Chapter 8: Awkward

Aidylan had a hard life.

Well, not actually. He just liked the aesthetic of a hard life. In reality, he made about 50% more than minimum wage just overseeing a few grunt workers.

His job was simple. Organize the gold farmers, coordinate their hours, and hold them accountable.

Since he was in a tutorial region, this was even easier. System Instances were rare here, danger was even rarer, and the only troublemakers came from newbies who didn’t understand the rules only because they didn’t have the experience or levels to matter anyway.

He mostly just lounged around all day, and the hardest part of his job was making sure that the efficiency of his farmers were high enough. Sometimes that might require shifting their targets, changing around the shifts depending on special events, or maybe paying attention to the changes in hibernation patterns of some of the beasts they farmed the most.

Divinity could get pretty complicated. The foxes here were actually active year round, but it was considered late winter to early spring here, so some of the larger hibernating beasts weren’t out yet.

Taking that into account, he sent out more farmers than usual because the danger was lesser. Staying atop of such things was the gist of his job.

So one could imagine that instances of deaths unrelated to beasts were fairly rare.

When Aidylan saw the notification of deaths, he checked the time of year. It was, indeed, time for the twinkle twinkle bears to come out. The schedule wasn’t exact, so it was possible that this group could have just gotten unlucky.

But when he cross referenced the names of the fallen with the region he had given them, he couldn’t help but frown.

Even during peak season that region wouldn’t have high instances of twinkle twinkle bears.

"Did these idiots die to the twink foxes? There’s no way."

Aidylan groaned.

Deaths were annoying. They came with a level loss, experience loss, and all the coins they had farmed would drop as well. He would have to send a team out to make sure no stragglers thought they got lucky.

Aidylan stood from his desk. It was in an office their guild rented in the Tutorial Zone and overlooked a city square and fountain below. The view was decent, and it was the most bustling part of the small town, but Aidylan usually spent his days surfing the Divinity Hub for news of what the powerhouses were doing.

But now that he had actual work to do, he made his way over to a corner of the office, scribbled out a few words on a scroll, rolled it up, then shoved it into a tube.

The scroll was sucked up and then vanished.

That was all for show, really. The scroll would vanish into motes of light then be teleported to the nearest team, and then they would go and cover the region the trio was meant to with a word of caution.

Unfortunately, Aidylan didn’t yet know that the three hadn’t died in their assigned zone at all. But he would know soon.

Not long later, he received the report he was waiting for, not from the team he had assigned to retrieve the coins, but instead from the trio that had died.

’They sure took their sweet time. Getting their stories in order, is it?’

Aidylan sneered. He had seen things like this many times before and it immediately raised his eyebrows.

One time, there had been an accomplice involved who had tried to steal the coins. The guild had made sure they never did something like that again.

He wondered what the story would be this time.

"A newbie? Killed all three of them?" Aidylan scoffed and he was ready to put these three on the blacklist. They’d regret their little game very soon. But then something in their story caught his attention.

’Warrant?’ Aidylan frowned.

He walked back to his desk and opened the hub up again. This time, he swapped from the world-wide hub down to a regional one, and then focused on their Tutorial Village. Specifically, Twinkle Village.

―

WANTED: Jaxir Chance

Bounty: 100 Copper

Special Reward

―

Aidylan’s eyes narrowed. It really did exist. A special reward, though? That was quite something. The village head himself might be involved.

Honestly, it was Aidylan’s job to be on top of something like this. This shouldn’t be the first time he was hearing about it, but he wasn’t going to tell those three that.

It wasn’t easy to get a warrant in a village. That wasn’t because the rules here were laxer, but instead because Divinity was a very realistic game.

Meaning, just committing a crime wasn’t enough. You had to commit one and get caught in the act or proven guilty. The only exceptions were if some sort of special item was involved. Usually, only those that had killed and been exposed for it would have warrants out for their arrest.

’This is peculiar. Is this Jaxir their accomplice? Or are they telling the truth about being killed and ambushed?’

PING

Aidylan opened his messages and his expression darkened. The team he had sent went to the assigned location and, as expected, didn’t find the coins.

Suddenly, all of Aidylan’s laziness vanished. He wasn’t about to lose his cushy job because some bastards thought they could sweep something under his nose.

Not just anyone got an officer position for the Golden Fleece Guild.

Aidylan walked over to the corner of the room again, about to write on another scroll before he paused.

’No. If I redirect everyone, it will affect today’s quota.’ Aidylan looked toward the corner of the room and spotted a sword laying around collecting dust. ’Fine, fine, fine.’

Aidylan wrote a message on the scroll and sent it off to the group that had gone to cover the three dead. For now, he wouldn’t respond to the trio and let them stew. He would have some personal investigations to do first.

He walked over to his sword and picked it up.

The moment he did, it was like rust was falling off of his demeanor itself.

It was like he had said.

Not just anyone could become an officer of the Golden Fleece Guild.

His level was only so low because he had to stay in the Tutorial Zone. But their guild had a storied history that went beyond just this game alone. He just wasn’t quite good enough to be in the upper echelon.

Maybe one day.

But for now.

He was going newbie hunting.

**

Jaxir didn’t realize that his appearance had stoked some cold flames in an unknown character. What he did know, though, was that making it down the valley without risking some death himself was probably impossible.

Luckily... this was a video game.

The valley had several ledges. These ledges were usually occupied by twinkle twinkle foxes, and sometimes not. But if he targeted these ledges, he wouldn’t have the space to fight, and he was a glass cannon so he couldn’t exactly afford to get into a rumble-tumble sort of battle.

So, he chose another option.

Firing from a distance.

He peeked over the edge, chose a target, then began to charge. Maybe this target practice would help him hit a new level of control.

Or it might enrage all the foxes down there and make them charge him.

Jaxir chuckled. He forgot about his worries and found himself immersing more and more in this game.

"Well, let’s piss off a horde of cute little foxes, then."

Jaxir held his staff up and a strong pulsing, milky white light came for it. He picked a target.

It was about four or so meters down, not that far, but it was about as far as Jaxir had ever tried to target something with Cast.

"Right here. This should be about 25 damage." Jaxir said aloud and then released it.

The fox didn’t even get a chance to yip.

[-26]

It died, vanishing into motes of light.

―

+4 Exp

+3 Copper

―

"Okay, that one was Level 4, then? Hm..."

Jaxir aimed toward the next one. This one was off to the side a bit, but it was probably around six meters away or so.

He could have gotten closer, but he was suddenly curious about just how far he could go, and how distance affected his damage output.

He charged up again.

[-28]

The fox’s eyes snapped open.

"Oh, stronger than Level five this time."

The fox was too crippled to move, so Jaxir just sent another quick bolt over, but to his surprise.

[-1]

Jaxir blinked as the fox died.

―

+6 Exp

+3 Copper

―

"So when I quick fire, my range is a lot shorter. I think it actually started to dissipate there a bit. That’s why it only took so little. I see..."

Just as Jaxir was about to aim and fire again, there was a stir.

The sleeping foxes suddenly woke up.

For some reason, Jaxir was almost 100% certain at that moment that they hadn’t really been sleeping at all, and whatever they had actually been doing had just been interrupted by him.

"Well... this could get awkward..."