wanted to give him. No need to put that off for a rainy day; rewards from a Royal were best taken right away… just in case you lost their favor in the future. Plus, gaining a new sense that leveled? Definitely worth making the trip. Joe looked around at the mid-sized temple he was in and sighed. At least there was five hundred divine energy guaranteed to go off to Tatum each day. At this rate, he would see the deity in… twenty-six thousand days, or a bit more than seventy-one years.
“Well, that just won’t work for me.” Joe started walking toward the newly built guild hall. It wasn’t hard to find; in fact, it was one of the only buildings currently standing. Everything else, even if it had survived the initial blast of the detonating… whatever that thing was… had been so unsafe that the guild had ripped it apart. There were very few survivors from the original town; most of them had been shuffled to the side to be taken care of by healers when the nuke-like object went off. There had been no sign of them respawning.
Through all the tragedy, the benefit to the guild was obvious. They now had a clean section of land to build and expand upon, but the downside was that they were going to need to import labor. That was rough. At least there was plenty of wood around! Whatever hadn’t burned right away had simply been knocked over, and this made it a simple matter to collect a few tons of trees to be cut into lumber. People in the guild with the carpenter class were ecstatic. Lumberjacks less so.
The doors in front of Joe opened, and he was ushered over to sit at a large, oval table. He wasn’t the last to arrive, but it was pretty close. Aten stepped into the room as soon as the final person was present and charged straight into conversation, “Hey, guys! Just popped over from the front lines and have a really short window to make it back before the Gate spell collapses. I’ll get straight to the agenda. First up, we’re having a lot of issues with leadership abusing their positions.”
“If you are suspected of doing this, there will be an investigation. If it is found that you are doing things you shouldn’t be, like putting someone into the position of attention or messing with them when they aren’t breaking our rules, your position is gone. No argument, no appeal. You might even get kicked from the guild.” Aten was speaking in a deep voice and trying to make eye contact with the whole table at once. “Now, look around. All the people here are guild leadership. Become friends. It matters.”
“Lastly, with Sir Bearington’s permission, I was officially able to claim the entire town and about one square mile of land with this building at the exact center. We need to make this place into a fortress, but first, we need to get people out of tents and into barracks at the minimum. There are a lot of support and logistics issues that need to be addressed, so work together to make it happen. If you have a skillset that could help us here, please use it to help us all out.” Aten was practically staring holes in Joe as he was speaking. “Alright, that’s all. I gotta go!”
Aten ran out of the building, and the other people just sort of… sat there with information overload. They started chatting, but Joe had been having a very long day and left after the eighth person introduced themselves. He was doing his best to be friendly, but Celestial Feces some of these people were boring. Joe was pretty sure that at least half the staff were there as stand-ins for some corporation that was funding this guild. The other half seemed… zealous about treating this purely as a game. Not really Joe’s scene when he was so tired.
After escaping the clutches of polite small-talk for the second time in one night, Joe finally made it back to the Pathfinder’s Hall. He was looking forward to a bed in one of the most defended places he could manage. The last time he had slept out in the open, an assassin had tried to lay a terrifying curse on him. It had failed, sure, but it had also made Joe far more wary.
Just as he was closing the door behind him, someone out in the darkness screamed, “I can’t log out!”
Silence followed this proclamation for only as long as it took other people to try logging out as well. Then the night erupted into screams and shouts, rage and fear.
“Nope.” Joe fi
rmly closed the door behind him. “Not dealing with that right now. Bed. Most of that’ll be sorted by morning anyway.”
Chapter Three
“Ahh. Nothing like a well-rested bonus to get you going in the morning!” Joe stepped out of the massive, egg-shaped building and looked around. There were a lot of sleepless faces around, eyes ringed with the purple and black bruises that showed up after a long and trying night. “Though maybe I’ll go ahead and keep that to myself…”
Joe had a very standard routine in the morning: wake up, cast Cleanse on himself, find coffee, and drink said coffee. His body and clothing were cleaner than if he had spent fifteen minutes in the shower and used a modern washing machine, and now he was ready for the second half of the morning ritual. Heh. No one ever said his jokes were good before coffee, but that one came close.
