Tutorial Day 33

  “Gather everyone!” Maelstrom ordered one of his puppets. When it just stood there, Maelstrom added some context for the stupid creature. “Gather all the human spies!”

  While he’d been content to slowly find this Ryu. That had changed drastically yesterday. First, he’d vanished off the Points board. Maelstrom had smiled, thinking that this Ryu had simply died, or learned the lesson everyone quickly discovered. Everything cost Points in the Tutorial.

  Then not even two hours later, that smile had morphed to nausea. Ryu had appeared on the Achievement Leaderboard. Near the bottom, but he’d climbed in spurts till he reached the three hundreds. He’d never seen such a meteoric rise. Kai even doubted his lord had accomplished it.

  Maelstrom spent the night pouring over the reports that his people had collected over the previous week. He picked up the stack that contained the residency for the District. No Ryu was on it. He knew that but he started going through it again–hoping he was wrong.

  How could anyone gain over a hundred thousand Achievement Points so quickly? There was one answer, but surely it wasn’t possible. He’d created something that had yet to be seen in the Tutorial. But not just something–something drastically more powerful or useful than anything Maelstrom had seen to date.

  Then as if that wasn’t enough–Ryu rejoined the Tutorial Point board, with a hundred and seventy five thousand points. In an instant. Had he sold what he created for that pittance?

  That could be a good thing. If Maelstrom could leash this Ryu. Well, he could re-establish everything he’d lost. Well maybe not everything, he thought while his teeth creaked from his clenched jaw. His family would never return.

  It was somewhat tough usually to tell who he might have sold the items too–but in this case, with the Tutorial Points leaderboard, he could see who’d dropped in it at the same time. While the Spider hadn’t ‘dropped’ in position. She’d lost some of her insanely high total.

  She knew who Ryu was. Was he part of her orginization?

  He picked up the reports from Jacky’s last batch of four spies. They claimed that there was a newcomer but he was poor and not named Ryu. They’d asked about him, and could confirm that much. The person had a name with an S.

  Maelstrom threw the papers he held, even as Jacky entered the room. His daughter, first to respond to his summons. He smiled. She was beautiful.

  * * *

  Waking up in the morning had turned into sleeping in, and now I was hurkle durkling—a term used for laying about in my bed when I should likely be doing work.

  Sure, I’d missed breakfast, and that meant I would produce one less batch of Finely Powdered Witch Hazel, but for the first time since I entered the Tutorial, I felt like I could relax. I technically still had a debt but I also had enough money to pay back Veronique’s loan, and still have around seventy-thousand Points.

  Plus, the payments were on hold while she researched what my Rejuvenation Pills did. So, technically I was probably going to be fine. I had a repeatable product that I could sell, and thus no longer needed to worry about Tutorial Points. Plus, if Rejuvenation Pills weren’t worth a much, which I highly doubted. I could make more Detoxifying Soldier Pills.

  Well, that wasn’t totally true—since I still needed lessons, better equipment made for fighting, and other unknown things. However, I didn’t have to worry about Room and Board at all. It was a good feeling.

  However, it brought up a great deal of questions. For one, if I could make this amount of Points—then why did people like London and his group exist? Smegma had always claimed the System was fair—but this didn’t seem to be. They risked their lives and collected a pittance.

  Sure, they were encouraged to get good at Gathering—but even Gatherers were a step down from what I was now making as a Crafter. Not even a Skilled Crafter either—

  Wait a moment. Why hadn’t I gotten the Alchemy Skill yet? Surely I’d done more than I had for Fishing?

  “Dammit, Smegma, where the husk are you,” I asked my ceiling. His input here would be invaluable. I knew the Pill Cauldron had the Enchantment that linked it to my Overdraft—so, why wouldn’t I have gotten enough Mana Spillage to get Alchemy?

  I hadn’t checked my Mental Universe as the Cauldron worked, but I actually got out of bed to add a note to my book about it. It was a question I would eventually need to understand. Maybe I’d never get a Skill, but then where was the Spilled Mana the Overdraft collected going?

  After my notes, I considered my next steps. There was one obvious experiment left, and theoretically, I could do it today. What would happen if I used the Finely Powdered Witch Hazel and Moon Stalk?

  Well, I could do it today if I went and collected or purchased more Moon Stalk. However, now that I had enough Tutorial Points, I felt like I should go and learn how to use my Qi, Force and buy a new weapon. I’d checked my Spear, and Shiva had been right—the durability and capability of the weapon had dropped a tiny amount from repairs. Not that it was needing to be replaced yet, but having a stronger version could be what I needed. If I could solo more Monsters like the Borkers. Then I could make more of my excursions outside of town.

