“Thank you, Your Gloriousness,” Tom said, ducking his head. “I’ll be off then.”
He hesitated for a moment as if unsure whether to wait for dismissal. When Devon smiled and waved, he whirled and trotted away.
She walked on, thinking about how to proceed. Maybe Jarleck had information on the rat situation. After all, his position as fortifications master meant he was almost always near the front gate and able to keep track of comings and goings. And she needed to talk to him about the defenses anyway.
***
“I hear Gerrald has finished your new gear,” Jarleck said as she walked up.
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. Her previous equipment had been reduced to shreds, Hulk-style, when she’d transformed into a demon. For the past few days, she’d been wearing a plain cloth tunic and trousers while waiting for the settlement’s leatherworker, Gerrald, to make her a new set.
“Wait…” she said when the man turned away in a poor attempt to hide the amusement on his face. “What’s wrong with it?” At the very least, the new armor wouldn’t have demon skin sewn in, but that didn’t mean she’d be happy with it.
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” the big man said, raising a finger to his lips.
She sighed. “I guess I’ll go see what I’m in for after this.”
Jarleck laughed. “So how have you been?” He seemed genuinely interested, but Jarleck wasn’t typically big on small talk. She suspected another motive for the question. Were the townsfolk concerned she might turn into a demon again?
Almost as much to reassure herself as anything, she pulled up her character sheet.
Character: Devon (click to set a different character name)
Level: 23
Base Class: Sorcerer
Specialization: Unassigned
Unique Class: Deceiver
Health: 361/361
Mana: 570/570
Fatigue: 16%
Attributes:
Constitution: 22
Strength: 17
Agility: 17
Charisma: 42
Intelligence: 29
Focus: 16
Endurance: 26
Unspent Attribute Points: 4
Special Attributes:
Bravery: 7
Cunning: 7
Dignity: -1
She brushed the sheet away, relieved. Her Shadowed stat, a manifestation of Zaa’s presence in her mind, was totally gone, as was the abilities page tab holding her demonic capabilities.
Ezraxis was really dead this time.
“I’m feeling better than I have in weeks. None of you need to worry about my alter-ego.” Of course, her attributes were much lower than she was accustomed to since she’d lost all her armor, so until she put on whatever butt-ugly or otherwise-embarrassing armor Gerrald had crafted, they did have reason to be concerned about her competence.
Jarleck grinned. “Good to hear. I didn’t want to ask directly, but when it’s my job to build defenses that keep demons out, it was always a little concerning that one might appear inside the settlement.”
“You definitely have nothing to fear for me, and as far as any chance of planar rifts opening in Stonehaven, the Blackbone Effigy gives the Shrine to Veia enough power to prevent them.”
Recovered from the Fortress of Shadows, the effigy was the second relic of Ishildar that Devon had captured. The little statuette granted extra power to any temple or shrine dedicated to the creator goddess.
Jarleck nodded. “In any case, did you come to survey our defenses?”
“I wouldn’t mind checking them out…looking forward to that upgrade to Castle - Basic. I have a question for you, first, though.”
“Fire away,” Jarleck said.
Devon smirked. Fire away, huh? The village NPCs rarely used real-world idioms. But Jarleck was the settlement’s only quest giver, which meant he had more interaction with the nearby players than anyone. He seemed to be picking up some of their speech patterns.
“Any idea why the hunters are bringing in rats?”
The big man sighed, shoulders slumping. “If I have to eat another bite of Rat ‘n Snake Glop, I might just take up foraging myself. But yeah, I get it. There have just been so many of the vermin near the settlement. Rats, grass snakes, and some unpleasant-looking beetles the size of house cats. I heard Grey and Heldi talking last time they came through the gate after hunting. The wilderness is getting increasingly dangerous due to attacks by awakened creatures. So when the infestation got bad over the last few days, they say it just makes sense to bring in vermin meat instead of high-risk game. I suppose it’s for the best. If it weren’t for them thinning the numbers, we’d have a real problem on our hands.”
Devon waited. Again no quest pop-up appeared. What the heck?
“Can you show me?”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, I think you’ll see you don’t need a guide to spot the problem. But I’m keen for the chance to show you the new drawbridge anyway.”
Right. The drawbridge was finished, and she hadn’t yet seen it. Between her quest to cleanse the Drowned Burrow and the subsequent journey into the underworld, Devon had been away from Stonehaven for quite a few days. When Emerson had pulled her and her guildmates out of the demonic plane, he’d teleported them directly to the Shrine to Veia. Since then, she’d been catching up with people inside the walls and hadn’t checked out Jarleck’s progress.
Jarleck nodded and gestured for her to lead the way out of town.
As usual, the settlement’s main gates were closed and barred, leaving travelers to enter and exit through the wicket gate, a small door set into the wall. She laid a hand on the wall as she passed through. The first defense she’d ordered constructed, the fortification had come a long way. The original timber palisade was now replaced by a twenty-foot-high wall of solid stone.
