by Jason Cheek
Manifest Pet: Tengsly (Flying Squirrel)
Level: 33
Strength: 9
Intelligence: 33
Spirit: 33
Agility: 58
Stamina: 33
Charisma: 33
Attack: 2-3
Speed: 3
Weight-Carrying Capacity: 1.5 lbs.
Special Abilities: Phase Through Walls, Carry More Than One Message
Experience: Received upon completion of a message.
Unique Characteristics: Due to being a manifest pet as well as being considered a Small Creature, the manifestation’s Strength is reduced by two-thirds and is converted to Agility.
Additional Information: Your manifest Giant Squirrel is bound to your soul. Unlike a normal manifest pet, this manifestation uses an alternate method for gaining experience due to the nature of its existence. At each tenth level, a manifest pet can acquire an additional feat to enhance their base abilities. To access the feats available for your manifest pet, select the manifestation’s name to open the properties, and choose from the available selection. Your manifest pet’s summons will last for twenty-four hours or until it has been destroyed. Your manifest pet can only be summoned once every twenty-four hours.
Looking over his Special Abilities, I was surprised to see that there were two feats listed since I’d never seen the Available Feats option up til now. The only thing that made any sense was that my desire to have Tengsly be able to carry more than one message must have been somehow automatically selected from an available feat without me realizing it. I’d have to make sure I paid more attention to newly available feats when they became available. Otherwise, I could run the risk of losing out on something that was truly needed by asking my manifest pets or mount to perform something that wasn’t normally an option available to them.
‘Lastly, after giving your message to General Dell, I want you to find Helgath and Neysa to let them know that we need to leave now,’ I mentally sent Tengsly, while giving him one last head rub. ‘Now get!’
Before I’d even completed the thought, Tengsly was leaping into the air and spreading his furry wings. Letting out an excited chittering call, he circled over my head in a gray blur, before racing towards the lead glass windows. Without even hesitating, Tengsly phased through the window panes as if it wasn’t even there. You’ve gotta love magic, I thought with a smirk. Taking a final look around the room, I turned back to my companions and nodded towards the bedroom door.
“Come on, it’s time to go,” I said, heading for the door with a purposeful stride. “There’s lots to do and very little time to do it in.”
“Yes milord,” both women said, following after me with their own Flying Squirrels perched on their shoulders.
Stepping into the hallway, I was surprised to see Neristhana, Ulia, Keela, and their new friends already waiting for me. While the boys were still in the process of strapping on their breastplates, the girls were ready to move out. As my eyes swept over the group, Neristhana, Hartley, and Legar, the third Skirmisher that had spent the night with Keela, all but blushed to the gills, while Gregory just puffed his chest out proudly. Good for him, I thought, giving the other man a nod of respect before addressing the group.
“I hope you lot at least managed to get a good night’s sleep,” I said, as Ulia and Keela let out unabashed throaty laughs, while the tips of Neristhana’s ears turned a bright red.
“We didn’t work them too hard,” Ulia promised, while Keela happily agreed as she playfully elbowed Legar in the gut.
“Milord, we’re rested up and ready to move out at your command,” Gregory assured, snapping to attention along with a flustered Hartley and a doubled-over Legar still gasping for air.
“Excellent,” I said, clapping Gregory on the shoulder, “because we’ve got to get out of here before the Orcs reach the city’s gates.” Not slowing down, I hurried down the corridor with the crew calling out over my shoulder. “I already have Tengsly letting General Dell know to get the troops moving and hopefully he’ll have an update on the Royal Cavalry’s ambush and how much of a head start we’ll have by the time I’m finished meeting up with the Queen.”
“General Dell?” I heard surprised gasps from the three men behind me. Not that I was particularly paying attention to their excited whispers as I turned to Neristhana and Ulia who were striding next to me.
