5.05

“It ain’t much, and it isn’t honest work. But hey gold is gold.” - Guild Master Ethelinda Smith the Prosperous of the Dim Ar Rype Merchant’s Guild after inflating the price of diamonds another thousandfold.

Murphy (FreddyBready): Gaias pretty much in anarchy atm

Murphy (FreddyBready): People have set up gangs and are murdering each other

Murphy (FreddyBready): Some guy found dungeons which moved most of the tryhards

Dustin (HitZaDec): Makes sense

Murphy (FreddyBready): I’ve set up shop with Peps, we’re calling ourselves Pep’s Pepperoni Pizzas

Dustin (HitZaDec): lol

Murphy (FreddBready): Finding ingredients is really easy once you find the right grind spots

Murphy (FreddBready): Also I found out where the grubs came from

Dustin (HitZaDec): Ah, I can explain

Dustin (HitZaDec): I have a severe lack of human empathy and was raised a capitalist

Murphy (FreddBready): And I have never met a person I liked more in my life

Murphy (FreddyBready): Also, I uh, made friends with one of the gangs, they can get you the spell crystals you wanted

Murphy (FreddBready): Just find me at the shop

Dustin (HitZaDec): Got it, I’ll meet you in the morning

…

“So any reason why I’m being held at bolt point?” I casually asked.

“Shut it,” the lady pointing the crossbow in my face spat out a lollipop stick. How did she get a lollipop? “You’re being interrogated right now.”

“Yeah!” the other, much shorter and probably a gnome girl said.

“You’re getting tortured?” the wisps asked from inside my cap.

“Hopefully not,” I answered.

“I wanna see!” They peeked out from the hem of my cap. .

“Awwww,” the gnome said.

The lady tsked, “Momo! What did I say about being threatening!”

“But look at them! They’re soo cute with their tiny, widdle arms! And feet! And glowy caps!”

“I think you’re cute too!” “Can I throw sneezing into her eyes?”

“AHHH! THEY SQUEAKED!” she shrieked in a high pitched voice. Did I just take sonic damage?

“Greenie said it thinks you’re cute.”

As I tanked another blast of sonic damage, the girl grabbed Greenie from my shoulder, spinning around with it, “CAN I KEEP HIM! CAN I KEEP HIM!”

“Jesus christ fucking a protestant sideways on casting couch! What is that racket!?” Declan yelled at the edge of my mind as well as in real life.

“Don’t worry, go back to sleep,” I answered with a mental chuckle. “Also, no, Yellow.”

“Are you tied to a chair?” he yelled incredulously, “How the fuck did you-”

“I have like eight strength. It’s not that hard to grab me,” I answered just as Yellow disappointedly sighed, to which the girl also grabbed them and began spinning and excitedly cuddling at even higher sonic levels.

“Fucking hell wheres the mute butto-” my other said, presumably right as he found it. How nice of deific mind fucking to also include quality of life functions.

The crossbow lady had long since abandoned trying to threaten me and was instead trying to contain the source of constant sonic damage. Chasing it around Murphy and Pep’s store.

Sheepishly, Murphy untied my wrists, “Sorry, they’re great ladies but umm…” he gestured in their general direction.

“Eh, I’ve dealt with idiots before,” I evenly replied. One, in particular, had horns and a bad attitude.

As I thought that, the backdoor was literally thrown open by a tiefling woman, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO ON ABOUT!?”

The two froze in place and I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a situation so adequately described by the term ‘deer in headlights’.

“MOMO STOP FUCKING YELLING!” she yelled, pointing a metal bat at the gnome/halfling, before turning it to the crossbow woman, “AND ANYA STOP TRYING TO FULFILL YOUR DOM FETISH ON RANDOM PEOPLE!”

“I DO NOT HAVE A DOM FETISH!” the crossbow lady with a dom fetish vehemently denied.

“THEN STOP TYING PEOPLE UP!” the tiefling yelled back as both devolved into shouting.

“You know,” I started, talking to Murphy as I stepped away from a stray firebolt, “it’s times like these I realize I didn’t draw the short straw in friendships.”

Matt was an idiot in every measurable metric but at least he was a quiet idiot.

The potato shuddered, “I should’ve moved zones with you ages ago.”

After a few minutes of awkward silence between potato, mushroom and halfling, which I confirmed with a quick question. The two swinging weapons at each other stopped, breathing heavily and tired out. The tiefling girl put down her bat as the other put down her burnt crossbow. They weren’t seriously going at each other. The tiefling was only swinging around the bat threateningly while the crossbow lady shot exclusively firebolts, which tieflings were obviously resistant to.

