Zones of Alacria- The Dragon Gate

by K R Dimmick

  Aliz interrupted my planning as we entered the Alchemy hut.

  “The recipe for the XP Release potion looks extremely complicated,” she said. “Before we get started, I need you to read up on the instructions for how to infuse your mana with the Guild XP.”

  She pushed her journal into my hands, pointed to the section I needed to read and told me to sit on the lone tree stump beside the bench. By the time I was finished, Aliz had gotten the potion up to the point where it required the infusion.

  Handing me a gasalator with some acid green gas inside it, she indicated I should get moving.

  I took the gasalator in my right hand like the journal said. This time, however, I selected Use Guild XP from the guild menu. A little image popped up in front of me with the green Guild XP in a virtual tank on the left side and my mana in a separate virtual tank on the right side. At the top was a place to enter the amount of mana I wished to infuse and the ratio I wanted to infuse it at, while the start button was down at the bottom.

  The journal said to select a ratio of ten to one, using ten Guild XP for every mana point. The recipe also stated that I needed to infuse 550 mana. Setting the numbers, I mentally pressed start.

  Thankfully, I was sitting down. Everything in my vision went green. It was like I was wearing green glasses. Suddenly, I felt my mana start draining rapidly out of my center. My head started to spin, and I grabbed the bench quickly with my left hand. The green in my vision started to change, as if blue was being added to it. I guess I was the final tank where the mixture was being created. As soon as 550 mana had been added to the mixture, the draining feeling stopped. I could feel a pressure building in my right hand, so I started to imagine pushing the mixture out of my hand and into the gasalator. As the mixture flowed out of my hand, my vision slowly reverted back to normal, looking less and less bluish-green by the second. As soon as it was complete, the image in front of me disappeared and I noticed the gasalator now contained a dark, teal-colored gas.

  I reached out and put the gasalator into the infuser that Aliz had set up with the rest of the potion.

  “Satus infusium,” I said, waving my right hand clockwise over the device. The dark teal gas started to bubble through the orange liquid in the end of the infuser, turning the whole concoction a chocolate brown color.

  “Finis infusium,” I declared, waving my left hand counter-clockwise, causing the contraption to stop.

  Aliz shoved the Alchemy flask into a bucket of ice to cool and finish it. A minute later, she passed me a bottle that looked like it contained iced lemonade.

  Success! You have created: A Potion

  Try it out to see what effect is has.

  This time, I wasn’t going to be the guinea pig, it was Baynor’s turn. We walked over to the hunters’ hut where he’d been locked up.

  “Baynor,” I said, waking him up. “I’ve got the potion you need that will stop you from sharing your XP with the Dragon Hunters.”

  He looked rather worried.

  “I can’t try it out on myself as I’m not sharing XP with a guild like you are, so I need you to try it.” I passed the potion through the bars that looked like they’d grown out of the side of the hut and got my staff out, ready to heal him, or worse yet, Resurrect him, in case something went wrong.

  He took a deep breath and downed the potion in one gulp, the empty bottle vanishing in a little puff of smoke.

  Success! You have discovered: XP Release Potion

  Releases the user from sharing their XP with their guild. Has no effect if the user is either currently not sharing XP with their guild or is currently not in a guild.

  “It worked!” I said excitedly. “Don’t select it, but can you check your guild menu? You should now have the Leave Guild option available to select.”

  Baynor looked surprised at first and then he grinned.

  “It’s selectable,” he declared. “I’m impressed. Thank you.”

  “Awesome. We need more of these,” I said to Aliz. “Allion needs one, and let’s go with another five to take with me, just in case.”

  Aliz and I finished the extra six XP Release potions just as I was starting to wonder what had happened to Arik.

  “I’ve finally found what I was looking for,” he said, strolling into the Alchemy hut.

  “About time,” declared Aliz.

  “Well, it’ll be worth it,” replied a rather contrite looking Arik. “I knew I saw it somewhere, it just took me a while to remember where.”

  He wandered out of the hut and sat down on a tree stump in the clearing, waiting for us to join him.

  “Hmmph,” muttered Aliz, walking outside.

  “When you create the Guild Growth potion, which I believe is the one you need to let someone share their XP with their guild,” he paused, and Aliz nodded. “Normally, it’s set to take 50% of the XP and that’s it, right?”

  Aliz nodded again.

  “Well, I read somewhere that if you inscribe a rune on the side of the potion bottle, it will alter the potion slightly.”

  He’d caught my attention with that. I started to wonder what other potions I could inscribe runes on. This would really open up the field of Alchemy and Scribing for me.

  “What do you think?” Arik asked.

  “Err, I’m sorry, I got lost in my thoughts,” I replied sheepishly.

  “Okay, once again,” he looked sternly at me. “If you inscribe the correct rune on the side of the bottle, once drunk, it is supposed to add functionality to the person’s guild membership. The guild leader is the only person who can alter the setting, but you’ll then be able to change the percentage of XP the person contributes on the fly. So, if they’re just about to level, for instance, you can drop the percentage down, even to zero, until they’ve reached their next level, then increase it back up afterward.”

