Town Builder - 73 -

Chapter 73:

The espionage interface for the Rogues Gallery allowed me to assign future assets before they were trained. The NPC in the queue was pulled from my population in Malcum and didn’t spawn as I had assumed. It was an NPC with no job or skills. The first trainee was a female wolfkin, so she would not be able to spy on the human kingdom of Vereel. Instead, I just slotted her into a counter-espionage role in Malcum.

I found the NPCs I trained had a unique ability called Jack of All Trades. It allowed them to use any at their level divided by ten. So, my 42nd-level rogues would have skills at level 5, since the ability started at level 1. To balance this powerful ability, they could only slot seven skills into the ability at a time and would have to return to the Rogues Gallery to change them.

I queued up the remaining NPC agents to defend Malcum. Having level 42 NPCs in Malcum should help me ferret out NPC kingdom spies and players up to no good. There was a lot more to the espionage tab, but I was hoping someone from the Silver Linings Playbook could manage it when they arrived. My focus could only go in so many directions, and I had just spent four hours in-game scratching the surface.

In the morning, I left Jaesmin and Joy to head to the skyship docks on the northern end of Crystalhelm. The docks had a handful of unique-looking skyships, and the massive dragonkin skyship heading to Dragon’s Tooth was also there. It was tempting to connect that portal stone, but if something happened while we were in transit, I wouldn’t be alerted until we landed in a city. Maybe after Mad Dog and company returned.

Danny waved me over to a rusty skyship with thick steam pouring out of it. Simba looked skeptical on his feline face. Dwarves ran along the deck as they prepared for their voyage. Danny addressed me as I approached, “They use magic to get it in the air but steam power to move it! I want one! Now I need to find myself a sugar daddy.” She waggled her eyebrows comically at me.

Simba broke up our interaction, and his tone was not as fascinated with the vessel, “It is slower than a normal skyship and prone to crashes.”

“Really? Is there an article about its safety somewhere?” I asked, opening my interface.

Simba growled, frustrated, “No. It just smells like soot and oil. At least the gnomes have the good sense to boil their water with magic. That ship is a travesty waiting to happen.” I couldn’t understand the AI's reluctance to ride the dwarven airship. Well, he didn’t have a choice. Danny already had our tickets for passage to Khelrahm. Our mounts were being sent back to Malcum for a fee. If we left them here, we would have to pay a penalty for picking them up late. It was cheaper and easier than porting back to Malcum with them and then returning.

The dwarven Captain welcomed us aboard, his face soot-covered and white teeth flashing in a smile. “Welcome to the Iron Ostrich.”

Simba hissed a laugh, “Ostriches don’t fly!” My NPC companion was a bit of an ass. I might decide not to renew his services in three weeks. But for now, it was set to auto-renew. Maybe save it for a threat if needed.

The Captain didn’t break his smile, “Have you ever fought an ostrich? They are as fast as a horse and vicious fighters. We have two forward spell cannons that can strike targets a mile away. And the iron hull plating can withstand a dragon attack. Well, the first attack anyway,” he laughed at his joke.

I nodded to the captain, and we climbed aboard as the only passengers. The ship vibrated as it lifted off and the thrum of steam pistons reminded me of a locomotive. Soon, we were in the air, and Simba had to eat his words as the Iron Ostrich slowly accelerated to an impressive speed under the intake and exhaust of some impressive encapsulated fans. The design reminded me of a jet engine, pulling in air and expelling it at high velocity.

Our voyage was only half a day, and the land raced by below. Not being my first time on a skyship, I was not too impressed, especially due to the constant noise. I went into my interface and was able to set a filter to mute it greatly, but there was a warning if we entered combat, the filter would be suspended. We were headed almost due west.

Danny was into her interface as the dwarven crew came by to offer us mini-quests on the trip. I smirked as I assigned Simba to help the crew. They were not Adventurer’s Guild quests, and the rewards generally sucked, but they would raise my reputation slightly with the city of Khelrahm and its associated ruling kingdom, so there was some purpose to them.

