by Tom Larcombe
The sword and buckler fighter used that opportunity to strike at Geirvaldr's back. The strike whooshed through the air as Geirvaldr dropped flat, rolling onto his back as the other fighter recovered from his strike. When the return strike came from the sword, Geirvaldr was ready for it, parrying with his spear and driving the sword towards the ground. He slipped the spear up the length of the blade and with a snap, the leather clad blade raced towards the man's chest.
Barely in time, the buckler was interposed, catching the spear blade, but leaving the sword and buckler fighter staggering from the force of the impact. Geirvaldr regained his feet as the man recovered from the strike, and moments later the spear was tapping at the chest of the sword and buckler fighter who hadn't recovered quickly enough to parry or block.
Geirvaldr stepped back and looked at the three men with a smile.
“Now will you believe my name and my skill?” he asked.
He got a bunch of chagrined nods before the sword and buckler fighter spoke up.
“Hey, I got a point in swords for that? Can you train your weapon skills up like this? I thought it was only by fighting.”
“You need the weapons to be safed for training this way,” Geirvaldr said. “I thought you knew since you were willing enough to put them on your weapons.”
“No, I don't think any of us knew that,” Eddie said. “We'll have to find out how to make more of these safety covers and then people can train some of their weapon skills up also.”
“I knew you could improve your bow skill on a range,” one of the observers said, “but only up to about a ten in the skill.”
“Correct,” Geirvaldr said. “After a point the only way to raise them more is through combat. But up to that point, you can train and receive advancement for your efforts.”
He gestured towards the three fighters he'd just fought.
“Well done. Allow me to buy you all a mead.”
~ ~ ~
Eddie was amazed that Geirvaldr seemed not even out of breath after the fight. He and the other fighters filed back into the inn and were soon drinking together.
Eddie himself didn't have any plans for the afternoon, so he made some.
“Tiana, how'd you like to take a boat ride?” he asked.
“Test out your new boat?”
“Yes, plus see if there's good fishing in the lake. If there is, I may find someone with the fishing skill and set them up with the boat and some nets. Half their catch for me, the other half for them and they can eat it, give it away, or sell it in the marketplace I'm having Griff build. Whichever they like is fine by me.”
“A marketplace? This is the first you mentioned about definitely doing that to me,” Tiana said.
“Oh, I realized that all the prices at the trading post seem to be geared towards adventurers, not NPCs. They could never afford anything there and the swap meet is mostly adventuring stuff. So I'm trying to make a place where the NPCs can buy or barter for whatever the other NPCs can make, grow, or catch.”
“It's a good idea, I'm just surprised you hadn't mentioned it to me,” she said.
“It was a spur of the moment thing when I realized I was overstaffing the house builders. So I set Griff to building some merchant stalls like my old food stand. Just a bunch of them all in the same little area near the crossroads. I thought it should be fairly convenient for everyone involved that way. I told Griff he could bring planks down from my farm for it since Osmond and Brandr are still collecting their extra coppers for felling trees and making planks.”
“Oh, well, I'd love to take a boat ride with you, even if you do have an ulterior motive for it.”
The two of them headed out from the inn and towards the lake. When they got close they could see that Paul had gotten right on building Becky's bridge. He had half of it done already, plus the small dock Eddie had asked him to add to the shore on this side. Becky was hauling and fetching for her dad, carrying plank after plank out across the bridge.
Eddie and Tiana waved greetings then he dug around for some bait while she climbed into the boat. He followed once he had a few worms. Lucky, seeing they were boarding the boat, ran off along the shore. From the direction she took, Eddie thought she might be headed for Rat Woods to do some more hunting.
Fishing spear in hand Eddie directed the boat out into the middle of the lake. Then he set the spear down and pulled his rod out from his inventory. Tiana just leaned against the side of the boat, her lower body sprawled across the bottom, and stared at the sky.
The bait he'd gathered before boarding the boat helped him catch several fish in rapid succession. They were of a different type than he found in the pond, so he'd have to try cooking some to see if they tasted good or not. Those several catches also netted him a welcome system notification.
You have upgraded the skill Fishing to (4). Too much time on your hands? Maybe we can fix that for you.
“Looks like fishing in the lake can be a thing,” Eddie said after exhausting his worms. “I'm guessing the game will respawn the fish here like I'm pretty sure it does in the pond behind the inn.”
“Lucky does appear to never run out of fish in that pond,” Tiana said.
Eddie nodded.
“Tell me about it. I never should've complained about her licking me when she had fish breath. Now she does it every chance she gets.”
Tiana laughed lightly and caught his eye.
“She does like to tease you and play with you, a lot like someone else you know. We're even happier when you play with us too.”
Eddie blushed and proceeded to put his fishing pole away in his inventory. He drew out three arrow shafts, arrow heads, and the materials to finish the arrows in its place.
