Goodman could see the black smoke rising from the woods, from the low hill he was sat on near the moutain town. He scratched his chin and wondered whether Ammy and Brett had managed to find their monster. He turned back to corwn city which he could just about see. He had been watching the storm all day, and it had just began to disapate. He wondered how many of Dunes Goons had gotten magic and how long it would take for Dune to decide he was ready to hunt them down. Amok was still their only magic user, he was the only one with the stats to learn it. He had been practicing his earth magic nearly none stop since they had left Crown city and so dispite Dune now having his own wizards it as unlikely that any one of them would be able to match Amok in a straight fight. Goodman sighed as he watched the sky brighten above Crown city. He stood up and made his way back down towards town. It was a small and rocky path down and if not for his high stats it would have been a difficult climb, however Goodman handled it all eaisily. And strode back into town without breaking a sweat. He kept an eye out for Jaks but was pretty sure they were down in the mine again he had heard them talking about looking for a rare item down there.

He was heading towards the a small house on the edge of town which he and the other travellers had taken over as their guild hall. Technically the house belonged to the tavern keeper but they had locked him in the basement and stolen the keys, and since the town had no formal guards or policing force the npcs hadn’t been able to stop them. Now another npc ran the tavern and they took a little of of the profits as a sort of ransom. Many of the npcs vacant empty looks turned to scowls as Goodman walked pass them, this showing that his reputation in town was negative. Usually this would mean he would have a hard time trading with the npcs but he and many of the other players in town were a high enough level that they could intimidate the npcs into trading. Although they didn’t get as a good a deal as they might have.

Goodman shoved the door open of their guildhall and walked through into the main living area. It was a large room made of bricks and wood. There was a Red rug on the laid across the floor and a fireplace flanked by a big arm chair and a large sofa, up stairs were to bedrooms and an office. Amok was sat on the armchair, reading a heavy dusty tome, he didn’t look up when Goodman walked in engrossed in whatever he was reading. Goodman cleared his throat and stood in the doorway. The fire was lit and the light reflected of his green armour casting odd flickering green light around the room. Amok still didn’t look up, and Goodman watched him waiting for him to notice. Eventually he just said, “what are you reading?”

Amok jumped in his seat, and looked frantically about the room, his eyes stopped on Goodman and he laughed, “Christ you snuck up on me.”

“Not really,” Goodman said, “what is that?” he asked again

Amok glanced down at the tome on his lap and grinned, “oh man, you are gonna love this,” He said, “turns out the books in this game are actually useful, like you can learn skills from them. I unlocked this focus skill that slows everything down just be reading for a really long time.”

“Thats cool,” Goodman said, “what else?”

“Well you know how in the archive everyone got bored and killed the quest npcs then they all learned alchemy and it turned into a horrific battle royale style thing?”

“Yeah,”

“Well I think we were meant to read some of the books those Librarians had us shelf stacking.”

“What?” Goodman sat on the sofa opposite Amok and started to unequip his heavy armour,

“Yeah,” Amok leaned forward and went on explaining, “I’m pretty sure if anyone had bothered to read any of the books in the archive we might have just figured magic out on our own.”

Goodman looked up at him, “well they’ve had that storm now so it hardly matters does it?”

“It matters a huge amount because there is more to magic than slinging spells.”

“How so?”

Amok held up the old tome so Goodman could see the title, ‘the encyclopedia of basic runic enchantments’

“Enchantments?” Goodman said, Amok nodded, Goodman stood up suddenly his chest piece clattered to the ground, “Oh my God,” he said, “enchantments, thats it, that will be our edge.”

“Huh?” Amok said

“Can you do any of those? What do we need to make them work?” Goodman pointed at the book.”

The momentary confusion left Amok and excitement returned, “yeah man, easy, we just need a bunch of candles some chalk or a knife a little bit of blood from a strong monster and we’re set.”

Goodman pointed at him and leaned in, “we can get all of that really easy.”

“I mean the monster might be hard,” Amok said, but Goodman waved away the concern,

“Something will come about,” he said, “if we can get this to work then it doesn’t matter how many wizards those idiots in the the city have, we can take them on if they come after us.”

“Are the likely too?” Amok asked

Goodman nodded, “I reckon that Dune guy holds a grudge, and besides, We’re the only ones stopping him and his goons being the top players on this shard.” Goodman took the book of Amok, “so what kind of enchantments can you do,” he tried to read it but it wasn’t in a language he recognised.

