“So, we need to pay exorbitant prices to defend the city because they don’t want to send their people somewhere they might get killed, even though they’ll all die eventually?” I asked, sort of understanding, but not really. They were all just buying time when they could have been trying to stop the Darkness by working together.
“Yes, and it isn’t easy to get that money unless you want to hire someone like me.” She pointed to a bookshelf to her left where a Dark Blood orb sat. “Those sell for roughly twenty-five blood coins each. It would be more, but we can’t refine them, so a refiner buys them cheap, does the process. A well-refined piece can sell for over a thousand Blood Coin.”
“Seems we need to find a refiner,” I said, an idea forming in my brain. If I could find someone who knew how to work with Dark Blood, I could upgrade them enough to make us rich. Then I could recruit more people.
“Good luck with that,” she snorted. “Those hoity-toity bastards will never come out here, even if you had the coin.”
“You never know,” I said, shrugging. While there might be more puppeteers pulling strings in the Centre than I realized, I was going to have to make this work, or we were going to be screwed. “Okay, I’m gonna go check the Stained and see about getting that fixed.” I gestured toward the forge. “Anything you want me to upgrade before I leave. I assume you know your, uh, class better than I do.”
“Well, I’d love to be able to fix the forge myself,” she said, shaking her head at it. “That’d make my job so much easier.”
“Can you do that?” I asked, and before she could respond, I was already searching the Repair Tree she knew. Sure enough, there was a Skill for Forge Repair, and since it was just a single offshoot Skill based on the tree she already knew, it was only ten points.
“I know some smiths who can do repairs like that, but I never learned much about it beyond the basics.” She shrugged. “I’m a sharp, pointy objects girl myself.”
“Well, you can do it now,” I said, learning the Skill for her. My sword glowed with soft blue light, and so did Sam. She stood there blinking at me for a minute.
“Holy shit, I can do it,” she exclaimed excitedly as the glow faded. Then before I knew what was happening, she was hugging me. “Thanks. I’ll get right to it!”
I nodded to her as she released me. She spun on her heel, already grabbing tools off the shelf as I glanced at her Skill window one last time and searched for the Skill to refine Dark Blood.
She couldn’t learn it though, not without taking on the Alchemy Tree, and the cost for that was insane.
9
“Okay, I think I understand how the Skills work now,” I told Gwen as I stepped out of Sam’s shop. She was standing just a few feet away next to fifteen Stained of various ages. All of them were wearing clothes that probably should have just been burned, but I was guessing they didn’t have anything else. We’d have to fix that.
“Hello, nice to see you too,” Gwen said, turning to look at me and raising a slender eyebrow at me.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Um, nice to see you again,” I said, moving next to her and peering at the assembled women.
“So, what were you saying about Skills?” she asked, following me down the line as I moved to look at each one.
“Basically, there are these primary Skill trees that are opened up. Like for Sam, she had a whole tree opened because she was already trained. That’s good because the Experience cost to buy a tree is really high. Once you know a primary Skill Tree though, buying the offshoots of that tree is pretty cheap.”
“I’m not even slightly following what you’re saying,” Gwen said as I looked at the fifth Stained. She was a short girl with blue hair and eyes like the sun and a red mark in the shape of a cudgel on her left cheek. It was deep and penetrated her skin. It was a mark that would never wash away. She also had no discernable Skills.
“Basically, if you are a guard, it’s easy to teach you to use swords, bows, whatever. Or even Skills based on those weapons. But if you have no training as a guard, it becomes incredibly difficult to teach someone those things because they don’t know the basics.” I pointed at the blue-haired girl. “For instance, if I wanted to teach Tonya here how to do Defensive Aegis, I’d have to teach her a Combat Tree, then a Shield Tree, and then the Skill. The Shield Tree is only a thousand Experience, and the Skill itself is fifteen hundred Experience. However, the basic Combat Tree? That’s like five thousand Experience.”
