Rhef was still fuming with anger as the warrior ran away, and she was just about to go after him when her brother stopped her and said, “You’ll never catch him up with his magically enhance boots. His parents seemed to have gone all out to equip him.”
Rhef relaxed a bit but still spat in the direction warrior ran, and said, “Oh, well the last laugh will be on him and the rest of the snobs.”
As the ill-equipped adventures were leaving through the town gates, with the guard waving goodbye, into the farmland around the town, that had a green field full of grass with cow and sheep grazing, the foothills to the mountains starting to rise, presenting an undulating landscape, dotted with areas of forest and scrubby bushland.
Walling up close to Rhef, Symania said to her in a curious tone of voice, “What do you mean by that he will regret him have all the best equipment.”
As the team walked along the path, with two tracks that showed that wagons rolled this way often, Rhef said, as she tried to explain to her quiet friend, “It all to do with gaining experience and level. The blessing is set up to ensure that you need to grow better in your class if you are to gain level, so that is why we're supposed to start with nothing really to our name. But a lot of the wealthy family don’t what their children to suffer being injured or resurrected, so they armed them with the best equipment that they can afford. This enables any of them to easily defeat anything in the beginner level, that they are required to do for the five of service, to become a full adult. By doing the service this way, they will gain no level and always rely upon equipment to be strong.”
Symania said with astonishment in her voice, “But they will not have the level markings on their right hand to prove that they are at the level they are saying they are at.”
Rinaldo said with a smile at the girl for her innocence, “Oh, that easy to get around with a fake tattoo, and as long as their wearing the high-cost equipment nobody knows unless they lose it somehow and then their back to their real level.”
Rhef said in an angry voice to Symania, “My parents are always lecturing us on how the corruption of the system is going to be the downfall of the kingdom with all the reliance on equipment and not personal level and ability.”
Symania was deep in thought for a few minutes as they started up a large hill, with forest on either side, and small birds flying through the trees singing nosily and said in the end, “What does he mean from painful memories about being resurrected. I thought that there was no penalty except losing the equipment you had on when you died.”
Rinaldo said with a look of pain in his face, as if he remembered something that was painful, “You are right Symania, but you do remember all the pain of dying, and I can tell you that it not pleasant.”
Rhef said with a laugh at her brother, “Rinaldo, as you may of notice, is an idiot, and fell out of a tree when he was very young onto some rock that kills him sending him to the families resurrection point.”
Rinaldo involuntary rubbed his head and said, “I still can remember the pain of hitting the rock and lying there as I couldn’t breathe properly. It's not something that I want to repeat.”
Ceras said with amazement, “But you’re always charging into a battle with no regarded for your life.”
Rhef said, “What part of an idiot so you not understand.”
Rinaldo tried to hit his sister, but Rhef dogged him with her greater agility and said, “The bad memories can be such a problem it you resurrected too many times, and it can drive you crazy if you don’t get some expensive magical treatment. This is why some of the beggar in the area we are living in are high level, but cannot function properly unless somebody treats them and removes their memories of dying over and over again. So, that is why the rich are now taking the stance of providing their children with high-quality equipment, so they don’t die.”
Rinaldo said in a deep tone of voice, “As my pa says. ‘We need to have a kingdom of personal achievers not fakers that are relying on the high-level equipment that their mummies and daddies bought for them.’”
Ceras looked at Symania, and for some reason, she looked slightly embarrassed and quickly put her head down. He had known the reasons for being sent out into the world poor, but it had not been too hard on him as his family did not have a large amount of capital, to share almost all of him his brothers and sisters. He was the oldest child of the family and the first to be sent out into the world to be an adventure, but he knew the rest would be following him with no significant weaponry except that had been made by the family, as was the tradition. He was thankful that his father was a good staff maker, and at least he had that to help.
Ceras went back to looking at the now green rocky hills, they were walking through, with woodland on in sporadic areas. Rhef put her hand to stop everybody as she them bent down to examine some dirt on the ground, and said to the waiting team, “My tracking skill is indicating that this is dirt from an earth troll, it was heading in that direction.” As she points to a small gorge leading off from one side of the road.
Running of toward the deep grass of the gorge that cut into a side of a hill, with gray rocky outcrops that could be seen about the grass, Rhef shouted, “Follow me it should be this way.”
