by Bruce Sentar
This made some sort of sense to Ajax. If he just imbued it with magic it would be like the material of the item was better quality. If he wanted to add a special effect he needed a spell to base the enchantment off of. “So do you need someone to enchant all of your weapons?” Ajax hoped he could get some practice and gold at the same time.
Darcie, however, looked disgruntled at the request. “I knew you’d ask. In the beginning, the adventurers destroyed many of the items they tried to enchant. I don’t know the specifics, but you won’t be touching my wares till you prove you are past that.” She looked down at the hourglass slowly filling with sand. She seemed to be wandering off in her own mind. Ajax waited for her to come back.
Ajax was starting to get upset at her stalling. It was insulting that she wasted his paid time. If the caravan wasn’t full of guards he’d be tempted to take care of Darcie himself. He was sure she had enough loot to rival a boss. She eventually refocused on their conversation, but Ajax was left with more disdain for the merchants of the caravan.
“How do I gain an element to use with my spells?” This was one of the main reasons Ajax had come. Especially if it was like Darcie had said. A spell with an element gained added effects at no cost. It seemed like a no brainer. He needed to focus on his questions, and not let his annoyance distract him. He was here to get stronger. Everyone gave you respect if you were the strongest.
“The more you interact with a specific element, the more you increase your affinity. With increased affinity, you’ll be able to use the element. There were some… inventive adventurers who burnt themselves repeatedly. They were unstable but quite powerful fire mages.” Ajax cringed at the idea. He wasn’t about to kill himself repeatedly for fire magic. There had to be an easier, more sane way.
Ajax stared at her until she continued. “We normal people usually use an elemental focus like this.” She held out a crystal that seemed to have a small tan glow spinning inside of it. “This is an earth elemental focus crystal. I meditate with this to attune myself to the earth element.” Ajax would not have guessed by her figure or attitude she was a earth mage. He thought a earth mage would have been more… free. “Some also meditate with a small burning branch in their hand. Darkness and Light magic are harder to attune to because they’re so abstract.” She glanced at the hourglass that was rapidly filling. Ajax didn’t think he had used thirty, minutes but the bottom looked about half full.
Ajax wasn’t sure what else to ask. He had learned quite a bit with this conversation and needed time to digest. He tried to organize his thoughts, but he wasn’t sure how to take the next step just yet. “What do you recommend to a new mage?” Asking for general advice never hurts. Though Darcie might hold back the value of what she said.
She, however, seemed surprised by the question. “Not often do you hear of an adventurer asking for advice. In my experience, a master of few spells is far more dangerous than a well-studied wizard that knows the basics of a hundred spells. Find a few spells to suit your needs and focus on them. Find one element and stick with it rather than splitting yourself across multiple.” She sighed like this was more draining than she expected. “If we limit this to one more question then I’ll let you pick two spells of the three I’ve prepared.”
Ajax was actually more than prepared to take her up on that offer. He remembered one of the things he needed as a mage. “Are there creatures I can summon like an elemental?”
Her face dropped. Ajax wondered if he had touched on a sore subject. “It can be done, but it is… discouraged now. When the adventurers left the last time, their summons stayed. Demon and worse, angels, then walked the world unbound by the adventurers that had summoned them. The King in Tyren is focused on actively destroying summoning magics at present.”
“Angles are worse than demons?” That comment caused Ajax’s brows to furrow.
“That was your last question. Or do you want to give up the second spell?” A grin like a cat who’d caught a mouse flashed across her face before she settled back into a merchant's neutral demeanor.
“Never mind, show me the spell books.” Ajax would have to save that question for later. He wasn’t sure if she’d even give him a straight answer if he asked now. She was helpful, but only just enough to earn that gold. He had noticed that she’d answered about how to attune a spell to an element, but had left out how to get a focus.
Darcie pulled out three books she’d obviously prepared and lay them down next to the ignored hourglass still trickling its contents into the lower chamber despite no longer being needed.
The first book was Slow, the first magical debuff he’d seen. It could be useful if he wanted to fight by kiting, a hit and run type strategy. The group really hadn’t seen any of the semi boss-type monsters that normally required that strategy. But who knew, they could find one tomorrow. Ajax could see a purpose for this spell, but he wanted to look at the others.
The next one made Ajax smile. He knew he was going to take it without a doubt. Arcane Shield created a thin shield that would rotate around and protect him. Ajax wasn’t sure how big it was, but even if it just blocked arrows, he’d be pretty happy with it. It probably either just reduced the blow or had a cap of what it could absorb. Either way, after how close he’d gotten to dying in the goblin fight, he needed this. He even wondered if this would be an effective spell to try enchanting into the girls’ armor.
