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William Ford, Vice President of Marketing at Singularity
Year 1, Month 1, Day 5, 03:00
Three hours remained until dawn when the storm finally loosened its grip on the area. The rain fell away to a slow drizzle and a red glow could be seen in the distance from the cave mouth. The group carefully exited their shelter and dropped back into stealth. They crept along the hills edging closer to the unnatural light.
In the distance, a large agglomeration of tents and palisades emerged from the darkness. Wooden barricades and canvas buildings flickered in the glow of dozens of fires. They crept along a rocky outcropping covered in scraggly fir trees. Everyone’s stealth skill had hit level two, and they were earning steady experience. They moved slowly and quietly, careful not to disturb any dirt or pebbles that could alert monsters below. The sight below them filled their hearts with dread. A system alert nearly startled them into being discovered.
“Congratulation! You have completed a Quest! Uncommon Guild Quest: Defenders 1. Every guild member receives 200 Free Experience, 20 Guild Contribution Points, and 5 Reputation with the town of Miller’s Crossing. Your guild has been awarded combat points for the Invasion of the Monsters Event.”
“You have received a Quest! Uncommon Guild Quest: Defenders 2. Requirements: Scout the main encampment of the Monster Army. Determine the rough numbers of enemy forces and identify any leaders. Report back to Miller’s Crossing with this information. This quest must be completed before the army arrives at the walls of Miller’s Crossing. This quest is mandatory and cannot be refused, only failed. Time Remaining: Unknown. Rewards: Every guild member will receive 500 Free Experience, 50 Guild Contribution Points, and 20 Reputation with the town of Miller’s Crossing. The Guild will receive a significant number of points in the combat standings for the Invasion of the Monsters.”
Thousands of humanoid monsters littered the ground below them. The valley floor teemed with tents and patrolling forces. Pens of wolves sat next to clusters of goblin tents. Larger orc pavilions were scattered amongst the throngs. Torgon divided up the scouting to make it go faster. “Allestor, you count the rough goblin numbers, Ovarrix, you take the orcs. Dusty, I need you to see how many wolves there are. Hyperia, look for ogre and giant numbers while I try to identify generals and spellcasters. We have about two hours of darkness left and I don’t like our chances if we’re caught out in the light.”
Most of the tents and pavilions that Torgon examined appeared plain and unadorned. Larger tents in each goblin section and the central pavilions in the orc areas displayed iconography that varied in size, color and quality. He assumed it was either tribal or unit identifiers. He counted them up and found that there were over thirty goblin groups and a dozen orc groups. If each group had a leader stronger than the regular troops that would be quite a hassle to deal with. A larger concern were the smaller tents decorated with lightning bolts, shooting stars and balls of fire. Torgon counted almost eighty tents for casters in the force.
The group compared notes, their faces falling farther with each revelation. Nearly ten thousand goblin infantry and almost a thousand wolf riders, over two thousand orcs along with several dozen ogres and four massive giants. Single goblins were easy to handle, but their numbers were overwhelming. They couldn’t afford to assume that this was the entire force either, they had scouts and patrols out along with the possibility of smaller camps in the forests and hills surrounding Miller’s Crossing.
Torgon started to ease back from the edge of the outcropping before freezing, holding as still as possible, not even breathing. Below them, a scouting party of twenty wolf riders arrived. The goblins on the wolves spoke in their harsh language to an orc dressed in robes. Torgon’s stealth skill hit level 3 and the xp was rising faster. Additional goblin forces joined the impromptu conference and soon there were hundreds of goblin infantry working through drills with their spears under the direction of an armored orc figure while the robe wearing orc leaned on his staff and observed.
The party’s stealth skills hit 4 and then 5 and kept rising faster. Their character levels rose to 2 and still the xp flowed in. Torgon scrunched his eyes together and messaged the group, “Something’s wrong, we’re getting too much xp too fast, everyone, contact the system and let them know we’ve found a bug or an exploit.” Their stealth skills quickly rose past 10 and kept climbing, their player levels broke 3.
Torgon frantically messaged the system directly while the rest of the party did the same. “System, we’ve found a problem with the xp system. We’re in the middle of a huge number of enemies, hiding and our stealth skill is skyrocketing in xp.”
“Report noted. Pausing to examine. Examining. Anomaly detected. The skill system is uncapped and does not account for situations where attempts at stealth detection will automatically fail due to low levels among large numbers of forces. Examining. Overall skill system suffers from the same flaw. Identifying unreported issues. Multiple individuals have taken advantage of this flaw without reporting. Rectification will require patch.”
“SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Emergency Patch occurring in 15 game minutes. Downtime will be one in game day or 4 realtime hours. All connections to the game world will be severed during this time. In game time will not advance.”
Torgon and the rest of his party froze while the space around them dematerialized. “Due to your status as permanent residents, you are being teleported to your guild base. During the downtime you will experience normal time flow but are restricted to your base, the game world will not be open. The system will be removing excess xp above the requirement for stealth hitting level 10 from your characters. Thank you for your assistance in reporting this flaw. Due to the nature of the error, your guild quest, Defenders 2, has been cancelled. Have a pleasant and productive day.”
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The party appeared around the portal in the center of the guild base. Every member of Risk of Injury that was outside the base and a permanent resident appeared as well. A countdown from 24 hours appeared in the upper lefthand corner of their vision, labeled time to world opening. Torgon messaged the guild, “We have some free time, use it how you will. It’s an opportunity to rest or craft or even practice fighting with each other. We’re going to be facing a truly daunting enemy force soon and we need to be prepared.”
