How Long Have I Been Playing For?

Even after using Cweeper's Mana Slash to clear out the fifth outpost's trolls the attack itself never even saw the reinforcement trolls, forcing us to face them head-to-head. If head-to-head meant I ran ahead of the team to hack and slash into the enemy front line, that is.

When my party was moments away from outright tackling into the front line of trolls with their mounts I used Quick Step, appearing near the back line of the trolls to keep their attention divided. It took a second for them to notice me, but a second was all I needed in order to use a 360 Arc Geist which partially crippled a few dozen closely packed trolls. And sent them airborne.

Filling the space left behind with an assortment of simple ranged slashed, I find myself staggering the trolls forward into the awaiting strikes and spells of my comrades who were mowing down the front line. Even though they only had a handful of their class skills, many of them had acquired some of the skills of other classes as well as advancing their actual class.

Just Go and Skooma were enchanted warrior versions of their previous classes while Conansson became an 'Arcane Berserker' on top of his previous early class advancement before he joined us.

Between their magic and poisoned weapons, the original front few lines of clustered troll bodies were already scattered parts of pavement for the broken icy ground under our feet. Even their own troll brethren did not seem to mind trampling the bodies of the fallen. They simply took up elevated positions wherever possible and launched a combination of attacks and themselves.

"Withdraw!" I call out only a minute later after we had killed the one hundred and thirty trolls from the reinforcements, causing the others to turn and run back toward the starting line without a moment's hesitation. I was actually pretty proud of their reaction time and lack of argument as they left me alone in front of the fifth outpost.

Alone, I simply ran forward to claim the fifth outpost as our next starting line while triggering the advance of the sixth outpost's one hundred and fifty trolls. Even tough it was only half as many more trolls as the first wave, it honestly looked like the number of bodies in the running trolls had doubled since the start. It was almost scary!

Jumping up and slashing down on the first troll to reach me, I hew straight down through the arms they raised over their head to attempt blocking the attack and the shear down into the head for an almost instantly fatal blow. They still had about twenty percent of their health left over but they were crippled from the blow. Poison drained them away in seconds.

Quickly channeling as many elements as I could, which only turned out to be wind, fire, and lightning, I unleash the mana gathering in my sword with the words, "360 Elemental Geist!" Automatically spinning with my sword stretched out, I unleash a corona of explosive elemental energy that flies out so fast it leaves a blurred comet's tail or bluish purple static and blinding yellow fire.

The first few bodies truck by this attack were immediately parted and set aflame from the extensive damage of layered elements and dozens of phantom blades. The trolls beyond the first bodies were all thrown about as if they had clustered around a mortar strike but retained more than ten percent of their health from the dulled edge of the cutting energy.

During the tertiary strikes on my surrounding enemies was when the full circle attack finally broke down but not before its explosion of released energy cleared the area within almost twenty yards of my position. There were not even any more bodies at my feet. Besides the one I stood on, of course.

Just as I was running off to chase down the closest troll with the most health, the entire world went brightly gray and slightly blurred as if I had entered fast travel. A split second later I found myself standing outside of the raid lane with the rest of my team who were all exhausted but excited from the event. Even though it only took us less than six minutes to get through roughly one quarter of the raid race everybody here looked haggard as if they had been fighting for hours.

Then, as I looked around to check out the condition of my companions I found myself besieged by numerous notifications about our first attempt in the territory raid. We all received several thousand experience based on our contributions, for which I received round ten thousand points thanks to Hermes and Cweeper domination their own waves of enemies.

However, since we retreated instead of clearing the raid we received only one third of our physical awards which was honestly not that bad. We each received around a hundred troll hides and a variety of parts with great values as well as soon loots I did not expect to see. Such as accessories, equipment, and recipes.

The last time I had gotten an accessory from mobs was from an alpha kobold and that last time was also the first time. Usually mobs of all sorts will drop random items of all sorts including their own gear but rarely had I seen mobs that dropped actual items. Goblins would drop their crappy clubs even outside of the Elder Oak Challenge but only the mana ice rat had dropped an equipment of any actual value.

Like icing on a cake, several of my team even acquired skill books that presented watered down versions of troll skills such as their war cry which was actually useful considering the icy war cry was acquired by Lil who did not have a vocal buffing skill.

I myself was feeling pretty drained. Even with my natural recovery rates coupled with the buffs I had received, I spent at least five hundred mana in every fight. Just because I had more than twice that in my mana pool did not mean using about a third of my mana every minute or so was not exhausting.

