“What changed?” Infect asked, greed in his eyes after listening to Hung. “Did he give you something else? Something divine?”
“A primeval mythical item!” the warrior declared proudly.
“What?” the bard gasped, his jaw dropping.
“That happens?” Irita asked in disbelief.
“No, it doesn’t,” Bomb answered, smiling. “But it would be bad manners to not tease Malik at least once a day. Get used to it, Rita.”
Angry, Infect rose and brandished his precious epic guitar, but looked at Irita’s giggling face and decided against hitting Bomber.
“Anything to laugh at the poor little bard,” he grumbled, going back to his seat at the table. “Tin already green with envy. Believe me, Rita, you can expect the same!”
“I’m not envious, but I’m really interested!” the girl said.
“Alright, enough jokes,” I said. “Bomb, what changed with the kraken?”
“Basically, he obeys me now. The trouble is, it costs reputation points—I lose a whole bunch of points for each request. I lost five hundred just from setting the kraken on a shark! I had to feed him again, but he did get the shark.”
“It’s only a thousand and five hundred points from fi’iendship to trust,” Crawler said. “So just two or three requests and you have to do it all over again?”
“Seems so, but “I’m going to test it,” Bomber declared. “I want to reach respect. But that’s not all! Ortho hasn’t learned to talk, but when he WTapped his tentacle around me, I got a quest! I need to somehow get to the underwater kingdom of the naga near Meaz and convince them to return to the protection of Orthokon. I feel a long quest chain coining on.”
“Uh-huh,” Infect agreed, scowling from under his brows. “Considering nobody has reached Meaz yet, there are monsters in the ocean with levels too high to see, and Underwater Breathing Potion doesn’t last long and has a cooldown, you can probably forget about your quest.”
“W-e-e— 11 …” Bomber said, glancing at the bard conspiratoriallv.
“What?!”
“Actually, the kraken gave me the ability to be underwater without needing to breathe!”
“So what?” Infect snorted sceptically. “Exhaustion will still get you! Or the monsters!”
“He can swim on the kraken, right?” Irita suggested. “And it’ll protect him.”
“Something like that,” Bomber confirmed. “I’ll get down to it once all this crap with Nergal’s event is over. I can feel it in my gut; getting to the Undenvater Kingdom will be the easiest part. I’ll have to level up my rep with the naga before they’ll even talk to me. In the meantime, I’ll keep gaining rep with Orthokon too.”
“Wooow, it’s so exciting with you guys!” Irita said. “My first day in big Dis and I’m already in a clan with a class-A Threat and another Threat with a pet beast god, and we’re talking about farming Holdest, Meaz and Terrastera as if it’s a piece of cake! Are you guys really that awesome?”
“As a certain envious showoff bard once said, get used to it,” Crawler smiled. He turned to me. “By the w^ay, about Rita. We can’t miss a chance to give our clan members a boost with some unique achievements. And we’re only a little away from clan level five. The achievement points stack for each member. Level five unlocks Gold Flow.”
“Oh, wow, that sounds great!” Irita jumped, clasped her hands. “Money from the air! Take me with you! I’m all in favor! Means I can put my feet up a little longer…”
Crawler continued:
“When any clan member picks up money from a corpse, an extra one percent of it is created and goes to the clan treasury. Magic, it really is like cash from thin air!”
“Everything is from thin air here. It’s virtual reality,” Bomber said. “Alright, alright, I get the point.”
“We need to level the clan up in any case,” Crawler added. “Instantaneous mail, mass raid respawns, improved defenses and damage inside the fort… There are plenty of bonuses, and they’re all useful…!”
“What about the frost debuff?”
“A few seconds is enough for Rita to poke her nose through the instance portal. We’ll jump straight to the entrance.”
“Alright. Then let’s take Gyula and Patrick with us too.” I waved a hand and shouted to O’Grady. “By the way, I think we can bring him back into the clan. What do you think, can he handle looking after the fort’s supplies?”
Bomber took a generous swig of coffee and coughed.
“Are you serious?” Crawler asked. “He even started bugging the cultists of Morena: Give a copper to an honored citizen ofTristad… They think he’s crazy!”
“But they throw the coin!” Bomber laughed.
“Only one way to find out,” I pondered aloud. “He’s changed. Behemoth fixed his head…”
Irita’s example showed me that, unlike the clans of the Commonwealth, the Empire and the neutrals, who were severely limited in their choice of faction when it came to taking on new players, the undead had no racial prejudices. It was the only side that would accept sentients from all races into the clan. Considering the Destroying Plague had no developed infrastructure, that move by the developers made sense.
“So, are we moving out?” Crawler asked.
“I need a little time, with peace and quiet,” I answered and quoted a system message: “Two hundred and seventy-five thousand free stat points available!” The timer until Mogwai respawned was ticking, but it would be dumb not to spend ten minutes nearly doubling my strength.
The boys whistled and nodded—of course, of course. Irita wanted to say something, but she just sat there open-mouthed, trying to grasp the number.
To avoid distracting me with their conversations, my friends sat down at another table, and Crawler even covered me with a Dome of Silence. Immersed in his thoughts, Gyula sat down next to them—Gyula wasn’t interested in our games, it seemed. Patrick O’Grady made a sixth in
