Morning of the 30th day ingame day found me and the rest of the expedition logging into the game back at the inn. We had arrived a few hours after sundown, meaning we had once again been late for our physical training session. Not something Kira seemed to be about to forgive any time soon.

The trip had been a good one. Just in pure coin we had earned almost eighteen thousand credits, and that was not counting the loot that the others were going to sell. We should end at around twenty thousand with that sold. While I could use some zombie brains and livers and so on, I decided it was better to sell it all, because Blackport did not have a very large selection of flora. If I wanted to use those items I would have to import most of the plants I would need and grow it myself, and that was not something I had the time to do at the moment. Not even with my Horticulture at level 3.

I kept the animated bones though, since I had big plans for those. Or rather small plans, since I was going to grind them to bone meal.

While waiting for the others to log in, I studied my skills. I would need to start planning which skills to throw my focus at, now that I did not need to do everything myself, I could focus on a select few properly.

Name

Tier

Level

XP

Observe

Beginner

3

3259/4000

Lesser Transmutation

Beginner

2

536/3000

Greater Transmutation

Beginner

4 (+1)

362/5000

Imbue

Beginner

6 (+2)

8299/9000

Message

Beginner

2

142/3000

Meditation

Beginner

10 (+2)

7184/13000

Butchery

Beginner

20 (+7)

1180/-

Gem Cutting

Beginner

4 (+1)

3151/5000

Alchemy

Beginner

6

5876/7000

Cooking

Beginner

17 (+3)

16219/18000

Herbalism

Beginner

14 (+1)

2566/15000

Mining

Beginner

1

326/2000

Runesmithing

Beginner

4

0/5000

Mentor

Beginner

2

1582/3000

Horticulture

Beginner

3 (+2)

300/4000

Brewing

Beginner

4 (+1)

4122/5000

Harvest

Beginner

2 (+2)

487/3000

Unassigned XP: 313

Upgrade Points: 6

Cooking would slowly get closer to the level 20 threshold of the Beginner tier on its own, while Herbalism and Meditation would slowly but steadily get there. Butchery had already reached the threshold, and I would need to pay a visit to the temple to upgrade it to Apprentice tier.

I had decided to let Mia go on the subsequent dungeon runs, simply because I wanted to focus on Butchery when I could get my hands on carcasses that actually gave me XP. Not that they dropped anything I could use or save, except for the meat and hide. However, the XP was simply too good to pass up.

I had also decided to take Harvest and filled my empty skill slot, instead of letting Mia take it like I had originally planned. It was a skill I would get to use a lot, unlike some of my other skills. Mining, Observe and Message was the biggest slot wasters, but they were good skills to have, I just did not get to use them as much as I had planned. However, then again I had not planned on having Nise join us and taking over the sales clerk position.

Runesmithing was another slot waster at the moment, but I hoped that the three days in town, and three ancient outpost runs, would change that. With my lowered reputation tier thresholds, another three runs should bring me enough reputation to become Friendly with Ilat, and hopefully that was enough to get him to teach me some runes.

“Hey Damian,” Kira said as she entered the inn. From where I was not entirely sure, but she did not come down the stairs, and as far as I knew, she had not logged in before me.

“Hey.”

“So, you’ve not given us a final tally on how the trip went,” she said, as Hei, the Phils and some of the others filed into the inn from outside as well.

“Well, it was a pretty good success, we’re going to be staying for three or four days, and then we need to head out for another longer trip,” I said while Ed’s party and Mia joined us. They came from upstairs where I expected them to be. The rest of the guild had come in from outside.

“Good,” Philmore said. “But first we’ve a surprise for all of you.”

“What is it?” Ed asked suspiciously.

“You’ll have to see,” Kira said with a big grin and started walking outside. Looking around I could see everyone but me, Ed’s party and Mia had an idea about what was going on. The rest of us were signalling confusion as to what was going on. Shrugging to each other, we followed them. After a short while, it was pretty soon obvious where they were leading us. They were heading to the poor section of the town and the site of our coming guild hall, or more precisely, house.

