“So I can become a ... merman?”
“The bite will allow you to breathe underwater, which may be helpful in the future.”
Breathe underwater? I press my hand against the bite mark again.
“It is not the only thing I will give you today. I am unable to go any higher than five – a rule set forth by the developers – but five levels should aid you in your journey; this will also allow you to assign the attribute points your kind so desires.”
Level up! Level up! Level up! Level up! Level up!
+15 attribute points!
Before I can say anything else, I’m swept a few feet backwards by a searing flash of light.
I scream as I tear my armor off my chest. The burning sensation grows in intensity as I run to the shoreline and splash cool water onto myself.
“What the hell did you do?” I ask as smoke steams from the fresh wound on my chest. “This is how you give me levels!?”
“That is how I give you rage,” she says, and even though her eyes are impossible to fully understand, I get the sense she is staring right at me, through me, even.
The singed flesh on my chest boils, hardens, and blackens into something that is a cross between a tattoo and scarification. The water before me suddenly flattens, my reflection crystal clear.
“What’s it say?” I ask, immediately recognizing it is Unigaean script.
“Its direct translation is Last Warrior.”
I run my hand along the scar. It no longer hurts, but as I touch it, I feel a tingling sensation at the depths of my gut. All around me now, the vampiric mermaids begin humming, their jarring sound like a million subsonic crickets trapped in a broom closet.
I raise my hands to my ears and they stop before I can stick my fingers in.
“With this, you will be able to rage once per day.”
“How do I activate it?”
A thin smile forms on her face. “Think the word ‘rage’ and it will activate itself. When you do this, your attack power and your defense power will double. You will also get a SPEED bonus. It will last the duration of whatever battle or trying situation you’ve found yourself in, so use it wisely.”
“Rage,” I say as I flit my fingers along my new scar. “Got it.”
“At this time, at your new level, I’m unable to give you any more advantages. I’m unable to give you armor, better weapons, or an infinite amount of lira. This was a handicap placed on me by the world’s developers, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake other NVA Seeds have made in other worlds in the past.”
“So you called me here to give me power?” I return to my Stater armor and start to put it back on.
“I did.”
“And that’s it? There’s no catch?”
The mermaids start to drop into the water one by one. As they do, the Obelisk reaches her hand out to me. “There is no catch, but please choose what you do next wisely. Come now, I will return you to your traveling companions.”
She reaches her hand out. I approach her as a halo of splintered mirrors forms around her head.
We clasp our hands together, I feel an electric sensation twist around my spine, and I’m suddenly back on the raft.
(^_^)
Quest update!
You’ve met the Obelisk and she has given you a new ability. The Obelisk has pledged her assistance to you in your personal quest to stop the spread of the Red Plague.
I swipe the quest reminder away.
The weather is calm now and the vampiric mermaids I saw earlier are gone. Sam Raid rests with her body against Wolf. She’s more beautiful than ever, her skin bright and pink from the afternoon sun and strands of her short blond hair beating in the breeze.
I pull up my stat sheet to find I’ve indeed moved up five levels.
Oric Rune
Class: Level 14 Player Killer
Subclass: Level 3 Herbalist
INFAMY: 45 Players killed
HP: 1899/1899
HP recovery rate: 3% per minute
ATK: 213 +90
DEF: 193 +69
Fifteen attribute points, huh? Rather than process the craziness that just happened to me, I think for a moment about how I’d like to assign the points.
I definitely want to put more in MIND just to see what will happen, because hell, I didn’t work for these points so I might as well do some experimenting.
So I shoot five points straight into MIND.
If the chaotic ending sequence of the classic Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life” could be put into a physical context, it would aptly describe what it feels like to get a sudden boost of MIND.
As my consciousness expands, so does a sense of compassion within me, which will be totally at odds with my Player Killer class and something I’ll have to come to grips with. Minute concepts of being, semantics, combat knowledge, and physiology come to me.
My brain expands, triggered by a neuronal atom bomb, swelling with ideas and emotions I’ve never had as an avatar. My ability to greatly manipulate my visual thinking makes itself known as I see my body in the dive vat back in my hometown of Cicero, Chicago.
Like a piano played by a hundred fingers, the music of my thoughts is sharp and percussive, expanding as the city streets stretch to Lake Michigan, while the Seluecid Sea lightly brushes at the sides of the raft.
“Whew!” I say, taking a knee.
I’ve had high points in MIND before as other avatars, into the twenties and thirties, but nothing ever felt like this, like I’ve lit the end of stick of dynamite filled with knowledge and shoved it in my ear, letting it explode within my skull cavity.
The thoughts eventually die down and once they do – once I’ve regained control – I return to the task of adjusting my character sheet.
With Willhammer’s Ring on, which I might add is a pretty good-looking piece of jewelry, my WILL is matched to my DEXTERITY. I add three points to this, leaving me seven more attribute points to assign.
As soon as I do this, I feel my agility increase and a sense of accomplishment fills me. I will do this; I will save Unigaea, I remind myself.
And somewhere, in the back of my head, a prudent voice reminds me that my quest for vengeance may overpower my quest to save the world if I’m not careful.