“What are you doing there?”
“I know I told you about this one. The new Conjunction I worked out.”
“Oh, those shocking arrows?”
“I'm calling them Arcing arrows, but yeah.”
“It'll be interesting to see how well they do in combat,” she said.
“Well, I'll find out tomorrow when we head to the mine. The Evaluate says they should work pretty well. Even better if I manage to raise my Arc spell higher.”
“I like this, just talking with you and not really doing a lot else. Even if you aren't being as lazy as I am, it's still nice.”
“Maybe we can manage it more if things ever calm down some.”
“Charles is right though, things never seem to stay calm around you, at least not while you're working those quests.”
Eddie thought for a moment.
“You're okay with that, right? I mean, I can stop working on them, at least for a while, if you like. I've just been focusing on them because I'm always nervous someone is doing the same elsewhere, coming along behind me and going to pass me up.”
“I thought you didn't care about being well known and all that?”
“I do and I don't. I mean, it's just a really nice feeling being first on things like this. Remember when we finished the temple?”
She nodded.
“I do understand, and I don't want you to stop. I'm just hoping we can have some time to just spend together without worrying about anything else at some point here.”
“And on that note, we do have something else to do today. It's Opron's last day, he's out at midnight tonight, and he said he wants to spend it just drinking. I thought maybe we could make something special in the kitchen for him. I mean, cakes are out since there's no sugar yet, but there's a lot of other things we can do.”
“Just a little more time out here?” Tiana asked.
“Sure, we can probably spend another half hour or more just lazing about, and now that I've finished these arrows, I don't have anything else to do right now either. There room down on the bottom of the boat for me too?”
~ ~ ~
Chapter Ten
A grin spread across Freyja's face.
Two can play at that game, she thought as she watched Cooper try to remove the new pro
perties she'd bestowed on Ferring.
Simple enough to add a new database that, like their own, does not allow everyone access. This way I can adjust those players in their hidden SF database as I like and they are unable to change my own alterations.
Freyja knew the authorized code of Light Online inside and out. All the billions of lines of code were simply like an extension of her own mind. So adding a new database with permissions limited to only herself had been child's play.
She watched as Ferring stalked about the clearing, trying to cast spells over and over. In order to help with the distraction he was going to cause among his compatriots, she ensured that every time he successfully cast a spell he remembered more of the magic he'd known while in the body of the ancient goblin shaman.
That should keep him trying to successfully cast those spells over and over. His magic isn't of a level to support some of those spells so he'll need to gain levels to use them and if he goes to do that, it will cause even more disruption in the plans he's supposed to participate in. Now to other things, although I'll leave one of my falcons in the forest nearby so I can visually review their actions later on. I may need to adjust my plan as it unfolds, she thought.
As she turned her attention back to the Meadowlands, her grin grew wider.
So, Eddie and his friends are rediscovering many of the Meadowlands lost secrets. He and Tiana have also brought me many new followers among the existing and new inhabitants. Should he continue to strengthen the Meadowlands as he has been, I shall have a bastion of power in the world once more.
She moved her attention, searching for something in particular.
There he is, she thought as she discovered Odin in the body he used for wandering the world, As of yet he has not disrupted anything, nor destroyed anything. Has he moderated his behavior somehow? I never thought it would be possible. Although, I think that party he's currently participating in might be a bit more raucous than it would've been without him. Leave it to Odin to initiate drinking games with the world-traveling mortals.
The last was thought with a mental shake of her head, but she wasn't going to interfere. Strife between her and Odin could only damage her plans and so far he wasn't doing anything nearly bad enough to require her intervention.
~ ~ ~
The party was in full swing. Geirvaldr had taken one look at Bjorn when the large man walked into the inn and immediately challenged him to a drinking match. So far, the two had each had enough alcohol to lay out Eddie's entire party and neither one was showing the slightest sign of being drunk. Several other adventurers had seen the match starting and tried to keep up, all three of them were now dead drunk. Two of them had passed out and the third, while still conscious, was so drunk he couldn't even lift his mug any more.
Opron himself wasn't engaging in that degree of drinking. He was nursing a mug of ale, going through about one every half hour. It was enough to keep him pleasantly drunk, slowly getting more and more drunk, but not enough that he was going to pass out. He was simply watching the inn, laughing with all the others as the adventurers trying to keep up with Geirvaldr and Bjorn slowly fell to the wayside while the two main drinkers simply kept drinking.
Eddie had limited himself as well. He was only keeping pace with Opron, feeling the drinks, but not being incapacitated by them. Karl had started trying to keep pace with Bjorn and Geirvaldr, but was, surprisingly, wise enough to stop after the first three horns of mead were downed in as many minutes. Now he was nursing an ale, obviously inebriated, but not passing out drunk.