Amok stood up and snatched the book back, “basic runic ones,” he said, Goodman rolled his eyes and Amok went on, “like low level strength ones, some minor protections etc. Oh also runic enchantments are temporary, for permanent ones you have to forge the weapons and armour with the ingredients for the enchantment, and probably a bunch of other stuff this book doesn’t go into it.”

Goodman frowned, “where did you even get that book?” he said.

Amok looked up at him, “the study, duh. There are a couple up their but this is the only useful one.”

Goodman nodded, “makes sense, makes sense.” He scratched his chin and began to make plans.

A few hours later Goodman was standing on the outskirts of town looking into the forest. A breeze blew and the sun had set. The moon cast and eerily light onto the scene. He looked into the forest where a small orange flame bobbed up and down, the light reflecting of pale steel armour. Sometimes the flame would disappear behind a tree and the person holding the torch lost their bearing, but it would always reappear and slowly get closer.

Goodman looked up at the sky and saw the stars, small white dots in a void, lit by a large moon giving off more light than it would have in the real world. He let his breath out slowly,

“Hey whats up.” Red said next to him. Goodman jumped a foot in the air and yelped like a startled dog. Red doubled laughing.

“Bloody hell,” Goodman said, catching his breath, and grinning, “I wasn’t excepting you.”

“Well that’s the idea, with this build. Sneaking about and all that, surprise attacks”

Goodman nodded, “suppose. Where have you been? Could have used you on some of the hunts,”

“I was off improving my skills till the dynamic duo killed my trainer.”

“Trainer? Wait, what why did they kill your trainer? What were you training,”

Red laughed, “wait till you see this,” she said indicating the approaching flame.

Brett and Ammy were close enough now that Goodman and Red could see their damaged armour from where they stood at the edge of the woods. They could also see that they were pulling something along behind them, dragging it with thick ropes wrapped around their chests. Brett held the torch out in front of him.

“What is that?” Goodman said stepping forward.

“It was to big to butcher it back in the forest, I said we should leave it and come back, but those two,” she shook her head, “they were all ‘nah we’ll just drag it, it’ll level our strength’”

“But what is it?” Brett and Ammy were almost with them now only a few metres away but the forest darkness still swallowed up their burden.

Ammy waved, “Hey! Come help us pull this, or get Amok or something.”

But Goodman did nothing, the chimera had just been pulled into the circle of light cast by the torches outside the town, “holy shit,” he said, he stood stock still and watched as the chimera was pulled closer. Three bloodied heads and a huge body. It looked like Red, Ammy and Brett had tried to butcher it in the forest and their was a big chunk of it’s stomach missing intestines hung out and dragged in the dirt behind it.

“How much blood did it have?” Goodman asked, as the beast was pulled passed him towards the village, Ammy and Brett frowned at him, Red said, “that’s an odd question. It obviously had a lot it’s massive.”

“Does it still have some?” Goodman rounded on Red,

She took a step back a worried look on her face, “Probably, but look here,” she dug about in her bag and pulled out a small large red bottle, “I got a bunch of it and bottled it, thought Amok might trade some for lessons in alchemy.

Goodman grabbed the bottle of her and held it up squinting at it, a prompt appeared in the bottom left of his vision, ‘chimera blood’ “oh,” he said, “we are way past alchemy, just wait till you see what we’ve got cooking now.”

Red reached up and plucked the bottle from Goodmans hand, “that’s a worrying thing to say” she said.

They hauled the dead chimera out in front of their guild haul which had the unfortunate side affect of blocking one of the main furrow-fairs into the village, the travellers guild took another reputation hit, they took another one after they aggressively asked for help from some towns folk in butchering the monster and putting the bits in barrels. Goodman stood overseeing the operation occasionally throwing a knife at one of the towns folk, not for any particular reason it just made him feel like he was more in charge. Red had scowled at the travellers methods but didn’t raise any objections. She walked past Goodman and into the guildhall, “take that blood to Amok,” Goodman said as she went past, she didn’t reply.

Inside the guildhall the fire was lit and Ammy and Brett where playing a dice game with large stacks of gold coins next to them and an even larger stack in the middle. It was likely more money than the small Mountain town had ever had in it. Brett and Ammy both had their helmets off and their twisted features contorted into grins as they saw her come in, “Red, want to join us?”