Awkwardly, the tiefling woman gestured at me to sit again, before her face died slightly as she realized she gestured to the same seat I was tied to.

“I… umm…”

Wordlessly, I sat down, making it clear I was ignoring the subject, which seemed to make her die a little bit more inside.

“So,” I casually began, “spells.”

Relief was apparent on her face, she gestured at the crossbow lady to drag a table to us. Who, huffily complied. I just realized I was smiling, not that they could see it. My Bark Skin masked my face in a pretty neutral expression. “Have I met you before?” I asked the tiefling.

She shook her head, “Nah, figure I’ll remember a guy like you,” she cocked her head, “you’re a guy right?”

I shrugged, “It’s become a pretty gender-neutral term.”

Strange, I’ve never met this person yet why do I instinctively want to screw with them? Physical attraction perhaps? No, unlikely, all three of the women here can be considered some degree of attractive, the crossbow being the most conventional while the tiefling was a more rough and gangster style, what with the leather jacket and all. My puberty ridden self would have his heart pounding as they sat around me, but strangely I didn’t have any feelings regarding that. I accepted the fact they were attractive the same way I would accept a painting or machine was aesthetically designed. It looks good but I wouldn’t fuck it. A side effect of my transition?

She sat directly opposite me, “So…” she awkwardly began, “spells.”

I ignored her, “Hey Decs?”

There were only muffled swears coming from that end. Unfortunately I couldn’t have him confirm if they would be attractive to my human self.

That last little part inside her died as I ignored her. Should I keep this up? No, I can’t drag this too long, I have a schedule to maintain. After just a few more moments of awkward silence, I spoke up. “Do you guys have the spore spells I wanted?”

She nodded, the halfling, still hugging the dizzy Greenie and the dimly protesting Yellow, produced a bag and dumped several spell crystals onto the table.

“We’ve got Lesser Poison Spores, Sneezing Spores and Rot Spores, additionally we also found some other mushroom-based spells we figured you might use,” she said, sorting them into three groups, “Fix-Up Fungus, Euphoria Spray,” she gestured at the last one, “as well as a spell that is just damn useful for all spell casters, Shillelagh.”

“May I see them?” She pushed them over.

Hmm… The spore spells were mostly a bust, Lesser Poison Spores was just a T0 variant of Poison Spores, with significantly less area coverage but about the same single-target damage. Sneezing I already had but Rot Spores I didn’t. It was an extremely useful T2 AOE spell that caused necrosis and weakened healing. Shillelagh, if I remembered correctly, was a spell that changed your club or staff weapon’s physical damage into magical, allowing it to scale with a mages’ magical stats. I’ve seen other spellcasters use it when I dragged Noam out of that spawn death pit, but even if they hit like a truck they weren’t as fast as one.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Fix-Up Fungus was a T2 spell that dropped a stationary mushroom that regularly sprayed Healing Spores in an area. Can’t be moved and it will heal an enemy if they were sprayed by it, but I can choose to cancel the sprays if I wished. Euphoria Spray was a close-range T1 that… well it made people high. It was a CON save against it and bad failures lead to confusion effects as well as being high.

“Unfortunate you couldn’t get Healing Spores…” I muttered, but Fix-Up Fungus was a close second. Healing Spores had the bonus effect of being preparable with my Sporages, which naturally meant additional range farther than where I can cast it. Rot Spores were also useful if I needed a high damaging spell. Unfortunately they were both T2 spells, those were costly enough that I probably can’t cast more than one or two per fight.

I raised an eyebrow as I began examining the third pile, “Why do you have so many Prestidigitations?” There were literally a dozen of those crystals.

“Well, Momo keeps saying we should hold onto them just in case they become useful later on,” the crossbow lady defended- or more accurately, accused.

“Well aren’t we selling them right now?” the halfling defended.

I shrugged, there was a single Summon Beast crystal in that pile, but while an extra body would be useful, it was a concentration spell so I would have to drop my Bark Skin when I used it.

“I’ll take Rot Spores, Fix-Up Fungus, Euphoria Spray and Shillelagh, what do you want for them?”

The crossbow lady pursed her lips, “You said you had information?”

“Yes,” I answered, threading my fingers together on the table, “mostly of Indiri and some useful meta-knowledge I have gathered.”

“Tell us the information and we’ll see if it’s worthwhile to give you the spells,” she said.

“I require a guarantee that you will at least trade me Rot Spores and Fix-Up Fungus.”

