The hound took a deep breath and then shocked Roan by belching up a huge gout of flame that washed over him(Damage -11HP). He was still trying to blink the flames from his eyes when the hound lunged in, latching onto his arm with its huge teeth(Damage -5 HP).
There was fire in the teeth or so it seemed to Roan who attacked with the sword in a frenzy to get the teeth off of him. The summoned hound was particularly susceptible to the Doom blade. Roan’s second swing clove the head of the beast in two.
Another took its place and it too blasted out fire as a prelude to attack(Damage -6 HP). Roan was ready for the lunging teeth this time and skewered the beast. When it died, coughing boiling hot blood onto Roan’s arm, the third came on.
Roan backed away, scrambling with his free hand for a healing potion. He was down twenty-five hit points and worse, the fire hurt! It really, really hurt.
But it seemed that he would have to endure the pain three more times. The narrowness of the footbridge worked against him now; there was no room to dodge. Just as the potion healed him, he was burned again(Damage -7 HP). This pattern repeated until the last hound was slain.
Gasping for breath, Roan pulled out his third potion and drank it. He then leaned over the rope of the bridge. Fifty feet below him were a number of K Street Killers and among them was a hooded figure in black. It was the man who had summoned the hounds.
Too late Roan realized that only a spellcaster could have done that. Roan took off for the next building just as the man shot a ball of fire at him. The ball grew and grew as it came on. It was going to miss, Roan saw—but then the ball erupted in an explosion.
It had been an Inferno spell, but its power and heated washed over Roan without hurting him, thanks to his Ring of Shielding. The wood and rope footbridge were not shielded and the spell set fire to it. “Crap!” Roan cried as he scrambled for the building.
He knew what was going to happen a second before the first rope broke. Dropping to the bridge, he entwined his arm in the remaining guide rope as the bridge came apart. Roan was struck by deja vu as he swung at the nearest building and crashed into it(Damage -5 HP).
At least this time he didn’t have to worry about anyone cutting the last ropes. Groaning, he climbed to the fifth floor as below him, the wizard directed the thugs, not just into the building he was in but to the others close by. They were going to try to trap him so that his jumping skill would be useless.
But Roan had more tricks up his sleeve. Reaching into his Dimension Bag, he drew out one of the scrolls of illusion. When he reached the top of the building, he threw his weight against the door and read the scroll aloud, hoping that he was pronouncing the strange words correctly. Once he was done, he looked up, not knowing what to expect.
The magic of the spell was in the air around him and yet nothing looked different. “Oh right,” he said feeling stupid. It was up to him to shape the spell. A moment’s concentration was all it took to form an exact likeness of himself. It wobbled slightly as the door behind him shook as the first of the thugs got to it and tried to come through.
Roan held them back as he undid the clasp on his shawl and then reclasped it again so that he looked like of the K Street Killers. He then set his illusion running for the edge of the building, while at the same time stepping back behind the door. Once his illusion got to the edge, it jumped to the next building. He had it jog to the stairwell down, only to run again when the door opened with more thugs coming out.
Once more he had it running and jumping.
The real Roan went to stand with the panting thugs who had come up the stairs. As the illusionary Roan jumped to another building, they all grumbled and headed for the stairs. Roan went last, sending his illusion running and hopping to yet another building, only to disappear down a stairwell door.
The illusion ended then. He could only keep it going as long as he could see it. It had done its job and now Roan could escape if he wanted to, only he didn’t exactly want to. He had been tracked to Rollup’s brothel and he strongly suspected the wizard had used a spell or some sort of magical device to accomplish the feat.
Roan would never be able to sleep soundly while the wizard lived. Besides, he was there to rack up experience points and the wizard looked like he was worth a ton.
2—
Having blended in without question, he followed along after the rest of the thugs as they went down the stairs, letting them draw ahead so that when they came to street level they were already jogging down the block. There were other thugs around him being hurried on by an officer of sorts, who shouted orders and waved his sword around.
Roan took a moment to memorize his red face, his bulging blue eyes, his flat, greasy hair, and his worn studded leather armor before loping along with another group. Once more he slowed until he was in the back. Pausing to check his shoes, he readjusted the clasp on his shawl and turned himself from a nobody thug to an officer.
Just like that, he went from being the hunted to the hunter. The wizard was not hard to find, he was just hard to get alone since the streets were teeming with thugs and onlookers who were enjoying the show. It didn’t help that Roan had disappeared. Men kept coming back to the wizard for orders. They even came to Roan, calling him Rayan.
“The whole block is locked down, Rayan. What do we do now?”
“We’ll have to go room by room,” was Roan’s simplistic reply. “Gather up all these useless morons who are just standing around and set up a building by building search.”
The thug hurried off and Roan hoped to get the wizard alone, only just then the real Rayan came marching up. Once more Roan bent to “check” his shoe. When he stood again, he was back to being a nobody thug.
“You!” Rayan snarled. “Every time I see you, you’re just standing around. Get your butt moving with the rest, you miserable coward.” Roan jogged off, turned the corner and immediately changed his look. Spinning back the way he came, he purposely didn’t look Rayan’s way, but instead went down an alley, calling, “Rayan! Anyone see Rayan?”
