Gaia's Gambit: Evolution Online I (A LitRPG)

by D. L. Harrison

  Between the battle, looting and tidying up all those dead goblins in a pyre, and a couple of hours of meditation to incorporate the new concepts, it was close to lunchtime when we all gathered back together in the glade by the fire.

  By Gwen’s grin I could tell she was as excited as I was by the shopping concept. Still, I was mostly excited about the upgrades, I couldn’t get excited by the idea of linens and candles, even if we did desperately need them. Everyone else looked ready too.

  We had a quick lunch of jerky, the leftover biscuits, and some berries and nuts. We also had a few raw veggies from the garden. Hopefully that was the last incomplete meal we’d have, though in truth it wasn’t that bad.

  My pile of loot was growing quite impressive. My elemental looked like a wagon without wheels, most of it was ice to hold the stuff, at the bottom it was liquid and kind of flowed along the ground. It would only last for six minutes, but I could just keep casting it over and over until we got there. Anlyth was using an earth elemental, and Lyre an air elemental.

  Gwen and Wynn managed with a travois.

  We headed south towards the new outpost.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Magic meant fast building, especially with fifty of them, and the elves had brought a lot along with them. Between last night and this morning, it was quite a sight that greeted us when we left the edge of the forest. The palisade was impressively high at twenty feet, and it was at least thirty yards wide. There were elves in towers on the corners, twice as high as the walls, and the gate was made of metal and stone that was framed by the thick wooden logs.

  There were two guards at the open gate, who both came to attention when they saw Wynn in the group. Wynn didn’t acknowledge them and took us in inside. The length of it became apparent when we went inside, it was about twice the width at a quick guess. A hundred by two hundred feet. There were several small buildings up already. Food, weapon smithy and armorer, general store, mess hall, and barracks. The smithy was huge, and I imagined it held more than one forge.

  Wynn said, “The armorer has some robes, and magical items. I gave orders to have a sampling brought, with you being the only exclusively magical person here it didn’t make sense to open a magic store.”

  I nodded, “Thanks Wynn, I’m sure it will be fine.”

  The weapon smithy was first, and we all dragged our stuff in the large building. It was a large open floor, with weapons, sets of armor, and a few sets of robes and a counter covered in display cases with rings and necklaces. There were three back rooms, each with its own forge, and the room was hot but not unbearable, they must have had good air circulation, or someone had the fire sphere and was using that to keep the outer room cooler.

  Wynn said, “Danell!”

  An elf walked out into the main store with a scowl on his face. He was a typical elf in features, with light blonde hair and green eyes, but he wore a lead apron and had thick gloves on his hands. He pulled the gloves off.

  Danell said, “Hold your horses Wynn. Let’s see what you have here.”

  The man wasn’t in a rush, and examined every sword, dagger, satchel, leather armor, and for me and Gwen, the pelts. He rubbed his chin.

  “This is a lot of trash, but I might be able to do something with it all if I melt it down and purify it. I’ll give you all twenty gold for the lot, an extra seven for the pelts.”

  Wynn snorted, “Forty, and not a penny less.”

  Danell cursed, “Forty? Have you lost your mind? I couldn’t possibly give you more than twenty-three for the lot.”

  Wynn sighed, “Old friend, I suppose I could do you a favor, and let it all go for thirty-seven a piece.”

  Danell snorted, “Have you seen this crap you’re trying to sell me? Twenty-five, last offer.”

  Wynn shook his head, “Thirty. You know damned well you’ll make three times as much once you re-forge it all, and the leather is good leather, despite the armor itself being shoddy.”

  Danell sighed, and then grinned like the cat that got the cream, “Thirty, done.”

  Wynn cursed up a storm.

  Danell snickered, “Just messing with you, I wouldn’t have paid more. It’s a fair price my friend.”

  Just like that, and I was thirty-seven gold richer. Add in the gold value of the silver and bronze I had, that was close to sixty gold to spend.

