Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "You keep saying we," Keia said. "What does that mean, exactly? You're making a shitload of money, and I hate to sound like this, but what's in it for us?"

  Me and Kris both turned and blinked at her in surprise. I’d thought we had a good thing going, and I felt a touch of panic rising in me as her words washed over me.

  She’d never struck me as the gold digging type, but I’d just admitted to having a shitload of money. At least it was a shitload of money by the relative terms of where we came from. Was that going to change everything?

  "What do you mean what's in it for you?" I asked, my brain still trying to catch up with what she’d said.

  We're in this together,” Kris said, putting a hand on her hip and looking at Keia like she’d lost it. “That's how it's always been. Sure it was usually me and Conlan, but you’re part of the three musketeers now! All for one and one for all, and that includes the spoils!”

  Keia looked between the two of us in surprise. Maybe she'd spent so much time dealing with Torian and Horizon and all the dick moves they were constantly pulling that she had trouble believing she'd found people who’d actually be honest with her and deal fairly.

  “Admittedly the spoils are usually the two of us splitting a painful death as a result of whatever cockamamie scheme this idiot has come up with, but if we share in painful deaths then we share in riches too, right?” Kris said, slapping me on the back.

  I nodded, wincing under that slap. Kris always had played freakishly strong characters in these games. I also couldn’t help but smile. It warmed my heart that Kris wouldn’t doubt me for a moment.

  "You're serious," she said after a long moment of looking between the two of us. "You’re making a bunch of money on the Auction House with this crafting stuff and you're just going to share it?"

  "Well sure," I said, suddenly embarrassed at all this talk of money. She’d been into me before this windfall, but I was also well aware that money could change things.

  I mean I wasn’t personally aware, having never had much money to my name as I’ve already covered, but I’d heard other people talking about it.

  “Besides. None of this would be possible without you. You’re the reason I have all this ore in the first place. You’re the reason I found the Spellcrafting table and unlocked the ability.”

  Sure after talking with Trelor I had the feeling I would’ve unlocked the Spellcrafting skill tree eventually regardless of that trip out to the goblin mines, but it was also true that Keia’s help had significantly advanced the timetable for unlocking those skills.

  I was suddenly glad that all the kissing and the confession of who we were in the real world had happened before I realized I was going to be making money hand over fist in this game and converting it into real world wealth.

  Sure I didn't think Keia was the kind of girl to care about a guy suddenly developing a fortune, I had the example of how frustrated she'd been with Torian when he tried to win her affections by throwing around Horizon’s money to impress her, but still. If I’d come into this money before she acted interested in me then there would’ve always been a question in the back of my mind wondering if she was only interested in me because I had money.

  Not a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things, but a shitload of money by the standards of a bunch of teenagers who'd grown up well below the poverty line in the dodgier parts of a forgotten level of an arcology.

  “I’ll give you a fifty percent cut of everything I earned while I was with you right now if that's what you want," I said. “If that’s what it takes to prove myself then it’s yours. You can do whatever you wanted with that money. No questions asked.”

  I was terrified she’d take the money and run. I wouldn’t fault her for it. Life was hard where we’d grown up, and that was enough money to change her life.

  "Wouldn't be a good idea though," Kris said. "If what Trelor says is true then we probably want to take the time to reinvest anything we've made, you know?"

  “She's right," I said. "And that's where we're going to have to take some risks. I totally understand if you don’t want to take that risk, though.”

  She looked between the two of us and her mouth compressed into a thin line. I was far from a mind reader, but I got the feeling she was seriously considering whether or not she should take a payday now, or go along with us and get a potentially much larger payday down the line if things went well.

  Then she shrugged and her face broke into a smile that was positively radiant.

  “You idiot,” she said, leaning in and hitting me with a smack and then a kiss. “There was never any question that I’d go along with you. I just wanted to see how serious you were.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t even realized I was holding. It looked like we’d both been testing each other, and it looked like we’d both passed.

  For now.

  "If I was into a guy for the money then I would've been digging for gold with Torian and all that Horizon cash he’s throwing around," she said, leaning in and hitting me with a kiss that curled my toes. It took Kris clearing her throat to pull us away from each other, but even then Keia stayed close to me. "You can rest assured I'm in this because I like how you do things. Kissing included."

  That was good for a blush from yours truly. It was nice to know my ability to suck face in the game was a part of the reason why she was staying loyal to me and Kris, and not the fact that she was digging for gold.

  I grinned. “I knew you weren’t the kind to date a guy for money.”

  “It’d take the kind of girl who dates for money for Torian to ever get any,” Kris grunted, which had everyone in Trelor’s Oddments laughing.

  When the laughing died down Keia locked eyes with me and smiled. She also blushed just a little. Like she was flattered that I thought so highly of her.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “You told me time and again you weren’t into the whole gathering and crafting thing, so it should come as no surprise that gold digging isn’t your thing.”

  That one didn’t get the same laughs as Kris’s quip about Torian’s sex life. Keia’s eyes narrowed. Kris and Trelor both groaned.