“Ah, well, what if Sheila trained her for a while first, would that make it cost less?” Gwen asked, staring at the girl in front of us. Tonya fidgeted uncomfortably under the scrutiny.
“More than likely, yes.” I nodded. “The best thing to do would be to find people with the primary tree unlocked and then use Experience, assuming they have enough, to teach them what we want them to know.” I shrugged. “I just did that with Sam. I taught her the Forge Repair Skill, and it was nearly free.”
“Okay, I think I’m following,” Gwen said as we moved to the next girls, but like the others, they had no useful Skills.
“Yeah, what I’m thinking is we need to find someone with the Alchemy Tree, then we can teach them refining.” I sighed. “Because the cost to learn that tree is expensive, but the Refining Tree isn’t so much.”
“Makes sense.” Gwen nodded, and a wicked gleam filled her eyes. “If we had an alchemist who knew refining, we could transmute all the Dark Blood into refined stuff and make a killing.”
“Exactly. That’s the best plan I think,” I said, looking toward the horizon. “Assuming we don’t just leave the town. I know you said you could get executed but really, look around. Who is going to hunt you down?”
“It’s really not an option to do that,” Gwen said, her face turning serious. “I need you to help us here.” She waved her hand at the town for emphasis. “I’ll give you anything. Do you like gold? We have that here. I could give you some?” She took hold of my hand. “Please.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, pulling my hand away because her sudden begging was making me uncomfortable. Worse, all the Stained had gone downright panic-stricken at the process. Was I really that important?
“Thank you,” Gwen said, breathing a sigh of relief. “We can work out the details of payment later.” She gave me a wink. “Just please, help us.”
“I will,” I said, glad everyone wasn’t looking so worried anymore. They had been really serious over what was only a passing observation and a smart one at that. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that if I, along with all the people who work for me, are bound to this town, and if we break our contract and leave, we’ll all grow weaker and weaker until we die.” Gwen swallowed hard. “I’ve seen it happen before. It isn’t pretty.”
Well, that changed everything. While I didn’t know Gwen that well, I certainly didn’t want her, Sam, or any of the others to die. That meant we had to stay here, and if we had to stay here, we needed to fix this place up quick. If we didn’t, we might die anyway. For that, we’d need money.
“Guess we need to find an alchemist then,” I said, fixing Gwen in my gaze. “That’s the first thing.”
“We will likely need to go to the Royal Centre to find someone like that,” Gwen said, giving me a sad smile. “I’ll be surprised if anyone here has something like that, but even if we do, I doubt anyone will help us.”
“You never know,” I said, stopping as I stared at a mousy haired girl in front of me. She was a bit taller than the rest, and as I stared at her Stat sheet, I smiled. “Oh, that’s neat.”
Name: Taylor
Experience: 725
Health: 39/39
Mana: 41/141
Primary Power: None selected
Secondary Power: None selected
Strength: 12/100
Agility: 27/100
Charisma: 15/100
Intelligence: 33/100
Special: 8/100
Perk: Trained at the Royal Clothier’s Academy.
“What is it,” Taylor asked, twisting her hands in front of herself nervously and staring down at her feet.
“You were trained at the Royal Clothier’s Academy,” I said, smiling at her. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“Oh…” Her frown deepened, and color spread across her cheeks. “I never finished my apprenticeship. I’m actually not allowed to say I’m trained there because of it.”
“Who cares?” I said, putting my hands on my hips as I opened her primary Skill Tree. It was true, she didn’t have any underlying Skills learned, but since she had the basic tree learned, I didn’t care because now I could upgrade her Skills accordingly without having to buy the expensive basic tree.
“Um… the Guildmistress for one. If they find out I am claiming to be a clothier, they will do extraordinarily bad things to me.” She swallowed. “I’d have continued, but I ran out of tuition money.” She twisted her hands again. “I’d hoped to come to a border town for work, but then the town I was in got attacked.” She looked like she was about to say more, but I turned to Gwen.
