by Adam Elliott
Seconds passed as his body went through the motions without him. When he finally regained his control, Cayden stole a quick glance at his console:
Progress: 69/100
Grade: 0/220
Durability: 28/50
No real surprises there. Babel was designed after an MMO after all, and Cayden couldn't name an MMO off the top of his head that had crafting so brutal that players were likely to fail their first attempt.
"Skill Use: Pour Mold" He commanded. There wasn't much worth in attempting to get the grade up on this particular item. His skills were too low, and his tools were bog standard. He could hope for a 'critical' success, but he wasn't holding his breath. Besides. Cayden had a plan.
Crafting Successful! You have crafted an Albieth Steel Ingot!
You have Earned 5 XP.
Achievement Unlocked
Craft your first item
You made it! You really made it!
New Quest
We Can Make it Better, Stronger... Gooder?
Requirements: Craft One Albieth Steel Ingot of Good or better quality.
Reward: 100 XP.
“Figure out the trick yet?” Cayden asked his unseen audience. “I'll let you in on a little secret. It involves this.”
Cayden opened his inventory, selecting the second item. Reality wavered around his hand, and another hunk of ore virtually indistinguishable from the previous one warped into existence. From there he dropped it onto the table, returning to the crafting menu where it listed the difference quite plainly:
Albieth Steel Ore Fragment (Great)
“This is going to be really, really easy by the way.”
And it was. The durability of the higher quality ore was nearly double that of the previous metal, which left him plenty of time and LP to simply spam Purge Impurities until he got the result that he wanted. Barely five minutes from start to finish and he was rewarded with a happy musical chime from his glasses and a flood of new messages:
Crafting Successful! You have crafted an Albieth Steel Ingot (Good)!
You have Earned 10 XP.
Achievement Unlocked
Craft your first good rated item
You crafted your first good item. Not bad!
Quest Complete: We Can Make it Better, Stronger... Gooder?
You have Earned 100 XP
“So there you have it. 115 XP at no risk for the cost of a few crafting materials in the space of about five minutes.” Cayden said, stepping away from the blacksmith's bench to stroll back out into the late afternoon sun. “Trade a little bit of Zeni for a decent chunk of XP. Neat trick right?”
Cayden smirked, suddenly glad his audience couldn't see him. He must be looking unbearably smug about the little trick he was pulling. "Did I mention there were forty-four professions?"
Chapter Nine
Level Up!
You have (5) Undistributed Stat Points
"And there we go, level three in the space of a little under two hours." Cayden said proudly as he waved away the alert and opened his Player Info tab. "Even grinding the best mobs we could have reliably killed at this level probably would have taken the majority of the day. Possibly even into tomorrow depending on what quests I could pick up and how well I chain the encounters. So this saves us a lot of time. Sadly the XP bonus for the quest falls off a cliff as soon as you're higher than level 2, so there isn't any incentive to train up the other skills. There is, however, a similar trick that I'll show you in the mid-fifties, so, look forward to that."
He worked as he spoke, once again selecting Guardian from the level up menu as it was presented. It was an odd level, so he didn't receive any alert for a new skill, just a small bump in HP and TP. All he had to do was assign his Stat Points, one in Strength, two in Dexterity and two in Vitality. Easy, right?
It should have been. Cayden had nearly every bit of his planned build memorized by heart. He had dreamed of the damn thing on more than one occasion. But now he was hesitating. And it wasn't hard for him to figure out why.
Runic Knowledge. Cayden frowned, glad his viewers couldn't read into his expression as his eyes drifted down to the lowest number on his display.
Energy: 1
His planned route had almost no use for Energy. The stat was used primarily to meet prerequisites for things like scrolls and staves, to increase the player's MP and to strengthen the effects of magic type skills, none of which were things he had planned to use.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he hadn't expected to discover a new skill either.
While there were a handful of skills in the game that used their resource system, the necromantic use of corpses, for example, they were few and far between. Even those that had their resources typically still had some interaction with TP or MP, and just judging by the name, Cayden didn't think that Runic Knowledge was the sort of skill he could expect to run off TP.
The problem was that any points spent in Energy were going to be a waste. Guardians were on the lowest tier when it came to Energy to MP conversion; he'd get a total of 10 MP per skill point invested, which would mean putting multiple levels worth of points into energy or reclassing as something else. Either way, it was going to be pretty obvious to his viewers that something was up if he started dumping points into it. He'd kind of screwed himself.
"Aaaand, done." Cayden announced as he added the points according to his usual build, wincing as he did so. "On that note, before I go any further out today I'm going to be disabling the stream for the rest of the evening. I've got to hoof it back to the first floor and get my drones, assuming they are still there. After that, I'll snag a few quests, and by then it will be dark enough that I should try and get some sleep to reset. Hopefully this time I won't be getting up at two in the afternoon."
That was a lie, though one tinged with enough truth that his viewers wouldn't think too deeply on it.
He did need to get his drones, that much was true enough, but the whole thing wouldn't take half as long as he had pretended it would. A teleport there and back would cost him most of his remaining Zeni, but it would also give him some off camera to investigate his new skill. And there were a lot of things he still needed to discover.
