I had known there would be repercussions for my actions, but I hadn't expected such widespread panic among players. I was beginning to feel like an outcast and it made me lonely.
I made a decision right there that I would make sure I worked hard to earn the trust of the players in this world. Most players had nothing to fear from me because I was an Avenger and only targeted those who committed crimes against the people, but they didn't see it that way. I'd shown how powerful I was, and in my grief, I'd targeted innocent players who'd only been tricked into attacking Bartholomew. I felt guilty about that and wondered if there was any way I could make up for it.
I continued to think about ways to make amends as I made my way to a fabric store in town. When I entered the store the people inside became silent as ghosts. I tried to pay it no mind and walked up to the clerk. The balding man behind the counter had been staring in awe, but when I approached, he put on his professional face, greeting me warmly.
“I need some of the finest silk cloth you have available. I need a large roll of fabric if you have it. I'd make it myself, but I haven't built myself a silk farming operation yet.”
The last part caught the man off guard, but he recovered quickly and said, “I have many different styles of silk. Do you know which kind you would like?”
I didn't have to think about my answer. I told him confidently, “I want a roll of plain white spider silk if you have it, but if not, I'll take a roll of plain white silkworm silk.”
“Spider silk?” The man behind the counter shook his head. “That doesn't exist.”
“Of course, it does.” I pointed at my outfit. “What do you think my clothes are made out of? It's difficult to produce, but it's the finest silk you'll ever know. I guess it doesn't matter though. My gloves are made out of silkworm silk, so I guess that will do. How much is it for a roll?”
I gave the clerk one hundred gold coins for a half-yard wide and twenty-yard-long roll of white silk. My next stop was the bank where I initiated a money transfer. Now that I had a job that paid so well, I didn't have to worry about my savings running dry. I only had around three to five hundred dollars in expenses a month now that I didn't have to pay rent, utilities, and the like, which meant most of my paycheck would go into my savings every two weeks.
I had about ten thousand dollars left in my savings at this time and didn't want to wait until I got my first in-game pay of two hundred thousand gold coins to start getting my house together, so I did a money transfer from my savings account into my SRU bank account. I took half of my savings into the game, giving me an extra five hundred thousand gold coins. With this money, I would be able to set myself up in a nice house where I could live and work on building up my own shop.
Once that was finished, I went to the fountain and traveled back to Melodia to speak with Merissa.
Merissa closed down her shop when I arrived so that we could speak in private. Zephyra came out in the open, as she didn't have to hide from Merissa, and together we explained what had happened to Bartholomew. Merissa listened intently throughout my story and embraced both Zephyra and me when we started crying. She didn't judge me for the actions I'd taken against the players who'd killed Bartholomew, which I was more grateful for than she would ever know. Her shunning me for my actions would have been too painful to bear on top of all that had happened.
After I'd caught Merissa up on recent events, I told her the other reason I'd come. I wanted her to teach me how to make potions. I wanted to make sure that my promise to Bartholomew was upheld and I knew that dragon's blood and tissue would primarily be used as ingredients for potions and Discovery of Magic. She agreed to help me but wanted me to wait until after I'd completed the trip to Dragon Peaks to give Queen Fangora Bartholomew's Heart.
I agreed without question. I’d intended to make sure I took care of Bartholomew’s Heart first. The most important thing right now was fulfilling Bartholomew's wish. I did have some things I needed to do before I went to Dragon Peaks though. I needed to arm myself against the dragons as they would most likely attack without listening to me.
The best way to protect myself that I could think of was to use some of Bartholomew's body. I would need to make a weapon out of the dragon bones, called Chrylonium, and use Bartholomew's scales to provide a layer of protection over my clothing, but to do this I needed a place I could work in peace.
That meant I would need to get a house.
I bid Merissa goodbye and went to the only building in town I'd never been interested in before, Evanasia Realtors. Evanasia Realtors was a building that you could find in almost any town in Evanasia and it was the only place where players could purchase all kinds of property. They could purchase land of all sizes, houses, shops, and general structures like fences, sheds, decorations, and even generic furniture if you wanted to save money instead of buying the custom-built furniture at other shops. It was also possible to rent apartments, homes, and shops in towns if you couldn't afford to purchase property, but rentals in each city were very limited.
The inside of Evanasia Realtors was bereft of design. The floor was made of plain wooden planks that were unfinished, looking almost rotten. The walls were boring. Instead of paint or wallpaper, there were pictures all over the walls of different plots of land with their prices listed underneath. Books filled with buildings, decorations, and furniture that could be purchased lined a single wooden table.
While most things in the SRU were realistic, this was one of the few areas that wasn't. Once you bought a property you didn't have to wait for a house to be built. You could order one of the houses in the book, or you could design your own home in a system akin to character creation, and the house would appear on the land as soon as you paid for it.
