******
Sam had tested his new moves against the rose men of the forest. Unfortunately he could only hit the creature cleanly with the Sword Uppercut. The Skyward Thrust could only be aimed upwards and went right over the short rose man he was fighting. Thankfully, the Sword Uppercut’s attack started at Sam’s hip. The Sword Uppercut did more damage than Sam’s normal light and heavy attacks. It didn’t outstrip the heavy attack by very much in damage. Sam was almost disappointed until he accidently stumbled upon the real usefulness for the Technique. The second rose man he fought had attacked him while Sam was performing the Sword Uppercut and even though Sam got hit with the rose man’s full thrusting attack, he didn’t stagger or stop his own attack. He took full damage and continued to swing his sword upwards as if nothing had happened at all. He felt invincible, unstoppable. Well, until the attack ended anyway and his brief burning glow subsided. And because that particular Sword Uppercut was a counter hit (attack performed on an attacking opponent), he scored a bonus amount of damage for it.
“Awesome! I need something else to hit!”
******
Sam returned from a grueling training session against the Forest Barkers near the cave. He was delighted to find that the Ignition Powder had actually worked and when the Barkers began to number more than six, Sam had applied the fire effect to his weapon and burned the Barkers so that they could not replicate anymore. After returning and testing his parries against the rose men, Sam noticed that King Herke had already disappeared from the Soul Beacon. Sam searched around the area and even went to where he had first found the king, but he couldn’t find him at all. He then went back and rested at the Soul Beacon to peacefully think about what his next move would be. He had enough points to level himself up some more, so he did just that.
Sam toggled each of the stats, increasing some by a single point then seeing what each stat would change with all three points that he could allocate. Some of the stats surprised him with extra effects that he hadn’t counted on. He noticed that increasing his vitality also increased his stamina as well as his “Equip Hold” which was the maximum amount of weight he could carry at any given time. Increasing Equip Hold would also decrease his current equipment burden and if he could get that low enough, his overall speed would increase. Since Sam had yet to save his point increase, he took the vitality back to normal and checked out what increased strength would give him. Besides increasing his S ATK, leveling strength seemed to increase the Equip Hold even higher than the same amount of points in vitality. Three points in vitality would give Sam an additional sixty points of health, six points of stamina, and six Equip Hold. Increasing his strength by three would give him an additional three points to S ATK and nine points in Equip Hold. That extra Equip Hold almost made Sam put a point into strength, but he instead put all three of his points into vitality since he could use all the benefits it provided. Sam was now soul intensity nineteen and was curious about what his stats looked like overall.
Name: Sarem the Sanguine (revenant)
Class: Cutthroat
Soul Intensity: 19
HP: 270/270 (-10%)
SP: 7/7
Stamina: 67/67
Held Souls: 1300
Souls to Next Level: 1840
VIT 15
DEF 6
RES 7
STR 6
INT 10
DEX 20
SPD 16
SPT 4
BLF 4
PCP 3
S ATK 6
D ATK 20
M ATK 10
B ATK 4
P DEF 6 +20 (Ring) 26
M DEF 11 +20 (Ring) 31
F DEF 4
L DEF 10
D DEF 5
A DEF 5
P RES 7
D RES 7
C RES 4
B RES 7
Perseverance: 1 + 20 (Ring) 21
Burden/Equip Hold: 14/58 24%
Discovery: +2
TECH Slots: 1, Skyward Thrust
SPT Slots: 0
After leveling up, he decided to check all of his items and read them closely this time. Certain items seemed to have some story significance to them, as was the case with the Three Headed Hound Seal. He sat and read the descriptions for a while and found one that piqued his interest.
Sinner’s Scriber
Allows a player to encroach upon the plane of another player.
One of the legendary writing tools crafted and enchanted by the eminent linguist, scholar, and mage Letraym. As Letraym had no moral qualms about exploring facets of magic and language otherwise deemed wicked, she crafted this tool as a way for its users to share their malice with other worlds.
