It turned out it was in the basement of the administration building and my first thought as I walked down the stairs into it was ‘Student Union’. One third had definite student bar vibes. Several booths, along a wall, some tables and chairs dotted around and a bar with a single bartender cleaning a glass with a cloth. There was a slightly raised area, which screamed stage and the floor through most of that area looked like it could be easily converted into a dance floor if they just moved the tables. The smell of freshly roasted coffee beans being brewed was coming from behind the bar where I could see a steaming Espresso machine.
Most of the floor was a store. In the middle there were the typical aisles to be found in a campus store. I bypassed the aisle with a variety of pens and pencils and another with notebooks. I checked out the aisles which had a variety of starter staves and wands. Nothing which was an upgrade on what I had, but some interesting sidegrades if I wanted better range or more accuracy with my spells. There was a selection of mage robes in the colours of each school. As well as some similarly styled, but distinctly not mage-like, robes for the other disciplines of the institute.
The initiate mage robes all had very similar bonuses, with increased mana regeneration being the main benefit, but also some increased damage. I got Glass Cannon vibes from them, and decided to stick with my slightly more robust set and its more defensive mana shield set bonus. They did look pretty cool under the floating mage lights.
The good things though, were around the outer edges. Counters blocked direct access to the more powerful gear and the attendants stood guard at anyone trying to get to the items beyond their reputation. Some of the mage sets definitely seemed to embrace the less is more approach to armour sets. Each school had a set which was little more than a thong bikini with glowing fairy wings. There was a male mannequin sporting the Storm schools version, implying the sets were gender neutral. Not sure what was more amusing to me though, the thought of Jacobs, Darksider and or even GoldedFist in one or the look of disgust on a group of teenager’s faces when they say it.
The majority of the robes though looked like long dresses and I just didn’t think that was right for me. The rugged explorator set was suiting me just fine. I started looking at the accessories counter and realised one big issue. I didn’t know how much rep I had. When I asked the attendant where I could find my balance, she smiled at me and then pointed to the room in the final corner of the building, which was opposite to the stairs from the bar.
I had thought it was a games room from the glows coming out of it. Turned out to be the quest terminals. The room had been divided up into small cubicles, each had a football sized orb in it. When I touched the orb with my right hand, my hud filled up with a table of available quests. There was a greyed out tab for completed quests and a final one for Balance.
On the Balance tab, it revealed I had 2000 rep. 1000 for sharing how I cast spells and a 1000 for basic achievement of
From the Quests tab, I found a quest seeking herbs from some of the fields lost to wild beasts to the south, worth 500 rep and another asking for someone to explore some ruins out there for a further 500. As our plan was to go that way I took them both.
I went back to the accessories vendor with a better idea of what I could afford and looked at her offerings. There were some very tempting items, a ring which reduced my Aether cost for Storm spells by 10% but increased Inferno and Arctic by 10%. Which if I was monofocused on Storm would have been a no brainer. Sadly the one which just gave a flat 5% to all schools also cost 2000 credits by itself. I almost went with the 10% one, but in the end decided I wanted that flexibility with my spells too much. All the best goodies were out of my price range.
When I had first seen those 2000 points I thought I was rich, I now realised it was more like yen than sterling. I had pocket change. I could have spent that much on a rank three spell voucher.
I ended up picking up a [Necklace of Exploration] for 500 rep. It increased the range of my automapper and could, on the application of mana, glow in the dark, which I figured might help us out in the field.
There was also a terminal on the end of the last counter that I almost ignored, but turned out to be system upgrades I could purchase using rep. There were some very nice looking guild upgrades like adding a bonus to rep gain. Most required tens of thousands of rep points to buy. Though it did look like I could use guild rep to buy them. Something to look into as I couldn’t see guild rep anywhere on the guild tab page.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
For a thousand rep though I was able to pick up an upgrade to my Party that would allow us to share quests we were all eligible for. I picked it up.
