Ring of Promise: A LitRPG novel (Elements of Wrath Online Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  All the same, Kayla was still a hair faster than they were, no doubt anticipating the same thing I was. With a single arcane word and a spin of her orb, a wall of solid ice sprang up between her and the backline of gunners, muffling the thunder of their attacks. Flaming shot put a thousand cracks into the wall but nothing broke through.

  However, that did nothing to stop the other four sprays of flaming shrapnel from tearing into us from the other side. Still, the light erupting from the sanctified ground slowed the shot and strengthened our bodies, blunting their alpha strike down to something reasonable. I managed to get my fancy new shield in the way of a good half of the assault and Kayla’s Ice Shield softened her own initial burst of damage.

  Dark Rider H’s Sparkshooter Blast hits you! You take 112 (-48 resisted) Physical Damage and 128 (-32 resisted) Fire Damage! HP 2758/3420

  Dark Rider H’s Sparkshooter Blast hits Kayla! She takes 156 (-68 resisted) Physical Damage and 134 (-86 resisted) Fire Damage! HP 1620/2240

  Even though it stung like the dickens, it made me smile just a hair to see the backlash from the Light Thorns on the Guardian’s Shell tick off another two percent or so off the shooters’ Health.

  “If we can keep them divided, we can take them,” I shouted above the din, moving forward to ensure that all four of these first bandits felt the full embrace of the Primal Light all around me. As they frantically reloaded, I slammed my shield right in the face of the frontmost one, alien metal resounding off his stony skull. Stunned and seriously rattled by the heavy impact, that Dark Rider almost dropped his ‘shooter.

  Kayla was already turning toward my four dance partners, setting both her staff and orb to float in midair as she put her hands to the Eye of the Solar Guardian atop her brow. “I’ll try to make this quick, then!”

  Her watery blue eyes focused in concentration, and the tiara flared to life. Blinding light collected along it before concentrating into a point at one side. Miming the much larger Guardian, the pinprick turned into a searing laser beam that swept across the enemy, conveniently arcing high to avoid tearing across my side.

  Kayla invokes the Eye of the Solar Guardian!

  Dark Rider E takes 26% (+2% vulnerability) Light Damage! HP 66%

  Dark Rider F takes 53% (+24% critical, +5% vulnerability) Light Damage! HP 41%

  Dark Rider G takes 24% (+2% vulnerability) Light Damage! HP 70%

  Dark Rider H takes 55% (+25% critical, +5% vulnerability) Light Damage! HP 45%

  The beam tore right through armor, burned away robes, and cut right through rocky flesh. The cry of pain was mixed with a certain fear you rarely heard from the voices of MOBs. It was a familiar sound to me, they both were, but I wasn’t quite ready to show much sympathy for an AI-controlled bunch of pixels. I mentally readied a Defiant Display as another pulse of healing and damage surged through the Sacred Earth, but before I could pull it off, another round of muffled shots echoed from behind us accompanied by the shattering of ice.

  Meanwhile, the three unstunned bandits split targets. The two that hadn’t been crit drew long, jagged daggers from under their ravaged cloaks and stabbed away at me while the last took a shot at Kayla as she was in mid-cast. I caught one swipe with a block while the other took advantage, not that it did much through my heavy plate armor and Light-infused body. Kayla let out a yelp as she took a single shot in the shoulder, but thankfully, it didn’t break her concentration.

  We were barely getting hurt and even the DoT from Sacred Earth was cutting deep into their Health pools. What was even the point of this encounter? It was too highly scripted to be filler and the Dark Riders were scaling baddies. This would be a complete slaughter with a full team.

  Well, I’d figure it out later.

  “Is that the best you thugs can do?” I taunted as I carried through with my Defiant Display. “Surely you can do better! Give me your best shot!” The pulse of threat got the attention of all eight of the bandits. Barrels swiveled and knives were raised, but despite the ‘hate’ generated, I couldn’t help but notice a quiver of trepidation from the bandits I hadn’t noticed before.

