"What could she do?" MatchlessMinion questioned sweetly. "She's just a healer."

"I wonder, I mean, that person probably knows hidden things about that path that most people have to slowly discover," Danika pointed out logically.

"I know that Jade Hands mostly heal people and give out temporary boosts, but that doesn't mean they can't do other things too. We had a few in my old guild," Ais.h.i.+n volunteered.

MatchlessMinion's expression was a bit incredulous as he asked, "Priestly a.s.sa.s.sins? Don't they have to swear to protect all life or something?"

"I don't think so," Danika answered first. "I think they just can't advance if they don't do the quests that the "Jade Emperor" gives them."

"All a.s.sa.s.sins have to do that to a certain extent," Ais.h.i.+n added. They both looked at him and he explained, "I mean doing other quests too. We're pretty sure that if you go around killing indiscriminately, it gives you some kind of hidden negative stat. A lot more things attack you on sight, stuff like that."

Danika remembered how many times they'd been attacked when traveling together in those first days together compared to lately. She wished she could ask her celestial a.s.sistant right away, but decided to ask it in the morning.

At the permit office, they had to pay a fee to submit the guild's application. MatchlessMinion had prepared it though. All he'd really needed was his puppet guild leader to sign everything. The clerk informed them that if the application went through, they'd be able to start paying toward the purchase through their usual guild quest interface.

"Woah," Danika exclaimed as they were leaving. "That's so convenient, it's almost like we're buying it through a bank."

"No it's not, you've obviously never bought a house have you?" MatchlessMinion refuted her while shaking his head. "If you buy a house with a bank's help, you get to live in it before it's paid off. This is just a guarantee that they won't sell it to anyone else while we buy it."

Magna Silvam caught up with them a few minutes later. The now busty blonde elf was dressed in Jade green robes that were either magical, or heavily tailored, given the way they flatteringly emphasised every curve. "OK, I'm ready!" she declared. "What's our current quest?"

Danika snuck a look at Ais.h.i.+n's face, but his expression wasn't appreciative, it was rather sour. He did have a cross gender playing bandmate though, and Nao1 was really cute even if she wasn't an elf, so maybe he was used to it.

"I can only play for an hour at most," MatchlessMinion reported with a sigh.

"I probably shouldn't play much more than that really," Silvam agreed.

"Well, we have the rest of the week to complete it, but we're looking for the farming spot near good fis.h.i.+ng that was in our guild requests. All the places near water to the west are either at the borders of racial territories, or already heavily populated and really expensive." Danika explained, "There are lots of little brooks, streams, and occasionally swamps, but not really any lakes or big rivers to the east, so we figured maybe in the plains to the north?"

"There's a new human town forming where the goblin fortress was, called Big Tree," Silvam volunteered.

"I don't remember any bodies of water near there," Ais.h.i.+n objected.

Silvam rolled her eyes at him. "No, but a trail should already be forming from it to the nearest water access, and it's new enough that there might be unclaimed land in-between."

They portalled back to the now familiar centaur town, where they split up and made inquiries about nearby farmland, since the river would be a good fis.h.i.+ng area around it too. There were a few possibilities, but nothing that seemed really good. The centaurs maintained a fairly dense farming community around their towns, and while most of them didn't seem to object to the idea of a human farmer next door, none of them were very enthusiastic about the idea either.

When they finished they traveled to Big Tree. There was no trace of the destroyed fortress anymore, but the huge tree that Shrubbery had encouraged to grow to free the Turtle's staff still towered above everything. If anything it seemed even bigger.

Danika would have called it more of a village, since it didn't seem as big as a town yet, but it seemed quite bustling. After a bit, she also realized that there weren't many NPCs, it was mostly players.

Silvam looked around with approval and said, "There will be more places like this after the expansion. This one was stolen from the goblins though, so it'll suffer raids pretty often."

"Oh, that sounds as bad as the territory border areas to the west then?" Danika complained.

Ais.h.i.+n stopped a player named Jackers and asked, "Are there any successful farmers between here and the river that you know of?"

"No idea," Jackers replied carelessly. "One of the merchants that come to trade might know I guess?"

Danika zipped into the town square without waiting for everyone when she saw the traveling merchant was just hefting his pack like he was preparing to leave. "Wait!" she called out.

The traveling merchant smiled cheerfully and replied easily, "Did you need something ZipZing my friend?"

"We are still looking for a good place for a farm near good fis.h.i.+ng," she explained.

"Maybe you should ask a fisherman?" the merchant suggested. "There are already a few in the new settlement that's forming along the river to the east. I'm headed there next."

Danika turned and zipped back to the others, who had almost caught up to her, and explained quickly.

"But that's…" Silvam began. "No," she said and shook her head when everyone looked at her. "I'll just watch how you all play as wandering realtors before I start interfering."

"Um, okay? Way to be confusing and mysterious?" MatchlessMinion questioned doubtfully.

Silvam just grinned at him, and ignored the sidelong glances from her new guildmates as they followed the merchant east along the faint trace of a new path. The plains here were gentle and gra.s.sy, without as many scrubby bushes as some areas. People had already begun to set markers along the path, so they probably could have followed it without him.

When they arrived at the crude goblin settlement on the river bank, Silvam smirked at them. Danika and Ais.h.i.+n both kept bland expressions, but MatchlessMinion said, "Oh. So we scratch another area?"

"No," Danika replied blithely, "now we find a fisherman."