Chapter 150: Intermission
“Let’s walk and talk, we’ve gotta visit the storehouse.” Aegis said to Chax before looking worriedly towards his party members. He walked forward through the streets of Rene towards the townsquare, and the others followed behind him. “What’s the problem, exactly?”
“It started two weeks after you left. Yuki, Ruffily, and Amlie all headed off to do their class quests. Yuki for her advanced, and Ruffily and Amlie for their intermediates.” Chax explained.
“Oh, are they back yet?” Rakkan asked eagerly.
“No, not yet.”
“Is Savika still safe?” Lina asked.
“Yes, she is fine - Celestian and Farlion have gotten much stronger since you made them elite, and law and order has been maintained. The issue is with the Arallians.” Chax replied. “We started getting an influx of new residents from Kordas, Orm, and the like. Word somehow spread that we were providing free housing, so NPCs from other cities and towns have been coming here to take advantage of it.” Chax continued.
“Ah, I see.” Pyri nodded as they neared the townsquare. Aegis could see what Chax was talking about - there was a much greater variety of NPCs walking about now, as opposed to before where it was primarily Arallians in Arallian attire.
“Without you or Ruffily around, or Yuki, Savika was doing her duties as Mayor under the assumption that you would keep this method of house assignment. She’s been giving any family that asks a plot of land to build their homes upon. The houses were at first being constructed by the highest level Arallian crafters that helped out with the wall, ect. So they turned out okay…” Chax said as he motioned to the eastern section of Rene. Aegis could tell just from a glance over the crowds in the townsquare that there were much more buildings, and plenty that clashed with the architecture style of the others.
“But, the new Kalmoore citizens proved to be troublesome in their own way. They started passive aggressively commenting on the fact that the Arallians were willing to work and build their homes for free, given that the Kordas citizens were accustomed to being paid for working.” Chax went on as they left the townsquare and neared the storehouse.
“So the Arallians stop building them houses?” Aegis asked.
“Not only that, they’ve been much less willing to engage in any crafting whatsoever, without an income.” Chax replied.
“Even though their housing is free?” Aegis asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Even though.” Chax shook his head as the group stopped in front of the storehouse. “The Kalmoore NPCs spread the idea to them that they shouldn’t work for free, all the while moving here to take advantage of the free housing. On one side, the Kalmoorians were envious of the housing, and now on the other side, we’ve got Arallian’s envious of being paid for work. Savika doesn’t know what to do, but the complaints have been coming at her constantly. She’s most likely in the townhall now with Celestian.” Chax went on.
“Right.” Aegis nodded as he started unloading his extra materials into the Rene storehouse. Constructed by Ruffily a while back, it was under the protection of two Rene guards. Aegis was made aware that once a storehouse was registered to a city, any belongings placed in them by any player could not be stolen, nor would they be lost if an island fell.
As he dropped off the spare items he wasn't planning to use for crafting yet, he pondered Chax’s words and tried to come up with a solution.
“Man, what a pain in the ass.” Aegis scratched his head as he’d finished, stepping back from the building whilst his party continued to drop off items they’d gathered so far. He looked around at the surrounding land, then moved up into his interface to check in on it.
“We’re just short 17 more residents, then we’ll be upgraded from a village to a town.” Aegis commented as he looked at his land management menu. “I’m not really interested in playing a game where I’m trying to manage a population's happiness all day, though.” Aegis sighed. “Savika really can’t come up with a solution? She was the daughter of a Kingdom’s King, wasn’t she?”
“She might be able to, but she lacks authority, or confidence.” Chax shrugged. "She's still just a kid."
“What do you suggest we do?” Aegis asked Chax.
“Honestly, I’m a bit pissed off at the ungratefulness of their AIs. They’re happy to accept free land, but two months later, it’s not good enough.”
“I don’t think that’s an issue with just AI’s. Most people are like that.” Pyri shrugged.
“Everyone always wants more.” Darkshot nodded along.
“What about the Tavern?” Lina asked as she looked towards it in the nearby town square, seeing it plenty busy.
“Tavern is fine, they make their own profits. Same with the shopkeepers.” Chax said as he motioned to a few NPC-run market stands in the town square. “The other players have no complaints, they love it here. Erikson’s been doing well. It’s really just the NPCs.” Chax replied.
“What would happen if we start paying the Arallians for their work for the village?” Aegis asked him.
