The rest of the fight with the Eye of Madness went by smoothly, even as it sped up the more it got injured. Yondol could easily dodge its attacks while keeping its attention on him, allowing Jade to run around like Amy, taking pot shots at the boss monster. The adventurers also easily took care of the smaller eyes flying all over the place, not one even making it into the city before being cut down.
The eye gave one last cry, disintegrating before their eyes as the party finally took the monster down. It disappeared slower than the dungeon monsters, more and more of the monster disappearing in flashes of light. Once it was finally gone, three large sacks appeared in midair, causing Jade to double take. The reward sacks were only given out when fighting the harder version of the bosses, leading him to believe that the Eye of Madness had been even more threatening to the town than he’d thought. One sack each flew towards each of his party members, Jade’s appearing in his inventory while he assumed the other two went into their personal item spaces.
The three soon grouped back up, Amy giving both the men a massive hug. “That was amazing! I can’t believe how easy that was!”
“Yeah…” Yondol agreed, giving Jade an uncharacteristically wide smile. “The armor and weapons really came in handy Jade. Can’t wait to see what you can do next.” Jade blushed as he wiggled out of the hug, looking away bashfully and noticing the adventurers lined up nearby. Seems as though some had a magical speed buff as well to get over from the wall that fast.
“What items?” “You can make items that help you fight that good?” “Can I have some?!” were soon shouted at the three, more and more adventurers crowding around the party, much to Jade’s dismay and Amy and Yondol’s chagrin.
“That’s enough!” a voice boomed out, Jade recognizing it as the same silver adventurer who’d talked to him on the wall. He pushed through the crowd of adventurers, making even the most manic looking back off in fright. “You know the rules! No asking about a fellow adventurer’s magic! Would you like it if he badgered you about yours?!” Most of the crowd looked away at that, not responding as some even started running back towards the city.
“As for you three,” the silver adventurer grunted out, turning back to the party members, “Guild building. Now. As guild master, we have a lot of things to discuss.” He pointedly looked at Jade at that, the mage looking down in embarrassment.
The four made their way back towards the city, Jade, Yondol, and Amy quickly falling behind to talk amongst themselves. “Well it looks like the cat is out of the bag,” Jade muttered, getting guilty looks from the siblings. “Not your fault. I’m the one who rushed out to help the town. Should we open the sacks and see what rewards we got at least?” They both frowned as he said that, giving him confused looks.
“The bag disappeared for us. It’s in your ‘inventory’?” Yondol asked, leading Jade to frown as well.
“Yeah. It asks me if I want to open it to get the boss rewards.” Both siblings took a moment to feel through the magic of their personal spaces, though both gave negatives as to the sack’s existence. Something to see about later…
They soon made it back to the guild building, the three party members following the silver guild master up a flight of stairs to the third story and to what was obviously his office. It looked very cozy for an office, with a hearth on one side with his desk caddy-corner to it and facing the door. With a wave of the guild master’s hand, three plush chairs appeared in front of the desk, the man moving behind it to sit in his cushioned chair as well. “Sit.”
As the three party members sat down on the chairs, Amy sitting to the right and Yondol sitting on the left, Jade looked at the guild master with a bit of trepidation, feeling sweat moving down his back. “Are we in trouble?”
The silver man sighed at that, leaning over the desk and rubbing his temples. “If you were in trouble, you’d be taken to the interrogation rooms downstairs. No, there are just some guidelines you need to be made aware of.” He then pulled out a stack of papers from inside his desk, waving a hand over them as they magically arranged themselves on his desk. He began reading certain papers faster than Jade had seen someone read before, the guild master looking up at them within a minute of starting.
“You’re the party that was out clearing goblin villages, yes?” he asked, the three party members quickly nodding their heads. “Did you make it back to the city before sundown?” His expression made it clear that he knew the answer was a no, though waiting for the three to shake their heads. “Than how did you know to come back in the middle of the night to fight the Eye of Madness?”
Amy gave no hint as to what she was thinking, while Yondol glanced quickly at Jade, who tried to keep the guilty expression off his face. “Oh for goodness…” Amy exclaimed, glaring at the two. “Better poker faces boys. I’ve seen less guilty looks on misbehaving children.”
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Jade gave a sigh at that before turning back to the guild master. “It was me. My magic warned me ahead of time that the eye would show up, though it didn’t give me much advanced notice.” The guild master’s silver eyebrow quirked at that even as his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Mages don’t have precog powers. For that matter, neither do they have as much movement magic as you displayed during the fight. Am I to assume you’re a transworlder?” Jade could only imagine the light blue color his face had gotten when he felt himself pale, both siblings turning to give the guild master glares at that. “I’ll take that as a yes. So I’ll also assume the items you all used can be made by you?” Jade gave a small nod at that, his eyes flickering to the windows as a possible means of escape.
