Light Online Book Three: Leader

by Tom Larcombe

  “How about you Stalker?”

  “You know me, all about the physical. Agility, strength, and heartiness, split my points between them evenly.”

  “One of these days you need to raise your intelligence to learn a few new tricks,” Charles said.

  “Don't worry, level eighteen gave me a skill slot also. I picked up that nifty little Stealth Maintenance skill I'd been eyeing.”

  “Huh?” Eddie said, noticing that Karl was now listening closely also.

  “Yeah, it let's me take actions that would normally break my stealth without breaking it. Opening a door, touching someone, stabbing them in the back...”

  Stalker was grinning from ear to ear now.

  “But you also said it takes a crazy amount of stamina to maintain,” Charles said.

  “Only on the backstab, that's a lot, about a hundred stamina. But the other stuff, like opening doors? That only costs ten stamina. And if, as Karl so aptly put it, we're going on a bug hunt, then that will be useful.”

  Now Karl was grinning too.

  “You liked Aliens too?” Karl asked.

  “Of course,” Stalker said. “Classic eighties flick, love it.”

  “You and I need to spend some more time together after this is over,” Karl said.

  “Sorry, you're not my type,” Stalker replied.

  “Heh! Even if I were, you'd have to take that up with Allie,” Karl said, gesturing towards her. “I just want to bullshit about retro eighties movies with you.”

  “That I'd be up for,” Stalker replied.

  “Uh, guys? We're in the middle of an orc settlement right now. Clearing it, remember? Maybe this can wait until later,” Eddie said.

  Charles gave him an encouraging grin, but mouthed 'they're hopeless' right after. Eddie wasn't sure if Charles meant about the eighties stuff and Eddie should be offended also, or if he was referencing them getting distracted right in the middle of the road leading into the settlement.

  Either way, he was right. Karl and Stalker stayed side by side, tossing out movie titles at one another then waiting for the other's opinions on that particular movie. Eddie heaved a sigh as Charles started leading the two parties deeper into the settlement. Before they got into more combat, Eddie pulled up his character sheet to see how things were looking now.

  Character sheet, he thought.

  Edward Hunter

  Human Male

  Level: 13

  Class:Warrior (Ranger)

  Strength:15

  Intelligence: 15

  Agility: 30

  Wisdom: 19

  Heartiness: 17

  Charisma: 12

  Willpower: 17

  Health: 251 (261)

  Endurance: 16

  Mana: 266

  Luck: 14 (17)

  Stamina:630 (640)

  Experience:

  327,841/400,000

  Base Attack: 15

  Base Armor: 10 (51)

  +2 attack melee (strength)

  +35 armor (studded leather, helm, boots, bracers, greaves)

  +8 attack ranged (agility)

  +8 armor (agility)

  Skills:

  General:

  Acrobatics: 4

  Animal Friendship: 1

  Animal Handling: 1

  Animal Husbandry: 1

  Bowyer/Fletcher: 3 (+2 to checks)

  Carpentry: 12

  Climbing: 1

  Cooking: 13

  Evaluate: 5

  Farming: 2

  Fire Building: 1

  Fishing: 4

  Herbalism: 3

  Hunting: 3

  Improvisation: 2

  Rope Use: 4

  Tracking: 3

  Weather Sense: 1

  Weaving: 4

  Combat:

  Bows: 5

  Staves: 2

  Small Blades: 1

  Short Swords: 4

  Special:

  Conjunction: 6

  Magical:

  Nature Magic: 5

  Accel Plant Growth: 2

  Arc: 4

  Create Food/Water: 2

  Fox Fire: 2

  Nature's Binding: 1

  Safe Site: 1

  Wall of Thorns: 2

  Create Spring: 1

  Along for the Ride: 1

  Frostbite: 1

  Languages:

  Common (Human)

  Goblin Speak: 3

  Huh, my new spell is Frostbite. I wonder what that does? he thought.

  A glance showed him that they were still half a minute away from the first of the houses so he thought he had time to at least skim the help file.

  Help Frostbite, he thought.

  Frostbite:

  The bitter cold of winter has been the cause of many deaths in nature. By means of this spell the Nature Magic user can call upon this cold, directing it at a single target. The target may resist against this spell. If their resistance check fails then they are subjected to bone-numbing, frigid cold. This cold may cause difficulty with physical attacks or spell casting and directly damages the target.

  Target: Must be targeted at a living creature.

  Range: This spell has a range of twenty-five feet.

  Type: Nature.

  Damage: X= Frostbite Skill level. Y = Nature Magic Skill level. Damage is in the range ((X+Y)/2) – (8*((X+Y)/2)). The spell will linger on the target for 1 + X seconds and the target will take the listed damage each second the spell affects them.

  Cost: Varies (25-50 mana), based on skill level in Nature magic and skill level in Frostbite Spell.

