Metropolis - Goldilocks

Monday, May 11th, 2089 | 2:51pm

Aya was at level fourteen. In one more level, she would need to start thinking about what class she wanted to pursue. From the beginning, she’d wanted the assassin class. It would be the perfect fit for her character, and the appearance of The Lost Poisonous Claives just seemed that much more prophetic. On their way back to town, she reasoned, bargained, pleaded and eventually begged Lulia for the blades, but the warrior just shook her head and said she would need to check the market first.

Still unable to enter Durrenheim, Aya was forced to stay outside of the city walls trading with the traveling merchant until Lulia returned. It took almost half an hour, but it gave Aya an opportunity to catch up with Xavier who came outside the city gates to meet her. The blacksmith gave her a dagger and a sword to show what the crafts made of the pure metal looked like. Aya thought it was beautiful, but she wasn’t a weapon appraiser so she kept a straight face. There was no reason to show Xavier how pleased she was; when people had nothing to work toward, they tended to become a bit lax about things.

She arranged for him to hand over half of their current weapons stock to Fiddler. Ackman would have the shop up in one day, but Aya couldn’t wait that long. Every day counted and at least this way, they could get the word out a little bit more quickly. Once Xavier left to complete her request, Aya was back to working on her notebook; she needed to keep things current. After she’d taken time to outline their route and take notes on the dungeons and the Slithers, Lulia finally returned.

The warrior was upset. The only people willing to buy the blade had been Serving Time and their offer had been nigh on insulting. Aya suspected the guild of blackmailing the rest of the square but didn’t say anything while Lulia recounted her disgust with the ugly kid at their stand. Nodding and trying to keep a straight face, Aya tried not to think about Donovan. Apparently, the kid was really adapting well to his undercover role, but then again, he was her ‘friend’ and she also thought him unpleasant.

It took over ten minutes of bickering back and forth, but eventually Aya managed to convince Lulia and she got the blade. The warrior would only have been able to get a better deal if she’d headed toward a capital city, but having spent a large part of the day with the girl, Aya knew she wasn’t ready to leave the Eastern Plains yet. In the end, the group retained the entire earnings from the hunt and each of them got a new weapon from the Fiddler. All in all, it set Aya back about 12,000 gold. It was a cringe-worthy amount, but Aya considered it a worthwhile investment. That is, until she saw the level 19 minimum on the weapon. Having signed a Contract already, she just hoped she was in the game long enough for the investment to pay off.

Lulia and her friends had come out a little on top with the deal; rare artifacts were hard to sell anywhere since they usually had many particularities that only revealed themselves once ownership of the item was taken. For the blades, it turned out to be their cap level and their special ability. They were poisonous blades, but they only worked when fueled by Slither poison, which needed to be stored inside the hilts of the Claives. Aya sighed, knowing she’d have to go back to the dungeon at some point before she reached level 19 and find a way to collect poison from the lamia mobs.

Caught in thought, Aya was surprised when each member of the warrior group sent her a friend request.

“Your level sucks,” Lulia said petulantly.

Samil rolled his eyes and said, “What she means by that is that you’re a pretty good support.”

The other male warrior, Nadsass, said, “Thanks for the good haul.”

Aya accepted the requests and then they were gone. She wouldn’t really call them her friends, as there was still a level of reserve they displayed around her. It was understandable; she was a convict, after all. The subject had never come up after their initial conversation, but she could see the reticence they showed around her. Over the day, it had decreased slightly, but it was still very noticeable. She wondered if it would ever change, if players would ever trust her, if people in the real world would ever trust her. The thought depressed her, but what was the point of even thinking about it if she failed Suerte and never managed to make it out of jail?

Packing up her things, Aya headed towards the farmstead. There, she hid The Lost Poisonous Claives, as they would be of no use to her until she leveled up to 19. Then she went to tend the birds. She fed them all of the blood on hand, which more than halved her load, then collected all of the eggs and took them inside Ferguson’s house. She’d counted 34 Layhens, but they had only laid 13 eggs in total. It was possible that some of them had nests outside of the coop, but she simply didn’t have the time to chase them down.

