“Something’s bothering you,” Hezbek said after watching the player roll the cart to a growing mound of stone fragments and dump the contents.
Devon blinked. Had the medicine woman sensed her worry about in-game aging?
She decided to play dumb. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, it’s not like you to complain about new spells. But it’s more than that… Ever since you returned from the mountains, you seem to be missing your usual spark.”
“I didn’t complain about Downdraft.” As Devon mentioned the name, she pulled up the ability descriptions for the new spells Hezbek had taught her.
Ability: Teleport - Tier 1
You dissolve into a stream of energy capable of stepping through folds in the material plane to reach bindstones you have previously encountered.
Cost: 205 mana
Cooldown: 3 days
Ability: Downdraft - Tier 1
You call down a ferocious gust of wind, knocking back all enemies within 10 meters. On each successful hit, 10% chance to apply a two-second Knocked Down effect to the target. Percentage chance scales with Intelligence.
Cost: 75 mana
Cooldown: 40 seconds
They were decent additions to her repertoire. Downdraft, especially, could be useful when she got in over her head. She’d been using a knockback effect with good success lately, sending herself flying backward and out of monster range when one of her sun-based Shadow Puppets shattered. But it had been tricky to control and required a lot of combo-ing.
“You haven’t complained, true. But you didn’t seem particularly excited either. And don’t change the subject. What’s bothering you, child?”
Devon sighed. “I guess I’ve just been letting my worries get to me.”
Explaining her fears about the future of Relic Online to Hezbek would be needlessly cruel, like aliens coming to Earth and complaining to people that their world was just a simulation and the admins of the cosmic server farm might be forced to shut it down.
But it wasn’t just her broader concerns about Relic Online that had poured vinegar over her mood. She worried about Stonehaven as well, her thoughts often cycling over their defenses and the likelihood of another demon attack. Given the terrible events in Eltera City and Frostheim, not to mention reports of attacks on smaller settlements, she’d started to think it was just luck that had spared them another attack. The citizens of Stonehaven relied on her for protection, a big responsibility.
And speaking of Stonehaven, she worried about falling out of touch. She recognized most of her new followers by appearance but couldn’t call them by name when they passed her on a new cobblestone path and touched their forehead in greeting. She used to know enough about everyone to return the greeting and ask about details of their lives, but not anymore. The flow of refugees from Eltera City had slowed, but still Stonehaven received at least one new citizen every day. Out of necessity, Devon had deputized Jarleck to administer the oath of loyalty. As master of fortifications and the only quest giver for the hamlet, his work kept him near the front gate where he could greet each arrival.
Not that it was bad that Stonehaven had grown so much. Sometimes Devon liked to climb the switchbacking ramp to the clifftop that guarded the settlement’s back. Looking down, she was often amazed at what she’d built. Amazed and proud.
She just wished she had more time to keep up with everything.
Hezbek tapped the end of her walking stick against the cobblestone path. “You worry too much about us,” she said. “Look at this. We’re an honest to goodness mark on the map now. Soon enough, these paths will be streets, and the tribe that you found living in scrappy huts lorded over by a dimwit ogre will have founded a lasting home. Judging by the steps you’ve taken so far, I’d be willing to say that, generations from now, Stonehaven City will still be a sanctuary for non-starborn like me. An example of the way to do things right.”
Devon swallowed, trying to avoid thinking of future generations living here. The notion just returned her thoughts to Hezbek’s mortality.
She ran her eyes over the settlement, taking in the bustle of construction and commerce. Shortly after returning from the mountains, she’d promoted the original craftspeople from the Tribe of Uruquat to management positions in their trades. Each checked in with her for high-level decisions on city advancement and the production of goods, but they managed the details without input.
Usually.
Recently, her meetings with Prester, the head carpenter, had become twice-daily affairs. The crunch to build housing for the new arrivals was taxing their resources, and without Prester’s savant-like rate of skill gain in carpentry, people would be sleeping in the moat. When she spotted him standing beside a sawhorse and giving instruction to a new apprentice, she made a note to check in with him after her time with Hezbek.
“That paladin, Torald, has been good for this place,” Hezbek mentioned almost too casually.
Devon snapped her gaze to the medicine women’s wrinkled face. Her words formed and died and formed again. “Were things really that much better when he was mayor?”
While she’d been venturing through the mountains, Devon’s account had been suspended due to a misunderstanding at E-Squared. The suspension had erased her ownership of Stonehaven, leaving it without a leader. Torald had filled in, but he’d ceded control the moment she’d returned home.
Hezbek blinked as if surprised by Devon’s tone. Her face softened as she met Devon’s eyes. “I’m sorry, child. I didn’t realize how that might have sounded. No, I just mean that he provides a good example for the other starborn in the region. With everything happening in the world these past few weeks, it sometimes seems like a miracle that we have such cooperation with the nearby starborn. The loss of Eltera City as a hub leaves many of them without a base. You know from the Stoneshoulder Clan how poorly it could have gone for our kind when the starborn arrived. There’s something about them…you’ve seen it, I imagine. They’ll mindlessly slaughter every animal in sight regardless of whether they need the meat. They dump off stacks of hides that flood the economy and make it impossible for simple hunters and trappers to survive...”