So it was not much of a surprise when we arrived at our guild house, but what was a surprise was how close to finished it was. As far as I could see, it was done. Not something that should have been possible in so few days. I had expected at least another week. However, I knew it was not finished, because I had not received any prompts about it.

“We just need to affix the front doors, and we’re done,” Philmore said proudly, despite him being reluctant to build the house in the first place. He stopped in the opening of the missing door, turned around and looked expectantly at us, for our reaction.

“How?” I asked, dumbfounded, while gawking at the house.

“We promised to provide wood and help repair the boats of some guys who helped us,” Phil said as he walked over to his father. “Give us two minutes, and the house is done.”

While they were putting up the double doors, I turned to Kira, “So this is where you slept?”

“Yeah, though the healing rate is not quite as good as the Inn,” she said.

Hei added, “At least it doesn’t cost anything.”

“I’ve been focused on the trip and getting my level raised. Any news about the Bears, Shadowguards or Dusts?” I asked.

“Well, the Bears disbanded. Even Iron went for a reroll as far as we can tell,” Hei answered. “The Dusts is doing their thing, though they lowered their buying prices while raising their selling prices while you were gone.”

“Yeah, been a lot of grumbling about that,” Nise said. “A lot of people asked if we wanted to buy their rabbits, but we had to turn them down, Elize has been struggling to find a couple of hours each day to butcher the rabbits they have been hunting.”

“And we’ve managed to gank the four Shadowguards a couple of times, they’ve received their Judgement,” Kira said with a big smile. “They tried going after our newbies a few times, but we managed to dissuade them. They haven’t done anything for the last couple of days but grinding.”

“Good. That hopefully means we can focus on expanding the guild and settle down for the long grind,” I said, feeling relieved by their report.

“All depends on what orders they’re getting,” Hei said. “I’m worried about them levelling. With the Guard’s average level around twenty, and players starting to exceed that, the town isn’t going to be secure that much longer.”

“It might sound like we’re outlevelling the NPCs soon, and we will. However, that’s only on the surface,” I reassured him. “The NPCs only starts with five skill slots, not ten like we do, and they can’t exceed their skill slots. They also don’t need to earn upgrade points to get to the next tier, but they can’t get higher than Grand Master. Also for each level they get twenty attribute points, not five.”

“So numerical we might be superior, but quality they’re far superior,” Kira summarized.

I gave a nod and was about to answer, when I was interrupted by a prompt.

Blue Lotus’ Guild House

Unassigned Rooms

6

First Floor

30 CPs

Bunkroom

95 CPs

Bunkroom

105 CPs

Hidden Vault

50 CPs

Ground Floor

Kitchen

150 CPs

Entry Hall

55 CPs

Great Hall

90 CPs

30 CPs

50 CPs

60 CPs

Basement

80 CPs

45 CPs

There were a lot of information to take in. On the first floor they had already taken the two large rooms and turned them into bunkrooms. The beds had not been of the best quality it seemed from the number of Crafting Points, meaning that the Phils had probably made them, but that was okay.

The Hidden Vault had already been decided on beforehand, because of the blueprint. The other small room on the first floor was unassigned, and there were no suggestions, which meant that there were no furniture in it.

Each room had their own number of crafting points, which was dependent on the materials made to make it and furnish it, and also the skill and luck of the craftsman. We could easily rearrange the rooms by moving the furniture, except for the Entry Hall and Hidden Vault, because they were locked down by the blueprint.

“So, what do you think?” Phil asked, breaking me out of my reverie.

“Sorry, was busy looking at the house’s configuration,” I said. “But it looks great, good work.”

“It’s not great, just the best we can do at this time,” Philmore grumbled.

“Trust me, it’s better than most other guild will have, without wasting a lot of money.”

Phil looked down, “About that. I still had permission to withdraw funds. We’ve all been contributing over the last few days, but decided to spend some coins on things for the bunkroom, like pillows, blankets etcetera. We also furnished the kitchen with a good wooden oven slash stove combo. We’ve only spent around five platinum, most of it donated by us and Nise.”

“It’s okay, we would have needed to spend coin anyway, and still need to spend more.”

