HC:Pacifist | Ch. 148 - A Crowded Inn

Roth couldn't help himself anymore after finding out that ant silk was used in crafting chitin armor. He had to visit the weaver ants. If silk was involved in crafting chitin armor, then that meant that he, as a tailor, could produce similar equipment. The prospect was exciting. At first, he had just assumed that tailors only made robes and gowns, but with each passing day, he saw the many opportunities contained in the path of a tailor.

He was now near the colony's heart, just above the queen’s chambers. Unlike before, when he had depended on his mental perception, he could now see the ant weavers around him in black and white. He wondered if he would see in color again after increasing his perception stat. Did Oli, the cat burglar, have good night vision? He had to. Perhaps he could see in color at night. How he wished he could peek into that cat’s stat page.

Cats! Oh no! He looked at the calendar! When would the next new moon be? He had forgotten about that! He still had no idea where the Table was and how to get there. The thought of Oli's sharp claws cleaving him into ribbons caused a shiver down his spine. Cursed be the pain settings that were locked. An attack from Oli would hurt tremendously.

Maybe after leaving this chamber, he would run down to the queen’s chamber and ask the Lord if he knew anything about the Table. He would use the chance to also ask about what happened to items when he returned to normal size and what he needed to do to use the teleportation system of the treeants. In the meantime, he also shot a message to his friends, asking if anyone knew when the next new moon would be.

There were so many things to tend to, so many loose ends. There was the quest to meet the Crow Emperor, the one to help Red and the other dwarf exiles, and the one to free the slaves. He also had to expand his business network, learn new tailoring skills, become a cardmaster and an herbalist, and improve his light and nature affinities. He had to solve the supercolony quest and figure out what happened to the food and equipment he acquired in the colony once he returned to his normal size. More importantly, he had to find a way out of this siege!

The to-do list only kept getting bigger, and Roth wished he could split himself into multiple Roths to tend to it all. Even though there were many things that the Lord couldn’t help him with, he was confident that he would have some information on the Table and how to get there. After all, he had to have some relationship with the cat nobility if Oli lived in his backyard. The Lord should also have more information on what happened to items as he changed sizes.

He stretched his mind, trying to feel the Lord, but the air was stale. He couldn’t feel his presence. One would think he could speak to the Lord whenever and wherever he wished while in Antioch. Unfortunately, although Roth was inside of the Lord’s brain, as it were, it didn’t work like that. The only place where he’d heard the Lord’s voice in Antioch was at the core of the brain: The queen’s chamber.

Despite having many quests and errands to run, his racing thoughts came to a halt as soon as his eyes landed on a team of weaver ants working. They all carried wiggling white larvae. As they encouraged the babies, they shot silk threads. The adult ants then spun the silk into intricate patterns. It all made up for a weird dance, where instead of holding fans, ribbons, or castanets, they held the white blobs of soft flesh. As a few weavers encouraged the larvae to keep producing silk, other team members cranked up a wooden contraption that spun a stick already coated with some silk. They were making spools! He had seen a few of these being used in the tree of the chitinsmiths. Fascinating.

This next team of ant weavers was using the glue guns on leaves. Roth, curious, walked over to a stack of leaves piled in a corner. As Roth ran his fingers over them, he was surprised by how leathery and thick they felt. He tried to scratch them with his flagpole, seeing if the leaf broke, but there wasn’t even a mark. He then tried to hit the leaf with all his strength. Still nothing. What had they done to this leaf?

A nearby weaver ant came to pick up a leaf from the pile and took it back to its team. Roth sat down to admire their work. He had been lucky enough to arrive just as they were getting started on a new piece of equipment. First, several ants folded the leaf into a tube-like shape. While they kept the leaf in place, others brought larvae to spin threads that glued the leaf together. After repeating the process several times, the tube was firmly secured, and the ants clamping the leaf took a step back.

They kept adding more glue to make the bond sturdier. Once they were done, ants wearing blades on their mandibles bit into the leaf. They were using their mandibles as scissors! The cutting was precise and flawless. They then attached other pieces of leaf to it, fashioning the cloaks he had seen so many ants wear. So that’s where they make these clothes.

After 10 minutes, the team of ants was finished with the cloak, and Roth inspected it.

Oakleaf Cloak (Uncommon)

Description: A cloak that can be used by different species, fashioned by the legendary weaver ants of Antioch.

Item effects:

+50 energy;

+3 intelligence;

+5 wisdom;

+5kg carry capacity.

Restrictions: Lvl. 30.

Everything that ants made granted a weight-carrying bonus. Maybe that’s how they managed to carry around so much weight. He ensured the team had stopped working, and addressed them before they could start with another cloak.

“Hello!”

