Chapter 330: Reconstruction

sorry for the delay, and I still owe 3, working to catch up (everytime I get close, something pops up and puts me behind again)

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Aegis pulled a torch from his inventory and wandered through the ruined village, using his other hand to hold the tablet with the ancient image on it. With it as a reference, he was able to find the base of the structure. It wasn’t thanks to the surrounding landscape in the image, as all of that had changed drastically over the years. It was thanks to a few circular stone walls still standing, albeit only a foot off the ground.

He plopped cross-legged on the dirt in front of the ruins, propped up the stone tablet with the image on it against one of the remaining walls, grabbed a nearby stick, and used the stick to draw lines in the dirt.

“How bad is it?” Lina snuck up behind him.

“Bad. Way worse than the intermediate crafting mastery quest.” Aegis replied. “The fact that these stones are still standing even though these buildings were supposedly destroyed thousands of years ago speaks volumes to how they built it. There’s nothing special about the materials used, though. I can tell just by looking at it that it was made using resources from the surrounding areas. This is all about craftsmanship.” He spoke while using the dirt to sketch out his plan of action.

“Anything I can do to help?” Lina asked.

“Gonna need a lot of leather from those mountain cat monsters. Gotta set up some crafting stations here. This’ll take awhile.”

“I’m on it!” Lina shadow-stepped away. He sketched a bit more before standing up and dusting himself off. He pulled out several tools from his inventory and strapped them to his back and belt while simultaneously shelving his shield and claws.

“Here we go again.” He marched down the mountain.

Stonecutting was first. He used his skills to mine out a quarry down the mountain and cut the stones into the highest quality blocks he could. He had the details on how best to do it fresh in his mind from having studied for the advanced stonecutting quest. Once cut, he brought a few more than he needed with him up the mountain back to the ruins.

Wood was next, with plenty of trees to cut in the vicinity. The trees were so easy that a level 1 woodcutter could harvest them, but Aegis knew the trick to this quest was going to be all about quality. He took extreme care in the chopping and trimming process to get the best base material to work with, nearing 100% on most of his cuts due to his high skill level.

Ore, sand, clay, flowers, and other herbs were next. Lina brought an abundance of dead monsters for Aegis to use creature harvesting on, for leather and meat. For the amount he’d gathered, Aegis would’ve normally been able to harvest and process it all in a couple of hours. His need to get the maximum quality on each gather was slowing him down drastically, though, and it took him nearly 3 full days to gather enough for everything he’d thought he’d need for the reconstruction.

Lina spent a lot of that time idling around, either watching Aegis or talking with the NPC, asking Danton questions like how long he’d been up in the ruins, and whether or not anyone else had tried to do the quest before(they hadn’t).

Any of the materials that were too big to stick in his inventory, namely cuts of stone, he finished stacking neatly off to the side of the ruins. Lina helped him transport the last few up the mountain from where he’d been cutting them out of the earth.

“That should hopefully be enough.” Aegis rubbed his hands on his knees after observing a satisfyingly large stockpile of resources.

“It is getting pretty late now in the real world, right?” Lina asked from his side.

“Yeah. Gotta get some sleep before classes tomorrow. I’ll start on processing all of this after classes.” Aegis nodded.

“Okay…” Lina looked at her feet, twiddling them. 

“Something wrong?” He stared at her patiently.

“Do you think, maybe… Even though we’re in the middle of nowhere, I thought you could sleep in the sim-box. You know, using dream-state.” Lina shrugged, speaking without lifting her head up once.

“Why’d you think I brought this?” Aegis pulled a tent out of his inventory that had the symbol of Rene on the side. Lina’s face lit up as he set up the tent within seconds, throwing in some pillows and linens from his inventory inside as well to make the interior comfy. Once he was done, he stood in front of the tent and pulled the door open, motioning Lina inside.

She gladly rushed in, Aegis behind her, and the two snuggled up together for the night.

He awoke to Lina shaking him awake, still inside the game world.

“I think you’re going to be late if you don’t go now!” She said, looking as though she’d been fighting to wake him up for a while. He sat up in the tent with no recollection of how he passed out. He took a few moments to gain his bearings, open his interface, and check the real-world time in the settings menu. 

“Ah, you’re right!” Aegis cut himself off by logging out of the game-world mid-sentence, leaving Lina by herself giggling.

Eli climbed out of the sim-box in his simulation suit and got to work taking it off, getting dressed, and rushing out of the room.

Tuesday flew by. He had more ogling fans and livestreamers following him around Campus between the classes, but that didn’t bother him. He was in a much better mood knowing that he didn’t have a nanotech class that day, and the lectures he did attend were ones he had already well studied. He felt much more comfortable after hearing the professors in these classes talk and slipped back to his room after they were done to get back to work on the quest.

Lina was waiting for him inside, and the pair got started on the next part of his reconstruction: processing. Aegis built a bellows furnace using wood, stone, and leather. He got it hot enough to smelt the iron and other materials that he’d gathered but first used it to make the parts of a loom and sawmill to process the other materials. He also built a stove and crafted a pot for cooking the food depicted in the tablet image and began tanning the leather that he’d harvested from the monsters nearby.

When the setup was complete, the long and arduous task of refining everything began. He avoided mass-processing any of the materials and instead took care of each one, knowing full well that the quality of his end products would be the determining factor in whether or not he completed this quest. 

He knew this mainly because all of the other advanced crafting quests that he’d completed over the last few months focused primarily on quality improvements to his crafts. Not a single quest was completable with a craft that wasn’t above 80%, and the materials provided were consistently much lower than that. Thanks to this, he’d got a handle on how to either process things quickly or process things slowly and carefully to improve their quality.

