RETURN OF THE SHADOW - Chapter 180

“I wonder what he sent me. I doubt he stupid enough to do anything that harms me,” thought Balthazar as he selected to save the video, he had recorded of his meeting with Sengo. With that done, he immediately contacted Jack and asked him to return to the room.

“What happened? Did you accept his claim?” asked Jack as soon as he entered the room.

“No, why would you think that?” asked Balthazar pushing a chair to his cousin.

“I just got doc.u.ments in my mail indicating that I was given the shares that he had promised,” said Jack showing him the doc.u.ments.

“Oh!” said Balthazar as he looked at them. “The man is much more scheming than I thought. He had prepared to give these Jack just so that he could avoid pressure from the family. I guess I have to be careful with him if I come into contact with him in the game,” thought Balthazar. He also remembered that the Divine Swords managed to become a force on par with some super guilds in vita-nova.

“I didn’t sell the name or accept to any of his conditions. He was actually just passing on a message,” said Balthazar. “Anyway, I didn’t call you back to discuss about the incident. It is currently in the past and I don’t want to discuss anything about it.”

“Oh! So, you don’t want anything? Why did you call me, then?”

“I wanted to talk to you about a few things. Not the issue that happened with the guild. Let me start with saying that I want to put aside the quarrels that we had with Rudra and others leaving your employment and start fresh,” said Balthazar. He realized that the quarrel with his cousin was something others could use to get Jack to do stupid things against him. He had to do something to nip this issue in the bud. If Jack had not been family, he would have preferred to convince him by force rather than talk to him. So, he decided to convince Jack and try to reduce the tension between them.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Jack raising his eyebrows in surprise. His cousin who was just ordering him a couple of minutes ago became nice and accommodating all of a sudden which had him perplexed. He began to wonder if something happened in these few minutes of discussion with Sengo which changed his cousin’s behavior towards him due to the friendship between him and Sengo. In the next second, he thought that he could use this chance to force his cousin to agree to better terms with respect to the guild.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” frowned Balthazar shaking his head.

“How about you give me few shares of your workshop and we could consider it even. I will even put in a good word to Sengo and his friends about you,” continued Jack without looking at Balthazar expression which was getting worse with every word.

“How come this idiot only thinks of using influence for getting things,” thought Balthazar as he moved towards Jack. He lifted Jack up by his collar and began to shout, “Listen Moron! I am only trying to reconcile with you because you are family and you are just a mild annoyance. But recently you have been crossing over from being a mild annoyance to a threat. Your friend, Sengo is sending a message from Ryan Rowley who I believe was in cahoots with the Nirbaadh pirates.”

“People will want to use any way they can to go against the family and our quarrel which somehow became public information feels like an opportunity to them. Guess what I am saying is to be careful and inform me or at the very least elder Oliver, your father before you become a patsy who would end up being labelled as a traitor,” he continued to shout at Jack whose eyes were wide open in shock as he started to realize the situation.

“I will handle this issue and the things that arise out of it for now. Be in touch with Sengo, but make sure no information goes out. I am doing this only because you are family and a bit naive about these things. Don’t get tempted by any offers. Even though elder Max escaped, he ended up dead as he foolishly let out information to others and he got the easy way out. It would much worse, if he ended up in the hands of the family. I hope you get it,” said Balthazar as he pushed his cousin back on to a chair and got out of the meeting. He hoped that Jack would change and sent a mail to D.i.c.k about fake IDs for himself and his friend before he logged in to vita-nova.

He sent a message to Rudra to inform him that he handled the issue that came up and he needn’t worry about it any longer. He also warned about the Divine Swords guild leader Muramasa who started the whole issue for a friend as he was worried that Ryan could still have others in the guild whom he could use against Crimson Realm and suggested to perform some recon of that guild.

He then went to the store and see if he could get a hold of any designs. He came to know that Hammer managed to create a silver original glaive of level 15 and took the design. He also came to know that the weapons that he made were quite a hit and they could do with more of them. He decided to get to the Welog town instead of forging. It would get dark in the game in a couple of hours and he could work on forging at that time. Apart from that he hoped to get higher level designs, even black iron ones are fine as long as they were higher leveled as they gave more experience on production.

It was an area which was to be newly explored. It was mostly a vast forest around the town with a few mountains towards the south, but there were two active volcanic mountains that were a few kilometers tall at that place which were quite famous in his previous life. These volcanoes keep spout lava every day in small amounts.

These two active volcanoes were considered forbidden areas till players reached tier 3 but there were a few dormant ones surrounding it where the monsters ranged upto tier 2 level 70. Though it had many monsters it couldn’t be considered a good farming ground as the numbers are quite high and also a few of the higher leveled monsters would suddenly come to the low-level areas occasionally causing huge losses to the players.

It was a volatile place where forest fires and the likes are common. One needn’t even be suprised if a blob of lava or rocks rained on them from the sky killing them. Even if a player keeps his pain and burn setting to a minimum of 1% to feel the surrounding burning to death suddenly due to lava rain is an experience which most players wouldn’t want to risk.