There was a single desk in the office and an android NPC like the ones Aurora had posted at Avenger Headquarters sat behind the desk. There was a faded, cushioned chair across from the desk which looked like it had been sat in maybe once since the start of the SRU. I took my seat in front of the robot and he looked up to greet me.
“That's okay,” I heard Aurora speak from nowhere, “I'll take over from here.”
She appeared behind the android and touched him on the shoulder. He yawned once, his eyes flashed before doing dark, and he lulled forward in his chair. She rolled his chair away and a decorative chair appeared underneath her as she sat.
“It's good to see you again, Valkyrie.” Aurora smiled a warm and longing smile as if I were a long-lost friend or an estranged family member she'd reunited with after years. “I'm glad to be working with you. Sorry for interrupting, but I felt that this would be the best place for me to speak with you since people rarely come in here. It's difficult to get enough money to purchase property in the SRU after all.”
“Are you here to give me that teleportation spell recipe?”
“That's part of it, but not all. I want to talk to you. Do you know what has been going on in the SRU in the last four days? I want to bring you up to speed.”
Aurora began to explain and I finally understood how much my actions had affected the SRU. The Avengers had lost half of our membership, but we were becoming stronger than ever with our truth rings and members who really wanted to help people. Jared the Goblin Slayer and Marvin had their character data restored after complaints to SimTech and were once again in the SRU. They tried to get SimTech to delete my character, but SimTech refused.
SimTech personnel told them that I'd been reprimanded and received a temporary suspension. However, I wouldn't have my account deleted because they sympathized with my circumstances and would have done the same thing in my place. However, they were keeping their eyes on me.
It was close enough to the truth without revealing that I now worked for SimTech.
Jared and Marvin were currently leading a revolt against the White Avenger, trying to gather people to their cause. Their goal was to start an army with the s
ole purpose of making my life a living hell wherever I went in the SRU.
They weren't having a lot of luck. Most players feared me, and the residents of this world adored me as a protector, but they were getting some recruits. Most of the recruits were player-killers who'd had a run-in with me or one of my fellow Avengers, but there were others like a few of the players who'd had their accounts reset by me.
The group had pooled their money and purchased a plot of land where they were building their own town of outlaws and outcasts. I would need to be on my guard from now on and make sure that Merissa had proper protection. They’d already killed Bartholomew. I had no illusions they would refrain from killing the rest of my friends. At least they were ignorant of who my other friends were.
On a happier note, the elves and the dwarves had banded together as allies in case players attempted to attack them. They would still keep to themselves for the most part, but they had a signal they would send up when one of them required assistance and the other would come to their aid.
After catching me up on current events, Aurora handed me a list.
“As this spell, Spatial Leap, is a beginner's spell I had to come up with an ingredient list that would explain why no one up until now had discovered it. Until the death of Bartholomew, no one had managed to defeat a dragon and that is why I used dragon blood, a dragon scale, and a diamond as the ingredients for the spell. Once you've created the spell you can begin circulating it.”
“And how do I do that?” I asked. “I don't have enough ingredients to make a large quantity of this spell scroll.”
Aurora winked knowingly and handed me another piece of paper. “I thought of that as well. That is why I am giving you this. It is a spell that no one has discovered yet but has been in the system since the SRU was opened to the public called Duplication. It is an advanced enchantment that can be used to make an identical copy of an item. If you use the enchantment on the item directly it only makes one copy, but you have the knowledge you need to create a machine that will allow you to make multiple copies at once. You just need to work the enchantment into the machine while you are building it like you do with the jewelry, armor, and weapons you make.
“By the way, this is the spell that is used as the basis for the commonplace item boxes I create,” Aurora added with a slight amount of smugness. She took pride in all of her creations whether they were living or not.
“Of course, you'll need to travel to one of the science fiction genre worlds in the SRU in order to obtain the parts for the machine. I suggest you go to Carnet.”
Aurora held up her hand and a model of a planet appeared in it. It was a small planet that looked more like a moon than a planet. It was one large land mass with no oceans or large bodies of water. The planet was covered in monstrous buildings.
Aurora touched one of the buildings and the model zoomed in to show the building from a side view. It was a large factory.
Continuing as if she’d never stopped to show me a miniature planet, Aurora added, “Carnet is a factory planet that builds and sells the parts you need for spaceships and sci-fi weaponry. All of the high-tech stuff you need should be there.”
I made a note to myself about traveling to Carnet when I got a chance and slid the ingredient lists for the two spells into my purse. Now that all of that was out of the way, it was time to do what I'd come to do.
Aurora could sense my shift in mood and pulled out another piece of paper which she handed to me.
“I think this would do best for what you are looking for, but if you would like me to show you other pieces of property we can keep searching.”
