“I understand your reasons, but I can’t change guild rules, nor can any of us question our leader’s orders. I will give you a head start. Leave now, Rutland. In 1 hour, our men and our dogs will come for you.”
Connor turned and left. His sword bounced on his back as he walked away. Some of the other soldiers wouldn’t move for him, so he pushed through until he left the unit and walked into the distance. Durthan watched him as his Serpent icon slowly faded away, leaving him a guildless fugitive.
He saw some of the men murmur to each other, so he decided it was time to attack. Concentrating his mana, he looked at his soldiers and activated War Cry. He bellowed the order to advance on Calmarnock.
Chapter Two
Janus
The marshes surrounding Dry Gulch seemed deeper and boggier than any others that I’d seen. The mud was thicker than treacle, and in parts, it looked like it could wrap around my legs and drag me into the ground. Extra agility points would have been useful here, but I knew I’d be okay if I was careful.
“Why did you want to come to Dry Gulch?” I said, looking at Brian who sat on the ground with bomb casings and gunpowder in front of him. Even sitting down, the giant was still taller than me.
“It’s off the beaten track, and it’s not affiliated with any guilds. That means that people rarely come here.”
“So the plan is to stay here and grind up a few levels? I’d like to be prepared the next time a PKer fancies stabbing me.”
“You’ve been working hard, Janus. Smoglar and I like your attitude. We were sceptical about you at first, you know.”
“Yeah, I got that impression.”
“But you know what? I’m glad to have you with us.”
We hadn’t come across many people lately because Brian had led us over rarely-trodden pathways. We met a group of Halons who were travelling to Iskarg, but they didn’t pay attention to us. Sooner or later, though, it wouldn’t just be Halons that we saw. Since we were all guildless, we were fair game to any members of the Halon, Merc, Serpent or Greye guilds that came our way.
Brian put his hand on his arm and winced.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I lost HP fighting the scuttlewasp a few hours ago. Must have left its sting in me, because my health is draining. I’ve used my last potion, too.”
I reached into my bag and checked my inventory. There wasn’t much in it, but I had one potion left. I took it out and passed it to my friend.
“That’s your last one,” he said.
“I know. Drink it before a scuttlewasp takes a fancy to my arse and I need it for myself.”
The giant smiled and took it from me. He unscrewed the cork and tipped the liquid into his mouth. His health bar slowly increased as the potion took effect.
“Thanks, Janus.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just remember me when they ask for your vote in the Tinker of the Year awards. Now let’s get going. We’ve got a lot of levelling up to do if we’re going to catch Herelius up.”
The giant sighed and got to his feet. “You’re more obsessed than Smoglar,” he said.
“I just need to get Herelius. I want to see his face when he knows that I’ve beaten him. The thing is, he won’t recognise me. So I’ll tell him who I used to be, and that he killed a newbie for no reason.”
“You’re fuelled by hate, Janus. Hate won’t lead you anywhere but down a dark path.”
I knew that I still had a while to go before I could consider myself prepared, but I would get there. After leaving Blundow I had used my unspent attribute points, giving weight to the stats that favoured my class. Tinkers weren’t warriors, so that meant most of my points were best spent on intelligence and charisma. For good measure, I had also beefed up my endurance so that it didn’t take just a single sword blow to cripple me.
I brought up my character screen.
Name: Janus
Race: Human
Class: Tinker
Level: 8 (114 Exp until next level)
Ability #1: Snake Tongue – Level 1 (25% toward next level)
Ability #2: Appraiser of Men – Level 1 (25% toward next level)
Ability #3:
Perks:
Bomb Maker – Level 1
Unallocated points: 0
Strength: 2
Agility: 3
Intelligence: 9
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Hit points: 125 / 125
Mana: 250 / 250
Stamina: 129 / 129
Skills:
Explosives: Level 1 (0% toward next level)
Knife Play: Level 1 (20% toward next level)
Blade Sharpen: Level 1 (25% toward next level)
Forager: Level 1 (15% toward next level)
Ongoing Stats:
Chaos: 1
Guardian: 2
Viewers: 1
When I first started out as a Tinker I didn’t know much about the class, but I was coming round to it now. There weren’t many stories of Tinkers who became warriors, but there were lots about ones who made bombs and siege towers. The strength of my class would never be physical, but given enough levelling up and skill improvement, I could become as deadly as a barbarian with a great sword.
“Hey, Janus? You’re not ignoring me, are you?”
I broke from the character screen to see Brian staring at me. He held a glass vial in his hands. Thick orange liquid with the consistency of blood swished against the sides.
“Catch,” he said, tossing it toward me.
I caught the vial and held it in my hands. It was a stamina potion, but I didn’t need it yet. I put it in my bag.
“Thanks,” I said. “How do you think Smoglar is getting on?”