  “Tough crowd,” I muttered, clearing my throat. “Right. The way I see it, we can try to get into that forge on the town circle, but that's going to run the risk of them trying to kill us.”

  “Risk?” Keia said.

  “Right. That’s going to result in them killing us, and maybe us taking out other players and some goblins on accident and ruining the reputation I’ve been spending so much time building when I blow shit up,” I said. “That would be bad, so we need another option.”

  "What other option?" Kris asked.

  "I think I know what he's going to say," Keia said.

  “I hate it when I know what he’s going to say,” Kris said. “It never means anything good for me.”

  "We know there are forges out there in the game world,” I said. “So if the forge in the town square isn’t available to us then we have to go find a forge out there.”

  “Oh shit,” Kris said.

  “Are you thinking the forges in the mines by the raid dungeon?” Keia said.

  "No way," Kris said.

  "None other than,” I said.

  "Excuse me," Kris said. "Admittedly I wasn't out there with you guys when you were flirting in the mines, but it seems to me it's a bad idea to cart a couple of low skilled players into an area that's being patrolled by Horizon Dawn and surrounded by angry goblins who probably won’t stop to ask us if we’re part of Horizon Dawn before they kill us quickly and painfully."

  “It’s a risk," I said. "But if we go out there where we can use the forest as cover then we have a chance of getting into one of those mines and crafting this stuff without running into Horizon Dawn. One guard keeping a half-assed watch at a mine entrance is going to be a hell of a lot easier to get around than a bunch of Horizon Dawn assholes creating a human chain to stop us.�
��

  Kris shook her head. "I don't like this idea at all, and I know when I don't like an idea is usually right around the time you push me into doing it and everything works out. So why not? I've already died a few times in this game. It's not like it could hurt if it happens one more time!”

  “Probably a lot more than once,” Keia muttered, earning a sickly glance from Kris.

  I grinned and slapped Kris on the back. I ignored Keia’s quip. Mostly because she was probably right on the money, and I didn’t want to think of that when everyone seemed to be in high spirits. "That's the spirit! Now let's get over to the Auction House. We're going to have to get a bunch of stuff out of my vault, and it's going to take all three of us carrying it to avoid too much encumbrance."

  "What about our armor and weapons?" Keia asked. "If we're going to do something risky like this then shouldn't we equip ourselves with some good gear? At least better than the low level crap you’re running around in right now?”

  “But I can’t craft stuff without a forge,” I said.

  “Don’t need to craft stuff to get base weapons and armor other people have crafted while they were leveling their skills,” Keia said. “It’s not gonna be goblinsteel stuff, Horizon Dawn has that market locked down, but it’ll be better than what we have.”

  “I guess it won’t be the end of the world if we don’t get to the mines tonight,” I said.

  Besides, I figured some time spent scouring the Auction House for gear that had useful spell infusions was a good investment of my time if we were going into the belly of the beast to find a working forge.

  Assuming I could get enough uninterrupted time at the Auction House to go looking for gear. I’d have to hope there were enough other people flooding the place that Horizon Dawn wouldn’t notice us until we’d been in and out.

  "Yeah," I said. "It might be a good idea to invest in some gear. Let’s hit the Auction House!"

  I laughed. Torian and his asshole friends were spending so much time keeping me from the forge, never realizing that what they really needed to be keeping me away from was the Auction House they thought they’d dominated.

  I was going to show them.

  58

  Powerleveling

  "This still feels weird," Keia said.

  "Tell me about it," Kris said. "I look fucking awesome!”

  "Don't get too cocky kid," I said. "You might have some nice spell infusions on that armor, but it's not going to save your butt if you're not smart about a fight. And we're going to be going against people who have awesome armor of their own and skill advantages."

  “Not to mention you insisted on wasting an infusion on those stupid encumbrance reducing spells,” Kris groused.

  “Believe me, we’re going to need that by the time we’re done if this goes right,” Keia said.

  “I still say it’s a waste that could’ve been used for combat,” Kris groused.

  “And even with that waste your stuff is still better than whatever Horizon Dawn is walking around in out here,” I said.

  What I left unsaid was their armor probably wasn’t going to be as good as what I’d put together, but on balance they still had the advantage even if the stuff I crafted was better. Their players had more skill points than me or Kris, and they could always zerg us if push came to shove.

  I figured it was a balancing act. On the one hand someone could give themselves better and better abilities by leveling up their skills. There were entire skill trees with nice combat perks as they skilled up that could make someone really difficult to take down in a fight.

  On the other hand there were spell infusion bonuses. Conceivably someone without much in the way of skills could get their hands on armor and weapons that gave them a hell of an advantage in a fight, but I had a sneaking suspicion skills would matter more than cool armor in a fair fight.

  Which meant we had to be on guard as we made our way through a forest infested with Horizon Dawn players trying to keep us from doing exactly what we were trying to do.