My body felt relatively fine despite being the medium for all of my attacks but my brain was groggy as if I had just woken up from a heavy night of partying with only an hour or two of sleep before work. It only took a couple of minutes before everybody was calmed down but then the younger members like Conan and Skooma went nuts celebrating the success of our first raid attempt that brought us to second place.

The only people who had made it further than us thus far were Mr. Thirteen and Thirteenth Incorporated but they were currently stuck at the seventh outpost.

For now. Once they ate up the big money clan that followed them to the territory, they would be able to turn the attention of thirty suits and swords to the raid and start increasing their lead all over again. Which was fine as long as they made sure to remember our deal.

As long as I got the Mantle of Aegis then they could have the larger share of the territory. We had already paved what was likely to be the main road leading here so we would already receive certain rights and reimbursement from the empire itself once a settlement was actually founded. As well, with our dungeon right outside in the Canfor region we would essentially be in control of the area surrounding the territory itself!

We just had to make sure that there would not be any other big fish in our pond before the first part of the raid came to a head.

Back at camp I had the others offer up half of their materials to the clan in exchange for several thousand contribution apiece. That was just the worth of their materials and even the unique equipment and weapons from the raid attempt. Their new skills, though, were kept to themselves.

I also received a skill book for a skill book for a troll regen skill but it had a fairly watered down effect of ten percent of health every three seconds for one minute with a one-hour cool time. Considering the fact that I could sip potions to sustain the same effect for minutes at a time, the skill itself was not that useful to me. However, Go had acquired a passive defensive skill that reduced blunt impact attack damage and raised his HP.

While the most commonly used weapons in the game were bladed or very pointy, his role as a tank of sorts was naturally increased by the passive while the healing skill I acquired would help to ensure his survivability. Since the skill could also be cast on others, his speed style of tanking would receive a heavy supplement of support by healing other tanks he covers for.

As for the recipes, I took them in by hand and passed them all to Oleander to make use of. After all of the work and effort I had put into working on the previous armor suit I was now more than willing to pass off the responsibility of our next set of 'uniforms' to Oleander and Merch.

I honestly considered making everyone finally design and make all the parts- treatment reagents included- to their armor on their own but the circumstances did not currently allow for it. Before it was as simple as spending excessively on oils, resins, and lacquers to treat the different parts and layers of our armor with. Now, we had to make those reagents ourselves and the crew currently only had experience in making restorative and buffing brews.

Manufacturing things like glues and resins was simplified by magic but complicated by skill level because they were considered intermediate and advanced techniques. Skill level directly affected the quality of processed reagents so even glues made from advanced mob and herbal materials would have mediocre affects.

Of course, since working in the lab was easier than working in the forge I had no problems letting Oleander spend the next few hours educating them on 'manufacturing techniques'.

As much as I would have liked to join them for the lessons in essentials, I could already produce adhesives from my threads that were strong enough to contain mobs in varying quantities. Holding together pieces of crafts or producing a material to bolster reagents was as simplified as possible thanks to my cordyceps. Once the others were done raising the level average in my place, I could simply give them the cordycep adhesives to augment their own products.

While they busied themselves in the lab I busied the familiars at the loom stations either preparing threads and cordage from the last of our dungeon web materials or spinning our fabrics. Since my own tailoring skills were my lowest profession skills, I decided to go ahead and kill time at the looms making simple swaths of spider's silk. Until about ten minutes later when Conansson received an alarm for returning to reality.

Considering the others had already taken the opportunity to make pit stops before entering the territory and whenever possible all along the road we paved, I was surprised that he had another alarm so soon. I was also a little surprised with myself. I could not, for the life of me, remember the last time I had actually gone back to reality.

[You have been playing for almost eighteen hours consecutively. Your guardian and sponsor was contacted at twelve hours to ensure your well being and the intended duration of your current shift. Your father's response was, "I wanna see how long it takes him to realize he's about to get penalized."]

[As per your sponsor's wishes, I have withheld your penalty warnings since twelve hours]

[You currently have less than two hours before you receive a twenty-four hour restriction]

After hearing Melpomene's falsely concerned and worried voice reading out these system prompts, I was at first furious with my father and then realized that only Melpomene could have made something like thing possible to begin with. Normally a sponsor would receive a warning of the player being booted or at risk of penalty at the same time as the player at the first moment of transgression.

However, they had a conversation about it and decided to bypass the protocol? Was this okay?! Are you really allowed to do something that literally breaks the balance of the game concerning player playing rights?!

*