“Last time I saw him he was smashing his anvil with a hammer. There wasn’t any metal underneath it, though. I think he was doing it out of frustration.”
We’d left the dwarf back in Dry Gulch, where he’d decided to try and level up his blacksmithing skills. The dwarf hated having to buy from traders, so he wanted to make his own gear. He said that once his skills were high enough, he was going to craft us the finest-looking armour we’d ever seen. He’d talked about it with such enthusiasm that I couldn’t help smiling.
As I looked at the marshland around me, a message flagged on my screen.
Global Message: The Serpents have taken Calmarnock. This town and the territory surrounding it are now owned by the Serpent guild.
That meant that the Serpents had broken the guild pact forged years ago, after the Great War. When the Halon, Merc and Greye guilds had defeated the Serpents, they had allowed them to keep their guild intact. The condition was that they surrendered all territory except their homeland, Dreadmount. A further stipulation was that they were not allowed to take territory without consent. With the treaty broken I had no idea what was going to come, but it looked like the days of peace were over.
“Did you just get the message?” said Brian.
I nodded.
“And do you know what that means?”
“It means I won’t be holidaying in Calmarnock anytime soon,” I said.
We hardly had time to continue the discussion when another message displayed.
Global Message: The Serpents have found a death shard of Necrolor (1 of 6)
The breaking of the treaty was bad enough, but this was much worse. Necrolor was the leader of the Serpents, and for years he had been the highest level player on the game. As well as immense power, he also boasted the highest tally of Chaos points, meaning he had done more evil in the world than anyone else. Necrolor was killed in the Great War but Herelius, the new leader of the Serpents, sought to bring him back by collecting the shards of his soul that were hidden across the land.
“This isn’t good,” said Brian, with his typical blend of understatement.
I had goals that extended far beyond the marshland around us, but it would be a while before I reached them. First, I needed to toughen up and improve
my skills.
“On with the lesson, wise teacher,” I said.
Brian had a cloth spread out in front of him. On it were cheap casings that were to be used for making bombs. It didn’t matter what size or shape they were, as long as they were made of metal. Next to the casings was a pile of gunpowder. Again, this was so cheap that even the meanest trader didn’t try to gouge you for it. Brian and I had stocked up in Dry Gulch before leaving for the marsh.
Brian seemed to delight in playing the role of teacher, so I thought it was only fair that I put all my effort into learning from him. There was a lot more to being a tinker than I’d first thought.
“Come over here,” said Brian.
I crossed the marsh until I stood near him, careful to avoid areas that looked too watery. A thin mist settled over the surface of the ground, and there was a bitter smell of mud in the air. I sat down in front of the cloth.
Brian looked at me. His beard was thicker than my hair, and his eyes were larger than my face.
“Make me a bomb,” he said. “One that doesn’t almost blow your own hand off, this time.”
Since getting the Bomb Maker perk, Brian had been drilling me in the art of explosives. And it was an art, he told me. When you made a bomb you weren’t just throwing materials together and setting them alight. There was a balance to it.
I looked at the materials in front of me. I had no doubt that outside the game, bomb making was a lot more complicated. Here, you just needed three things: a casing, gunpowder, and a fuse. We’d also bought a fire-flint each so that we could actually light them.
I closed my eyes. In my head I began to tip gunpowder into the casing, letting the black powder pour down slowly so that I didn’t overfill it. With that done I sealed the casing and then inserted a fuse. I opened my eyes and then looked down at the cloth. Voila, a bomb.
“We need to get your production time quicker, but that will come with better skill. I think you got the gunpowder balance a little wrong as well. But not bad, Janus. And it’s going to come in handy, too. Look.”
Brian pointed behind me. I turned and saw that twenty yards away there stood three Boar Minions. Their rough fur was as brown as the mud around them, and their long snouts hid teeth that I knew from experience could cause a lot of pain.
“There are too many, though,” said Brian. “We should probably sit this one out.”
I had come to realise that ‘cautious’ was too understated a term for the giant. I was surprised that he hadn’t somehow managed to find armour made of cotton wool. It wasn’t that he was scared; he just hated taking risks.
Looking at the boars, they did seem mean. The bad thing for them was that Brian and I were meaner.
“No, come on. We can take them.”
“Fine. Then you’re up to bat, slugger,” said Brian.
I equipped my dagger, but I knew that if I actually had to use it then something had gone wrong. As I slowly became at one with my class, I realised that a Tinker shouldn’t fight hand-to-hand where possible. My strength was going to come from the sides, where I’d launch bombs at delightfully flammable wildlife.
One boar sniffed the air and then snapped his head in my direction so that he stared at me. The others noticed, and soon all three boars scraped their feet on the ground and prepared for a charge.
