A Slave in the Locked Lands

by Arthur Stone

  Tangh’s HP had shrunk to no more than two thirds over this time. Ros refreshed his shield, then commanded the pet to attack the boss from behind, and they fell back into their routine.

  He had to raise another pet before the boss realized who was to blame for the constant resurrection of the creatures that keep biting it and dealing such disproportionate damage to its health. The enormous dark mass leaped at Ros, obscuring everything from sight. He didn’t manage to so much as yelp before the darkness of death enveloped him.

  “Danger Babe pours the energy of life into your lifeless body. Do you want to be revived on the battlefield? Yes/No.”

  As soon as he got up, Ros jumped away from the boss, cast a shield on the tank, and asked:

  “Should I raise another pet?”

  “No! The tank hasn’t got enough HP! Heal him!”

  “If we keep healing him, the boss will keep turning on you! You’ve seen it go!”

  “Tangh, stop attacking! Ros, let’s try Sleeping it.”

  No one knew whose ability did the trick, but the boss froze still.

  “Raise it now!” shouted Danger Babe, and started to take off her chainmail shirt.

  They didn’t get much of a headstart. The boss unfroze in about fifteen seconds, but the girl had already managed to cast two or three regens on Tangh, followed by a shield, so his HP stopped falling.

  “Why are you taking it off?!” shouted Ros.

  “Spellcasting will take less time!”

  “That thing might kill you!”

  “It would kill me even in this chainmail. Tangh! Don’t attack! Sleep!”

  Didn’t work this time—the boss kept tearing into the norder, while all Ros could do was watch. They were in luck. The pet rose before Tangh lost a single point.

  The boss’ HP bar started to shrink once again. Much faster, too—the new pet turned out to be more dangerous than its predecessors. The monster appeared to comprehend it, too, eventually turning around and attacking the pet. It took Tangh several seconds to draw its attention back.

  As the boss’ HP dwindled almost to nothing, it finally pounced at Danger Babe. However, Ros cast Sleep just in the nick of time, and the enormous blanket froze in mid-air.

  “Run!”

  “I’m already running!”

  “Tangh! Get the bastard! Danger Babe, root the boss!”

  The pet reached the boss in a single long leap, and hit it with both paws as hard as it could, causing a Bleeding. The next several attacks left their mark, too. Unable to move, the beast turned toward the pet desperately, but it was too late.

  “You kill the Shadow Demon. XP received: 189,905. You gain a level. Points left until the next level: 492,349. Your Mental Power grows by 1. Your Stamina grows by 1. Your Summoning grows by 1. Attention! You kill the Shadow Demon with a small party! Every member of your party receives one unassigned primary stat point. Congratulations! This is the first time in the history of Second World that this monster was defeated! Your group did it! And you did it with few resources! Your party has destroyed a monster 70 levels above the party’s strongest player! Achievement earned: Daredevil Killers, Second Degree. Achievement bonus: +105 to mana. Bonus effect: permanent. Attention! You have killed the Shadow Demon! Your party was the first to do it! No one has ever managed it before! You receive a bonus: the title of Monster Slayers, Third Degree. You receive a bonus: +1 to Luck. Title bonus: +4 to Attack, +2 to Defense, +2 to Agility, +2 to Stamina, +2% to Magic Defense. When you join a guild, a party, or a raid, all the members of the respective guild, party, or raid receive half the bonus. The bonus is permanent or lasts until the title is renounced.”

  “There’s another heroic title, and Ros is 52 now, even if he did die once! Hooray!” Danger Babe exclaimed.

  “They wasted Ros, but I was as close to it as ever myself,” answered Tangh in a weary voice.

  “Oh, come on, it all worked out in the end.”

  “What about the final boss, Ros?”

  “Even if we progress at today’s rate, we’ll only reach it tomorrow evening—or, perhaps, the day after tomorrow, in the morning.”

  “And that boss will wipe us for sure. This one was much nastier than the first, which means the last one will be a total nightmare. Also, we don’t have the time for several attempts.”

  “Why don’t we go right away?” Danger Babe suggested. “We haven’t got much time, have we?”

  Ros shook his head.

  “It’s time for you to go offline.”

  “Oh, I can linger for a while.”

  “I told you, it’s time to go offline. We’ll stay here for the night. There are secret caches to discover, and we’ll mine everything we can. The most valuable resources can be found near the boss. Have you forgotten?”

  “I have. Slipped my mind completely.”

  “Well, why are you still here?”

  “Oh, Ros! What is wrong with you? Telling me to go without even checking what the boss dropped!”

  Tangh laughed.

  “Indeed. How could you have forgotten about her woman’s curiosity?”

  “Pah! Any man would behave just the same!”

  Ros crouched near the boss and gave a whistle.