The medicine woman trailed off, her gaze distant. Devon sensed she wasn’t done talking, though, so she held her silence.
Hezbek’s eyes returned to her hands on the walking stick. “Back before what I now think of as the starborn era, hunters would take only enough to put food on their family’s table. We’ve always known that killing too many of the deer or foxes or tree vipers means no babies next season, and the season after that nothing at all. But that sort of thinking just doesn’t seem to occur to starborn.”
Devon nodded. Hezbek was describing the classic behavior of killing mob after mob in search of loot and experience. It worked in other games because the spawners produced an inexhaustible supply of NPCs. Relic Online was more realistic, meaning that resources in the game world could become depleted. She wouldn’t be surprised if the game bent the rules a little bit to accommodate player demand, but she doubted the NPCs had changed their tactics to adventure like players did. They probably had no concept of grinding through mobs for the small rewards offered.
“So Torald and his crew do better with resource management than average starborn?” she asked. “I guess I haven’t been paying that much attention.”
“Well, that’s part of it, I guess,” Hezbek said. “But I was just giving an example. It’s their general attitude. I often find the paladin and his friends in discussions with your leadership, making sure the players’ actions are for the mutual benefit of their camp and our settlement.”
Devon tapped fingertips on her knees. She had to admit that she was lucky his group had decided to encamp here. It could be worse in a hundred different ways, and the only way she could think that it could’ve worked out better was if players had never found Stonehaven in the first place. And sometimes, she wondered if that was even true.
It didn’t happen very often, but with Hailey and Chen off exploring the world, she’d felt the occasional flash of desire for companionship with people who understood the real world too.
“I see your point,” Devon said. “I’ll make a point to thank him next time he’s in town.”
Hezbek raised an eyebrow. “Have you still not been out to their camp? There’s even a road now.”
Devon shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”
“Well, it’s time you visited. And to give you some incentive, I refuse to let you manage my list of work orders until you head out there and see what they’ve done with the area.”
Devon’s brow crinkled in confusion. “Honestly, that’s not a very good ultimatum. I hardly ever tell you which potions to make anyway.”
Hezbek chuckled. “But when you see what I’ve cooked up with those ingredients you brought back from the mountains, you may become a little more interested.”
Devon rotated on the stump where she was sitting. “What did you discover?” If the new potions didn’t taste like they’d been vomited up by a carrion eater—the situation with almost all Hezbek’s creations so far—she’d love to start playing around with them.
Hezbek smirked. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
Hezbek is offering you a quest: Stop being such a shut-in.
Objective: Visit the player encampment outside of Stonehaven.
Bonus objective: Actually talk to people while you’re there. (0/5 players engaged in conversation.)
Reward: Regain access to the medicine woman’s list of available potions.
Accept? Y/N
“I’m guessing this is one of those ‘for your own good’ type of situations,” she said as she accepted the quest.
Hezbek hummed agreement. “Never had my own daughter…” The old woman paused and fixed Devon with kind eyes. “But I figure seventy-two years of walking this world gives me some license to press my wisdom on the closest thing I’ve found.”
Devon swallowed, abruptly overwhelmed. Did the woman really think of her that way? She felt tears well, and she looked away before the medicine woman could notice them.
She cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll head out there tomorrow.”
“Good then,” Hezbek said, gripping her walking stick with an arthritic hand and grunting as she stood.
“Seventy-two…” Devon said. “You must have seen a lot. I feel like I’ve never had a chance to ask much about your life.”
The woman nodded. “Perhaps I could tell you a tale or two while we look through my new concoctions… After you visit the starborn camp, of course.”
Planting her stick firmly on the cobblestone path, she started hobbling away.
***
Devon headed across the settlement to catch Prester for an update on construction. While walking, she pulled up her skills interface. If she was ever going to get those basic stats up, she needed to either go full monk style, shutting out the world while she focused on nothing but grinding, or she needed to try to fit her skilling-up into regular play. As she scanned the list of skills she'd already gained, her toe caught on a cobblestone and she nearly went down.
Devon sighed. Too bad there wasn't a skill for a "walking while chewing gum" type of talent.
Stepping off the path, she held still while she finished examining the tab on her character sheet. In real life, people would probably take a wide detour around someone standing motionless with a distant look in their eyes, maybe twitching their fingers as they navigated an invisible-to-others interface. In Relic Online, NPCs and other players considered the behavior normal. If anything, her followers seemed to gain a little morale boost when seeing her stare off into space. They must have understood this meant she was doing important leadery things.