While walking over to the dining hall, Joe kept an eye on his fellow guild members. A good chunk of them seemed distraught, but an even larger number of them seemed hyper-manic and happy with this outcome. Joe wasn’t sure where the discrepancy lay; perhaps they were simply hardcore gamers that had been chasing after this fantasy from the start? Where was the coffee?
Joe got in the back of a long line and not-exactly patiently waited for his chance at the anthracite ambrosia. When he finally got around to the front, he realized why this process was taking so long today and cursed whoever had brought this tradition to Eternium. “Grande half-caf double whip toffee nut latte with an extra shot.”
People turned and stared at him as he screamed, but he didn’t care. “No~o~o! Why, you monster? In the first place, why would you get a shot of espresso and put that delicious liquid in half-caf mud? Move! You! Coffee! Black! Large!”
The server… no, the barista smiled at him and poured a long stream of coffee into a mug for him. “Can I get a name for this?”
“Joe.”
“Thanks, Elbow! That’ll be five copper.” The barista hadn’t changed his plastered-on facial expression the entire time. Joe had to do his best not to slap him, grab the mug, and run away screaming.
“Here’s the copper.” Joe slapped the coins on the table and snatched the mug away. “I can’t even tell you how upset I am about this situation.”
“New policy! Coffee is expensive to get out here, so we can’t just give it away for free. Have a great day, Elbow!” The barista was already back to helping other customers, and Joe could only walk stiffly away while sipping his drink. Anger sipping.
“Okay, I can do this, this is fine.” Joe laughed in a slightly too-high pitched tone. “Since everyone else is out on quests and stuff, I guess I’ll just go–”
“Excuse me, Joe?” A glasses-wearing man stepped toward him with a too-friendly expression on his face. The glasses had to be an affectation as everyone had perfect eyesight here. That, or they offered some bonus similar to Joe’s scholarly spectacles. “I don’t think we’ve had a chance to meet. I am the Vice-Guild leader. My name is Michael. My friends call me Mike, and I hope you will as well.”
“Oh, good morning, Mike.” Joe switched his coffee mug to his left hand and shook Mike’s outstretched appendage. “How can I help you today?”
“I have a few problems that I am told you might be willing to help with, especially in light of our most recent meeting and subsequent lack of being able to log off.” Mike saw the coffee in Joe’s hand and smiled widely. “Oh, you found our newest coffee shop! That was my idea. Did you find something that you liked?”
“Blasphemy.”
“I’m… sorry, I didn’t catch that?” Mike frowned at Joe’s whispered word but decided to just launch into his reason for being there, “I’m told that you can raise buildings very quickly, and I know that you are the one who made the Pathfinder’s Hall. Can I ask what you would need from us to get a few housing developments going? Since no one can log off, we are finding that having rooms would be very beneficial.”
“You want me to make… housing.” Joe tried not to crack his knuckles, a bad habit from his past life. “I can create war-starting-and-ending structures, and you want me to magic houses into existence.”
Joe’s flat tone wasn’t lost on Mike, who gestured at the massive, black marble building. “I do. I know that this isn’t as glorious as something like that, but this is something that may actually be more important in the short term. It’ll take a week for our people to put up a house, two for an apartment building or barracks, but you… you can do it in under a day, I’m told. We’ll supply whatever you need, within reason, and this is a great way to earn contribution points!”
“Contribution… points.” Joe wasn’t dumb; he was just surprised by the blatant attempt to get him to do a lot of work on what was essentially credit. An ‘I owe you’ didn’t help much when a wolf was tearing out your throat. He’d found that out firsthand.
“Right! We took the concept from the Wolfman war,” Mike jovially informed Joe. “When we go on raids or clear dungeons, there will be gear and items that everyone wants. Those will go into the guild’s storage, and people will be able to buy that sort of thing only with contribution points. I swear it’ll be a useful currency.”
