“It’s okay,” Crystal said, reaching out and squeezing Sally’s hand. “I’ll just be a minute.” She put on a brave face. “I doubt this is where he asks for sex.”
“I’m not asking for sex,” I said, shaking my head at the two of them. I wasn’t sure why every girl thought I wanted to proposition them for sex. Not my style.
“Okay,” Sally said, still looking uncomfortable. They did that strange mental communication again before she finally relented and made her way toward the stores where Maribelle was using a measuring tape on one of the walls.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” Crystal said, turning her red eyes on me.
“I noticed you actually have two Skill trees available,” I said, flicking my hand at the orb above her head to open her Stats window.
Name: Crystal
Experience: 3,300
Health: 91/91
Mana: 98/98
Primary Power: Fighter - Stealth
Secondary Power: Gathering
Strength: 23/100
Agility: 68/100
Charisma: 34/100
Intelligence: 36/100
Special: 62/100
Perk: Trained at the Royal Guard’s Academy.
Perk: Rank 9 Herbalist.
Perk: Rank 10 Lumberjack.
Perk: Rank 10 Miner.
“I’ve never seen anyone with so many perks. You’re an herbalist, a lumberjack, and a miner. That’s in addition to having been trained at the Royal Guard’s Academy.” I smiled at her. “What gives?”
“There really is keeping no secrets from you is there.” Crystal gave me a brittle smile and finger-combed her red hair out of her face.
“There are but not when it pertains to your Abilities. Unfortunately, those are an open book to me as long as I have my sword.” I nodded to her as I looked through her Fighter - Stealth Tree. It seemed like most of the abilities were related to slowing and snaring opponents. “Please, tell me. I really want to know”
“Well, it’s not that odd of a story. I trained at the academy. I was assigned stealth instead of offense or defense because of my nimble fingers.” She waggled her long fingers at me. “Only when I lost my hand, I couldn’t do most of the stuff they’d trained me, like picking locks or using a garrote. Well, not as easily anyway, so I was given a severance package and kicked out.” She looked at her shoes. “Sally tried to support both of us, and that worked okay until she got blacklisted.” Crystal waved off the comment. “So, I applied at the Gathering guild. They took me on as a favor, but I couldn’t do the work well either. I can’t use a pick or an axe with one hand very well. I did okay at herbalism since a lot of that is lore, but it’s still hard to pick some of the herbs and mix things effectively.” She gave me a weak smile. “Sorry, it’s not a very glamorous story.”
“It’s pretty much the best story ever,” I said, smiling at her as I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “I mean that. Honestly. You’re seriously like the best person in the world right now.”
“I appreciate the compliments, but I don’t quite follow,” she said, shaking her head at me. “What use do you have for that stuff? I’m no good at it.” She showed me her hand. “Sure, I have my hand back, but I’m much better at fighting and the like than any of those things.”
“Sure, but I can fix that,” I said, gesturing at the forest. “We need to do the whole lumber thing. You know how to do that. It’ll be easy enough to pull a couple of the worst guard recruits from Agatha and Sheila for you to use as lumberjacks.”
“I can’t really teach anyone. I don’t know how…” Crystal shook her head. “I’m sorry, what you’re asking is beyond my Ability.”
“I can see that, like the others, you’re a Rank four teacher. That’s plenty good enough, and as for the Skills, like I said, I can show you that.” I opened the Lumberjack Skill Tree. “You have all the basic blocks learned, they’re just not leveled.”
“I, um…” she sighed. “Well, if you think it will work, I’ll trust you. I did get my hand back after all.” She bit her lip. “I just don’t think it’s possible.”
“Well, not with that attitude,” I said as I opened her Teaching Tree and looked it over again. That’s when I found a Skill that nearly made me dance with joy.
Ivory Tower: This Ability allows the user to effectively teach a known Skill to another person, even if they have no real world Skill. It causes the Skill in question’s level to double for the purposes of teaching.
