by Kyle Johnson
Mathias silently wondered about that. In most games, your Class trainer would teach you about things like training your Stats, advancing your Skills, and what sort of options you might have for more Advanced Classes or specializations later. If you were lucky, they might even help you get those more powerful Classes, or at least send you to a trainer who could.
In SO, though, Mathias’ trainer – an older veteran who no was no longer able to serve in the army and was somewhat disgruntled about it – had barely condescended to teach him basic Spear Mastery and Medium Armor Mastery. He’d given Mathias just enough instruction to grant him the Skills and had sent him out into the forest to hunt. Mathias figured he’d be facing something simple, like foxes or coyotes, but his first outing had gotten him hunted by a wolfpack and sent quickly back for respawn.
After that, he’d put together this party, all of them having had similar experiences with their trainers. They’d each been given just enough instruction to function in their Classes and had been sent out on their own. Together, they’d managed to complete those first training Quests, but they found that their trainers had nothing more for them. Instead, they’d been left to their own devices and had been easy prey for Keryth and his promises of gold and XP to any Traveler who joined him.
Thinking back on it, Mathias had a feeling it was probably a question of reputation. He’d assumed he – and every other player – had started in the Elven Realms with neutral reputation, but what if they hadn’t? What if all the Travelers started with negative reputation? He also knew that some of the players hadn’t responded well to the lack of freely offered Quests, easy gold, and lackluster training and had gone on something of a rampage; NPCs did provide XP and could be looted for gold when they were slain, after all. What if their actions had reflected badly on every player, at least as far as the elves were concerned?
While that wasn’t fair in normal game terms, it was realistic. If a bunch of people came into his town, all from the same place, and a group of them started going around breaking stuff and attacking his neighbors, he wouldn’t be too quick to trust the rest of them, either. Mathias was honest enough with himself to admit that he and his party also hadn’t really gone out of their way to earn the elves’ trust. They’d just assumed that the game was set up this way for a reason and hadn’t looked deeper into the matter.
Apparently, Aranos had figured it out and had managed to score massive reputation points with the elves. Now, he was leveraging those points into getting training for all the players, even though they’d attacked him at their first meeting. It was…well, it was pretty cool of the guy, and Mathias figured they all owed him big-time.
Aranos had even gotten them this Quest from the House of Twilight, where the Keepers of Eredain lived. As far as Mathias could tell, the Keepers were something like elven Rangers, protecting the Forest from invasions of Shadowborn creatures. Ever since Aranos had saved the city, though, something about the Forest had changed, and now the Keepers spent their nights hunting in the Blightlands. Mathias and the other Travelers had volunteered to take up the job of keeping the Forest safe for them, and the House was paying them a bounty for every Shadowborn hide they brought back.
It was a decent bounty, too: a bronze link and some reputation for each amarok or every 10 balayangs they brought back, or a silver disc for each pouka they killed. Gwin had the presence of mind to ask a bit more closely about the creatures, and they’d discovered that poukas were something like giant ravens. They hadn’t seen any of those, yet, but there was still time tonight.
A sudden flash on his party screen drew Mathias’ attention. As Party Leader, he had a heads-up display that showed the general location and state of each of his party members, and the red dot blinking in the corner of his vision had come from that screen. He pulled it up and noticed that Rhiannon’s LP bar had suddenly taken a serious hit: she was down 20% of her LP already, and it was falling as he watched. Quickly, he called up her location and roused the others.
“Rhiannon’s in trouble!” he shouted, hefting his spear and pointing it in the direction his display showed the woman. “We must rescue her! With me, stalwarts!”
He noticed Gwin roll her eyes as she and Yevgeny followed him, charging into the brush without any pretense at Stealth, but he ignored her. Mathias loved to role-play his character in-game, and Mathias the Lancer was an overly honorable, highly dramatic persona. He tended to overreact to things and had quite a lot of flair…really, he was the opposite of quiet Matthew from the accounting department IRL. He was also a lot of fun to play.
