Are you threatening me ?

"That bitch planned this since the beginning, let's kill her!" One of the two others guys suddenly woke up and looked quite angry.

"You shouldn't call a young and elegant lady like me a "bitch" "Aelya said while turning towards the incoming bad guys.

In the meantime, Edwyn counted the seconds and shot a glance at the goblins who were already preparing their next launch.

The two soldiers didn't seem to notice anything wrong when they attacked Aelya, however they suddenly realized their situation at the moment the young woman rolled on the side.

Edwyn kept himself from healing her because it was too soon. Aelya didn't touch the goblins and just get their attention. However if the priest casted a heal on her, there would be a switch in the target focused. To keep the attention of a monster, a tank needed to deal damage or use a special spell. Anyone who used a spell on the target of a monster would enter in the fight, and if the tank didn't deal enough damages, the monster would then attack the one who made more damages or heal.

If Edwyn healed Aelya, then he would enter the fight and the goblins would focus on him. It would mean that should be obliged to deal with the soldiers by herself while Edwyn would do his best to avoid getting obliterated by the goblins.

That didn't look like a funny moment, not at all.

But it didn't happen, the two soldiers were the ones who get killed and Aelya came to greet the miners.

From what Edwyn could see, the Crafter Association divided its men in a specific way, two fighters and one healer to protect four miners. Each miner was working on one deposit, and this one didn't seem to be emptied, so one could mine forever if he wanted to.

Aelya just stayed next to them and waited for the dynamite to arrive, however what was strange was the fact there were no reactions from them. They didn't mind her and just continue to mine, until the death come from above.

Edwyn watched the event unfolding in front of him with surprise.

"Why don't they try to avoid the hit?" He asked, dumbfounded.

"Profitability." Aelya said while moving towards the last two miners.

"What do you mean?"

"She means that it's not worth for them to move from their position." It's was Wallace's turn to talk. "They are payed for the quantity of works they do, however there is no penalty if they died killed by a monster. Their contract specify that they should be protected by players from their Craft Association, so if those ones failed to do their job this is their responsability."

"That's why they just wait for their death?"

"Indeed. Trying to dodge an incoming attack is not worth because they could use this time to mine and earn more ores, instead of running."

Edwyn took his time to comprehend all thoses informations. However to him it's was just unnatural. Where was the fun you should have by playing a video game? How was it different from your job in the real life? Those miners looked exactly like robots, with no emotions, no reactions at all. That was frightening.

"Wallace, it's your time to shine." Aelya said after the last miners died. The blacksmith nodded and took a pickaxe from his inventory.

"Milady Aelya, we should get ride of those goblins before there is a new batch popping at our feets." Edwyn suggested.

The young woman stopped running and instead turned towards her new friends, she closed the distance between them in a few seconds and slashed them with her axe. When you she was in front of them, they stopped throwing dynamites and instead choose to fight with their claws. The damages were clearly manageable, indicating that their "throwing dynamite" mecanic was their most fearable ability. They were supposed to be fighted at close range, like usual monsters.

Edwyn waited for the young woman to deal some damages before starting to heal her. The view of her health bar refilled put him at ease and it didn't take long before the three goblins were dead and gone.

"Did they loot something useful?" Edwyn asked.

"More ores, and rare ones at that!" Aelya exclaimed.

"Rare ores ? For what?"

"If you melt rares ores, you get rares ingots." Wallace explained without looking at them.

"But for what use?" The young man wondered.

"To upgrade your stuff, you can use normal resources. However, if you use rares or higher resources, the statistics of your stuff will also be higher."

"Then shouldn't we just farm goblins in order to get only rare ores?"

"That wouldn't do." Aelya interjected. "Wallace needs to mine in order to level up his job and you can't create a "rare" item. Only upgrade could use rare or higher resources."

"And is it really useful to do the upgrade in rare or higher?"

The young woman nodded.

"Indeed. There is 60 levels in this game for the moment, and from what we already know you can upgrade your item every 5 levels. Let's say that a normal upgrade gives you 5 more stats, then a rare upgrade would give you 6, and so on. This could seem rather weak, however it's one more stat per upgrade. In others words, there would be a difference of 11 stats between someone who only did normal upgrades and another one who did only rares upgrades. This sort of gap couldn't be ignored if you really want to become strong in the future."

Edwyn finally understood the importance of this information.

"Then we need to always correctly upgrade our items as soon as we can."

"There is another way in fact." Wallace added. "You can completely cast aside the craft items and the upgrade until you reach the max level. All you have to do is to get items with the quest or dungeons or wild bosses. And then, once you"re max level, you gather the resources needed to craft and upgrade your item. This way, you don't have to loose your time by looking for specifics things."

"That's another method indeed." Aelya approved of Wallace. "Pretty boy, it's up to you to decide which path you want to walk and i'll follow you."

Edwyn took his time to figured the situation out, and finally took his decision.

"I think we should just focus on craft and upgrade items as soon as we can. Firstly because it will give us experience points, and secondly because we'll have an advantage on the others. If I clearly understood the process, craft items are always stronger at equivalent level. Plus, if we farm it now, we won't be obliged to fight with others guilds to gather resources and end up in a similar situation as this one, where resources are monopolized by Craft Associations."

Aelya smiled and Wallace thumbed up above his shoulder.

"That seems like a good plan. I wasn't wrong when I told you you were fit to be a leader pretty boy."

"You flatter me too much milady and I hope I won't disappoint you."

"I'm pretty sure you won't. However how do we deal with the others guys? We let them alive? Aren't they gonna come back and fight us?"

Edwyn looked at the other formation of the Craft Association close to them. They were staring at them with visible hostility but didn't move.

"They can't attack us because it would mean leaving their miners defenceless, which could lead them to death if goblins reappear. Moreover, it took us a few minutes to came here since the village, it means we have some times before doing something."

"We should wipe out them, I don't like the way they look at us." Aelya said.

"Let's wait for the goblins here to reappear, we'll bring them on the soldiers with the same strategy as before. That's a little bit dumb, however they don't have anything to counter your [Shield bash] so you'll be able to easily stun their healer, and then get ride of the soldiers and miners."

The young woman agreed with a smile, and looked around her, waiting for the little green things to come back.

Soon enough, a shape of smoke came from the ground and took the form of a goblins, the smoke then turn to green and a goblin appeared just like that.

"Fascinating!" Edwyn exclaimed.

"Careful, there is five of them. Stay as far as you can from them or it would be bad for us if they focus you."

The priest looked at his surroundings and took a few steps back. Aelya just waited until they were all there, and when their focus were on her, she ran towards the soldiers.

"She's coming, be careful!" One of them shouted and they all prepared for the fight.

However, as she announced it, the young woman just used her only spell on the healer and the poor guy disappear in a cloud of smoke under the terrified eyes of his teammates.

Edwyn couldn't help but smirk, that was really too easy. Edwyn brought the goblins after her and went to fight the warriors. They weren't able to split their attention between the warrior and the goblins and ended up dead in a few seconds. Then it was the miners' turn.

Aelya was about to attack the goblins behind her when a group of people came in their direction.

"Hey you! Are you trying to declare war on us? Do you at least know who we are?" The one in the front angrily asked and Edwyn couldn't help but smile. This was the same man who refused their offer earlier.

Aelya turned in his direction and looked at him with utter contempt.

"Are you threatening me?"