So, with the guild house all ready to go, the gang decided to set it to public. Everyone would be able to check it out without needing an invite. Gray tempered his expectation. Their guild house was cool, but it was mishmash of ideas and tone. Plus, there were plenty of other guild houses that were made public on a fresh patch week.
They also weren’t going to keep the guild house public all the time. This was their home base. A place for them. The public setting would be turned off after a while, it was just a temporary thing. Then everyone not in the guild would be kicked out and they would go back to chilling.
Melody did the honors. She set the guild house to the public and then they waited. Melody went out to fish on the fourth floor, Akira sat down at the dining table to look up videos talking about potential future patches, Kelsy queued up to PVP, and Madame Cheddar just went to her room on the first floor. It seemed the rest of them weren’t expecting much.
Gray spent some time with Melody until It was lunch time and only about four people actually came to visit their guild house. Most of them were too lazy to do the jumping puzzle.
Gray went to make lunch and came back to the full house. It seemed the like the whole server had come to visit!
There were people all over the first and second floor. On the first floor, there was a group of members that were all from the same guild. There he saw the familiar names of Ervara and Lector.
“Hey you two,” Gray said. “Been a while since we’ve played. I see that you guys are around the same levels as us.”
He tried to talk to them, but they were still adhering to their quiet ways. The two of them gave him a nod and then refocused on their own group. Their guild was fittingly called the Voiceless. Ervara and Lector were showing off a pair of matching rings to their guildmates. Lector sprinted over to the second floor.
“What are they doing?”
Gray overhead to players talking.
“Just showing off the Ring of Vows.”
“Is that legendary?”
“Kinda, but it’s easy to get.”
Gray heard the commentary from a duo off to the corner. They were sitting on the dining room table. Something that Gray wouldn’t have allowed in the real world, but he let them be. After a few second, Ervara’s Ring of Vows started to shine, and Lector appeared right next to her.
As the voiceless talked, or rather emoted, Gray thought other potential legendaries that could have been easy to get.
It was around this time that Madame Cheddar appeared. Gray saw her blink at the all-new people. At first, he thought she might have been overwhelmed before her avatar started to talk.
“What did I say about putting on the headset,” Madame Cheddar’s character avatar shuffled before going completely still. He heard a shy sorry. Then after a minute, she returned with a headshake. She saw Gray and walked up to him. “Sorry about that, my kid took my headset for a moment. He like to sneak in and use it.”
“I see. I didn’t know that you had children.”
“Yeah, It’s why I don’t get much time to play in the afternoons. But wow, there’s a lot of people. I would stay, but…”
“Totally get it.”
“Thanks, I’ll talk to you guys later,” Gray had never thought about it, but there were certainly players of Elrin that had already started families. MMOs were a genre that were played by an older demographic. Gray was just too young to consider it. He decided to check out the second floor.
A couple of players that were off in the corner near Akira’s laboratory. They were rolling some virtual dice from 1 - 100. Melody was watching them. No matter what number the dice number generator spat out, at least one of the players gasped at the result. They tugged and shoved each other around when the result came. Hollering and hooting, Gray almost assumed that they drank before hopping on to play.
“Are they gambling?” Gray asked. “Is that okay under the TOS?”
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“I dunno,” Melody shrugged.
“I’ve seen it before on other MMOs. At least they are just gambling for in game gold,” Gray groaned. “It better be just in-game gold….” Gambling for real money would have definitely led to some bans. They were doing it in their guild home too! Gamemasters might even blame them for such behavior.
The Daybreak guild was not some callous guild that promoted such things.
“Is that Akira?” Melody pointed out.
“Huh?”
Akira was rolling with the best of them. Rubbing his hands together as the dice started to roll. Chuckling and giggling like a gremlin.
“Do you mind keeping an eye on them?” Gray asked. “I’m gonna check the other floors out.”
“Sure. Oh, by the way, Jericho and his guild buddies came over. They are on the third floor.”
“I see. Thanks,” Gray went through the mandatory jumping puzzle and went off to the third floor.
As soon as Gray reached the third floor, he saw a player fly pass him and head straight into the wall. He turned to the center of the room and found Kelsy punching her fist together with a smile. She was insane.
“Hey Gray! Want to fight?” She asked.
“Being kicked by you once is enough, but thanks for the offer.”