I’ll make the revenge quick, I tell the voice.
I throw three points in STRENGTH, and as soon as I do my muscles bulge and pulsate. Figuring it can’t hurt any, I put the final four points in SPEED.
Attributes
STRENGTH: 13
WILL: 13
DEXTERITY: 13
MIND: 11
SPEED: 9
A quick wave of my hand in front of my face and I assume I’m faster now. Looked faster, anyway. I’ll have to test it.
Only one more thing to do.
I crawl to the side of the raft and look down at the water. A deep breath in, I bend forward with my eyes clenched shut and stick my head beneath the waves. I hold my breath as I’m accustomed to, and once I’m ready, I breathe out and take a deep breath in.
Instead of water swelling into my mouth, I feel digital oxygen filling my lungs.
I give it another go, this time more relaxed than before. As the raft continues to float towards the southern continent, I keep my head under the water, breathing in and out.
I could definitely get used to this.
Chapter Three: Vampiric Mer-Dog
I turn my head and see the wavy outline of Sam Raid hovering over me. I whip my head out of the water and press my long wet hair out of my face.
“Um … ” She bursts out laughing.
“What? I was testing something.”
“Well, you could use a bath … ”
“Bath?” I sniff my armpit. “I’m still fresh. Wait,” I say as I take in the casual expression on her face. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
“I remember taking a nap, and now we appear to be just drifting along, which brings me to another point: why aren’t you paddling? I told
you I don’t mind doing it.”
“Sam, touch your neck.”
“My neck?”
She looks at me suspiciously as I show her my scar.
“Jesus, Oric! What happened!?”
Her hand instinctively comes to her neck, and she lets out a little yelp. Wolf emits a panicked yip in response. After telling them both to cool down, I begin explaining what has transpired over the last hour or so.
“So ... you met the NVA Seed?” she asks, momentarily forgetting her bite marks.
“Yes, the Obelisk, as she’s known here. She’s supporting us.”
“By sending vampiric mermaids after us?”
“Like I said, relax, Sam, it’s not as bad as it seems. Just, you know what, I’ll let you see for yourself. Put your head underwater.”
Sam raises an eyebrow at me.
“I’m serious here, just see for yourself.”
“Is the water cold?” she asks as a sly grin forms on her face.
“Dunk your head or I throw you in. Which would you prefer?”
“Ha! I’d like to see you try to throw me in.” She places both hands on her hips.
“Is that an invitation? ’Cause I don’t think it’d be very hard for me to toss you into the water.”
She cocks her head at me. “Are you challenging me?”
“All right, Sam, you win,” I say as she stares a damn hole through me. “I won’t toss you in.”
“Good.”
Sam marches right past me, gets down on her knees, glances up to me one more time to let me know she’s still highly suspicious of what she’s about to do, and dunks her head in. She comes up almost immediately. “That was crazy!” She does it again and comes up nearly a minute later.
“Cool, huh?”
“Aside from the bite mark, yeah, it’s pretty cool.” She uses her hand to shake the water out of her short blond hair. “What about Wolf? Was he bitten?”
“Yep.” We move over to the Tagvornin canine and I crouch down in front of him. “You okay, buddy?”
He whines, and I place my hand on the scruff around his neck. I massage my fingers in and find the two vampire marks. “Well, Wolf, I’m happy to report that you are now a vampiric mer-dog.”
Sam laughs. “That’s one way to put it.”
He glances up to me with his big blue-green eyes and my heart melts.
In that instant he looks like a puppy, a helpless little thing barely able to stand let alone take care of himself. This is hard to stomach juxtaposed with the big, bad wolf I’ve seen maim people to death on multiple occasions, tearing their necks out one shred of flesh at a time.
It’s funny how that works, how one can go from innocuous to intimidating at the drop of a hat.
“We’ll test your abilities later,” I finally tell him. “For now, we need to get to the coast before another storm comes.”
(^_^)
Smooth sailing the rest of the way, and I get the feeling that our path is being shepherded – that our newfound guardian angel, the Obelisk, is buzzing somewhere over the water in her dragonfly form, keeping an eye on our passage and sending the sea dragons, who will always be lurking on the periphery, to another pair of hapless fools.
I say hapless given the task we’ve decided to undertake, a task Sam has now repeatedly said is right up her alley.
We bear the weight of the Obelisk’s faith.
“But seriously, Sam, you could just go back to doing what you were doing, rebuilding the city of Tangka and whipping the militia into shape for the next time the Tags decide to drop in uninvited.”
“And leave all the fun to you?” She waves this thought away. “You seriously underestimated my militiamen during the battle for Tangka, and you continue to underestimate them. Jeff of Hays has taken charge of the militia while I’m away, and if he doesn’t feel up to the task, Ralph or Jay will step in.”
“That’s if Jay isn’t in a tree.”
“He doesn’t climb trees all the time! And besides, this ‘save the world’ goal is your thing, your personal quest.”
“I’m aware, and that’s what concerns me,” I say as I press the paddle through the water.
