by Pavel Kornev
Damage: 65
I hesitated for a moment, unsure about finishing off my opponent, but Garth didn’t even think of trying to stop killing me. A milky white shining ball of energy started to burn between the hands of the necromancer as hoarfrost spread over the ground, but just before he managed to use his Sphere of Cold, I turned around and took his white-haired head off his neck with a single, powerful strike.
His blood gushed out.
Player Garth Deathblade has been killed!
Experience: +311 [1964/2070]
You’ve have gained a level!
I added another point to Agility and suddenly my vision blurred. I had to prop myself up by leaning heavily on my sword so I wouldn’t fall down, but the feeling of sickness refused to let go. My thoughts were a jumble and I was unable to comprehend what was happening. I couldn’t even understand who I was!
And then a system message suddenly appeared and started flashing:
Main Class available!
Main Class available!
Main Class available!
I came back to my senses, opened the menu and couldn’t believe my eyes.
[…]
Undead, Flesh Eater. Level 10 / Human, Rogue. Level 10
Experience: [1964/2070] [2008/2070]
Strength: 20
Agility: 13
Constitution: 24
Intelligence: 5
Perception: 6
Health: 480
Stamina: 440
Energy: 110
Damage: 60-120
Stealth: +10
Critical damage when attacking in stealth mode, backstabbing or attacking a paralyzed target.
Creature of the Dark: night sight, penalty for being in sunlight, Deathgrip, Aura of Fear, Fearsome Bite.
Neutrality: undead
Immunity: death magic, poisons, curses, bleeding, sickness, cures and blessings.
Both of my characters had merged and my stats were equal to player at level 20! Rogue skills and human speech were available again, but I didn’t stop being undead — there was still skin covered with livid spots underneath. However, there were almost no welts and pustules anymore and my mouth had also become much wider for some reason, with suspiciously sharp teeth, as if they had been deliberately filed into shape.
Stop! I wasn’t thinking right!
I looked for the button to quit the game, but it hadn’t appeared. The technical support hotline also remained unavailable.
Damn it! I was still locked inside the game!
I swore and tried to close the menu. A request demanding that I enter a character name appeared. The old one turned out to have been deleted when the classes were merged.
I smiled wryly and typed: “John Doe”. I stepped back from the pool of blood forming around the necromancer and refrained from looting. I wasn’t afraid of getting my boots dirty, but I wanted to believe that I was above this. That I’d manage to remain human even in the dead body of a flesh eater.
I rested my flamberge on my shoulder and strode down the road away from the city. I had no idea where it would lead me, but I was sure of what awaited me at the end.
Scroll of Rebirth, I am coming to you!
Chapter Two. Village Of The Dead
1
RAIN, DIRT AND PLAGUE.
This was exactly the way the new global event in the world of Towers of Power began, without fanfare or colorful writing in the sky.
The Kingdom of the Dead expansion was being added to the game slowly but surely and somehow too realistically. Epicenters of plague appeared here and there as the epidemic struck down whole villages. Unusually, the villagers left their homes en masse and carried the disease further and further afield. Roadblocks appeared on the roads. Depending on the dark or light alignment of the Lord of the local Tower, the paladins of the Order of the Fiery Hand or the black knights of the Night League tirelessly cut down the diseased, but were unable to affect the situation as a whole.
To add to this, the plague started to infect players as well as NPCs and everyone was trying to decide whether this was an error or the desire of the developers. However, the second option seemed more realistic, considering the fact that the disease would recede immediately after death and resurrection.
I found out the latest news from the game chatrooms, which I’d gotten access to but unfortunately only in read-only mode. There was enough to think about even without chatrooms anyway...
I WALKED THROUGHOUT the night. I was in no hurry to get anywhere; I just wanted to get as far away as possible until Garth returned to the game. I didn’t believe that the stubborn necromancer would leave me be for a moment. The price they’d offered him for my skull was just too great.
I would have walked along during the day, as the sky was thankfully covered by heavy clouds and a cold drizzle began to fall, but I was suddenly overcome by a strange apathy. I became afraid. A small, dead man in an open world was like a grain of sand in the universe. Anyone could grind me into dust without breaking a sweat. But I lived! I was alive!
My mind was probably overcome with recent events and it needed a rest. I found some rather thick bushes, crawled inside and froze, as if in a strange trance. I didn’t go to sleep, but switched off from the realities of the game. That was when I looked through the chatrooms. When it was closer to evening and I’d continued along the forest road, I came across a dead horse that had had its belly eaten out almost immediately. It smelled absolutely terrible. Even though the sense of smell of a flesh eater was not too great, I started to feel sick.
Or was I feeling sick from hunger?
I shuddered and picked up the pace. The road turned and a cart abandoned in the middle of the forest appeared up ahead.
Abandoned? I had some doubts...
It looked like the owners were lying around somewhere nearby. The sound of muffled growling and the crunching of bones came from the bushes and I froze in midstep, taking my flamberge off my shoulder and clutching its long grip with both hands.
There was a flash of gray among the greenery and I carefully started to retreat.