“Will be.” Joe sighed and drank his now-cool coffee in one long pull. “Ahh. Alright. Listen, Mike, there is a reason that buildings take a long time to build. What you are doing is having a bunch of people share the energy cost and potentially cutting down on the resources needed to put a building together properly. If I were to do it, I could get a building up in ten minutes after the process got going. There is still a cost, both in mana and resources. It's a lot cheaper to just build the building.”
“How high of a cost are we talking?” Before Joe could answer, Mike held up a hand and continued, “Is the cost so high that it would be worth about a hundred people—who just lost everything—sleeping outside? My job is morale. Even that coffee you were looking so sour over a moment ago? The intentionally-insulting treatment is something familiar to a lot of people. The options they get to choose from? Those make them feel less powerless in a place they just found out they can’t leave. I’m telling you that if it will help the people relying on us, I’ll happily foot the bill.”
Joe’s opinion of the man in front of him just soared. “Ex-military?”
“Lieutenant-Colonel, retired.” Mike showed him a real smile and pushed his glasses up his nose. “But you never really retire.”
“Huh.” Joe rubbed the back of his bald head. “It’s good to see that there are some people in upper management thinking about the low-level people. Alright, Sir, first thing I’m gonna need is a blueprint of whatever building you want made. I need it to be perfect because whatever is on that blueprint is what is being built.”
“I’ll make it happen, and don’t call me ‘Sir’, that life is over.” Mike smiled and shook Joe’s hand again.
“You never really retire though, do you?” Joe grinned back at the expression on Mike’s face as he repeated the words Mike had used. “Plus, this makes it really easy for me to get back at you for tainting my morning coffee run.”
Mike growled a deep, meaningful growl that only people with military experience can make, and Joe laughed at him. “Alright, Sir, I’m going to be occupied over at the mess hall for the next two hours. Don’t let people interrupt me. Just have ‘em leave the blueprints in front of me.”
“Hmm. Mess hall, indeed. It’s a double row of picnic tables, and you abyss-well know it.” Mike nodded at him and marched off. Now that Joe knew what to look for, the military bearing was plain. Joe turned and went over to the wooden tables, having decided to work on his puzzle cube. Since Joe had three of the four stats in the second tier, it took an hour and forty-five minutes for a notification to appear. Still, that was better than the seven hours it should have taken.
Characteristic point training completed! +1 to intelligence, wisdom, perception, and dexterity! These stats cannot be increased further by any means other than system rewards, study, or practice for twenty-four hours
game time.
Joe blinked away the question that the puzzle cube had given him today: ‘Why do we have emotions?’. He had been caught in an odd loop there. Was the cube saying that it had emotions? He assumed that it was talking about humans, but this thing had some really non-standard questions on it, so he couldn’t discount the possibility that it was using him to justify its existence. Still, the training had paid off.
In front of Joe—actually tucked under his left elbow—was a small stack of papers. Blueprints. Excellent. Joe picked up the first one, took a look, and set it aside. He was going to be building a few of the larger housing complexes like a barracks or an apartment to maximize the housing efficiency first. Small, well-appointed houses could wait.
A pot of ink, a quill, some low-grade scroll paper, and Joe’s ritual reference book all appeared on the table in front of him. Joe smiled as he pulled the items directly from his Codpiece of Holding to his hand without needing to make a seemingly obscene action. He already had people looking at him strangely on the regular, no need for them to think that he kept a pot of ink and a quill in his undies.
“Step one, surround a copy of the magical blueprint with the Architect's Fury ritual.” Joe placed his scroll of paper under the blueprint after putting a thin layer of the darkest shadow he could make over the lines on the ritual template he had already drawn up. Then he used the quill to deftly make a tracing of the dark lines, finishing within about half an hour. He dropped the quill into the inkwell and sat back to let the paper dry. “Ugh, that’s so much easier than making all of this from scratch. Or, wait, I’m not actually sure. Easier than coming up with the design, at least.”
Skill increase: Drawing (Novice VI). Go you, dirty tracer.
“Looks like even the drawing skill is as picky about real art as artists are.” Joe snorted at the notification, deciding it was time to get back to work. “This is going to be a tier-one building, but with this great of a blueprint and if I add on a second spell circle, I should be able to get this to be at least a Common-ranked building.”
