The livestock was new. Animal husbandry put the town up a notch on the development scale. Kalmond checked the town ledger and found more than two-thousand circs in reserve.
He had enough to buy improvements for the watchtowers now that Dundree was connected with Darkwell. It turned out that the sister town had a goodly stockpile of both wood and stone, so Kalmond drew from it and set to work making the town archway stone. He bought an iron portcullis to supplement the crude whole-log palisade doors. He didn’t quite have enough to build a finished-wood gate, and he’d used most of the iron on the portcullis. These final improvements filled the reputation bar to 1000 and changed his title to “exalted alder.”
But guard towers and gates were little good without guards. With most of the townspeople unwilling to fight, that left Molly, Arnold, and Claudia as defenders, and they all had crucial roles in the village. Runecaster and McCrushin were not available all the time and who knows what other quests they were involved with. Kalmond needed a solution.
The day wore thin, and he still had three more levels to plow through and less than two days to do so. He tried not to think about how he would do that and also work his way through the dungeons and into the Sixth Circle. Kalmond turned away from the gates and past the new guard towers that now represented more problems than solutions. At least they scored him some XP and reputation points.
Kalmond tabled the issue and headed to Alchemist’s shop where he found another pair of adventurers. He gave the two male wood elves a cursory glance, then scurried back to the workbench. For a moment, he considered checking Boris’s journal for some formulas but thought better of it. He wasn’t in the mood for comic relief.
He’d just finished making some mana potions when he caught motion in his peripheral vision. A blade flashed out searching for the gap between helm and neck. The damage number flashing before his blurred vision began with nine and trailed three digits. The health bar dropped shockingly. Poison damage. I’m in trouble, Kalmond thought almost casually as another blade found the narrow gap between his chest and back plates.
Whatever poisoned those blades made him nearly blind. He tried to draw his axe of warding but could not feel his arm. Instead, he watched his once-strong limb wander out and to the side where another blade slashed at the opening in his armor at the elbow. This time, he had a clear view of the numbers that announced more than 12000 damage points in two hits while the poison damage dropped his health to sliver.
That’s when the berserker rage kicked in. Time snapped back like a rubberband and Kalmond’s gauntleted fist made a solid connection with the second dwarf’s face, crunching bone and sending a warm fan of blood across Kalmond’s cheek.
Double Critical 7500
The dwarf roared to rival Urseon and grabbed the second attacker, an elf, by the neck. A savage headbutt made the second elf spasm in his grasp like a fish. Another critical did 6500 points. Both attackers now had about half the health they started with, and Kalmond fully intended to relieve them of the remainder in short order.
The berserker rage gave him the strength to hurl the elf into his partner, who was just rising to his feet. Kalmond used his telekinesis spell to knock both elves back across the cluttered shop while he drew axe and hammer.
He finished the first elf with the hammer to the head, crushing his skull flat as a pancake and sending pointy elven teeth clattering to the floor like a broken string of irregular pearls. The second elf hit him with a throwing dart that nearly made Kalmond’s health bar disappear. He managed not to read the shocking number and instead pressed the attack by bringing the axe around in a swing that removed the elf’s left arm, buried the axe head into his ribcage and carried his dead body around in a half circle to land on the alchemist’s workbench like a blood sacrifice.
With his endurance gone and his berserker rage spent, Kalmond dropped his weapons and staggered back. It was all he could do to slug down a healing potion that brought him back from the brink of death. With the poison damage, the potion gave him less than half his health back.
He staggered over to the shattered elves to loot them, taking their poison daggers first. Both carried herb satchels, but aside from their weapons, they had nothing else. At least killing two level, nineteen assassins gave kalmond 553 XP.
On closer examination of the daggers, he found each was configured the same, right down to the enchantments. The long, needle-sharp stiletto blades sported dual blood grooves down the middle and wicked serrations near the hilt. When he broke one of them down and the bench, he learned a poison enchantment that slowed its victim and took one full point of strength for each critical hit. Kalmond realized right way that the only thing that saved him from assassination was his berserker rage ability.
Searching the contents of the looted her satchels yielded six kindleblooms, a dozen wicked icharies, and ten unidentified mushrooms. Taking a chance, Kalmond mixed one each of the plants together at the potion bench. He counted the fact that he still had his beard and eyebrows a good thing. But while he identified the mushroom as widower fungus, the combination did nothing.
He decided to suck it up and opened Boris’s journal for clues. The dead dwarf rose from the pages, and Kalmond braced himself, but instead of blustering and insulting Kalmond, Boris slowly raised a ghostly hand and pointed at the doorway to the shop. For once, Boris remained silent.
The bemused smirk fell from Kalmond’s face as he realized he’d not seen the old alchemist since the attack. With ice-cold blood, Kalmond darted from the back room to find the old man lying in a pool of blood behind his counter with his face locked into a twisted mask of pain.
The dwarf saw red, and his first impulse was to smash the nearest object, but he couldn’t. Everything belonged to the gentle soul who loved to tell long stories and sell potions to travelers. Boris hovered down and stood level with Kalmond and kept his ghostly silence.
“Open chat to Martin,” Kalmond said with surprising calm.
“I was about to call you,” Martin said by way of greeting. “Najeel is freaking out about some sudden gap in the code followed by a spike in the computer core.”