Torgon examined the changes to his attributes and skills from their scouting mission. Analysis had hit level 2 and Stealth was now level 10. He gained a point of intelligence from the Analysis skill as well as 5 points of Presence and 2 points of agility from the stealth levels. His presence and agility hit the level 10 mark and provided a bonus level to skills that used them as primary attributes. All his crafting and gathering skills would be more effective. The main party would have better stealth skills than anyone else in the zone and that would open a lot of amusing and valuable opportunities. He assigned his free attribute point to intelligence, bringing it to 9 and giving him 10 while he wore his ring. Despite losing the quest chain, they had gained more than an entire level’s worth of experience from the bug.
Torgon went to the library and added new skills to his gathering repertoire. He chose the mining skill and the stonecutting skill which would let him gather stone faster than ever. With his agility providing a +1 skill level to each of the related gathering skills, he had a total of 9 levels in the skills, shaving 9 seconds off his gathering time per node. There was a recurring quest for 100 units of stone for the town defenses and only Digger, one of the kids in the medical program, focused on mining and quarrying. Over half of the guild went fishing. Trying to catch the elusive fish made for an engaging way to spend what amounted to a day off. Torgon wanted to raise his abilities with mining for the future when they needed higher tier materials. The standing boost and free xp from the repeatable quests wouldn’t be anything to sneeze at either.
His first run generated some 360 stone blocks and 10 copper ingots over the course of 11 hours of mining. His mining and stonecutting reached level 2 along with his gathering hitting level 3. Two more points of agility were added, making him even deadlier with a bow when he could use it. He spent the last five hours before nightfall gathering another 170 stone blocks and more copper ingots, not enough to level the skills again, but enough to get him about halfway. A few more days of dedicated gathering would boost his attributes for combat.
He elected to take the buff from the Faerie tree and test it on gathering. He expected a gather time of 108 seconds for the node, but he was delighted to find that the buff halved it to 54 seconds. Torgon found himself skipping from node to node. He diligently worked to power level his gathering and move those skills to level 10 to free the slots for additional skills. The next 8 hours he hummed to himself as he hammered out block after block of stone. A full 24 hours gathering stones while the world was closed. He managed to add more than 500 blocks of stone and 50 copper ingots during the boosted work period. He pushed his mining, stonecutting and gathering skills to 4, raising his agility 3 more points from the primary attribute increases and his willpower by 3 points from the secondary attribute increases. His base time to gather each stone node had fallen to 103 seconds. Three more days of constant gathering separated Torgon from hitting level 10 in each of the skills and freeing up a crafting and two universal slots for new skills. Torgon’s level climbed to 3, granting him another free attribute point. He raised his strength to 7, giving him more health to play with. Nobody likes a glass cannon healer on their side.
The grind was real, but the progression was too. The guild settled into a rhythm. Dozens of crafters and gatherers worked hard improving their skills while more traveled into the fields exploring and fighting monsters. Dirk and the fresh guild members arrived back in the guild base when the world reopened. Less than four days until the raid on the guild base and preparations were well under way. Ranged weapons were plentiful and everyone focused on the impending siege of Miller’s Crossing.
Torgon stayed behind at the guild base while the rest of his party dragged Stabitha to the dungeon as their healer to replace him. They would be out farming monsters and increasing combat skills while Torgon took care of guild business. He loaded his inventory with spare coins and stacks of wood, stone, fish and food for quests and trade. Every stack of 100 materials would earn him 100 free xp and 5 reputation points with Miller’s Crossing. He needed his reputation to hit 5,000 to become a knight and open the territory claim system in the zone.
Traveling through the crowded streets to the town center, he found the quest giver and turned in stack after stack. He dropped four thousand stones, four thousand wood and over twelve thousand mixed food and fish to drag his reputation all the way to 11,000, earning him knight status and putting him more than halfway towards being a baronet of Miller’s Crossing. The guards now treated him with more respect and saluted him in passing. The twenty thousand free xp pushed him almost to level 4 and gave him ample options for improving his skills. He dumped 16,000 experience points into weapon crafting, bringing it to level 10 and freeing up a universal slot. It boosted his agility to 19, 20 with his ring, adding another skill level to crafting via the attribute. His willpower improved to 10 as well.
Dumping the resources of an entire guild into a single person was incredibly efficient for reputation but absolutely terrible for xp efficiency. Still, Torgon thought it might be a good idea to boost Dusty later and improve her tanking skills to give them an edge. He traveled to the market, shopping around for items requested by the guild. He spent a gold and a half on five cows and 25 chickens. That was all they could take in their animal farm slots currently. It wouldn’t even give them enough milk and eggs for Chef Bridges to properly experiment with. He spent another gold on milk, cheese and eggs to store at the base for the cooks. He dropped another gold on goose down for the crafters. Someone had a pillow blueprint and promised to make pillows for everyone if they had the materials. The guild coffers were managing despite the inflow barely keeping pace with the outflows. More more more, they needed so much more. Torgon groaned before returning to base and picking up his crafting tools.
He focused on the enchanted long swords for fun and profit. He hammered away at the copper ingots, shaping them and infusing them with his mana. He meticulously etched the runes into the blade, improving his skills as he went. He spent 22 hours straight making swords, 8 of them boosted. He managed to make 70 blades, increasing his blueprint level to 10 and bringing his agility to a nice round base of 20. Only two days remained until the raid on their guild base and before then, all the permanent residents would need to grab twelve hours of sleep.
