Town Builder - 75 - Game Launch!

Chapter 75: Game Launch!

Grey Weasel remained smiling as he waited for my response. “Your player map?” I questioned the legitimacy of his claim of being lost.

The realization came to him, and he laughed cheerfully, “Oh! I just came from the Endless Dark. I started in the Necropolis down there and popped up about twenty miles north of here in the mountains. Since I was on the surface, I decided to link several portals before returning. This weird little town isn’t in any of the forums.”

His story sounded believable to me, but player guile would probably be a regular part of my life. “You are north of Crystalhelm in the human kingdom of Veeral,” I replied. It couldn’t hurt to be helpful since he would get the information eventually.

He engaged his interface as he sorted through the forum maps, “Ah! Wow, I am a long way from anywhere important.”  He closed his interface; his ever-persistent smile showed teeth again. “So Goatyah? Is this your town? I see you are a hardwired player by not being able to see your level.”

Since this was not my town, I weighed how much information to give him. “No, it belongs to a friend. It is a play on the phrase, ‘got you’ since we had to kill a bunch of angry goats to claim the land and build.”

“Ah, yes, I ran from some goats on my way here,” he chuckled. “Glad I made it to the safety of a town and found a portal to boot.” He started to scan the town and the buildings. Danny should have hidden her buildings from inspections of those of lower levels. “So, where does a vampire get a drink around here?” My mouth went slack, and he laughed, “Bad joke. An ale is fine.”

Danny hadn’t actually built any taverns or inns yet. I went into my dimensional bag and handed him a jungle brew. “So how is adventuring in the Endless Dark and being a vampire?”

“Calling it dark is a misnomer. Glowing stones, glowing moss, and lava pools keep almost everything well-lit. But all the races down there also have dark vision. As for being a vampire? I thought it would be fun. A few interesting racial buffs at higher levels, but I haven’t reached any yet.  Hopefully, there will be more players in a few days. I have been adventuring alone mostly as only four of us were staring there, and the Endless Dark is layered, meaning there is a much greater area to explore on the surface.” He took a long pull on the bottle. “This is good, and the buffs even exceed the debuffs.”

“Are you a member of a Guild?” I asked the vampire as he enjoyed Malcum’s brew.

“God, no. Just a solo adventurer’s life for me. I am a professional soccer player in real life and in the off-season. I am using the pod instead of sleeping. Sleep isn’t any better or worse than regular sleep.” I think he expected me to be impressed with his career, but I wouldn’t know who he was if he told me.

I decided to give him some advice as he seemed like a genuine person. “Vampires and other undead have some prejudice on the surface. You should be careful where you go and build local reputation slowly to counter it.”

“Ah, I know. I thought about starting over as a bulkin or catkin, but then I would lose my early start bonuses, and we are almost a mint in,” Grey Weasel said, shrugging. “Guess I should head back. One portal is enough for me, and the game launch is just two days away.” He indicated the portal stone.

On impulse, I sent him a friend invite so we could communicate in the future. I had some quests in the Endless Dark, so maybe I would venture there eventually, and having a contact to act as a guide could help. He accepted the friend request with a smile, walked to the portal stone, and vanished. I sent his information to Danny since if he returned, he would arrive in her town.

I returned to building structures in Goatyah until my interface alarm buzzed hours later. It was a reminder to head to Stillwater to meet Deific Savior for the exchange. I entered Goatyah’s portal stone and arrived in Stillwater. I was only an hour early and spent my free time shopping for skill books. The city had not restocked much, and the fifteen skill books I purchased were mostly useless skills.

Deific Savior sent me a message. He was at the End of the Road Inn and asked me to meet him there. He didn’t want to walk the city and risk being spotted by Frost Siren’s agents. I walked across the city and entered the inn. It was a large common room with dozens on NPCs. Savior waved from the corner, a hood pulled over his face. I settled in across from him.

“How goes your war with Eternal Legacy?” I asked as conversation starter.

I didn’t see his reaction under his hood but he grunted. “It’s not a war. At least not yet. Neither side has developed enough of power disparity to push a war. Also the NPCs can currently kick all our asses. Maybe when our power paradise the NPCs you might see a true guild war. When you see it, cities will burn and the death toll will be immense. I have ten major time essences for you. The extra two are no extra charge.”

