Dark: Fearless Pioneer (Dark LitRPG book 1)

by Arthur Stone

  After finishing the elite sentinels off, Dark took a long rest. He followed the royal queen, who continued to graze on gasthos trees as if nothing had happened, and took a string of mana potions with a few minutes of pause between. Sometimes, as his Mana allowed, he used Possessed by Light to charge up another arrow.

  After all, the potions made his Mana recharge much more quickly. No stat-strengthening potions were on the menu today. The elixirs in that category he had managed to create were hardly worth the risk. He would only hurt his ability to charge up more arrows. Dark added up the numbers in his head yet again. The arrows only held Light Magic for twenty minutes, so he had limited time.

  How many hit points did an elite have? Many more than a guard, clearly. But how many? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? There was no way to find out, with no other players having encountered this mob, and no access to the X Encyclopedia. By downing one vial of potion after another, he was preparing for the worst.

  Despite his cautionary pauses, he went too far. A special debuff icon appeared with a twenty-minute countdown. If Dark took anything “stronger than water” during that time, he would suffer a debuff to his stats and skills. Egregious violations of this ban would cause debuffs strong enough to disable him.

  Only seven arrows were charged. Each could deal several thousand points of damage. Of course, he had equipped everything that increased his Magic Attack and had used his staff so as to possess each arrow with maximum damage.

  Yet the longer he considered the royal queen, the more he doubted that it would be enough.

  She was terrifying. She was also the only hesh’ell he had seen that had a sharp stinger at the end of its abdomen. Ever since he was a kid, Dark had hated wasps, bees, and hornets.

  And that stinger wasn’t even the worst part.

  To hell with it. Here we go. All he had to do was draw his bow, aim, and release. One and a half minutes remained until the first arrow lost its charge. The others would follow at intervals.

  Dark approached to within thirty yards and stuck seven arrows into the ground. Lighting a bomb in his bag, he threw it in the creature’s direction, waited a couple of seconds, then drew the bow more tightly and released the fingers of his right hand.

  The elite shuddered like it had taken a blow from a jackhammer. A hail of copper shards followed as the bomb exploded, three steps away. Despite all of this, the mob spun on a dime and charged Dark.

  Rather than reach for the next arrow, the man cast Suffering with a wave of his hand.

  The royal queen fell to the ground and began writhing ridiculously, its legs flailing in all directions. For at least ten seconds, it would be under the skill’s control, and then the battle would begin in earnest.

  Dark hurried to take maximal advantage of the moment, firing a second arrow, then a third. A message appeared that was much too long to simply be a “damage dealt” alert, but he paid it no attention.

  A fourth arrow, then a fifth.

  Dark paused before firing the sixth. He knew how slow his rate of fire was. There was no way in hell that he could fire a bow fast enough to deliver so many arrows in ten seconds.

  The elite had stopped writhing, and its legs had relaxed, splayed out every which way.

  It was dead, slain by three arrows and a bomb. Hence the long message.

  Dark nearly slapped himself in the face for his stupidity. The Ancient Evil was right. What else could a massive message filled with all kinds of stats and numbers mean in the middle of a fight?

  Note: Personal victory! Royal Hesh’ell Queen killed! Elite Mob. Level 12. Location sensation level: 30%. Personal sensation level: 80%. This was a flying mob. You receive double XP! +918 progress points received. This was a flying mob. Double distributable progress points! 153 distributable progress points received.

  The following skills played a significant role in this battle: Physical Attack, Ranged Weapons, Reaction, Accuracy, Luck, Magic Accuracy, Control Resist.

  +22 Physical Attack progress points.

  +37 Ranged Weapons progress points.

  +15 Reaction progress points.

  +211 Accuracy progress points.

  +60 Luck progress points.

  +411 Magic Accuracy progress points.

  +162 Control Resist progress points.

  Note: You have discovered a new creature: Royal Hesh’ell Queen. Elite Mob. Level 12. Base XP: 360. Note: Flying mob. x2 base XP! Health: 16224. Mana: 4480. Stamina: 10055. Aggression: aggressive if attacked. May attacked if approached within melee distance. Magic abilities: Blinding, Elemental Magic Damage, Slowdown, Reduce Accuracy. Poison level: poisonous. Chance of valuable loot: high. Description: a huge, phenomenally voracious creature that adores Fruit of the Gasthos Tree. Parts of its body may be used for food and crafting. Avoid it unless you are looking for a painful death. Note: This is an elite monster with highly elevated stats. When hunting these creatures, it is dangerous to go alone. Take a party with you.

  No player in the history of X has ever encountered a Royal Hesh’ell Queen! You receive +500 Knowledge progress points. Bonus +1 level to any basic skill. You also receive 500 distributable craft skill progress points. The leaders of the Explorers League may present you with a reward for adding creatures you have discovered from your personal bestiary to the league archives.

  Congratulations! Keep discovering new things to unlock more generous rewards!