“While I’m meeting with the Queen,” I said, as my mind raced forming plans around everything we could do with a mounted force. “I want you, Keela, Rayne, and Brenna to purchase as many mounts as possible for our people. If we can get all of you and the command staff mounted-” I paused at the uncomfortable looks that had suddenly come over both women’s faces. Glancing behind me, I saw the same looks on the rest of my companion’s faces as the obvious hit me.
“Let me guess,” I said, looking back and forth between Ulia and Neristhana, “none of you know how to ride a horse?”
“That was forbidden unless your class was a Death Knight,” Ulia snarled, as her eyes got a far-off look. “The last House of Kayden Lord refused to allow non-nobles to learn how to ride.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Neristhana flippantly said, as I looked her way. “Why would a sailor ever need to learn how to ride on land?”
“I would’ve never guessed that after last night,” Hartley mumbled a little too loud, as a ringing smack rang throughout the corridor.
I didn’t even bat an eye as Neristhana smoothly turned back around as if nothing had been said. There was a moment of stunned silence as all the men’s eyes turned to me fearfully. Seeing the hint of a grin on my lips and realizing that I wasn’t offended, Gregory and Legar both let out hearty guffaws at their friend as the Gnomeling woman turned three shades of red. Careful to not get in the middle of that mess, I continued as if nothing had happened.
“Well, that sucks,” I said, coming to a stop. Obviously, I’d miscalculated big time here. “Do you think any of the other Sub or Assault Leaders know how to ride?”
“Knowing how Humans treat any commoners, it’s doubtful,” Neristhana said, as Ulia and the other Half-Elves nodded in agreement.
“Cavalry and Royal Knight units are solely filled by the nobility,” Hartley stated in a quiet voice, as if he were afraid to anger me. “Unless you’re a mercenary company or a well-to-do merchant house transporting goods via wagons, most commoners do not have the means or the need to learn the Riding skill.”
“General Dell wasn’t one to believe in all that crap,” Legar angrily muttered, as Gregory and Hartley both gave him an alarmed look.
“What my brother in arms is trying to say,” Gregory hurriedly tried to explain, as he gave the larger man a warning look, “is that our old Royal Skirmisher unit was the first of its kind to be made up of commoners.”
“We were the best Cavalry unit out of all the Royal Forces too,” Hartley hotly said, as Gregory gave him a brotherly clap on the back.
“Until they demoted our General back to an Assault Leader for daring to prove they were better than any noble unit,” Legar snarled, as Gregory and Hartley worriedly glanced at me. It was obvious they thought I’d take offense at their buddy’s angry words.
“It’s okay,” I dismissively said, as my mind continued to chew over the problem. “How long does it normally take for a,” I paused deciding over the correct term to use, “person of The World to learn how to ride without any previous experience?”
“Learning to ride in the first place is what takes the most time,” Hartley clearly stated, as the men to either side of him nodded sagely, “and takes a skilled Journeyman level trainer to teach the basic skill in the first place.”
“After that, it requires a skill level of ten to be able to fight while mounted,” Gregory explained, quickly going over the various riding skill levels. “Level 20 will allow you to use all of your attacks while being mounted. Though, there is still a sixty percent chance of spell disruption or special abilities failing.”
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“It reduces by ten percent every five skill levels thereafter though,” Hartley quickly added at seeing my frown, “and every ten levels opens up a new mounted ability.”
“Level 30 opens up the ability to add barding and specialized addons to increase your mounts basic attacks,” Gregory continued explaining, “while level 40 allows your mount’s basic attacks with your own. Though, it’s not until level 50 that you can combine both your mount’s advanced attacks with your own without any negative penalties.”
“Isn’t that some shit,” I said, imagining my friends’ outrage, “all of those jokers paid extra for a full set of barding for their new mounts and won’t be able to use any of it for this fight.”
“Personally, I doubt your friends would even have the money to purchase a basic mount,” Legar guffawed, “only nobles and merchant houses have an extra hundred gold lying around to purchase a mount, let alone another hundred for barding.”