The only people around were civilians hanging from their windows or sitting on folding chairs in the alley smoking cigarettes. Eventually one pointed behind Roan who turned to see a very angry Rayan heading his way.
“I was standing right there! You practically walked right past me.”
“Sorry, but one of the guys I passed said you were down this way.”
“Was it a guy wearing a grandma?”
Roan froze. A grandma? He didn’t know what that was. “He was like this tall and he had on padded armor…”
“That’s the guy! I didn’t like the look of that guy. How much you wanna bet he’s with the Ghak?” Rayan had already turned and was fast-marching out of the alley. Pretending to take him seriously, Roan acted like he was reaching for his pouch, but was really pulling his sword.
He expected an easy backstab followed by a quick frisking, instead the man reacted with amazing reflexes and instead of being decapitated, he was only slashed across the shoulder.
“It’s you,” Rayan growled, pulling a glowing short sword.
Roan didn’t answer. He let his sword do the talking. The two clashed in a silence that was punctuated only by grunts and the clang of metal. Their swords whipped faster than the eye could see. In the span of seconds, they both attacked, hacking twice per round.
Rayan was slightly faster, however, Roan was much bigger and stronger; his sword was bigger as well and did a ton more damage compared to Rayan’s short sword. To further tip things in Roan favor, for a rogue he was extremely tough and could absorb a lot more damage.
After a minute in which Roan had lost twenty hit points and Rayan twice that, it was obvious the fight wouldn’t last much longer. “Son of a bitch!” Rayan seethed. “I have money. Real money. I can get you a thousand dollars.”
Roan was shocked by the amount. “A thousand just to save your character? How are you that attached? You play a damned thief.”
“It’s not the character, i
t’s the position I hold. It’s a good source of secondary income. How about fifteen hundred?”
Now Roan understood. Rayan made money pimping out women and exploiting children, robbing from the weak, hooking people on drugs and hurting the innocent. He was everything Roan hated.
Roan thought that as an evil character he would be able to accept someone like Rayan, but he couldn’t abide to see the man still breathing. He launched himself on the vile thief, hacking at him with more anger than finesse. The crowd said: oooh as Roan brought the man to his knees.
Before he could cleave the man’s head in two, Rayan cursed and clocked out(XP +2000). He had given up and his body fell over, lifeless. Roan was still seething, but what he did next was purposeful. Taking his mud and blood covered shoe, he smashed Rayan in the face, breaking his nose and leaving a mess.
No one would know this was Rayan. There’d be no autopsy or investigation. The second the locals stripped him, he’d be just another rotting corpse in a city that stank of them.
Roan knelt and went through Rayan’s pockets and pouches, taking two golden wheels, four potions and a pair of soft, grey gloves. These he took from Rayan at first only to check the man for rings, but was surprised to find that the gloves were magical. Finally, he slid the magic short sword into the Dimension Bag. He left the rest to the locals, who were already closing in to snatch the man’s armor and clothes.
Just before he exited the alley, he changed to appear like Rayan and then went in search of the wizard. He hadn’t gone far when a crow zipped up to him, dropped something in front of him and then flew off to the next building.
Glancing down, Roan saw the crow had dropped a piece of paper. Picking it up he read: Pull your men back. They’ve gone too far—Gairafel.
“I have a name and a location.” He didn’t need much more than that. Slipping across the street, he found himself in the same building with the awful smelling grocery store. Somehow, he’d gone in a little circle. It was no wonder since the city, with its nearly uniform structures had all the charm of a Soviet-era gulag.
Nothing had changed in the store or the butcher’s room behind it. There were a few extra footprints tracked through the black muck in the hall beyond it. Roan leapt across with ease and, pulling his sword, he headed for the stairs.
He was five steps up when someone spoke behind him. “I have twenty bucks that says you’re going to die.”
Quick as a cat, the Doom blade at the ready, Roan spun around expecting to see one of the black-garbed thugs or perhaps the wizard, but there was no one in sight. “Who’s there?” he asked, taking a step upwards.
“Everyone is looking for you, but I’m the one you’re looking for. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find the Infinite Assassins…or should I say, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to be noticed by us. Only now you’re going to die. Gairafel is far too powerful for you to take on just yet, fledgling. But if you don’t kill him, there are some in the organization who will think you don’t have what it takes to become one of us.”
Roan had a pretty good fix on the man’s voice and oriented on it as he asked, “Who says I want to be a part of your group?”
The man laughed. “You say it. Your actions speak louder than words. Attacking the Temple of Apollo, that was a bold statement indeed. It couldn’t be missed. And using the girl to get to Tarranon, that was genius. Now for your final test. All you have to do is take on a fifteenth level wizard.”
A shudder went up Roan’s back—fifteenth level! That was impossible. Who knew what sort of power a wizard of that level had.
“He’s got tons of power, however, it’ll be his contingency spells you’ll have to worry about,” the voice said, seemingly reading Roan’s mind. “If you don’t kill him with your first strike, he’ll have contingency spells which are sort of ‘just in case’ spells that will spring up with a thought. A Steelskin spell will be one of them for sure. Right now his armor class is probably around a sixteen, but if he has that spell as one of his contingency spells—and I’m sure he will— then you’ll be going up against a twenty-six armor class.”
