The Secret of the Dark Forest ( (The Way of the Shaman: Book #3) (20 page)

"No, I haven't died and I don't need hired help right this moment. Let's be in touch in the evening. I may have a thing or two to tell you."

"Mahan, I gave you the information you needed, so you owe me! If you want to stay on good terms, learn to share!"

"Stacey, the information that you just gave me isn't worth me granting you access to anything. Check your mail for the description of a certain quest – sorry, I won't be adding a proper link to it, since it will show you where we are. Once you read it you'll see for yourself that I'm right." I opened the Mailbox and copied the conditions of the Guardian's quest, while deleting any mention of the Dark Forest. Let Anastaria turn on her brain and try to figure out for herself what this is all about.

The silence from the amulet seemed to last an eternity.

"For a day after a plot of land chooses you as its Guardian, it will produce rare ores, trees and herbs. Some of them will match the level of your gathering profession, but the majority will be much higher. In a zone like this the leveling up in all professions happens at double the normal speed. I wanted to find out where you are in order to send a team of gatherers there. There have been cases of a Diamond Vein, Redwood or Emperor's Bloom appearing in such places. Do I need to tell you how much all of this can be worth? The resources appear 12 hours after the event, and judging by the chopping sounds in the background, you already know about that. This is my full answer about the Guardian."

"And why couldn't you tell me this straight away?"

"And why couldn't you tell me about the quest straight away?" Anastaria replied with a question of her own.

"What's with the habit of answering a question with a question?"

"And what's with the habit of driving a girl nuts?"

"You're not married by any chance?" smiled Eric, who had finished gathering the herbs and was listening to our verbal sparring with some interest. "You bicker like you're a seasoned couple."

"Is that Eric you've got there?" asked Anastaria, showing off her good memory.

"The one and only. Let's try the following: you've already seen the description of the quest. I will call you in the evening and invite you to do it with us. My clan comes first, so if anyone objects, there'll be no quest sharing. Stacey, I will need more than just the Phoenix people. Get hold of Undigit, Etamzilat and other high-level players. The more people there are from different clans, the lower the price for taking part will be. Yes, you heard me right – anyone who wants to take part in this quest will have to pay. The phrase that I am the only one who can pass on the quest is no exaggeration, but comes straight out of the original quest description. Think it over, gather some people and we'll speak in the evening. Deal?"

"All right. Until then." When the situation called for it, Anastaria was quite capable of speaking plainly and briefly, without any jests or chuckles.

The girl disconnected and I sat down on the ground, holding my head in my hands. As much as I had wanted to wait for the others, I failed to keep shtum about the quest and, essentially, made the decision for the rest of the clan on my own. Never mind, the rest of the team should be here in three hours and I'll explain to them that I had little choice.

"Hello everyone, I'm a bit early today." About ten minutes later Barsina appeared in the glade. "Wow! This is some nice place you've found to make camp! How did you manage to find this? And what's this quest update?" I breathed a sigh of relief: the High Priestess's quest had updated for everyone in the group. "Mahan, would you tell me what happened here while I was away? How come Leite's dead?" Barsina asked after noticing that his frame was grey.

"Well, there's been a bit of a shoot-out," I replied for us all. Eric and Clutzer were lost to the world with wood chopping as they leveled up in the Lumberjacking profession, so I had to do all the talking. After I told Barsina of our misadventures she asked a reasonable question:

"You won't mind if I do a bit of gathering of my own? Our agreement doesn't seem to prohibit it, but I wasn't involved in the business of bringing this about."

"Be my guest." I flexed my shoulders, got my pick out and headed for the Veins. "Just don't be too surprised by what you see.

"See?" asked the girl, but I didn't reply, having already thrown myself at an Iron Vein. With my level 52 in Mining, I just had 8 more levels to go until I could mine Gold, but the main profession limitation wouldn't permit me to gain more than +2. That's a pity ... should I perhaps focus on leveling up my Jewelcraft instead?

