by Kit Falbo
I accept. “Fine, I’ll use my methods to tell everyone about your wondrous abilities.” I’m not sure if posting on a forum will count. I’ll probably have to post notice at some player lounges as well, just in case.
“If I don’t have people showing up by the end of the week, I will find you, and your little companion too!”
I hightail it to Byron’s with the mold underneath my arm.
“Welcome back Chess, you ready to work on another piece for Alerin?”
“I think I should practice smithing some of these first.” I hand him the mold.
Byron opens it up and looks at it. “My grandfather talked about working on these back in the day. I have a mold myself.”
Of course he does. I groan inwardly. I should have gone to him first, instead of causing whatever trouble I stirred up in the basement.
“Yours is better though.”
“How is mine better?”
“The one in my collection has some of the seals chipped and a crack in it. I would have needed to have it repaired. Yours also has a slightly different design. It uses less metal, so it won’t be as heavy. It will do a little less damage if you need to strike someone with it. Not a lot of casters have the strength to wield this kind of weapon either way.”
“I should practice before we make the weapon for the Spellworks. Only have about two hours left in the day for me. I doubt I’ll get good enough at this by then.” It is clear this will not be easy. Even with the good iron I am using, my first two tests end up poorly crafted in quality. They are long and awkward and require a different technique than hammering blades or even working bows. I have to keep the end I’m working on hotter than normal, and part of the process requires I to roll the staff on the anvil while scraping the hammer along it to smooth out patches. They are also so long I have to flip them over to do the other side as well.
Byron walks over to point out that because of the advanced design that lightens the weight, this one requires a little bit of hammering for divots that can hold powered items. “One of the reasons these were popular is that they can hold more items than the wooden staffs,“ he explains as he helps. “And channeling spells through them also has less of an effect on their durability
Inspecting the poor-quality work shows there are two additional slots for crafting materials available. They have a +1-damage boost to spells and effects channeled through them and a 15% chance of searing the targets in the process. My new Elemental spell added an additional +2 elemental damage and visual effect to spells depending on what is attached to the staffs. These can only be enchanted once with elemental effects. However there is a 16-strength requirement for using them, and that’s with what Byron considers an improved design.
My timer ticks down. I want a little more practice before I do the real thing, but that will have to be tomorrow. I log out and call Mel about posting or updating the wiki for Lady Else and her ability to help find things. I’ll ask Jasper to spread the word around as well tomorrow. That way I’ll have done something in-game to hopefully count as enough to keep that NPC away from me.
I make it home in time to see Gramps trying to shove an oversized painting through the door. I run up and grab the back end to hold it steady. ”Thanks, my boy,” he says with a grin as I help guide the monstrosity into the house. I call it a monstrosity not only because of its size. The thing is ugly. It’s a forest scene painted in oranges and purples.
“How much did this cost?” I wonder aloud.
“A steal, only a hundred dollars. The canvas and paint alone probably cost twice that to make it.” I don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t have given five dollars for that thing, though I might have paid that to someone else to have it taken away. I feel my blood pressure rise and a headache start to come on but say nothing as we maneuver it inside the house to stand along with the other items the old man had managed to collect. A lamp sways a little and falls as we accidentally bump it. I manage to catch it with my foot instead of letting it hit the ground. The worst thing about setting the picture down is that the forest side now faces the inside of the house instead of the wall.
I take some breaths and center myself, or at least try. I have to look away from the picture before I finally do. “Gramps, you’ve made some very nice purchases, but I’m going to have to ask for you to hold off a bit. Or at least only use the money from selling these to buy new ones.”
His face droops in sadness. I have seen him use that face to get out of sticky situations or to scam one more bill off a mark. “Kids are back in school; more players are focusing on doing the work I’m doing. I’m just not going to be bringing in as much until spring break, or I get my character up to the next smithing skill level.” All true, but I’m not being completely honest. This quest is taking a lot of my time. I’m also starting to worry about Noxtimus and what I will do if he fails. I just need a little break.