  “This one’s got more stuff than the sow we fought before. A rare necklace, another pair of gauntlets, also rare, an epic ring, unique knuckledusters, and four vials of Shadow Demon’s blood.”

  “What does ‘unique’ mean? Are there no other knuckledusters like this anywhere?” Danger Babe asked.

  “No, that’s just the item class.”

  “As far as I know, there cannot be more than a thousand unique items in the entire Second World.” Tangh added. “Well, give or take a zero, I’m not entirely sure.”

  “The ring is ideal for Danger Babe—decent stats and a slight spellcasting speed boost. The necklace offers good protection from magic. This is important for tanks, so you should have it. The gauntlets are worse than yours. The knuckledusters… Can you use them to replace the mace?”

  “No. They’re for fighters with high attack speed. It’s a rather eccentric weapon, so few players use them.”

  “So, will we be able to sell them?”

  “Are you kidding? No one has ever seen a unique item that wouldn’t find a buyer.”

  “The boss’ blood is apparently used for high-level alchemy. It’s nice that we don’t need vials of our own to collect it. Danger Babe, you’ve seen everything now, haven’t you? Shoo, go offline already.”

  “Give me the ring first! You promised it to me!”

  “I’ll enchant it, and when you log off, you’d better pray it doesn’t fall to dust.”

  “Don’t you dare break it!”

  Chapter 26

  Ros mined around forty pieces of tantalum ore in the hall, as well as some tungsten and niobium. There weren’t many gems, but the ones he did find were topazes. He had never seen them before. He also mined two Mountain Power stones here. There were four altogether, but only two of his attempts were successful—the resource level was simply too high. But he managed to raise his Mining & Quarrying, Perception, and Dowser stats as a result.

  There were four secret caches in the hall, and one of them contained a rare class shield. Tangh nearly started showering it with kisses, simply overjoyed about the stats. There was nothing else of much interest, but they didn’t mind. A party’s strength relied directly on how well-protected the tank was.

  Ros tried more crafting experiments in the morning as they waited for Danger Babe. He was hoping to make a chainmail shirt for the girl that would be lighter and with better stats. He wouldn’t mind crafting something similar for himself, but, unfortunately, the resource and item levels were too high, and that directly affected the level of the crafted pieces.

  The attempt to create a better weapon proved more successful. He decided to forego swords, having never been successful with those. After three attempts with different materials, he ended up with a Mountain Power Staff from the Locked La
nds. Rare class, decent stats, and a minimum level of 119. They’d have to sell the staff—there was nothing else to be done about it.

  He’d managed to raise a few stats for crafting the staff thanks his inventing a new item, and then Enchanting by one when he enchanted it.

  “I wish I had a few peaceful days,” said Ros musingly. “Resource variety would also be a good thing.”

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “I could spend hours crafting. I have already made a few unique ones from the loot dropped by the local mobs. They count as inventions. And they reward you for those with bonuses to rare stats. And that makes it ever easier to craft higher-quality items. Do you remember the early days of our acquaintance?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “It would take me a lot of time and effort to craft only a couple of enhanced rings. And would you look at us now—we only have four whose class is lower than good.”

  “It’s a pity you can do nothing about armor.”

  “It takes a lot of resources, and I usually waste them. This is why I avoid armor. I only do tried and tested things, albeit minor ones.”

  “You do know that armor is the most important thing to a tank, don’t you?”

  “You’re immortal, anyway. The only one of us who hasn’t gotten himself killed yet.”

  “Not quite. There was that time…”

  “That was because of the archer. I was referring to mobs.”

  “I’ve had quite a few close shaves, you know.”

  Danger Babe stirred.

  “Hey, guys. What were you talking about?”

  “We were just saying it was time to go,” said Ros as he stood up.

  * * *

  They sneaked rather than walked until midday, killing one shadowcrawler patriarch after another. The mobs seemed to have gone berserk—or, perhaps, they wanted to avenge the death of their leader. A few even managed surprise attacks, and it was sheer luck that they had chosen Tangh or the pet.

  Then everything changed drastically, and the party walked for an hour without running into a single living thing. The caves looked different now. The passages were just as meandering, but the walls were rounded and smooth. It was like walking through an enormous pipeline. There were no further halls, either, and fewer minerals. However, they did find something new—amorphite, an ornamental stone. It was rather rare and expensive, but didn’t hold a candle to any of the higher-level resources.

