"I'm confused," said Gary, folding his muscular arms over his chest. "Are you wanting to know what we are working on, why we are working, why we start work early, or why the work is loud?"
Garath just looked at him blankly for a second, trying to restrain himself from succumbing to his anger.
‘Don't freak out, Gary is a good dude. Forgive him, G, he knows not what he's done,’ Garath thought to himself.
Finally under control he simply replied, "Nevermind, thanks for all your hard work. Aren't you short one red-headed child-laborer?" he asked, glancing around main hall.
Gary nodded. "Brock, the middle nephew," he confirmed. "He picked the Tamer Class and said that it was useless if he didn't have a pet. So, he asked if he could take the morning off to try and catch a wild animal or something. I just left my World Map up so I can keep an eye on his location. We're in a safe-zone so I really wasn't that worried about him."
"See if you can get him to catch the asshole cat running around while he's at it," said Garath. Then he turned back to the four boys clanging metal against metal. "Are they making a grill?"
“They are indeed. Been cooking fish over the fire but we have a lot of mouths to feed. It's a pretty basic design but it should be able to grill up ten or more at a time. I even got a prompt when I finished drawing the plan this morning telling me that I unlocked my first Profession.”
Garath nodded, looking impressed. "All that and it's only shitfuck-o'clock. What Profession?”
“Engineer,” Gary told him proudly. “I even got a second one when giving the boys instructions on how to build it. I am now a professed Engineer and Foreman."
“Wow,” Garath remarked, trying to repress a slight frown. He had been curious about Professions himself but had yet to unlock one, and here Gary was unlocking two before he had even crawled out of bed.
"I'll look over the new sections in my MENUs after we get breakfast going. You wanna give me a hand with this?" Gary asked, motioning to the end of the four-seater opposite of where he was standing.
Garath shrugged. "Why not?"
He walked to the couch and bent to lift his end, thinking bitterly about what a poor job he had done of chastising Gary and his boys for disturbing his slumber.
The huge couch was old and constructed with a solid oak frame but the two of them lifted it easily and carried it through the double doors of the south-side entrance. The glorious blue sky was cloudless and the tangy smell of the ocean filled the fresh morning air. Garath felt his bad mood lifting as though blown away in the summer breeze.
He inhaled deeply through his nose and was reminded of his improved sense of smell. He could now differentiate individual scent signatures and could even tell the rough location (or at least general direction) of each smell's origin. Another of the developments caused by swallowing the Dragon blood was a 300% increase to his sense of smell, a development that was definitely proving to be a double-edged sword when living in close quarters with over two-hundred people that did not have access to a working shower.
Together, Garath and Gary hefted the couch onto the asphalt that had housed the majority of their battle during The Culling. They set it down when Gary stopped in the dead center of what had once been outdoor basketball courts. Laid out next to where Gary stopped were several long, steel poles and next to them a pile of folded, white drapes. Garath wondered what the newly professed Engineer had in mind.
"Outdoor dining area," Gary explained, noticing the Necrologist's narcosis. "We have another few months of nice weather so I figured why not enjoy it a bit, you know?"
"I think I might enjoy it a bit right now," said Garath, sinking into the plush couch. "I wanted to get your input on a few things too, if you have a minute?"
Gary plopped into a seat on the other side of the long sofa and rested one steel toe booted foot on his knee. "What's on your mind?"
"I don't know if you saw that we had another group come in last night, just two of them."
Gary scratched at his beard thoughtfully. "That's right. A pair of blond sisters, wasn't it?"
"Something like that,” Garath confirmed. “I was notified that our Raid reached maximum capacity when I tried to invite them.”
“Huh,” Gary huh'd flatly, unsure if he was being asked a question.
“Indeed,” continued Garath. “My interface suggested converting the Raid into a Guild.”
"A Guild?"
"Right," Garath confirmed. He had forgotten that some terms used in most MMOs didn't translate directly and that Gary (unsurprisingly) had not been a gamer. "I know you didn't spend your time before all this playing video games, but I think we can agree that whatever caused this apocalypse has a lot in common with MMORPGs, right?" Garath asked. The blank look on Gary's bearded face told the Necrologist that he had just used another term that needed explanation. "Massively multiplayer online role playing games."
“Okay," said Gary, nodding as he worked it out in his mind. “You mean the Classes and Levels and magic and monsters and stuff?”
“Exactly.”
“Then sure,” said Gary. “I think we can agree there.”
"Okay. I don't know whether Guilds will be the same here on Earth, but in most games I've played Guilds are a way for like-minded people or people with the same goals to organize and work together. In a lot of games there are even perks for Guild accomplishments, etc."
Gary nodded. "Okay. I think I follow."
"Well, I was thinking about announcing the conversion after breakfast. I thought that might be a good time to establish a couple