  “Wow!” I exclaimed. “This is going to be huge. If we need Guild XP really quickly, I can simply adjust the percentages and then change them back later. Or, if a new traveler needs to reach level 10 quickly, we can make it easier. I’m so glad you remembered this. We can also experiment with doing this on other potions,” I suggested, watching Arik’s eyes light up.

  “I’ve not seen anything like this in my mother’s journal,” muttered Aliz, flipping rapidly through the pages.

  She looked up and glared at Arik.

  “Alchemy is an exact craft. When, precisely, in the process, do we need to add the rune?” she demanded, with her hands on her hips.

  “I don’t know,” replied Arik, his shoulders slumping. “It simply said inscribe the rune on the potion bottle. I could go back and have a look through my other books, if you want?”

  “No, if it said to inscribe it on the potion bottle, it must mean you do it after the potion is finished,” I offered. “It’s in an Alchemy flask until it’s finished, and the last thing you do is decant it into the potion bottle.”

  Aliz nodded, obviously considering the idea.

  “I’ve no idea how much time we’ll have after we decant it for it to still work, but we can experiment with that later,” I said. “Let’s make the potion, then inscribe it immediately after we pour it into the bottle. We might have to finish the potion slowly to make sure I have enough mana left, or we’ll be going through our mana potions while we do this.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” Arik prompted eagerly, grinning.

  Aliz started on the potion while Arik showed me the rune in Orquin Glic’s Compendium of Marks, Symbols and Runes.

  As soon as Aliz was ready to include the Guild XP-infused mana into the mixture, I sat down beside the bench and followed the steps. This time, the potion took 600 mana, again at a ratio of ten to one. 6,000 Guild XP later, and I placed the gasalator, filled with a bright yellow gas, into the infuser and turned it on, watching my mana regenerate.

  I left Aliz to finish the rest of the potion as I studied the rune in the compendium.

  “The rune is called Ken,” Arik said. “It’s all about knowle
dge, improvement of skills and abilities, transformation, and application of intellect and creativity.”

  “Sounds like it’s a perfect choice to alter a potion,” I replied, running my finger over the rune in the book to make sure I got it absolutely correct.

  “It’s finished,” Aliz said, handing me the potion bottle.

  Success! You have created: A Potion

  Try it out to see what effect is has.

  Once again, the potion was ice cold from having rested in the ice bucket to finish the process. I took the bottle full of the bright orange liquid and set it on the bench. Drawing my mana up into my right hand, I pushed it out through my index finger to start inscribing the rune.

  I drew a vertical line and my mana once again started to drain away rapidly. Keeping an eye on it, with a mana potion in my left hand in case I needed it, I drew the second line. Starting halfway down the vertical, I drew my finger diagonally down and to the right. As soon as I pulled my finger off the glass bottle, the blue rune flared slightly, and the glow was toned down until you could barely see it. My mana stopped being pulled out and I noticed I had only five mana left.

  Success! You have correctly inscribed the sigil: Ken

  All that was left was to try it out. I picked the bottle up off the bench and walked out to my little testing area with Soter and Arik, who was grinning like a madman. Casting Healing Mist just in case, I popped the lid and downed the potion in one go.

  Success! You have discovered: Guild Growth Potion (Inscribed)

  The user will start sharing their XP with their guild. Has no effect if the user is currently not in a guild.

  The inscription allows the guild leader to set the percentage of XP that will be shared. Access guild functionality for more details.

  “We did it!” I exclaimed, giving Arik a high five.

  I quickly brought up the guild menu, leaving Arik to give Soter a celebratory head rub.

  Sure enough, right there, next to my name, was the ability to set the percentage of XP I shared with the guild. I set it to 25%, deciding this would be my default until we saw how fast we used the Guild XP when we started building things in our guildhall.

  Now it was time to get more of these potions made and get the Guild XP coming in.

  57

  Do or Die

  Six inscribed Guild Growth potions later and I was ready to sleep for a week. Since Mikael and Kira were still out setting the traps for the ambush, I gave them to Aliz to hand out when we were all back together. While I’d used 75,000 Guild XP to create the potions, I wasn’t worried, because we now had a way to increase it again, so everything was looking good.

  The only thing I had left to do was work out how to get us out of the Dragon Hunters’ guildhall once we’d rescued everyone.

  One of the questions I had was whether a non-guild member had to remain in the party to stay in the guildhall. Since I was going to ask Kaylin if she’d be interested in joining the guild anyway, she seemed like the perfect person to try this out with.

  Arik declared he was off to work on his secret project, so I left Aliz making various potions for us all to use tomorrow, and went off in search of Kaylin. I finally found her sitting and chatting with Suri.

  Explaining what I needed to do and why, I sent her a party invite. As soon as she accepted, I opened up the guild menu. The first menu item was Enter Guildhall. Selecting that caused a notification to pop up.

  You have non-guild members in your party. Do you wish to open a temporary portal for them to enter the guildhall with you?

  Open portal Yes / No?