  Good timing on my part because Kayla decided to drop the proverbial bomb. Planting her staff in the earth, she raised up her orb, the large diamond Light Gem she had earned herself from the previous quest mounted next to a large blue emerald. Both Gems surged with power. With one last arcane word, the air above us split, a swirling hole in space opening up to what looked to be the star-flecked night sky. A moment later, a singular icy shard, a literal miniature comet, exploded out from the portal and slammed into the cluster of bandits around me.

  Kayla’s Celestial Comet hits Dark Rider E! She takes 37% (+4% vulnerability) Light Damage and 33% (+3% vulnerability) Water Damage! She dies!

  Kayla’s Celestial Comet hits Dark Rider F! He takes 34% (+4% vulnerability) Light Damage and 36% (+3% vulnerability) Water damage! He dies!

  Kayla’s Celestial Comet hits Dark Rider G! He takes 35% (+4% vulnerability) Light Damage and 37% (+3% vulnerability) Water Damage! He dies!

  Kayla’s Celestial Comet hits Dark Rider H! She takes 38% (+4% vulnerability) Light Damage and 33% (+3% vulnerability) Water Damage! She dies!

  Yes, I had, in fact, hid under my shield for a moment. Yes, I do know that there isn’t friendly fire in EO, but I dare you to stand under a Comet Spell and not do the same! Still, amazingly flashy as it was, Kayla looked amazed that they had died so dramatically, torn to shreds by glowing shards of ice from the exploding mini-comet.

  “I can’t believe this is so easy,” she muttered, miming my own thoughts. She spun to face the remaining bandits, sliding behind me in the process with one elegant maneuver. “We’re missing something.”

  Instinctively, I turned with her movement, not nearly so gracefully, planting my feet and raising my shield towards the bandits. To my increasingly growing surprise, the Riders didn’t immediately open fire. Instead, they backed up slowly, ‘shooters raised. Some of them had tossed aside their hoods, and I could really see a deep-seated fear etched on their faces.

  For a moment, I wondered what the heck they were so afraid of. They were the ones trying to murder us, weren’t they? But then it came to me and I wasn’t alone in the realization. It was Kayla that put it into words, though.

  “This sounds crazy, Shale, but I think they don’t want to die.” Her voice was soft beside me. “I mean, no one wants to die, but MOBs normally don’t care. Maybe these do based on what their leader said.”

  I nodded along with her. “I think you’re right and it is nuts … but it makes sense.” I raised my voice. “If we fight and beat you, you won’t come back, will you?”

  For the umpteenth time that single encounter, we were both taken off-guard when one of the bandits, a Craggar woman, answered my question. “The Grand Rider didn’t lie to you, demons. No Life Crystal, no resurrection. It’s that simple.”

  This sort of encounter had never happened to me before, and I had the feeling that Kayla was as out of her depths as I was. My first wonder was why we hadn’t dropped into interaction mode but it became obvious after a second of thought. We were all still in ‘combat’ mode. Weapons raised, Skills and Spells queued up to go. We couldn’t interact in combat.

  The bandits had backed out of the radius of the Sacred Earth, which was starting to wind down. Our Elemental Power was starting to recharge after the spewfest of the first half of the fight, and we could certainly take them, even with our big guns on cooldown. If we dropped our guard, though, there was a chance of a couple of lucky crits putting us in a bad spot if they shot anyway.

  Kayla’s hand rested on my shoulder. As if she was reading my mind, she said, “Let’s give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is we respawn at the Crystal, unlike them.”

  She wasn’t wrong and call me a sap but I felt like I understood these people. My life for years had been nothing but pain, uncertainty, and marginalization. Maybe we could offer them an escape for the information their leader wouldn
’t divulge.

  “Yeah, I agree,” I whispered to her. Collectively, we straightened up, lowering our weapons and clearing out of combat mode. Louder, I called out to the still-defensive Riders, “Look, we don’t have to fight. How about we talk instead?”

  We both tensed, waiting for the fingers to pull on triggers and a fresh collection of holes to sprout in our bodies. I could only assume that K-Pat and company had a mean sense of humor because we stood there for a good three seconds before the bandits finally responded.

  The collection of sparkshooters lowered slowly, hesitantly, before the lady who replied spoke up, “All right, kingkneeler, let us talk.”