Requirements: Intelligence 50+
Cost: 2,500 Experience
Requirements not met. Intelligence Stat too low. Would you like to upgrade? Cost of Stat upgrade: 609 Experience.
“Well, looks like we’re in luck,” I said, annoyed it would cost all her Experience, but there was nothing for it. That was the problem with not specializing, but at the same time, we might be able to train lots of people.
“How’s that?” Crystal said, glancing around like she wanted to be anywhere but here.
“We have enough Experience to make it work,” I said, selecting the Skills.
Blue light surrounded Crystal, and as it did, intelligence filled her eyes. She shook her head a couple times and blinked rapidly before meeting my gaze.
“Did you just make me smarter?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“A lot smarter actually. I dunno if it means anything to you, but I moved your Intelligence from thirty-six to fifty.” I smiled at her. “How’s it feel?”
“Different. I have all these thoughts rattling around in my head.” She paused and looked up at the sky. “However, if I think about what you asked me before, I feel like I can make it work. I just feel like I’d be able to teach it better now.”
“Great, we’ll talk about it at the town meeting. Speaking of which, we’d better go, the last thing I want to do is make Gwen mad by being late.”
“Yeah, I bet she’s really into the whole whips and chains thing,” Crystal added with a grin.
17
“So, as I was saying before, we still have a people problem,” Gwen said, holding up the report she’d received from Agatha. “It’s just sort of the opposite problem.”
“Some of the people you gave me just aren’t suited for guard work,” Agatha affirmed, shrugging. “I think out of the dozen we got, maybe six at most will make the cut. Only four of those six will be worth half a damn.” She dropped her hands in exasperation. “Back at the academy, we start with classes of over a hundred and only twenty-five percent or so make the cut to go to round two. The final tally is something like six percent of the original class actually graduates, and that’s among the three major disciplines.” She looked to Crystal. “You were trained there, right? You can confirm what I’m saying.”
“She’s not wrong,” Crystal said, looking at me and giving me a quick nod. “We have a much bigger basket of people. On top of that,” she gestured past the gates, “we need all sorts of people to cut lumber, mine the ore around here, and find herbs. While some of the dropouts will make the cut for one of those jobs or even will work to help Taylor or Maribelle, we’re still going to be short staffed.”
“So, what we need is a bunch of people, I got that. We’re all teachers and no students.” I rubbed my chin as I looked at the assembled ladies. “Can’t we just go on a recruitment drive? There seems like there are lots of refugees around. Can’t we get them to come here?”
“Maybe,” Maribelle said, meeting my eyes. “But maybe not. No one will come here who can learn a trade because they still want to get into a guild, and that won’t happen because the guilds don’t want to work with you. Besides, Lustnor isn’t exactly safe. Not many refugees want to head toward a war zone.”
“Yeah, but I’m not talking about getting that kind of people. I’m talking about Stained plain and simple, you know, poor huddled masses types with nowhere to go. The dregs. The overlooked. That’s who I want.” I turned my attention to Gwen. “You said you thought the increased demon dog attacks were cau
sed by a town getting overrun. That means more Stained. And what about all the homeless we saw in the back quarter of Royal Centre? We could take them.”
“Assuming we do that,” Buffy said, raising her hand in the air like a kid in school, “we won’t have the food to feed many more people. We have no food other than what we buy, and we can’t afford a lot, especially if we need to set up a mill and apothecary. The stuff we have for Taylor is laughable, and while Sam’s forge isn’t bad—”
“It’s utter shit,” Sam interrupted.
“It needs an upgrade. That’s in addition to axes, saws, and all the other stuff just to get the trees knocked down. Sam might be able to make that stuff, but we haven’t the materials.”
“Okay, so we need money.” I glanced at Sally. “How’s your refining process coming with the Dark Blood? I know you haven’t had much time…”
“I was able to do one. Like with everything else, if I had better equipment and more time, I could do more, but this is what I got with what we have. This is sort of an eighty-percent effort. I could increase the quality about twenty percent more, but it’d take probably twice as long as what I spent on this.” She held out a glowing orb, only unlike before now the Dark Blood was faceted. Fire burned within, casting flames across the ground in front of us.
