Quick Change Volume 1: Slyborn

by C. T. O'Leary

  “Aurora, being a knight, gains a lot of stamina per level, translating to high health and defense. She eventually took on a secondary class of priest, meaning she gains more wisdom per level than a normal knight, translating to more mana points and more magical defense. She also gains access to some priest spells, like Urgent Heal, allowing her to heal herself and others, but she doesn’t get access to some of the more powerful priest spells, like Potent Heal, as those are reserved for priest primaries.

  “Lastly, Aurora gets some special skills only usable by knight priests, like her Divine Aura spell, making her completely invulnerable to all damage for five seconds, though with quite a hefty cooldown and mana cost. Actually, that makes me think,” Ivon looked at Aurora, “couldn’t you have just leapt off the wall at Vardon and triggered Divine Aura before you hit the ground? And our young adventurer here would have just returned to life the next day anyway if he’d jumped.”

  Aurora looked at him levelly for a moment before answering, “I did think about doing just that, but didn’t think I could live with myself if we left you behind. Also, I did want to do some damage to those bastards after seeing what they’d done to the guild headquarters…” She trailed off, her eyes losing focus as she peered back through time to the carnage they’d glimpsed inside the guild’s headquarters. Red caped bodies piled in the central courtyard with no regard for their dignity. Seth shivered.

  Ivon just looked sad. He said, “I appreciate you both for helping me, even though it meant risking your own safety.” The man looked quite solemn for a moment, which seemed somewhat out of character for the man, but then he grinned and said, “Well, actually, Seth did die saving me, so thanks for that, boy! I’ll never get used to that!” He cackled, and the tense moment passed. The group continued their march toward Slyborn Stronghold.

  Pahan and Seth passed the day taking on any monster that made the mistake of coming near them. Ivon and Aurora continued to draw monsters to them from farther out, and gave them pointers on how to fight better as a team. Most fights typically started with Pahan getting the monsters attention, Seth Charging them to inflict a stun penalty, and then Pahan rushing in to deal massive damage while Seth unceremoniously wailed on them with Fearless. It worked very well, and any time Pahan or Seth took damage, Aurora would heal them up. Seth could tell Pahan relished the chance to fight.

  During one of the lulls between fights Seth remembered the boon upgrade he had read about before they’d all gotten sidetracked with Pahan’s bond token and willed open the boon menu.

  Boons

  Quick Change Artist - Upgrades available: 1

  Owned Upgrades: none

  Available upgrades: -Control: You gain finer control over your divine boon, and are now able to change specific pieces of your outfit and equipment, instead of being forced to swap entire outfits at once.

  -Position: You gain the skill Quick Change Position. Use this skill to physically tag another living being. For the next ten seconds, you may trade places with the tagged being once. Cooldown is 60 seconds after a successful tag.

  -Expand: You gain access to a third distinct outfit.

  Seth privately grinned at the options presented in the upgrade menu, but he didn’t have to think too hard. The Position upgrade sounded absolutely amazing and useful in combat. He wondered how long it would be before he’d have another opportunity to upgrade the boon. After a moment, he shrugged and chose Position.

  Seth was desperately itching to give the Quick Change Position skill a try, and figured he only had one chance to surprise his party with it. His gaze drifted between Aurora and Pahan, since Ivon was somewhere in the woods and hidden from sight.

  Seth settled on pranking Pahan. He struggled to admit to himself that he was terrified of Aurora, but that was the case. The advantage with Pahan, too, was that if the lion was too upset, Seth could always unsummon him and wait for him to calm down.

  Seth knew his moment had arrived when the party walked past a small pond. Seth, who’d been walking behind Pahan and Aurora, trotted up to Pahan and set his hand on the lion’s flank, activating his newest Quick Change Position ability. A thin blue line of electricity raced from his hand into the big lion, but Pahan didn’t seem to notice the spell. Seth started striding towards the edge of the pond and said, “Hey, Pahan, where I come from, cats don’t like to get wet. Does that apply to lions, too?”

  Pahan stopped and turned toward Seth, his voice projecting into his head, At that moment Seth reached the edge of the pond, leapt into the air above the water, and triggered his Quick Change Position ability again before he completed the fall. In an instant, Seth was where Pahan had been, near the center of the path next to Aurora, and Pahan was suspended a foot above the water at the edge of the pond.

  The big cat splashed into the water, it only went up around six inches on his legs, but the instant he touched down he leapt out of the water again and hurtled toward Seth, a surprisingly high-pitched growl escaping from his mouth. Seth fell on his back laughing, and the giant lion sailed right over him.

  Pahan landed on the opposite side of him and started furiously shaking his paws to dry them. Seth struggled to breathe through his laughter, but eventually the two of them both calmed down enough for Pahan inquire about Seth’s new ability. Seth explained the ability Pahan and Aurora, and when he finished Ivon materialized from the trees and said, “Try something like that on me, boy, and I’ll put a bolt between your eyes. You may come back to life the next day, but it will be an unpleasant trip!”

  Aurora agreed, and told Seth that he should think twice about trying to prank her. Pahan vowed to get him back, and a seed of worry bloomed in Seth’s gut as he imagined how much a giant lion could scare him if he was really trying.