“We gotta do PVP one day, so that you can get used to it.”
“We gotta have you do literally anything else,”
“I like other stuff,” Kelsy put a hand on her hip. “Besides, it’s not like you can get BIS in this game without grinding encounters and stuff.”
“True,” Gray saw that a line was forming. Was she creating a fight club in their guild house? One of the person on the line was Rachel. She gave him a pleasant wave and Gray waved back. Akira was gambling and Kelsy was brawling with random strangers. It was too much, so he walked away from the center of the training room. He looked around for Jericho but didn’t find him. He assumed he must have gone up to the higher floors.
Hopefully there were fewer wild activities.
The fourth floor was better. There were players just chatting and fishing. It was a nice respite from the previous floors. He hadn’t found Jericho yet, so he continued on.
Dusk was sleeping soundly on the fifth floor. As there were even less people on this floor than four. The only group being Jericho and his friends. WetPaperBag and Cosmic Lemon were staring at Dusk. They were standing near the second entrance to the guild house. An opening lined with black roses that was connected to a ladder that led straight down to the back of the building. The black roses were picked by Melody to fit with the vibe.
“We really have to go,” WetPaperBag threw his head back. He sucked his teeth.
“Hey man, are you complaining about getting to play video games?” Cosmic Lemon replied.
“Yeah, yeah. Once you graduate, you’ll know how much you’ll value your free time. Especially during the summer months. The first summer that I worked was some shit man.”
“You guys heading out?” Gray asked. He felt comfortable approaching them since they had all met before when fighting for the dragon egg.
“Oh look, the co-founder of the guild that now has a obelisk of remembrance,” Jericho said.
“Wait what?”
“You’re the first guild to get a gold dragon on NA. The world event popped for the first time on the day that you guys went.”
“Really?”
“You can go to the mountaintop to check.”
“They just got lucky. It should have been level 50s that got that gold dragon,” Cosmic Lemon muttered.
“Take your lumps, bro.” WetPaperBag chuckled.
“That’s sick. Did you hear that Dusk?” Gray pet Dusk’s head. “You’re the first gold dragon in NA.”
Dusk happily leaned into Gray’s hand and closed his eyes.
“Anyways,” Jericho sighed. “We gotta go.”
“Kinda sucks. We haven’t really got chance to play.”
“Yeah, but we we’re trying to be part of the world race for the new raid that coming. That means that we need to be geared to the nines.”
“We weren’t supposed to raid today. What happened to his big old speech about respecting people's time,” WetPaperBag spoke. “It’s patch day, too.”
“Patch day or not, we all signed up for a hardcore raiding team. That means we gotta go or get booted,” Jericho said.
“I’m just complaining. Don’t mind me.”
“I guess, I’ll see you guys then.”
“I do want to say goodbye to everyone else. Let’s go on down through the steps, guys.”
“Does that mean we have to do the jumping puzzle again,” Cosmic Lemon groaned.
“You don’t. You just have to fail it.”
The four of them headed down. Gray saw no point in staying on the fifth floor with no one on it.
When they reached the third floor, the air seemed different. There was a player in the center of the room. He had his hands balled into fist. Everyone was staring at him.
Then he opened his mouth.
As the absolute distasteful and frankly abhorrent word came out. The entire crowd stared at the belligerent man. Gray looked to his side and saw Rachel shaking her head. Lightning crackled and struck the player. His health instantly dropped to 1. A special status effect called: Broken appeared on him. A Gamemaster appeared outside and noclipped through the walls. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and dragged him away to some GM’s jail cell.
Once again, Gray’s headset failed him. Low framerate as the spectacle began. Only to serve as a reminder that he really needed to stop procrastinating on buying the new machine.
Either way the vibes were sullied. People left.
Gray set the guild house to private. He felt like an old man telling everyone to scram, but he didn’t want anyone else to get banned on their premises. With the house set to private, all players not within the guild got kicked out.
“Why did he say that shit?” Gray asked Kesly.
“Because I beat him in a duel,” Kelsy shook his head. “Wasn’t expecting him to get that mad.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t hold you responsible,” Rachel said. Neither Gray nor Kelsy had a chance to respond as she did the jumping puzzle to go back down. Gray doubled check to make sure that he didn’t make the guild house public again. And saw that he did in fact had it set to private.