  Even if it had been a quiet walk through the woods so far. Quiet and productive. I’d been exploring the various branches of the Spellcraft skill tree to see what I could look forward to as I got more and more skill points.

  Right now I could only add a simple spell infusion to a weapon or piece of armor. Sure the game was new enough that even a simple spell infusion was enough to give us a heck of an advantage, sure when potions and their flat bonus to our combat abilities were added into that we got an even larger advantage, but that wouldn’t last.

  For now, though, I figured the gear and potions evened the score just a little. Not to mention we’d been playing Horizon modules for a while now, so it's not like we were strangers to playing a Lotus style game, even if we hadn’t been playing Lotus Online for very long.

  Of course the problem with that equation, bonuses from skills versus bonuses from armor, was anyone we went up against out here would naturally be someone from Horizon who had Horizon armor in addition to whatever skill bonuses they'd gotten from being in the game for a month.

  Which meant we had to keep quiet and listen for anything coming at us, because we were going to be at a hell of a disadvantage in a fight no matter how you sliced it. Unless we were lucky enough to come across a bunch of Horizon Dawn people gathered in a group, but I didn’t think that was going to keep happening for long.

  “Does this skirt have to be so short?" Keia asked.

  I looked at her. More particularly I looked at the way her cloth skirt barely went down below her unmentionables. It was the kind of skirt that showed off plenty of leg while also revealing that nerd culture still hadn’t come very far when it came to depictions of female armor in video games despite women making up more than half of the gamer demographic these days. Still, I couldn’t help but grin and enjoy the show.

  Both because she was so annoyed and because she looked so damn good in her sexy healer outfit.

  "Sorry about that," I said. "I had no idea what that would look like on you when I bought that bit of armor. It was totally different when I modeled it on my character.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. That bit about the armor being different when I had a look wasn’t entirely the truth, I could see what it looked like on male and female character models before hitting the buy button on the Auction House, and I had a sneaking suspicion she had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  "I don't even need my stealth archer abilities with an outfit like this," she said. "I'd be able to distract them by flashing some leg."

  Kris blushed and pointedly kept her eyes pointed at Keia's face, and not down below at the tight outfit that exposed plenty of her stomach and breasts up top while being little more than a miniskirt down below.

  It wasn't exactly the infamous chain mail bikini that’d been the subject of so much debate and navel gazing in fantasy circles and gaming fandom over the years, but it was certainly just as revealing in its own way. It was way more revealing than the last outfit I’d seen her in when she was leveling with Kris.

  “You’re the one who said you wanted to try healing,” I said.

  “I know,” she growled. “I just didn’t realize armor for a healing class wasn’t going to be much better than the skintight leather I was stuck in for the stealth archer!”

  I shrugged, and pointedly looked her up and down to let her know just how much I appreciated her new armor choice. She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me again, but the blush that came to her cheeks told me she maybe didn’t mind my appraisal as much as she was pretending to.

  "Okay," Keia said, pausing and inspecting our surroundings like she was looking for something. What that something was I had no idea, but she seemed to know what she was doing out here so she was navigating for now. "I think we need to go this way if we're going to reach one of the mines that has a crafting facility in it."

  "You know that's interesting," I said.

  "What's interesting?" Keia a
sked.

  "That they have crafting facilities at all in those mines," I said.

  “What’s weird about that?” Kris asked.

  "It just seems odd that they’d put in crafting facilities for a bunch of mobs,” I said. I turned to Keia. “When you were running through those mines with Horizon Dawn did you see any of the goblins crafting? Or were they all mining and the crafting stuff was just there for decoration?”

  "Hard to tell," Keia said. "By the time we got to the forges the goblins were running in terror. Not working on their crafting. Assuming that was ever something they did.”

  "Fair enough," I said, trying not to think too hard about the picture she'd just painted for me.

  Still, it was something to think about. There were a lot of ideas moving around in my mind. Ideas that seemed crazy. I wasn't sure if they were all going to fit together. I was looking at puzzle pieces from a distance and trying to figure out exactly how they might fit together, with no idea if my plan would work.

  The goblins had crafting facilities in the mines they worked. Could that mean the goblins were capable of crafting the same as player characters? It certainly seemed like the kind of realistic touch that would be in a game like Lotus.

  That would be interesting, under certain circumstances, considering some of the skills I was reading up on as I moved through the Spellcrafting skill trees to get an idea of where I wanted to take this skill. There were lots of skills that were still greyed out, for the moment, but they were there, giving me tantalizing glimpses of what the future might hold.

  Like the Mercantilism path which gave me an advantage if I managed to set up a trade empire of Spellcrafted goods. That teased the possibility that a trade empire was something that was possible in this game.

  Of even more interest was the Manufactories skill tree. I could pass off some of my Spellcrafting mojo to other players or NPCs, and I would gain skill points from them using Spellcrafting to manufacture goods. The tooltip was very specific that it applied to both players and NPCs. Sure the skill point raises were fractional compared to what they’d be if I was doing spell infusions myself, but if I got a lot of people I could trust to somehow work on mass producing items…