“No thanks,” she said, “you know where Amok is?”

“Upstairs in the study,” Brett said, he had also gone with the no middle sliders rule of character creation turning his face into a twisted crator with a stuck out jaw, the only reason the jaw was stuck out was because Brett had spent ours making his teeth impossibly perfect, a straight rack of pearly white sparkling teeth.

Red walked passed them as Ammy rolled the dice and cheered.

She went up the stairs and to the study and opened the door to find Amok on the desk by a stack of thick tomes 4 high. He was sitting on the desk, and holding on of the books open their was some parchment on his lap and he was copying runes onto it.

“Why don’t you sit at the desk and do that?” Red said, Amok jumped and stabbed himself in the leg with his quill.

He yelped then scowled at her, “why don’t you mind your own business,” he said.

“Alright, alright,” Red was digging around in her bag, “I’ll trade you this for some alchemy lessons.” She pulled out the bottle of blood.

Amok squinted at it, “what is it?”

“Chimera blood. Thought it could be used for some Alchemy or Goodman said something about enchantments?”

“Chimera blood?” Amok said as the tag appeared in his vision, “how do I know your telling the truth, everyone knows the tags just say what you have been told it is”

Red laughed, “have you looked outside?”

Amok frowned at her got up and went to the window looking out, “holy shit.” He said, “you give me that bottle and I’ll teach you everything I know,”

Red smiled and tossed the bottle to him, he scrabbled to catch it, “thats more like it,” she said.

Amok uncorked the bottle dipped his finger into the blood and then stuck it in his mouth.

“Mmh thats it, this is exactly what I need.” He said nodding, he went back to the desk and put the bottle down before pulling down the open tome and flicking through the pages.

“What’s it for again?” Red said

“Enchanting.”

“Enchanting?”

“Yeah,”

“What sort of enchanting?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Amok turned and grinned at her, “all sorts,” he said, “strengths buffs, attack bonuses, elemental defences, regular defences. This is going to change the game, I’m telling you.”

“And you learned all that reading one of the books?”

“It’s a tome, it says so in the item description.”

Red walked over and squinted at the book, ‘the encyclopedia of basic runic enchantments, this tome contains many basic runes and instructions on how to use them’

“Huh, I bet if any of you bothered to read the books in-”

“I know, I know,” Amok interrupted, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. That archive was huge, if we had even read the titles of some of the books we probably would have unlocked a skill tree.”

“So about this alchemy,” Red said, “how exactly does it work?”

“Hmm? Oh right, yeah lets do that now before I get to carried away with this.” He closed the tome and placed it carefully back on one of the book shelves, he pocketed the bottle of blood, then swiped the rest of the things on the top of the table onto the floor with his arm, he pulled a small cauldron out from under the desk and sat it on top, “right,” he said as he pulled a bottle of water out of his bag and poured it into the pot, “so you want to start with a base liquid, waters the easiest because it doesn’t add any effects to the end result, but really you could use any liquid.”

“Doesn’t it need to be boiling?” Red asked

“Nah that’s more for help health potions and stuff under the brewing skill tree, you can boil it and you probably need to for some stuff, but not for this. So to start your going to want something body part, any part will do but the more important the part the better.”

“What are we making?” Red asked as she pulled out one of the bones of the chimera, she still had after they had tired to butcher it in the forest, and tossed it into the pot with a splash.

“That will do it,” Amok said, “we’re making a bomb in a bottle, the staple of the alchemists toolkit.”

“Oh”

“Yeah, so next you want a little of your own blood, I mean you can put a lot in but I’m not convinced it makes a big difference.”

Red held her hand over the pot and pricked her finger with one of her daggers and let a few droplets of blood drip into the cauldron,

“Yeah that’s it, that’ll do it, look how the bones starting to melt?”

She leaned over and saw that the bone was indeed starting to flake away in the red tinted water.

“The last ingredient is knowledge.”

“What? How does that work?”

“Easily,” Amok picked up one of the other books of the floor and red the cover, “Gardening a beginners guide, that will do it.” He opened the book and started to tear out pages and toss them into the cauldron, “the more pages the more potent also whats on the pages counts too.” He tore a few more pages out and tossed them in. As the paper hit the water it began to disintegrate, and the water turned a sickly yellow, “now take a small empty bottle,”

Red pulled one out of her bag,

Amok went on, “scoop some up, cork the bottle, give it a shake and viola.”