I had other bombs in my bag, but I thought I’d try the new one first. I lit the fuse and smiled as I breathed in the smell of it burning. As the fire fizzed down I lifted the bomb in the air, took aim and threw it. I made sure that the arc of my throw would end a few feet in front of the boar, rather than where they were now.
Sure enough, the wild animals ran straight into the bomb. The fuse ended and there was an explosion. Mud flew up into the air and fell over us in a shower, and I tasted speckles of it as they landed on my lips. The boar screamed out.
25 Exp Gained!
(79 until level 9)
25 Exp Gained!
(54 until level 9)
Two of the boars were dead, but I hadn’t collected the experience from the third yet. I looked up and saw that it clung to a millimetre of its HP. Despite its injuries, it still dragged itself toward me, anxious for a taste of my flesh. I knew that given the chance it would kill me, but I couldn’t help but think that it was suffering.
I gripped my dagger. This boar was so injured that it wouldn’t be a threat, and I would take any chance to improve my knife skills that I could. You never knew when you would need them.
As I walked over to the boar, Brian strode across in front of me. His legs were much longer than mine, and he reached the boar first. Holding a hatchet, he swung a death blow at the boar and killed it.
“Sorry,” he said, looting the corpse. “I only needed one more kill to level up.”
I knew that levelling up sent a surge of pleasure through you. It was like a warm elixir washing through your body and smoothing it over with happiness. For some, it was the reason they came back to Re:Fuze again and again, even to the point that they left their families. It was so exhilarating that it could cause addiction.
Despite the pleasure of levelling up, there was something different about Brian. There was sadness in his eyes, buried in their depths as though he tried hard to hold it in. I’d seen the expression before, but he was always quick to get rid of it.
Message from viewer: ‘He’s hiding something from you.’
Ah yes, my mystery viewer. Whoever it was had been following my feed since Blundow. I still wasn’t sure why, since it could hardly have been thrilling watching me grind my way up the levels by blowing up Boar Minions. I wanted to know who it was, but it was clear that for now, they were only interested in playing games.
Just before leaving Blundow, my mystery viewer had sent me an item. I didn’t know what it was yet, and I would have to identify the item somehow.
Their latest message to me was just as cryptic as the others. ‘He’s hiding something from you.’ I assumed that he meant Brian, since it was clear that the giant had secrets in his past. Deep down I felt that I could trust him, so until he decided to open up, I would let the matter rest.
Bomb Maker perk increased by 25% (75% to next level)
A warm radiance spread through me. Not as much as if I had levelled up, but it was nice all the same. It had taken me a while to make even this measly progress. My first few attempts at bomb making had been so bad that Brian took pity on me and bought me some fire-resistant gloves. My own bombs couldn't hurt me or our party when I threw them, but they could damage me while they were still being made. Still, I was getting better, and I wouldn’t stop until my bombs were perfect.
“You’re getting to grips with it,” said Brian, moving back as the Boar corpses evaporated. “A Tinker can become more powerful than you realise. It isn't just about bombs, Janus. There’s so much more to it than that. If you’re going to remember anything I tell you, then remember this; you can only become as powerful as the limits you set yourself.”
A tremendous roar cut through the stillness of the marsh, so loud that the mud seemed to shake. Ahead of us was a Boar, but this one was different than the minions I had just dispatched. Its body was packed with muscle, and it stood as tall as my waist. It opened its mouth and roared, and I saw rows of yellow, razor-sharp teeth.
I looked at Brian. Even the giant seemed worried now. It was obvious that this creature was beyond our level.
“Back to Dry Gulch?” I said.
He nodded. “Think it’s time we called it a day.”
Before we could move, the boar advanced toward us with a speed I didn’t expect from an animal so dense with muscle. It seemed to sense which direction we needed to go, and it cut off our path.
We were going to have to fight it. I knew that boars could become enraged, and once that happened they would follow you across the map until one of you died.
I pulled a bomb out of my inventory. This was one of my early efforts. It was misshapen, and gunpowder fell out of the hole where the fuse r
an. I lit it, waited a few seconds and then threw it at the beast. The bomb exploded and the animal reared back. When I looked at its health bar, I saw that it had only reduced by a fraction.
Brian threw a bomb of his own but as well-crafted as his bomb was, it still inflicted only a little more damage than mine.
“Think we’re going to need bigger bombs,” he said.
Combat wasn’t just about brawn. If you wanted to win fights it made little sense to throw one mindless attack after another and hope you did enough damage. A Tinker, especially, had to fight with intelligence.
I stared at the Boar. I concentrated on its body, taking in every inch of its muscled flesh. As my concentration grew stronger I found myself looking deeper, until I could see the inner workings of the animal. My Appraiser of Men skill activated, and information flooded my screen.
Tinker, Tailor, Giant, Dwarf ( LitRPG Series): Difficulty:Legendary Book 2 Page 2