“Oh, I doubt that’s an issue for any of my friends,” I said, with a twinkle in my eyes. We’d earned a shit-ton of money from all of the PVP we’d done over the last few days; let alone all the money we’d made from slaughtering high-level Orcs for nearly nine hours straight.
That simple comment brought the three Skirmishers up short. Ignoring their shocked looks, my mind went into overdrive as I weighed the merits of purchasing my own cavalry unit worth of mounts. It would be a massive chunk of change, that I’d be putting out, if the city even had the necessary horses available. While a part of me felt like it was a massive waste of money, I couldn’t deny the usefulness of having another cavalry force besides just the Centaurs under my banner. Besides that, the money sitting in my inventory wasn’t actively helping our war effort.
Yeah, I could use the money for purchasing raw goods like food and ores for our production of weapons and armor, but how would I get any of that to my people in time to be of any use for the coming battle against the Hobgoblins? Not only that, just transporting all of that material would slow my people down, possibly long enough that they would be too late to help with the defense of our lands. I could just see half of my forces being overwhelmed as they tried to hold the new walls only to have the other half of my forces be caught while still in transit by overwhelming forces. The battle would be over before it had even started.
I’m sure many players would think my choice of increasing the strength of my people before using the money to trick out my own character with the best of gear would be the height of foolishness, but I knew that I had to be smarter than that if I wanted to stay at the top of the charts, especially with how small our guild was. I also understood enough about history and general economics to know that having me take all of the wealth that we'd been acquiring couldn’t continue. At least, it couldn’t if I didn’t want to lose the productivity, creativity, and loyalty of the people that made up the House of Kayden and BrokenFang Hold.
On top of that, my current mode of ruling the people of The World under me was great if I were playing a strategy game like StarCraft or Stellaris where the people were nothing but non-thinking or non-feeling digital scripts. There was no way that such a form of governing could be applicable to real-life people. So, if I truly wanted a strong society that could adapt, produce, and fight for the future, I needed something much better than the Socialist approach I was now using or the Feudal System that currently dominated the various kingdoms of The World. A feat, I’m sure, that was much easier said than done, Earth’s history of terrible forms of government were proof enough of people’s and society’s failures.
Call me a hypocrite if you like but I was basically planning on being a benevolent dictator at this point in time. Though, one that truly saw a chance at making the lives of my people better. I’d do my best to take what was good from our real world and discard the rest. Meaning, that while a constitutional republic and the changeover from an agrarian to an industrial-based society were the core precepts that helped to make America the world power that it was today, I no longer believed in true unbiased representation for the greater good without making people’s own fortune somehow tied to the job they were doing as a civil servant, especially not after seeing all of the corruption of professional politicians at all levels of government. While I believed in the benefits of a free-market system’s ability to raise people out of poverty and help to increase the productivity of a country, I was beginning to believe that a representative democracy was too easy for corrupt, self-serving people to abuse the system and steal the reins of power from a lazy population focused on their own goals.
I silently shook my head at the monstrous task that I’d set for myself. All of this was moot until we escaped the Chaos Storm Alliance, the Orc Horde, and defeated the Hobgoblin invasion. The one good thing about the monstrous hordes we were fighting was that it was going to give me the extra money that I needed to grow BrokenFang Hold and strengthen the House of Kayden. For now, the only two questions that I had were; is this the best use of my money and could I get someone that was a journeyman level rider to train my people? Coming to a decision, I wordlessly began heading towards the stairwell that led to the main foyer.
“Hey, where is everyone at?” I called out, after switching over to the raid’s command chat. “I need to know how many more mounts are left for purchase?”
“What the hell, Jay,” Sarka’s voice rang out in annoyance, “you could at least say good morning before you start snapping orders out?”
“Good morning everyone,” I said drolly, as Jill’s bitching voice cut me off.
“Could you keep it down, some of us are trying to learn how to ride!”
“Ha,” Kenzie sharply called out, “looks like someone needs to work on their Strength stat!”