It almost felt like this was a drug deal as I slid the guildhouse plans across the table. Savior inspected them in his interface and slid the bag of time essences to me. “What do you need them for? They are quite rare and we are lucky to be in control of a dungeon where they can be obtained.” It was a hint that another transaction was possible in the future.

“A personal project. Hopefully it is a success,” thank you.

“I was told to make you an offer to join Divine Deviants but I have a feeling you will not take it.” Savior stated flatly.

“You are right. I am not interested, but I hope we can have an amicable relationship.”

He sighed deeply, “We offer immense support for all our crafters. Unlimited resources,” he indicated the bag of time essences. “Whatever we can’t get, we will procure by any means necessary.” He was a charismatic man and there was no pressure in his tone.

I shook my head and he shrugged off the rejection. He had read me correctly. I slid him a list of essences, “What do you want for this list?” He scanned the list, which contained over two hundred common essences, including fifty lesser illusion essences to power the Overwatch Obelisk.

“There is nothing difficult to obtain on this list, and our guild vault has everything listed here. Another crafting building should suffice, but getting them to you will take a day.” Savior explained.

“How about this leather works?” I sent him the details of the plans I had copied. As with the other plans, the limiting factor was the number of workstations the building supported. This building had four workstations in it. It really was my fault, as I had not been considering massive guilds when I first drafted them.

Rare Tannery/Leatherworks, Health 50,000, Requires Masonry: Structures 43, Woodcraft Carpentry 23 (Bonus 33% chance to increase tanned hide quality, +5 defense bonus to leather crafted armor, 1% chance to increase rarity of crafted armor)

“More than adequate,” he said after seeing the bonuses. He smirked, “I will increase your demands by 50% before I send the transaction to our leadership for approval—best to keep on friendly terms. It didn’t take him long before he sent me a formal contract created by the game. “One of our leaders took the skill to create them. The game just enforces the penalty if the contract is not satisfied.”

I nodded and read the contract while Savior waited on me. When I finished, I produced and handed over the plans. When I did so, my half of the contract was listed as complete, and the Divine Deviants side had a twenty-four-hour clock starting. The penalty for failure in the contract was 200,000 experience transferred from one party to the other. The other party was called Seraphim’s Sword, who I assumed was one of the guild leaders.

I thought this contract ability was overpowered. “Is your guild leader planning to farm experience from players with his contract ability?”

“He already has. Remember, you are not required to be listed in the top ten players,” Savior said, smiling.

“Is he farming the hard-wired players, then?”

“There are limits to his contract skill.” He paused before continuing, “This is one of our guild secrets.” I nodded seriously before he continued. “So, the amount of experience is limited by his skill level, and if a player fails a contract, they cannot sign another for thirty game days. We have been paying hard-wired players gold for experience before the admins step in with an update.”

It was clear he was trying to earn my trust but not pushing. I was sure the contract skill details would be on the forums before too long, with millions of players joining in days. I wondered if you could force players to accept a contract they couldn’t complete.

Savior stood, “I made sure I wasn’t followed this time. There is an advanced tracking skill that can read a portal stone’s destination that we were not aware of. I will gather the essences and have them sent through the auction house—another benefit of using a contract instead of a transaction, but you have to pay tax on the goods. We will be in touch, Tallis, but we have recruited four architects, and hopefully, one can match your skill in time.”

Savior left, and I took the last as a gentle probing and warning. I should still have months before any new players came close to my drafting skill. No, that was not true. It really depended on how proficient someone was in the real world. I had raised it quickly from years of study. There were people out there with decades of experience. Still, I expected the demand to be extremely high.

I stopped in the auction house to place a few simpler plans and set the bid with a three-day timer. I was no longer as concerned with being found. With the influx of players, Malcum would inevitably have numerous players roaming it in the near future. That would give the new players a chance to bid on them.

