Traveling Tragedy's Raid Suit

Good old Dad came to the rescue, saying, "You guys can play the game when you manage to do one hundred push-ups and sit-ups and jog for a mile without stopping. Your brother can do twice that and you guys want him to drag you around? If you can't carry yourself then you don't get to drag your brother down."

Harsh. Even though I would have told them the same thing if the decision was passed over to me, I would have at least found a nicer or maybe funnier way of putting it. This was just outright soul-crushing.

However, I said nothing at all and let my parents cope with the aftermath while looking for some jerky in the pantry. I had already eaten some eggs and toast and two bananas for breakfast but it had been almost an entire day since the last time I had anything to eat. Loads of protein were what I was craving right now.

I spent another half-hour hanging out with my siblings encouraging and helping them exercise. Since they were high-energy little kids they had little weight to hold them back and since they were little kids of this household with a long battery life, they could both do around forty push-ups and sit-ups without stopping but after that they were incapable of doing any real length of jogging around the yard.

After that I left them to wash up and recover on their own while talking to my father in private. He and Papi had already been working out release dates and phases for videos and collections but what I was interested in was actually going to the gym and seeing the different kinds of reactions there. Would I be famous?

Probably not, but I could still sort through trainers and customers who would be interested in a gaming workshop established by the gym. Unless they already played the game, they would be power leveled and stat raised through various forms of crafting. Otherwise, they would be forced to be strong enough to run the sepulcher daily for now.

It would be a while before I am able to make such a trip, at least until I returned to Sierra in the game and could take some actual time to relax.

My dad had also already set in motion the foundation for building up a workshop, going so far as to rent a small office building to outfit for gaming. I would not have much of a part to play in the workshop in reality unless I was somehow made a part of meetings I preferred to avoid. In the game, though, I would be in charge of handling organizing the people.

I spent some time cleaning the kitchen and living room area with my mom just keeping her company after dealing with my father and talking about the future workshop. After most of the house was cleaned I went back up to my room where I checked my computer for clan updates. Another day had passed in the game since I woke up and the clan was long since open to requests for joining.

After seeing that familiar names were now counted among the clan elites and even some fodder positions had been filled, I simply went back to my chair and laid down as if going to sleep.

Moments later after mentally diving and logging in I opened my eyes to find myself standing just outside the command tent where I had logged out from. It was currently night time and there were no sounds in the camp, meaning everyone else had already gone to sleep. I could even see their positions in the command tent on my map after opening up my menus.

Simply lying down on the ground, I find myself faced with a notification asking if I wanted to time-skip by sleeping and I soon joined my team. The next morning I was the first person awake even though I was the last person to go to sleep. So, I just made some rounds through the tent saying good morning and welcoming myself back before heading to the kitchen.

Over a breakfast of more sandwich sleeves I learned that the new clans to join the raid had all approached our camp to meet with us and make it clear that they had no interest in conflicts or bounties. Not only because they were aware of the plague dragons nesting outside of camp Duality but also because they were aware of the origins for the monochrome tribute clan. Even if they were offering more money per lost level they would have no interest in helping that clan at all.

I was only slightly surprised by this. Personally, I would have avoided making an enemy of a top clan like them if not for personal vindication and grudges. They carried a name smeared with more than just mud and should know what it could cost them to wave that banner so I had no problems.

Considering most of the big clans were backed by large money groups in reality who would only see the importance of a dollar regardless of morality or history, I was surprised that they were openly condemning that fifth ranked clan. However, I did not exactly give much credit to the other clans because of this. So what if they were willing to let my clan do as it pleased?

If the clan or players in question were nobodies, they would probably have no problem collecting the bounties as much as they could. Right now it just happened to be in their favor to ignore the monochrome clan. As such, I was far from willing to consider trade and alliance talks with these groups I knew little about.

After breakfast I put everyone to work in the forge crafting weapons to meet the needs of the bounties I had casually placed on the heads of Fallen Monochrome. There clan had three leadership positions, fifty middle managers, and a few hundred people who would be counted as fodder among Tragedy's Travelers. That was a lot of swords to make.

I had already noticed before from my experiments with the different alloys and crafting methods but finding myself working in the forge with the entire group made things all too clear. I had stopped acquiring stat points from crafting. Whether it was by hand or entirely with magic, I made a dozen thousand-layer swords with either method and gained nothing but experience.

Reaching level sixty-nine was great, mostly because I could walk around making jokes about 'sixty-nine'. However, besides reaching a magic number I had officially hit the wall when it came to making gains from smithing. It was honestly somewhat upsetting but it was due to happen eventually.

If a player could perpetually raise their stats by crafting then there was no need for most starting warriors to ever leave a forge. They could get all of their physical stats to one hundred after their tutorials and then go out to start leveling again. I could only be grateful that the game let independent stat gains be counted as part of their realism aspects.

Aspects which, of course, were already questionable.