“Encroachment, huh? It’s time to go say hi to some other players.”
Sam added the Sinner’s Scriber to his one of his Quick Select slots. The scriber looked like some sort of ornate and thin ice pick. It was wrought in a metal that was as polished as silver and had a handle made of dark red wood. Sam instinctively knew that he had to scribe his message into the ground below. The game seemed to feed him these subtle instructions mentally. He bent down and etched his message into the dirt of the forest floor. As he wrote, the tip of the scriber glowed. Sam rose up and smiled as he read his ominous message which seemed to be written in magic that was the color of glowing blood. It read, “Sarem is coming.” Sam placed his hand on the glowing message and a prompt popped up.
Use the Sinner’s Sign to warp to another’s plane?
Yes No
Sam vocalized his decision with a, “Hell yeah”, and was enveloped in a deep red glow that obscured his vision. He could only see pulsating crimson light all around him and felt himself being pulled from all sides, like he was being stretched apart. He felt like he was moving, but had no clue what direction he was moving in. The distortion caused him to fall to one knee to balance himself. After only a few seconds the glow faded and he found himself back the in the dark forest where he had seemingly left it, only nothing seemed to have changed. He rose to his feet and looked around.
Did it work, he wondered. He touched the nearby tree and got a confirmation, well maybe. There appeared to be two red lights on the tree that brightened when Sam leaned his head in to inspect it. His eyes were glowing, he suspected and they were very bright. He’d be at a disadvantage like this, in the dark.
Now encroaching upon the plane of JakThe_MonarchBfly.
The words blinked on and off for a while. Sam grinned as he recognized the gaming handle as one belonging to his pal Jacob. He had gone out with Jacob and a few others a couple of nights ago for drinks as a matter of fact. They had all speculated about the game. None of them had predicted that they’d be playing a fully immersive VR version of The Death Planes.
“I’m gonna find you Jacob and kill you buddy, hehehehe.”
Sam decided to proceed through the forest slowly while lightly humming the theme of Michael Myers from the Halloween movies. As he skulked around, he came across the same creatures from his own plane. At first he avoided them, until he noticed that none of them had paid him any attention. One of the rose men had even walked directly in front of him without a care in the world. Normally they aggroed (become aggressive) at a much further range. Sam then remembered a little about encroaching in the old Planes games and recalled that it was the same back then. The AI controlled enemies didn’t attack encroachers.
Sam heard some foreign noises in the distance. It wasn’t a sound he recognized from the enemies of his own game, so he went to go check it out. In the distance he saw some intense fighting between a Cutthroat and a Fighter. The Fighter had the default armor set and the starting Steel Sword for the class. The Cutthroat was in the same gear as Sam but fought with two Daggers instead. He circled around the Fighter, who kept his mid-sized shield up in front of him. Above the Fighter’s head was his username, JakThe_MonarchBfly. Sam quickly took advantage of the situation and snuck up to Jacob. Even though he approached from his rear, Jacob still s
eemed to notice Sam’s avatar and rolled away into the forest away from both Sam and the other Cutthroat enemy. Sam counted on the repeated rolling to drain Jacob’s stamina really quickly. After four rolls, Jacob looked unable to move for a little more than a second. Sam used that to catch up and stab his buddy in the back. Jacob’s health bar had popped up, already at half, and Sam’s backstab had easily taken the rest of his health. Jacob’s avatar fell to the ground and writhed in pain until he faded into a cloud of white soul aura and was absorbed by Sam.
Sinner’s Encroachment Completed
Sam was given one thousands souls for his efforts and a single unit of loose Quintessence which was temporarily displayed at the lower right hand corner of the screen, below his souls. He also got something called a Bloody Tearstone. He gave a bow to his fallen opponent, even though it was a little too late for honorable gestures considering all the grief he just put Jacob through. Sam still couldn’t help but to laugh at how he ambushed of his friend. The game didn’t have any chat functions for the players, but he just knew that Jacob would be ridiculously pissed at him right now. He’d be that way for at least the next thirty minutes straight as he whined and cursed at how unfair the game was and how much of a jackass Sam was to do something so cheap. It would be even funnier once he saw Jacob outside of the game and heard him explain it all in a way that only Jacob could.