Having read Ferguson’s journal, she knew enough about Layhens and their eggs that she would need to do a major overhaul of their breeding. She’d have more work for Ackman as soon as he finished the shop. Aya was still thinking about what exactly she wanted the layout to be, but she was thinking of partitions that would encourage selective breeding. From the eggs she’d tested, she saw that the bonuses were either of strength one or none. Unfortunately she’d found there to be more zeros than ones. In order to bring the Layhens back to their former glory, at least as described by Ferguson, she’d have to separate the two out. She didn’t want to think about what she was going to do with the zeros, but she knew the stock needed to be culled. If everything went as planned, eventually, the ones would start breeding twos, and so on. That’s why she needed the partitions, but for now, she didn’t have the time to invest in the birds. The reward would be great, but not soon enough.

Setting the eggs aside, she went to look for Ackman. He was steadily working away, but quickly running out of materials. The drought had inflated the price of all materials, particularly wood. Ackman told her he was going to be over-budget and late if something didn’t happen at the sawmill. Aya wasn’t too surprised; she’d never seen construction go through on time and on budget, not in the real world and apparently not in Era, either. Taking matters into her own hands, Aya got directions from Ackman and headed over to the sawmill. Luckily, it was on the outskirts of town, outside the city walls.

The door to the workshop was open and there were many people streaming in an out. Ackman really wasn’t lying when he said the price of everything had gone up. By the chatter of some builders standing by, waiting for their orders to come in she worked out that the price of bricks was just too high. The process of brick-making just needed too much water to be feasible in a drought, so everyone had switched over to wood. It made sense, but Aya just wondered what would happen long term. Trees also needed water to grow. She looked around, trying to find someone in charge, she wondered if there was even anything she could do, but then a large man walked up pulling a cart stacked full of logs.

“Got another load!” he yelled into the bustling workshop.

Before Aya could work out where she came from, an old woman was standing before the man directing him and two other workers that had also shown up where to put the wood.

“What’che standin’ round doin’ ther’, boy?” the old woman practically yelled.

Aya flinched, caught off guard by the raspy voice directed at her.

“Er, I was looking for some planks,” she explained. When the woman’s expression remained dark, she added, “Ackman sent me…”

The carpenter’s name immediately softened her expression a bit. She straightened her back, relieved her reputation with the carpenter was enough to undo at least a little of the negative reputation from Durrenheim.

“I told ‘im to wait his turn,” she shouted, apparently her normal speaking volume. “If ‘en when he wants it soon’r. He migh’ as well com’ do som’ chopp’n h’mself.”

As she spoke, another cart of logs was brought in.

“Or mayhap y’er up fer’ it?” the woman shouted when she saw Aya’s interest in the load.

“I think I…” Aya began, but then stopped when she received a reputation increase notification. Reconsidering on the spot, she finished with, “Yea, what do I…”

She wasn’t even able to finish her sentence and before she knew it, she’d been given an ax and agreed to fell wood. If working for the woman improved her reputation and sped up the supply of planks for Ackman, she wasn’t going to turn it down. Aya needed to improve her reputation to get back into Durrenheim and if she was able to do it while furthering her own goals, it was killing two birds with one stone, three including the strength stats she was about to gain from chopping wood.

Having just leveled up to fourteen, getting stats was once again a lot easier than it had been in quite a while. All she had to do at first was pick up the ax and swing it at one of the marked-off trees in the forest behind Old Mam Lulo’s workshop. Not all of the trees were marked, but the ones that were, weren’t all marked the same. Aya soon realized her mistake when, five minutes later, she was still hacking away at the same big tree she’d chosen. Panting, she took a moment to use her Scribe skill and recover her breath before she chose another, smaller, tree to try.

More careful about her approach, she tried aiming for a particular spot before swinging the ax at it. About twenty swings later, she got an aim stat point, but the progress was still marginal. Sweating from the hot weather and exertion, she propped herself on the ax and looked around to see if she could spot another player. She’d been hearing other axes throughout the woods, so she knew she wasn’t alone, but now it looked like it was time for her to go get some pointers.