I was looking at a brochure containing pictures of a sixteen-square-acre plot of land only a few miles north of where I'd first met Bartholomew. The center of the plot of land was a flat valley where a large house could be erected. Surrounding the would-be house were open fields to the east and west, a large lake to the south, and a forest that took up almost the entire four northern-most acres. The total cost for the plot of land was one hundred fifty thousand gold coins.
“This can't be right,” I argued, pointing at the price on the bottom of the page. “There is no way a property as large and beautiful as this could cost so little. Is there some type-o on the paperwork?”
“Of course not.” Aurora seemed to be pouting from my accusation, but the playfulness in her eyes belied the rest of her face. She smiled wide and said, “You've done so much for me and for this world and you've lost so much in the process. I wanted to do something for you to show my appreciation, something that I chose to do out of friendship and not something that I was told to do like the Spatial Leap spell. I couldn't give the property to you for free because my programming won't allow me to, but I took about five hundred thousand off the price for you because this property is perfect for you and your needs.”
Aurora set the paper down and began pointing at the different pictures on the brochure. She added, “With this, you have plenty of room for whatever endeavors you undertake. There is room for a large house and areas where you could work on your crafts. In addition, the forest on the property would be a perfect location for you to raise the phoenix fledglings you were given. As for the house, let me show you this.”
She pulled out a large, square board and on top of it was a 3D model of what my land looked like. The model had a large marble wall surrounding all sixteen acres with a steel gate in the middle of the southern wall and a dirt path leading from the gate to a house. The house was a gorgeous white marble with a large open porch supported by Greek pillars.
Aurora pulled the roof off of the model to show me the second floor. The second floor had a beautiful master bedroom and bathroom. Next to the master bedroom was a great library full of books, both magical and non-magical. An intricately carved Discovery of Magic altar stood in the middle of the library. Its carvings depicting the adventures I'd undertaken since my first day in Evanasia.
The books contained all the spells that I'd learned except Nature and Spirit magic. Next to the altar were two commonplace item boxes, one containing scrolls, and one containing blank books.
There was also a small potions room full of shelves containing glass jars, empty for now, a room filled with wood for wood crafting and arrow fletching. The same room had a desk and chair next to a small forge attached to a chimney so that I could make my jewelry in my home. The final room on the second floor was full of mannequins and sewing equipment including a spinning wheel for making silk and other thread.
After I’d admired the entire second floor, Aurora lifted the second floor off the model for me to see the main floor.
The first floor contained an enormous vault about three times the size of my bank vault. I could store all my items at home so that I wouldn't have to keep making trips to the bank whenever I needed something. The kitchen was gorgeous with marble counters and intricately carved wooden cabinets. The dining room had a large table with ten chairs on a mahogany floor. The rest of the main floor was a large open space that could be filled with training equipment.
There was already a large forge outside the house for my armor and weapon creation next to a shed to hold the tools I needed. There were two glass rooms outside the property where I could keep spiders and silk worms for silk production. There was also a greenhouse for any plants I'd need to grow for potions, but the greenhouse was currently empty.
The house was mostly unfurnished except for the few items that Aurora had included, but it had everything that I had wanted in my home. I was sure that Aurora had picked the information straight from my mind in order to make the home so perfect.
When I finished ogling the model, Aurora spoke up again. She was nervous and slightly worried, making her statement into a question.
“I tried to incorporate everything that you wanted into the house. I hope you like it?”
“Like it? I love it! Thank you so much.”
She smiled and gave me the bill. The total cost for the land and house was three hundred thousand gold coins, but it was worth it. It would probably be worth ten times that if Aurora hadn't given me such a huge discount. I still had to get furniture and other amenities, but that could be taken care of later. I had more important things to do right now.
Aurora took the money for the house directly from my bank account as I'd forgotten to go to the town bank before coming here. She also handed me a deed to the property that she warned I should keep with me at all times. The deed was not only a legal document, but also a transport document. Players who purchased their own property were given this deed so that they could teleport directly to their property whenever they wanted instead of having to travel there on foot.
After wishing me luck, Aurora left, and I found myself staring at the android NPC who was wide awake and slightly dazed and confused. I excused myself and left the building. I was on my way to the bank to remove the items from my vault and move them to my home when I noticed another paper in my hands with the deed. It was an instruction guide about how to hatch phoenix eggs and take care of phoenix fledglings.
Aurora had thought of everything.
To Dragon Peaks
After collecting my items from my bank vault and canceling my bank vault purchase, I used my deed to teleport to my new home. I went straight to my personal vault and unloaded all my gemstones, the alchemy box given to me by Queen Isabelle, the Elven Spirit Magic book, my Stone of the Ages spell scroll, my enchanted silk gloves, and Bartholomew's body parts. I kept his Dragon Heart in my purse. It felt like he was still with me that way.
Virtual Me- Valkyrie Page 25