“Well… We’d have to start by paying the guards. Then, those crafters that have been working on our exports for treasury funds. And the builders who contribute to construction and maintenance. Then, the farmers who supply the granary. We could afford it, but it’d cut down on our profits massively. Easiest way to pay them is to start charging them for their land.” Chax shrugged.
“If you charge them now, they’ll be pissed.” Rakkan warned Aegis.
“Yeah, they’ve grown too accustomed to living free. It’s harder to take something away than to never give it in the first place.” Pyri agreed.
“I can manage the funds to sort it out as efficiently as possible, but… if word gets to Kordas that we’re giving out free housing AND paying for work, no NPC will want to live anywhere but Rene in Kalmoore. The other cities and towns of Kordas will suffer.” Chax replied.
“Hmm.” Aegis pondered the situation. “Alright, tell Savika to stop giving out free housing. Organize the funds so that we start paying all of the NPCs working for us, standard wages.”
“That’ll make it harder to pay back our debt to the Night Hunters.” Chax replied.
“It’s fine, I’ll sort out that debt myself once I start crafting the tier 3 items and selling them.” Aegis shrugged.
“Right. The cloth will sort that out really quick. Can you weave it yourself, since Yuki’s not around?” Chax asked him.
“Gonna try…” Aegis said as he paused, walked to the storehouse and made sure he'd grabbed all of the strands, pincers, and other crafting materials he had available to him, including his ironwood and some high quality iron bars.
“Ok. Sounds good. Once Ruffily’s back we’ll have to ask her to sort out the weird buildings that have been built up recently. I’ll update you on any other changes.” Chax bowed, waved, then rushed off towards the townhall, leaving Aegis and his party alone on the streets of Rene out front of the storehouse.
“Should I just give up ownership of the land to Quinn or something? This sucks.” Aegis pouted.
“Nah, you’re doing good. Having our own land is awesome, can do whatever we want here.” Darkshot patted him on the back. “NPCs are just doing NPC things. Savika and Chax will sort it out.”
“Just bad timing, what with Yuki, Amlie and Ruffily all gone.” Lina nodded.
“Yeah, I bet if they were here it woulda been fine.” Rakkan shrugged.
“I guess…” Aegis replied hesitantly. “Alright. Hand over your gear. I’m going to try and learn to weave this silk on my own and use it with leather to make us some new armor before we continue into the Underrealm. Let’s meet up again in 24 hours.” Aegis said to the group.
“Okay. I’ll go check on Melon. You wanna come and stretch out your wings without all that armor on?” Pyri asked Snowflake in a babying voice. He nodded excitedly and screeched softly before hopping along behind her towards the pasture.
“I’m going to go see Sherry, she’s working the Night Hunter stall here in Rene. Cya.” Darkshot waved before he ran off with a skip in his step.
“I’ll go check on Amlie’s house and farm fields.” Rakkan shrugged, leaving Lina and Aegis alone.
“Do you have anything you want to do?” Aegis asked her.
“Nope, I want to stay with you…” She replied while avoiding eye contact, fidgeting with her hilts.
“Alright…” Aegis smiled. “I’ll start with the tailoring hall, and try to figure this silk out.” Aegis added before making his way through the streets towards the building.
Stepping inside, Aegis was surprised to see it completely empty - just as Chax had said, the other NPCs were not working at all. This meant that when the door shut beside them, the sound from outside was blocked out, leaving Aegis and Lina to stand in silence for a moment as he looked around.
“I’ve got no idea how to do this, but it can’t be that hard… But first...” Aegis looked at his livestreaming icon, "You guys will have to wait and see how it all turns out after. No peeking." He winked awkwardly at his audience before turning the livestream off. Aegis then pulled bundles of the strands of voidsilk out of his inventory and made his way over to the spinning wheels. “It says its already purified, thanks to Pyri’s fire, but it also says there are two methods of weaving it…” Aegis said outloud as Lina watched. With that, he got to work on the first batch, using standard tactics that he’d learned to make silk cloth.
He spun it easily enough over the next hour, gaining a large amount of experience in his weaving skill. He then went on to the actual weaving, and interlocked the long thick strands of voidsilk to produce multiple pieces of long cloth, gaining even more experience in his weaving skill.
Level Up!: Weaving has reached Level 40!
From his first batch of attempts he ended up with three patches of usable silk cloth, ready to be sewn and cut into the shapes for clothing. The quality of each cloth wasn’t great, none were above 20 - but he wasn’t expecting much from his first attempts given his low weaving skill level.