5 x Rare Guard House Plans, Health 120,000 Requires Masonry 43, Woodcraft Structures 23 (Bonus: Houses 12 City Guards, Spawn Rate of 1 Guard per day, LEVEL 22)

1 x Uncommon Barber Shop, Health 2,000, Bonus +3% to effects from barber

2 x Rare Barracks Gatehouse (Houses 250 NPCs), Health 250,000, Requires Masonry Foundations 23, Masonry Structures 43, Woodcraft: Carpentry 23 (Bonus: +15% skill advancement for martial skills, +4% health and stamina recovery during sleep)

The barracks gatehouse was fairly obsolete with my profession advancement and didn’t spawn any NPCs like my magical buildings woven with runes and built with essences. I planned to delete all these plans from my recipes as the earlier works didn’t incorporate my ritual enchanting. I still expected guilds to give me their gold to win the auction.

I returned to Malcum, checked on Danny’s quest progress, and then pulled all my builders to focus on the two guard houses. Danny was still trying to complete the quest for her dwarf engineers and shipwrights but hoped to return before the launch. They were not large structures; I expected to complete them before the game launched. After this, we could start on the Watchtower Obelisk in the center of the park, in the city's heart, completing my defenses for the early game.

There was no sign of the Eternal Legacy players, and my Master of Scouts, Mira, was level 143, so she should have found them if they were spying. My best guess was that the resources of Eternal Legacy were stretched too thin, and they were trying to position themselves to claim territory and do onboarding for thousands of new players.

As we approached the completion of the first guard house, another of my buildings generated my first agent. The Rogues Gallery produced a wolfkin spy for me. She was already slotted to remain in Malcum. I waited patiently as the Rouges Gallery selected the following NPC in Malcum to train.

The spinning icon finally resolved, another female NPC, but at least this time it was a human. This would allow my to send the agent to infiltrate the human Kingdom of Veeral to the south. It was still going to be days until her training was complete.

The following day, we completed the second, advanced guard house, with over ten hours to spare before the official game launch. We used a lot of high-tier stone and lumber in the project, and the results showed.

Very Rare Stone Guard House, (Generates one level 80 Time Master Combat Mage Commander every seven game days, limit 2) (Bonus: Houses 8 Watchman, Spawn Rate 1 per day, Level 50, limit 8) Structure Regenerates 1% health every 24 hours (stacks with similar effects)

Very Rare Stone Guard House, (Generates one level 75 Combat Time Master Mage Commander every seven game days, limit 2) (Bonus: Houses 8 Watchman, Spawn Rate 1 per day, Level 45, limit 8) Structure Regenerates 1% health every 24 hours (stacks with similar effects)

I went into the interface of each building to explore its functionality. The Time Masters had impressive spells like Jaesmin had noted. Slow debuffs for enemies and speed buffs for allies were at the top. There were also some lesser healing spells, like accelerated healing. I would have to wait seven days for them to spawn, but with two towers, I would get two at that time.

I was able to set their patrol route through the city and its frequency. Rather than do this myself, I turned over controls to Galana. The NPC would do a better job micro-managing the new additions than me. I was most happy the the guards themselves were titled watchman. These were elite NPC guards that specializing in perception skills. They were less robust fighters than regular guards but I was okay with that.

I tried to rest in the Lord’s Manor with Jaesmin and Joy as I waited but got figity. Should I be spending the last hours rushing another building project? Should I be reading the game updates? Should I be talking to NPCs to increase their AI potential? I moved to the drafting table and started working on new plans to distract myself. My interface chimed and I thought it was going to inform me the game launch was about to happen. Instead, it was the end of the NPC auction for the cycle.

I had been locked out of the auction in favor of the paying early-start players getting a chance. The auction was going to get incredibly more competitive, not just with the players but also with the NPC cities having their chance at bidding. It was no surprise I was the winning bid on the NPC I used the compensation token on. I looked at my grandmaster.

Name  Profession-Level         Race                Primary Skill

Kuba     Archeologist-259        Human           Ancient History

His high level was daunting as the next highest-level NPC I had in Malcum was Fareth, my master cook. She was level 188. There were also no guarantees that the NPC would stay. From my experience, the more skilled the NPC is, the harder the acceptance quest will be.

I realized I had been so distracted that I had not prepared anything for his arrival. Searching Malcum in my interface, I found a nice villa for him that was half-completed along the river. I moved the builders to focus on it as their next project.