“Can I kill him in the first strike?”
Laughter echoed up the stairs at him. “If you were an assassin, the answer would be yes. Since you’re not one, I’m going to say it’s not likely. He doesn’t look all that tough, but looks can be deceiving. He likely has on a Vestment of the Rhino so his hit points will be thirty points higher than normal. If he averaged four hit points per level as his base and you add that to the thirty, he’ll have somewhere around ninety.”
Ninety was too much. Roan’s sneak attack did quadruple damage. If he got lucky and did maximum damage, he’d only take off forty points plus six more for his strength and the magic in his sword. His second strike would likely hit as well, but only for maybe eleven or twelve points of damage. After that Roan would consider himself lucky to hit him even once a round.
“And do you have a guess as to what his other contingency spells would be?” he asked.
“Who knows? Invisibility, teleportation, maybe a summoning spell. That’s the fun of the game, right? You never know what you’re going to get. Now, the question you have to ask is, how bad do you want to be one of us?”
Chapter 30
K Street Killers Territory, Oberast
The answer was easy, Roan didn’t want to be one of them, he had to become one of them, his life probably depended on it. “This is all I have to do join? Kill this guy?”
More easy laughter came up at him. “No, of course not. It’s only one step. Trust me, there’ll be more tests. Loyalty tests you might call them.”
“I’m not worried about those. I just need to get past the wizard.” He opened his Dimension Bag and pulled out the soft gloves he had taken from Rayan. Slipping them on, he felt an immediate change come over him.
“Gloves of the Cat,” the invisible assassin said. Now that they were named, Roan knew what they did, they added two points to his dexterity so that he went from a seventeen to a nineteen. This in turn made his armor class better, his initiative better and all of his dexterity based skills better.
Next Roan pulled out his Potions of the Ogre. He drank it down making his strength a nineteen, which added a plus one to his attacks and his damage. Next he pulled out the Inferno Wand.
“Looks like the party just got interesting,” the assassin joked.
Roan next added his potions of healing to one pouch and an invisibility potion to the other. “Do you know where to find me when this is over?” he asked the assassin.
“Sure. I’ll look for you on the street; they’ll be picking pieces of you out of the cobblestone.”
“We’ll see about that,” Roan said, over his shoulder as he mounted the steps. His game plan was to hit hard and fast and not let up…if he could. At the top of the stairs, he paused, taking a deep breath. The wizard, clad in his black robes, was standing by himself on the edge of the building. The idea of pushing him off was tempting and yet now that Roan knew about contingency spells, he figured it would be a waste. The wizard probably had a flying spell ready to go.
Roan wouldn’t have gotten close even if he had wanted to push him off. He walked across the roof with all the sound a mouse might make, still Gairafelturned. “What are you doing? I told you to pull your men back. They’re all over the place.” He looked back down at the streets and sighed. “This whole situation is getting more and more messed up.”
“It is.” Roan agreed coming closer to his victim. “I sent out a few people to round everyone up. The problem is, we don’t even know who the hell we are supposed to be looking for.”
“No one. We let him come to us. And when he shows his face, then we jump on him with both feet. I want our guys to get to him first. The bounty is now just stupid.”
Roan was almost in position to strike. “What happens if we don’t get the guy?”
The wizard laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about that. If we don’t him, Ederon is going to bring out the b
ig guns. He’s already contacting the assassins.”
That certainly explained my previous conversation, Roan thought. And it made him wonder if he was doing the right thing. If he killed the wizard, would he be killed next? And if he didn’t kill the wizard, would he be killed regardless? And if I just go home?
As appealing as that was, it was the only option off the table. For better or worse, he had to follow through with the attack. “Ederon must be getting pretty desperate to call the assassins. Do you know how much they charge for something like this?”
The wizard blew out through puffed cheeks. “A friggin arm and a leg from what I…” He had turned away as he spoke and Roan took that moment to attack. He had the drop on the wizard and his first thrust did the full quadruple sneak attack damage. The blow would have killed a grizzly bear and it nearly killed the wizard. The Doom blade drove deep, but before Roan could follow up with his second attack, the wizard’s contingency spells erupted.
There was a sudden flash of light and flame that went off all around him, without touching him. His shielding ring had worked its magic and he was completely unhurt by the spell. He was partially blinded and after he blinked away most of the yellow blobs floating in his vision, he saw that the roof was empty.
He didn’t believe it for a second. Roan took three steps and leapt from the roof, soaring across the chasm between the two buildings. In mid-air he spun and pointed the Inferno Wand, flicked it and thought Go! There was a delay of about a second and he was just about to land when the wand spat out a ball of fire.
It rocketed at the roof and when it exploded, flames blanketed all around where he’d been standing. Roan hit the roof, facing backwards and might have injured himself if it hadn’t been for his augmented dexterity. He fell back, tucked into a ball, did a reverse summersault, and was back on his feet in one move.
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure Page 28