  Gwen said, “I’m looking for armor that fits and better quality.”

  Danell chuckled, and pulled out a tape measure.

  “You’re human but lithe like one of us, so I shouldn’t have any trouble filling that order. Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for while I take some measurements?”

  I left Gwen to her own shopping, and walked over to the robes, which were all tagged. They were all enchanted to be as protective as leather armor would be. They also all had two bonus attributes. Some had one of each intelligence and wisdom, some were two of one or the other. The extra damage idea was appealing, as was having a sharper intellect, but so was gaining another percentage or two in mana gains when I leveled, along with the less obvious bonuses a higher wisdom would give me.

  Eventually, I chose the middle road, and grabbed a set of blue robes with white accents on the sleeves and collar, that gave me a plus one to both attributes. The robes of course would be my reward, looking at the tags they were quite expensive. There was also a sign that said no haggling on sales, this was a military outpost and they were set up for minimum profit. It was only selling to the store where haggling had a place.

  Then I walked over to the rings and necklaces. I was already aware I could only have two rings, one on each hand, and one necklace. It didn’t make sense to me, I had ten fingers, but it was a game mechanic and I might as well have argued about the sun rising in the east, I’d have about as much luck changing that rule. The rings were varied and offered pluses to all five of the attributes in various combinations. Same with the necklaces. There were also enchantments for resistance to certain specific types of magic, or to increase armor. My fighting style involved no melee, so I really wasn’t tempted at all by the latter.

  The pricing as a rule seemed to be five gold an attribute or kind of protection. I was sure that would change though, when a ring or necklace did three or four things, it would have to be a higher quality, but for the initiate level gear that cost seemed to bear out across the board.

  After some internal debate, I chose the middle of the road again, and picked up a ring and necklace, both with one point of both intelligence and wisdom. A short conversation with Danell, and just like that, I was twenty gold poorer.

  My intelligence was now twenty-three, and my wisdom twenty. That put my base damage up again, it’d be thirty-four. The rush of my new clarity of thought had me dizzy for a second. I spent some time going through concepts again, while Gwen took care of her own rings, necklace, armor, and weapons.

  When I saw Gwen in her new armor, I simply stared for a moment. She was even more distracting in armor that fit her curves well. It wasn’t just a leather armored cuirass either, it went lower and curved out to protect her hips. There was also a leather skirt of sorts of overlapping hanging leather strips down to her knees. It might stop a sword from digging into her thigh or getting to her femoral artery. She was also wearing a leather helm, arm bands, gloves, greaves, and boots.

  She winked at me, “Almost done, I just need to find a sword and bow now. How do I look.”

  “Great.”

  She smiled and headed toward the swords. It didn’t take that long for her to pick. All the swords were longswords of similar quality. Very good swords, sharp and well made. It just took her a little time to find one that fit her height and had a balance she favored. I supposed that was the downside of a military outpost, not a whole lot of variety.

  The long bow she picked out was quite large. Fully covered in armor, with a bow over her shoulder and sword at her waist she looked intimidatingly sexy. Why sexy I wasn’t sure, she was totally covered, maybe I was just weird
. She settled up with Darnell, and then grabbed my hand and dragged me from the shop.

  Gwen said, “General store first, then we’ll check out foods.”

  I nodded, “Yes dear.”

  She laughed, and slapped my arm. It stung, but I manfully ignored it like it didn’t, and followed the woman that turned my life upside down. I had just been playing of course.

  She said, “I can’t wait to try out all this stuff. I feel a lot more confident with better armor and weapons.”

  We walked into the general store, which was filled with camping equipment, candles, various types of linens, fire starter kits, bedding, lanterns, oil, parchment, ink, quills, clothing, under-clothing, leather boots and shoes, and all sorts of other stuff.