Eddie had been surprised. As he'd been sitting and chatting with Opron, almost all of the adventurers in the inn had come up and wished the dwarf well. Evidently Opron had taken Eddie's advice and listened to all their game related gripes, and most of them had come to think of the dwarf as a friend due to it. As Opron had said when Eddie asked.
“Everyone likes someone to listen to their complaints, even if they don't realize the person they're complaining to might be able to do something about it. But when I asked them how they'd change things to fix their complaints, I started making friends. Even more than listening to complaints, asking someone for their opinion makes them feel good. And who doesn't like to feel good?”
Eddie had just shaken his head and extended his own well-wishes to Opron.
The dwarf was keeping an eye on the clock in his panels, and when it approached midnight he climbed up on the table, with an apologetic nod to Eddie.
“Sorry, I'm too short otherwise,” was the comment he made as he clambered onto the chair and then the table.
Opron cleared his throat loudly.
“Sorry to interrupt your drinking game,” he said, directing his first comments to Geirvaldr and Bjorn, “but my time is limited. As most of you know, I only had thirty days of vacation to use to come into the game and play at smithing. Those days are just about up now, as a matter of fact, I've got just under five minutes to go. I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed my time in here immensely and, amazingly enough, made lots of new friends. Should I get a chance to do so, I'll come back to play here more at a later date. In the meanwhile I just wanted to say goodbye to all my new friends and wish you well in your adventures.”
There was a general roar of a reply and the inn, almost as one, raised their mugs to toast Opron. Eddie just smiled at the reaction and raised his own mug as well.
I guess he's that type, kind of like me, Eddie thought. He has a hard time putting himself out there and talking to people, but once he does he makes friends quickly. I think I'm going to miss him after he's out of the game and I don't see him nearly as often.
Eddie quickly grabbed Opron a fresh drink and handed it to him.
“One more for the road,” he said, then raised his mug and drained it. Opron followed suit, slamming his mug on the table as soon as he'd drained it. He must've still been watching his clock, because he raised a hand and waved farewell before the avatar of the dwarfish smith shimmered briefly and disappeared.
~ ~ ~
Eddie was late getting out of bed the next morning. Tiana was still sleeping beside him so he took the opportunity to bring her a tray again. The smell of coffee and fresh bread was enough to get her stirring once he set the tray beside her.
Alright, we'll get to the mine later on today if Charles' people are ready also. For now, I need to solidify my plans. I keep getting caught up in all these smaller quests, but I need to keep the big picture in mind, he thought. What did I need for those again?
Help developmental issues, he thought.
Developmental Issues IV:
This quest is all about developing: The Meadowlands.
To complete part IV of Developmental Issues you must build one of the following buildings and open it to the public. In addition you must construct a town hall for the area.
Leatherworker
General Store
Tavern
Rewards:
+ 10000 Experience
+ 500 Gold Pieces
Increased reputation and renown with inhabitants of: The Meadowlands
The Mayoral position of: The Meadowlands, offered to you.
Good, Eddie thought, Bjorn said he was going to be bringing back a leather worker and tanner, didn't he? So all I'll need to do for that part is to get a tannery and a building for the leather worker. Probably I only need the leather worker building for the quest, but it's not going to be all that useful without a source of leather, so I'll need both eventually. Now the Town quest.
Help player town, he thought.
Player Town:
A player town is a functioning town. It is considered a player town when the player either owns the land it is built on or the player employs at least twenty-five percent of the occupants with no other player employing a higher percentage or owning the majority of the land. The occupants of the town will acknowledge the player as their leader, unless there is another elected leader, and ask him for advice on businesses and building placement.
A town is a community of one hundred to two-hundred and fifty occupants. A successful town will attract more occupants over time, slowly growing. For a Player Village to progress to a Player Town the player in charge of the village must have completed the quest: Developmental Issues II, for the town.
Eddie shook his head, thinking.
That employee percentage is going to be a problem, he thought. We've got so many refugees in the area that employing a quarter of them is going to be rough. Well, maybe not also. We're going to need a lot of building materials. So maybe if I get Opron... oh wait, Delgar now. Maybe if I get Delgar to turn out a bunch of wood axes and pickaxes I can hire on lots of the able bodied refugees to get raw materials.
He processed the idea and decided that they'd need more than just that.
We'll make somewhere to store them and then they can just stack it all up there. Then they're handy when the builders need them and I'll have a lot more people employed. I could hire a fisherman too, but that's just one person, I need jobs that will employ a lot of people, not just one at a time. I'll give that some more thought. Wait, if that's going to work I'm going to need more wagons, and oxen. I hope Bjorn hasn't left yet.
Eddie was already dressed from going down to get food, so he raced down into the common room and back into the kitchen.