“The Crystal Cities are credited with the advancement of our modern world, particularly my home of Vallum within the Triskelion. They provided a safe place for our ancestors, free from the roaming beasts that have made prey of us since the dawn of time.”— The Crystal Cities: Where did they come from?
The Ruined City of Araedi. Day 02.
Sinnamon Roll awoke to the sound of ringing in her head. Despite her eyes being closed, she could very clearly see the prompt alerting her to an incoming call from Kaitlynn, or rather, Orbnus; a stark reminder that the events from the previous day had not been a dream as much as she had hoped.
The ringing stopped and a new message appeared letting her know she had missed the call. She dismissed it and leaned up in her bed.
Weaver was nowhere to be found and the only light in the room came from what leaked in from under the closed door. As she stood and re-equipped her outfit from the previous day, Sinnamon returned Kait’s call.
“Good morning, Sinn! I wanted to run something by you.”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’m not sure how much you’ve heard, it’s mostly passing around through word of mouth, but a couple of the larger guild systems are trying to organize a kind of player-run government. I think they mean to make Araedi the capital.”
“And you want us to move to Araedi’s guildhall?” Sinnamon asked. It made sense to want to be near the action.
“No, think bigger, Sinn. We can buy properties in the Guardian cities now, Jack and I moved some of our gold into our guild treasury. We were thinking you could buy us something nice and maybe three or four—” Kait paused for a moment. “—Make that seven or eight other buildings. Ones with lots of rooms.”
“Seven or eight buildings? What do we need that many for?”
“You’re the one with the Merchant subclass, you tell me!” Kait said in a sing-song voice.
Sinnamon winced as everything clicked in her head. They were planning on charging to rent the rooms.
“Kait, you two are evil!”
“I like to think of it more as being… entrepreneurial. And you know if the idea came to us, then others for sure are going to hop on the train. At least if we get a head start on it, we’ll have a say on pricing.” Kait spoke as though she were talking about a simple game mechanic, not using her wealth to buy up large sections of the city. “And Sinn, please call me Orbnus or Orb. We aren’t on earth anymore, I’m not Kait here.”
“Yeah, sorry Orb. Did you guys have anything in mind for our guild building?”
“I’ll leave it up to you. I’m sure you’ll get something amazing. Oh, I gotta go. Jack needs me! Oh, and use a little bit of the gold for yourself and Weaver. Get yourselves some nice gear. I plan to do a lot of fighting when we party up!”
Orb ended their call and Sinnamon decided to take a look at their guild’s finances. What she saw nearly made her choke.
Eighteen million gold sat in the guild treasury. She knew her pair of friends were rich in-game, but that was insane. It was more gold than Sinnamon had ever seen before and the two casually dropped it like it was nothing.
Annwyn Online’s user-generated outfit store was one of the largest of its kind, making the game not just an MMORPG, but one of the largest avatar building communities on the internet. Both Jack and Orb were talented artists who contributed a lot of content to Annwyn Online’s Masquerade system. They were paid for their work like all the other artists and even got a few in-game rewards for their effort. Most of the money they earned went right back into Annwyn Online. And that return had more than paid off now, given the two were probably one of the wealthiest guardians on the continent.
***
Yentel was mixing yellow batter with fruit chunks floating in it when Sinnamon entered the kitchen.
“Good morning, Sinnamon Roll. Weaver already ate most of the pancakes I made earlier, but if you look under that lid, I saved you some.”
Sinnamon turned around and lifted the lid off the plate on the table. She was instantly met with the sweet smell of the neatly stacked pancakes with syrup and sliced bananas on top.
“They look wonderful!”
“Thank you, now get out of my kitchen! I have more magic to create! Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!” Yentel made a show of brushing Sinnamon out of the kitchen.
Sinnamon laughed and left the grandmotherly woman to her work and went into the main dining area. Weaver was sitting in their usual booth by the window, reading a book..
She tapped him on the arm and he jumped, then smiled when he saw her. “Ash, you have to try those!”
“Oh?” Sinnamon sat opposite Weaver, picked up her fork, and took the piece he had just cut. It was good.
“Hey, get your own!”
“Didn't your mother ever teach you to share?” Sinnamon cut a piece of the breakfast cake from her own plate.
“Yeah, actually she did!” Weaver stood and stepped beside Sinnamon. He grabbed Sinnamon’s hand, and with the ease of someone with a million points in the strength stat, lifted her by her hand clear of the table, and bit her food from her fork.
“Whoa, rude!” Sinnamon said as he set her down and returned to his seat.
Weaver said nothing and stuck out his tongue.
Sinnamon noticed Weaver had changed his subclass. “What’s a Paragon do?”