  We both picked out a few sets of clothes, linen napkins, cleaning rags, sheets, bedding, blankets, pillows, lanterns and oil, quills and paper. I also bought leather boots, better than the soft leather shoes I already had. Lastly, the store had a few magical devices of convenience. We both bought communication devices, like magical cell phones. They would come in handy if we ever had to split up, or were forced to.

  All of it together cost us both eleven gold, and ten of that was for enchantments and required gems in the communications devices. I still had my thirty-seven gold though, all the purchasing lightened my purse a lot, I’d used the equivalent in silver and bronze. It was easy enough to remember the exchange rates, ten bronze to a silver, ten silver to a gold, and ten gold to a platinum.

  The food store was next. We picked up a lot of flour, yeast, and other impossible to find things in a forest. I picked up a couple of samples of more vegetables, herbs, and spices that our garden lacked, and I could grow a lot more of once we’d gotten back.

  The rest of the afternoon was quite busy for both of us and we didn’t get to spend all that much of it together. I did my chores in maintaining the camp, practiced my spells with the new concepts integrated, and we set up our cottage with all the new stuff. It started to look like it was a real house.

  Gwen spent time sparring with Wynn, to incorporate her knew fighting styles and work out the rough edges.

  It was quite late already, when we got together by the fire to cook dinner, which included fresh bread, vegetables, wine, as well as venison and the rest of the usual fare. Technically, we could have all had separate meals in our cottages, they did have a small fireplace for cooking and heat, as well as tables and chairs, but eating together outside just seemed like the right thing. We were a party, and together.

  After dinner, the everyday conversation trailed off and we got down to planning.

  “Everyone set?” Wynn asked.

  We all exchanged looks and nodded.

  Wynn grunted, “Good. I’ve got the scouts out looking for likely targets. They’ll report in to us in the mornings, or if something major breaks, like a very large group marching for the elven forest or here. If they don’t have anything for us, we’ll go ahead and attack their cave’s outer fortifications and kick the hornet’s nest.”

  Gwen asked, “How will we know when they’ve had enough?”

  Lyre replied, “The outer fortifications will be undefended, and the cave entrance will be barred by a large stone. That won’t happen until their population is cut down enough where they can support it with their internal farming and hunting of cave animals.”

  Gwen nodded, “How much of an impact do you think we’ve made so far?”

  Wynn shrugged, “Not sure. We’ve killed what, a little over a hundred between the four battles, and you two ambushing a goblin here or there on your way to rescue us. Goblins are prolific. They like two things. If they aren’t causing pain or killing, they’re making babies. It’s why we have to face them every generation, they’re evil and they’ll never change.”

  “So, there’s a lot more of them left, since they were making babies for twenty years?”

  Lyre snickered at my sally.

  Wynn nodded, “At a guess, we need to take out at least ten times what we have already, if not more. We also need new tactics for offensive fighting.”

  We discussed several ideas for that, based on how many and what kind of mix we’d be facing. Fortifications on the fly wouldn’t be as good, but hopefully we wouldn’t be facing thirty or forty at once. We also wouldn’t be in the woods, so entanglement wouldn’t be as useful if there were no trees or large bushes around.

  I asked curiously, “What are the rest of the elves doing? Aren’t there higher-level elves, more powerful ones?”

  Anlyth said, “They’re working on fortifying our towns and cities, and building up for the siege we know is coming. The smaller villages will be abandoned, we can’t protect them all. In short, they’re leaving the goblins to us, so they can focus on preparing for the upcoming race war. It’s also important to challenge us and let us grow in power, to add to their numbers of the powerful before war. They’re also in communication with the dwarven and human leaders, both to our east, and west.”

  Gwen frowned, “What about the humans to the south?”

  The three elves exchanged glances, and Lyre fielded that answer.

  “They don’t work well with others, their leaders are isolationist. We leave the southern evil races to them, and hope that they can defend and beat them back. The northern and eastern fronts are handled by the dwarves, us, and the humans to the west.”