Robin asked impatiently, “Are you the only one that can see the configuration?”

“No, give me a moment,” I said as I mentally ordered a few changes to the settings, which would allow the others to view and suggest changes, but not permanently alter it. I was still the only one that could make the changes. Not because I did not trust them, but messing around with an unfamiliar system, you could easily make a mistake, and once a room had been assigned a function it could not be changed for a month.

“I’m getting a headache looking at this,” Blaze muttered, and wandered into the house instead.

“What are we going to use the different rooms for?” Mia asked.

“The small room on the first floor should be Damian’s love shack,” Marion teased.

“Funny,” I said dryly.

Ed said, “No she’s right. The guild leader should have his own bedroom. The rest of us can share a bunkroom or two for now. It’s not like we’re sleeping in the game.”

“Neither am I, so it’s crazy to turn a room into my personal bedroom,” I protested.

“Then make it a study or something,” Robin countered.

“But—”

“No buts, it’s a perception thing. You’re not a warrior, so we can’t deck you out in the finest gear, but a guild leader needs to have some prestige,” Ed interrupted me. “So we do the next best thing, making sure you’ve a room for yourself, something that sets you apart from the rest of us.”

“I—”

“No discussion, the room on the first floor is Damian’s,” Kira said. “Can I take the large room in the basement and turn into a dojo?”

“No,” I said quickly. All of them turned to look at me, clearly wanting an explanation. “The large room in the basement will be for growing moss, and other plants that need little to no sunlight. The medium one will be an alchemy lab.”

“Okay,” Kira said with a shrug. “How about the medium room on the ground floor?”

“Storage and pantry,” I said with an apologetic smile.

“Well that just leave two small rooms,” she said with a frown. “Not large enough for a dojo.”

“Sorry, not this time,” I said and patted her on the shoulder.

“Oh well, can’t get everything I guess. But what should we do with the last two rooms?”

“I thought they make a study for each of the party leaders, you and Ed. Had also planned on making the room on the first floor a study for Philmore. He’s going to need a place for keeping blueprints etcetera, when he starts building boats and ships. I don’t want to discuss this. It’s the way I planned it when I bought the blueprint.”

Ed let out a rumbling sigh, “Fine, no study for you then. Not this time.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad we finally see eye to eye on that. I might be the guild leader, but without the rest of you, I would not be able to achieve what we’ve achieved so far. Now, I’ve a lot of work to do, and so do all of you. Ed’s party is the only one running the ancient outpost with me today.”

I changed a few settings, allowing each of them to choose the benefits of their own study, and then started making the changes to the configuration as we had discussed. I also requested some tables, shelves and so on for the empty rooms in the basement as well as the storage room on the ground floor.

First things first, was a name for the house: Lotus Hall. I then locked down the room designations.

Blue Lotus’ Guild House

Lotus Hall

Unassigned Rooms

0

First Floor

Philsmore’s Study

30 CPs

Bunkroom

95 CPs

Bunkroom

105 CPs

Hidden Vault

50 CPs

Ground Floor

Kitchen

120 CPs

Entry Hall

55 CPs

Great Hall

90 CPs

Kira’s Study

30 CPs

Ed’s Study

50 CPs

Storage Room

60 CPs

Basement

Growing Room

80 CPs

Alchemy Labs

45 CPs

There were only two rooms that was fully furnished, so I had to be content with choosing benefits for the bunkrooms. There were not a lot of benefits that could be found for communal sleeping quarters, so I ended up boosting Wound and Fatigue Recovery with two points per hour, meaning it was only one point behind the communal rooms at the Inn.

The Kitchen was almost fully furnished as well, but I wanted a few shelves and more tables in there, since it was only the oven and a couple of tables. There also needed to be an open firepit, which would allow me to use a large cauldron or spit to cook. The oven they had found was of higher quality than I expected, above average quality to be precise, meaning that it added 50 points to the room. I would have to ask at some point where they got their hands on that for so little coin.

With that out of the way, I decided to head to the temple. I had a lot of things to accomplish before it was time to run the ancient outpost.