“What if I find something I need?” Gramp’s sad face still not letting go.
“Then sell one of these, ” I hesitate as I almost call the stuff junk. “, treasures and use the funds for your next purchase.” I eye the stuff. Even the basement had been more organized than this. Old Pa nods, and I look at the picture again. I know art is supposed to cause a reaction, but the only reaction this one gives me is the creeps. “Let’s go out to dinner. I’m buying.” I spend some time making sure everything is stable before we head out.
Chapter Eighteen- David
Mizzie has gotten me as much the dirt as she can on general Chatwin, and I bribed the cleaning staff of the barracks for the rest to fill in the blanks. Thankfully, most NPC in Lusania are creatures of habit. They have jobs, tasks, and appointments that pretty much keep them on a schedule. It is not unlike most people’s lives in the real world.
My days are filled with so many assisted cleanings, feedings and doctors’ appointments that I have to schedule time to log in and truly live again. Seven days isn’t a lot of time to plan this type of action, but I’m not going to complain, considering the prizes inside the quest box.
The first day is gathering intel on what his week is like. The next day I spend planning. General Chatwin sleeps with his Officers in the barracks. It is a show of solidarity since they had been moved there after having their budget cut. A few had family and houses of their own, but it is mostly a single person’s job. You did it for the glory and the pay, both of which had been cut. Still, it left Chatwin sleeping in a room with dozens of trained soldiers who kept their weapons by their beds. It’s one thing to invade a man’s home; it’s another to invade fifty soldiers’ shared bedroom.
They all like to drink their current sorrows away, but it’s not like I would run into them all passed out drunk. Chatwin spends most of his day in his office writing letters for more support or looking at reports from patrols along the border. He is now a paper pusher, but rumor is he had been a badass on the front. He preferred to lead with his men rather than behind the lines, something he had gotten reprimanded for by the council. Online, all the reports of anyone facing a high-level NPC in a battle tell of getting their asses kicked hard and running away.
I have learned from one of the cleaning staff, that the general usually takes a few drinks and has a solitary siesta in his office, either resting with his eyes closed or napping. He always makes sure to be up and ready before the other men in the unit and often goes to sleep after them, so it’s not like I could blame him. Having not yet met the man face to face, he seems like a good, hard-working guy. Really is a shame I have to kill him.
I had to arrange my outside world schedule so I can do this today. The first step is to swap out the bottle of his favorite rum that is being delivered to him with one that I’ve poisoned. It had taken a night of tests to see what would work. Certain poisons changed the color and consistency of the alcohol too much. Others, well, I had to taste. The poisoner skill helped me figure out the least I could mix in while making sure it will still be potent enough. After I made a mistake and a target rea
lized their drink was poisoned, I worked harder. I acquired the Poison Tester achievement by tasting several different options to make sure the flavor didn’t change too much.
Ultimately, I decide to go with a mixture of a sleep aid (the actual sleeping poison added too much of a peppermint flavor) and a constitution poison that Mizzie had managed to make tasteless. Once he is out and weakened, I’ll sneak in and strike.
Right now, I’m waiting across the street from Two Jugs, the brewery where Chatwin gets his hooch. My passive blend lets me stand in the crowd attracting no attention at all as long as I don’t start anything. The lieutenant who had been assigned to the job of making the general’s purchase is inside. Once she comes out, it will be time to make the switch.
She is a short blond thing, her hair cropped but still sticking out wildly from beneath her Officers’ cap. She got lucky on the looks for an NPC. She’s backing out of the store using her butt to push the door open. It’s a nice butt too. God, it’s been too long since I’ve been in anything other than Fair Quest. Chess bringing me to that glorified men’s club didn’t help either. I make a line towards her as she rotates out of the door and I see why she opened it that way. She’s holding two bottles, not one. Both wrapped in the generic brown sack that is popular. A similar one adorned the bottle I aimed to swap with hers.