“Gives buffs to allies fighting alongside me. I figure I should run a more team-oriented build now,” Weaver nodded. “I also changed my profession. I was in Gavriel’s workshop helping him with a project while you were sleeping and it just felt right to become a Tinker.”
“That actually seems like a smart idea. I should probably pick a better subclass, too.”
Isaac had advised Sinnamon on useful subclasses to take with the Caster class depending on the playstyle she wanted. He’d said most Casters either went with a healing subclass or a damage one. At the time, that level of commitment to combat had been beyond what Sinnamon was willing to get out of the game. She contented herself with the game’s marketplace and avatar building. She’d really only gotten to level fifty-four because she liked questing alongside her friends when they played together.
Sinnamon opened her character menus and was instantly met with a prompt.
Warning! Your Subclass, Merchant, is no longer a valid Subclass. As it lacks a comparable Profession replacement, you may choose a new Subclass without penalty. Any Subclass levels you earned as a Merchant will be free to be distributed towards your new Subclass and/or Profession.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Levels remaining: 62
It made sense that there wouldn’t be a generic Merchant Profession when someone could choose a more specialized one. Sinnamon was glad to see that she wasn’t being forced to start over because of the changes to the system.
Subclasses could be gained in a variety of ways. The most common was to have leveled a skill sufficiently high to unlock a related subclass or to earn one from a quest, such as was the case with the Dragon Warrior subclass. Only those players who had participated in the game's first raid and accompanying event could get that one.
Sinnamon went through her skills menu to see if she had progressed any skills high enough to unlock a subclass. Another prompt came and this one made her smile.
Greetings, Guardian! The path of healing and medicine is often as thankless as it is demanding. Because of actions taken in your life on Earth, you have been awarded level twenty in the skill Healing and twenty-five in the sub skill Emergency Medicine.
Alert! Due to the magical nature of your Caster Class and your high skill level in Healing, you automatically meet the prerequisites to choose the Subclass Cleric - School of Healing. Would you like to select this subclass?
Sinnamon was a year older than Weaver and their friends and had taken a gap year to be an EMT while Weaver finished his senior year. It had been borne of an arrangement with her father, a doctor of oncology. He would help her cover the cost of her schooling, but only if she was certain she wanted to go into the medical field. Like her father, medicine was in Sinnamon’s nature and she had been firm in her decision. She was happy to see this world had recognized that.
You have chosen Cleric - School of Healing as your subclass. Allied buffs now have a healing component that scales with level and enemy debuffs likewise have a drain over time. This sapped health is stored for you to heal an ally with, separate from any mana used to fuel healing spells you may unlock. In addition, you have learned the level 1 healing spells Healing Pulse and Static Barrier Shield. More spells will become available to you as you level your Subclass.
Sinnamon immediately allocated half her subclass levels to this new subclass. She hadn’t figured out what profession she wanted to take yet, so she thought it best to keep the remaining levels in reserve. The message had specifically said “levels” and not “experience towards those levels”, so she hoped they might prove more valuable if she held onto them as higher levels required more experience points. Failing that, she would be able to jump start her subclass for a quick boost in progression if needed.
Weaver gave Sinnamon an appraising glance. “Good choice.”
“Whatcha reading?” Sinnamon asked.
“A Treatise on Mages,” Weaver answered with a mouthful of food. He swallowed. “It's actually kind of interesting. Apparently the NPCs have a totally different way of seeing magic than we do.”
Sinnamon got the abbreviated explanation. A level cap was imposed on the NPCs, but not night spawns, Royal Guards in armor, or players like herself. Apparently it had always been like that and this world’s version of gods and legendary figures were those who somehow exceeded that cap.
That likely meant that unless there was some low level mass brain swapping spell the NPCs were hiding, none of them would likely have an idea of how they got here. Although given the Royal Guard could get as high as level four hundred, they could be potential candidates as the architects behind everything. The power discrepancy between even a level ten and level fifty player was immense. What would a three hundred level difference grant?
Though if it were the guards, what would they have gotten out of it? And why not tell them it was they who did it?
Sinnamon was of the opinion that whoever brought them here would have been more efficient at the task if they'd given that power to the locals here. Then again, maybe they couldn't. The removal of the player level cap of one hundred was suspiciously timed to their being brought here…
Sinnamon pulled herself out of the rabbit hole she'd gone down. She could think about this and never actually figure anything out.
“We should probably get going if we want to meet your friends at the guildhall,” Weaver said, finishing the last of his breakfast.
“Yeah, about that, actually. I got a call from Orb. She and Jack just gave us a ton of gold to buy up some buildings in the city. We’ll have to make a stop and do that first.”
“Alright, you do that, I’ll find us a quest.”