He leaned back and looked at the item cards for each cloth. Despite him trying three different, common weaving methods for each piece, they all resulted in the same option. All three cloths were going to increase the agility of the item that was crafted with them.
“How many agility based classes utilize cloth armor?” Aegis asked Lina as he leaned back and inspected his creations, laying them out on a table in front of him.
“Uhm… maybe monks.” Lina shrugged. “Most go for leather for the movement speed bonus. Cloth armor proficiency grants casting bonuses.”
“Casting classes don’t generally want agility, do they?” Aegis replied.
“Nope.” Lina shrugged.
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“So. There’s gotta be a better way to do this. First, I’ve got to figure out the weaving method to make the voidsilk bring out its magic property. Second, I’ve got to use the voidsilk with leather to apply the agility property to leather armor. That part should be pretty easy…” Aegis said as he thought about it for a bit. “It’s unfortunate we haven’t found any high level leather creatures yet in the Underrealm, though. I’ve only got some Lynx leather to work with.”
“Do you want me to try and buy some higher level leather from the market stalls?” Lina asked him.
“If you can find some of good quality, yeah. Do you have enough gold?”
“I’ve got some left. I’ll try to get enough to make new armor for all of us.” Lina replied enthusiastically before rushing out of the building, leaving Aegis alone with the silk. He placed another batch of long strands on the spinning wheels and paced around them.
“A weaving method that makes them magical instead of agility based…” Aegis said aloud as he considered how to do it. “Let’s try magic.” Aegis shrugged. “Enchant object!” Aegis cast on the spinning wheel, draining his mana by 5000. “Whoa. Expensive.” Aegis said with wide eyes as he saw his mana bar drop below half in an instant, but the result was that the spinning wheel began to give off a faint blue glow.
While it was glowing he quickly began spinning the strands into fine silk threads. Unfortunately, the object enchantment didn’t last long, but Aegis was determined to try this method out fully, so he waited for his mana to regenerate and only spun it while the wheel was enchanted.
He continued this all the way through the process of spinning, then weaving, making sure to enchant every tool he used along the way in the hopes that he was on the right track.
When he finished the next patch of plain woven voidsilk, he set it down on the table anxiously, hesitant to check the item card and see if he’d succeeded. It had taken him so long to weave it in this way that Lina had long since returned with level 80 leather, and was waiting and watching him silently.
“Did it work?” Lina asked him as she saw Aegis step back from his creation.
“I don’t know. I’m too scared to look. I don’t really know how to do it otherwise, if this doesn’t do the trick.” Aegis turned away from the cloth. “You check it.” Aegis motioned her towards it with a head nod.
“Me? Okay…” Lina hesitantly walked over to the table with the cloth on it and picked it up, checking the item card. “It has an option here for casting speed… is that what you were hoping for?” Lina asked.
“YES!” Aegis pumped his fist in the air. “Nailed it. Who’s the master crafter? This guy.” Aegis pointed his thumbs at himself excitedly, causing Lina to giggle.
“I got this, it was the highest level leather for sale. It’s pretty good quality, mostly.” Lina said as she pulled out a few stacks of level 80 leather and placed it on the table nearby. Aegis walked over to inspect it to see the leather was from a creature called a basilisk, and had a dark gray appearance.
“Perfect.” Aegis said while he inspected it. “I wanted to put off doing more crafting until we’d gotten the best materials possible, but I think our gear is a bit too outdated for our level.” Aegis said as he locked his fingers together and cracked them out. “This should be enough, combined with the pincers, to beef up our equipment for the rest of the Underrealm.”
“Do you need anything else?” Lina asked him.
“Yeah, just dyes, so it looks good. Gotta level Artistry too. Can you pick up some good colors for us?” Aegis asked her.
“I’m on it!” She gave him a thumbs up before heading out of the tailoring hall again. Once she was gone, he eagerly got to work on the crafting.
Aegis was careful and meticulous throughout the entire process. He travelled back and forth between the tailoring hall and the leatherworking all as needed for each craft. The first thing he worked on was a new set of Voidsilk cloth armor for Pyri. He skipped over the gloves though, given that she already had a high quality pair.
Once he’d finished that, he worked with his higher level tanning and leatherworking skills to treat the level 80 leather, then stitched together the leather using voidsilk threads, and added voidsilk to the inside of the armor as a liner in an attempt to strengthen it and add the voidsilk properties. He discovered that the key behind deciding what the armor type was went based on which type of material held the majority in the craft.