They’d only made it about fifty feet into the scrub when Mathias froze, causing one of the others to run into his back. From the deep grunt that accompanied the impact, he assumed it was Yevgeny, but he wasn’t worried about that. His eyes were firmly fastened on the pair of amaroks that had just emerged from the forest in front of the party and who were moving slowly toward him, their heads low and deep growls rumbling in their throats. Each wolf was black-furred, with gleaming red eyes and stood about as tall as a pony or small horse. What surprised him, though, was that he’d seen the creatures at all; normally, the amaroks attacked from ambush and weren’t big on frontal assaults.
“Behind us, Mat!” Mathias glanced over his shoulder at Gwin’s cry and saw three more of the wolf-like creatures emerging from the shadows behind the party, penning them in.
“Yevgeny, give me some fire in the front,” he ordered tersely as he realized that the creatures had deliberately trapped them. “Hopefully, that’ll keep them cautious enough to let me deal with the ones in back. Gwin, keep me…”
Mathias’ words broke off as twin spikes of pain lanced through his temples. He swore as he felt the familiar scream of a flight of balayangs and glanced up to see a half-dozen of the huge bats swooping overhead. Gwin cried out from the pain, but Yevgeny had dropped, his lower End Stat insufficient to withstand the stunning effects of even so small a flight of the creatures. Shit, are they working together? he wondered silently as he hefted his spear. How the hell did that happen?
His thoughts scattered as the first of the amaroks charged, and Mathias the Lancer prepared to be sent for respawn.
Chapter 3
As Aranos helped break the camp the Ascendants had made, he glanced through his older notifications. Most were things like combat logs and such that he merely scanned through, just to be sure that nothing strange or inexplicable was happening, but two were fairly important and two others were things he really needed to deal with and had been putting off:
You have slain jubokko! 1,138 XP gained (Base 4,552 split between party members)
Quest Updated: To Redeem the Fallen
The Elder of the House of the Sickle has asked you to find and Redeem fallen lands or races.
Objective: Redeem a location or a race of plant, animal, or beast lost to the Feast of Virnal.
Difficulty: S
Objectives Completed: You have Redeemed a lost race (oilarie)
Reward: 5000 XP, increased influence in elven lands, global reputation
The XP gains were nice, but what he needed to focus on were the two older notifications:
Evolution: By reaching level 10, your fenrin Companion has achieved her adult form! As an Adult Fenrin, her Stat gains per level double, she gains 5 bonus Stat points per level, and her mental faculties significantly improve. You may also choose two Perks for her from the following list:
Armor Skin: Your Companion’s hide provides them with a Defense bonus equal to double their Endurance Stat.
Great Agility: Your Companion gains a 50% bonus to their Agility Stat
Great Strength: Your Companion gains a 50% bonus to their Strength Stat
Great Endurance: Your Companion gains a 50% bonus to their Endurance Stat
Great Perception: Your Companion gains a 50% bonus to their Perception Stat
Hunter in the Dark: Your Companion’s Perception Stat is doubled for the purposes of Tracking only
Deadl
y Bite: Your Companion gains a 50% bonus to their base bite damage
Divine Regeneration: Your Companion heals at double their resting LP regen rate, even while in combat.
Congratulations!
For reaching level 5 in your Advanced Class, you can choose a Class Perk!
Select from the following:
Arcane Aura: You radiate an aura out to 10’ that resists hostile magic. All hostile Spells take a penalty equal to [(Charisma-10) / 4] % to damage and duration to you and any allies within your aura.
Great Channeler: You can channel Spells with heightened efficiency. Your Mana Mastery Skill level is doubled for the purposes of determining SP cost and Spell damage when channeling a Spell
Greater Ascendant: Your Spells below the Adept level grow 100% faster. Spells of the Adept level or higher grow 50% faster.
Sacrificial Caster: You can burn LP to improve your Spell power, gaining a 5% boost to Spell power per 5% of your max LP sacrificed. Lost LP heal normally.