Danny toured the ship with one of the dwarven engineers the entire trip. When I talked to her, I found she had been fascinated with trains growing up, and this skyship reminded her of them. She did mention a few times that she had a birthday coming up—in five months but that I had missed her last birthday. She couldn’t be any more obvious in her desire for a steam-powered skyship. I asked the captain about the cost, and the idea was quickly dismissed. Not only were they ridiculously expensive, but the ship's and crew's maintenance was astronomical. It was just as much as supporting a small town.

The trip only took five hours, and I had the impression that the dwarven captain was pushing his ship to impress us. There were five emergencies in the steam engines during the trip, but they were all handled quickly. We started to descend rapidly, and Simba issued a warning that we were crashing, but the captain laughed and assured us we had reached the destination and were landing.

I went to the bow to watch. The dwarven City of Khelrahm was a massive hole in the ground with winding paths along the descending interior cliffs dotted with buildings. A steady stream of dark smoke rose from the pit city. Surrounding the pit were vast, dark, barren plains. Before we descended into the depths of the hole, Danny pointed out the only dungeon in the area, Glowing Greed. A group of players stood waiting to enter the large opening. “Must be hard-wired players as it is a level fifty dungeon,” I recalled the dungeon’s suggested level was fifty. We then passed the lip of the hole, and the plains vanished from sight.

The Iron Ostrich landed on a platform jutting from the wall. Land might be too generous a term; Danny and I stumbled to keep our feet as the ship slammed hard into the rock. The Captain announced the arrival and ordered the crew to unload the cargo. We had nothing to do with the NPC economics, so we disembarked and started walking the city. Simba pouted behind us, having spent the last few hours earning a few silver coins, which were just enough to cover the cost of his ticket. I guessed there was a quest to work on your passage. I let him keep the coins, but they didn’t mollify him, and he continued to pout.

The difficulty without the city’s design was traveling. Fortunately, there were small skiffs that acted like taxis and could take you around the cylindrical-shaped city quickly to get a silver coin. The skiffs were not steam-powered, which quieted Simba. We hired a skiff operated by a young female dwarf for the day. Her name was Eveta, and she was very talkative. I only half listened as I watched the buildings pass by as we descended or climbed.

Evita frequently cursed another skiff for passing too close and not obeying the traffic pattern. From what I was observing, there was no traffic pattern. The dwarven book and magic shops were flush with skill books. It looked like this city had not been picked over at all. After half a day, we cleaned out every shop and came away with 469 novice skill books and 28 expert skill books. Half of the skill books focused on mining, smithing, and engineering.

We were at the portal stone after the shopping trip, and both activated it in our networks. “I think I am going to stay a bit longer and check out the Glowing Greed dungeon. Maybe I can run into the other hard-wired players we saw entering the dungeon.”

Simba was shaking his head no very slowly. To me, that was an indication they would not be allies to us. “I think we should avoid bringing in any other hard-wired players until the Silver Linings Playbook Guild joins us. Hard-wired players are the only ones strong enough to overpower my NPCs in Malcum at this stage.” Simba’s shake changed to a nod. So maybe the AI was useful after all. He had guided Danny and the Silver Linings Playbook players to me, and they had all been very helpful allies.

“Fine. I will see if I can convince some dwarves to relocate to Goatyah. Maybe in a few years, I can build my own steamships.” Danny was wearing a grin, and I was happy she had found a goal in the game. It would be much more rewarding for her to achieve on her own rather than have me drop a few hundred thousand golds to buy her the skyship.

I paid for Simba and me to return to Malcum. Nothing had changed in our time away. Once back in my city, I was able to scroll through messages I got from the lord quickly. Two new players had entered Malcum and left on quests they obtained in the Adventurer’s Hall. I sent Simba off to continue with the river stone collection as I talked to Neral.

