by Deck Davis
He held up the brooch, wondering how to reverse what he’d done. As he did, some dialogue appeared.
Oh look – you messed up. Remove artificery from the item?
He gave a mental yes thought, and the essence fell from the brooch, leaving him with an unfilled brooch.
“What do you think, Bee? Do I need poison or speed?”
“As your DF, I would say that you need to play to your advantages. Let’s say you have two buckets, one is perfect, the other one is full of holes. You can add a little water to the perfect one and it’ll hold it. If you want to fill the leaky bucket, you’ll constantly have to fill it.”
“You’re saying I can try to boost my damage all I like, but it won’t do any good?”
“You’ve chosen to be a crafter and not a fighter, against all my advice. Leave the damage dealing to Warren and the others. That’s why you joined with them.”
“You’ve changed. I was sure you were going to tell me to add the damage.”
“It was tempting, but I’m learning stuff. Maybe there are other ways to do things.”
The question now was, should he give himself extra speed, or get a little resistance to the orb weaver’s attacks?
Given that the Blood Wave seemed to be a nightly occurrence, he guessed there was only one option.
Or was there?
This time, he took some poison and speed essence and mixed them together, and he sprinkled this into the broach. He checked his item.
Brooch [Fixed]
Effects: None
Another experiment had gone wrong. He’d hoped that putting a mix of the two essences in the artificery hole would maybe give him a weakened version of each effect, but it didn’t work.
Hey, you didn’t learn unless you experimented. At least he knew two things now; you couldn’t use offensive and defensive artificery on the same item, and you couldn’t mix essence.
“You’re forgetting something,” said Bee. “You had the choice to become an artificer-alchemist, remember? If you’d chosen that, you could mix essences together. As it is, you’ll have to become a master-rank alchemist before you can do that.”
“Damn it. Smart-ass.”
Anxious to be done with the brooch and move onto something else, he reset his artificery and added poison essence to the defensive hole.
Item created: Brooch of Orb Resistance
When clipped to an item of clothing, this brooch grants the wearer resistance against orb weaver melee attacks and poison.
Would you like to make a crafting card of [Brooch of Orb Resistance]?
Well, this was something. “I would like that very much.”
Item added to inventory:
Crafting Card – Brooch of Orb Resistance
Artificery skill leveled up to Tin 2!
- Essence concentration increased; effects of essence will now be more pronounced
Wow, not only had his artificery worked, but he’d created another item with a unique name! It was so much cooler than just brooch [fixed].
As well as that, he’d made his first crafting card of his own. He held it in his hand, a little slip of card with a drawing of the brooch and the materials needed to make it. The beauty of it was that he didn’t need to go and find more broken brooches; according to the card, he could turn metal into a brooch and then use orb weaver essence to complete it.
This was really something. Soulboxe was governed by supply and demand just like the real world, and with nightly Blood Waves attacking the town, demand for protection against the orb weaves would be sky-high.
Now the question was, did he feel altruistic, or just greedy? He could make a bunch of brooches and hand them out so people would overlook his chicken status, or he could say “screw you” and charge ridiculous prices.
It was something to think about. He fastened the brooch to his steel chest plate and felt the artificery magic spread a warm glow through him. At least now if he had to fight the orb weavers, he was a little more prepared.
But he wasn’t prepared for the fifteen players advancing on the work studio.
CHAPTER 43
The troll was the strangest of the group, his head high above the rest of them, his face craggy and hard-set, and yet he wore the finest clothes Tripp had even seen. A frilly shirt with lace sleeves, pantaloons of the finest silk. Necklace chains rattled when he walked, and he looked like the kind of person who would smell like pot pourri.
The rest of them had chosen the usual races, even if it was an eclectic mix. Tripp saw night elves, wargs, gnomes. There were fighters, paladins, sorcerers, druids, and weird amalgamations of two or three classes, like a cool-looking spell bard who had a guitar strapped over his robed shoulder.
With so many players coming this way, with their swords and robes and armor, it looked like an amateur theatre troupe advancing on him.
One of them stepped forward from the pack. He was a man with hair so red it should have come with a fire hazard warning, and it was long and flowed to his shoulders. He looked trim, and he carried a staff so gnarled that he must have been a high-level mage. Everyone knew that the gnarlier the staff, the more advanced the mage.
Lamprecht Bristol – Spellwright – Level 56
Wow, spellwright must have been an off-shoot of the mage discipline. Tripp hadn’t seen anyone use that class, but it sounded cool. That was another rule; the cooler a class sounded, the better it was.
“Are you the one doing the labyrinth quest?” said Lamprecht.
Damn it! How had they known? Well, he guessed he wasn’t exactly subtle about going in or out of the mountain or spending lots of time around Konrad’s shop. No use lying about it.
“Maybe. Why?”
“Can you draw me a map of the labyrinth?” said Lamprecht, his eyes wide and eager now, and stepping a little too close into Tripp’s space. “You know, everything you saw, all the traps, the puzzles, the monsters. Write down everything Konrad said, what Boxe said…”
A woman walked out of the crowd. “Don’t mind Lamp. He’s obsessed with knowing everything about Soulboxe.”