Outside the main wall, she and Jarleck stepped into the section of bare ground that stood between the main palisade and the curtain wall. This outer wall was now around a meter thick with a rimmed walkway on top. The gates in the two walls were offset, forcing any would-be attackers to travel a long and unprotected distance through the so-called killing field if attempting to breach the defenses through the gates. She hurried across the open area, not wanting to think about how vulnerable she was.
Unlike the main palisade, the curtain wall had no side entrance, but its gate stood open. Devon grinned to see that the new mine they’d taken from an orc horde was already productive. Instead of the timber gate she remembered, two massive iron slabs hung from hinges in the curtain wall. Though they were both wide open, sentries posted on either side of the gates would be able to close them in just a few seconds.
“Wow,” she said as she stepped around one of the slabs and looked through the gate opening. Laid over the dry moat she had helped dig—earning her a score of 7 in the Manual Labor skill—the drawbridge looked straight out of a medieval fairytale. Massive timbers were fastened with heavy iron bolts, and chains with links the size of Jarleck’s huge hands extended to the far side from ratchet and pulley systems atop the curtain wall. On the far end of the drawbridge, wooden posts were topped with carvings of mythical creatures: a chimera on the right, and what looked like a phoenix on the left.
Devon stared at the chimera. “Who came up with the idea for the carvings?”
“Uh, well…” Jarleck shuffled his feet. “Greel said you had a connection with the chimera, and one of the new arrivals from Eltera City is a woodcarver.”
Devon rolled her eyes. If by connection, the lawyer had meant that she’d been embarrassingly trounced by one of the beasts…
“And the phoenix?”
“Well, after Hezbek thumped Greel on the back of the head with her walking stick, she suggested a second carving. To balance things out, she claimed.” Jarleck shrugged. “I just work here.”
Devon sighed. Regardless, the drawbridge was gorgeous.
; “So all we need for the upgrade is to finish the dungeon?”
Jarleck crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s it. Deld tells me the walls are solid. We’ll be ready to put on the roof soon.”
“Make sure you let me know before they install the final section. I want to be here to see us rank up to Castle.”
Jarleck grinned, then sobered as he stepped onto the drawbridge. He indicated the field on either side of the nearby cobblestone roads. “As for the vermin, you see the problem.”
“Holy sh—wow,” Devon said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t believe you…”
The surrounding area was absolutely crawling with mobs. She used Combat Assessment and shook her head. It wasn’t even like the game was trying to present a challenge. Everything in the vicinity was under level 5.
“I don’t get it. It looks like a…like a newbie yard.”
“A what?”
Devon started to say something then stopped as a terrible feeling settled into her chest.
“An adventuring area for inexperienced players.”
“I see. But It makes little sense to me why such a thing would occur here,” Jarleck said.
Devon clenched her jaw, thinking about how the nearest player starting location, Eltera City, had recently been devastated by a demon attack.
“Yeah,” she said slowly and very loudly in case the game was more likely to listen to words spoken at high volume. “Me neither. The last thing we need is a bunch of newbies tripping over their swords when we’re expecting a demon invasion.”
Of course, maybe she was worrying unnecessarily. There could be plenty of reasons the game had sent a plague of rats and grass snakes into her area without offering any quest for getting rid of them.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “Thanks, Jarleck. I’d better be on my—wait, who are they?”
She pointed at a strange group of humans approaching. They looked almost comically like the archetypes of an adventuring party, including someone in wizard’s robes, a tank marching in heavy platemail, a leather-clad rogue, and a healer in white vestments.
“No idea, Mayor,” Jarleck said.
The tank raised a hand in greeting as they neared the drawbridge. “Is this Stonehaven?” he asked.
Devon used Combat Assessment.
Aravon the Valiant - Level 20
Tier 1 Defensive Fighter Guildmaster
“It is,” Jarleck said as Devon just stared.
“Hail and well met, then,” Aravon said. “We’ve come a long way, sent to take up station as your class trainers for new starborn adventurers.”
Damnit.
Chapter Three
DEV.
Devon blinked, nearly tripping over her own feet, then cursed herself. She’d been a little jumpy after returning from the underworld, partially because Zaa’s domain had been so disturbing, partly because she couldn’t stop thinking about an incoming demon horde.
She pulled open Tamara’s message and subvocalized a response. “Yeah? How’s it going, Tam?”
“Pretty good except that it’s something like zero degrees on your balcony.”
Oh, crap. Devon had totally forgotten. She was supposed to go with Tamara and her parents to some Christmas Eve thing downtown. She hadn’t really wanted to accept the invitation but had agreed to come because she couldn’t concoct a believable excuse. Growing up, Christmas had really sucked. The memories always got her down, so for the last few years, she’d refused to acknowledge the holiday. Often that meant catching up on solo quest lines or grinding out reputation with an in-game faction—things that she tended to put off when the rest of her guild was online and ready to take on more exciting objectives.
Of course, in the games she’d played before Relic Online, the developers always shoved in some holiday-themed content. Annoying, but easy to avoid if she stayed out of the major cities.