Moving through the knee length, grass, Ceras followed Rhef as she ran with an excited look on her face, as she was enjoying her new learned tracking abilities. Around a corner that turned into the hill towards the mountain in the background, Ceras saw three earth trolls at the end of the gorge. They seemed to be eating dirt and stone from a pile of gravel on one of the sides of the gorge. He watched with interested as they pressed the stone into their mouths and crushed it into a powder that was swallowed. They were slow moving as they lumbered around the gorge eating. He could see dark stones for teeth and layers of dark earth all over their body with small stones:
Name of Monster
Level
Agility
HP
MP
Skills
Earth Trolls
5
1
100
-
-
The team ducked down behind a large rock to spy on the monsters and make a plane. Rhef said, “Great, we’ve found some. I would like to try and use my bow to at least kill one of them and then your boys can take care of the rest.”
As he pulled her simple bow off her shoulder, she pulled out several arrows and placed them in front of her. Pulling back the string on the bow, she sighted on the closes earth troll to the team and let the arrow go. It quickly flew across the distance with a thud as it hit the body of the earth troll, showing ten percent damage on its health bar.
Rhef swore and said, “That to low damage, it will take about ten hits to kill it.”
Ceras said in a whispered voice as the slow reacting earth troll was looking around for the threat, “Try and hit it head as it should increase the damage.”
The next two arrows Rhef sent down toward the troll hit it in its forehead and took off another thirty percent damage. By this time, all three were slowly heading in the direction of the adventures.
Rinaldo shouted as he jumped up from cover, “Charge!” With Grikius closely following him, both of them were swinging their maces as the run-up to a slow-moving earth troll.
Ceras stood up, shaking his head and went for the last troll, with his staff. As he was running, he saw more arrow striking the first troll that was now down to only forty percent health, and the two boys dancing around one of the slow-moving earth trolls take about twenty percent health per hit.
Ceras was now faced with his own pile of earth and stones that was moving it hand toward his head as if to smash it into the ground through his body. Ceras easily dogged, to the side and smashed his staff into the side of its body, taking away most of its health as he also shot a fire spell with the hit as his staff connected. The side of the earth troll’s body started to melt as the energy of the fire spell spread across its side, and bubbling lava fell on to
the ground. The monster let out a loud groan that Ceras felt in his bone as if he was trembling with fear. Moving to the back, he hit the earth troll again but his time as if by magic, it fell apart into a pile of dirt and rocks, at his feet.
Looking around Ceras now saw three piles of dirt and rock, with Rinaldo shaking his fist in the air in a sign of victory. Suddenly at the end of the gorge that was a large crash as a rocky monster landed on the ground from the hill above. Everybody paused for a second seeing a large rock troll moving like several boulders connected together toward them swing a large rock club:
Name of Monster
Level
Agility
HP
MP
Skills
Rock Troll
7
2
300
-
-
Rhef was the first one to shot an arrow into the charging monster's head, which only took of a sliver of health. The three boys ran over to the charging enraged mountain of grey stone, but Rinaldo was closeted, so he got there first. He was about half the size of the rock troll, but a lot quicker on his feet than the lumbering monster and so was able to dodge and got two solid hits, with his mace, that knock stones out of its legs.
Before the other two could get to him and help out a large club, swiped him and hit his legs, sending him across the ground to the side of the gorge. Ceras notice that he only had about one-tenth of his health left, so he jumped between Rinaldo and the rock troll, that was about to hit Rinaldo again. The swing that was meant for Rinaldo took Ceras fully in the chest and knocked him back. His health fell by about thirty percent, as he stumbled backward, in pain, but was able to smash his staff into the side of the rock trolls' hand, holding the club, and released a magical fire that started to melt the hand causing the large my melted hand rock troll to drop the club.
The rock troll stumbled around as more arrows hit him in the head and Grikius smashed his legs with his mace several times. During this period of confusion, Ceras repeatedly hit with his staff, and magical attack of the frost spell, which froze up joins in the rock trolls body stopping him from moving. Then it was all just a matter of time as he and Grikius finished the troll, and as he fell to the ground, all that was left was a large pile of rocks on the grassy ground of the gorge.
Ceras lent on his staff as he tried to recover from the fight as his stamina and MP returned the full. It had been a close-run thing as both Grikius and himself were nearly out of stamina and would have just be left with normal strength.
Symania was at Rinaldo side healing him, as Rhef was picking up arrow looking around the area for any other attacks. Ceras looked at his bruised and bleeding chest and started to heal himself slowly with his magical spell, thinking it would be good to get a better spell that worked in combat.
Grikius dog Apollo was digging at an earth trolls' bodies as if was looking for something. Ceras watched as dirt flew everywhere, as the eager dog got closer to whatever he wanted and then exposed a fleshy heart in the middle of the dirt. This he quickly wolfed down and then ran to the earth troll mount and repeated the process until he had eaten all of their hearts. The only heart he could not get to was the rock troll.