  The quest structure of EO is solid, I agree, but that’s because it follows the path blazed by the last thirty years of MMOs. While we could continue to milk the genre’s legacy for another decade, our quest design team has been working hard to add new elements, new concepts, and to revise old concepts. We think the player base will really enjoy it.

  Reggie Patel, EO’s lead quest designer

  The Earth Kingdom is a land based on principles as rigid as the stone with which its buildings are crafted. Every citizen is expected to uphold those same principles and keep eternal loyalty to the royal lineage, while the Mountain King and his court follow a strict set of obligations to the citizenry. The system works, arguably quite well, but it has created a society that values traditional values over innovative thinking.

  From the Earth Kingdom page, EO internal wiki

  17

  With those words, the scene shifted into the relative safety of the NPC interaction interface. The gnarled woods went out of focus as the small cluster of cowed bandits gathered together, the Craggar woman at the head of them. She leaned the butt of her sparkshooter against the ground, holding it up like a spear, but I was sure she could ready it and shoot in a split second.

  “Know, demons, that we only are willing to speak with you because the Grand Rider said you would be allowed to leave if you were victorious,” she said guardedly. “If we were commanded to fight to the death for our cause, we would do so without hesitation.” She spat to one side, an action mimicked by the other three. “So, what do you have to say?”

  Unlike the Grand Rider before, there were some suggested dialogue options hovering next to the bandit’s head as control shifted over to me. ‘What is your name?’, ‘What caused you to be exiled to the forest?’, ‘What are you trying to accomplish?’, and ‘Where is the main bandit camp?’ were all possible choices. With how lore-intensive this felt, especially after what we had heard from the big boss, I sincerely wished that Burndall and Crysta had been with us. It would have been great to have our lore-monkeys on hand, but there was nothing to be done for it.

  We’d simply have to wing it. That being said, I thought about how I would want to be treated if I were in the bandits’ shoes. It wasn’t hard to get into that mindset, to be fair. Being put down, trod on, and forced to go to extraordinary lengths to take care of me and my own was second nature.

  “To start with,” I began slowly, “why not start with names?” I tapped the center of my breastplate. “My name is Shale and” – I gestured to Kayla beside me – “this is Kayla.” She added a little wave of her own to punctuate her introduction.

  The bandit woman had been expecting something else, tense and ready to burst out with some angry rebuttal. “You have no …” When what I actually said sunk in through the layer of defensiveness, her expression softened as much as her rocky skin and crystal hair would allow. “I, well, I am Emmie.” She nodded around to the rest of her little group. “This is Rand, Quartz, Lai, and Misha.” Emmie’s head tilted slightly. “You’re the first champions I’ve seen that bothered to ask that.”

  As control flipped to Kayla, she gave me a tentative smile, that ‘I-hope-we-don’t-screw-this-up-but-we-seem-to-be-doing-okay’ sort of look. Turning her full attention to Emmie and her crew, she said, “We’re not like other champions.” Her smile grew stronger as she pressed on, “Your leader told us why you might be doing what you are doing and I understand that … but why have you embraced the Darkness instead of abiding by the laws of the Earth Kingdom?”

  Emmie looked surprised by the question but shook her head. “As a Nix, you would have no idea how things work here.” She gestured all around her as she continued, “Perhaps the Ocean Mother is more loving, but the Mountain King is cold as his namesake. Some would argue his laws are fair if stern, but others do not want to live under such a rigid yoke. Many times, we tried to ask for some leniency, a space to call our own to practice our own traditions and beliefs lawfully, but with Granholm it is always tradition, tradition, tradition.”

  Stamping her ‘shooter’s butt into the dirt, she growled in frustration. “No matter our beliefs, we are still Craggar. We will not be moved, and we will fight for our beliefs, different as they are. If the Darkness is the only ally that will join our cause, so be it. We live under the dark boughs of the trees and the deep caves, do we not?”

