The 2nd event - The Siege of Aether Keep will be starting in 1 hour!

In 1 hour, everyone will be transferred to the Aether Keep.

All difficulties will participate in the same instance.

You will be facing a gradually increasing number of enemies trying to destroy Aether Keep. The numbers and strength of the attackers will grow over the duration of the event. You will have 5 hours to prepare your defenses and then 5 hours to defend Aether Keep.

Participants will be rewarded according to their performance during the defense.

Note: You can leave the event at any time you want.

Note: Cooperation with natives from Aether Keep and with participants of the tournament is required and fighting among defenders, be it tutorial attendees or natives, may decrease your points.

Note: You can use [Restriction] for this event.

Well, the event seems interesting. The only thing I dislike is the part about not fighting other participants, but it says that there “may” be a punishment. So maybe a bit of infighting is allowed? It also makes me wonder who or what the attackers are and what kind of place Aether Keep will be.

There doesn’t seem to be any restriction on mana or stamina regen, I can’t help but like that part and I have to wonder if I should set a [Restriction]. Placing one might increase my rewards, but not placing one would give me more options for defending the place, which might work out better in the end.

The question is how difficult the second event is going to be. If it's easy and I placed no [Restriction], it could end up being overkill and earn fewer points.

If it's difficult and I placed one, I may regret it, and find myself hamstrung during the defense.

Well, I’ll have to leave that to future Nat. He can decide a few seconds before the event starts.

Closing the window, I open another and put three items up for auction. Each one quickly made and apparently, according to the assholes who give me funny names, graded at mid rare. So this time I set the starting price for each one at 300 shards and set the time of the auction to 30 minutes. Let's see how they do.

As I did before the 1st event, I create a small orb inside my body and start filling it with my mana, trying to smuggle it in again.

Entering the house, I find everyone already inside, spread out over the living room. The most notable is Biscuit who is facing Noodle in a staring contest.

The white snake feels a bit stronger now. Did one of our animal overlords have a breakthrough in his training and is trying to fight for the position of Absolute?

Well, in the end, it doesn't matter. Biscuit doesn't even release any mana, just looks at Noodle with his usual silly expression. The one that makes him look like he is smiling with his tongue slightly sticking out.

Even that is enough and Noodle lowers his head and leaves in a clear state of defeat.

(Asshole,) sounds proudly through everyone’s mind as Biscuit announces his victory.

That makes the introverted snake lower his head even more and burrow under the blankets on the couch.

It might seem harsh, but Biscuit is cute so he can do anything he wants.

"Yoo, can you lend me the ax for the event?" Maya asks shamelessly as the fight between two animal overlords is over.

"One thousand shards per hour."

She blinks a few times staring at me.

"You can’t afford to buy it so a subscription might be a good idea. Even if it’s damaged, it's an arcane item. It performs at the level of a mid to upper epic item and sometimes even a bit higher."

"I heard you were offering an epic item to find someone to help you make a good pizza in a few days. We are teammates, right? You can be nice to me too."

I shake my head, "That pizza is for my precious minion. She deserves it."

I still remember Vega asking me about my food, and now that I have a token that will allow me to summon her for a day, there is no way I wouldn't prepare a nice welcome for her. While the 5th floor wasn’t all that long ago and it's only been a few days since I saw her, this is too good an opportunity to waste, given that we are currently in the middle of a somewhat safe tournament.

Maybe I could let her fight some of the people from Easy and Normal difficulty. I kind of wonder how my minion would do.

"Can I become your minion too?" Maya tries again.

I ignore her and pick up Biscuit from the floor, setting him in my lap and grab his lolling pink tongue, pulling it gently.

Shaking his head, he woofs at me and calls me an asshole.

In exchange, I pull his whiskers and whisper, "I’m going to introduce you to someone in a few days."

(Asshole?)

"No, she isn't an asshole like me." I boop his nose.

(Food?)

"No."

(Food food?)

"Hell no. It's a friend."

(Friend?)

"Yes."

He tilts his head as if thinking and then looks at me.

(Food!)

Goddamnit Biscuit, can’t you at least be normal.

"Any plans for the 2nd event?" I ask Maya.

"Tess is talking to Gareth. Dennis, Aaron, and Sophie managed to set up some kind of telepathic conversation web or something, so we are waiting," Maya answers.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I heard Gareth complained about Sophie’s web?" I turn to Izzy, who is still trying to make Noodle come out from under the blankets.

"Soph kept talking about how bad their web is and they refused to fix it. So she created her own with Dennis and Aaron and then started taking over parts of the other web when they complained about it," Izzy sounds somewhat proud.

That makes me wonder if I shouldn’t create a third web and take over both of them.

"Soph can be spiteful if she wants. One guy told her to keep her mouth shut and let them work when she tried to help with their web," Maya giggles. She seems to be enjoying the situation a lot.

I get a notification and ignore Maya to check it out.

Congratulations, all of the items you put into the auction were sold off for 1500 shards. After the system takes 10%, you will receive 1350 shards!

Congratulations, you are currently the 1st in the crafter rankings of the tournament shop.

Rankings:

st - Fuckyouintentbitch

nd - Miwa

rd - Adam

th - Jonathan

th - Athena

Okay, 1st. The asking price I set was 300 for each of the 3 items, so how the heck did they all get sold for around 500 each? They were only rare items and apparently ugly even with their decent performance. There is something very suspicious here going on. I need to up my prices for sure.