With the Sinner’s Encroachment completed, Sam was whisked away back to his own plane in the same way as before, this time without the red aura. There was only a blurred distortion this time. When the distortion disappeared, Sam found himself in the exact same place as he was before he left. There were no enemies nearby, so he took the time to read the description of his new item in relative peace.
Bloody Tearstone
A favored trophy of sinners.
When sinful Walkers decide to encroach upon the planes of those who are innocent, several distortions are guaranteed to occur. One such distortion is the creation of these solid crimson colored gems, which are said to be a physical manifestation of an encroachment victim’s grief.
What was strange about the whole encroachment was that Sam was able to encroach upon another player’s plane while being in his revenant form. In the old Death Planes games, players had to be in human form to encroach into other planes or even to be encroached upon themselves. It was a mechanic that ensured a certain level of balance when it came to the frequency of encroachments. That method ensured that players had some control over if they would participate in encroachments or not. The more he thought about it, the more Sam simply figured it to be a product of the alpha build of the game. The developers probably just wanted to see if encroachments worked correctly and didn’t want simple barriers to get in the way of testing it. That still didn’t explain why they would hide the item needed to initiate an encroachment inside of a place that most players would avoid. Maybe they wanted to test out player psychology and see what kind of players would find and use the Sinner’s Scriber or maybe they just wanted players to be at a higher level to defeat Caesar before they got it.
Whatever the case, Sam was the perfect candidate to get this item. He had no qualms about encroaching and killing other players. In fact, he found it pretty funny and enjoyable in a game like this. He could only imagine the pure terror in the other testers who were likely already struggling with the game as they got encroached upon by a skilled tester like him who was out for blood. It made him feel like a movie monster. Sam was confident that he was the first person to get the Sinner’s Scriber, so he would make sure he got the most use out of it before anyone else. Since he still had all of his health and full Soul Fire, Sam used his Sinner’s Scriber again and dove right into another new plane.
14 The Sinner vs The Immortal
Sam hurriedly lifted his shield in front of his face and was pushed back a little from the force of the projectile as it collided with his shield. It was a wooden arrow, the third one that Sam had blocked in this fight. Sam had a hard time getting into the range of the tester he was chasing who seemed to have built a character even faster than Sam’s own. The tester used a Ranger and went by the handle DangerStompz and Sam knew him as a quiet guy named Steven in real life. Steven was cool because he told Sam the dirtiest jokes he’d ever heard in his life. It was so funny because no one else believed that Steven told jokes like that. The other testers always assumed him to be a nice and quiet guy because he mostly kept to himself. Besides telling dirty jokes, Steven also played dirty no matter what the game. He’d exploit any advantage in order to ensure his victory, even glitches.
Steven was also really smart and observant. Every time Sam blocked one of Steven’s arrows with his shield, Sam noticed that Steven’s attacks had locked him in his blocking animation for a half second longer than he needed. Steven took advantage of this to create more distance. Sam yelled obscenities, knowing that Steven couldn’t hear him. When he was done with that, he puzzled out a strategy to get in close to his friend turned opponent.
“Alright! Here we go! YOLO dash!”
Sam ran forward, laughing at his outdated slang from the twenty-tens while using the trees as cover whenever he saw that Steven was about to fire an arrow. The strategy worked for a while until Steven altered the timing of his shots. He waited for Sam to emerge from behind cover then fired shots at various speeds and trajectories.
