“The pacing of NEMO differed from the constant adrenaline of casino like mobile games or other instant action games of the day. Glacial slowness in an era that had melted all the glaciers might seem out of place, but the draw of a world to be lived in rather than a game to be played overwhelmed outlets carrying the hardware. Production facilities across the globe struggled to meet the demands of hundreds of millions of people desperate to try a new life.”

  Excerpt from “Defining the new Meta”

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 14, 06:15

  The second guild base assault Risk of Injury faced felt almost anticlimactic. A dozen of the field mana cannons and over forty portable ballistae lined the walls. Crossbowmen and archers kept exploding projectiles in reserve. The larger waves didn’t matter. The players were eager for the fight and there was a celebratory air. The first wave of goblins lasted less than two minutes. The next three waves never reached the walls. Only the boss of the final wave managed to make it to the wall, and he was slaughtered shortly afterwards.

  “You are Victorious! You have defeated all five waves of the Base Siege. Bonuses have been granted for having 97% of your Guild Members still fighting and 100% of your buildings still standing.”

  “All members of the guild are awarded 1,000 Free Experience. Additional experience for the combat has been distributed according to your individual participation. The guild has been awarded a park upgrade. Your guild park now contains a mana fountain that increases mana regeneration rates for all guild members inside the base by 1%. Obtain victory in additional guild base sieges to upgrade your park. Your guild has been awarded the basic ladder siege gear blueprint. The guild has been granted 5 teleportation passes to the trading city of Deep Harbor.”

  The fountain quickly attracted the attention of the faeries who began flitting about the stone decoration. The fountain consisted of a large bottom bowl nearly thirty feet in diameter. The design featured a total of five bowls, each subsequent bowl smaller than the one below it. The top bowl contained a statue of a frog with water pouring from its mouth as it perched on a lily pad. The air in the base had a slight tingle from the extra mana being generated.

  The prior night had been quiet inside Miller’s Crossing. Extra guards were in place in case of a repeat of the goblin glider attacks. Instead, the night air resonated with the steady thumping of rocks against the walls. The damage rates were still low, allowing the teams of people repairing the walls to keep pace. The repair kits found some use whenever one of the siege engines on the towers were targeted but overall, the only thing lost was rest.

  The experience reward from the successful siege pushed Torgon over the top to level 6. He dumped a bit over 8,000 experience points into his gathering skill to push it to level 10, freeing up a universal slot. Torgon made the quick trip to the siege point vendor and added the common spell ranged heal to his arsenal. Finally, he could throw spells without having the awkward combat touching. Dusty hadn’t really cared due to the unpredictable nature of combat, but he had occasionally been forced to place his hand on areas of her body that were less than polite. Slapping someone’s butt to heal them had started to become a running joke throughout the guild no matter how much they tried to stamp it out.

  The spider eggs would incubate in approximately a week, then whatever guild members who wanted a spider pet could spend their guild contribution points to acquire one. They would earn experience slowly and provide some combat utility including mild damage, poisoning and crowd control with their webs. The higher level they became the more useful they would be. They were level capped at 10 until the Tamer’s Hall reached a higher level.

  Hyperia fielded dozens of messages from guilds across the kingdom and the wider world. The monster armies bearing down on all the starter zones worried everyone. She put together an information packet with everything the guild had learned so far, including rewards for the siege contribution points and distributed it for varying prices depending on whether or not she liked the group wanting the information. A steady trickle of new recipes and blueprints arrived at the guild as a result of her efforts.

  Torgon sat in his house, basking in his improved accommodations. The primary room was now about fifteen feet across, and a closet and small shower room turned his hovel into a cheap apartment. The extra space highlighted his need for more furniture. His current furnishings seemed sparse inside the expanded room. He needed a chair, a good comfy chair to sit and ponder the future of the guild. Nothing as large or tacky as a throne, just a good recliner. Maybe one that rocked and had deep cushions that he could fall asleep in.

  He roused himself from his musings when a knock sounded on his door. He opened it to find Ovarrix and the rest of his party outside.

  Ovarrix spoke, “It’s been quiet in the city, and we have a whole day where it looks like the siege is just in the background. Why don’t we teleport out to the mines and make our way over to the Crypt of the Lost and go for the expert clear. It would be a great warmup before we need to take out the dungeon seed. It might drop some tasty blueprints too.”

  Torgon scoffed, “Your idea of fun would be tackling a difficult dungeon. Let’s go. We need to find some better armor. This furry stuff itches.”

  A few other teams from the guild accompanied them, intent on running the dungeon in normal or hard mode while they tackled expert. The control points gave them a distinct advantage in the siege, so long as the monsters didn’t attack them. Torgon desired nothing more than to keep upgrading the guild buildings but raising the hall from basic to common would take common core points or a prohibitive number of basic core points. The starting zone they occupied just didn’t provide those levels of resources. It all came back to the siege. They needed to get stronger, defeat the monster army, then break into the wider game world.

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  The trek through the wilderness to reach the dungeon entrance was uneventful. It concerned Torgon that the monsters weren’t patrolling more. Were they overconfident? Was it designed to be easier than they expected or was it for some other purpose they hadn’t fathomed yet. Their group selected expert mode on the dungeon and entered.