Assuming she has two different liquors, fifty-fifty shot getting the right one isn’t so bad. If she’s got two of the same kind, then it will be a fifty-fifty shot of poisoning the general. I brush against her, activating disarm against something not a weapon and not in combat has an almost one hundred percent success rate. I catch the bottle with my left hand as it starts to fall and tuck it behind my back before pulling my replacement out with my right hand. “Woah there. You almost dropped this.” I hand her the replacement bottle.
She blushes and gives me a faint smile. She’s got dimples, and oh god, I love dimples. “Uh, thanks, I’m not usually this clumsy.”
“No problem, miss.” I tip my hat goodbye and move into the crowd. After a few steps to get lost in the crowd, I activate blend again and check the bottle. Strawberry peach hard cider, not general Chatwin’s preferred drink. I spin around to search for the blond hair and Officers’ cap. She’s gone now, but I know where she’s heading.
I make my way through the crowd and start cycling through my abilities and skills. I focus on Assassin’s Track. Useful when chasing crippled prey through the woods to get experience, but I haven’t actually attacked the pretty young lieutenant. I activate it, hoping my use of Disarm will be enough. Off to my right, faint blue sparkles drift in the air in a line like suspended glitter. The trail is on. I push forward following it, trying not to lose the passive by moving too fast.
The sparkles of my ability dance around the cap and the wild blond hair trying to escape it. I pick up the pace and touch her shoulder. Her brief flash of recognition tells me I blew my passive. I activate Distract, and her eyes glaze over briefly. Then Disarm for the other bottle, switching them again. “Oops, this time it’s my fault.” I hand the cider bottle back to her as she blinks out of her momentary stupor. “You’re an officer, right? We Touched haven’t really seen many of you. I had to find you and ask what’s the job like? Think maybe some of you can show up to the front lines and whip us into shape?”
“What? Um, yes. I’m an Officer. Lieutenant Maye, not to be confused with my father general Maye.” She attempts to tuck some hair behind her ear, only to have it spring back out. “I haven’t met many Touched,” she admits. Then, with a smile, she adds, “I’m on duty, but if you want to meet later and swap stories, I would be up for that.”
“Noxtimus,” I say. She cocks her head just a bit questioningly, so I add, “I know. One of those funny Touched names.” Then I follow up quickly with “There’s an inn in the market district, The Pearl Petals. It’s near a flower shop” I use my display to check the world clock. “How about we meet up there around nineish this evening and chat.” By then I hope to have my mission complete and can express my sympathy for the lost leader of the order.
“That would be great, but I do have to run.” I wave bye, and she flashes me a smile over her shoulder. It almost makes me feel guilty about what I’m planning to do. This kind of an exchange with an NPC is one of the things that are so amazing about this game. I had selected rogue assassin because I thought it would be cool, not to deal with moral dilemmas.
Sneaking into Chatwin’s office is not as hard as switching the bottles had been. The door isn’t even locked. Half my skills are built for this rather than combat. The general is drooling on his desk. I shed the cleaner’s uniform I had acquired for this and don my armor, over which I put a cloak of obscurement, which makes my whole body look blurry unless the viewer focuses on me for five seconds or longer. I also slip a mask on. It’s the kind worn by the enemy at the front, a twisted mask screaming in agony representing one of the higher-level soldiers you could currently kill out there. It gives off a slight fear effect but also increases the chance the wearer will be attacked.
The weak link in my gear is my sword. It’s is a poor thing from the guilds crafter and causes only minor fire damage on hit. I add poison just in case. I hold it over him. I try to activate the skill Coup de Grace, only to get a warning that the target is too high level to use.
I’d figured that might be the case. Might as well try. The game won’t even let you paralyze someone then kill them unless you are much higher than them in level. Their force of life breaks the effect after the first attack if they live. This is just business, I say to myself as I bring the sword down into his neck.
It goes in part way, and the general is up screaming. With a kick, he sends me and the desk flying towards the wall. Papers and the bottle of booze shoot off to the side. The half-full glass he had been drinking before falling asleep splashes all over him.