The final hour of the bidding wars was proceeding in my interface. I was happy to see the NPC auction tab had also been unlocked for me for the next auction. When it reached zero, the screen went blank, and a massive list of new NPCs populated the NPC auction. I closed it, not planning to bid on any NPCs at the moment.

With the portal stone, it shouldn’t be long before Kuba arrived in Malcum. The game launch was also counting down from 2 hours, 19 minutes.

I watched as the timer finally ticked down to the worldwide game launch with an alert that my NPC had arrived. My digital heart raced as it hit zero, and nothing happened. I checked the interface, and the intro was delayed until all the players could log in. My jaw dropped as the player count was quickly rising from 68 million. That seemed insane, but not all people would have the full immersion pods.

A few flashes of light descended, indicating some players had already completed their characters and had utterly skipped the intro. I thought those people were the early testers like Mad Dog. They had been allowed to keep their player settings, so they should have breezed through character creation if they chose not to alter their appearance.

My interface buzzed again, showing that access to the worldwide internet was available in the game for a small fee. Since I could pay it with in-game gold, I did so. Tons of other features were coming online in my interface as well. I wanted to sort through them but the sky darkened a few minutes later as the player count slowed to just over 72 million. With over ten billion people in the world, that meant almost 1% were playing this game.

The intro hadn’t started to play in the sky yet, so I went on the internet, which had been denied to me for so long. The browser seemed awful slow for the technology, but maybe that was due to the incredible number of players. I did a quick search for the latest on the Open World game. It said 2.6 million game pods had been sold, with another two million to be produced annually—or about 160,000 a month. Mad Dog had been lucky to get his people all immersion pods.

The intro in the sky finally started, but I had already seen it twice and didn’t focus on it. I was too curious how the world had changed since my accident. I started playing short history clips on a website called SHORTS, a collection of 60 second or less video clips.

I didn’t even notice when the intro in the sky ended. The sky now looked like it was falling with the number of streaks indicating individual players descending on the game world. And I was just in a small corner of the massive world. Even though it was the harbinger of violence, it looked pretty. Jaesmin was at my side, watching with trepidation as well.

None of the lights descended on Malcum, which I thought was odd. I thought the Silver Linings Playbook Guild would have arrived here by now. Remembering that he could keep his name from testing, I sent Mad Dog a friend request. A few seconds later it was accepted and the man’s voice echoed in my head.

“Tallis, been awhile. You need to turn on Malcum’s ability to find a starter location for players. It is not coming up in our searches. We were about to accept Barrista as our starting location and walk to you.” Mad Dog sounded both excited and nervous.

“Working on it.” The permissions were buried deep in my complex interface. The only issue was that I couldn’t turn them off after I turned them on. Whatever. I turned them on. “Try again. Malcum should show now.”

“Got it, mate! Be there in two shakes of a roo’s tail.”

I was already by my portal stone waiting for my new NPC and wasn’t surprised when the first light descended on Malcum. A familiar wolfkin stood there grinning. “Tallis, love what you have done with the place, mate.” He hadn’t even looked around and came in and hugged me. “The others are coming along shortly.” Black Beauty arrived next. She had kept her sun elf appearance and smiled and hugged me as well.

It was weird seeing them in starter gear and at level one. “Where is Grinder?”

Black Beauty laughed, “He is trying to pretty up his avatar for your demonkin huntress. The rest of the guild will probably take just as long even though they made their decisions long ago.”

I started pointing out new buildings in Malcum and talked to them about the skill books as we waited. A minotaur with glowing violet eyes landed next, looking around with wild amusement. I wondered if he was one of the guild’s. Mad Dog introduced him, “The is Blood Crisis. He is planning to play a berserker fighter. Good bloke, and his real name is Burt.”

Blood Crisis walked over to us with his bovine features smiling, “Crap. It is even better than I imagined.” He sniffed his armpits. “What the hell! I haven’t done anything yet! Why do I already smell like a wet dog!”

Our player interfaces flashed with a message. I didn’t think too much of it, but Mad Dog was already cursing as he checked his. “We are only fucking level one. What do they expect us to do?”

I checked the message: Player’s get to the safety of the cities and prepare to help defend them! An incursion from the Realm of the Undead is going to occur in three days!

An Incursion already?

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