Neral was very helpful. The two players, Raging Fire and Slight Offense, were on a chain quest. They did two minor quests in Malcum before heading east to the location they needed for their chain quest. It was not certain they would return, but they were both early-start players. I was going to have to get used to layers constantly passing through Malcum. Neither player was on the top 10 players list.

I returned to my Lord’s Manor and descended into the Rogue’s Gallery. The cavernous rooms with training equipment were impressive, and I quickly found Zion supervising the training of the new wolfkin. She was running an obstacle course with Zion muttering comments.

“Lord Tallis,” Zion nodded at me.

“How goes things?” I asked the dwarf barber.

“Can’t say I am overly happy about being trapped down here,” he muttered. “My sheep are being tended to, but my barber shop has been closed.” I quickly checked, and I had increased his compensation already but ticked it up a little more.

“Do you have to spend your entire day down here training?” I asked, and he shrugged. It took a while to get into the interface and figure out a way to make him happy. The interface eventually created a clock for me to release the NPC every day for eight hours. It reduced his training effectiveness slightly but increased his morale and standing with me. This added just another layer of headaches for me.

I didn’t run into the same problem with my other NPCs, as they had been assigned just one job. Zion had his homestead with his sheep and barbershop, so I have to be aware of it in the future. Zion’s high level gave me strong motivation to keep him happy. Zion’s AI had not been upgraded yet, but I hoped it would eventually be upgraded.

I toured the excavation of the crescent lake forming north of Malcum. It was where most of the work was being done in the city. Breda had hired a number of NPCs outside of Malcum to do the work. The foreign NPCs arrived by the portal every morning and left after the end of the work day so they were not added to Malcum’s population.

It was going to take a lot to finish the artificial lake, but Sanso had already completed the stone bridge cutting across the future lake. It was a wide, simple bridge of fused stone. I regretted not making some simple plans to give it bonuses. I would have to draft some guard shacks for either end of the structure. North of the bridge was going to be an industrial zone to move the craftsmen with professions that had unwanted smells with them. Why that was needed in a virtual game was a mystery to me, but I guessed it helped with immersion.

I spent most of the afternoon with Breda and talked to NPCs. We had been very lucky recently and hadn’t had to deal with a lot of calamities. We had dodged confrontations with Sinful Echo and the Divine Deviants Guild. I doubted we would continue to go unscathed much longer. My first priority was guarding my NPCs.

I returned to my Lord’s Manor to draft a new guardhouse. First, I made use of some of the skill books we had collected, raising my concealment skill from four to seven, my air magic from four to seven, and my spirit magic from two to seven. It only gave me a few stats points but helped accelerate my skill growth until my skill experience was unfrozen. Concealment was the most important as it transferred to my town buildings and made it harder for others to identify them.

After I sat at my drafting table, I tried to balance the higher-tier essence requirement with maximizing the spawned NPCs’ level. The structure was extremely simple, a twenty by twenty, two-story stone building. Stone was my choice of construction because Sanso’s, and to some extent my own, summon stone spells generated higher quality stone, giving the completed buildings a percentage boost.

This guard house had just one office, a kitchen, and a common room on the first floor with a small basement larder. The second floor was two tiny individual rooms for sergeants and one bunk room with eight bunks. My thoughts were that each building would have two city patrols of four watchmen and one sergeant. I spent nearly a day on the building, adding as much detail and tweaking it as much as I could to balance my desired outcome.

I compared this attempt to my first guard house.

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)

Very Rare Stone Guard House, Requires Masonry 43, Masonry: Foundations 43 (Generates one level 50 Combat Mage Commander every seven game days, limit 2) (Bonus: Houses 8 Watchman, Spawn Rate 1 per day, Level 30, limit 8) Structure Regenerates 1% health every 24 hours (stacks with similar effects)

A watchman was a specific type of guard with a perception ability. Overall,  it was a massive improvement, but I frowned when I looked at the required essences in the materials list. The structure required four major elemental essences. I understood whatever those essences were would be the spell focus of the generated mages. So, each mage would have two sets of spells—maybe if I made them all the same element, the mages would be stronger. That thought seemed to fit with how I could now somewhat interpret the building plans.