An encounter with a wolf pack could certainly send me off to be resurrected, so I wasted no time in activating stealth mode and dashed under the wide canopy of a pine tree.
Stealth mode: On
Energy: -1 [109/110]
I don’t know whether I managed to deceive the wolves or if they just didn’t want to leave their terrifying meal, but the predators didn’t pursue me. I walked around the cart and returned to the road, noticing a deer that was peacefully munching on a bush. I quietly approached it and slashed it with my flamberge with full force, killing it with my first strike.
Critical hit! Damage: 180
The Spotted Deer has been killed!
Experience: +5 [1964/2070] +5 [2008/2070]
Ah-ha! Experience was divided equally between both classes!
Was that good or bad?
Deep in thought, I wiped the wavy blade of the flamberge on a clump of grass, put it upon my shoulder as usual and returned to the road.
Good or bad? It was probably good, actually. I’d probably have to get almost twice the experience that other players need to rise in level, but I’d rise two steps at the same time. Further along, I’d develop quicker than the others. As far as I could remember, twenty five thousand XP would be needed to get to level 25. Multiplied by two, it would be fifty thousand. I’d also have to honestly earn fifteen times more points to get to level fifty fairly.
Was there a difference? There was. And what a difference!
However, the maximum level of 100 was still there and a character that was at level 50 twice was definitely weaker than a player that reached the top using traditional leveling Due to my lack of access to high level skills, dual classing promised me serious problems down the line, but I decided not to think that far ahead. I would find the Scroll of Rebirth and immediately leave the game. That very moment. Without pause. As if they had barely seen me!
Th
e issue was to find that scroll before the other players. Well, no, I had a great plan which I’d already tested in the skeleton dungeon: while the others would storm the Tower of Decay, I would carefully make my way into the Treasury and steal the scroll. NPCs wouldn’t react to me and players had no business being among the dead. It was just that no one knew where the Kingdom of the Dead was and how to get there...
THE RAIN BECAME more intense by the evening, and mud started to squelch under my boots. I stopped trying to go around the puddles — catching a cold was no threat to a dead man, while my clothes were filthy beyond measure anyway. The road twisted between the trees until it entered a field, where I spent a long while in the bushes, observing a village which was built beyond the forest edge. No people could be seen, while the gates were wide open. It was completely silent. No dogs barking and no cows mooing. And a bloated corpse floating in the gutter by the roadside.
A plague village?
I carefully set off down the road, having decided to look through the houses and search through the possessions of the villagers. Money was no use for the dead, but it was to me.
Everything was quiet and peaceful, so I didn’t spend any Energy to activate stealth. I was just ready to become invisible at the first sign of danger. I stepped up to the gates and immediately saw a diagonal red cross, the symbol of a plague quarantine.
A dead man shouldn’t fear the plague...
As soon as I stepped inside the boundary of the village I immediately felt the cloying smell of rotting flesh. A dead body gnawed down to the very bones lay at the entrance to the village, with a crossbow bolt protruding from its back. Another body lay nearby — this villager hadn’t been shot, but cut in half with a heavy sword.
This place had probably been visited by a quarantine unit of the Order of the Fiery Hand and it was only bad weather that had stopped them from burning the village down to the group. They did make attempts to do this — there were fresh burn marks running up the walls...
I nodded, agreeing with my own conclusion and then froze as I noticed a dog with a ragged piece of rope on its neck which had suddenly appeared from somewhere. The dog bared its teeth and growled, with other dogs immediately starting to come out of the doors of the huts.
I immediately dissolved into the shadows, but it was to no avail — the feral curs surrounded me in a circle. The smell! I was betrayed by the smell of my dead body. A smell that had become very much to their taste over the last few days.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen. A devil’s dozen dogs!
The first to bound forwards was a rangy looking bitch and I met her with a kick. The steel toecap of the boot broke her spine, as I immediately followed up with the flamberge to interrupt the leap of the pack leader, spraying blood everywhere.
Critical hit! Damage: 168
Bleeding wound! Additional damage: 2
The dog whined and quickly jumped aside. Inspired by my success, I resolutely attached the pack. My long blade sliced downwards to cut a growling dog in half and hacked into the ground.
The ring of dogs scattered and I quickly swung to cut through the legs of a red haired mongrel as it tried to run. The mongrel rolled along the ground, but a huge hound attacked me from behind and sank its teeth into my leg.
I changed my hold on the flamberge to take the grip in one hand and the ricasso, the unsharpened part of the blade above the cross-guard in the other. I raised the sword above my head and drove it violently downwards, pinning the disgusting beast to the ground, killing it instantly. I freed my weapon and stepped towards the gate, but I was too late — I heard the growl of the leader and the whole pack rushed into the attack.
This was when my inexperience in using two-handed weapons made itself known. A normal swordsman could hit several opponents with one swing, strike accurately at vulnerable spots, parry, disarm and even sweep enemies off their feet. I looked like I was swinging around a long steel bar — one attack, one hit. I was slow. Too slow...
