'...Some Bitter Old Lady...'

When the raid attempt finally timed out and we found ourselves back in front of our lane it was to find two small groups of people gathered together outside of our camp and talking almost companionably. Several members of either group looked familiar, such as Mr. Thirteen and the sword king candidate. This, at least, told me which clans they were from.

"Mr. Leo," Little Thirteen calls out when he notices my party and small army of familiars had returned from the lane raid. "I'm glad to see you're back, did you enjoy your rest?"

I wanted to ask something obscene in return to answer with an obvious yes, something along the lines of 'does a baby enjoy titties' but there were several faces I was unfamiliar with and did not want to give the wrong impression to. As well, there was a vaguely familiar face at the front of the Duality group.

However, in complete contrast to Mr. Thirteen who I remembered playing a younger character this lady looked barely older than me with a face that I remembered being middle-aged. She was fairly tall and petite with noticeable curves thinly veiled under layers of magical robing and light armor while wavy golden blond hair flows down her back all the way to her waist like a waterfall.

"Donna?" I ask curiously after giving the new yet familiar figure a quick examination which brought laughter to her sparkling green eyes and a slight smiling curvature to her small yet plump lips.

"Leo," she says by way of greeting, nodding a simple hello alongside my name. Then, smiling fully, she performs a quick spin to show herself off and asks, "What do you think? When Mr. Harlen told me he would be playing the game with his real body, I decided to do the same! Surprised, right?"

"I always thought you were some bitter old lady…" I remark with a smirk, shaking my head almost sadly.

"Oh, I'm definitely bitter right now," she assures me as the smile vanishes from her face and she puffs her cheeks out angrily. "Here I thought you'd be glad to see your old boss again only to realize you're still just an asshole. I actually put on my nice robes for this!"

I almost made a remark about how wearing nothing at all would have been fine as well but thought better of it and simply say, "I really am happy to see you again, I'm just surprised that you turned out to be some kid while Thirteen is an old man. Am I the only person who is honest in video games?"

Smirking to himself, the sword king candidate remarks, "If Bygones heard you say that, they wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. Honest? You sold them dragons that almost started a zombie plague and those same dragons have been eating all of OUR trolls. If not for the fact Duality is still in the raid I would say you screwed us over as well by having the dragons eat up all of our siege experience."

"It's either have them guard your camp or send them back to their rightful owners," I reply with a shrug. "If you guys were capable, I would say to kill them after the raid to deprive Bygones from having a super weapon but I don't think you guys are, well, capable. You'd just start a pandemic."

Looking off to the side, Donna says, "I think I'm plenty capable of opening the ground under them into a nice deep pit and filling it with fire. Fire is great for treating plagues."

Treating? You mean eradicating! "As the progenitor of that species and a physical embodiment of plague, I'm not sure how to feel about that statement," I say in an emotionless voice with a completely placid expression while looking at the young lady who had made the statement.

"You just said-"

"I take it back," I say in the same flat tone of voice as before. "Even though the goods are already paid for and have changed ownership, what kind of merchant would I be if the people I did business with walked away with nothing at all? That's the real scam, right there. No killing the plague dragons!"

Then, quickly switching gears while the leader of Duality starts glaring at me, I ask, "So, what brings Thirteenth Incorporated and Duality Resistance to our humble camp? I can't imagine it was to watch our raid attempt."

"People outside the lane can only see that there's fighting taking place, no what's actually happening," Thirteen informs me quickly in a leisurely way as if reassuring me without really caring. "Although, there are some interesting things that can be seen, such as WHO is fighting. And if they're fighting alone."

"I wanted to buy some food so we can get passed the fort," Donna says bluntly with a pouting face, puffing her cheeks a little as if to show that she was obviously unhappy with the way that things had been going. "My raid team got reset yesterday because they could not get passed the fort but today we got back to the fort and left but then we were besieged by trolls and our raid attempt is refreshed. So, sell me buffs."

The resistance leader I remembered was much calmer and less emotional, rarely ever showing a smile unless it was during a fight or after receiving reports of victory. Now, this younger version of my old boss was… well, a kid! She was probably a proper adult at a few years older than my seventeen but she was obviously much more relaxed in this game than in monochrome.

Then again, without the threat of fighting an NPC genocide it was probably easier to actually enjoy the game than back in the old days. Of course, I joined that game just for the sake of large-scale war battles and clandestine operations. She was behaving in this game like I behaved in monochrome!

"Have you even paid back those loans, yet?" I ask curiously, knowing I had not been here to collect the money her clan owed me for taking care of Bygones and Fallen Monochrome.

Whipping her head around to face me so fast that I feared she might give herself whiplash, Donna angrily snaps, "Yes we paid you back! I personally handed to money to Go since he's the most reliable person out of your original group, unlike their leader who doesn't know how to treat friends like friends. I bet you're single in reality!"