“I thought you said you interviewed everyone.” I gestured at Taylor. “You should have brought her to me at the start.”
“I didn’t know,” Gwen said, glaring at the girl. “She didn’t tell me.”
“That’s true, I didn’t.” Taylor looked around sheepishly, but couldn’t find a way to hide from Gwen’s withering gaze. “I… um… got nervous. What if I messed up?”
I sighed and rubbed my face with my hand. “Look, it’s okay to mess up. Why I’m a world class screw up. Anyway, let’s get you settled.” I looked around. “Um… pick one of the empty shops and make a list of what you need. We’ll try to scrounge it up. Until then…” I glanced through her tree and had her learn the Clothing Repair Skills. “Let’s get to work on stitching up some of these garments.”
Taylor nodded and bit her lip. “I’ll do my best. Thanks for trusting me.”
“No problem,” I said as she turned and made her way to the smallest shop on the left. “Say, Gwen, can you go help her get situated? I can finish up here, and that way by the time I’m done we’ll have a better idea? You know, split the work?”
Gwen looked at me for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah, okay. I’ll take care of it.” She moved off to follow Taylor as I turned to the rest of the Stained.
“Anyone else have anything they want to tell me?” I asked, but none of them responded, so I carried along. Unfortunately, none of the others had any discernable Skills nor much Experience either.
“Too bad,” I said as I rubbed my chin. “Still, I think I can work with this.” I looked over the Stained for a few minutes before pulling two girls, Jesse and Jenny, aside.
“I want to check something,” I told them. “Is that okay?”
They nodded in unison, and I smiled at the pair of them, trying to put them at ease. “Nothing bad,” I said, waving my hand toward Sam’s shop. “I’m going to see about making you apprentice blacksmiths. How’s that sound?”
“You’re going to give us jobs?” Jesse asked, completely flummoxed. “Why? We don’t know anything about smithing.”
“Yeah, I’m going to try to fix that.” I turned to the rest of the girls. “You all go see Sheila and Agatha at the gate and wait for me there.”
“So, um, why did you pick us?” Jenny asked, following behind me as I turned and made my way back toward Sam’s blacksmith shop.
“You two had the Stats most similar to Sam’s own.” I shrugged. “I was making an educated guess.”
“Oh,” they said, both looking at each other for a second and then they nodded like they’d had a whole unspoken conversation.
“Hey, Sam,” I said, walking into the shop. The smith was busy at work on the forge and barely paused long enough to look over at me.
“What?” she asked, turning back to the forge. “I’m kind of busy here.”
“I brought you some helpers,” I said as I reopened Sam’s Skill Tree. Sure enough, there was a whole tree dedicated to teaching, and better yet, she already knew some of it. It appeared that unlike some of the other trees, this one was automatically learned based upon Sam’s own Skill level. The only thing that was low was the proficiency Skill at the top.
Teaching Proficiency
Skill: 2/10.
User can teach Skills up to a maximum level of 2. Increasing this Skill increases the speed with which knowledge is imparted as well as the maximum level of Skill that can be learned.
Like before there was an upgrade tab. This time the message was a bit different.
Do you want to upgrade Teaching Proficiency to Skill level 3? Base cost 300 Experience. This price can be reduced by attaining an overall Rank of 2 in Smithing.
“Well, that’s neat. Evidently, since you’re a high-level smith, I can make you a better teacher.” I smirked, and before Sam could object, did the upgrade. Blue light surrounded her, and she glared at me.
“Did you just waste my Experience so I could teach those two no-nothings the difference between their asses and holes in the ground?” She put her hammer down and shifted her eyes to the two girls. “Never mind.” She waved off her train of thought. “So, they’re really mine to do as I wish?”
“Yep, well, within reason,” I said, nodding to her, and she actually smiled at me.