After four hours spent in the forge cycling through dozens of steel bars apiece we finally managed to make as many swords as people in the monochrome clan with only a few reaching the ninth tier of PATK. There had been no reports about Fallen Monochrome being attacked and there were no in-game decapitation videos plastered on the forums, so the swords would currently remain in our care.

Although, after seeing the monochrome clan being just plain angry and hateful on the forums talking trash and throwing threats in every direction while venting their rage I simply posted an in-game image of all the swords we had made laid out in neat stacks on the long kitchen bench table.

Since the people who originally started that particular thread were from Fallen Monochrome I was not surprised to be notified a few minutes after posting the picture of hundreds of swords that my post was removed from the thread. So, I just started my own thread reminding everyone that the swords in the picture were up for grabs and what they needed to do to earn them. Of course I also mentioned that a bunch of sorry female dogs had deleted my post in their thread in an attempt to hide their shame from the public view.

My post was soon booming with a combination of hate from the enemy clan and support from the general player base who had no problems letting monochrome know what people thought of them. Even though they were one of the big names in the game right now, players were heavily protected from the usual underhanded and cheating tactics once used in the actual monochrome game.

After enjoying the forums for a little while I set to work with Oleander and Merch finalizing the designs for our new suits of armor. My team had already spent the last few days in the game preparing all of the alchemy reagents and raw materials that we would need, all we needed now was for the Divine Designer to actually be present so our crafts would be in full effect.

After having spent four hours crafting weapons to induce the day-long buff provided by my title, it was time to set to work.

The armor itself followed the same design as the previous set, a comprehensive combination of wolf and troll hides and parts on top of an inner layer of spider's silk canvas. However, instead of buying basic reagents from an NPC shop in the village outside of Winter Wood we had a large stock of various reagents created with our own group skill and buffs.

Just like before I used material enchantments on each layer of each armor piece, increasing both its physical and magical base stats. The inner silk canvas layer even came out half a time stronger than the last suit despite being made from the same materials. Then again, it was not until after we made Stonewall's mobile fortress suit that we actually acquired the divine crafting buffs.

Unlike last time, though, I used ancient electrum to augment my armor instead of using plain primitive parts, using layers of light magical scales to cover the surface of my armor. The wolf and troll hides were all at least twice as strong as the upper kobold and imp hides we used previously despite the armor using its natural dark camouflage to the lightly colored mobs we now used.

Making the armor itself was simple in the beginning until it came time to add the outer layer of 'primitive' scale mail. The scales were easy enough to make and stud or embed with wolf and troll parts such as large canines or ivory spikes but placing them about the armor was somewhat tricky. To avoid making heavy armor out of medium armor I could only place scales about the torso, forearms, upper thighs, the back of the coat, crowning the helmet, and then on the front armor pad of my new belt.

Each scale was adorned with a different array of troll ivory or wolf parts, alternating between using one or the other as the centerpiece for each scale while framed with parts from the other beast. The designs on each scale were made to look like runic characters and magic symbols but did not serve any actual purposes. Oleander even tried to incorporate actual magical symbology in our crafts but somehow they came out to having no affect at all.

It was simply an aspect of crafting we did not know about yet which was probably something I would need to ask Ferithar about whenever we finally get back to Sierra. However, Papi and I both performed blessings over the shared stock of materials and reagents so it was almost certain that our crafts would have multiple layers of benefits even with the failed symbol magic.

As well, I added a few personal touches to my armor to add to its visual appeal as well as combat effectiveness. From the outer sides of the forearms grew forth short and narrow ancient alloy blades that curved forward to accentuate my punches with while similar blades grew backward from the elbows of my coat. The scale crowned helmet also bore an actual crown of transmuted troll ivory and permanent ice mana crystals.

The damage from getting stabbed by such an ice ivory spike was over thirty points of PATK and a solid thirty more ice damage that caused enemies to lose stamina and five percent of their movement speed. Being outright headbutted by me could be seen as a crippling blow to common mobs and players.

Then came the gauntlets, my usual final piece, that were also scaled with fingers ending in several inches of ancient electrum blades.

Each piece of armor granted me more than three thousand experience, boosting me to level seventy-one with no trouble at all. I had already breached three hundred point in Intelligence at level sixty-seven and acquired a new Intelligence perk for learning new types of magic, but without new titles with permanent bonuses or independent stat raising it would be a while before my next stat reached three hundred. My third highest stat was Endurance with two-eighty-nine points which would take a minimum of eleven more levels before reaching three hundred points.

Luckily, I was no in possession of a legendary medium armor suit that provided more than three hundred physical defense and more than four hundred magical defense. As well, the gauntlets, upper armor, coat, and spiked leggings all raised my unarmed attack values by over a hundred points between them. The entire suit passively raised my MATK by almost three hundred at the same time.

Wielding my current Hauntings, a single elemental 360 Edge even without Geist should be enough to crowd control a group of raid trolls into an early grave with a single attack. Paired with its domineering name, the Traveling Tragedy's Raid Suit that I crafted was several tiers and grades above the previous suit of armor I wore.

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