In spite of all this, players still attempted to kill these monsters as they can find ores and even gems as the go deeper lying on the ground. There would also be a lot of igneous rocks that could be found on the ground and even on trees which when broken would also have different kinds ores. There would soon be players who just go to search for ores by wandering in the place as even areas with low level monsters would occasionally give ores like Dark Iron and crystals like Jades. So, it will end up being one of the popular places for player who want to test their luck.

Currently the forest around the Welog town has level 15 beast common to the forest, but Balthazar wanted to increase his levels fast. So, the volcano region is actually a good place to grind for player who go solo. Moreover, the monsters tend to leave decent loot too.

The main problem was that he currently didn’t have a way to quickly get to the Welog town due to lack of mounts, so he had to make way by foot. Without having been registered at a place one couldn’t use teleportation portal to travel to a place either. That was the main reason, why everyone had to discover a town before being able to teleport, except in cases where a quest guided them to it. Without mounts which aren’t introduced yet, it would be very time consuming to get there, but he decided to go there anyway as it would help him increase his level while he could also help the guild establish themselves towards the direction of the Jarko town.

The path to Welog town was a mild forest. Being a town connected to the White Heart City and as it is not one of the beginner towns, there is a clear path to it made by the NPCs and a few watchtowers and restaurants along the way. Thus, the players didn’t have to worry about monsters attacking them in large numbers in the path. Players actually try to get out of the path in such scenarios to attack and explore the surrounding forests. Currently, most players are trying to explore all the surrounding areas in hope of getting lucky after they heard of the fort that was discovered by the Crimson Realm guild.

This behavior of the players made his journey a solitary one till he reached a watchtower. Even while running at his best speed it took him 15 minutes to reach the first watchtower along the way. The watchtowers in between the ways weren’t just a tower but were like a small encampment of guards having a proper stockade with a hotel, restaurant, bar and warehouse so that travelers either adventurers or NPCs could spend the night if there was a need. The security and the number of NPCs at the watchtower also varies based on the number of players using that path.

These places tend to be crowded as they also have a quest board at the watchtowers. The quests could be either resource gathering for the guards or killing special monsters or guarding NPC convoys. Players would realize later that gathering reputation would also allow them to post quests at such places, which could even be accepted by NPCs, but the details would depend upon the reputation of the individual concerned. Sometime, NPCs might even try to cheat the players in regard to the quests.

Balthazar had no plans to pursue any quest. He only disguised himself and went to the watchtower areas to see the players and if any known guilds or team were there. Knowing the future, he was continuously planning on getting more trustworthy and powerful allies in the game. But he didn’t find anyone of much value and just had some beverage at the restaurant to quickly replenish his stamina before going ahead. He continued in the same way for the next two watchtowers before he found something interesting in the last watchtower before the Welog town.

The thing he found wasn’t related to any player, but it was a quest to gather specific item from location of the volcanos. The quest was to gather the firestones that would be found in the abdomen of the salamandrids that would be roaming near that place. These beasts ranged from level 18 to level 20.

Most wouldn’t even realize the quest nor would be interested in it due to their high level, but Balthazar was reminded of a very common use of these firestones and something else that would be found at that place. The firestones could be used to provide lights and used as consumable if one had lanterns. It could also be used to increase the quality of normal fire that could be used for forging or alchemy which would help increase the success rate of weapons and potions.

But these weren’t the most interesting things to Balthazar as it is not easy to get the blueprints for lanterns and he had already been using advanced workshop which has better fires. So, using the firestones for improving fire was of no use to him, but he knew something that is very useful. The salamandrids are almost always accompanied by fireflies when they are resting.

If he could use stealth and get close to a few he could put them in jars and with help of a tamer use them as light sources at night-time. The fireflies would also need to be properly supported to grow in level along with the player, else it would become victim to attacks of other beasts if the player attempts to farm monsters at higher levels. So, it is best if he tries to get hold of them at a lower level. He also knew that once the light stones and lanterns came into existence, the number of fireflies that were spawned were decreased by the game administrators and it becomes much harder to tame fireflies at that time.

At this stage, exploration of places as night and some dark caverns are very hard. Use of a tamed firefly or a group of them would make it very easy for a team to continue in the wilds at night-time instead of staying at towns or cities. So, it would have a lot more value than anything he could think at this stage of the game.

So, he took the quest and decided to attempt it rather than other things. It would also enable him to raise his experience faster at night. He is already having trouble finding a decent forging or engineering design to work at nights to increase his experience and level and this would only get worse at higher levels. Having a firefly tamed would allow him to farm monsters at night much easily and would help to increase his experience faster.

He quickly made his way to the Welog town and registered himself. The town was exactly as he had remembered. It was a small town with no specific features. There were woods all around the place and it was a small town almost like a beginner town. The only difference is that all the monsters in the surrounding areas and most of the NPCs were at least at level 15. The towns size would only increase once the number of players visiting it regularly increases.

After registration, he decided to go to the White Heart City. At this stage, tamers wouldn’t be in large number in kingdoms and even if they were, they wouldn’t be popular. He asked in the Crimson Realm guild chat on his way and found that no one knew of a tamer NPC or shop in Welog town. So, he had to go to the White Heart City where he knew the location of the pet shop. A pet shop always had a tamer or group in charge of it.