“Excellent.” She gestured at the two girls. “Come here and let me teach you a thing or two.”
The pair of them looked at each other for a moment, nodded, and moved forward.
“Thanks,” Jenny whispered as she passed by me.
“No, thank you. You’re going to be doing the work,” I said as I turned to go.
“If we can do anything to repay you, just let us know,” Jesse added over her shoulder, right before Sam smacked her upside the head.
“You’re here to learn, not to flirt,” Sam growled. “Now, you go. You’re much too distracting.” She made a shooing gesture at me. “Go bother Gwen. Maybe take her in a backroom somewhere and keep her out of our hair for a while.”
10
A few minutes later, I found myself at the gate. I’d stopped by the new clothing shop to see Gwen, but she’d shooed me away because her and Taylor were still busy setting up. Evidently, they’d found some old supplies somewhere and were still going through it to see what worked and what didn’t.
“Hello,” I said, as I approached the group of ladies waiting there. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” a few of them murmured, watching me with careful eyes.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” I said, trying my best to be cheery. “Let me just speak with Agatha and Sheila for a moment, and I’ll come back, and we’ll do a whole spiel.” A few of them nodded as I made my way to the gate and rapped on it with my knuckles. “Open up.”
“On it,” I heard Sheila say, and a few moments later I saw the gears on this side of the gate begin to move. The doors swung open enough for me to squeeze through before slamming shut. Now that I had watched it in action from both sides, I realized it was set up on springs that naturally made it close.
“So, what do you need, boss?” Agatha asked, her eyes flicking from me to the horizon and back again. “It’s really not safe for you out here.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said, opening her Skill Tree.
Name: Agatha
Experience: 4,300
Health: 131/131
Mana: 72/72
Primary Power: Fighter - Offensive
Secondary Power: None selected
Strength: 54/100
Agility: 77/100
Charisma: 11/100
Intelligence: 25/100
Special: 47/100
Perk: Trained at the Royal Guard’s Academy.
Like Sheila, Agatha had no Abilities known, but that was something I could fix. Still, that wasn’t what I was interested in at the moment. I scrolled to her Teaching Tree and was surprised to find it was already at four out of ten. Interesting.
“Say, Agatha, what’s a Skill similar to Defensive Aegis but for offensive fighters like yourself?” I asked, as I moved to Sheila and checked her proficiency. It was also at four. That felt odd to me.
“Blinding Blade, probably,” Agatha responded with a shrug. “Usually those teamed with a Defensive Aegis user, use that to increase their attacks to take advantage of the enemies leaving themselves open.”
“Okay,” I said, moving back to her Skill Tree and bringing up the Skill.
Blinding Blade: This Ability allows the user to temporarily double the speed of all attacks.
Requirements: Special: 50+, Agility: 50+, Charisma: 10+
Cost: 1500 Experience
“Hmm, you don’t quite have the Stats for it,” I mumbled, and was going to let the Ability slide away when I noticed a linked Ability.
Blinding Blade Omni: This Ability allows the user to temporarily double the speed of all attacks for friendlies within ten yards.
Requirements: Special: 50+, Agility: 50+, Charisma: 10+, Blinding Blade
Cost: 600 Experience
“Does that mean I can’t get it?” Agatha asked, and from the tone of her voice, I could tell she was a bit upset by it.
“Hang on a second,” I said, selecting Blinding Blade.
Requirements not met. Special Stat too low. Would you like to upgrade? Cost of Stat upgrade: 147 Experience.
I made it so and then spent another 2100 Experience points for her to learn Blinding Blade and Blinding Blade Omni.
As blue light surrounded Agatha, I smiled at her. “I did you one better. Now the effect will be given to those around you.”
“Great, I guess,” Agatha said, confused. “But it’s just her and me.” She jutted a thumb at Sheila. “Seems like a waste of Experience to me.”
The Builder's Sword (The Legendary Builder Book 1) Page 6