"It renews itself!" Barsina's astonished voice came from somewhere to the right, as she saw for herself how a new flower sprung up in place of the one she had just picked. She did have a surprise after all, I chuckled, as I continued to strike at the Vein, despite me warning her and everything!

After increasing my Mining to its current possible maximum (which was limited by my maximum level in Jewelcraft), I sat down under the Oak and began to make rings. Eric and Clutzer followed my example and started to level up in their main Professions, since they had plenty of crafting materials to hand. When Leite appeared two hours later, the Guardian handed him a wooden sword, same as the others, and I sent him off to gather herbs, chop wood and mine veins. Leite's main profession was Alchemy, so he was only able to get it up to 10 with herbs, after that you needed special ingredients like Rat Tails, Spider Legs and Field Mole Whiskers. I had no idea where to get all of these in the Dark Forest, so Leite's leveling up wouldn't get very far. Never mind, the main thing was to lay the foundations – it would be easier after that.

Anastaria was right: the speed of leveling up in the professions doubled and at times even trebled. In just three hours, until the rest of the group showed up, I got my Jewelcraft as far as 50. Eh ... if I could only get to the trainer now ... he had so many recipes for this level that subsequent leveling up would have been sheer pleasure ...

"Listen up, everyone!" After I crafted the last ring for the day, I addressed all the industrious herbivores. The players were flying at the herbs as if they'd never seen or gathered them before in their lives. That side of the glade was periodically filled with surprised exclamations and happy shouts whenever someone gained yet another level in Herbalism. "Guys! Stop grazing like a herd of hungry cows. I need you here for ten minutes; it's a serious matter!"

It's true when they say that as soon as a player sees a freebie, he completely loses his head. "
So many herbs ... Aaaahh! We need to gather them! Gather them all!
" It never even occurred to anyone that their bags would never be able to fit this much hay. They would stuff their sacks full of Daisies, increase their Herbalism to the point where they could gather Yarrow, then chuck it all out and start gathering Yarrow. Why they couldn't throw things away as they gathered them remained a mystery to me. Probably it broke some religious statute of their greedy inner zoo.

"So that's how it is." I finished my retelling of the quest and the potential Agreements with the leading clans. "What do you say?"

"It makes sense to me”, said Barsina thoughtfully, after Sushiho, Dukki and Elenium expressed their approval. "But would this affect our agreement? We signed it for four weeks and at the moment there's a risk of it not being fulfilled. Ten levels and +40 stats points, in essence comes to almost +18 levels, which is a very nice, but ..."

"Barsa, I totally see where you're coming from, so I can offer only this: I'm sending you the Seathistles Clan Agreement. Have a look at it and if you find nothing else amiss, we could add the restrictions on open flirting. When you complete quests with us, this one and any others, you will receive as much as any other member of the clan. The degree of the reward will be proportional to the part you take in the quest – it's all there, have a look. I have nothing against simply paying you something for making extra use of your help, but right now I have no idea how much we will earn in the end. It could be a million or a couple of coppers. To avoid these problems, simply join Seathistles, at least temporarily. I think this will give us a fair way to distribute future rewards. What do you say?"

Barsina stayed silent for a moment, probably reading through the text of our Agreement and weighing something up, and then looked at me and at the other Fighters awaiting her decision and said, "Send me the invite. You have a great Agreement – you can see straightaway that whoever drafted it knew what he was doing. Was it you?"

"No, but we have a guy in the clan who, one might say, is a specialist in this area." I invited Barsina into the clan as a Fighter and pointed out a pleased-looking Leite: "that's him over there, beaming like he's just won a prize. If no-one else has any other proposals, let's talk about what we'll be asking from our dearly desired top players."