  I thought yes, and a portal appeared in the air in front of us. Telling Kaylin to follow me, I stepped into the portal. My entire body felt like I’d been shrunk down to the size of a single atom and sucked into the void. However, as usual, a second later, the portal spat me back out, this time into my new guildhall. Looking up, I could see that Kaylin was now also on her hands and knees beside me.

  “I really don’t like portal travel,” I grumbled.

  “Oh, I’s glad it’s not just me,” Kaylin laughed.

  I stood up and looked around. Spread out all around me was a rough stone floor, looking like it had been carved out of the bedrock. There were piles of rubble as far as I could see in every direction. No trees, no grass, just rock and nothing else.

  Behind me was the glowing blue portal we’d entered through. It was the only sign that this was a guildhall, everything else was simply a construction zone. Hopefully, once I started construction of our first building, things would start to look a little more like we owned the place. I knew from the Dragon Hunters’ guildhall just how far I had to go, and for all I knew, they hadn’t finished building everything yet, either.

  Time to get on with the experiment, I thought, turning to Kaylin.

  “I need you to leave the party to see what happens, please,” I said. “I’m hoping you’ll be kicked out of the guildhall, so don’t worry if that’s what happens.”

  She left the party, and for a split second, I thought we were going to have to find another way to escape, but then Kaylin vanished out of existence.

  Keeping my fingers crossed that she was okay and just back in El Sanctum, I pulled up the guild menu to leave. Instead of the two original locations, I now had six: Milgate, Telemachus Dungeon, Gads End Dungeon, El Sanctum and Entry Gate. A final option was titled Point of Entry, which I assumed meant I could go back to the same place that I’d entered through. Remembering what Baynor had said about non-guild members always returning to the place they entered from, I quickly chose Point of Entry as my exit point and once again stepped into the portal.

  There, standing next to Suri, and looking none the worse for wear, was Kaylin. We had our exit strategy, and not too soon, either, since the sun was already starting to set.

  “We have 375,000 Guild XP left that we can use to start building something,” I said, looking around at the other members of my new guild.

  We’d all gotten together for our first guild officers’ meeting to work out what we all wanted to do with our new guild.

  “I’m looking forward to using the guildhall as a very fast way for us to travel home whenever we go somewhere” Kira grinned. “We’ll never have to ask Damir to build a temporary portal again.”

  “Well, at least not one that takes us to El Sanctum, anyway,” agreed Damir.

  Aliz had passed around the Guild Growth potions and everyone had agreed that a 25% XP share was a good amount for now.

  “I’ve had a quick look at the guild menu, and it looks like there’s an order to what we can build, along with a list of materials we need to gather before the building becomes available,” I stated. “The only things we have a choice of building at the moment are a marker stone, a warehouse and the mines. I can’t tell what having them will unlock for us. The only thing I know is that there are two greyed out items after the warehouse, one after the mines and one after the marker stone.”

  “Perhaps we need to consider what each of them does?” suggested Damir.

  “It says the warehouse is used to hold materials like stone, wood, metal and other crafting ingredients, while the mines are there to get you more stone. The marker stones are more for travelers,” I explained. “At least the one inside is. You can select the ones outside as places to travel to when you exit the guildhall.”

  “Well, you don’t even need the marker stone in the guildhall, at least not initially,” Arik said. “You can use the one here in El Sanctum if you need it.”

  “I agree. I think we first need to look at what’s going to help us build other things,” I said. “I’m assuming the stone in the rubble that’s lying around the place is what will allow us to build the warehouse if we pick that first. We can then store any resources we need in it to build whatever comes next. I know we’ll need the mines extremely quickly, but unfortunately, we only have enough Guild XP to build one item. I think that item should be the warehouse rather than the mines because without
it, we’ll have nowhere to store the stone from the mines, or any other resources we pick up.”

  “Agreed,” Arik said with a nod. “Plus, from what I know, a warehouse can have lots of different sections to it. You’ll be able to store your alchemy potions in one section, your stone in another section, and so on. I can even show Orianna how to convert one section into a cold room so Suri can store food ingredients in it.”

  Well that sounded even more useful than I’d realized.

  “What do we need to build it?” asked Arik.

  “300,000 Guild XP and 2,000 stone,” I replied. “It looks like we already have access to 3,000 stone from the piles of rubble, so we can build the warehouse straight away.”

  “What about the mines?” asked Mikael.

  “They only need 200,000 Guild XP and nothing else,” I said. “I’m assuming the rubble piles are a one-off bonus, so we’ll have to build the mines next if we start with the warehouse.”

  “I like your reasoning, Orianna. We don’t want other resources to spoil while we’re getting more Guild XP,” Damir added. “I know we could continue storing resources here in El Sanctum, but I think we need to start as we mean to go on, keeping our guild separate from Faelyn’s domain. That’s why I vote that we go with the warehouse first.”

  Everyone else agreed.

  Now it was time to work out how to go about building it. I mentally selected the warehouse and a notification popped up.

  Build: Warehouse

  This building will consume: 300,000 Guild XP and 2,000 stone.

  Build time: 3 days.

  You may reduce the build time by adding more workers, thereby consuming more Guild XP.

  Start building? Yes / No / Update