  Hot damn, Eddie thought. A DoT spell. I like damage over time spells when they're on my side. I need to work it up a few levels before it's really good though, but even so it's better than Arc and I bet I can put it on my arrows like I do with Arc, too.

  He glanced up when he noticed everyone stopping. A clatter came from behind him and he turned to find the goblin warriors following him, but having come to an abrupt stop when the rest of the party did.

  “I meant to say, that was good fight,” Eddie said to the goblins. “Well done, sorry you lost one.”

  “Good leader,” the goblin said. “We only lose one fighting lots more.”

  There were only six goblin warriors remaining now, Eddie had seen the other one sprawled out amidst the corpses of the orcs. Tiana had taken care of healing the remaining goblins up, so they were following his party now, having acknowledged Eddie as their leader. He was pretty sure Tiana having healed them had something to do with that also.

  Well behind them, Eddie saw the rest of the goblins he'd freed. They were creeping along the sides of the streets and trying to stay mostly out of sight, but not very well. He shrugged. He hadn't even considered the fact that they might have to go house to house when he'd freed them.

  Speaking of which, we probably ought to free the humans as well, don't know if these orcs are the vengeful types that might go take out their anger on their prisoners.

  “Hey Charles,” Eddie said. “Can we work our way along the outskirts at first? I want to get to the human pen, I ran out of weapons on the goblins so didn't go the rest of the way to it before.”

  “Hm, I wonder if they have any fighters in there like the goblins did.”

  “No clue, but it's possible. I'm just worried that the orcs might kill them since it was us humans who just beat them down. You know, take out their mad on them?”

  “Yeah, we'll work that way. Stalker's already back, no-one's in this house. Let's go.”

  As they worked their way towards the pen holding the humans, they didn't find any orcs in the buildings along the outskirts of town. As they passed the goblin pen, Eddie recovered his rope, using his Acrobatics skill to drop back to the ground with no problem.

  When they reached the pen for humans, Eddie took several tosses to get the rope up onto the pillar again, but once he did he scrambled right up. When he peered into the pen, he almost let go of the rope.

  There were several huma
n bodies sprawled out on the ground, obviously dead. There was a larger group of live ones though, surrounding the bodies of a pair of orcs. Several of the humans had weapons, obviously looted from the orcs. Their gazes were suspicious as Eddie had appeared, but when they recognized him as a human, they broke into smiles.

  “Alright, anyone want out of here?” Eddie called out, dropping the other end of the rope into the pen.

  The humans rushed the rope and Eddie had to spring off the wall as they started swarming up to freedom.

  Once they were all out of the pen, Eddie turned to them.

  “We're getting rid of all the orcs down here. If anyone of you are leveled and skilled in fighting, you're welcome to join us. Otherwise, go back with the rest of the non-combatants.”

  He gestured towards the small swarm of goblins following along after the groups.

  “You rescued the goblins first?” one of the humans asked, indignantly.

  “Yeah, I did. They were closer, and I didn't have enough weapons for anyone else. Otherwise they'd all be armed.”

  “Fredrick might still be alive if you'd come for us first, like you were supposed to,” the man said.

  Eddie stared at him in disbelief.

  “You know what?” he said. “I don't care if you're a fighter that's higher level than me, I don't want you fighting near me. Get back with the non-combatants. And please note, a bunch of them are armed, so if you pull the same speciesist shit with them you're liable to end up joining whoever the hell Fredrick is, or was.”

  He turned back to the rest of the humans.

  “As for the rest of you, I've got goblin warriors fighting for me. If you've got a problem with that, too bad. If you can fight, and you don't have a problem with it, let's see what weapons we can find you.”

  Two of the humans stayed, the rest moved back with the non-combatant goblins.

  “Don't worry, that guy's an asshole, always has been,” one of the humans staying told Eddie softly. “Most of us would've done worse to him than you did. We would've told him to go walk into the city and hope an orc found him.”

  “That bad?” Eddie asked.

  “He's a narc, always informing on this or that to the orcs to try to get favors or special privileges. Fredrick wasn't as bad, but never said anything about it either. He got killed when we swarmed our guards. We heard fighting out in the town and were hoping...”

  He trailed off there and Eddie understood.

  Hoping that someone was coming for them finally? I wonder how long they've been down here, he thought, then caught himself. As far as I know this encounter wasn't even generated until we found the mine, gotta remember it's just a game, but I suppose even fake memories of a long captivity are still memories. They're just as valid as memories an NPC actually experienced.

  Niggling at the edges of Eddie's brain was the fact that his memories from in the game were just as suspect. After all, it was all a virtual environment. So weren't his memories from in it virtual, just like those of the NPCs? It wasn't something he wanted to dwell on, so subconsciously he'd been giving the experiences of the NPCs more and more weight as time went on. It was part of the reason he kept forgetting it was a game as well, but he refused to think on the matter consciously, he just let his subconscious stew on it and come to its own conclusions.

  As the other humans started walking away one of the goblin warriors spoke up.

  “You no have problem goblins?”