  They stopped to set up camp when the sun began nearing the horizon. A mountain range had become visible in the distance, and Ivon informed Seth that Slyborn Stronghold, the fort they were heading for, was part-way up one of the mountains. The range was called the Broken Bones, and Seth assumed that was the inspiration for the naming of the War of Broken Bones they had mentioned when they had discovered the note about Slyborn Stronghold at the Adventurers’ Guild safehouse the previous day.

  He asked if Ivon could give him any more info about the history of the stronghold, what to expect it to be like currently, and anything he cared to share. The grizzled scout wiggled his moustache back and forth, finished chewing on his stick of jerky, and began.

  “Slyborn is a relatively small mountain stronghold, the Adventurers’ Guild had the site constructed quite some time ago, hundreds of years. It was originally used as a training location, a commander would take a unit of trainees to the fortress, and they’d stay there for weeks at a time, leaving during the days to seek out the strong monsters that the spirits spawned in the surrounding area, working as a team with healers on standby to ensure they could harvest the monster essence without undue loss of life. Academics have suggested that the wild spirit dominating the Broken Bones is abnormally strong, and the monsters spawned in the area, while tough, seem to offer more experience than monsters of a similar strength somewhere else. There’s also an elaborate cave system that runs deep into one of the mountains, though the guild tends to stay away from it, as it gets very dangerous as you go.

  “There are only a few buildings that make up the fort. It’s around one third the way up one of the Bones, and it sits mainly on one rather steep small peak of rock, with a second section sitting on another neighboring peak and a bridge running between the two sections. Wipe that look off your face, you’ll see what I mean when we get there. The second section was added as a later expansion as the fortress began being used more and more. There are walls surrounding the stronghold, and a couple of watchtowers for use in repelling monsters that decide to rush the walls.

  “When Vardon went to war with Agril, a city-state on the o
ther side of the Broken Bones, many of the battles were centered around who would control different passes through the mountains. Controlling a pass meant having easy access to get troops to the enemy’s lands, and preventing them from getting to your lands. Vardon commandeered the fortress, though they did offer a hefty sum to the guild, and used it as a base of operations during the war.

  “The Agrilites eventually took the fortress and held it for several weeks. When it looked like the Vardon army would win it back, they set it aflame and fled. The war eventually ended with the two sides coming to an agreement, though I have no idea what the war was even started over. The Adventurers’ Guild wrote the fortress off, though they retained ownership of the land.

  “The plan was to eventually send a group back to Slyborn and reclaim it from the wilds, but it’s an arduous and expensive process to defeat so many monsters in a given area that the wild spirits stop sending them at all. One must be ready for fights at all time, from any direction, and it makes for a truly exhausting few weeks. I don’t envy the guild members there now, but I’m sure they’ll put us to work when we show up.”

  Seth mulled over the information the old scout had just dropped on him. He wondered how tough the monsters would be surrounding the stronghold, and how much experience he’d receive if he were able to slay one, given the ten times experience blessing he currently had.

  That brought up another question he’d been meaning to ask for a while, so he spoke up, “Thanks Ivon. Kind of unrelated, but how high can one’s level get? I think you’re the highest level person I’ve interacted with, unless you count being smote out of existence by that level 39 mage interacting, though I guess I can’t really know how high any given person is unless I fight or party with them.”

  Ivon gave him a strange look, and Aurora jumped in to explain, “In the world he came from, there are no levels. At all. They don’t have any measure of a person’s combat ability and, apparently, he seems to think things work just fine there. It doesn’t make any sense, I realize, but just humor him.” She gave Ivon a meaningful look that seemed to insinuate that Seth was crazy.

  The scout shook his head and answered, “There is no maximum level, as far as I’ve ever heard, but it takes more experience to level every time you gain another, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Many of the leaders of the Adventurers’ Guild are usually somewhere in the forty to fifty range, and that’s brought about by a life dedicated to training, and perks from the organization sending them out with healers and back up to be able to take on stronger monsters without worrying too much about getting killed.

  “The average citizen is probably somewhere between level ten and fifteen, and those are usually just levels gained by handling pests around their homes. Most parents do encourage their children to reach level ten by the time they hit their teens, but that’s typically the end of most people’s leveling journey, as they take on a trade and work for a living. I believe the highest level I’ve ever seen myself was a man named Arkus, a guild commander who was high in the organization when I was a mere recruit. He cleared level sixty just before he retired, and there was a truly massive celebration to honor his accomplishment. They said he could take on entire battalions by himself, though I don’t think that was ever put to the test in my lifetime.”

  Seth gaped at the thought of someone at such a high level. He already felt pretty tough at level twenty, and Aurora and Ivon seemed like they could take on pretty much anything he’d ever encountered. That thought brought up another question, so he figured he’d just continue to ask until Ivon got sick of answering things that everyone should know, and asked, “Speaking of leveling in general, how come monsters back in Bosqovar were so low level, but now we’re encountering things almost as high as you Ivon? Do the spirits generate monsters proportional to your current level or something?”

