April 10, 2039

Molly raised an eyebrow as she looked at Aaron. “Are you thinking about taking up leatherworking? Is this an application or are you competition?”

“Neither really. Leather is great, but most tank classes wear plate. I’ve got my mind made up for blacksmithing. I think that Runic Initiation would work great with that too. Does it work with weapons as well?

“Alright. Just know that you are looking at two difficult and expensive trade skills. Each rune is a permanent bonus to something you make, but it costs money for every attempt. If you fail, it puts a damaged debuff on the item until you repair it. Good thing though, if you have blacksmithing, you should be able to repair metal items.”

Molly seemed to be enjoying this deal more and more as she kept going. “Lexen, you have brought me two customers. I will teach you two runes. Keep in mind, I know defensive and some utility runes. Do you know what runes you want?”

Aaron thought for a few moments as he leaned against one of the chairs. “I believe so. Do you have strength and endurance?”

Molly nodded. “I don’t get much call for strength, but I made sure to get all the basic stats. Come on over here and I’ll show you how they work.”

She reached down into a bin and pulled out two irregular pieces of leather about the size of Aaron’s palm. Sitting them down on her table, she showed Aaron a chisel with a fine edge. “You need to carve the runes into your creations right away. To be effective, they need to be done within thirty minutes of when the item is created.” She started to carve a complicated series of lines and circles into the first piece of leather. “Like I said, this gets expensive. After you carve the rune, you crush a gemstone on the rune. The more valuable the gemstone and higher quality the item that it was carved into, the more powerful the effect. Get some money together so you can buy some gemstones. Come back and I’ll help you practice those. Bring another customer or two with you too! Then, I will teach you a few more runes.”

Marie gave Aaron a hug from behind. “I’m headed upstairs to get dinner together. Don’t stay on too much longer.” Reaching back Aaron gave her a squeeze. “I’ll be up in about 30 minutes. I’m going to close up with these two. Then, I’ll turn in those two quests and done. Love you.”

Aaron focused back on Mack and Molly and found them both staring at him. Mack tapped his ear where the mute button would be on Aaron’s helmet. “Love you too bro. Sounds like your playtime is up. Go wrap up those quests and get upstairs before Marie gets too creative with dinner.”

Molly had walked over to a shelf and pulled a pair of leather pants out of a bin. She walked over and tossed them to Aaron. The pants looked like regular pants but made of the same grey leather that he now recognized as the local rats. The similarities ended when he opened the pants.

While the front of the pants differed very little, the back was a different story. The legs opened at the top into empty space. There was a belt that went across the waist, but the entire seat of the pants were missing. Aaron looked up at Molly in confusion.

“Your tail.” She let the word drag out for a few moments. “Per our agreement, you can borrow the pants and chest piece until you get replacements. Come back with pelts and gemstones or more customers.” She put an emphasis on the word borrow.

“Be on Wednesday after work. I’ll meet you over here and we’ll catch a ride over to Makazi. I’ll introduce you to Brok and get you working!”

Aaron equipped the pants. Pulling the camera out to a third person view he rotated it around. His Gold Dragonkin was wearing grey leather pants and a leather chest piece and that was about it. The shield was on his back, since he was not in a combat area. He pulled the camera back to first person perspective and brought up the stats on the pants.

Low quality leather greaves: 8 armor. +2 Dexterity +1 Wisdom

“On that note, I need to get going. Aunt Molly, thank you and your family for everything. Mack, a pleasure as always.” Aaron shook Molly’s hand and ran out the door towards the city.

He passed a few more Dragonkin fighting the bugs wearing the rough fabric clothes that Aaron missed. He ran back into the city and found his way back to the hatchery.

After going down the stairs and retraining his first steps in Arella Everlasting. Walking down the stairs, Aaron walked back into the first room.

The same elder Silver Dragonkin stood in the chamber. Aaron realized with a sense of guilt that he never even glanced at the Dragonkin’s name, let alone talked to him.

He was named Elder Tavonis. Not sure exactly what to do, Aaron walked in front of the NPC. “Thank you for all of the training Elder.”

Elder Tavonis nodded his head in acknowledgment. “You have worked hard to earn your respect Lexen. Before you go into the world, please take these clothes. They will help you in your early days of training. A warrior should also take off his armor when the need arises. You should also have a set of clothes to wear as your armor is being repaired.”