They all came running to inspect them with their antennae. “Fellow weaver! How good of you to come visit us.”

“Fellow weaver?”

“Of course! We're all weavers. We’re all bound by the threads of life.” Roth smiled at the camaraderie these ants were extending. Tailors seemed to make a tightly-knit group. He chuckled at his own pun.

“I was wondering about these leaves. How do you make them so resistant?”

“Good question! They have been soaked in resin. It’s done by the resiners in the spruce tree up north.”

“So that’s what it was.” It looked like it was the ant equivalent of tanners. “Thank you for showing me!”

“No problem.” They immediately put down the empty larvae, grabbed fresh ones, and returned to work. Roth moved from crafting session to crafting session. There were so many different items being made here, and he had so much to learn.

*

Pegasus had spent 100 gold to rent out the whole inn. This was a drop in the bucket compared to the guild's resources. The building had several floors packed with Pegasus guild members from top to bottom. They filled every hallway, every room, every staircase, every common space. To have a private conversation with the fifty captains, much shoving and pushing had been needed until they could be stuffed into a relatively large office.

“Ladies and gentlemen. You might be wondering why we’ve been doing these drills over and over the past two weeks. I’m sure other guilds wonder about it, too. All will be revealed soon. We have stumbled on a quest. It’s a quest that involves hitting the Zucchinis. As soon as I give the order, everyone is to leave the inn and storm their hideout across the room.”

He watched with interest as uncomprehending looks were thrown around the room.

“Sir?”

“Any problems, captain?”

“We have to raid the mafia? But they are level 60 NPCs. Some are elites, and others are even boss-tiered. How are we supposed to survive this?”

“Have some faith in the guild, captain. Rest assured, even if something goes wrong, the guild will reward you handsomely. Everyone is going to get 1000 guild points if they follow orders. There will be bonuses to those who perform well.”

The frowns were instantly turned upside down. One thousand guild points were enough to get two or three uncommon skills from the coffers or even a rare piece of equipment! Normally, it would take dozens of dungeon runs or deposits of many rare crafting materials or valuable equipment to gain this much.

“I don’t need to say that this operation is to be kept secret. Make sure your teams are ready to follow your orders and pay attention to your chat. We’ll provide further instructions as the scenario evolves.”

Zin had already activated the Guild War function, which locked out any communication with anyone who wasn’t here. This was a game system that reduced the dangers of spies getting their reports across to their masters, but Zin knew that there were many ways to circumvent this. They could just log out, contact someone in real life, and return to the game. That’s why Zin had already instructed his people to take note of anyone who left the game and mark them. Spies or no spies, top 10 or top 100, it didn’t matter. It was too late. The time to stop them was long past.

His team was making sure that no one came in or out. The inn was across the road from the Zucchini's bar, making their blitzkrieg attack even more powerful. The captains squeezed their way out of the office and pushed and shoved the clouds of players flooding the inn. Zin looked like a river going around boulders, and while others clumsily reached their squads at snail's pace, he was already by the door.

Zin had to give it to his employer. AstroTerra was about to be rocked to its core.

*

After careful observation, Roth came to the conclusion that there were two main schools of tailoring down here. There were those who used silk as a bonding agent to combine scales, leaves, or rocks and fashion them into different pieces of equipment. Then, there were those that made items out of pure silk.

Roth sat admiring as a team of twenty ants moved in perfect synchronicity, making silk thread go under and over the other threads in one living loom that made individual lines into a shiny cloth. It would later be used to make cloaks and other clothes. How cool would that be if he could get their techniques and use them in his profession?

Wendy, the Weaver Ant

Lvl. 49

40,000/40,000

“Excuse me, tailor, I was wondering if I could learn from you about how to use silk to make a cloak like that.”

“Of course, where’s the rest of your team?”

“Team?” asked Roth, confused.

“Of course. Weaving requires good teamwork. Come back when you have collected a team of at least 20 ants.”

Roth stood there, frozen. What did this mean? He could only learn the weaver ant techniques if he put a team together. How was he supposed to do that? Did he need to partner up with more players?

“So I need nineteen more humans before you’ll teach me?”

“Humans?” The ant conveyed her outrage mentally. “Not paying attention is a waste of everyone’s time, martyr. Twenty ants. Ants!”

“OK. OK, I get it.” Roth fumbled with his fingers. Ants? Twenty of them? He looked around. All the crafting stations he had visited were manned, that is anted, by complete teams of twenty. Was he supposed to find ants that were working by themselves? In all his hours of exploring, he hadn’t seen one lone ant looking for work anywhere. Where was he supposed to find a team of twenty ants?

Ch. 147 - Drills

INDEX

Ch. 149 - Illusion