  The humans stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “He asked if you had a problem with goblins or not, like the other fellow I guess,” Eddie said.

  A chorus of negatives came out.

  “Hell, most of us have worked alongside them recently. They're industrious little buggers and they sure pulled their own weight. I got no problem with them,” one said.

  The other nodded in agreement and Eddie translated as best as he could for the goblin warrior.

  “Here, we give these then,” the goblin said.

  The goblin warriors pulled out a few weapons, handing them to the humans that were going back to the non-combatants. Mostly daggers with a few other shorter weapons mixed in.

  “You help keep other goblins safe,” the goblin warrior said.

  After Eddie translated the humans, who had started growing nervous at the goblins pulling out all these weapons, were reassured. They nodded and some stepped forward to take weapons.

  “Let's get a move on,” Charles called out and the parties started heading into the rest of the settlement.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was a classic bug hunt, but with Stalker able to slip into buildings without breaking stealth, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. There were a lot of wounds, but nothing serious. Eddie got to try his frostbite spell for the first time and the sight of the orc shivering and nearly dropping his sword when he went to swing made Eddie think that this one had the potential to be quite powerful after he'd worked it up.

  He'd even gained a point in Frostbite the one time he'd tried it. It was currently at max mana cost for him though, so he refrained from using it as his go-to spell. Arc remained his first choice, for now at least.

  As they moved from house to house, Karl came over near him.

  “Hey Eddie,” he said softly. “Check out your experience from the last kill. I'd swear that the modifier is growing the more of the orcs we kill. It's almost at two and a half times now instead of just two times like earlier.”

  “Figures,” Eddie said, cynically, “That means that if you notice it you really want to save the boss for last for the extra exp, after you're all beaten up and worn out from everything else.”

  He looked around and realized that the two groups weren't looking all that beaten up. A little worn down, but the pace had been slow enough that the healers were keeping up with the wounds, and the added warriors from the goblin and human pens had also taken up a little of the slack.

  “Or maybe that's just how they coded it so people wouldn't give up after the first few?” he said a moment later. “Either way, good find. Let Charles and his people know too, would you? Just let Charles tell Stalker though since Stalker's a bit busy at the moment.”

  Karl grinned and gave Eddie a thumbs up. Eddie continued keeping watch on his sector as they moved through the settlement. It looked like they were almost clear, finally. There were only a few houses left before the only remaining building was a structure much larger than the rest and set apart from them as well.

  By Eddie's count they'd taken down another hundred to hundred and twenty orcs on the bug hunt. He wasn't involved in every fight so he didn't have an exact count, but it seemed to be almost all the orcs that had fled from the earlier battle. They found a few more in the last houses, but soon enough the only thing left was the much larger structure that stood across the street from them and was set in front of what seemed to be fields of mushrooms.

  As they crossed the street, shouts of alarm rang out from inside the larger structure. The front door closed rapidly, then echoed with a hollow boom. Eddie couldn't help but imagine someone sliding a huge bar into place on the back of it to cause the noise.

  “Well, that's torn it,” Charles said. “Hey Stalker... Stalker?”

  He looked around but couldn't find the thief. A few seconds later there was a muffled scream from inside, one that almost immediately cut off. After a few more seconds, the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord.

  “Stalker, you good?” Charles yelled, moving hastily towards the door.

  The thief appeared beside the steps leading up to the door, sitting and panting.

  “You were right Charles, it uses way too much stamina, at least on the backstabs.”

  “We're going in,” Charles said. “Follow as soon as you're up to it.”

  Stalker gave a weak nod and as Eddie passed, he dropped a sandwich in Stalker's lap.

  “Eat up, might help speed your recovery,” Eddie said.

  Eddie turned to the Goblin warriors and human
s who had volunteered to assist. He didn't think there'd be enough room for all of them to fight in the house, it would be bad enough just with the two groups.

  “Please guard the door, make sure no orcs come in to attack us from the rear,” he said. “We'll be fighting and it could be disastrous if they did.”

  He repeated himself, or as close to it as he could, in goblin.

  “We guard rear,” the leader of the goblin warriors said.

  Eddie entered the building and started getting a creepy feeling as soon as he saw the hallway. The ceiling was a good fifteen feet overhead.

  “What the hell needs hallways this wide and tall?” Karl asked, echoing Eddie's feelings.

  “Not a giant, not big enough for them,” Charles replied casually. “Maybe an ogre though, they'd fit in here.”

  Eddie shook his head. Some of the orcs had been bad enough that he'd had worries, especially back during the larger battle. He didn't want to think of an ogre in league with them, especially if they all came at once since he was assuming that what was left were the best of the orcs.

  That's normally how the boss fights work anyhow, he thought.

  The only noise audible, besides their footsteps, was coming from a doorway all the way at the end of the hall. Despite that, they made their way slowly down the corridor. Each and every door they passed was opened, the room it led to scanned. When they reached the end of the hallway, Karl leaned over to the door.