  Her rhetorical question brought a round of grumbled agreement from her companions. While I wasn’t as deep into things as Burndall or Crys, I remembered enough of my time in the newbie yards around Granholm to realize Emmie’s story clicked into the lore in general. It was a lot like the real world when you thought about it. The difference between ‘guerilla’ and ‘freedom fighter’ often came down to a matter of perspective.

  For me, it was hard not to find these people sympathetic. Deprived of life-giving medical care because you are on the fringes of conventional society for whatever reason hit me right in the ‘feels’.

  “I believe you,” I replied with heartfelt honesty. “I understand how hard this has to be for you, but is this the best recourse? The Darkness caused the Sundering in the first place, right? And that’s why we don’t all have Life Crystals, so are they the best people to turn to?”

  The bandit spokeswoman’s emerald green brows knit as she chewed on her lip for a moment. The others mumbled low, whispering among themselves for a good ten seconds before Emmie spoke up. “You aren’t speaking false, Shale, but where else can we go? Who else can we turn to? I doubt the Ocean Mother would take us in, let alone the Fire Sultan or the Storm Empress. Our choices as I see them are to roll over or to fight.” She stuck out her chin proudly. “We Craggar fight.”

  It was the classical ‘between a rock and a hard place’ thing, except technically both sides were rocks. There had to be some answer here, though. We hadn’t screwed up and lost our chance to further the questline yet, I didn’t think, but we didn’t seem to be going forward either.

  Thank god for Kayla’s beautiful brain because she found an answer. “I admire your tenacity, Emmie,” the Nix began in soft, sympathetic tones, “and I understand your cause. My fear is that you’ve been lied to. After all, your leader isn’t a Craggar; he is an Ember with the mark of the Dark on him. Stoking the Flames of Conflict and spreading discord is what they live for.”

  A ‘eureka’ moment to match hers was firing off in my brain even before Emmie responded after another low, whispered conference with her fellows. “I can see what you’re saying, Nix, but the Grand Rider’s words haven’t been wrong. He understands our troubles, our position. His way isn’t the one I would prefer, but there is no other sanctuary for us.”

  “But what if there was?” I countered. “I think your leader has deceived you about the possibility. We know the Ocean Princess, and she is a kind soul. We could petition her on your behalf …” I almost left it at that but my brain kicked into high gear as I added, “We need some sign of trust, some token of recompense to give, though. Is there some way you could help us with that?”

  Kayla: It’s like you are reading my mind, Shale!

  Shale: You started it, Kay, I’m just following in your wake.

  She was smiling at me, something that made my ego swell just a tad, as Emmie shushed her fellow bandits. “Look, champion, I don’t know if I can trust you, but at this point, I’m not e
ntirely sure what to trust.” She sighed and flicked a knob on her sparkshooter, the glowing sparks in the barrel cooling. “What harm can it be to give your way a try? I can’t tell you where our camp is, you could simply lead the border guard there to kill us all, but I can tell you that the Grand Rider regularly makes trips to meet with a supposed traitor in the king’s court.”

  Sighing, Emmie pointed off towards the northwest. “I know not the name, but I do know their meetings take place in the shadow of Crystalfire Keep, one of the fortifications that ward against the Flames of Conflict.” She leaned on her ‘shooter. “Do you think that is sufficient information to prove ourselves to your Nix princess?”

  Kayla glanced over at me and I flashed her a thumbs-up back. With a smile on her lips, she looked back to the bandits and nodded. “As one who knows the values of the Water Kingdom well, I assure you that this will do much to sway the princess to your petition for sanctuary.”

  Quest ‘Shades of Grey’ available!

  Objective: Deliver the Riders’ information to Sir Copperholt -or- Plead the Riders’ case to Princess Kallisandre

  Reward: 50% Experience, Variable (based on quest objectives completed)

  Do you accept?

  Kayla and I exchanged a momentary glance and we practically ran each other over in group chat. Do we take this quest or try to come back with the others?

  Kayla: Jinx?

  Shale: Jinx. But it’s a good question. Will they need to do this section or will the next quest trigger be off the dialogue trees, like it was with the start of all this?

  Kayla: I know … and can we even redo this scene? This seems highly scripted, maybe even using some of that old ‘phasing content’ idea from the One and Twenty.