A wide swing sliced through the side of a flea-ridden cur, with my blade going to the side, and while I restored my balance two dogs bit and hung on to me at once. One had sunk its teeth into my already bitten leg, while the teeth of the other glanced off the chainmail so it tore at my cloak.
I swayed, barely staying on my feet and then cut through the bitch which had recovered from my first attack. Some other beast then grabbed my left wrist. I didn’t manage to fight back against the leader with one hand, so its terrible fangs tore into my throat, immediately sending my Health into the red.
The dog used its weight to bring me to the ground and I didn’t even have time to flinch. I was torn apart in an instant.
2
NIGHT. RAIN. DIRT.
I was resurrected in a ditch, so I forcefully got up from the foul-smelling goo and put the enchanted skull back into my inventory first. Then, I hesitantly checked my stats, but no — I didn’t get penalized for death and my experience was still the same.
Anyway, I had something else to worry about — a pair eyes suddenly shone red in the darkness of the night, and then another one!
The eyes of dogs don’t shine at night — I had this thought for a moment and then it immediately disappeared. At the end of the day, the walking dead didn’t exist in real life either. I got out of the ditch and swung my sword, making a huge hound keep its distance. It jumped away and barked, causing a cacophony of barks to answer from all around.
I had no time to run to the nearest house so I retreated to the gates and used my Aura of Fear ability when the dogs set upon me. The shadows swirled around me and hoarfrost crawled out along the ground. The dogs moved away, but they didn’t go far — they just stood around about fifteen feet away. They stopped barking and started to growl, as the wet fur on the backs of their neck rose.
What the hell? Run away!
I looked at the description of the ability I was using and quickly retreated from the pack. Aura of Fear reduced the accuracy and the willingness of an opponent to attack, as well as scaring them away, but the chances of making them panic were slim.
Damn it, my Energy was literally slipping through my fingers!
I backed away through the gates and continued my retreat towards the forest, with the dogs padding along after me. I wanted to turn around and run as fast as I could, but the Aura of Fear perceptibly weighed me down. If I ran, I’d lose concentration and that would be the end of me.
I was walking along and swaying. Swaying and walking along. Understanding fully that I’d never make it to the forest in time. It was too far to the edge and my Energy level was falling too fast.
The dogs kept coming after me. Running, baring their teeth and growling. They were preparing to jump on me and tear me to pieces and that was exactly what they’d do after I stopped scaring them away.
I didn’t want to die. I especially didn’t want to die several times in a row, but...
I suddenly realized something when the last drops of energy were disappearing. I took the skull out of my inventory, took a swing and threw it towards the forest with all my strength. The skull didn’t quite reach the trees, but it bounced and rolled into the bushes.
This was when the dogs attacked!
I kicked the first mongrel away with my heavy boot, caved in the skull of a rabid bitch with the hilt of my sword and sliced into the side of another dog that leaped towards me.
The Maneater Dog has been killed! The Grizzled Maneater Dog has been killed!
Experience: +35 [2029/2070] +35 [2073/2500]
Rogue: You’ve have gained a level!
I never even had the time to be happy about my latest level. The dogs jumped on me as if they were huskies attacking a bear, hanging off my arms and legs and then dragged me to the ground, not letting me use my flamberge. Some agile beast managed to reach my throat and sent me off for resurrection.
NIGHT, MUDDY GROUND and the roots of trees.
I got out of a shallow grave, buried the skull in the fallen leaves and looked around
. It was quiet in the forest and no one was following me. My clever trick had made the dogs lose track of me. I spent a while longer lying on the wet grass and then finally calmed down and opened the character stat menu. I increased Agility again, but I didn’t improve my Stealth any further, choosing to improve my Dodge skill instead. My Agility was already at level 14, so quite a few hits would miss me now when it was combined with Dodge.
I’d have rather learned the Two-handed Weapon Fighting skill, but that option turned out to be closed. A Rogue used shortswords and daggers, there wasn’t much you could do with that... I got off the ground and swore. I no longer had my chainmail on me.
Damned dogs!
The loss made me change my initial plans and return to the edge of the forest. Once I got there, I hid in the bushes and listened. I soon heard a strange chewing sound even though there was no one in the field. Strange.
I entered stealth mode and moved along the trees with my flamberge raised, ready to strike. One step, two steps, hide behind a thick tree trunk. I moved along to the next pine tree and could already see a small clearing by the roadside. That was where the sounds were coming from.
WHEN I LOOKED OUT of the bushes, I saw a huge hound that was tearing into the bloated belly of a corpse. The leader was not accompanied by his pack this time, so it was gnawing the rotting body on its own. The hound seemed to be completely taken up with its meal of dead flesh, so I decided to take a risk and approached the leader in the hope of finishing the fight with one resolute strike. A critical hit is guaranteed from stealth mode...
Then the hound moved its ears and jumped back from the corpse. He had smelled me!
A charge, a swing and a hit!
The wavy blade of the flamberge flew through the air and cut into the side of the hound, but didn’t manage to cause critical damage.