Following the sound to the nearest player, she watched as a male archer hacked at a medium-sized tree. Not even a minute later, she knew it would be useless to try to imitate him. He was barely any better than her and was relying solely on brute strength, something that wasn’t an option for her. A couple trees over was a female shaman of some kind; she had the religious Contract Rune tattoo on her forehead. Aya had read up on it in her Contract research . The rune strengthened the gatekeeper bond, but in turn, also required more energy to maintain. The woman was a lot more methodical in her ax-work and Aya was soon taking notes on it. She took out her notebook and sketched out a few moments of the swing. It wasn’t really necessary, but it helped her visualize the movement.

Having conducted enough research, she headed back to her spot and got back to work. The first few swings were awkward as she tried hard to mimic someone else’s movements. She had to keep consulting her sketches, but five or so minutes later, she was starting to get the hang of it. Eventually, she felt it click, and her body automatically followed the motions she wanted it to. She felled her first and then her second tree as she amassed more and more strength and aim stats. She was pouring sweat, but the pure physical exercise actually felt good. Aya wondered if the game pumped artificial endorphins into her body or if the act of fooling her mind made her body do it by itself.

Lost in thought, it took her a while for her to realize she’d been joined in her small section of the woods. Only when a massive tree fell right beside her did she jump aside to notice the kid who’d felled it.

“WHOOO—” he shouted. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to… Kinda got carried away. First tree I ever cut!”

“… Ahuh,” Aya said, not amused. The kid looked like he was ten years old, but so did she. It wasn’t enough reason to cut him slack for idiotic behavior.

Picking up her things, she was getting ready to head to a different area of the woods when the kid walked up and said, “Don’t leave! I’m sorry. Honest!”

He crossed his heart as he said the last word and Aya really looked at him for the first time. The boy was barely taller than her, with bright blue eyes and strikingly blond hair. Freckles riddled his face, only adding to his innocent and angelic facade. She would have thought the appearance completely artificial, much like her own, if not for the way he’d crossed his heart. The motion was so childishly pure that she actually thought he was a kid.

“…Ok,” she agreed when his pleading puppy eyes didn’t falter. “I’ll stay.”

“Yay!” he said, quite literally jumping into the air.

Aya expected him to say something else, but the kid just went back to his corner and started kicking at a tree. For a moment she thought he was deranged, but then she noticed the sheer force of his kicks. They thudded loudly against the trunk and if she wasn’t imagining it, a bluish glow surrounded his foot every time it landed on the tree. The wood at the base was splintering more and more with each kick and less than five blows later, the trunk crashed to the ground.

“YEEEEHAAAAW!” the boy screamed, beaming proudly at her.

Aya’s jaw was hanging loose. It was impossible not to be impressed and his reaction confirmed that the kid was, in fact, a kid. He got back to chopping other really big trees, which made Aya feel slightly inadequate as she slowly chopped away at the smaller and medium trees. They worked in silence for a good couple hours.

“ALRIIIIIGHHHT!!!”

… With the exception of a few exclamations of joy.

Aya worked diligently, splitting her time between chopping wood and writing Contracts. Every half hour or so, a man with a cart would show up and pick up the wood that had been chopped. She received a couple gold for each fallen tree. It was disgusting to see the amount the kid was raking in with his outlandish kicking abilities, but she couldn’t fault the angelic face for anything. The bigger trees gave a lot more money and he was felling them a lot more often than she was.

She thought she might as well stay on for the rest of the day. The aim stat points she was getting were great, and there was no chance of getting any EXP from fallen trees. There was also an added advantage of the reputation points she was getting from the work. Helping Old Mam Lulo increased their relationship, and to a lesser degree, her reputation with Durrenheim. If she could bring it up enough, she might be able to get back into town. When it was starting to look like she really was going to stay, she got a party invite out of the blue.

Reading it over, she was suspicious. Aya had never heard of any of the players in the group before and was about to turn it down when she got a PM.

[We read Lulia’s review on the forum and we’re looking for someone to help us clear the Serpent Dungeon… She said you write your own Contracts and we’d be willing to negotiate…]

Surprised, Aya opened the forums and searched for herself, and true enough, there it was, Lulia’s glowing review. It was strange to see such words of praise from the girl who’d barely talked to her in all the hours of their dungeon crawl. She smirked, considered the offer and agreed. It was time to see if the hours of aim training had any effect whatsoever on her combat skills. She couldn’t wait to try out Bleed with better aim.