If some women were knockouts, this one was a haymaker that shattered his mind and sent him flying into another damn dimension, with her dark complexion and her hair that swept back over her head in waves, then ran down to the middle of her back in curls, like pasta.
Curls like pasta? It was lucky he didn’t plan on writing her a sonnet.
Gilla – Fighter-Commander – Level 43
“I’m Gilla, this is Lamprecht, but we call him Lamp, and this is our guild,” she said.
The gaggle of players behind her said hellos, grunted, and gave waves. They looked strangely uncomfortable to be there.
“Can we talk?” said Lamp.
Tripp shrugged. “I thought we were.”
Lamp nodded at the studio. “Inside.”
“Follow me.”
Tripp walked into the work studio, but Gilla and Lamp stayed at the doorway.
“Damn. Seems that we can’t come in,” said Gilla. “We don’t have access.”
Tripp left the studio, and they walked around it, away from the rest of the guild members so that they were alone.
“We’re the Forgestriders,” said Gilla. “You probably haven’t heard of us. We’re not the most newbie-friendly guild, nor the most active, either. At least not publicly.”
“You’re the first guild I’ve met since I started playing.”
“A lone wanderer, huh?” said Lamp. “Questing by yourself so you don’t have to share loot?”
“Crafting, actually. And learning.”
“Now you’re talking my language. So what have you learned? Tell me everything,” said Lamp.
Gill touched the spellwright’s shoulder. “Not now, Lamp. We’re here to threaten this guy, remember?”
“Threaten me?”
Gilla nodded. The armor she wore might have been leather, but the craftsmanship was stunning. It looked like it had been made by a master armorer. No, scrap that �
�� by the God of the Armorer skill. A piece of kit like that must have come from an epic quest.
“Maybe threaten isn’t the right word,” she said. “I thought about using ask because that’s a nicer word, right? But Lamp always talks about the power of words and their meanings, so I changed it.”
The flame-haired man nodded. “Part of a spellwright’s job is his words. Put the wrong word on a spell scroll and a Summon Demon spell turns into Transform Demon, and you’ve turned your enemy into a hell beast.”
“You can make spells?” said Tripp. The idea of it buzzed around his head, it was like the magic version of his own crafting card ability.
Lamp smiled. Tripp recognized that smile because although he hadn’t seen it in a mirror, he’d felt a similar one on his own face. It was the smile of a guy taking pride in his work. “Sure can. If you ever buy the Scroll of A Tiny Bit of Misfortune from a vendor…I made that when I first became a spellwright. I was just trying stuff out.”
“Tiny Bit of Misfortune?”
“Sure. Makes your enemies a little unlucky. Like, they drop their keys and they fall down a grate, that kind of thing.”
“I’m the guild master of the Forgestriders,” said Gilla. “Lamp is the co-GM. Don’t take the co part too seriously; I’m in charge.”
“Good thing too. Gilla’s an organizer. She keeps us in line, gets us together for quests. Only thing is, public relations isn’t exactly her forte.”
Gilla glared at Lamp now, who shrugged and said, “I worded that as nicely as I could!”
Tripp felt his to-do list weighing in his head and he started wondering how to get away from Gilla and Lamp without being a complete ass.
“So you’re here to threaten or ask me for something,” he said. “What exactly are you looking for?”
“We want access to Konrad’s mines. We heard there’s hellbrick in there,” said Gilla.
“Not just that,” said Lamp, his eyes lighting up like a…lamp. “There are minerals in Konrad’s part of Old Kimby, ones that can be used in alchemy, artificery, enchantment. Our guild tries to have a balance of roles so that we can be self-sufficient.”
“Good plan,” said Tripp. “And you have an artificer already?”
Gilla nodded. “What we don’t have, is enough gold to spend on materials. With the Blood Wave happening, we need to tool up. A few of the guys have heard whispers that something bad is coming.”
“Like what?”
“They don’t know. There’s just a dark feeling, you know? Funny thing is, as much as everyone’s talking about Godden’s Reach and the Blood Wave, nobody can get into the Reach anymore.”
This was a surprise. It went against what he had guessed was the purpose of the Blood Wave. “What do you mean they can’t get in?”
“Just that. Anyone outside of the Godden’s Reach map can’t travel into it. There’s an invisible barrier stopping them.”
“Can people get out?” asked Tripp.
Gilla shrugged. “I haven’t heard anyone who’s tried since the first wave, and since we found out people can’t get in. That’s the thing; with the Blood Wave, with the entry barrier, it’s got people talking even more. Something big is coming, and nobody wants to leave Godden’s Reach in case they miss it.”
Wow, so nobody could get in or out. Tripp had read about some big shakeups in Soulboxe over the years, since the devs loved experimenting. This ranked as one of the biggest even if it affected only a tiny part of Soulboxe’s game map.
Was it a coincidence that it was all starting when he entered the game?
He could feel his head swelling already. How vain a thought was that? That Boxe would alter an entire map just for Tripp? It was just coincidental timing.
He really needed to get Gilla and Lamp out of there now. The reams of stuff he needed to do were circling in his head.
“So you want access to Konrad’s part of old Kimby so you can mine materials. Can’t you get these in the public-access part of the mountain?”
