“New Era of Man Online brings out behavior that reminds everyone of the old era of mankind. The landscape is sprinkled with valuable resources and areas that would continue to produce those resources. Fighting would constantly break out over these locations. Guilds would rise and fall based on how many they could control. The world perpetually consumed resources and the more you could feed it the more comfortable your position would be.”

  Excerpt from “New World, Same as the Old World” by Collin Ising

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 4, 14:00

  Traveling through Miller’s Crossing, Torgon noticed a distinct change in his walking style. His pace was steady, and he moved seamlessly with the crowds. His stealth skill earned a slow trickle of experience as the group moved across the town and headed into the wilderness. The fluid movements attracted less attention, and they blended with the trees and moved, if not silently, then with far fewer snapped twigs and crunched leaves than before.

  Faint echoing sounds of combat could be heard in the distance as they moved deeper into the forest. Wordlessly, the group angled towards the sounds. They stumbled across a clearing along a wooded trail with an overturned cart and desperate villagers huddled behind it. They sheltered from chittering goblins who fired the occasional arrow at them. The group readied their own bows and took the goblins under fire one at a time. Dusty moved in front of the group to intercept the little angry creatures when they charged at them. A short sharp engagement led to seven dead goblins and a group of very grateful people.

  “These woods are teaming with monsters. Where are you moving from?” Torgon asked the leader of the peasants while Dusty, Allestor and Ovarrix righted their cart and helped them load their goods back onto it.

  “We came from a small village down the track sir. The monsters have been poking around our fields, and we’re scared. We’re trying to make it to Miller’s Crossing and shelter there until it’s safe again.” The leader was an older man with greying hair. He was accompanied by two families, each with small children. “I think others in our village want to flee but they’re too scared to try. They were right. If you hadn’t come along, those goblins would have killed us.”

  “Fleeing to the safety of the town is the right move, you just need some help. Lead us to your village, we’ll get some of our friends to escort all of you into Miller’s Crossing.” Torgon motioned for them to head back along the track while he sent messages out to the various parties in the area for the guild.

  They arrived at a dense cluster of ramshackle cottages near fields that had seen better days. Dead and trampled crops were mixed with areas that had been burned or showed obvious signs of looting. Bedraggled farmers gathered around the center of the village. Torgon and Hyperia went to talk to the villagers while Allestor, Ovarrix and Dusty examined the fields. The villagers told them that the attacks started two days ago. Goblins came at night and stole from the fields. They came in increasing numbers the next night and now everyone was desperate.

  “Don’t worry. We’re calling in some more people to escort all of you to the city. It’s not safe here any longer. Get everyone to load up as much as they can on any carts.” Torgon arranged for Mark to bring in several teams from the guild to take the villagers to Miller’s Crossing. The villagers frantically piled their goods on carts and stuffed makeshift packs. The people were on the edge of panic and moving with purpose.

  Dusty and the others returned to the village center and shared what they discovered. “It looks like the goblins were coming from the east and they came to steal the crops and livestock. This is a good clue for the location of their encampment. They’ll need to keep all their troops fed and I don’t think they went out of their way to conceal the direction they came from.”

  The team helped the village prep for their journey and arranged them into a small caravan. Mark arrived with a team of about fifty guild members, more than half of them new. “We’re ready to head out, we’ll move as fast as we can without drawing attention,” Mark informed Torgon before pausing for a quest notification. “Yeah, we have a quest to deliver the villagers, it will give us some xp and standing.” Mark grinned and waved his hands to direct everyone into formation before setting off down the trail.

  Once they left the village another notification popped up for Torgon.

  “The Village of Pine Grove is claimable. The location provides 100 farming nodes, 100 animal nodes at the location and 100 farming nodes and 100 animals nodes at the guild base. The location is expandable. Required Guild Reputation to claim: 2,500. Required rank with Miller’s Crossing, Knight. May use one control slot to provide direct teleportation access from the guild base.”