I’m curious about the rankings too. Do they exist to give those with crafting classes the chance to earn some nice rewards too even if they don’t place in the events? Very interesting.

Around thirty minutes remain ‘till the start of the event when Brainiac and Lootenant return, led by our three boys. They are a rowdy crowd, but the moment Brainiac and Lootenant see me they shut up.

"What?" I ask the red-haired boy who is looking at me.

"How did you sense my attack? Only the most powerful natives have managed that up until now." His behavior is slightly different from before too.

"I’m not helping the party who attacks a single guy six versus one."

"Oh, come on! How the hell did you even fly? You were restricted to your stats on the 4th Floor, were you already flying back then? What is your level? By the way, Adam wants to talk with you, he is a bit annoyed at the fact you killed him while he was fighting Savant."

“Adam can go hide somewhere just like he did in the event.”

“Right? I complained to Gary but he didn’t seem to mind. Apparently, that’s just how Adam is.”

Min-Jae also joins in, “I warned you that you should look out for Nat during the event.”

To that, Brainiac gestures widely, “Who would trust that!? I know he’s in Beyond, and he keeps gushing about mana in the Community. But then you meet him and he barely talks and acts like a cat looking down on us poor humans. He doesn’t leak any mana at all. I’ve got nothing against that, Noname,” He adds quickly, “Then you meet him in the event and he just does all this weird shit. And at the end of the event, it looks like he’s gonna start biting pieces off Savant before he dies. Then once it’s all over he loses control of his mana and 357 people from Easy difficulty pass out and 106 more from Normal puke up everything they ate in the past half year and everyone from Hard difficulty with decent mana sensitivity gets scared shitless.”

Is… is he complimenting me?

“Noname,” Brainiac moves even closer, “people are already betting on the result of the duels. Most of the main bets are between you and Savant, a lot of people have money on Tacita. But I’m betting on you.”

“Launch,” I say.

“Huh?” Brainiac asks, confused.

His rambling has put me in a better mood, so I may as well throw him a bone, “The moment you shoot your invisible projectiles you move a lot of mana that makes it super obvious when you will shoot them. I can even read the trajectory that way. Then, the projectiles themselves are unstable and leak mana which makes them more apparent. I recommend using half of the mana you are currently and focusing on making them more dense. If you’re fighting other humans you can make them a quarter the size, they’re too big as is.”

“Noname!” he shouts happily. “You have to train me! I can trade you some items worth a few hundred shards per lesson.”

Huh? He thinks that's enough?

“It’ll be at least 1000 shards per hour-long lesson. And that’s heavily discounted already.” I answer. That much should make it worth it.

“Fuck man, that’s too much.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

Brainiac seems to be thinking, “I can get a few guys and we can split the cost. I bet after the 1st event there are plenty who would be willing to join.”

“Four thousand shards worth for group lessons. Five thousand if it’s over 5 people. Ten thousand if it’s over 10 people.”

“What?”

What does he mean by what? There is no way I’m going to let a bunch of people drain all of my energy if I don’t have to. Sure, I can endure it for a while, but only for the right price.

Now that I think about it, if I do well during the other events I might ask more. I wonder if there are actually people who would be willing to do that.

“Come on, Max, leave Noname alone,” Lootenant jumps in, pulling the red-haired Brainiac away.

As Brainiac gets dragged away to the other room, he keeps shouting that I'm a scammer or some other nonsense.

With less than ten minutes left on the clock, everyone else returns and Brainiac and Lootenant leave to rejoin their group.

While I continue to prod and poke at Sophie and the twins' web, Tess and others have some sort of important meeting which I half listen to. I spend my remaining minutes thinking about what kind of [Restriction] I should set, or if it is even necessary.

In ten seconds you will be moved to the location of the 2nd Event!

The message finally sounds and the final countdown starts. 3, 2, 1,...

You will be transferred to the Aether Keep. You have three seconds to place a [Restriction] if you wish to do so.

Everyone else disappears, followed by me.

Entering the area of the second event I look around. All two thousand tutorial participants are spread out across a massive courtyard, surrounded by a tall wall.

Off to one side is a mountain rising into the sky with windows carved into its faces. Telling me that the mountain's insides are filled with rooms and buildings. There are also more walls like the one currently surrounding us.

The air here is slightly colder and the clouds almost seem to be close enough to touch.

I give myself some time to examine the place. It's simple, yet its architecture gives off the impression of old strength and power, and there are rough and fascinating mana-powered inscriptions.

Interestingly, there are thousands of humans all around. Both armored and not. Each one scrambling to prepare the defenses. A dozen well-dressed men with guards following them are heading toward the participants whereupon they start explaining the situation.

Well, it seems like we won’t be defending this place alone.

Looking around I spot and check in on a few people.

Gareth (Hell, 4th)

Tess (Hell, 4th)

Grumpy (Hell, 4th)

Tacita (Hell, 5th)

And then there is also this guy.

Savant (Hell, 3rd)

I see. I think I know his reasoning and I had the same thought. The event has all of the tournament attendees participate and even calls for cooperation. It’s very logical to assume that the event will be somewhat made to reflect that fact. Forgoing a restriction would probably be overkill and far from worth it.

But, the system isn’t always logical.

The system is an asshole.

That’s why the text the others see over my head reads thusly.

Noname (Hell, 6th)

And as far as I can see it’s the highest out of any Hell difficulty participant.