With extra time to prepare, Merrick turned to his overstuffed office-turned-laboratory to find a way to be helpful. It would take more than Merrick's own skill to win at the upcoming Faction War. He did his best to focus on what was to come and not that overwhelming feeling like he was about to be fired from his day job.
Thom had mentioned that the upcoming challenge was going to be an item hunt. He had not offered any specifics about what that meant. Merrick knew there were a few reasons as to why his Faction Leader had been so vague. Firstly, the Faction Leader was solely responsible for the strategy and preparation of their Faction. Even as Vice-Leader, there was information that Merrick was not allowed to know based on the nature of the game's event rules.
Despite that, Thom had specified that it was an item hunt. To Merrick that meant that there would be more to it than that, there would be some kind of special qualifier that was dropped on the participants at the last moment. Yet, Thom had taken the time to specify the general type of Faction War. That, in and of itself, told Merrick three concrete things.
First, it was a small-scale Faction War. There would only be a handful of members involved in the challenge, probably no more than five and no less than two. That was why it was okay that Thom was solely in charge of preparation. In medium-scale and large-scale Faction Wars, Merrick was allowed to know more as the Vice-Leader to assist in preparation.
Second, the qualifying details of this specific Faction War were irrelevant to what Merrick needed to do to prepare. If he prepared for a standard Item Hunt, regardless of how it changed at the reveal, Thom believed that they would be in a good place. That meant that Merrick was, somehow, going to be involved even though the contestants in an Item Hunt were usually randomly selected.
Lastly, if it was in any way a traditional Item Hunt, Merrick would not be able to directly interfere in the other rounds. He would be waiting in the wings to take his turn, for whenever he was called in. There was nothing, once they arrived at the battlefield, that he could do to help the others. That meant that he needed to craft items and a lot of them.
Since he did not have to work, Merrick had a whole day and a half to prepare in the world of Dungeons Below. He also had access to the resources he pulled from the Labyrinth earlier and their Faction's Coffer. After getting approval from the Faction Commissioner, who was in charge of managing the Coffer, Merrick was able to pull out enough basic items to craft two items for each member of the Faction.
To keep it simple, he made the same two items for every member of the Faction except for himself and Thom. Even though Merrick looked at the two items like they were basic, in truth they were nothing short of rare. They did not stack up to Thom's gear or his own but it was a far-sight better than what most Adventurers could get their hands on.
The first was a Cursed Ring of Speed. The ring doubled the reaction time and movement speed of the wearer. However, true to the name, the ring imparted a Life-Draining Curse on the person wearing it. The drain lowered their vitality slowly over time but it also improved the effect of the Ring's proper enchantment. Merrick had found the blueprint in a dungeon called the Cursed Castle. He had used it himself for a while until he found a Magic-Boosting ring that better suited his build.
The second item seemed mundane by comparison. It was a variant version of a common item called Holy Rosary. It could be worn as a necklace or a bracelet, allowing it to be versatile, and it even canceled out the negative of the first item. The normal effect of the Holy Rosary was to either make the wearer immune to curses, diseases, or grant them an effect called Holy Regeneration. Merrick's version was made custom by a Priest and he bought the blueprint from an information broker. This version granted all three. The only downside to the variant Holy Rosary was that Holy Regeneration only worked if the wearer was not actively casting magic.
Most of the gear that Thom wore was crafted by Merrick. So rather than make something new, Merrick spent a few hours finding a way to make a slightly better version of his Faction Leader's gear. It was hard to do, since the gear was already the best that Merrick had been able to make. Despite that, he managed to pull a few more ones and zeros out of the system to increase the buff's on Thom's Green Vambraces.
For himself, Merrick could not make anything better than what he wore currently. His robes, his pouches, and even the wands that he sometimes relied on were all crafted from rare or legendary dungeon loot. There were a few items in the Coffer that could be combined with his newest legendary loot, but Merrick did not have the time to find a proper recipe. Instead, he focused on making new consumable items.
In the back of a book in the darkest corner of a rotten basement in an undead-type dungeon, Merrick had found two recipes that he had been waiting to try out. The first was a Will-O-Wisp Seal. It was similar to the Spark Sprite Seal that he had crafted in the Elemental Cage but instead of an elemental-type creature this summoned a fairy-type creature called a Will-O-Wisp. The second item did not summon a monster, instead it alchemically created one, and it was called a Slime Monster Jar.
By the time he had finished crafting all of the items, Merrick only had an hour of in-game time to make it to their assigned Faction War battlefield. It was just enough time to rush over but as he rushed, Merrick did not feel the same elation that he had before. Now it felt like when he hurried to work in the real world. This was something he had to do, a sort-of contractual obligation that must be upheld.
Maybe the feeling came because he was worried about his real job's stability. Maybe it came because of the near-mugging that he suffered earlier and had been actively trying to not think about. Maybe it came from the fact that Dungeons Below was not simply a game even though it presented itself as one. Whatever the truth was, Merrick knew that there was no difference between this Faction War and a shift at work. He simply had to, despite how he felt, clock in and do the work that he promised he would do.