  That was it? That was all he got for killing an elite? He hadn’t just robbed some old bones—he had murdered the monster with his own hands! The bomb shouldn’t matter. According to the forum, as long as he finished the bug off with conventional weapons, it counted as a non-explosive victory. Most of the damage had been dealt by magic arrows, in fact, not by the shrapnel and blast wave.

  What a waste of time! That instant, as he realized the failure of his quest, a new message appeared.

  Note: Check Global Announcements.

  There it was: the red announcement.

  Attention! The player Dark has, for the first time in the history of X, destroyed a dangerous monster: the elite Royal Hesh’ell Queen. He accomplished this alone, without the slightest assistance from any other players. A great achievement worthy of the history books! Congratulations to this outstanding player! Continue achieving great feats and you will be rewarded!

  Before Dark had finished reading the red message, another appeared underneath it, in a light blue font.

  Note: You have accomplished a global achievement! +5 distributable base skill levels, +3 distributable craft skill levels, +5 distributable stat levels, +3 distributable craft stat levels.

  Note: This is your first global achievement! You receive +10000 distributable base skill progress points and +5000 distributable craft skill progress points.

  The system had taken its time! He had given up hope, in fact. But it was done. Now for the last bit, and he could return to the tower.

  From the bug carcass, Dark collected an extensive assortment of the standard alchemical ingredients hesh’ells had to offer.

  In addition, he acquired the new Royal Queen Stinger and Royal Queen Poison. Plus, several Lesser Modifiers—and a Greater Soul Essence of level 11. He had never seen that last item before. Perhaps it was a reward for his solo victory. According to its description, a greater soul essence counted as 10 normal soul essences.

  But the best treasure was yet to come.

  Twisted Silver Ring with Star Sapphire. Class: Superb. Elegantly crafted by a worker who knows how to make masterpieces from only moderately expensive materials. It looks completely new. Durability: 35/35. Item bonuses: +5 Intellect, +2 Mana Regeneration per minute, +2 Magic. Required level: 8. Estimated value: This item includes an expensive gem. For this fact alone, merchants will be willing to pay a great sum for it. However, selling it to a novice mage is a better idea, as magic users are very fond of such items.

  The description understated things. For a novice mage, this item was incredible. In order to match its effects with his current
arsenal, Dark would have to use nine separate items. This one gave it all to him while only taking up one slot.

  The swarm was worth it.

  Sadly, the level requirement was 8, and Dark was—paradoxically—trying to avoid leveling up. After all, that let him level better, in the long run. The game’s mechanics allowed him to pump some skills to astronomical heights while keeping others near 0. For instance, if he declined to use shields, the Shieldbearer skill would stop growing, preventing his Strength from growing, as well.

  This allowed his character to keep a low level for months, gaining mountains of experience for the skills he used without leveling the unused ones. Then, later, he could push ten levels at once by spending distributable points.

  The lower your level, the more experience you got from defeating mobs thanks to the level difference between you. In fact, that difference was the greatest determiner of experience awarded.

  He did not want to level up—but this ring was worth it. With one last moment of consideration, Dark spent 120 distributable points on the skill Magic Staves and Rods. That increased its level up to 5, bringing his Magic to the same value. His stats were now at 48—divided by 6, that put him at the exact level required by the ring, allowing him to gain the maximum bonus his trophy provided.

  But he was in no rush to go further.

  Exactly one month ago, Dark had escaped the torture room. He had been confused, pathetically weak, and in ownership of nothing but a loincloth, with the realization that he would be stuck here a whole year developing his character from square one.

  Thirty days later, he had single-handedly defeated an elite mob. Novice players did not often risk attacking an elite on their own, even when they were much better equipped than Dark. They would have considered the ring that he held so dear now as little more than an ordinary trinket.

  But he had done it. Either he was awesome—or Light Magic was truly a force of imbalanced power in the world of X.

  Chapter 52

  The Invisible Saboteur

  Total stat levels: 48 +7.

  Character level: 8.

  Mastery level: 7.

  Killing an elite, even as a solo player, was a common phenomenon. If a leveled player performed the killing, against a low-level mob, it would be hardly worth any attention. In fact, it would be near worthless, since a large level difference meant that neither significant experience nor valuable loot would be expected.

  But killing unknown elites, that was something. If one player, or a small party of weaker players, pulled that off, they could earn a mention in the global announcements. This recognition netted some excellent bonuses, and that would make other players jealous.

  The killing of an unknown elite by a player with the nickname Dark hit the forum like a bombshell. The furor lasted for several days, with everyone but the shyest lurkers commenting on it. Perhaps the discussion continued beyond, but Dark did not have enough time to follow it.

  The buzz was no surprise. After all, the hype over the unsuccessful search for a Dark had just grown quiet when suddenly a player with that nickname landed a global announcement. An announcement that included an undiscovered mob.

  That last bit multiplied the intrigue. Why not assume that this hero Dark and the unknown fugitive were one and the same?

  The masses did assume that, and rightly so.

