The village in which Artha was - (Author is a lazybones who doesn't have patience to read back the intro or have enough brain cells to remember the village number. - comment which is true)
Artha was forcibly pulled into a meeting with bigwigs. Why? Because he was a banker. Sorry, wrong game. Because, he was a trader, a supplier. Indeed, most of his customers were in the meeting in the first floor of the pub. At the time when evening past time was slowing down due to penny pinching of the players, these people climbed up next floor, where a glass of mead costed thrice that from ground floor.
Artha was in his habitual black cloak. It now was his best friend. He wore it even when he logged off. But the black cloak were like an uniform here, every one wore it. Still, it was also useless as many knew the names of these players.
These money makers, famed players, policy makers didn't mind and pulled the tables together and sat down to talk. The villages were always peaceful because the guilds didn't bicker about them. Every one knew it was just a small place and they would walk off sooner or later. They wanted it to be sooner, so no hanky panky to delay them.
Few were new faces, few old. Few were friendly with others at personal level but friendly with others due to their guilds. So, no choose me or him, only one, sort of things. What personal preference? If it helped the guild, you can kill yourself to level 0. They were that pragmatic.
And finally Artha understood why not all of his customers were here. The absent ones were self proclaimed lords, hotheads and sh*tstirrers. In less than 5 days of launch, they already had pegged most of the players.
Artha sat at his seat, kept his mouth shut. This was not his place to chat or talk back.
Dragon Slayers, Bloody Rose, Glorious Knights, Great Griffin, Heavenly Treasure, Sword's Edge, Ice Flame - all were true and tested guilds, surviving for many years in one name or another, in various games. There were few workshops too- the cheepstakes or tier minus one customers in Artha's self made list. They had budget and they had to appease their elites and experts. Which meant that they would bargain and bargain again, every time. Still, the order was not bulky enough to warrant such bargaining. Artha still sold they potions as he was also penny pincher and not ready to give up few thousands of credits.
No middlemen were present. On thinking, it made sense. These middlemen didn't have power to decide the way guilds operated. Artha, a poor soul, was a self proclaimed one man army but he got a seat. Having a capital works wonders.
He saw first hand how the deadly rival guilds sat next to each other and shared ideas. He saw how that xx workshop gave an input as an equal. What deadly rivalry? What inferiority complex? What being a level lower? At village level, it's individual strength that mattered. Oh, the pull mattered too. The charm of pulling players to your side.
They had gathered to decide how to progress. Inspite of rushing around, rather recklessly, there had been no progress. Only multiple deaths. The recent posts, their own theories, all meant that they had to decide the path to take, as a whole.
Slowly, they started covering the theories one by one. If it was having a high level player, they had it covered already. If it was having a proportion of having high level players, they had to loosen their wallets and pour credits into Artha's. Ah, now Artha's presence makes sense.
But if it was having all players at high levels...hmm. This has to be done delicately and the charisma played a big roll here. People discussed which ways would work. What the guilds have to give in. Should they give in that much, can it be a bit less. Other ways to increase chances of dungeons opening were discussed too. Which were feasible? Which were not. Having a same goal made this meeting rather easy.
If not for the etiquette, Artha would have opened his book and started reading.
So he did the next best thing. He started writing the report on the meeting. Who told what, what was his own impression. What was told by persons next to him. Whatever nonsense he felt, he wrote. Yep. He literally took a virtual notebook, a virtual pencil and wrote in his final revision handwriting. (Atharva had minimum 3 handwriting - for class, for revision, for final sprint. Final sprint meant compressing lots of knowledge into minimum, so he could glance through faster.)
Thankfully, no one could guess he was writing. He just missed blood bath by that much.
After wasting nearly half an hour of time, Artha got new mission and new designation. He was ASZ- autonomous safe zone. He was off limits and he should not be harmed. In return for his guaranteed safety and lots of promised goodies, he would sell potions a bit cheaply. As he said he was not free to sit and sell items, potions ( The only item in his sell list. As far as sleeping bags were concerned, the boom had long passed and he had squeezed that lemon rather too much already), the potions would be handed over to teams on rotation basis among the guilds, to be sold in coins, similar to consignment.
Artha didn't mind. Having extra coins would be good too. This from the player with over 10 rose gold coins.
A player typically earned around a silver coin now, thanks to recent even more liberal payments. Which meant, typically, Artha would earn around 1 rose gold coin per two to three days. That's not including the gold he got when he entered the game first time. So, yes, he had capital to say he would not mind earning some more coins and not be cringey. Unfortunately, others didn't know the real situation. So, cringe galore.