  He shared the notification with his party, “Now we know what the control slots are used for. The reputation grind is going to be harsh. We need to keep an eye out for other potential claimable locations. For now, let’s get back to the task at hand, scouting for the enemy base. We have just a few hours of daylight left, and we should make the most of them.” The group slipped back into stealth and slowly started moving in the direction the goblins had come from.

  Mark led the force towards Miller’s Crossing as quickly and quietly as possible. He had scouts spread around to look for goblin ambushes and easy kills to rack up more points in the event. He was tired and he wanted to take a few hours at the guild base, maybe even check the markets for some tea. He could use a cup or a few cups. He just needed to get this task done and everyone could relax before returning to their regular patrols.

  Steve was bored. Right now, he was with dozens of others playing babysitter to a village of peasants. It was slow and noisy and dusty and just, well, utterly boring. He longed for some action, some violence, some break to the repetitive actions of scouting, walking or gathering. Hitting something with his sword would make him feel so much happier. He noticed a flash of movement from a gully parallel to the track. He eased to the side and looked down, trying to find what made the movement. He froze. Players. Over a hundred of them. It was a detachment of Red Hat Raiders waiting to ambush them. He quickly alerted the rest of the team, eased his sword into a ready position and crouched down, waiting. He smiled. Steve wasn’t bored anymore.

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  Mark started cursing immediately when he read Steve’s message, “Dirk, take two parties and get ready to rush the villagers to the city. There’s an ambush ahead, the Raiders, and they outnumber us better than two to one.”

  Physical Ed moved up beside Mark and peered ahead. “Are we going to evade or are we springing the trap? The fastest way out of an ambush is through it after all.”

  “Even faster if we die, we’re already back at the base.” Someone joked. The laughter broke the building tension and put smiles on the faces of the condemned.

  “We have better gear according to Steve, but I don’t think it will be enough. Their quantity has enough quality of its own. Primary targets are healers, secondary targets are ranged combatants. If we’re still up at that point, it’s just burning down everyone that looks fast enough to catch our escort team.” Mark issued hasty orders and led his forces into a loping jog into the gully and down it while Dirk continued along the track with the villagers.

  Mark roared and led the charge into the Raider ambush. The charge caught them unprepared as they focused on the villagers along the trail. Several raiders were cut down before they began to mount a proper defense. Archers above the gully poured arrows into any ranged forces while the close-range fight grew ever more desperate and brutal. At least twenty raiders were dead before the first ROI players began to fall.

  Dirk urged the villagers to move quickly and ignore the battle now raging in the nearby gully. Their pace quickened. The villagers feared the raiders and feared the attention the fight might attract. They quickly left the sounds of fighting behind and emerged onto a larger road. It wouldn’t be long until they reached Miller’s Crossing, only another hour. Dirk just hoped there were no more surprises.

  Mark’s desperate charge soon bogged down in blood and bodies. His health was dropping steadily from hits that made it through, and the raider numbers seemed endless. The ranged support was locked in close quarters fighting, dealing with raiders that made it out of the gully and moved to encircle their force. Over half the raider force had been sent back to respawn but only a handful of his own players were left. Mark stumbled, going down under the press of bodies. Swords flashed and everything went dark.

  Mark’s eyes opened, taking in the inside of his house. He breathed deeply, letting the disorientation of a violent death pass before patting his body all over and feeling relief that he was whole again. He smiled briefly thinking of how much damage they’d managed to inflict on the Raiders before losing. If Dirk made it through with the villagers, it would all be worth it. If he didn’t, well, another tally in the ledger of scores to settle. He stepped outside and headed towards the area where Chef Bridges and her crew were continuously making food. He had an xp debt to clear, but first, he needed a cup of tea.

  Torgon followed the grim news of the ambush but relaxed when the villagers were clear. They had journeyed deeper into the forest, approaching a series of low foothills. They eliminated lone monsters and several small groups of goblins quickly and quietly as the party kept searching for the enemy camp. The forest was eerie in the twilight, their low-light vision gave everything a greyish cast with more contrast than natural for the human eye. Distant thunder crashed, covering their footfalls from any listeners.