“He needs to get the materials though, and most of the items we have he looted from the dungeons and goblins.” Yondol was, of course, the first to calm down enough to explain the situation to the guild master properly. “His magic has very strict rules to it that I’ve never seen with crafting magic before.”
The guild master sighed at that, once again rubbing his temples in frustration. “I was not going to lock him up or whatever you three were assuming.” He looked up at all of them with a calmer expression as he released another sigh. “I also can’t let you leave without at least giving some of the love to the rest of the guild, otherwise I’m going to have a mutiny on my hands. So how do you propose we go about this?”
The three party members looked at each other in thought, Jade standing up from his chair to give the guild master his best level look. “We’ll come back to you in the morning with that.” As the guild master looked like he was about to say something, Jade quickly interjected, “We need to think on how we’re going to handle things and get some sleep as well. Clear heads prevail better after all. In the morning we’ll have a solid plan to propose to help out the guild without trapping ourselves here.” The guild master nodded his assent as Amy and Yondol got up to leave, giving Jade curious looks.
#
“How much trouble would we be in if we left tonight?” Jade asked once they got back to the inn, deciding to hole up in Jade’s room to discuss tactics.
“Not as much as you’d think.” Shockingly, Amy was the one who responded, Yondol crossing his arms and nodding in agreement. “Yes the guild as a whole would be more wary of you, but there’s not much they can do to stop you.”
So a reputation hit… Jade grumbled, not liking the sound of that. “And if I try to make armor and weapons for them?”
“That wouldn’t be the best idea, though if you sell the armor and weapons, we could make a good bit of cash with it.” Yondol tapped his chin, thinking on it before speaking more. “The problem is the materials and items we have on hand.”
“With you having to be there to loot things like the boots, it does make that option less palatable,” Amy agreed, giving Jade a playful shove. “My vote is to leave in the dead of night, but I know you won’t do that. What kinds of items can you make without looted items?”
“Just armor, melee weapons, ranged weapons, and arrows.” Jade sighed at that. “Most of my good weapons and magic items area either looted, made from meteorite, or from Cythralite and Flesh ingots. Which I don’t have access to yet.” Both siblings flinched at the last option, still obviously uncomfortable with the mention of the evil biomes. “It’d be helpful if other people could loot the items…” he grumbled, getting nods from his party members.
“There’s also the worry about logistics and time,” Yondol sighed. “You took what, like an hour to make our weapons and armor? Usually a commissioned armor set takes a few days to make. If they find out you can make them that quickly, there’s no chance they’ll let you go.”
“Are there cheap armor sets you can make?” Amy asked.
“There’s the wooden armor but…” Jade looked at his crafting menu and winced, already having a good number of wooden logs and able to see the stats for the armor. “It provides almost no protection, so it’d be similar to leather armor. The next step up would be copper or tin armor. Not to mention the wooden weapons are mostly crap as well.”
Both siblings frowned at his explanation, thinking over the possibilities. “Then we’ll have to stick around in the town and make a few copper and tin sets to placate them,” Yondol offered, Amy giving him a grimace. “Yes they’ve seen your golden weapons, but we can just say it takes you longer to make them than normal. We’d have to stay in town for a few weeks though, to sell the illusion of the armor and weapons taking the normal amount of time.”
Jade perked up at that, thinking over how much time that might take and giving both siblings a smile. “We don’t have to be stuck in town though. We could dip out using the Plinth and come back in the evening to sell that I’m working on the armors all day.” Both siblings also perked up at that, Yondol nodding at the suggestion as Amy gave Jade a searching look.
“It… could work,” Amy muttered, absentmindedly stroking the starling that had been sleeping on her shoulder. “It’s not going to give us a lot of time to explore, though, wherever we end up.”
“I was planning to head to the cavern city next anyway,” Jade reassured her. “Besides, we need to take a few nights here to nab the beginner wings for both of you anyway.”
“Alright, if you think you can do it, we’ll trust you.” She once again playfully elbow jabbed him, Jade chuckling at that. “We’ll need a timepiece, though, if we’re heading into Indas. No sun down there makes it a necessity if we want to get back here on time.”
After all of them agreed on the plan, they decided to head to their paid for rooms to sleep, Jade secretly hoping that the guild master would go along nicely with the plan.