***
Araedi’s guildhall saw only a trickle of people coming and going, a far change from the near constant flood of people outside it yesterday. There was a small crowd off to the side of the stairs. Sinnamon recognized one of the bystanders as the man she and Weaver had bumped into the previous night bringing Gavriel’s food cart to the bakery. Weaver had single-handedly lifted the entire thing and rested it on his shoulder as easily as she would have a small stick. That hadn't helped him see where he was going, though.
The man had a darkened, brooding expression that was shared with much of the crowd. The previous night, that man had handed Sinnamon and Weaver a flyer about a meeting being held last night to figure out what exactly had happened to bring everyone here. By their expressions, it hadn't gone well.
Weaver slowed down, having noticed them, too. “I feel bad for those guys. They probably only succeeded in making themselves feel even worse about all this. We don't know enough about anything in this world. We should be trying to study everything we can.”
“Yeah, probably would have helped if they had a book like yours,” Sinnamon agreed.
“I'm going to find out what they talked about. Meet at the big glowing rock?”
The big glowing rock was the guildhall’s Caer Fragment, it's what enabled players to fast travel. Though one had to go the long way to the city first or have a friend willing to take them there before they could use it themselves.
“Sure, I'll shoot Sparrow a message.”
There was a large gathering in front of the many market boards. Orbnus had been right, people were eager to snap up property within the city. Sinnamon had to hunt and push her way through to find an open stall.
When she finally found one, there was only a blank board with a single white crystal in the middle. An icon of a small storefront appeared in her vision and she focused on it.
The crystal began to glow and the blank board was replaced with a screen very similar to Annwyn Online’s marketplace. She moved to the properties tab and the screen changed to an overhead view of the city. The city was circular, with one large street leading away in each cardinal direction like the spokes of a wheel. Increasingly larger circles of streets with their own connections fanned out from the center like the rings of a tree stump.
Looking at it made Sinnamon realize just how small the game version of the city had been. The entire northern half had been unavailable to players and now she saw the map would allow her to purchase a building anywhere inside the walls.
There were over a thousand buildings available and that number was shrinking as the green dots marking a building flickered to either grey or red. The northern section had a higher density of remaining buildings, and upon closer inspection, Sinnamon understood why. The towers there were in worse shape, larger chunks of the buildings had been blown out and some had been knocked so far off their foundations, they leaned on the towers beside them.
It was in that section of the city where Sinnamon found the building she had hoped might be there. The building stuck out to her immediately.
Just as Araedi’s guildhall looked like an embellished version of the Empire State Building, the one she placed a hold on looked like an equally ornate version of the Museum of Natural History. The outside of the building was made of black granite with swirls of red and white marble accents. There weren’t any images of the inside, but Sinnamon knew she wanted it. Without hesitation, she added the six million gold building to her hold list, both surprised and happy to see no one else had claimed it yet.
Closer to the city walls, she found a dozen more buildings going for between nine hundred thousand and two million gold. Since it really didn’t matter what they looked like, she picked nine across the city.
A notification said an NPC would meet her at the museum building within the hour so she could see it herself before she finalized the purchases.
***
Weaver sat at a table with Sparrow, JonJon, and a third person with short green hair and silver deer-like antlers whom Sinnamon realized must be their friend Anna. Sinnamon sat down between the girl and Weaver. The girl introduced herself as AnnaLee, a level thirty-six Druid.
JonJon wasn’t wearing the sling Sinnamon had made for him the night before and when Sinnamon asked how he was feeling, JonJon held his arm up for her to see.
“It’s way better! Anna’s healing worked!”
Anna nodded and it left Sinnamon with something to think about. Healing potions, even ones of considerable strength, did nothing for injuries after respawning, but healing magic did. She wondered what the significance of that information might be.
Just to be sure JonJon was fine, Sinnamon still looked over his arm. There wasn’t any indication that he’d even been hurt.
Sinnamon glanced at Annalee, “Nice work!”
The Druid blushed, but said nothing.
Weaver looked over at Sinnamon. “You find us a good home?
"I think you'll like what I got for us. It's in the northern part of the city. It looks exactly like the museum in New York City."
"Whoa, you guys bought a guild tower? You must be rich!"
"Sinn's the rich one, I'm just the trophy boyfriend," Weaver said, making a show of flexing his arms to the giggling of all three kids. "If we're ready, I found a quest to fight a giant level thirty stone monster named Nun’Yunu’Wi.”
“Level thirty? Isn’t that a little high for us?” Sinnamon asked, nodding to the kids.
“Yeah, we’ll be a little underleveled, but I think our party has a good enough mix of healing, damage, and utility. The stone monster’s high health and likely higher resistance stats should do great for some limit testing.”