Dark Blood
Material: Gemstone
Grade: B
Contains the essence of a fallen warrior of Darkness. Has begun the refining process.
“It says it’s a grade B Dark Blood now. Is that good?” I asked, turning my attention to Buffy.
“It’s probably worth four times as much, which given what it cost to produce, probably doubles our profit on just selling them outright.” Buffy shrugged. “Definitely worth doing, but I doubt we’ll have enough for it to help significantly. We need a few big-ticket items, or this is going to take forever.” She gestured at the horizon. “I’m okay with forever but who knows if the Darkness will be.”
“Right, okay, hmm.” I sighed. “Anyone have any ideas?”
“I think we just need to keep on, keeping on for a bit,” Gwen said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t need to build Rome in a day. I’ll go through the Stained once again with the rest of the girls and see if we can split them up based on what Skills they have. That might help some. Then we’ll just slowly expand.”
“I have an idea,” Sam said, suddenly. Her eyes were fixed on the glowing Dark Blood. “What if we could turn out Blooded Blades?”
“Blooded Blades?” I asked, confusion filling my voice. “I have no idea what those are.”
“If we could do it, we’d make a lot more money, but I don’t think you have the Skill,” Buffy said, hands raised palms out. “No offense or anything, but there’s maybe three people in Royal Centre who can do that. And you’d need at least Grade A Dark Blood, if not Grade S.”
“Can you make Grade A or S?” I asked, flipping my gaze to Sally, and before she answered her Skill sheet told me the answer.
Rank 4 Alchemist: Able to use Skills and Abilities based upon Rank 4 Skill. This will allow the alchemist to produce Grade B items 70% of the time. There is a 15% chance of crafting a Grade A item. There is a 10% chance of crafting a Grade C item. There is a 5% chance of crafting a Grade D item.
Refining (specific) – Dark Blood
Skill: 6/10.
User can refine Dark Blood with a maximum Skill requirement of 6. The quality of the refinement is based on time spent and a multiplier based on Skill level.
For every Skill level of the item greater than the alchemist, chance of success is decreased by 10%. For every Skill level lower than the alchemist, chance of success increases by 10%.
I turned my gaze to the upgrade tab.
Do you want to upgrade Refining – Dark Blood to Skill level 7? Base cost 2,000 Experience. This price can be reduced by attaining an overall Rank of 3 in Alchemy.
A quick glance at her Experience bar let me know she had three thousand Experience available. She’d had twenty-seven hundred left after I’d given her the healing Abilities, so she must have gained three hundred between then and now. That seemed like quick growth, but then again, I had no idea how the Experience gain actually worked.
Still, if she had a higher Rank, she’d have a better chance of crafting higher grade Dark Blood. That much was obvious. I just didn’t know what the Skill level of Dark Blood actually was.
“Is Dark Blood difficult to work with?” I asked, before dismissing the question. “Guess it doesn’t matter.” I looked at Buffy. “What’s the price difference between Grade A and Grade B Dark Blood?”
“Triple, maybe quadruple if you find the right guy,” Buffy said, watching me carefully. “Are you thinking of upgrading her Skill?”
“Yes,” I said, turning back to Sally. “Would that be okay? It is your Experience, after all.”
“It sounds fine.” She shrugged. “I have no idea what the options are, so if you think that’s best, I trust you.” She shot a fond look toward Crystal. “You’ve already given me more than I ever thought I’d have.”
The way she said it made me feel pretty good, I’ll be honest. I’d basically given her the power to fix her friend, and that was something no one else could have done.
“That still leaves the problem of Sam not being able to craft the weapons,” Gwen said, shrugging. “But I guess more money is better than less money.”
“One thing at a time,” I said as I upgraded Sally’s Skill level to seven and looked at the cost for the next level.
Do you want to upgrade Refining – Dark Blood to Skill level 8? Base cost 4,000 Experience. This price can be reduced by attaining an overall Rank of 3 in Alchemy.