Finally, Ajax started scrutinizing the last book. It was Arcane Charge, as in an explosive charge. The spell created something like a magical grenade or C4, though once created it expired in thirty seconds. A mage could trigger the explosion anytime during those thirty seconds. If he didn’t trigger it, it would just dissolve into a waste of mana. If Ajax picked Arcane Charge, it would be his first area of effect spell. Of course, for all the spells, the actual level of effectiveness would still be determined later. For all Ajax, knew any of these spells could be far underwhelming, but then again that was sort of how Legendary Rule was supposed to work. He was supposed to practice spells that he found useful and make his own class.
Ajax reached out and took Arcane Armor and Slow. Darcie nodded at his decision, “All three are good; you couldn’t have gone wrong with the decision. Obviously, I sell only the highest quality of goods.”
“Now, I believe you are broke, and I’m growing bored.” Darcie grinned “Please come again when you have more money.” Like last time, she sat back and willfully ignored his presence.
The servant had silently returned and opened the door for Ajax to exit. Ajax had two new toys and didn’t react to being dismissed so bluntly. He learned both spell books on his way back to Missy and Sky’s favorite spot by the fifth wagon. Where they tried to exercise as they walked with the caravan.
He was already playing with Arcane Armor when he arrived back with the girls. A small light blue shield floated around him. According to the spell, it would last for ten minutes or till destroyed. The shield would absorb up to fifty damage.
Ajax was pretty happy with the little shield. It essentially gave him an extra third of his health bar. It, however, took three seconds for him to form it, so he wouldn’t be able to keep them up if he was under constant attack. He had been casting the spell repeatedly as he walked. The old shield always shattered when he had cast a new one, but it was a pretty tame way for him to expend his mana rather than firing off Arcane Bullets everywhere.
Now having the new Arcane Armor spell, it was time for him to try to enchant the shirt that Sky had given him. He sat cross-legged in the wagon and focused on channeling his mana into the shirt.
He imagined his mana bar draining and light blue magic seeping into the shirt. He willed the magic to fill in the space between threads, making the shirt harder to cut. The shirt flashed with a small light when he finished. His mana had dipped, and the armor had a faint shimmer that quickly was fading.
Ajax had been expecting explosions after Darcie had warned him about but nothing happened. The shirt now had a minor incre
ase to the fortitude it provided and a reduction in durability damage. It had been easier than expected. He wondered what had made it so hard for previous adventurers.
“Congratulations, Ajax! You’ve discovered enchanting.” Systems voice chimed above him.
“System, where have you been?” Ajax hadn’t received a message from the bubbly AI in a while.
“I’ve just been sending you notes. You seem to respond better to those. They also take up less of my surface processing. I’ve been updating from the hotfix that was put out.”
“The leather scrolls are from you too?” Ajax hadn’t thought that the AI-controlled those as well.
A brown scroll popped up in front of him.
“When you look at an item and see its stats, I make those windows too. And I designed almost all of your interaction with the game. Look, I added Arcane Bullet into in your spellbook.”
Spellbook? Ajax thought. In response, a weathered leather-bound book appeared with an outline of a star the same color of his arcane magic embossed into the front. He opened the book and saw all of his spells. Arcane Missiles was one page, but the next was Arcane Bullet, describing how it was modified from Arcane Missile and even had a note at the bottom that it was created by Ajax.
“Thanks, System, this is very nice of you to put together.”
“You’re welcome, Ajax. The spellbook will grow with you. The bars at the top of each spell page will fill as you gain experience. Do you like this version of looking at your skills?”
“It’s great. Can you put my enchanting here? Wait. Can you make it like a… new chapter.” Ajax felt the book grow slightly in his hands.
“Check the end of the book.” Ajax followed her instructions and flipped it to the last few pages the first one was a generic description of enchanting. At the bottom of the page, it warned of adding another enchantment on top of an existing as it caused the material to ignite if it held too much magic. Well, that’s one mystery solved. Good thing he didn’t start dumping all of his mana in the shirt.
The next page was the enchantment he had just created. Material Enhancement does what it sounded like. It makes a magically enhanced version of the material increasing its durability and general qualities. Materials outside equipment can be enchanted, but it warns that they will be harder to work with for crafters.
“Ajax, with the hotfix would you like to adjust your pain setting?” System asked. Ajax had forgotten about the hotfix, an update while the game stayed live, after dismissing it. Larger updates would require the whole system to go down.
Most of it didn’t mean much to Ajax, except a few lines of the update. One, they had patched fortitude training to scale with pain levels. Players were abusing setting pain to 0 and beating each other up to increase fortitude. So if a player had pain down to 0 percent then they wouldn’t be able to train fortitude. This scaled linearly all the way to full pain sensory levels, where you can earn full fortitude. They had also locked player versus player content to 90 percent pain, so no one was at an advantage or disadvantage because of pain response. It was pretty harsh to play with near full pain in PvP. It would bring some real psychopaths into the game for sure.