Regardless, the thought of actually going down and participating in some strange ritual with a herd of ordinary people made her feel ill at ease at best. What if they tried to get her to sing or something? Smiling at overly cheerful strangers sounded terrifying enough.
Anyway, she owed it to Tamara and her parents, especially after they’d been so welcoming.
“Crap. I’m an idiot. Just a second.”
Devon dropped to a cross-legged seat in the grass and focused on the logout button. Moments later, she surfaced into the stale air of her apartment. Devon grimaced. Along with her usual grocery order, the delivery company had sent her a gift basket full of potpourri that smelled like 20-year-old orange peels and cinnamon chewing gum. It hadn’t been too bad at first, but now, even two days after she’d carried it down to the dumpster, her apartment smelled like a bath and body store that had been hit by a candy truck and left to rot.
Devon sprang to her feet, then grabbed the back of the couch when the inevitable headrush struck. She looked down at her gaming uniform, a pair of flannel pants and faded sweatshirt with tattered cuffs, and shrugged. Hopefully Tamara wouldn’t care.
Her friend stood on the balcony in some kind of marshmallow-man coat that looked suited for Arctic exploration. The straps of the backpack she wore to carry her oxygen bottle dug deep channels into the puff. As Tamara cast her a grateful look and stepped through the door into Devon’s kitchen, Devon felt a flash of guilt for dreading this so much. At least she wouldn’t struggle to walk on the flat pavement in the downtown walking mall, her healthy lungs taking in as much oxygen as she needed. Tamara ’s permanent lung damage from a mountain bike crash a couple of months ago made even a simple outing into a difficult journey.
Devon shrugged apologetically. “Really sorry. I just lost track of the day. Won’t take me more than 10 minutes to get ready.”
“No problem,” Tamara said, unzipping her coat as she took a seat at Devon’s table. She slipped off a pair of gloves and stacked them on the table top.
“Any news on the surgery date?” Devon called over her shoulder as she stepped into her bedroom and surveyed the unfortunate results of having put off folding her laundry while she’d been dealing with the whole demon-AI-invading-people’s-brains thing. One overflowing basket held her dirty clothes and another had a stack of relatively clean stuff that looked ready to topple. It was hard to say which way some of the items between the baskets should be categorized.
“Yeah, actually. I’ll give you an update when we’re in the cab. Mom and Dad are meeting us down there.”
Devon picked up a knit sweater from near the clean-ish basket and smelled one of the armpits. She shrugged. Seemed okay. When she pulled a basic black T-shirt from the teetering pile, the mass toppled. But at least the catastrophic pile failure exposed a pair of wool socks that actually matched. She pulled them on, then switched to a pair of jeans and hurried back out to the kitchen.
“Okay, ready. Sorry about that.”
Tamara stared at her.
“What?”
Her friend chewed the corner of her lip. “We’re actually not in that huge of a rush…”
Devon scanned the room, searching for her purse and the winter coat she almost never had to use. There were a few reasons to live in St. George where summer temperatures regularly went over 100, and they included not having to deal with temperatures that could cause frostbite. Only lunatics like Tamara would actually go outside at night in the dark of winter when the temperature had dropped below freezing.
“Your hair, Devon,” Tamara said, glancing at the top of Devon’s head.
Devon blinked, then realized the problem. She’d pretty much gone straight from bed to gaming after scarfing down a few toaster pastries. If the hollow ache in the pit of her stomach wasn’t enough to remind her that she’d played straight through the day, Tamara’s raised eyebrow made it clear. Devon patted the back of her head and felt the massive tangle.
Despite knowing Tamara well by now and trusting her not to abandon their friendship because Devon apparently lacked perso
nal hygiene, Devon still felt the blush in her cheeks.
“Right. Just a minute. Do you…uh…” She gestured toward the cabinets, following a vague notion of what she remembered was the etiquette for hosting guests. “Help yourself to food if you’re hungry.”
A faint look of horror widened Tamara’s eyes, likely produced by her memories of Devon’s usual diet. “No thanks. I’m good. The doctors have me on a pretty tight eating regimen to get ready for the surgery.”
Devon stopped in her tracks on the way to the small bathroom. “Wait. I thought you were still a ways out.”
Tamara grinned. “I got the health go-ahead, and apparently there aren’t a backlog of people signing up for surgery between Christmas and New Year’s. I go in on the 27th.”
“What? Holy crap! That’s awesome.”
Three days until the surgery plus between one and two weeks for recovery and general orientation to the implants. Tamara would be online before the end of January at the very latest. Devon needed to get on with finding crafters to piece together a bike. She wanted to be able to get her friend riding right away.
Of course, hopefully Tamara’s first bike rides would be for fun, not to flee a horde of bloodthirsty demons.
***
At least a third of the people on the walking mall downtown were wearing augmented-reality goggles, most craning their necks to look at images rendered over reality, the particular sights invisible to anyone not connected to the same AR stream. Some were probably experiencing downtown St. George as a Triassic swamp, others as an alien planet. Or maybe with Christmas in a few hours, many were viewing reenactments of Bible stories or tours through Santa’s workshop.
Vault of the Magi: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 5) Page 2