As Rinaldo was getting up from being healed, Rhef said to the group, "It seems like we're OK, let's get the crystals out of the earth trolls."
All four of them started to sift through the dirt, of the earth trolls, to find anything of value. Three crystal were found, and small nuggets of some dense metal that seemed to be the earth troll teeth.
Grikius was smiling at all the nugget as he said, "We'll be able to sell these to a blacksmith for quite a lot as the metal is very strong and good for making weapons with." As he collected them all in his backpack.
Once everybody had finished, they all went to look at the body of the rock troll in a rock pile. Rinaldo smiled and said, "I bet that they're some of the value in that pile of rock. I guess we have to move all the rock to get to it."
Rhef said in a serious voice, "When you say we, us the girls will be watching for any other animal attacking." As she walked away while Rinaldo rolled his eyes but started to lift up the heavy rock.
With the three of them working, it was hard work to uncover the darker denser crystal where the head was, and larger nuggets of heavy metal weighted more than all the earth trolls' teeth combined. The fleshy heart in the center of the pile was thrown to the dog who gratefully ate it as it barked in excitement.
Not for the first time, Ceras wonder how the dog ate so much as it was still only small, and he said to Grikius, "How big is that dog going to be when it's fully grown?"
Grikius who had picked up the dog and was petting it said, "I don't even know what breed he is so I've no idea."
The rest of the day was spent with Rhef tracking earth trolls, and the group finds them. They were able to quickly dispatch them without any problems as they realized that due to the earth troll's low agility that if they just moved them quickly, it was easy to hit them every now and then waring them down. By late in the afternoon they had now sixteen crystals and several bags full of nuggets. Deciding that they could get back to the town before dark, they made a run for it.
Chapter 8 Leveling Up
As Rhef passed the sixteen crystals over to the guild woman behind the counter, she was passed the 22 silver coins in the bag which were quickly split amount the adventures. Everybody was excited to get some silver at last, and Rinaldo started to sing ‘am in the money again.’ Ceras thought about the experience he had gained with the adventure, and the text appeared in his vision:
XP 5 of 12 too level 3 Wizard
Five stat point to place into character sheet
His character information then came up in his vision:
Character Name:
Ceras
1st Class
Wizard
Character Total Level*
1
Major
Strength
Fortitude
Agility
Number
40
40
40
Major
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Number
15
1
14
Minor
HP
MP
Stamina
Carry Limit
Number
142
87
210
90
Regen Sec
4
4
5
N/A
With no needed thought he put the entire 5 point into intelligences, and smile as the details changed to:
Character Name:
Ceras
1st Class
Wizard
Character Total Level*
2
Major
Strength
Fortitude
Agility
Number
42
42
42
Major
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Number
20
1
14
Minor
HP
MP
Stamina
Carry Limit
Number
150
114
220
94
Regen Sec
4.2
5
5.2
N/A
Looking at his new stats, he wonders why there was two more in each of the physical stats, and they remembered the wisp dying blessing. As he looked around, all the others were changing their stat as well with a distant look. He checked his right hand and saw the second mark full with a third starting to appear. In his pocket, he now had more than five silver to spend if he needed anything.
When Rinaldo had finished the update of his character sheet, he looke
d excited and said to everybody, "This is reason enough to celebrate, shall we go out and find something good to eat tonight."
Everybody nodded eagerly to have something good to eat for once and to see what the town held in the form of entertainment. Grikius said, "There is a hall attached to one of the taverns that apprentice adventures often go to as it's an informal meeting point."
Setting out following Grikius through the now dark town, they walked down winding alleys that had cobblestone sticking out of the road that they sometimes stumbled on in the dark. Finally, the team of chatting adventures in a happy mood came to a large thatched hall with a large sign indicating food and drink available, and Girikius said, "This is the adventures hall, used by most of the beginners in the town as an informal meeting place for arranging a trade or forming groups."
The door was open into the dark night with magical yellow light shining out of the doorway, lighting up the street around it. Out of the door, Ceras could hear the sound of loud talking and music playing. As he entered into the large wood hall, the first things he noticed a large number of large tables arranged around the room, with groups of people around them. The wooden clad walls were full of trophies hung seeming to celebrate adventures, with a monster head that had been killed. From the ceiling hung large chandeliers with magical like giving a yellow light to the room. At one end of the room was a small stage with some musician playing folk songs, that some people were singing along to.
Origins Page 7