Starting with the special quest notification that had appeared during his crafting binge.
Cayden's heart had nearly stopped when the notification first showed up on his HUD, and he'd spent the last forty-five minutes casting furtive, longing glances at it. He couldn't open it when it arrived, his viewers might not be able to see the window, but they would be able to see him interacting with a display they couldn't see, and that would be enough to send them into a tizzy of speculation that would be almost as bad as the reveal. Hell, as it was he'd barely managed to choke down his surprise and pretend everything was normal when it had first arrived.
Everything was not normal, least of all the quest.
Quests in Babel were categorized in a few different fashions. The most basic was by level, a green quest the easiest that still gave experience, then yellow, then red. They sometimes also carried extra tags. Elite, Party, Dungeon, Raid and so forth. These, coupled with the color coding helped to gauge difficulty and helped keep players from following a quest line into a place that would kill them before they even had a chanced to realize their peril.
In addition to those standard tags, however, were two exceedingly rare modifiers that had been discovered. Special and Grand Quests. And he'd just been granted one of the former.
New Special Quest
Make Your Mark
Requirements: Inscribe a Rune Phrase of Good Quality or better.
Reward: 5000 XP
I'm going to need a defibrillator if this keeps up. Cayden thought, his mouth half open in amazement. Five thousand XP was a level and a half. It was hours, probably days of grinding away at mobs or equal level quests. There had to be some sort of catch.
Eager to disprove his cynicism, Cayden started back towards the scribe's workshop at a full sprint. It was later in the day now, and
the streets had begun to fill with returning adventurers and the Elan who would soon be catering to them, but Cayden didn't let that stop him. He weaved in and out of the crowd, his athletic frame slipping between or around the bodies of slow moving tourists and merchants as he sought out his goal.
He didn't have to go far. The inscriber had been second to last on his circuit, to begin with, in part because it was one of the only two professions, along with cooking, that he'd had any real intent on continuing to use beyond his exploit. Cooking was an obvious one for him, well-cooked food could provide some significant stat bonuses, it could keep him alive in a pinch on some of the more feral floors and to be honest, he just liked to cook. Always had.
Inscription had been a more esoteric choice. At a glance, it didn't seem like a particularly powerful skill. An inscriber could apply minor bonuses to each piece of equipment worn by inscribing arcane or divine wards and symbols along the gear. It was time-consuming work, and the bonuses were among the smallest possible in the game. A few HP, a point of damage or a bonus to a skill. Even cooking tended to provide stronger mechanical bonuses.
But like many things in his build, inscription was deceptively useful. The bonuses were minor, but they were unique. A sword found on a boss might be already brimming with enchantments, alchemical potions could be found as loot, even food could be obtained in a variety of ways. Inscriptions could not. The bonuses they provided could only be provided by inscription, meaning that all things being equal, a player who had inscriptions fighting a player who did not would always have a statistical edge.
It also had the perk of being perhaps the cheapest profession to level in the whole game. The components were common and not highly sought after, and any loot he found would serve as easy practice fodder before he sold it for a slightly increased price. During his evenings he could even lend his time out to others, making the whole thing revenue neutral, if not profitable.
If years of speedruns had taught Cayden anything, it was to embrace incremental improvement. Save a few frames at the start of a run, and you might save minutes over the course of it. Gain a few extra stats early, and that would compound over weeks and months to a not insignificant boost. At least, that was the idea.
Judging by this quest though, it might be a slightly bigger boon than he thought.
Despite the increased traffic, the scribes' shop was no less dead than it had been the hour previous. A single older Elan man toiled away behind a workbench, his eyes squinting down through a magnifying lamp at a steel bracer. He'd been working on the same project when Cayden had first arrived, adding some gold leaf writing around the edges of the item that would increase its defense by a single point.
"Back again so soon, young one?" The senior man said, raising his eyes from his work to fix Cayden with a toothless smile.
He was a chatty one, this Elan, and despite himself, Cayden had ended up striking a conversation with him earlier. Much to the amusement of his viewers. "A bit of a different goal in mind this time."
“Ah, well best of luck to you my boy.”
“And to you.” Cayden replied.
Once settled at one of the tool festooned desks, Cayden snapped his fingers and dove into his menu. He pulled up his inscription skills, sorted through them and was surprised to see... nothing. A jump back into his lexicon produced similar results. No new skills, no new item options, nor sub menu's that he wasn't expecting.
He had a new quest, but no method by which to achieve it.
Do I need more words? He wondered, returning to his Runic Knowledge skill page. It still listed him at 7/20 for Greater Runes Known, so perhaps it was as simple as that, the menu just wouldn't unlock until he knew some Greater Runes. It would make sense with the XP reward and overall difficulty of the quest.
Cayden sighed. As he'd expected, too good to be true.
“Your goal was to come and be depressed at one of my desks?” The old man asked wryly.
Cayden laughed. “No, nothing like that. Sort of a long shot here... but you wouldn't happen to know anything about Rune Phrases, would you?”
The old man fixed him with unblinking opalescent eyes. His expression was flat, though his eyes were probing, searching Cayden for a long moment before he responded, cautiously. “The runes of Babel contain the language and knowledge of the Great Emperor. It is folly to toy with them.”