  Allestor froze and motioned for everyone to stop moving. In the stillness, howls sounded on the wind from multiple directions. “Scouting parties. We need to find a place to lay low.” He turned and headed towards the rocky hills at a loping jog, and the rest of the party followed him. The sky darkened as heavy clouds obscured what little light there was. A light rain began falling as the group found themselves maneuvering through trees and rocks in uneven terrain.

  “Look for an outcropping or even better some sort of shallow cave higher up one of the hillsides. The rain is picking up and there are going to be flash floods. It should keep scouts away but if we get caught in one, we’re probably dead anyway.” The group spread out after Allestor’s advice and quickly found a small, dark cave with room for them all. They had to squeeze their way inside, but the cave opened into a rocky chamber around twenty feet across once they made it past the entrance.

  The rain picked up in intensity and became a steady downpour. The loud drops rendering other sounds impossible to hear. The group brought out their wolf pelt blankets to make themselves more comfortable. Torgon leaned back on his elbows and spoke, “We can’t scout in this mess, let’s just relax and figure out how we’re going to handle our current problems. Let’s start with the Red Hat Raiders.”

  Hyperia jumped in, “We could pull back and do full PVE/Crafting for a while but blue balling them only really works if they’re in it for fun. If someone’s paying them to harass groups, they’re going to keep doing it until they accomplish whatever their goal is. I really don’t see any option but to raise our pvp effectiveness. We need to train everybody to a higher standard. We’re top tier and we have maybe twenty in total that I’d consider elite. Everybody else is average or worse. I don’t think that’s based on talent though, just experience.”

  Dusty spoke next, “We should move the training yard to our next priority in the build queue. The crafting hall will give us gear slightly quicker but yeah, the kids need training. When we finish this scouting mission, we have as many people as possible finding the cores we need to build it then we do a full training montage.”

  “Allestor and I can do that while the rest of you guys craft. I think there are some training related skills in the library, we can grab that and see how well it works.” Ovarrix grinned as he thought it over, “We have the raw material. It’s always a breath of fresh air to teach someone that doesn’t know anything. They don’t have terrible habits to unlearn.”

  “What about resource allocation?” Allestor went next. “All modesty aside, I think any of us are as good as two or three similarly equipped people. We could handle more if there’s a gear edge. Numbers still matter however. Gear up the elites all the way or aim for more of a rising tide model?”

  Torgon wrinkled his forehead as he thought it over. “A sect style model won’t work. Our main goal is still living here and training the kids we’re watching over. Personally, I think kitting the primary raid group out as best we can while not sacrificing the rest of the guild is our model. I’d love to get everyone above average for their level with gear. We need to lean into our crafting and production by buying up any blueprints we can get our grubby hands on. If everyone’s gear is a little better and their training is a little better than others, it should snowball. If we find amazing gear, we keep it. We’ll only trade excess for better gear at a guild level though.”

  Allestor spoke again, grinning slightly as he did, “We need to talk about progression, specifically our progression. We’re going too slow. We need to look at the angles and edges and push our way up. This might shock everyone here, but I think we should stay out of combat for a while and do some heavy gathering and crafting to boost attributes. Keep Dusty out in the field tanking for dungeon groups and the rest of us hammer out two or three skills at a time back at the base.”

  “That’s a good idea. I know a few of the kids have been tripling up on skills. You can get a gathering skill for a subtype and specific gathering skills.” Hyperia thought it over more and continued, “We can funnel supplies into town quests for standing too. Burn the xp on raising harder to level skills to free up slots. Nobody is going to complain about key crafters or our guild main tank getting boosted.”

  The storm continued to rage as they discussed the finer points of their plans. They ate quietly and waited for the fury of the weather to abate. Finding the monster base had to be done, but afterwards, the full focus of the guild would be shifting to deal with whatever enemies were at hand, be they monster or player.