“Well, that’s out,” I said, turning my eyes back to the main Alchemy Tree so I could figure out what base Stats affected the Skill Tree the most, but as I did, a new Ability popped up.
Artisan: User has a 3% chance to create an item of higher quality than normal.
Requirements: Special: 50+, Intelligence: 50+, Agility: 10+
Cost: 1500 Experience
“Well, it’s better than nothing,” I said as I scanned it further. At Rank ten the Skill would have a 30% chance of crafting better stuff, and it would affect every Skill, not just one. That was worth getting. I accepted it, and then dumped the rest of her Experience into Agility because it was her lowest Stat that also affected alchemy.
As the blue glow faded from Sally, I smiled at her. “I’ll spend a few more minutes talking to Sam, but I think we go with Gwen’s plans while Sally tries out her newfound Abilities. Is that okay with everyone?”
“We’ll go interview the girls and see if we can find them more appropriate jobs,” Gwen said, gesturing for the others to follow her.
As they all filed off, I turned my attention to Sam. “Now, let’s see what we can do for you.”
Sam rolled her eyes at me. “Let’s get this over with. I wanna check on the two apprentices before they burn down my shop.”
I scrolled through her tree until I found the Skill we were talking about.
Smithing (Specific) – Dark Weaponry: User has the Ability to infuse normal items with the energy contained within Dark Blood.
Requirements: Special: 75+, Intelligence: 75+, Agility: 50+
Cost: 7,000 Experience
“Holy crap that Skill is expensive. Worse, you can’t even learn it because you don’t have the Stats for it. I could raise your Stats but then we’d be short by,” I glanced at her Experience, “nearly five hundred Experience.”
“That doesn’t seem like much,” Sam said with a shrug. “If I was you, I’d do the Stat upgrade now, and then when I get enough, have me learn the Skill because the Stats will help the whole time.”
“That was my thought too,” I said, spending the nearly eleven hundred Experience to bring her Special to seventy-five and her Agility to fifty. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
“Whatever,” she said as the glow faded from around her. �
��I’m going to go do my job now unless—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of a massive explosion at the front gate. The barrier overhead shimmered like the sun as the shockwave threw me from my feet.
18
I arrived at the gate in time to see Agatha vault over the wall itself, huge black wings spread behind her like a giant bat. She landed on the ground in front of a massive creature I’d never seen before. It sort of looked like an eighteen-foot-tall eyeball with a mouth full of dagger-like fangs, skin the color of squid ink, and was covered in writhing tentacles with huge spiked eyeballs on the ends like morning stars. Fear surged through me. I had no idea what that thing was but it seemed more than capable of killing us all.
A quick glance behind me revealed Polly and the other guard, Michelle, running across the town toward the gate. While I couldn’t see much of the fight from behind the wall, I could hear the sounds of the battle raging. Did that mean everyone else was out there already?
I wasn’t sure, but as Gwen sprang into the air, huge wings beating the air at hummingbird speeds, I was fairly sure of it. Her hands were awash with flame. As she threw fireballs at the big beast, it ignored her, focused on someone on the other side of the gate.
Clambering up onto the wall so I could see, I sucked in a worried breath.
Sheila had at least half a dozen of the lizardmen on her. While she was doing a reasonable job of keeping them at bay, mostly because the rest of the guards were attacking them from behind, I knew she couldn’t take all those monsters and the big guy who was lumbering after her.
It wouldn’t have been a problem because she could have probably kept kiting it, except I could see more of the lizardmen rushing toward us from the Darkness. A second wave! Worse, it’d be on us in seconds. If that happened, we’d be as good as dead. As I pushed down my own fear, I tried to think of what to do.
As Polly and Michelle hopped the wall to join the fray, I caught sight of Sally and Crystal. Both were zooming through the air toward us, their wings flapping for all they were worth. Good. Sally could keep Sheila topped off.
The Builder's Sword (The Legendary Builder Book 1) Page 11