She scoffed, “The two best spells? I’ll guarantee the Shillelagh but not a T2.”

“Euphoria Spray and you have a deal,” I bargained.

The crossbow lady was about to speak, but the halfling spoke first, “If you tell me how you got these cute mushrooms.”

“I am a stealthy spore in the dark that’ll visit doom-” Yellow began, before Greenie interrupted. “She called me cute!”

I raised an eyebrow, “My class skill. I can make as many as I can so long as I am supplied with wisps.” As an example, I created another wisp body in my hand. “I can create the bodies but without a wisp, they won’t move.”

I glanced at Yellow, who quickly vacated its body, the tiny mushroom going limp in the halfling’s arms as the glowing yellow wisp flew out.

“Ah!” the halfling tried to catch them, but her hand phased through it harmlessly as Yellow entered the new body.

“See?” I said, raising Yellow, who just pulled down its non-existent eyelid at her. “They’re relatively simple to raise and feed since they just passively suck your mana and grow off it- look, Greenie’s doing it right now.” I gestured at the barely visible threads of mycelium starting to grow on her arm.

Yellow looked betrayed at its comrade, but Greenie just sheepishly rubbed the back of its cap, “Sorry, was hungry. She has tasty mana.”

“It says you have tasty mana,” I answered non-committedly.

She screeched and I realized I needed to find where my ears were if only to plug them, “I understood him!”

“Yep.” The same thing happened when they sucked Noam. “Greenie imprinted on you.”

“CanIkeepit!? CanIkeepit!? CanIkeepit!?” she asked, head swinging wildly back and forth from her companions and me.

The tiefling shrugged.

“That one’s not for sale,” I answered. She seemed to physically deflate and I had the feeling I just kicked a puppy, “I like that one, but I can give you one of the bodies.”

She brightened at that and I continued to explain, “If you find another wisp you can coax it to possess one of the bodies and raise your own.”

What was the familiar market like? Perhaps I should attempt to corner this ASAP? But there were already so many things I needed to figure out in Indiri. Focus on one task, I try my hand later when the economy has actually stabilized rather than the current state of anarchy.

“What are their capabilities like?” the crossbow lady asked.

“Beginning pretty weak, but the bodies I make hold a spore spell which they are capable of casting. If you top up their mana then they can be a pretty consistent source of additional damage or healing. Of course, they don’t automatically respawn unless I make another body, but so long as they are supplied with mana they are capable of lasting indefinitely.”

She nodded in understanding, likely figuring out why I specifically requested spore spells. “And what spore spells do you have currently?”

“Balm Spores, a weak healing type spell. Light Spores and Sneezing Spores, which are both self-explanatory. As well as Poison Spores, which creates a small cloud of AOE poison,” I glanced at one of the spell crystals. “I could have Rot Spores.”

“Back to the point I see,” she answered with a sharp grin.

“I plan on being somewhere later.” The current time was eight twenty-four AM and we agreed to meet up at twelve, so there was technically still plenty of time.

The crossbow lady turned to the halfling, “What spell do you want Steph?”

“Balm Spores sound good,” she answered.

The tiefling nodded, “Yeah, we’re lacking healing with our current set up. And Peps doesn’t like fighting.”

“Where is Peps anyway?” I asked.

It was Murphy that answered, “He went outside trying to catch the sunrise. He’ll be back in a few.”

“I see.” Made sense, he was a tree.

“We’ll take four Balm Spore bodies from you in exchange for Rot Spores,” the crossbow lady said.

Finally, we were going somewhere. “Four?” I asked with fake curiosity bordering slightly on incredulity, “I’m not even using that many.”

“Ah, but you can just pop them out freely can’t you?” she returned, “And not to mention they won’t even be animate unless we find a wisp. Four’s a fair number.”

No, I believed it was actually below fair, Rot Spores posed an enormous benefit to my damage capability. I would’ve paid a dozen such bodies for the spell, but no need to correct when we were haggling. “Very well. Then for the other spells…”

We went back and forth for a while, but in the end, I got the spells I wanted. I informed them of the mercenary recruiting process and the promotion test sign in exchange for Shillelagh, then Euphoria Spray for a promise that I’ll sell more symbiote bodies to them in the future, with an additional promise from them that they’ll try to find ways to gain more wisps, and finally,

“Are you aware of Feats?” I asked.

They looked around at each other but seemed uncomprehending. “It’s an alternative system where you can pay SP for new abilities. Currently, I’ve seen them come in three, six and nine cost variants. Increasing in power with each rise but also in specificity.” Noam’s Backpfeifengesicht feat was powerful, but also so insanely well suited to him that I doubted it would work well in another build.