Tier 1
Tracking: 8
Stealth: 3
Sprint: 8
Bartering: 6
Unarmed Combat: 3
Manual Labor: 7
Foraging: 1
Animal Taming: 1
Foreign Language Learning: 2
Felsen Language: 1
Orcish Language: 8
Climbing: 8
Tier 2:
One-handed Slashing: 14
One-handed Piercing: 16
Combat Assessment: 10
Darkvision: 11
Tier 3:
Leadership: 20
Special Skills:
Improvisation: 6
She sighed. Definitely pathetic. Sure, some of the skills that were still stuck at Tier 1 weren't that critical to competent play. It was almost embarrassing to have 7 points in Manual Labor, for instance. And she didn't even want to revisit the game's stupid sense of humor in starting her with an innate skill in Orcish that had put her at 8 after her first skill-up. But Stealth and Unarmed Combat at 3? That was inexcusable.
Brushing away the interface, she glanced at her immediate surroundings. The cobblestone path cut through knee-high grass that lapped against the settlement's buildings and hid foundations. Unfortunately for the purposes of sneaking around—the only real way to up her Stealth skill—the ecosystem shift from jungle to savanna had thinned the trees and undergrowth in the area. Basically, the new environment was great for hiding if you were less than eighteen inches tall. Not so good for full-grown women.
Unless...
Eyes darting over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being watched, Devon crept to the nearest building, a shop selling unprocessed crafting components such as hide and unpolished moss agate from the quarry. Once beneath the shadow of the eaves, she cast Fade to temporarily boost her Stealth. Of course, the effect would break as soon as she started to move around. But she couldn't exactly start sneaking in the middle of an open field and hope to succeed.
Assured that no one was nearby to see the grass rustling, Devon dropped to her hands and knees and then slithered down onto her belly. She started combat crawling through the grass, and the Fade effect canceled, leaving her visible but well hidden.
With her chipmunk's eye view, Devon noticed that the grass wasn't actually as thick as it seemed. At the base of the long stems, it grew in tufts, meaning that, with care, she could place her elbows between the groups of tall stalks and avoid wiggling them and betraying her position. Rather than use her knees for forward motion, she pressed the toes of her Boots of the Crags into the firm savanna soil and pushed her body onward.
She advanced a body length and then two, enjoying the sensation of moving unnoticed through the settlement. The sounds of construction and the clucking of hens in Stonehaven's chicken coop blended with the buzzing of insects that whizzed around the top of the grass. Devon paused and watched a beetle march past, stiff carapace rocking side to side with its gait.
You have gained a skill point: +1 Stealth.
Oh, yeah. Devon grinned as she nodded to herself. Way better than mindless repetition. If she just did stuff like this for a few minutes every day, she'd be up to a respectable skill tier in no time. She'd just have to think of—
"What the...Devon?" A loud laugh followed the woman's words. "What are you doing?"
You have been noticed. Stealth canceled.
“Yeah, obviously...” Devon muttered in response to the game message. She climbed to her feet, dusting grass pollen and dirt off her Superior Medium Leather Trousers.
She faced her former guildmate, Hailey, with a flat expression. "What does it look like I'm doing?"
Hailey was still laughing. "Uh. Trying to sneak up on the neighbor kid's box fort? Looking for a chupacabra? Scratching your stomach?"
"My Stealth skill is terrible. I have to start focusing on the basics."
Hailey's face twitched while she tried to contain more laughter. "I finally get why you aren't into livestreaming. You're a complete kook."
Okay, so maybe she had looked a little ridiculous combat crawling through her own player-built settlement. "I'm busy, okay? It's ha
rd to find time for skills focus." Devon's brow furrowed. "Wait, why are you back?"
Hailey took a deep breath. "Well..." She glanced back at the Shrine to Veia where she'd, apparently, just respawned. "Let's walk. I don't think I want to be standing here when Chen arrives. He's bound to be a little out of sorts."
Brushing a few pieces of dried grass from her hair, Devon started toward the construction site where she'd last spotted Prester. "It's been weeks since you left, right? I thought you were going to discover the world. Grab all the achievements before anyone else can. Why are you still bound in Stonehaven?"
Hailey coughed and glanced again toward the shrine. "Yeah, that. At first, we were just exploring the coast to the south. Slow going with all that swamp—you remember, right? Wait…whoa!"
Hailey was staring toward the center of the settlement where the Inner Keep now rose three stories above the village.
“My very own starter castle,” Devon said with a grin.
“Lemme guess. You built it and then gave all the rooms away to your NPCs. If that was mine, I’d be all like, ‘Get out of my castle, peons!’”
Devon laughed. “Believe it or not, I took the third story as my chambers, even if I only keep a couple of chests there and occasionally use the rooms for meetings. Hezbek was tired of me rifling through her trunks for my items. And basically, my leadership council said I had to do it so the new citizens would see me as an authority figure.”
“Never thought I’d see the day,” Hailey said with a smirk. “Glad you’re taking some credit for building a town for the little guys. Anyway…the swamp…”
Citadel of Smoke: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 4) Page 5