Red did, and as she was shaking the concoction, it began to bubble and went a harder bright yellow, a prompt appeared in her vision, ‘you’ve made a bomb in a bottle, alchemy skill tree unlocked.’

“That was easier than thought,” she said

“Yeah, it’s super worrying how easy it is to make grenades.”

“How did you discover this in the archive?” Red pocketed the bottle for later testing.

Amok grinned, “there was a big fight by a fountain, people getting shanked blood and body parts going everywhere, people were chucking books too. So all the ingredients landed in this fountain and all the people running though it churned it up so it mixed. Then someone fell in and BOOM, half the natural history section was gone.”

“Oh”

“Yeah, crazy,” Amok laughed, “you should see what happens when you chuck a human brain in one of those,” he indicated the potion on the desk, “it really goes up then.”

“Uh-huh,” Red said, she took a small step back, “yeah thanks for this though, she said.

“No worries, thanks for this,” he was holding the chimera blood again.

Goodman barged through the door, and looked around the room, he grinned when he saw them both, “excellent, your both here. Amok how’s the runes going?”

Amok gently pushed the cauldron to the back of the desk and opened up the Rune tome again laying if flat on the desk open to a page depicting someone painting runes on to weapons and armour while surrounded by candles and with a big circle drawn around them, “I’ve got almost everything I need now.” He said

“Almost everything?” Goodman said

Red leaned in and scanned some of the pictures, “he needs some of your blood too,” she said, “to mix with the chimeras it looks like,”

“That’s it,” Amok said, “come here then, hold out your hand,” Amok pulled out a dagger and brandished it towards Goodman. Most people even in the game would be worried about someone like Amok waving a dagger at then but Goodmans smile only widened and he held out his bare arm ready to be cut.

“Red,” Amok said, “get another bottle and catch the drips would you. This is going to get messy.”

The following morning Amoks work was done. He had drawn the runes onto Goodmans plate armour with a paint brush. Instead of drying th blood stayed a bright red but it didn’t drip. The Runes glowed faintly as Goodman moved around, testing the enchantments.

“I can defiantly feel it,” he said, “it’s like the armour is lighter, and I can move a lot easier,”

Amok nodded he sat on the desk chair which he had pulled out the tome was on his lap, “those would be the strength and agility runes,”

“How long will they last?” red asked, she leaned against the door frame,

“Since they are painted on with chimera blood and not etched in or drawn on they should last two days of constant hard use.”

“Would they last longer if they were etched in or drawn on?” asked Goodman.

“No less, the blood is the best way to do it.”

“So we could have done this right away?” Goodman looked at Amok,

He shrugged, “why do anything by halves, these are only basic runes though, if I had more books I could probably do a better job.”

“Books like from the archive?” Goodman said

“Yeah.”

Goodman scratched his chin, and looked out the window. The guild hall overlooked the back end of the main street in town. The chimera was still being carved up by town folk but now Ammy and Brett were helping, they were gathering big bottles of the things blood, and setting it to one side. He let his gaze wonder up to the horizon in the general direction of crown city,

Finally he said, “we should do a heist.”

“What?” Red laughed,

“Of the books?”

“Yeah, we no one will expect us to come back and steal books. Then it doesn’t matter if Dune and that lot find us because we will be able to outmatch them with enchantments.”

“You really want to go and rob an archive?” Red said.

“Not just any archive,” Amok jumped in, “an archive that is filled with crazy alchemists that might also all be wizards now.”

Goodman nodded pointing at him, “exactly no one would expect us to that, we will have the element of surprise.”

“No one will expect it because it’s suicidal, if we hadn’t found Amok when we did and gotten out of their we probably would have been melted by the acid and grenades they were tossing about.”

Goodman waved this off, “we’re better prepared now, we’ve got these,” he gestured to the runes on his armour, “couple of these are protections against all sorts of damage right Amok?”

“He is right,” Amok said, “also I would like to get back into the archive now that I know we are meant to be reading these,” he pointed at the book on his lap.

“Who would have thought you were meant to read books,” Red deadpanned, then she sighed, “I’m not opposed to the idea. Aside from going out into the wilderness this town is pretty boring, all the quests are fetch quests, the mines take ages to explore and are too cramped to jump about in. I miss the big city.”