Using this knowledge he was able to make use of the extremely powerful properties of the tier 3 voidsilk in tandem with the level 80 leather, and bring out the most armor possible using his skills. In the process, he gained massive amounts of experience in all relevant skills due to him working with such high level materials.
The hardest part of crafting the armor was making use of the Royal Mosmir pincers. He’d gathered just enough from them to craft two sets of armor for all of his party members - after that, he’d be out of them. They weren’t too hard to farm, but Aegis didn’t want to waste time going back down into the hive just to gather more pincers from an enemy on a two hour respawn time. Due to this, he took extra, special care in adding the pincers to the armor.
He broke up the material into thin strips and used them as lining around the edges of the armor, giving each piece a hardened black outline of thick, melded chitinous material. He did it in such a way that the hardened chitin pieces wouldn’t impede mobility and accented the design.
Once the armor was finished and dyed to be dark blue and embroidered with yellow stars of Eirene, Aegis moved on to the weapons. These were much easier - he made use of the rest of the Ironwood and his highest quality mined and refined iron to forge all of the weapons. He discovered that using enchant object on his other tools as he worked the weapons was adding damage improvements to the end result of the crafts.
When it came to remaking Pyri’s Ironwood staff, this time he added Voidreaver pincers, and carried out the entire process with wood carving tools infused with enchant object. It took a lot longer, but he gained plenty of enchanting experience and managed to make a very impressive staff that added spell damage and casting speed despite it being Ironwood and not Wildwood.
Last but not least, Aegis moved on to forging himself a new iron shield. It still wasn’t mithral, but he knew his current armor wasn’t going to cut it if enemies kept getting stronger - especially given that slowly his damage reduction was getting lower with each gained level.
He lined the inside of the shield with a mix of Ironwood and Voidsilk, the level 80 leather was used for the inside straps, then the best of the best iron he had left for the front. He added in a set of voidreaver pincers, and royal mosmir pincers, and thought about trying to add in the tendrils from the raid boss which had a psychic-resistance option, but due to his blacksmithing level he was only able to add two option-adding materials to his craft.
He worked through the night and into the morning, hammering away at the weapons and shield at his magnificent forge of Rene.
Given the materials he was working with, he’d drawn quite an audience of curious players who were eager to learn from his technique. Aegis tried his best to pay no mind to them and not disrupt the other players who were working at the other forge’s crafting stations, but it wasn’t just the local audience interested in what he was doing. Once he'd finished with weaving the voidsilk he turned his stream back on and his viewership held steady at 75,000.
He’d thought by now that it would’ve dropped back down to its average of 35,000 since the Hive adventure had finished, but it didn’t - it seemed to Aegis like quite a few of Feng’s viewers were sticking around to keep watching him.
Finally, nearly 24 hours after returning to Rene, Aegis moved on to the finishing touches on his shield. He carefully engraved a new star symbol in the front of the shield. Its shape was identical to his last shield with a teardrop shape, but it was a few centimeters larger.
Once he finished the last bit of etching, he blew on it to clean off the filings from the etching indentations and held his shield back away from his face to get a better look at it, the sun shining down from the afternoon sky and reflecting off of the smooth iron surface.
“Looks good.” Aegis said proudly. He stood up from the crafting station to see a group of crafters looking behind him eagerly, and beyond them stood his party and Chax. Aegis walked around the onlookers who continued to stare oddly at Aegis. He wasn’t really sure how to talk to or address them, so he gave them a smile as he walked by.
“I bring gifts to you all.” Aegis said excitedly as he began fidgeting through his inventory. “First, for you, Chax.” Aegis handed out a roll of leftover voidsilk, the greatsword that had dropped from the hive boss, and everyones old sets of armor. “That should help settle up our debt with Tullan.”
“Nice. Raw materials are much easier to sell, and this’ll be the first of its kind on the market. I love a sellers market. Not to mention your old gear... Your fans might want it just as a collectors item.” Chax rubbed his hands together. “If I play it right, this oughta clear up the debt with the Night Hunters in one fell swoop.” He added as he took the items from Aegis and added it to his inventory.
“Next, a new set of robes and staff for our Wizard.” Aegis presented dark blue voidsilk robes, boots, and leggings to Pyri, followed by her new Ironwood staff. Aegis had added the voidpincer to the top of her staff, jutting out of it like a horn, and it maintained its purple glow.