  Of course, they took it much further. If there was an elite royal hesh’ell queen, there were probably many species of less advanced hesh’ells. And no one had ever heard of a hesh’ell. Only one dubious message mentioned some rumor that the poster had ostensibly heard of these mobs. Some months ago, a group of curious players in a barren and uninteresting land had stumbled upon an oasis amidst the carnage that was miraculously preserved. There, they had found a building resembling an ancient museum. Despite its rundown state, it still contained several exhibits. And those included a hesh’ell liver, sealed in a flask. How it had gotten there was a great mystery lost to the centuries.

  Despite the doubt which others prescribed to this message, Dark was inclined to believe it. After all, he had gutted thousands of hesh’ells, and had extracted dozens or hundreds of livers. Not once had he been credited with discovering this ingredient. That didn’t mean any player had come to Ethria before him and killed a couple of the buzzing beasts. No, the lore of the world included various convenient trade routes between the many territories that were now isolated. Such items of interest could have ended up anywhere, preserved for posterity far from their place of origin. A museum was the perfect place to find exotic trophies from ancient times.

  Every possible theory was suggested by the players on the forum. One said that Dark had discovered a formerly-unknown dungeon. Some people happened to get so lucky, even in lands that were highly populated. The game loved to hide pleasant and perilous places alike in clever ways. But the mobs in hidden dungeons were usually stronger than usual mobs. Elites in such sites were virtually as strong as bosses. It was far from within every party’s ability to deal with such monsters. And dealing with them alone, without so much as a buff or item from a leveled player, that was impossible.

  So the theory was dismissed as nonsense. But what was the true story? Who was this Dark? Where had he come from? Why were so many looking for him? Where had he settled to mow down ancient mobs and tell no one of his location?

  Dark had attracted the players’ attention, that was for sure.

  Had he attracted the attention of the system, as well?

  That was an open question. His mysterious human assistant made no appearance. The man stared at the Ancient Evil all night long, in vain. The latter floated among the shelves in his customary way and made no moves to become the form of a beached jellyfish.

  Why weren’t they contacting him? Had Dark failed to attract attention? Or had the system responded—but after reviewing his character’s development had just decided that this was obviously a lucky loser? Perhaps his clandestine adviser had even lost his ability to contact Dark on the same channel.

  No answers were forthcoming, only more questions.

  The only thing Dark knew is that he had failed to open communication. He wanted to speak to a person, not some element of the game AI.

  In the meantime, he talked with the Ancient Evil. It was something, but still not enough.

  This lack of answers and human interaction was a clear path to severe mental problems. He needed social connection, at least now and then.

  But with no sign from his helper nor the system, he had no choice but to follow his original plan: Attract more attention. A lot more attention.

  * * *

  Stealth was a skill that was valued by warriors of a certain specialization. Assassins were a class of characters whose objective was surprise attacks. Some, thanks to special abilities, could walk right in front of you without being noticed. And then crit stab you in the back. Others could shoot you with several arrows before you guessed where they were coming from.

  But for most players, Stealth had little value. Such was the consensus of the forum, in any case.

  Dark had his own opinions. At first, he had considered his character hopelessly ruined, but now his mindset had swung to the opposite end of the spectrum.

  Thanks to Kim’s machinations, Dark’s Stealth was incredible. That provided him immense benefits even though he had no particular skills bound to Stealth.

  Now was a case in point. He had to sneak around a city filled with a thousand zombies. The main principle was to take his time. As long as he moved slowly and took frequent stops, his chances of being noticed were minimal. Unless he was two or three steps from a zombie. They were difficult to spot from far away, but it was easy enough to tell them from stones, branches, and other piles of debris.

  Still, he gave larger piles of trash a wide berth. Some mobs could be disguised enough to fool him. At first, Dark had been sent to the tower twice, preferring to die rather than execute another protracted chase and lose hours or days. Now he knew no
t to reveal himself if there was the slightest hint of danger.

  Sadly, the zombies only stayed motionless during daylight hours. At night, they rose and wandered the city with no discernable routes. In dawn, they froze wherever they happened to be located, with unpredictable results. He could clean a whole quarter of the city of zombies and find it full of them again the next day. Running into just one led to howls that alerted all of those nearby. As soon as those opened their eyes, they would howl in the same fashion, and so the call would spread until every zombie in the city was converging on the epicenter of the great collective moan.

  So, he declined the idea of a general sweep.

  Instead, he only killed zombies that were in the way of his movement among buildings. For some reason, zombies did not enter a building unless they were lured inside. Once he was inside, he no longer had to fear running into them—as long as he avoided being seen through windows and doorways. One slip-up there, and it was back to the tower for him.

  Dark had enough travel to do without adding the significant distance between here and there.

  On foot and by boat both, often carrying heavy loads.

  Sometimes he even had to use a small wagon he had built for the task. The city had plenty of carriages and carts, but they were all too big for his Strength to push.

  He had about forty yards to reach his chosen house. There was no need to exit through the door—it was a little further from his target, and every additional step brought with it additional risk. The abandoned city held countless hiding places for zombies at every turn. He spotted a large crack in the middle of the street. The roof of some sewer or secret underground passage had given way. A zombie could easily be hiding within it, and there would be no way to spot it from a distance.