“I wasn't planning on toying with anything.” He retorted, feeling sudden energy run through his body once again. The Elan shopkeepers were, in part, tutorial NPC's for the different professions. Why wouldn't this one know something about it if this was part of the inscription skill?
“Yet you ask about Runic Phrases.”
“So you do know something then.” Cayden persisted.
“Those who stayed will always know more than a bloodline of the ninety-nine.” The old man snickered. “You are not the first to ask me about the runes, doubtless even the hundredth of your kind. But you are the first to ask about the phrases.”
That was good to know. “I think I may be among the first to ever decipher enough runes to even make a phrase.” He paused, choosing his next words carefully. This conversation wasn't going to be something he could command word his way though, so perhaps better to buy into the lore if he was going to convince him. “The Great Emperor has given me a quest to craft a Rune Phrase... but I can't say I have the slightest idea where to start.”
“How do you inscribe anything?” Came the reply.
"I-" Cayden started, about to say that he simply selected the inscription from a menu. But that wasn't entirely accurate. Technically he chose an item first. The item provided the durability for the crafting, then the inscription he chose determined the damage dealt to the item through each skill use. But he never actually had to choose an inscription.
If he were cooking roasted chicken, he didn't need to select the roasted chicken recipe. Technically all he had to do was have the components on hand, enter crafting mode, and complete all the required steps. Inscribing wasn't any different, just more involved.
The old man smiled from across the room, as though he could see the gears turning in Cayden's head. "You write words of eldritch power along the object, along the hilt of a steel blade or the edge of a gorget. The script appears flowing and complex, but in reality, it is simple. A phrase, sometimes even just a word repeated. Health, Strength, Power."
He was right. Unlike the runic language, much of the arcane and divine tongues had been deciphered ages ago. He had an app on his phone that could auto-translate just about any phrase in either language in seconds. It had made him laugh when he'd first realized that the gorgeous symbols placed by a low-level HP inscription consisted of the words "Health, Vigor, Life" repeated over and over again.
He could craft without a recipe. Well, in theory anyways.
In practice, it would prove a good deal harder. Without a recipe, he'd have to rely solely on personal skill use, which meant drawing the runes by hand, and art class had never really been his strong suit.
Still, practice made perfect. It took a few trips to the old man for new scrolls to work on, as well as a not-inconsiderable amount of Zeni on additional ink, dusting and other magical accouterments that would make the inscription truly functional, but within an hour Cayden felt he was ready to proceed. The whole thing felt decidedly grade school, sitting at a desk, his fingers stained with ink as he wrote the same letters over and over until they satisfied him. He'd chosen the only phrase he truly knew, muttering the individual words as he marked them to paper.
I Have Defied Gods and Demons.
Worryingly, none of the runes that he wrote shifted or warped into their English variants as he worked. He hadn't been surprised during his early failures, but as he nodded in satisfaction at a 'perfect' sixth worth, the doubt did begin to creep in. Either his runes were garbage, or the system only auto-translated existing runes.
He was going to hope for the latter.
Next, he opened his skill menu and
sorted through it until he had only the four current inscription skills visible:
Outline
Type: Active Crafting Skill [Language]
Skill Level: Novice Level 1. 8.2% to Next Level.
Effect: Increases progress and Improves Grade. Improves progress for skills other than Outline that provide progress. Lowers Durability slightly. The amount depends on tools used and skill level.
Cost: 50 LP
Detail Work
Type: Active Crafting Skill [Language]
Skill Level: Novice Level 1. 7.7% to Next Level.
Effect: Increases progress. Lowers Durability. The amount depends on tools used and skill level.
Cost: 100 LP
Finishing Touches
Type: Active Crafting Skill [Language]
Skill Level: Novice Level 1. 7.2% to Next Level.
Effect: Increases progress and Improves Grade. Lowers Durability. Single Use Amount depends on tools used and skill level.
Cost: 200 LP
Steady Hand
Type: Active Crafting Skill [Language]
Skill Level: Novice Level 1. 5.1% to Next Level.
Effect: Reduces Durability Loss for next skill by 50%.
Cost: 50 LP
The beginner skills for each profession were all similar, but with their particular flavor. In the case of inscription the process was designed to be time intensive and perfectionist. A typical rotation for a low-level inscription involved using Outline around a half dozen or so times with Steady hand, then a single use each of Detail Work and Finishing Touches. That left enough LP left over for a second use of Detail Work if things went completely sideways somewhere along the line, and made sure that all three primary skills were used in order.
“Now I just have to decide what to inscribe.” Cayden murmured aloud, drawing a bemused chuckle from the far side of the room.
Despite the old man's derision, it was a tough decision. A failed inscription wouldn't destroy the item he was working on, but it would impose a negative malus that was well in excess of any bonus he might earn by successfully inscribing the item. That put his sword right out of contention. No way was he going to risk losing damage on his primary weapon, or on his shield for that matter. That left his armor. Ultimately, he decided on his breastplate. He'd survive until he could get a replacement if push came to shove, but if it worked out the breastplate would provide the best benefit.