I bring my sword down on his forearm, activating Cripple. It cuts into his arm before he can unsheath his sword and I watch as it goes limp.
“Who are you?!” he yells. Alcohol is so heavy on his breath I can smell it from where I stand. It doesn’t slow him down much though. In no time he has pulled out his sword with his other hand.
He parries my next swing with such strength my blade bounces back into the partially broken desk. When it hits, the searing aspect activates, igniting some loose papers and the booze.
He swings, and I jump back and activate my Hidden Dagger ability to throw a pair of poisoned ones at him. One hits.
“Fine don’t talk,” he says as if catching a dagger in his shoulder happens every day. “I’ll just have to get the information from your corpse.” He pulls out the dagger, and his body starts to glow. His wounds start to seal up and disappear.
Behind me, I feel the heat of the fire is spreading. This is all unexpected.
He tosses his sword to his primary hand and hits me. Pain is numbed the least in the game with the adult settings, but it still feels like the combination of a bee sting and a gut punch. Enough to really get your attention if you need it. More than half my life is gone in one hit, and if I die here, he can get enough info from my body to figure out that I’m a Touched and who I am. Getting magically restricted from the city would be awful.
Chatwin grabs a flaming chair leg for his other hand.
Time to go. I use Distract and drop a pouch of concealing mist as I dive through the door. It’s only been moments since the fight started, but Officers are already running towards the door. I activate my latest skill, Temporary Invisibility, and start booking it out of the complex. Behind me, there is a crash. When I glance back, I see Chatwin plow himself out of the smoky room.
I’m invisible, but I can hear by his yells he still has my trail. I guess it would be too much to ask that he didn’t have any tracking skills.
Instead of running down the street I make for the businesses of the district, jumping over hedges, climbing fences.
The guild mocked me for my parkour practice. I had
just wanted to move in ways I couldn’t in the real world. Now it is useful.
I dash around laundry hanging to dry. A brief look behind me shows Chatwin is still there, torch and sword in hand. I throw another blade. He dodges but gets tangled up briefly in a sheet, catching it on fire before he gets free and keeps coming at me. I keep running and start to feel my stamina run down.
A player’s reactive room stamina reflects their real stamina as they run walk and fight. Headset players get this forced tightness around the chest and arms as it starts to run low, eventually slowing our movements till it’s like traveling in honey. Players are recommended to visit reactive rooms to get a baseline, but because of my exceptions, I’ve been given an excellent amount. Clearly Chatwin’s stamina, even poisoned, well exceeds my own. This escape route I’d designed for if this went to shit isn’t working.
I run into the tannery nearby and throw another bag, this one causing a fear effect. The workers there start running out screaming of demons. Fumes from giant vats of noxious chemicals sting my eyes and nose while skins of animals and monsters hang to be worked on. Chatwin barges in, his face red and eyes angry. “You will not escape me!”
Yes, that is certainly clear. No point in banter. I don’t know if he thinks I’m a person or an agent of MoM.
I pull out a final surprise, a magical suicide charge. I’m hoping the extra flammable materials inside the tannery will add some punch. (The forums have mixed information on such things).
Just as the head of the Order of Officers swings at me, I take a step back into a vat, and at the same time activate the charge. I feel the stinging punch of his blade hitting me in my chest. The sting turns to an icy numbness that quickly radiates down my torso, out my legs and arms, until it reaches my toes.
You have died.
While my body is going numb, my vision fades. Now it switches to a point of view outside my body. I watch myself splash into the tannery’s murky vat and disappear beneath the surface just before the explosion goes off. My view pulls back, and I see the building explode and fires leap out from it as if trying to catch me as I recede. I see the laundry, its hanging clothes burning. I see the barracks office fire still raging and people, now small as ants, swarming to contain it. The scene below continues to drop away as my sense of place rises as if carried away by the billowing clouds of smoke.