Lamp shook his head. “Our miners are a high-enough level that not only is their underlay skill mastered, but they tend to find rare materials more often than a Nickel-ranked miner would. We set them mining different parts of old Kimby, different depths, and at different times of the day. We found nothing.”
“Say what you will about Lamp, but he’s thorough,” said Gilla.
“Sometimes knowledge is buried, and you’ve got to grab a shovel and sweat to get it out.”
As much as they were an inconvenience, Tripp found himself liking the pair. Gilla with her strong stance and her talent for leadership, Lamp with his ridiculously-thorough experiments.
And yet, he had stuff to do.
“How do you know you’ll get the things you need in Konrad’s mine?”
“Because some of the weapons and armorer Konrad sells had to have been made with them, and part of Konrad’s storyline is his rift with the crafter’s guild. The guild won’t sell to him; therefore he must have his own ways of getting the materials he needs. The last guy to get Konrad’s crafter quest said he had a bunch of goblins mining for him.”
Tripp nodded. “Correct. So Boxe5’s dynamic questing doesn’t throw the labyrinth quest out too often, I take it?”
Lamp rolled his eyes. “You aren’t special. It’s just that not many people a) dedicate their play time to crafting weapons and b) have enough money to pay for dynamic questing. You’re not a special snowflake by any means. You’re a…uh…regular snowflake.”
“Fine, I understand why you want access. I guess the way to do that would be to friend you all, and then you’d have access to all the areas I can go into. Seems to me that your story about minerals and materials might be bullcrap. A cynical man might say you want to go into the labyrinth with your artificers and rogues and solve it all before I get a chance to. Since we’d be in-game friends at that point, our quests would be shared.”
Lamp held up his hands. “You have it wrong. We need materials for our artificers, nothing more.”
“The wave’s coming again tonight,” said Gilla. “Who’s betting that it’ll be worse than the last one? That’s how waves work in any game. We have a map where nobody new can enter. We have towns divided into sections at night, each one with a running counter of players. Then we have the orb weavers scuttling over the barricades. Something big is coming, and I plan on shoving the collective swords of my guild up its ass.”
Tripp almost felt swept up in Gilla’s energy. “What are your plans?”
“Our builders can shore up the Mountmend fences and gates. No sweat on that – they just need wood and stone, and we can get that ourselves. But we need better weapons, better armor, and we need access to Konrad’s mines for that.”
“What do you say?” said Lamp. “Look at me. Do I look like I’m ready to trick you?”
Tripp was an optimist at heart, always looking to see the good in people. Then again, in Soulboxe you didn’t see real people, you saw a part of them. You only saw whatever they decided to show you, and maybe his sunny world view didn’t apply in here.
After all, Warren, Jon, and Lizzy seemed like decent people, but they had crossed him just to get their hands on the loot. That didn’t make them bad people, because what you did in a game didn’t reflect completely on what kind of person you were outside it.
So, when Lamp asked if he looked like he was ready to trick him, Tripp could only think one thing; what a person looked like didn’t matter. You judged them on what they did, and Tripp hadn’t known Lamp or Gilla or the Forgestriders enough to decide that.
Better to play it safe. If you thought waters might be shark infested, you didn’t just dive in, right? You waited, you watched out for fins. Or, being realistic, you got the hell out of there, but the point stood. No way he was risking the Forgestriders getting access to the labyrinth.
“Sorry,” he said. “No can do.”
“You won’t let us in?”
Tripp shook his head. “Nope. We just met. I
have no reason to trust you.”
Gill leaned back against the workbench, her legs stretched out and feet crossed. “If you remember, I told you that I wasn’t here to ask. Lamp wanted me to go in softly, but I saw your orc ass and I guessed that it’d be better to threaten.”
“This should be good. Let’s hear your threat.”
“Nothing extravagant, you rusty tin can. Just that until you friend us and give us access to Konrad’s mines, the Forgestriders will kill you every time you stray into a PVP area. We won’t take pleasure in it; we aren’t griefers, but we need access to the mines.”
Tripp wasn’t an aggressive guy, but being threatened pushed his buttons. Right now, Gilla’s words were a giant finger appearing from the sky and pushing his temper buttons again and again in a frenzy, like a kid jamming the open-close button on his dad’s garage over and over until his dad yelled at him.
Yeah, that had happened to Tripp before. Dad had been pissed.
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
“Remember what I said.”
“Don’t worry, Gilla. Your words are burned into my mind.”
CHAPTER 44
“The plains are a big place, and I’m a careful man. I’m so careful that I only die when I choose to,” Tripp said, when the Forgestriders left.
“I must have dreamt the sleels nest,” said Bee.
“The mind can play tricks,” he answered, heading back into the studio. “There are times to dwell, times to think, but never times to worry. Worrying is looking at a painting that hasn’t been finished yet and critiquing the artwork.”
“She sounded serious to me, Tripp. It might make the plains hot for you.”
“I have you to keep watch for me.”
The matter settled, he had things to do and little time to do them. He’d only just set the broken prism on the work counter when the door opened and Warren, Jon, and Lizzy walked in.