I bet you would really like to know about my love life since you just brought it up. "Listen, lady, my relations with your mom is between us adults and little kids like you should just stay in school. As for buffs, I can sell you some of our signature sandwiches but only this once. Just remember that this grandfather of yours and Mr. Thirteen worked it out already so that they, we, and then you take first, second, and then third place in the raid race. If you try to jump ahead of us then it'll be the end of you and I."

"Mr. Harlen, you deal with him," Donna says through clenched teeth, turning and walking off to the back of her group of followers where she begins venting her frustration by asking for clan updates and overseeing minor matters.

Shaking his head in an almost sad sort of way, Thirteen remarks, "You're aware that you're a complete ass, right? That young lady was actually excited about getting to play a game with you again, and she even used her… oof, never mind."

Casting a sidelong glance in the direction of the Duality leader, I say, "It's better not to get too attached or include emotions in business. If it came down to it, I would choose my clan over hers and if necessary would destroy all of your clans to ensure our survival. I doubt us being friends would survive something like that so there's no point in being friends."

Sighing softly, Mr. Thirteen easily moves on to matters at hand and says, "Three hundred gold per sandwich, I'll be buying for her as well. That is my final offer."

Three hundred gold for thirty sandwiches times two? That was not too bad.

Opening my clan menus to enter the clan store were dozens of signature sandwiches were currently waiting fresh from the over earlier, I start retrieving the overpriced food items and passing them over to both Little Thirteen and the sword king candidate. Once Mr. Thirteen had passed me the eighteen thousand gold in exchange for the sixty signature sandwiches I doles out, we shook hands and I briefly shooed everyone away from my clan's camp.

Since he was not the actual leader of his clan, Little Thirteen actually wanted to stick around and hang out which was an intention that others probably shared as well. However, after our previous interactions, Donna simply gave me a cold 'hmph' and led her people away to commence with their raid plans. Honestly, I was interested to go watch them like they had watched us while waiting to buy sandwiches.

However, I quickly shrugged away such an idea after the brief interactions with Duality's leader in which I obviously pissed them off. While I had meant what I said about not bothering being friends with people who might end up my enemies, I did somewhat feel bad because it seemed like I had upset the poor girl. She even said she wore her nice robes and stuff, which obviously meant she was trying to make a good impressions for lasting business between our clans.

Returning to work in my own camp, I just threw myself into crafting to raise my tailoring skill while working on captain standards from plain spider silk canvas without using any reagents. If I used water and fire proofing reagents, the grade would leave the semi-legendary quality and enter legendary grade where could no longer sell it. Publicly, anyway.

Mr. Thirteen had a lot of questions to ask about my work while I worked, questioning the materials I was using as well as my seemingly basic methods of stitching and seaming and folding. I answered most of his questions honestly and openly since there was no way he could replicate the effects of all of my combined crafting perks- let alone my Divine Designer perks.

Even if he could replicate my work to a certain extent, there was no way he could replicate the effectiveness of the materials and reagents made and used by my assistants.

He even asked about these facets and I outright gave him some material to make a suit of matching light armor from. His stuff came out as a rare blue named scrap silk armor similar to the scrap suits I used to make before the Divine Designer title. Even when he used some basic proofing agents from my team's testing phase for manufacturing the stuff the color of the name did not change despite the addition of resistances and even an innate Conductivity perk similar to my recent swords.

The only real changes were when he made a complete suit from just magic at the expense of three different potions, proving that magical crafting and magic in general were not his strong points. As a universal type of character, I could not help but show off by forging ten-pound quasi-legendary fuller sword with just my magic and then presenting him with the eighth tier weapon as a gift.

Of course, after realizing how much a gift from me was worth, I continued showing off by crafting an extremely large 'fuller dagger' from ancient alloy that was one thousand layers and had a PATK in the seventies. This dagger was given to him with strict orders to pass it along to Donna as an apology for my behavior. To some extent, I really was sorry but it was necessary to create that distance not only between us but between our clans.

After inspecting the dagger to see the obvious difference in quality and material when comparing the physical attributes between his basic alloy sword and the ancient alloy dagger, I could tell that Little Thirteen was both impressed with my gift for Donna and upset that he was given an obviously lesser sword. He himself preferred to fight with a spear or lance of sorts but I did not have to time to make him a halberd or glaive.

After draining myself making the two weapons and over a dozen captain standards, I retired to the kitchen-slash-lab where I prepared some simple foods for myself and my guest despite the fact that I knew he was keeping track of all of the ingredients that I used. I only used a few medicinal herbs in the food to help with recovering from the work but those same ingredients could be used in a variety of ways. Some were even mildly poisonous and could be downright toxic when mixed with certain other plants.

Finally, though, after several hours spent openly spying on my camp Mr. Thirteen finally bid us farewell after being repeatedly told no to offers of buying certain reagents and ingredients from us. It was bad enough I let him keep the scrap silk suits that he had made for free, there was no way I was going to sell him divine designing components outright.

Then, as I was stretching out on the ground in the command tent while contemplating what I would do with myself for the rest of the day I received a very interesting notification.

[Tragedy's Travelers is now facing a siege by trollkin forces]

*