“Ooh, this looks like a neat, underrealm themed magic staff. Much better than that walking stick I had before.” Pyri took it excitedly and equipped it all.
“For Rakkan, a new set of weapons made with appropriate pincer incorporation. And some new leather armor.” Aegis handed over Rakkan’s new items one by one. “I left out the spear, though.”
“Yeah, I got that spear from the Queen.” Rakkan nodded excitedly. “This stuff is crazy good.” He excitedly equipped the new set of dark blue leather armor.
“For Darkshot, new armor and a quiver. And a new Ironwood bow infused with a drone pincer. My new crafting method of infusing tools, and the pincers, made it a lot stronger than your last bow. If we want to improve it, we’re going to need to find a high quality sinew from something in the underrealm.” Aegis explained.
“I don’t know what a sinew is, but this stuff is sick.” Darkshot said as he equipped it all.
“For Lina, new armor and daggers.” Aegis handed it to her. She took it all with a smile and quickly equipped it, looking down at herself to check it out.
“It’s perfect, thank you.” Lina smiled.
“And of course, my own stuff.” Aegis proudly began equipping each new piece of armor one by one, inspecting it himself as he did.
Name: Royal Iron Shield of the Voidreaver
Slot: Off-hand
Type: Shield
Armor: 2515
Quality: 61%
Durability: 500/500
Requirements: Level 55, 55+ Strength
Option 1: Increases Favor with Eirene while equipped by 250
Option 2: Increases Casting speed by 2.5% [Source: Voidsilk]
Option 3: Increases Damage and Healing from Spells by 75 [Source: Mosmir Voidreaver Pincer]
Description: A shield made of Iron, Ironwood, Voidsilk, Royal Mosmir Pincers, and Mosmir Voidreaver Pincers. Detailed with the star of Eirene. Crafted by Aegis.
Name: Royal Basilisk Leather Armor of the Voidreaver
Slot: Chest
Type: Leather Armor
Armor: 1764
Quality: 58%
Durability: 300/300
Requirements: Level 50
Option 1: Increases Favor with Eirene while equipped by 125
Option 2: Increases Casting speed by 2.5% [Source: Voidsilk]
Option 3: Increases Damage and Healing from Spells by 57 [Source: Mosmir Voidreaver Pincer]
Description: A leather chest piece made of Basilisk leather, Voidsilk, Royal Mosmir Pincers, and Mosmir Voidreaver Pincers. Crafted by Aegis
The gloves, boots, and leggings all contributed an additional 2.5% casting speed each, bringing his total casting speed bonus up to 12.5%, meaning that Aegis’ heal could now be cast on himself in roughly 1.75s, down from 2s. It was the first thing he wanted to test out.
“Heal.” Aegis cast on himself, and he was happy to see the cast finished much faster. “This voidsilk is amazing. I wove it all for now, but once the larvae are ready to catch I will figure out how to tame and raise them to make more.” Aegis explained to Chax.
“If you manage that, you’ll make Rene rich.” Chax grinned from ear to ear at this idea.
“Those pincers, too, were really good.” Lina commented as she waved her daggers around in front of her.
“They’re not enchanted yet, but I was taught how to mine Glasmium from Pakro’Vielle. That's the stuff that is used to craft enchanting orbs. The mining trainer in Pakro’Vielle said we’ll find it on the other side of the Red River, so once we get some, I’ll put enchants on our equipment.” Aegis explained and he got a few nods back. “Does anyone else need anything from Rene?” He looked over his party members once more.
“Nope, not really. I got enough arrows.” Darkshot shrugged.
“I got a nice relaxing sunbath, so I’m rejuvenated and ready for round two.” Pyri replied.
“Same, I’m good to go.” Rakkan said.
“Me too.” Lina joined in.
“Alright.” Aegis spoke loudly, clapping his hands together enthusiastically. “And, you’re good now here with Savika?” He asked Chax.
“Yeah, she’s not letting any more people in for free, and the Arallian’s seem willing to start working again.” Chax replied.
“Good, let me know if anything changes. And tell Savika she’s free to make executive decisions if she needs to, she’s the Mayor after all.” Aegis added.
“Got it.” Chax nodded back.
“Ok.” Aegis looked to his party members once more, stopping on each of them briefly with his eyes before moving on to the next. Each and every one of them looked eager to test out their new equipment. “Fetch me my gryphon, and let us return to the Underrealm!” Aegis cheered over-enthusiastically.