Aaron received a green shirt and a dark grey kilt similar to the ones that the brothers had been wearing. Thanking Elder Tavonis, Aaron went back up the steps and turned towards the Steelscale barracks.

A short walk later and he was at the barracks. It still has the group of warriors bustling around. There were some that were clearly other players. They would stand completely still for a few moments before breaking off in a direction at a full run. Most were Dragonkin, but there were a few Humans and an Elf in the crowd.

Aaron walked around the other players and into the barracks. Turning to the left, he walked into their office. Commander Harvin was standing next to the wall inspecting a map of the valley. Sub-commander Avel looked up from his stack of papers. Avel clapped his hands together causing Harvin to turn and look at him.

“Look Harvin! Our Golden hatchling has returned. You owe me five silver.” With a sigh, Commander Harvin tossed a few coins towards Avel. “It took you long enough. I figured that you were beetle chow. Did you manage to hunt down the meat for Chef?”

Aaron pulled the beetle and dragonfly meat out of his inventory. The beetle meat looked similar to crab meat and the dragonfly looked like tenderloin. Avel walked over to a shelf and pulled out a rectangular serving tray and allowed Aaron to place the different meats on it.

Aaron set the two stacks of meat on the tray. He couldn’t help but smile as they appeared in two nice even rows of five of each type. Avel walked out to the door and called for an aide. A short, thin Bronze Dragonkin ran over. After a few words, the young Dragonkin was carrying the tray towards the mess hall.

Commander Harvin reached in a crate in the corner and pulled out two steel bracers. He walked over and handed them to Aaron. “These are the Recruit’s Steelscale bracers. They will offer you some more protection than just the clothes on your back. This is a good first step for you. Whenever you come across anymore meat that you don’t use yourself, bring it to the chef. He will make sure you are rewarded for your efforts. Come back to me when you are ready for more dangerous prey.” A notification popped up in front of Aaron.

Quest completed: Feeding the brood. You have received armor as compensation.

Recruit’s Steelscale bracers: 2 armor. +1 strength. +1 constitution.

Suddenly a loud gong sounded right behind him. Aaron stumbled forward and swung around to see what that was. He only saw a guard walking back deeper inside the barracks.

Calming down, Aaron noticed a blinking icon of a gong in front of a blue arrow pointing upwards. Moving the down arrow on his right control stick, he opened the icon.

Level up! Congratulations! You are now level 2. You have two ability points to distribute.

Aaron brought up his character page and looked at his statistics. Oddly enough, his current gear bonuses made a pretty good rogue or ranger. To bad he was going for a warrior. Figuring that he couldn’t go wrong with this strategy, he added one to strength and one to constitution.

This brought both his strength and his constitution up to 9. Aaron still hadn’t decided if he would stay with warrior or try out the arcane knight. Either way, more hit points and being able to hit harder would not be wasted. While he was in his character page, Aaron saw the xp bar now read 5/2,500. The xp reward from the quest put him just over.

Aaron pulled out the spider silks and gave them to Sub-Commander Avel. The Silver Dragonkin took the pile of silk and nodded. “These will go a long way to help my wife make the cloaks that she has been working on. Here, take one of the old cloaks that she made earlier.”

Faded silk cloak: 2 armor. +10 hit points

Aaron equipped the new pieces of armor. He nodded in contentment at a rather successful first day at the game and pushd the log out button. A timer from 30 counted down and the screen faded to black. Aaron pulled off the helmet and set it down onto the desk. He plugged the helmet and the control sticks onto their charger cradles.

Walking upstairs, Aaron suddenly remembered that he had all the rat meat for the next quest. He rocked on the last step for a moment thinking about going back downstairs to get and finish that quest.

Marie looked at him hesitating at the top of the stairs and raised her eyebrows. With a shrug, Aaron told her about the last quest. Marie smiled. “Don’t worry. You can get that one on Wednesday. In the meantime, I could use some help with the potatoes.”

Opening up the kitchen pantry, Aaron pulled out a bag of potatoes. He opened them up and pulled out six potatoes. As he washed them, he asked Marie over his shoulder. “Isn’t Val taking a course on computer design this year? I found out that AE has a video function. I bet she could use some of that footage for something.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to her about it. If she’s interested, I’ll have her go through the footage again and see if there is anything that she can use.” She put the chicken that she had been prepping into the crockpot. “I’m glad you enjoyed it though. You could use a way to unwind from work other than pacing around here looking for something to do.”