True Elementalist: You gain a percentage bonus equal to double your Class level to Spell power, casting speed, and opposed checks to all Elemental-based Spells and take a penalty equal to half your Class level to all other Spells.
Really, procrastinating over his selection of those Perks didn’t make much sense, if he was being honest. He’d been overwhelmed by everything that had caused him to level up, and faced with too many decisions, he’d put this one off, intending to see to it the next morning. His new duties as a Patriarch and dealing with the Travelers had distracted him, but in the end, he’d simply forgotten. It was a bit of a stupid mistake, since the Perks might have helped them in their hunt the night before.
His Class Perk wasn’t even too difficult a decision; he just hadn’t taken the time to really look at the options. Sacrificial Caster didn’t make much sense for him: he already had a massive boost to his Spell Power, and adding 5% or even 50% wasn’t going to give him as much oomph as it might for another caster. The same went for True Elementalist; he already had significant bonuses to his arcane casting, and the boost wouldn’t be worth suffering a penalty to his non-elemental Spells. That was especially true now that he was working toward mastering Enhanced Mana Aspects, and he had a feeling those Spells would be more powerful but also more mana-intensive.
That left Arcane Aura, Great Channeler, and Greater Ascendant. Arcane Aura sounded cool, but as he examined it carefully, he thought it probably wouldn’t be very useful. Sure, it would give something like a 20% penalty to the damage and duration of enemy Spells, but it only extended 10’. Plus, his Cha score would have to be over 200 just to boost the penalty to 50%; by the time his Cha was that high, he was hoping that he’d have figured out some sort of magic-dampening Spell that would do the same thing, so it would probably end up being a waste of a Perk.
Great Channeler and Greater Ascendant were both good choices, though. His Mana Mastery was at the Expert Level, and its growth would no doubt slow down drastically, now. The kind of boost Great Channeler offered would make his Spells a lot more powerful, at least the ones he could channel. At the same time, Greater Ascendant would make his Spells level faster, which would also make them more powerful. In fact, he’d noticed that when his Spells jumped a rank – from Student to Adept, for example – they sometimes doubled in power. Eventually, that would give him a greater benefit than the boost to his Mana Mastery would. Of course, that decided Aranos, and he quickly chose Greater Ascendant. He’d see smaller gains today but greater ones in the long run, and he’d always preferred to play with the long-term in mind.
Silma’s Perk choices were a bit more difficult, and he decided to include the fenrin in the decision-making process. She was the one who would be using the Perks, after all, so it only seemed fair that she get to choose what they were.
Those are all good choices, she acknowledged when he explained the options to her. Thank you for asking for my thoughts. It sounds like it is a choice of what role I wish to play in the party, isn’t it?
Pretty much, he replied. You can choose something like Armor Skin or Great Endurance and become a second tank with Saphielle. You can pick Deadly Bite, Great Strength, or Great Agility and work with Geltheriel doing damage. Or you can choose Great Perception or Hunter in the Dark to focus on scouting. Divine Regeneration doesn’t focus on anything, really, but it’s also probably the least powerful of the Perks.
The silver wolf sat quietly for a moment, her face unreadable but her gaze unfocused in what Aranos took for thought. I believe I serve the party best as a Scout, pack leader. I won’t ever tank as well as Saphielle, no matter my Perks, because she’s built her Class to do just that. I might be able to do damage like Geltheriel does, but no elf will ever be able to Track and move in Stealth as well as I can. I would prefer Great Perception and Hunter in the Dark.
Aranos considered her words and decided to just give her Great Perception. The fenrin’s Per Stat was naturally high and would grow with each level, meaning that a 50% boost would give her 3 points of Per each level instead of 2, and any bonus points he added to that Stat would count for even more. That wasn’t why he chose that Perk, though; gaining a 100% bonus to Per with Hunter in the Dark sounded great, but it was only for Tracking…and he would still be a better Tracker than she was. In all likelihood, even with the Per boost, he always would be, at least until she reached the Master ranks, which could be years down the road. Having a higher overall Perception would be more useful for her, since she could already detect things much farther away than the elves could thanks to her enhanced senses. Boosting those senses would give a better payoff overall.