“You can take your Strength stat and shove it-” Jill’s bitching came to an abrupt stop as she let out a startled yelp, “Gah!”
“Ha!” Hefe barked out, before suddenly screaming out in agony, “get off of me, you psycho bitch!” There was more screaming and cursing with a lot of hollering from both AJ, Bonnie, and Kris, before my friends calmed down again.
“Seriously, watch where you’re slinging those Arcane Blasts,” AJ vehemently swore, “or you’re going to get us all kicked out of the stables. Besides, it’s not Hefe’s fault you’re having problems learning to ride.”
“From all of your sexipades, I honestly thought you’d be better at riding than that,” Unalia unconsciously muttered without realizing she was in raid chat, as Thomas and several other Devil Dogs burst out laughing
“This is such bullshit,” Jill frustratingly said in a voice that was close to tears. “How can Hefe have gotten the riding skill before me when he can’t even reach the damn stirrups?”
“Probably because he’s so small and light,” AJ said with a shrug, not thinking about how his words might be received, “it’s more like him sitting on top of a table than riding on a saddle.”
“Are you saying I’m fat now?” Jill asked, as her voice turned frosty.
“Only in comparison to a three and a half-foot Gnome,” AJ unapologetically shot back, as his girlfriend let out a strangled cry.
“Listen up people,” I said, trying to get everyone to stop with the shenanigans, “we need to be out of the city and on our way in no less than half an hour.”
“Half an hour?” Jill angrily snarled, “Are you shitting me?”
“We’re twenty minutes from the main gate if not further!” AJ agreed in a strained voice.
“Jay, there’s no way we’ll be able to make it in that amount of time,” Sarka reluctantly agreed, as Thomas spoke up.
“What’s the situation, Star?”
“The Orc’s vanguard is already visible from the top of the keep with the rest of the horde not far behind them.” I hurriedly explained as we headed down the central stairs, “They’re currently skirmishing with the Royal Cavalry four or five miles out, but there’s no way they’ll be able to do more than slow the Orcs down.”
“What numbers are we talking about?” Thomas asked.
“A hundred thousand or more,” I answered, mentally picturing the packed mass of Orcs off to our east northeast. “If not for the bottleneck created by the ridge, there’s no way they would’ve held out as long as they have.”
“This is bullshit Jay,” Jill said, as her voice noticeably cracked, “Why didn’t you warn us about this earlier?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I shot right back, with my voice dripping in sarcasm, “probably because I just freaking logged in and found out about it myself.”
“Excuse me, milord Ironwolf,” General Dell smoothly cut in, “the Western gate should be reachable. Anyone at the stables should be able to reach the Western Gate and meet up with the main force there without a problem. It’ll take a little bit of time for our group; milord, our troops, and the Uten Syn, to circle around the outer walls, but traveling outside of the city will be quicker than heading directly through the center of Palnisdale. They shouldn’t have any problems meeting up with us if they head out no later than twenty minutes from now.”
“That sounds like an excellent plan,” I said not missing a beat. “So, if you don’t want to become part of the siege to save Palnisdale for the next several weeks-”
“Then be at the Western gate on time,” Thomas finished, as Jill and several other voices groaned that they were never going to learn how to ride.
“Basically,” I agreed, reaching the ground floor and stepping into the main foyer of the keep, as Tengsly phased through the wall and flew to my shoulder. As the gray streak settled on my shoulder, I was surprised to see the little guy didn’t have a return message from me, when the large double doors opened and General Dell, along with several other familiar faces, entered the keep. Barely paying any attention to all of my friend’s affirmative comments that they’d be there in time; my focus was pulled to the excited exclamations coming from the Skirmishers behind me. Though, the grinning sight of Durneth and Jannoth, the two Skirmishers that had spent the night in the Royal Guard’s barracks after the Naked Raid, striding behind General Dell gave me a heads up that something special was going on.