Shopping had taken me a bit longer than I had expected, so I quickly logged off and headed downstairs for lunch. I briefly looked through my cupboards and pulled out the ingredients for a beef and horseradish sandwich. I normally savour my lunch, but this time I devoured it in record time and dropped the plate into the sink on the way back up.
I had nearly twenty minutes to kill before we were due to meet up, so I used it to take a meandering wander around the campus. Partly to complete as much of the exploration for my Explorator quest as I could and partly to test out my new necklace to see the difference it has upon the range of my map. Interestingly enough, I discovered if I actively identified a building using the campus map I had been given, it would label my system map. If I didn’t it wouldn’t.
I got to the school's challenge arena with a minute to spare and found I was the last one to arrive. Voice had previously completed the first three floors of the challenge, but had been defeated by a swarm on the forth.
We had pep talk about how we were going to approach the challenge this time and finished with a cheesy hand in the middle ‘let’s go!’ moment. I won’t pretend it didn’t work.
The first couple of floors went much the same as last time, only with Voice confirming we are all ready before hitting the button. We had a pair of bears on the 4th floor. Voice simply agroed the pair of them and then slowly pulled back dodging as many attacks as possible. The first one fell to Infliction, Daisy’s new spell. The other to Voices Shield Bash. My fireball took out the swarm on the fifth. I got eye rolls from both Sam and Voice when I blew the smoke from the end of my staff while my back was to the mozzies.
The 6th round was a two tailed Scorpion and the first one I thought we might have an issue with. Voice misjudged one of the tails, and zigged when he should have zagged. He let out a loud scream of pain, and was just able to get his shield up to block the follow up strike from the other tail. Up until this moment the few hits he had taken had been healed up by the next tick of Daisy’s Heal Over Time. He’s lost nearly half his health from that one strike and his health bar had gone from red to green.
“Poisoned!” he called out. His health was visibly falling.
“Switching to Heal!” Daisy replied. Her spell went through and his health shot back up to 85%, but resumed its fall.
“Switching to Storm” I called out. I had been using
We were sat down in the next room while Daisy’s mana regenerated. She had ended up blowing a lot even after the scorpion went down just keeping ahead of the poison procs.
“Nasty Poison.” I said. “Should I stick with Storm? Those momentary stuns seem to make it easier for you to Crit.”
“I don’t know, with the added DOT, your inferno does more damage.” Voice said.
“Could you dual wield?” Kelsey asked.
“Maybe if I was at range…” I mused. “I need to use both hands to really wield my staff in melee range… I’d also want to practice it outside of combat first… the visualisation for casting the spell out of my left hand is slightly different to out of my right.”
“You’d be able to cast two spells at the same time though.” She said.
I shook my head. “Not worth it. Only doubles the damage for three times the cost.”
“Sorry?! What?” exclaimed Voice.
“One of her early experiments back on the island. I came out after taking a shower to find her a bloody mess.”
“Potential side effect of messing around with spells… backlash can be nasty, though apparently you become more resistant to it as you get stronger. Which is why we are mostly discouraged from experimenting.”
“Right…and you are going to ignore that advice, aren’t you.” Voice said wryly. I tried to look innocent. “OK, next fight is going to be a bit tougher. It’s two of those Scorpions, do we want to risk it? And if we do, what tactics should we go for?”
“We are going to need to split them, I don’t think your gear is tough enough to tank both of them.” I said.
“Reluctantly, I have to agree.” Voice acknowledged. “I’m confident I can handle one now, but two would require me to be kiting them around the arena constantly, and I can’t guarantee I will hold agro doing that.”
“We also need Sam to be on Tails. So I think it will need to be me off tanking.” I say.
“Can’t you use Ice Blade?” Sam asked.
“I need to find the weapon master, I’m flailing too much… I could try… but…” I trailed off, my lack of experience with melee weapons didn’t need reiterating.