I can see the shoreline now; I’ve never been more ready in my life to get off the raft. My water escapades over the last week have been trying, to say the least. That said, not many can say they’ve bested a sea dragon, been bitten by vampiric mermaids, met the NVA Seed of Unigaea, and lived to tell the tale.
I clear my throat. “What I’ve decided to do will, in the end, put me face to face with the source code bomb. You and Wolf as well.”
“I told you a dozen times already, Oric, I’m down.” She smirks at me. “And what else does Wolf have to do?”
“But what about your smuggling operations? Don’t you have something better you could be doing?”
“I’ve been smuggling ever since the Proxima Pilot Program was introduced. That’s eleven years, Oric, since 2058. I deserve a break. It’s like you don’t want me on this journey.”
“No!” I say a bit too loud. I clear my throat. “It’s not that, not that at all, Sam. I want you here – hell, Wolf wants you here. And Deathdale doesn’t know it yet, but we could use your help.”
“Yes, Deathdale,” she says, her grin fading.
“She’s not as bad as she seems.” An image of the eye-patched Solar Mage comes to me, her short gray hair, her impractical armor shaped like an A-line dress, her heeled boots. “But that’s beside the point. I’m just trying to tell you if you have something better to do, something more profitable, I totally understand. Do that, ’cause this is going to get crazy.”
“What could be more profitable than going to the Rune Lands and taking on the source code bomb? Speaking of which, did the Obelisk give you any advice on how to actually stop the spread of the bomb?”
“Nope.”
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She did give me a pretty sweet tattoo on my chest. Forgot to tell you about that. Five levels too. Can’t complain there.”
Sam shakes her head. “You’re a ridiculous man, you know that?”
“It’s better than being incredulous. Actually, I’m pretty incredulous too, especially when it comes to folksy bullshit and legends.”
“Right. Why am I sensing that you have underlying anger towards folk religions?”
“Ah, I don’t really, just not into superstition.”
“Okay. I don’t know what we’re arguing about then.”
“Are we arguing?” I motion for her to paddle. “You ready to finally do a little work?”
She laughs and walks next to me, making sure to nearly knock me into the water with her hip. Wolf moans and buries his head even further between his paws.
“You’ve got to be careful on such a small raft,” Sam says as she steers us closer to the shoreline. “And seriously, Oric, unless you want me to call you Eric, stop asking me if I’m serious about joining you. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.”
“You’ll have to log out at some point.”
“I have my own vat.”
“Really? Must be nice.”
Sam jams the paddle deep into the water and pushes us forward with real vigor. The shore is a stone’s throw away; I can almost taste solid ground. She gives the raft another vigorous push forward.
“You’re strong!”
“Is that an invitation for an arm wrestling match?” she asks over her shoulder.
“I was pretty drunk the last time I arm wrestled someone. It was in Rial Resort Town. Rich narco-orcs from the western splits love to get drunk and challenge each other to strength contests. Crazy night.”
“Did you win?”
Before I can answer, Wolf takes a running leap and lands on the shore. He circles around for a moment, huffing as his water anxiety leaves him. Driftwood is scattered along the shore; a circle of rocks marks a place where someone recently set up camp.
“I lost miserably,” I say after I’ve joined Wolf on land.
Sam throws me the rope and I pull the raft ashore. I look around for a place to hide it, wishing that Unigaea had Bags of Holding.
“So you’d like to replicate your loss tonight?” she asks as soon as she’s ashore. Sam Raid stands with her hands on her hips, a gesture I’ve come to recognize as uniquely hers.
“Ha! Sure.”
“Good, ’cause look what I got.” She pulls a bottle of champagne out of thin air.
“Where the hell did you get that?” I grin at her.
“I stole it from Florin’s little banquet.” She shrugs. “What did you expect? I’m a smuggler.”
“That’s some good stuff,” I say once I’m close enough to take the bottle from her. I hold the bottle up as if it were Simba, admiring the way the manufacturer has sealed it with Stater blue wax.
“You think Deathdale will be there?” she asks as we move the raft to a small clearing of fallen palm leaves.
“Hopefully.”
“And where did you say we’re going again? Your hut?”
“Yeah, my Walden’s Pond.”
“What?”
I start covering the raft with fallen fronds. “Long story short: Before I met you, I needed to get to Stater. I met some fishermen who told me some bandits were harassing them. I killed the bandits and took their hut. That’s where I sent Deathdale after the battle.”
“That’s right, you told me that. You didn’t tell me the backstory, though.”
“Sometimes it’s better that way.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. I don’t believe I’ve said anything profound, but by our silence, it feels that way. The breeze that comes ripples the tops of the waves. Seagulls fly over the water, swooping down occasionally to see what they can find.
Wolf licks his lips.
“We don’t have time,” I tell him.
Sam looks from Wolf to the seagulls. “He likes seagulls?”
“They’re not so bad. Taste a bit like chicken.”
“Gross, only an idiot would eat a seagull.”
“Well then, you’re looking at two idiots,” I say as I hook my thumb at Wolf.
“Give Wolf some jerky. You and I can eat the Unigaean MREs I’ve prepared. They’re good, trust me.”
(^_^)
The Drachma Killers (The Last Warrior of Unigaea Book 2) Page 2