He used carpentry and woodcutting to process the wood from the mountain. He used an alchemist kit in his inventory to process the flowers into dyes. The forge was used to smelt iron and glass, and his mithral jewelers kit was used to better refine all of the stone he’d be using for the lower walls of the structure. Using the image on the tablet as reference, he made sure to have blocks that fit the shape of the round structure, which took a bit more care than usual.

The evening of Tuesday came and went, with another two in-game days gone. The processing continued into Wednesday after classes when he was finally able to finish preparing the last materials for the reconstruction to the best of his ability. That meant that by the time Thursday rolled around, it was finally time to get to the actual reconstructions.

He carefully planned out each step, starting with the structure itself. The stone was used for the outer walls of the observatory base, with wooden planks used for the interior walls and flooring. Pillars were set up to reinforce the structure in preparation for the heavy telescope that was depicted on the second floor.

The telescope was his real challenge, though. He got started on it towards the end of the night but didn’t get very far before he had to settle in and sleep. All the while, Lina kept him company and helped out as best she could by joining his construction project.

Level Up! Your Leadership skill has reached Level 150!

Congratulations! You have reached the maximum level for Leadership (Intermediate). In order to progress further, you will need to advance the skill to (Advanced). 

The message popped up during the last task he did with Lina for the night. He settled into the tent with her and tried to sleep, but couldn’t, and ended up waking early, climbing out of the sim-box without disturbing Lina.

His mind was filled with thoughts of his upcoming nanotech class, and he was dreading it.

He remained seated in the sim-box momentarily, his legs dangling off to the side. The sun hadn’t risen over the horizon yet, leaving Eli in darkness.

“I joined the coalition!” His roommate declared loudly, startling Eli. He looked up to see that his roommate, too, had just climbed out of his sim-box on the side of the room opposite Eli’s. When their eyes met, Eli saw a scary level of enthusiasm on his room-mates face.

“Coalition?” Eli raised a brow.

“Yeah. I’m a proud member!” His smile widened.

“What coalition?” Eli tilted his head curiously.

“Yours, of course!” He spoke matter-of-factly.

“I have a coalition?” 

“Yup. You didn’t know?!” His roommate tapped his wrist implant to turn on his holo-screen, causing it to light up the far side of their room. A few more taps on his wrist and the screen switched over to a Live-stream broadcast of Mikael, the level 165 Crusader class player that worshiped the god of Zeus. 

Aegis had recognized him from their run-ins during the tournament in Stormtop, but his armor and weapons looked much more powerful now. He had his guild around him, moving about a small village overlooking the abyss. The skies around the village and above the abyss nearby were packed with Airships of all sorts, all using the designs of Kalmoore’s airships that were not reliant on Island Stone magic.

“Another ship just came in from Savringard to join the cause.” A guildmember of Mikael’s spoke on the stream.

“Have Mightymira vet them, make sure there are no spies.” Mikael replied.

“What is this?” Eli asked, still confused.

“Oh, right. Sorry, let me show you the famous clip.” His roommate tapped his wrist implant a few more times to bring up a highlight from Mikael’s stream, where he stood atop an airship facing the camera.

“The time has come for the people of the Shattered World to stand up to their oppressors. Many of you have been waiting for a hero to arrive and take back control of our islands, or negotiate with the members of VGN for access into the abyss. But VGN members and guilds have repeatedly taken action to prevent anyone from even obtaining an Elder Tree seed themselves, so that they maintain their titan grip on the end-game areas below our shattered islands.

Well, that stops now. As Aegis has said, we all have sim-boxes, and this is our world just as much as it is his. We can’t rely on him to come out of retirement to fight our battle for us. So, we’re creating the Aegis Coalition, in honor of how he fought against VGN valiantly on the island of Stormtop to end Seraxus’ oppression.

We have located a small island that is not apart of any major kingdom, from which we have established a small base and have begun construction of our own fleet of airships, free from the taxes imposed by the kingdoms of VGN, and away from the island of Kalmoore that Aegis fought so hard to keep peaceful.” Mikael spoke clearly and concisely, as though reading from a script.

Aegis let out an elongated sigh of disbelief.

“Don’t you think this is awesome? We’re going to war with VGN by ourselves! Gonna finally show them what’s what!” His roommate replied.

“That’s great and all, but why’d he have to call it the Aegis Coalition?”

“It gets everyone to join, you know?” His roommate shrugged. “A lot of people are hoping you’ll show up too and give a speech or something. Will you?”

“What? No.” Eli shook his head, standing up from his sim-box and slowly taking off his simulation suit. “I’m busy with my own stuff. I don’t have time to get involved in that. Mikael looks like he’s got it handled.” 

“It’d mean a lot to everyone, though,” he said with pleading eyes. 

“Nope.” Eli waved it off without hesitation. He glanced back to see the dejected look on his face while Mikael’s voice continued to ramble on in the background.

“Level, class, island of origin. None of it matters. What matters is that you have a heart that loves this game, and you want to stand up and defend it. Stand up for freedom, lower taxes, and a truly open world free of these streamers and their oppression. We’re bringing down VGN, that’s a promise.” Mikael finished, and the clip ended. 

Eli caught a glimpse of some text at the bottom of the clip at the end, showing that it had over 30 million views.

“Maybe you’ll change your mind?” there was still a glimmer of hope for this roommate. 

“Uh…” Eli’d finished with his simulation suit and was getting dressed. He took another moment to see how much excitement his roommate had for him, with all of the Fanta-See network products scattered around his side of the room. “Maybe. I gotta get ready for class.” Eli shrugged, though the size of the smile that grew on this roommate's face made him regret his word choice. 

He finished getting ready and headed out to class, and by the time he made it back to campus, all of his thoughts on Mikael’s coalition had been replaced with the dread of his upcoming nanotech lecture once more.