  Wynn cleared his throat, “We’re getting a little far afield, hopefully it will be a while before they attack, a year or two, maybe longer.”

  He was right, we should’ve been focused on the goblins, but I couldn’t help being curious. I also thought his hope was in vain, it might be a while but I doubted a year or two.

  “The campaign starts tomorrow. I think we have a good idea on what to do in various situations. We can plan better once the scouts bring us some targets along with the information on them.”

  Wynn nodded in agreement, “Alright, we’ll find out in the morning at breakfast.”

  We all stayed around the fire a bit longer, and just chatted over another cup of wine. It was relaxing, and nice to decompress.

  Gwen and I retired as the sun started to sink behind the horizon. We cuddled in bed after she stripped her armor off, and just relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. There were kisses, a few quite heated, but I held back the temptation to escalate further. I could sense that she still wasn’t ready for more.

  Still, just holding her, and having her against me while we talked was a wonderful sensation. It was satisfying in a lot of ways, even if frustrating in one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning, I woke up an hour before the sun rose to meditate. It was slightly easier that morning, to empty my mind of thought. The new world hadn’t changed, things hadn’t gotten easier, and there was still a lot going on. Things I weren’t sure about, but I supposed my mind had started to accept this new world and the inherent risks along with the need for violence to protect myself, and who and what I held dear. I wondered if that didn’t make me crazy, but then I hadn’t felt so excited in a long time, on many levels.

  Gwen woke as the sun hit the window, and sighed deeply as she rolled out of bed. It occurred to me then that over the last few days we’d woken up exactly when we had intended to do so, without fail so far. As if the system and world we were in set a mental alarm of sorts per our wishes. It was… a stark reminder this world wasn’t one of flesh and blood, even though it was real in many ways. Maybe it was my higher intelligence and wisdom in action? It was hard to believe I’d completely missed such an obvious discrepancy from real life before now. Would I start noticing other inconsistencies? In the end, I supposed it didn’t matter, Gwen would always be real to me, she was a real human mind, and the elves were real to me too. The rest was just dressing.

  I pulled the robes over my head, and grabbed my pack.

  “Good morning, want help with that?”

  She had a lot more armor pieces to secure on now.

  She
said, “The bracers maybe? They’re a pain in the butt to do one handed.”

  I grinned, “Happy to be of assistance.”

  She smirked, “I bet.”

  I walked over, and stole a kiss before I slid her bracers on, and tightened the straps one at a time.

  “Good?”

  She nodded, “Thanks.”

  My mind wandered as I watched her finish up, to what we’d be doing that day. I was… jazzed, and looking forward to it. I wanted more power, another level, deeper understanding. I also felt alive, not only with Gwen in my life, but at the challenge the goblins represented and by the growth in my magic. What disturbed me was the violence of it, did I enjoy that too? Yes, the rush of adrenaline and challenge from it did appeal to me now, but the killing itself? The answer was pretty easy just then, we were stopping an evil race from pillaging and destroying elven villages and lives in attacks that would come if we do nothing.

  It seemed pretty clear cut, and easy to dismiss my concerns. That bothered me a little. Not enough to change my course though, or even to feel any guilt about it. I’d never been a violent person before, I guess I was just shocked at how easy it was to accept in this new world, as a necessary part of growth. I supposed if one day I ever had to face off against someone from the supposed good races, I’d find an answer in that. The idea of it didn’t appeal to me at all. It was psychologically dehumanizing the enemy I think, that led to this lack of any guilt over my actions. To be fair, the goblins weren’t human, and they were evil, so I hadn’t just been lying to myself.

  Gwen finished up, and we headed out to the fire to share breakfast with the rest of the party.

  Wynn and Anlyth nodded in greeting, Lyre gave us both a smile.

  “Morning.”

  Wynn said, “The head of my scouts, Rylla, will be here soon. The scouts come in at dawn, and she’ll be updating a map of the area with target information. We have time to enjoy breakfast.”