For her other Perk, though, he chose Great Agility. Not only would that allow her to run faster, it would also increase her chances of escaping if she got into trouble while scouting. That was always one of the downsides of being a scout in a party: hiding was your best defense, but if you got caught, you were probably too far from the party to hold out until they arrived. Scouts didn’t usually have fantastic Defense scores and preferred to flee from combat whenever possible. That made Agil almost as important as Per to them, and he was certain that Silma would agree.
The party began their trek back through the Blightlands, returning to the Stronghold. Dawn would be breaking soon, and they needed to get back to the Stronghold for their daily training before gathering to leave for the High Roads. Aranos planned to head to the manor, first, to train his Wis and Int Stats before the Travelers got started for the day. Of course, those Stats now would only go up by a point every other day or so now that they were over 100, so that was probably his least important training. In fact, they would go up a point one day, nothing the next, and two points the day after that. Then, he’d have another day of no gain, and the process would start over again. Still, even those small gains were better than nothing.
He also needed to visit the High Dreamer one last time before they left the Stronghold; his Dreamstriding Skill was close to reaching the Expert level, and once it was there, he could use it freely without failing the Quest the High Dreamer had given him. If he didn’t get it there, he wouldn’t be able to use the Skill at all until he got back to Eredain, which would kind of suck. It was the easiest and simplest way for him to communicate with Phil, and without it, the two of them would be out of touch until they reached Antas.
Jhaeros would definitely want to see him before he left, to get one last bout of sadistic pleasure from torturing the Sorcerer under the guise of training. Aranos had to somehow try and talk the elf out of the training crystals he’d been using if he wanted to keep up his Grueling regimen and keep getting the bonuses that entailed, as well. He didn’t think that would be easy, but with his high reputation with the House of Twilight and his exceptional Charisma, he thought it might be possible.
Finally, he needed to sit down and spend some time Enchanting more items for Lorsan to put on the market. He didn’t think he’d need to create more than a handful of them – his High Enchantment Skill gave his creations
a considerable bonus to their power, which he assumed would translate into a boost to their value – but crafting them would take time. And time, needless to say, was at something of a premium for Aranos.
The party began the trek back to the Stronghold, but it wasn’t long before Aranos’ senses began screaming at him that something was amiss. Generally, the trip through the forest was uneventful, since the Keepers hunted down any Shadowborn in the Claimed Lands and drove out large, dangerous predators. In fact, Aranos kept his Tracking Skill active mostly out of habit, idly noting the passages of various animals or the elven Keepers, who would probably be unhappy if they knew how easily he could track them.
His Skill wasn’t showing him these fairly innocuous signs, though. Instead, he could see the marks left by dozens of Shadowborn creatures, mostly the lupine amaroks, all heading deeper into the forest. Glancing up, he picked out the faint traces left by swarms of balayangs, as well, and a chill passed down his spine as he saw the abundant traces. A single glance at Geltheriel showed that she, too, had noticed the incursions, and her face was troubled.
“Oathbinder, it appears that the Shadowborn assaulted the Stronghold last night. I had hoped that, with the Tree-heart being healed, they would shun our defenses for a time.”
Saphielle looked around somewhat fruitlessly; the guardswoman didn’t have the Tracking Skill, because she’d simply never needed it. “Are these the tracks of Shadowborn? I believe you told Elder Golloron that these creatures would no longer invade our forests, Redeemer. Were you mistaken?”
Aranos frowned as he examined the tracks more carefully. “We don’t know that they attacked the Stronghold,” he pointed out. “We just know that a bunch of amaroks and balayangs were in the forest last night. We’ll keep an eye open as we head back, but I don’t want to spend a bunch of time trying to Track each of these packs. We’ve got too much to do today already.”
