“How are we a class A guild?” Daisy asked incredulously, getting a look from around the room. We had been looking at the features and most of them it seems were locked behind group achievements. We would gain guild experience from doing content as a group. The more guild members in the group at the time of the content the greater experience the guild would get. Each level up would unlock points which could be spent on the tech tree. Early rewards were things like additional bank spaces, shared guild bank, small bonuses to rewards.

  “I can’t see anything about what that means…” Darksider said.

  “From the description in the guilds data file,” Daisy indicated the computers, “C class guilds are basically just a social system. B class guilds have access to a guild home, a shared space, and are starting to build progress to being strong enough to start making moves. The A class guilds are land holders, estates, lots of skilled people working together. Above that is the S class, which are basically described as the movers and shakers of the world… I expected it to be a C class…”

  “Errm, So… shall we go and run the challenge again? We have two groups of guild members here and if Voice is a tank…”

  “Don’t try and change the topic Vax.” Jacobs said with a deadpan. “What is SHIFTE?”

  Sam started chuckling. “You haven’t told them about your island?”

  “Island? What island?” Peachy asked.

  “We can totally get some ranks in the guild and unlock the guild bank…” I tried.

  “Tell us about the island, Aenara.” Kenda said, leaning forward close to me.

  “Would this be that beautiful sandy beached island you washed up on instead of struggling down in the cold underwater hell of Deep Sea Land?” Peachy asked.

  “I… err…”

  “Sorry? Washed up? You didn’t get dragged down?” Daisy asked.

  “Aenara here is what we affectionately like to call a ‘Jammy Git,’” G said. “Not to say Vax doesn’t get into scraps, just comes out of them more often than not better off.”

  “From what I can figure out there are three outcomes of the tutorial.” Voice said. “If you just skip it, you will definitely die and respawn in Deep Sea Land with a higher price to pay to get out. If you run the tutorial and don’t stand out to the officers then you will probably survive the sinking, reducing the debt. If you do the tutorial and impress the Captains somehow, you will have a chance to not sink to the bottom, and if you can survive on the surface. Built a raft?” he asked me, I nodded, he looked at Sam who also nodded. Kelsey also nodded. “You will then wash up on a random desert island.”

  “Or the beach on the southern edge of the continent.” Kelsey said. “I walked to Landing.”

  “Interesting,” Voice said. “Bench is presently having the time of his life, here is his in-game name if you could send him an invite, Aenara.”

  “Sure,” I pulled up the interface and sent George HackenSchmidt a guild invite. I then went into the access rights tab and gave all full members the ability to invite, then promoted all my friends to ‘full member’. Gave it a moment's thought and did the same to Daisy, Sam and Kelsey.

  “Who wants deputy?” I asked, five fingers all pointed at Voice. So I hit the promote button which already had my finger hovering above it.

  “The people have spoken,” I said when he started to protest. “You should all be able to invite.” I said to everyone in the room. “So, shall we get back to…”

  “The island, Aenara.” Peachy interrupted with a grin.

  I sighed, I wasn’t getting out of this now. “To get the parts for the ship we sailed to get here. I ended up claiming a small town on an island. It’s provisional and I have some quests for some parts that I need to collect… but yeah. We have an island, with sandy beaches, workshops, docks, potentially fast travel and storage access… I was intending to get it up and running first and then show it off…”

  “Nice?”

  “Very.” Sam confirmed.

  “How do we get there?” Peachy asked, Kenda nodding her head.

  “We would need to sail there…” I said.

  “How do we get a boat?” Peachy asked.

  “Err… I can, well, will be able to once I am higher up in the Explorators. They’ll give me a ship, but I need to be higher up with them for the missions in those areas… in fact South Harmony would make a good location for the regional explorator base if you can get it up and running. That would make for a good rep bonus if you can offer that to them.” Sam said.

  “How big is this town?” Voice asked.

  “Would have housed several hundred. Easily.” Sam replied.

  “There is also a raid…” I added. “Once we are strong enough to take it on…”

  “What do you need for the base then?” Jacobs asked.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “I need a teleporter core and a Plexus Power converter from Central Services for the fast travel system and an antenna for access to the ComNet.”

  “I saw an antenna on my way here.” Kelsey said. “It was in ruins to the south. Full of wild beasts. It stuck out to me as it had a giant spider web between it and a tower. Central Services was also on a building I passed on the outskirts of the city.”

  “So, in short, if we want to get our guild’s new home up and running and visit it, we need to get you promoted within the Explorators, and you the parts so we can visit there when we want to?” Peachy asked.

  “We can probably kill two birds with one stone.” Voice said. “I’ll join you four as your tank. We can run through that five-man challenge and get used to each other. We then head south to central services and those ruins. Hopefully gain the parts Aenara needs. If they haven’t been mapped yet, hopefully it will give Sam here the Explorator rep he needs. This is assuming of course, the three of you wish to join us?”

  “We don’t bite!” Peachy said.