Though if you played normally at 100 then PvP would be less pain than normal and vise versa so, in the end, the whole system seemed to want players to play with full pain. Ajax assumed it was to make this very real game even more real. Though he wasn’t really sure if it could get more real.
Ajax didn’t think he’d be getting hit much as his role adjusted to a mage, but he didn’t want to leave stats on the table just because he was afraid of a little pain. Okay, a lot of pain. If he wanted to go professional at this game there were really two options. He could get into PvP or PvE. The PvE option he might be able to get away with playing on lower pain settings. But for PvP, if he dropped his pain settings now he would be at a disadvantage then.
In the end, he didn’t want to leave any opportunity off the table right now “Yes System, please bring me to one hundred percent pain sensitivity.”
He didn’t feel any different, but he dreaded another arrow to the shoulder now. “Done. Is there anything else you’d like right now?” Ajax knew he’d continue to tweak how everything was set up till it was perfect- unique to him. But for now, there wasn’t anything urgent.
“Nope, thanks again System.” He didn’t receive a bubbly response. He wondered how much the hotfix had affected her.
CHAPTER 21
As the trio set up their usual camp for the night, Ajax showed off Sky’s shirt he had enchanted. He had also enchanted his equipment that afternoon.
Missy was practically sitting on his lap as the three sat together. Since they had stopped for the day, she had been practically glued to him. Not that he was complaining. After last night he felt very attached to her too. They had broken through a wall in their intimacy. Maybe they should be attached at the hip now.
He had always fallen head over heels for a girl whenever it started. He wrapped his arm around her pulling her closer. Ajax let her look at the shirt before passing it to Sky.
Sky had been oddly quiet since last night. She looked at the shirt disinterestedly before handing it back. Something was clearly wrong with her. Had he done something? He remembered tonight was supposed to be her night, but she hadn’t done anything yet. Ajax figured it would at least give him a chance to talk to her alone.
“Hey Missy, I believe tonight is supposed to be Sky’s night.” Sky looked up with a disappointed look on her face. Yeah, he had done something wrong.
The cracking of twigs alerted Ajax to the visitors around their campfire. Captain Remblar stepped into the light of the campfire with a few men flanking him on either side. “Who’s up for night watch?” Ajax had asked before if they needed help, but this wasn’t an opportune time.
He looked to Sky for her opinion. This was her night. He didn’t want to make the decision, especially when he might make whatever he’d done worse.
“I Told you. Adventurers wouldn’t do something so lowly as a night watch.” One of the men behind Remblar was loud in complaining. If the captain heard it, he wasn’t giving any indication.
“I’ll go on duty.” Sky stood up. Ajax watched as the men ogled her. A flash of anger went through Ajax as he clenched his jaw.
Missy could tell. She rubbed his back discretely to encourage him. “I’ll go with her,” Ajax said after a moment. He’d go on the night watch and have the opportunity to talk with Sky. He glanced at Missy who was smiling at him reassuringly.
Ajax smiled back, but he was confused. Shouldn’t she be trying to keep him away from other women?
Remblaar spoke up after that. “Good. See wagon eleven?” The wagons had already circled for the evening. Ajax and Sky would be early warning away from the wagons. “Go a hundred yards out past it and stand to watch for the night. I’ll expect the two of you to take shifts. I won’t be sending anyone else out to relieve you.” Ajax followed his arm to where he was pointing. They’d be out by a copse of trees so they’d have some privacy to talk.
“We’ll head out there in a few minutes.” Ajax answered before turning his attention back to the girls. “Let me enchant your gear before we head out.”
Sky was silent but took her shirt back from him, and left to go change in her tent. The captain and his men left without another word. That left Ajax alone with Missy. She was still cuddling up against him. “Just talk to her tonight.” The sage advice came without prompting.
“What’s wrong with her? Or what did I do?” Ajax looked at the beauty in his arms. He wanted nothing more than to have another night like last. Except this time he’d return the favor several-fold.
She looked up at him “I can’t fix it. You are the one that is trying to have two at once. Bold move. But I think you can pull it off.” She nestled her head back onto his chest, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on Ajax. Damn, he was being stupid. He was beyond lucky to have b
oth these girls interested in him. It makes sense that it wouldn’t be easy. If he wanted to keep both women. He needed to put twice the work in to make a polygamous relationship work. The harem books made it seem too easy.
“I-I… T-t-two?” Ajax had been content after last night just focusing on Missy. He had two interested girls, but he had made his choice. Though, admittedly not the best way to think of a woman. However, Missy was encouraging him to pull Sky into the relationship as well.
He had not thought about the choice of having both. Polygamy was legal now but it was something for the rich and powerful. Certainly not something for a Lowes-Depot sales clerk. “I don’t think I could support two women.” Ajax regretting saying that. Damn, he was a loser and he had just admitted it to the girl in his arms.