  They insisted that Danger Babe should log off and have a rest, despite her vocal protests, and then Tangh spent about three hours entertaining Ros with tales of his exploits back when the game had just launched. The latter kept grinding his Enchanting and Jewelry, but listened attentively. It was nice to find out that he wasn’t that unique a noob. The norder said he’d had some earlier experience playing games that could now be classified as fossils. The prototypes of games of this sort, as it were. Regardless, he had also made a few spectacular blunders at first. He laughed as he recollected how a sly trader swindled him by giving him twenty-five hundred copper coins instead of the same amount in silver. Another time he stepped up to defend a noob girl attacked by a noob of a similar level. The poor thing was crying for help so movingly that Tangh rushed to the rescue, being a true gentleman. He hit the aggressor, and realized the latter was nowhere near as noobish as he had seemed, for he hardly managed to deal him any damage. He was correct, as it took two hits for the norder to be swallowed up by the darkness, and his pants got left behind. Good quality, and enchanted to boot. They remained on the battlefield as the spoils of swindlers who would take advantage of the chivalrous nature of marks who fancied themselves mighty protectors of the bullied and the downtrodden.

  When one player attacked another, the chance of the aggressor dropping an item in the event of death increased drastically. The players’ names became displayed in pinkish letterings, and this color would linger from forty to ninety seconds after a hit or the use of a combat ability, depending on stats, level difference, and a number of random factors.

  As Ros kept listening, he managed to craft something very odd: a rare class ring with a bunch of useless stats. Or, to put it another way, stats of little value. A 5% chance to evade Fire School abilities, a 25% reduction to the probability of being bitten by a venomous insect, and so on. Sometimes random bonus distribution would render even legendary items spectacularly useless.

  Ros enchanted this ring for different effects a hundred and twenty-nine times, until it broke. He used up nearly all his low-level soul crystals and raised Enchanting by 1. The higher the level of an item, the more experience he got.

  * * *

  Danger Babe arrived about half an hour after the ring ordeal was over. Another half-hour, and they ran into a dead end. The passage was blocked by enormous boulders fused together by a large amount of thoroughly dry clay.

  “Have you lost your way?” Danger Babe looked surprised—she had already gotten used to Ros never making any navigation errors.

  He crouched, touched the boulder, broke off a piece of dry clay with some effort, rubbed it into dust with his fingers, and shook his head.

  “Nope. We’re right where Agythric’s map tells us we should go. Except it doesn’t show any piles of rubble blocking the way.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We head back. There’s another cave that joins this one further on. We’ll have to make a detour, but we’ll come out about a mile deeper in. No pile of rubble can stretch that far, right?”

  An hour later they got to the passage they needed, but it also ended in a pile of rocks.

  “And now?” Danger Babe looked dejected. “I haven’t seen any other passages. Do we go back again? What do we do?”

  “We don’t. There are no other detours.”

  Tangh bent down and picked up a rusty sword.

  “Did you see what you can find right underneath your feet here? It’s too small, and in too poor a condition, but if you fixed it, I’d have a sword. Although what would I do with such a piece of junk? Hey, take a look!”

  Tangh was pointing to the ground. A skeleton hand was sticking out from underneath a boulder.

  “Someone must have gotten squashed,” said Ros, and started to climb.

  Once he reached the ceiling, he said:

  “There’s a gap here, and the pile doesn’t go on that long. We can try to remove a little rubble off the top of the pile, and we might just squeeze in.”

  “A little” had them busy almost til evening. They could have finished earlier, but Tangh’s bulk wouldn’t budge. And they couldn’t leave him on the other side. The boss’ lair was less than a mile away, and the battle was due any hour now.

  But the battle never came to pass.

  * * *

  “Attention! You have found the remnants of a named creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! This is your fifth named creature. You receive a reward: +4 to Fury. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Achievement completed: Gatherer of Names. Achievement bonus: +1 undistributed primary stat point, +1 to Arcane Knowledge. Achievement unlocked: Name Expert. Discover ten named monsters that have not yet been added to the world bestiary to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”

  “They even give you achievements for dead critters like this one…” said Danger Babe thoughtfully, gazing at the remnants of what appeared to have been the third boss only recently: the Salt Mine Worm.

  The worm was most unusual. It wasn’t just that it was bigger than two large buses put together. Worms were invertebrates, after all, having no bones whatsoever, let alone a spine. But this one had a thin spine with numerous ribs that looked like those of a fish, and a skull that resembled a pail with holes in it.

  That was all that remained from the boss.

  “I wonder what the salt mines are all about…” mused Tangh apropos of nothing.

  “What I wonder about is why our boss is dead.”

  “Pe
rhaps we’re supposed to revive it somehow? There might be a way. Some sort of a ritual, or something similar…”

  Ros approached the remnants of the boss, touched the skull, and shook his head.

  “It is identified as a dead body.”

  Tangh bent down and picked up a fragment of a handle from some weapon—a halberd or a spear.

  “It doesn’t seem to have died a natural death. So, what’s the plan?”

  “What else can we do? Danger Babe should go offline, and we’ll head back tomorrow morning. If we’re lucky, we’ll get outside before nightfall and report to Agythric that the third boss had kicked the bucket without our help. Let’s hope that does the trick and we complete the quest.”