“So it’s decided-” Goodman began

“Now hold on,” Red stopped him holding up a hand, “if we are going to cross the valleys again, and March back into the city I want us to have an actual plan. Not the usual wade in and attack.”

“Is that like a condition of you coming?” Goodman asked and Red nodded, “alright, he said, we will make a plan on the way, Amok knows the Archive at least somewhat, and we can probably sneak back into the city with a group of other players.”

“I still have contacts in they city,” Red said,

“Me too,” Amok added,

“See it’s coming together already, Brett and Ammy will agree I bet.”

“Alright then,” Red nodded, excitement bubbled in her at the thought of getting back to the city. She loved jumping rooftop to rooftop and outwitting the npc thieves guild, she was also interested to see how the fire and then a storm had affected the city. Along with the new batch of magic users that were likely still finding their feet.

Brett walked in interrupting her thoughts, “jaks and that are back,” he said, “they found something, come look.” He didn’t wait for a response just turned and walked back down the stairs. Red looked at Goodman who shrugged, the three of them got up and went outside where Jaks and his group were admiring the dead chimera.

“You’ve been busy then” Jaks said. Jaks and Goodman hadn’t been on the best of terms since arriving in the village. Jaks eyed the runes on Goodmans armour,

“Well you know,” Goodman said, “idle hands” A few tense moments passed and then Jaks seemingly couldn’t take it any more, a smug look overcame his traditionally handsome features.

“Look at this,” he said, and pulled his shield of his back. It was a large black tower shield with a sword motif on it.

Goodman shrugged, “what is it?”

“It’s an S class item,” Jaks Grinned.

“Oh,” Goodman leaned in to look at it.

“Whats it do?” Red asked,

“Massive boosts to defence and it has like an AOE shield thing, like a force field sort off.”

Ammy and Brett went back inside apparently having heard it already. Jaks went on, “yeah, had to beat a boss like 12 times for it, there was all this lore about it in down in the mines, about some big knight that got lost down there.”

“That is pretty cool,” Goodman said, “you figured that all out?”

“We all did,” Jaks said a moment of silence passed as Jaks expected Goodman to keep talking about his shield when he didn’t Jaks said, “whats with that?” indicating the glowing runes across Goodmans armour,

Goodman looked down at himself, “oh they’re to intimidate my enemies.”

“They’re glowing,” Jaks said.

“Glowing things are scary,”

Jaks frowned at him, “whatever,” he turned to his group all of which were looking at the dead chimera, “come on lets go rest up and restock.” Jaks group followed him back towards the inn.

Red, Goodman and Amok went back inside the guildhall,

“smug bastard isn’t he” Ammy said, nods of agreement went around the room.

“We’ve got a plan,” said Goodman, changing the subject, he laid it out for them, explaining what the runes did and that they needed to get better books to get better enchantments. Ammy and Bretts faces twisted into grins, Ammys toothless gummy smile, and Bretts perfect pearly whites. They agreed without protest.

“Before we go though,” said Brett, “we should steal that shield.”

“Don’t steal his shield,” said Red, “it’s not worth it.”

“You should defiantly steal it,” Ammy said,

Amok had already gone upstairs with bottles of Ammys and Bretts blood to prepare more Rune paint. Goodman scratched his chin thinking it over, Red watched him.

“I’m not going to steal it for you,” she said, “just leave it with him, it’s fine.”

“I do sort of want it though,” Goodman said,

“Your just making enemies everywhere, he already doesn’t like us because we lead them through the mountains killing basically everyone.”

“We’ll help you take it.” Ammy said,

“Be good practice for the city,” Brett agreed, “a good old smash and grab.”

“Just don’t.” Red pleaded, “I’m telling you, it’s not worth it.”

Goodman waved her off, “alright, alright.” He said, “he can keep it.”

“Alright, good. It’s the right thing to do, you don’t need more enemies.”

“Yeah,” Goodman agreed “your right.”

“I’m gonna go fetch my stuff from my camp, I’ll be back once their done getting painted and we can go.”

Goodman nodded, “see later then.”

Red walked out the door there were a few moments of silence after it closed behind her then Ammy said, “you are going to steal the shield though?”

“I mean yeah,” Goodman said, “obviously.”