  If I could become a more proficient Hunter, then I could explore other areas also. I could collect a larger variety of Herbs, make different Pills and hopefully get more Tutorial Points. There were quite a few things I needed more Points for. But primary amongst them was the Stat Breakthrough Pills or Liquid.

  If they did as described, I may be able to use them to push past Peak-F-Rank Stats. Still, this Tutorial seemed to be a study of the saying, ‘you need to spend money to make money.’

  So, the first thing I needed to do was take some lessons.

  * * *

  Wednesday, May 15th, 2069

  Dave stared as Clara’s Crystal glowed blue. He kept his fingers crossed behind his back, hoping the Altar granted her a Skill as helpful as his Cut, Gary’s Mining, Jarred’s Puncture or Willa’s Shatter.

  Abyss needed it to be something good. They basically needed another Skilled Specialist, to help bridge a forming gap. Even with Willa and Dave unlocking a second Stat, they were slowly losing out on the high ranked contracts for the following week to P-Squared and that jackass Jagger. He’d figured out their company’s limits on Specialists and began heavily investing his money from his sale of P-Cubed into hiring back Specialists he’d previously sold to other companies and crews.

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  That and blocking Abyss’ attempts to hire Mana Pool Miner’s. In some ways it was a compounding problem. Jagger’s true end goal was becoming painfully clear to the people in this room. He’d never been selling his Specialists permanently. He’d been loaning them out and waiting till he had the funds to do what he was doing now.

  With a company like P-Squared in town, Lynx and Snowbirds could go after higher Ranked Portals and not worry about losing valuable Portal Resources. Plus they no longer needed to hire out of town companies when they found one. That along with the larger size of P-Squared had earned Jagger what appeared to be exclusive rights to contracts with those Guilds.

  From what Dave could discover, the dickwad had created five crews in his company. Which meant if between Snowbirds and Lynx they didn’t have six active Portals, then Abyss would be relegated to B-Ranked Guilds. That wasn’t catastrophic yet but it could be–if Jagger continued. The intentions were clear from Jagger–he was out to bankrupt them. He’d even put in an offer to buy back some of the infrastructure that they got in the takeover of P-Cubed. It wasn’t even a low-ball offer. It had been a decent price, and they had considered taking it–but if they did, they’d be in trouble when Brodie returned and needed that infrastructure to grow.

  Also only idiots would sell to a company that was out to destroy them. Like in Settlers of Maraman, you don’t trade with the person in the lead.

  What was the problem with not working for Lynx and Snowbirds? Well, the next group of Guilds were considered B-Rank or lower, and the treatment from Mirage was very hard to forget. Not that B-Ranked Guilds were anywhere near as bad as Mirage, but in truth there were only one of the B-Ranked ‘mid ranked’ Guilds that operated in Windsor. So, Dave’s prediction was that Jagger would expand that way in time as well.

  The limiting factor right now for Abyss was Enchanted Gathering Tools. Before Brodie left, he’d purchased forty Pickaxes, and thirty of both Skinning Knives and Gardening Kits. That and the three Bags of Holding. At current, Abyss was running at full capacity with three crews of Equipment Specialists, and while Brodie had lofty ideas to begin a Crafting arm—they had no way to entice people to join it.

  Clara turned over the cards that fell into her hand and Dave schooled his features.

  “Useless!” Smegma said, and Dave immediately tried to swat at the huge bat-winged creature.

  “What the shit, man?” He said as his hand passed through the asshole. “First off, it isn’t useless—second you don’t say shit like that!”

  “How’s that going to help Abyss keep up with that loser Jagger?” Smegma asked, his voice scornful. When no one gave an immediate answer he continued, “Exactly! What’s the point of sugar coating a turd? It’s still eating shit!”

  “But Dave’s right,” Geneva said with a wince. She brought her two fingers up to the bridge of her nose and began massaging as she continued, “That Skill is actually pretty useful. Maybe not for the Gatherers, but we won’t know that till you try it.”

  “Oh look, she’s trying to put strawberry filling in the steaming diarrhea,” Smegma countered. “Look ladies,” Smegma said while pointedly looking at Dave to turn the phrase into an insult. “I’m not saying it’s a bad Skill. I’m saying it’s crap for our current predicament. Lies people tell to themselves are the most dangerous, because it can make you believe there is hope in a situation when there isn’t.”

  Smegma held up a hand.”Abyss isn’t that bad off. Not yet, but we all know Jagger isn’t going to stop. What we really needed was another Skilled Specialist or for one of you to Evolve your Skills. Or for the Enchanted Equipment to Evolve. Right now, Jagger’s P-Pee-iece of shit company is beating us cause they are handling higher grade Monsters, and Flora. The problem isn’t Demonic Nobility…”

  Smegma said the last bit the way Dave might say Rocket Science and so he intrinsically understood that Demonic Nobility was somehow complex and complicated.