Still, obtaining major essences was going to be a problem. I reclined in my drafting chair, surprised to find Joy underneath, playing with a toy. I had been so focused on my work that I hadn’t even realized the AI child was in the room. I picked her up and sat her on my lap. “What element do you think I should try to get?” There was a huge array past the normal fire, water, earth, and air.

Joy tilted her head, “Time.” My head turned to see Jaesmin in the doorway. “Time magic is the most powerful of the elements and is a force multiplier. The mages can slow opponents or speed up allies.”

“Where did you learn that?” I asked the NPC AI.

“I just took time magic myself as a skill to help accelerate my building,” Jaesmin said, taking Jaesmin away from me.

“Where am I going to major time essences? I haven’t seen any time essences available in the player auction.” I opened up the wiki and didn’t see any reference to time essences. Either someone had not found any or just hadn’t posted them yet. Maybe, the early start players had bought some in the auction or found them.

I took a chance and contacted Deific Savior. The message was blocked with a dungeon icon, so he was currently in a dungeon and would not receive the message until he left. My message was simple: “How has the construction been going? Does your guild have access to any major essences for time?”

I then returned to working on making copies of other building plans to sell. The timer was continuing to go down toward the game launch, with just over five days before a massive influx of players joined. At least Mad Dog would be among them.

I got lost in my work and almost missed the message from Deific Savior, “Tallis, things are well. We have two of the lesser guild halls built, and they are massive boons. We appreciate the construction materials bonus you informed us about. We got a 25% and 30% bonus on the two guild halls. We have had to defend one from Eternal Legacy already, but since they were constructed in NPC cities, there is not much they can do without taking over the entire city. We are headed to a city and can talk in person in a few hours about the time essence.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant he was coming to Malcum or if he just planned to open the voice chat feature. I could only wait, so I returned to drafting plans. Three hours later, my interface alerted me that a player had arrived via the portal, and I confirmed it was Savior and went to meet him.

Savior had a wide grin on his face, and he came over to shake my hand. “Tallis, it's good to see you again so soon. My guild leaders told me to keep your favor, so here I am. I checked our guild stores for time essences, and we have a few. We even know a dungeon where we can grind for them if needed. How many do you need?”

This seemed almost too easy. “Eight,” I replied, hoping to get enough to build two of the new guard houses.

Savior frowned, “We have three in storage, and only the ninth-level boss in the dungeon drops them with about a 33% rate.” He thought aloud, “Our top team can clear the dungeon four times a day…so give us five days to make sure?”

It almost sounded like they planned to do it as a favor. I confirmed, “And what do you want in return?”

“Plans for a second large Guild Hall,” he said unflinchingly.

“Done,” I said immediately. He had guessed I was the architect already, so I wasn’t going to deny it. We shook, and he started to walk back to the portal stone and froze. He was a statue for almost a minute before he turned around and looked extremely annoyed.

“Tallis, sorry about this, but an Eternal Legacy team was tracking mine. They just wiped my team in Marigold City and learned that I portaled here.” The Asian man looked angry at the circumstances and regretful at his actions. “I am guessing you can expect a visit from one of their players soon. If you need our help in dealing with them, message me but it is best if I am not here when they arrive.” After confirming our deal was still good, he sighed as he returned to the portal and vanished.

After he vanished, I was not sure if this was a setup or not. On one hand, it made sense that Divine Deviants was trying to push me closer to their side. On the other hand, it would be foolish to give up their unfettered access to my building plans. I assumed it was the former, but my skepticism remained. I checked with Danny, and she was doing some quests to get a few spaces to settle in Goatyah, so I didn’t bother her with my looming problem.

I returned to drafting, but just a few hours later, my interface alerted me that three players had arrived: Frost Siren (13), Derelict Mystic (10), and Fervent Youth (10). The second most powerful guild in the world had found me. I had to confront Eternal Legacy.

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