“They’re unlocked based on major character achievements or feats,” I said, “I’ve seen some that grant additional damage against certain targets, like Player Killer which does so against players. And ones that grant you additional spells and useful utility effects.”

“We haven’t heard of them,” the tiefling answered.

I raised an eyebrow. That was… Were there certain unlock conditions?

“Have any of you stepped foot in Indiri?”

“For a check,” the crossbow lady replied, “but I came back quickly. Most players are still here after all.”

So not entering Indiri… What else separated us? Could it be? “So I’m assuming that neither of you leveled in Indiri?”

They shook their heads.

“I see…” Then I could get this cheaper. At first I planned on sharing some of my guessed unlock conditions for Feats, but perhaps just sharing the existence of the system is enough now… “That is what I have then, I suggest you guys start saving SP since they are rather costly.”

The tiefling furrowed her brows, “Are they really worth it?”

“Three SP costs are small effects. Most common are ones that increase a stat whilst giving a proficiency related to that stat. Others have niche utility effects such as improved memory, increased damage against certain enemies and ignoring difficult terrain. Six costs have the most generally useful effects across build archetypes, and nine costs are something that seems to be custom-built for your build.”

“Nine SP… Even if you were playing a human character that is still two and a half levels of investment…” the crossbow lady said.

I raised an eyebrow, “Nine costs are extremely beneficial to whatever build you’re pursuing.”

Backpfeifengesicht was extremely powerful when paired with CtH. All he had to do was go up to a large crowd and activate the two in succession and he would become a raid boss. Without. Exaggeration.

One should not forget that CtH also raised Charisma, which was Noam’s casting modifier. If he didn’t spend all his mana taunting the chimeras in the last encounter then he could’ve easily nuked them through spells alone. Even if it was situational, the combination of Backpfeifengesicht and CtH was enough to allow Noam to solo groups of over a hundred and fifty people lower or even equal level to him. Whereas my D Gate’s spell list had spells which I absolutely needed to bring my build to a higher tier.

“Hmm… I suppose this is enough,” the tiefling muttered. She glanced at the crossbow lady, who passed me the last spell crystal.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” I said.

“We couldn’t use these spells anyway,” she shrugged. “Since you’ve promised to trade further let’s add each other to keep in check,” the crossbow lady suggested.

I shrugged, “Sure.” And accepted the three incoming requests. “I’ll be traveling out of Wayshard zones for the next few days, so you won’t be able to contact me for the duration.”

“Got it,” the crossbow lady answered, she rose and extended her hand. I took it and shook it.

“Thanks for the business… Oh god, we haven’t introduced each other have we?” she said with a slightly embarrassed face. “I’m Anya.”

“Cindy,” the tiefling added.

“Momo,” the halfling offered.

“Dustin,” I said. “I look forward to working with ya’ll.”

“Likewise,” Anya replied.

“I’ll raise them well,” Momo said as she clutched the still inanimate sporage bodies with an intense determination.

“Have fun with that.” I barely managed to wrest Greenie away from her and I definitely did not have the necessary strength to take those from her.

There was a punch on my shoulder, “Was good mate- Ah!” Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention and stumbled sideways slightly.

I quickly regained my balance as Cindy grabbed me. “Holy shit you’re light,” she said as she pulled me back.

“I just have a really low body weight.” I thought about it for a moment, “Round thirty-ish kilograms for a hundred-forty centimeter body.”

She furrowed her brow a bit, “What’s that… like fucking seventy pounds and four foot seven?”

“Sounds bout right,” though what kind of idiot used Imperial?

“Jesus, you’re lighter than Momo,” she said.

I shrugged, “I make do. Anyways, I have places to be, so thanks for the trade.”

“You too,” she replied, also shaking my hand.

“Bye!”

I said a few more goodbyes and left. Making my way to the Wayshard. Nine thirty-four AM, that took longer than expected. But I confirmed another thing.

Murphy said that group was rather ahead of the curve, one of the stronger ones and though I had only rough estimates, Cindy and Anya, the two most competent of them, weren't above level three.

I had a head start, small as it may be. People should still be wasting time attempting non-functional level grinding methods. Though staying here nets you Spell Crystals to fill out your build, Indiri was still the way to go. Given its already established infrastructure, information and questing. It should be the superior place to level, even if it was slightly more difficult.

It should take a while for people to figure this out, so I still had time to grow my level advantage.