  “All your points are right, hellspawn but voicing them ain’t fixing the words coming out of your asshole,” Jarred grumbled. “Let’s reserve our opinion until we see what the other ladies and John got. Okay?”

  Dave looked around the Board Room. Aurome and Seleff had left with the Altar immediately after their Healer had done her job, and everyone had accepted their Skill. That’s why they could now use the Spent Mana Crystals.

  Still, Kristen and Geneva, despite coaching from Smegma before they’d gotten the Skills, weren’t ready to use their Mana. John, on the other hand, could use his Mana but hadn’t regained consciousness from activating the Altar and gaining a Skill of his own. Dave looked at Mrs. Stovall, and she shrugged, indicating he was okay, but still not ‘awake.’

  “Smegma, you’re the one with the most knowledge of the System, so shouldn’t you be the one who figures out how we’re supposed to Evolve our Skills or the other Items? Like why can the Picks level to E-Rank but not the other gear? How did you Evolve your Cards on Crendalar?” Dave asked the Demon.

  “Finding Sets was one way. The other was obviously finding a System Opportunity… However, the sets are clearly not possible here—since you don’t even have Cards and aren’t fighting the Monsters. The only hint we have to go off is that Brodie Evolved Mining and the Picks after he defeated the Golem…”

  “Do ya be sayin’ the only way to be Evolvin’ our Skills and Equipment is to fight Monsters?” Willa asked incredulously. “I still be thinkin’ we should be tryin’ to convince people to let us Cook and Fish.”

  “We’d only make money that way by starting a restaurant,” Jarred grumbled.

  Everyone nodded at his point though, which made Willa’s head fall. She did respond quietly still, while kneeling beside Kristen, “I still thought it be a good idea!”

  “Less groaning and more teaching!” Smegma stated, directing his scathing glare at Willa. Willa flipped him one and then two birds before she returned to coaching Kristen.

  Geneva slid over to join the women, and despite Dave not being able to hear them, he was sure they were uniting against the Demon. Dave sighed, and turned to Mrs. Stovall. “Is there no way to take out a loan against Brodie’s holdings or stop Jagger legally?”

  Mrs. Stovall stroked John’s forehead, but did look up absently as she did it. “You could offer more for the Mana Pool Miners, but then you’d all have to accept lower Bonuses.”

  “It isn’t like the B or C-Ranked Guilds are that much more dangerous. So, let’s not be too hasty. Any ideas on how we can get more of the Skilled Specialists? Mining is still earning the largest bonuses, thanks in large part to you three,” Clara pointed to Gary, Willa and Jarred. Then continued, “That’s starting to bother the other groups. We can’t rely on Dave alone to bridge that gap.”

  Dave smiled. He’d been working double duty as it was—spending most morning with the Gardeners before moving to the Cleaners in the afternoon. If he didn’t have the Mana Battery from the Naga dungeon, he’d never be able to do it. Just like Willa and Jarred used the other two to keep well ahead on Mining. That and Willa had successfully unlocked a second Stat, which was helping as well.

  Gary and Jarred had yet to accomplish that task.

  However, there was one issue Dave thought he was noticing with the Mana Batteries. While they still felt like they were thrumming with untapped and unused Mana, he thought he could sense a difference. He’d been using one of the ‘B-Ranked’ models, and it worried him that it felt different from day to day.

  “Are you two noticing something different about the Mana Batteries?” Dave asked quickly. He hoped that by getting the question out fast, that it might be like ripping off a Wound-sticker. The silence from the room after the question was quite possibly worse than the voicing of it.

  “What do you mean?” Gary asked, looking at Willa, Jarred and Dave in turn.

  Willa and Jarred shared a worried glance. It was Willa that spoke. “The Mana Batteries ain’t be recharging we think.”

  “What?” Gary’s eyes flew wide. “W-What do you mean? How—”

  “It’s because the Enchantments don’t recognize the current Mana. So, they aren’t reabsorbing it. I didn’t want to bring this up—but they seem to be slowly diminishing the Pools inside, and will eventually run empty,” Smegma said while not meeting anyones eyes.

  The entire room held its breath, hoping he’d say more—that the Demon would have a solution to that rather huge problem. When the silence stretched, Dave eventually shouted, “What?!”

  That was a rather huge problem. They already needed to figure out how to keep the Cleaner’s and Gardener’s afloat–and now they were all on a timer before they’d return to being ‘regular’ Specialists.