  They inhaled sharply as the temperature in the air plummeted. Their breaths misted in the air and a thin layer of frost filled the crypt. Mana regeneration for the party was halved as the dungeon drained it away from the group. They rechecked every passage, noting that the traps inflicted twice as much damage. There were double the number of monsters in the regular rooms compared to the normal difficulty, and the first bosses came with four minions now. Their improved access to area of effect attacks and greatly increased damage let them plow through the encounters.

  The double strike and double shot abilities combined with their higher levels and stats allowed the team to increase their damage per second on the boss by more than twice their original attempt on the normal difficulty. The added abilities were a nuisance, but it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. They were experienced, had experience dealing with this boss and knew what they needed to do. Torgon’s options with healing at range and inflicting ranged damage allowed him to contribute at a much higher level than in their original encounter. Soon the Expert Ancient Skeletal Spellsword collapsed, granting them a bounty of treasure.

  “Congratulations! You have defeated the Expert Ancient Skeletal Spellsword! This is the first time this boss has been defeated so rewards are doubled!”

  Torgon examined the loot, and a grin split his face. “Jackpot! We have a blueprint for a cloak that provides a boost to intelligence. There’s also a blueprint for boots that give a bonus to agility and a skill level boost to running.”

  Hyperia groaned, “Am I back on crafting duty?”

  Everyone around her nodded vigorously. Torgon replied, “Yeah, sorry, I think we have enough of the siege weapons now. We need to get more armor out for everyone. I’ll open the chest and see what else we get, time for another announcement!” Torgon skipped to the dungeon completion chest, unlatched it and swung it open.

  “Congratulations! Your party has successfully completed an Expert Dungeon. Each member is awarded 1,000 xp and 5 silver. The group is awarded a 2 Basic Dungeon Cores and 2 Basic Dungeon Chits”

  “Regional Notification. A Party from the guild Risk of Injury has become the first to complete an Expert Dungeon in Miller’s Crossing.”

  “Congratulations! For being the first party to complete a Dungeon in Miller’s Crossing, each member of the party is awarded 3,000 xp, 10 silver and 500 reputation with the town of Miller’s Crossing. The group is awarded 6 Basic Dungeon Cores, 6 Basic Dungeon Chits and one library unit of texts related to the Forgotten Empire.”

  “Congratulations! For being the first guild to complete all three levels of difficulty of a dungeon in Miller’s Crossing your guild base has been expanded. You have been granted two additional defensive towers and two additional building slots.”

  Dusty could barely contain her excitement at having more research materials. She had trained the basic research skill which allowed her to find clues more readily in texts such as those they had just discovered. It also made deciphering languages simpler. She had been planning for the guild’s future adventures in the next zone every chance she had.

  The team made their way back to the guild base while others kept running the dungeon’s lower tiers. The extra space added to the guild base would let them put their cores to good use. After a brief discussion, they elected to construct a Ballista tower, a Catapult tower, the Trading Hall and the Adventurer’s Hall. The cores were spent and the materials placed into the appropriate areas for the new buildings to commence that night.

  Hyperia headed straight to the crafting hall and began working on the new armor. Ovarrix and Allestor dragged some of the children out to the training yard and began putting them through their paces. Dusty had already disappeared to the library with Dr. Masters. Torgon found himself at loose ends. He was torn between working on his gathering, peacefully crafting or trying to earn more siege points.

  Torgon decided to grab a couple hours of sleep and then head to the quarries and gather stone. Cleaning up more slots for future skills was the responsible thing to do, even if he would prefer to be making swords or fishing poles or a host of other crafting tasks. He did reason that he could always turn in the stone for siege points, after all, repairing the walls was a constant drain on the city stone supplies.

  The common pick he used now felt smoother and lighter in his hands. It helped take the stone apart much faster. The extra ores he picked up from the stone nodes were just a bonus at this point, adding to the growing pool of guild resources available for their members. He tuned the outside world out and hammered away. Hours passed while he gathered increasingly large amount of stone.

  Torgon paid attention to the reports from Miller’s Crossing. There were sporadic attempts at goblin glider attacks, but the walls had better lighting, and the wind kept the smoke clear of the city. A few times during the night, concentrated attacks on siege engines came close to destroying them. Thankfully, teams equipped with siege engine repair kits arrived on site and managed to outpace the incoming fire. It was a risky task that left several of the heroic engineering teams crushed under rocks meant for the weapons they were tending. Morbidly, Torgon was amused by the players who quite literally took one for the team. Every rock that smashed a player was a rock not smashing into the gear that was being targeted.

  By the dawning of the new day, Torgon had spent eleven hours mindlessly smashing rocks and storing them. He brought them to the quartermasters in Miller’s Crossing and collected his rewards. The experience flowed in much faster now with the myriad quests and events he was involved in. It was still a grind, but the rate of growth was steady. The new armor from Hyperia looked more refined than what he had been using. He might look like a homeless person that had wandered around in a frontier cosplay shop, but instead of taking just the scraps, now he looked as if he took a couple of items that had actually been displayed on the shelves.

  He was preparing to head back to the guild base and gather more, when a discordant note sounded in the distance. Horns began sounding in the monster army to be met with more horns all around the city. He fired off a warning over the guild channels asking for backup, the first serious attack of the siege was about to begin.