One of the wooden arrows pierced Sam’s shoulder and caused him to reactively reel backwards from the force of the blow. The arrow had stunned Sam enough to leave him open to another of Steven’s shots. The arrow almost connected, but Sam rolled forwards, past it, just in time. With a properly timed dodge roll, Sam found that he could get certain attacks to pass right through him, even when it looked like they connected.
Steven stood up on a slight incline deeper in the forest, and so Sam had to run upwards to catch him. He gained a lot of ground thanks to his dodging and was now right in Steven’s face. Steven ran around to Sam’s right and tried to circle around him, maybe searching for a backstab. Sam quickly guessed that Steven was actually trying to bait out one of his attacks, possibly to parry it or maybe he was just trying to buy some time.
“That’s it!” Sam yelled aloud, but he knew his friend couldn’t hear him thanks to the way the game was designed. He also knew that his earlier guess was wrong. Steven was actually stalling so that he could equip a melee weapon. Equipping more than one weapon would surely slow him down tremendously.
Sam stopped and charged up his Soul Burning Technique. Steven thought he saw some sort of opening and attempted to close the distance between himself and Sam. Sam stopped charging his attack and unleashed it on Steven. He pivoted around and swept his fiery blade upwards, cutting Steven’s avatar from hip to shoulder. Steven was knocked to the ground from the forced of the blow. Sam was able to follow up with something new that he totally did by accident. As a way to prolong his attack while waiting for Steven to rise, Sam charged a heavy thrust by going deeper into his stance and tensing his muscles, just like real life. Once the charged strike landed, it did nearly twice the damage of a normal heavy attack and caused Steven’s Ranger to recoil horribly. It was all that Sam needed to walk up to Steven aka DangerStompz’s and backstab him. Sam stopped and, with outstretched arms, did an “are you not entertained” pose from a certain classic movie, over Steven’s fading corpse.
Sinner’s Encroachment Completed
Sam managed to rake in one thousand souls, a unit of loose Quintessence, and another Bloody Tearstone. Now he had twelve of those tearstones, one from each of the testers he had encroached and killed. Steven had proven to be his most difficult challenge and even he couldn’t get Sam’s health down below half. Each of the testers had proven to be a very good source of souls and Sam had enough Quintessence to stay in human form for a while now. He turned human right after his first encroachment and hadn’t been killed since.
With his prey now vanquished, Sam was once again returned to his own plane. His soul count was loo
king pretty hefty, so he figured he’d take a break from killing other testers in order to level himself up and do it all over again. The encroachments were proving to be way too much fun. It was a welcome distraction from the difficulty of the game. It felt better being the predator rather than the prey. Sam had dug into the game manual a little more to read up on the ends and outs of player encroachments and saw that an encroacher stood to lose very little even if they were defeated. They’d remain in human form and even had a chance to keep their souls and loose Quintessence as long as they went back to the spot where they died in the other player’s plane to pick them up. That spot would appear in Sam’s own plane. It was called a Death Mark and had contained all the loose Quintessence and souls that were in Sam’s possession upon his death.
Sam rested at the forest Soul Beacon and accessed his Level Up menu from there. He threw caution to the wind and rose his soul intensity up to twenty five by putting all six of his points into his speed. It had cost him a hefty thirteen thousand six hundred and thirty souls, but after seeing what DangerStompz could do with his speed, Sam opted to try the same. He grinned as he rose up from the Soul Beacon and started moving. He immediately felt the difference in his basic movement. He tried a roll dodge and saw that he had cleared much more distance than usual. Even his attack speed had improved by a noticeable margin.
“Oh yeah, this is where it’s at! Hold on to your precious souls and quintessence, alpha adventurers! Sarem the Sanguine is coming ‘round, coming ‘round, coming ‘round! And Sarem wants to hear you cry out his sins as your blood paints his forest red.”
He knew it was over the top, but he was having fun with it. The Full Dive technology really made this game a true role playing experience. He knew he’d have some really sick stuff to illustrate once he was done with the gig. He was feeling all types of inspired.
Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure Page 12