  Ivon said, “No, you’ve got it a bit backwards kid, monsters that are spawned by the spirits are proportional to how strong that spirit is, so the strength of the monsters varies from region to region. Bosqovar is surrounded by relatively low-level monsters, because the spirits in that area are relatively weak. If you were to go back there tomorrow, with your current level you’d feel grossly underchallenged. The range of levels of monsters you’ll encounter in the world is massive, there are places where the strongest thing you’ll encounter will be a level two snail, but there are many, many places in the world where humans can’t even begin to think about entering, as the monsters are simply too strong, and lack of human interaction over the centuries just lets them grow stronger. There are entire chunks of land as large as countries that can’t be claimed because the average monster found within can be level fifty, sixty or higher. Large enough groups of soldiers, some losses assumed, can start to edge into these areas over the course of years, but it often isn’t worth it, as you’d have to have incredibly elite guards stationed at any towns bordering such high-level zones.”

  Seth asked, “What percentage of the world is controlled by humans? Are we the dominant force, or are the spirits?”

  Ivon looked at him like he was a lunatic and said, “What do I look like, a cartographer? A mathematician? I have no idea how much of the world is covered in monsters, I’m an old soldier!” He harrumphed and stalked a few feet away, beginning to set up one of the small tents they’d taken from the Adventurers’ Guild safehouse. Seth looked at Aurora, who sat on a stump next to Pahan, but she just smirked and shrugged her shoulders.

  Seth pitched his tent and volunteered to take first watch with Pahan again. The few hours he had to keep a look out flew by quickly, and he passed the time chatting with Pahan about Earth. Before he knew it, Aurora tapped him on the shoulder and took his place. Seth climbed onto the hard ground and shimmied his way into his tent, and Pahan laid down outside, his back to the front opening. Seth realized that he’d picked a pretty poor spot to set the tent, as there were several loose stones now pressing up on his back, but he was asleep before he could even think about standing up to try and get them.

  Chapter 22

  The next few days bled together as they walked, the Broken Bones growing ever larger in the distance with every step. The two guild members continued to push Seth hard, forcing him to fight every monster they encountered, and ranging off into the surrounding areas to draw more towards him.

  Seth and Pahan became excellent teammates, mastering several combinations of moves that kept their enemies off guard. Seth gained a new ability, called Taunt, which typically made enemies look at him mid-fight, even if they were in the middle of attacking Pahan or someone else. It was useful in keeping them off balance, not sure who they wanted to try and take on first, the annoying little man or the giant angry cat.

  When Seth passed Aurora in level, she seemed happy for him, but also a bit annoyed. He realized what it must have been like for her, and imagined it like a business man who’d worked hard for everything he had being surpassed by some clueless trust fund baby. Aurora had been training the entirety of her adult life, and he’d shot past her in level in under a week by possessing a divine ten-times experience modifier and not being afraid to literally die in the process of gaining levels.

  And die he did. Twice on the trip to Slyborn, to be exact. The first time, a viper about as thick as Seth’s thigh and more than ten feet long shot out of the brush and locked its jaws around his calf. Before he could do anything aside from shout unintelligible curses, its head had been pierced by a perfectly placed arrow, but the poison was already inside his veins.

  Aurora tried to heal Seth through it, but every second the poison did more damage than she could heal, and as his vision went dark, he was able to choke out, “I’m glad it was me.” It was wondrously melodramatic.

  Seth’s second death came not by monster, but by trap. He had taken a confident step forward right as he heard Ivon shout, “Stop,” and fallen straight down twenty feet into a spike pit. He was glad at how quickly it was over, but the brief experience of pain was unbearable. When he
’d returned over a full day later, Ivon had told him that the trap looked quite old, and no one had come to claim their prize.

  Seth had also gained more skills. At level twenty he’d gained access to a skill called Cleave.

  Cleave - Area of Effect - Cost: 30 fury - Cooldown: 10 seconds You swing your weapon in a wide, devastating arc, causing 140% weapon damage to any targets hit by the swing.

  And at level twenty-five he’d received a skill called Taunt.

  Taunt - Cost: none - Cooldown: 30 seconds You shout at an enemy, resulting in a high chance that the enemy will focus on you for at least 15 seconds.

  Aurora informed him that her Taunt skill read exactly the same, except that it cost her some mana points and lasted thirty seconds as opposed to Seth’s fifteen.

  Later that same day, they reached the base of the mountain Ivon said Slyborn Stronghold sat on, but the sun was already behind the mountains, so they resolved to get a good night’s rest and make the hike in the morning.

  Hiking up a literal mountain, it turns out, is many times harder than the flat ground walking they’d been doing up until then. Seth’s legs and butt burned with every step, and he felt a bit angry that Aurora and Ivon didn’t seem near as bothered as him, even though he was a higher level than Aurora, and closing in on Ivon by that point.

  Seth had made it to level twenty-nine, Ivon still sat at thirty-six, and Aurora had actually leveled to twenty-eight from all of the healing over the past few days, and healing Seth against monsters higher level than her, which didn’t happen at all around Bosqovar or Vardon. Seth was ecstatic for her, but she let on that she’d been relatively close to levelling for months.