When the discussion was coming to an end, Barsina proposed something else that could gain us additional profit. Why waste resources by throwing them away when you can invite high-level gatherers and allow them to graze on the glade for a certain percentage of the profit? Both they and the clan will benefit. So, looks like fresh blood was good for the clan. Well done, Barsa. She thinks like a true mercenary: how to spot a cash cow and milk it for all it’s worth. We could use pragmatic thinkers like that in the clan.

"Speaking!" Anastaria's cool voice came from the amulet. How had she managed to get upset with me? Doesn't seem like her.

"Hi, this is Mahan ..."

"We're not ready yet, we need more time. Call back in three hours."

"This is about something else. Do you have a couple of high-level gatherers of herbs, ore and wood to hand? The glade will soon disappear and it seems stupid and wrong to lose a chance for profit because of excessive greed."

"Then why didn't you invite people in the first place?" Anastaria briefly raised her voice, but immediately calmed down. "The Guardian's resources appear only for a day and we've already wasted so much time. My people are ready and await your signal. The Mages will make a portal – you just have to give the coordinates. You can look them up if you ..."

"I know how to look up coordinates. I'm sending you an agreement, stating that aside from the gatherers not a single Phoenix member will show up in this territory without my permission in the next 5 hours. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be trampled over by your Fighters until we settle things properly. Finally, I want half of everything you gather."

"Ten percent maximum," the girl immediately replied. "I realize that you're on a roll now, but even 10% is too much for a beginner clan, if you consider that you will be profiting without lifting a finger."

"Forty percent, but that's only out of respect for you," I parried. "Stacey, there's little sense for me in sharing my location for just ten percent. Nothing would be better than such a pittance. Forty! I'm giving you too much as it is!"

"All right, twenty. Think about it: consider the labor of my Fighters and the fact that for you herbs will be little more than something to hang from the ceiling – something that you wouldn't have any idea what to do with. A fifth of what's been gathered is a reasonable price for access to the plot. Just think of the expense we'll incur by opening a portal to you. We have to recoup it somehow."

"Thirty, and that's final. The portal will cost you nothing, in total. You just said yourself that your players will be opening it. So what if your Mages will be without mana for a day or two – it will do them good. They'll level up their Intellect."

"Agreed," came the reply from the amulet after a little while. "Thirty percent of what's gathered will go to Seathistles. Send your agreement."

"The Dark Forest ...," she said in a thoughtful voice after the agreement had been signed and I gave her our coordinates, "I wouldn't have thought."

"And also ..." I managed to remember an important point for the clan before the girl turned off the amulet.

"What now? I agreed to your conditions! Everything's been signed!"

"It's not a condition, but a request. While here in the zone I leveled up my Jewelcraft to fifty, but I have no recipes with which to continue leveling up. Can you ask someone from the clan to send me some of the recipes sold by the profession trainer specifically for this level?"

"All right, they'll send it to you with the bill and you can just pay them back later."

"Then, since my foot is off the brake, I might as well try my luck further: can you do the same for Smithing, Wood Carving and Alchemy? In the case of Alchemy I need non-herb ingredients. And the recipes need to be from level one to a hundred inclusive, for all four professions. I'll repay the money, with commission on top, if needed, and I'll owe you a cookie for your help."

"You're one brazen Shaman, I can tell you that. Bork here heard you. He'll get everything done before the end of the day and send all the required recipes and ingredients in a letter. And don't forget about the cookie; I'm only helping you because you promised me one. Right, we'll be with you in a couple of minutes."

"We? Whatever; we'll figure it out. I need to make another call now."

"What?" You couldn't mistake Plinto's rough voice for anyone else.

"Greetings to the self-styled Robin Hood," I said, "the rescuer of the poor and needy. It's Mahan bothering you, if you didn't catch on yet."

"Where'd you get my amulet? Ah! I was the one that handed it to you ... Mahan, put the amulet on a stone and smash it hard with a hammer. If I catch you, I'll send you to a respawn point and keep you there until the Heralds intervene."