  “I think I would like that.” Daisy said. “You all seem like a good group of people.”

  Sam looked at Kelsey to see what she thought. “I’ll follow you.” she said timidly.

  “OK, I think we would like that as well. Though you barely know us.”

  “Ha, Vax didn’t ignore you when you sent a message. That’s practically an endorsement!” G quipped. I rolled my eyes.

  “For the rest of us, continue as we are? Explore? Grow?”

  “I’d say so. You need better gear. Might want to head east and join the people clearing the towers. I’ve been up since four this morning, couldn’t sleep again. You can gain both Warden and Explorator Rep, and good money helping to clear and map them. The Warden sets are probably the best for tanking that I have seen so far.”

  “The mage sets from the Provisionary look good. More bonuses to mana regen and casting efficiency, but you will need to be in one of the schools… they all had faction restrictions” contributed Daisy.

  “OK,” said Darksider. “We finish off what we can here. I would like to see what the head of Tempest has for me. Get a gear set if possible and then head east?” he said to his team.

  “Was anything said to any of you about the fast track program?” I asked.

  “It’s something you can get onto if you impress someone in the Admiralty or a senior faction member. It’s also an item in the warden rep store.” Voice said. “Nothing was said about what you get for it, merely that it is worthwhile.”

  “Let me guess.” Jacob said to me. “You are in it?”

  “Get on it. Trust me, try and get on it.”

  “Bonus to rep and discounts on training.” Sam said.

  “Contribution to the city is definitely a way to get it. It’s on the list of things available to you in exchange for points at the Wardens camp. I traded mine for gear, but maybe prioritise for that status if you can…”

  “We’ll head there as soon as we finish off here.”

  We finished off our discussion and then went our separate ways. Voice accompanied us to the Spell Forge. He’d gotten Fire Bolt, and had decided it wasn’t much used for anything but pulling at the start of a fight. I was hoping we could convince him otherwise. Daisy was hoping, now she might not need to spend the whole fight healing; she could learn how to use her Ice Bolt spell, though she did explain that her healer title gave a bonus to healing at an expense to damage. Kelsey’s spell had been Frost Weapon, and was supposedly a weapon enhancement spell, but like many she had decided the cast time to uses ratio didn’t work, but if it was something she could cast while drawing an arrow…

  The queue at the Spell Forge had dwindled down, only a handful of people in the queue now. Voice, Kelsey and Daisy all went and joined the back of it and I opened up my spell book to start reading up on Ice Blade.

  I came out of my contemplation in time to see Voice walk up and cast his spell, shake his head and then start spamming the spell. I chuckled.

  Kelsey’s was different, she too had tried the spell enough she had the pattern in her head and was able to cast it quickly. When cast, the bow gave off cold vapour, each arrow carried with it a touch of the cold and after three arrows the effect would fade from the bow. She chuckled a few times and then started to rapidly loose arrows at the targets. Each one erupting in ice. The effect seemed to stack on the dummies she hit. The fourth causing the target to become seemingly frozen.

  I approached one of the vacant melee dummies, and pulled out my Arctic BattleStaff. I focused on the spell, and felt the weight change on my staff as it changed from being a long stick to being a spear. I used the thrusting skill I had learnt for the quarter staff and stabbed the dummy with it. I tried a slash with it.

  “We should try and find that old man…” Sam commented from behind. “Might be worth seeing if he can teach you how to use a spear…”

  “Think he survived?”

  “I have a quest to find him in the city if I want more training… So hopefully he is here somewhere…”

  “We can ask around when we go and pick up some quests from the Explorators and Wardens before heading south.” I suggested. Then tried to swing again. The spell seemed to last as long as I wanted it to… but in exchange it reserved a hefty chunk of my mana.

  Recasting the spell didn’t use up more mana, but it did allow me to change it from a spear to a scythe.

  ….

  I was more clumsy with that, than I had been the spear.

  The Mage monitoring the range was more than happy to pass all of us and gave us the slips telling us to go visit our respective schools. In my case there was also a reminder to wear the correct title for each of them.

  While we were on this side of the campus, we went over to check out the giant statue from the top. We needed to meditate, why not do it on the giant meditating statue.

  The hands weren’t just inline with the top of the cliff, they had a platform to make it easy to go step into it.

  Last time I was over here, I had noticed a lot of the people in meditation had done so on the hands of the statue. With people being able to now cast quick enough to pass the requirements this number had dwindled down to just the two left, who nodded at us as they walked past and headed for the range.

  I walked out onto the left hand and looked out over the port below. Even approaching midday like we were, the sun high in the sky, the sea looking calm, and the view… for miles… was simply breathtaking.

  I sat down in the middle of the palm and started meditating.

  Sam had done the same on the other hand.

  I’m guessing he had found the same poster I had. We certainly hadn’t planned on it.

  I brought my hands down into the flow mediation technique, at the same time he did. We both did four cycles and then at simultaneously, brought our hands up into the same pose as the statue.

  The statue rumbled.