“Tell him to check on the brains,” Kalmond said icily and fought hard to even out his breath. He needed to turn this rage into something productive. While he waited, he turned to Boris and said, “These assholes are going to pay for this.”
“I’d expect nothing less from you, Bear Dwarf. Make it count. That is all I ask,” Boris replied.
“One of the brains went offline,” Martin said. “How did you know?”
“One of them got killed and didn’t respawn. It looked permanent, and it is,” Kalmond said.
“So now the Realm can torture these things to death,” Martin replied.
“You have to stop this,” Kalmond said.
“Believe me,” Martin replied. “We’re trying.”
“Call me if you need me,” Kalmond said. “Otherwise, I’ll be settling a score.”
“What do you—” Martin began to ask before Kalmond closed the channel and set the do not disturb flag. If they wanted him, they’d have to do an admin override.
Kalmond turned to Boris and asked, “What do you know about widower fungus?”
“Come,” Boris said. “I will show you.”
Kalmond and Boris worked silently, with the ghost gesturing to pages busy with arcane script, dancing skeletons and skulls. They settled on a particularly nasty potion called foemaker that, when applied to weapons, made victims bleed from the eyes and attack anything and anyone within range for thirty seconds on a critical hit. The problem was that the formula was complicated, requiring five ingredients. The basilisk beaks and widower’s fungus, Kalmond had. It was the reeking ichary, the bloodsuckle and the tenant’s bane he lacked.
“Where do I find the other three ingredients?” Kalmond asked.
“Both bloodsuckle and tenant’s bane grow near my cabin,” Boris replied. Kalmond found himself strangely sad that the dead dwarf no longer insulte
d him. It wasn’t the abuse Kalmond missed, but the radical change in Boris’s character that Kalmond found disconcerting.
“Don’t worry,” Kalmond said, trying to place his hand on Boris’s shoulder only to have it pass through a cold veil of light. “They will pay.”
“He was my friend,” Boris said, then dissolved back into his journal. It was the first time he disappeared without having the book closed on him.
“Believe it or not,” Kalmond said, gently closing the book, “so am I.”
Kalmond opened up a private voice channel to Holly. “Are you in world?” he asked.
“No,” Holly replied. “Some of us work.”
“I need intel on two characters,” Kalmond said, giving the names of his would-be assassins. “Clan affiliations, shops they’re invested in and most importantly, their current location when I’m ready.”
“Damn,” Holly replied. “You didn’t even snark me back. This must be serious.”
Kalmond told Holly what happened and a silence stretched out over the channel while Kalmond fumed. “Dante,” Holly said, finally. “They didn’t know the Alchemist was a human brain. They’re just playing the game. It is a game, Dante.”
“My name is Kalmond,” the dwarf said. “And it doesn’t matter. Alchemist was real to me, and those assholes killed him for no reason. He wasn’t a threat, and his loss hurts my village.”
“You’re taking this too far,” Holly said.
“Maybe, but are you going to give me the info or not?”
“It’s cheating,” Holly replied, “But I’ll do it anyway if it gets you back on track. You have about thirty hours left to get three levels and into the sixth circle.”
“You too,” Kalmond said. “Did you get through the dungeons?”
“Yes,” Holly said. “So did Thornbark and Thuglar. We just have to meet you there.”
“Good,” Kalmond replied. “I’ll call you when I’m there.”
He closed the channel and checked his map menu, finding three teleport credits. Kalmond stabbed his index finger on the point of the map that showed Boris’s cabin. Before touching the word “teleport,” he went back into the workshop and added Boris’s journal to his inventory.
***
Kalmond materialized in the woods between the stone ruins and Boris’s cabin. He took a moment to find his bearings, then headed for the dead dwarf’s home. When he got there, he cast a quick detection spell to make sure nobody was around. Only the faint glow of tiny footprints around the cabin revealed some small creature was recently about, probably a mouse or duke rat.
Kalmond went around back to the enchantment bench and set down Boris’s journal. Before he opened it, he decided to collect some wood from beside the cabin and build an alchemist workbench that earned him 110XP. Then he opened the journal. Boris appeared in somber silence.
“Point me to the plants I need,” Kalmond said.
“Find the bloodsuckle near the temple ruins. Tenant’s bane grows in a clearing south of here,” Boris replied.
Kalmond closed the book, then went back inside the cabin he’d not visited in days. It seemed like weeks. Being inside the space, even in its decrepit condition, brought comfort. When this was all over, he planned to make this place into a home base. It was far out of the way, and the woods were rich with materials and apparently, herbs.
Kalmond marched back to the temple ruins and made short work of the slime mold that respawned there, using his cloudsplitter axe in one hand and the axe of warding in the other. Now that his level was higher than the slime mold, the slaughter only brought him 100 XP for killing five slimes. He harvested the bloodsuckle quickly, then doubled back to the workbench to fix the slight corrosive damage to his weapons.
The clearing Boris mentioned was a bit further than he thought. The day wore on into afternoon, making Kalmond conscious of just how much time he had left. “Come on, dwarf,” Kalmond said to himself, and it seemed like Boris’s voice spoke to him. “Do you really have time for revenge?”
The answer came to him quickly when he realized that was not the voice of a nagging dead dwarf but the voice of doubt. “Yes I do,” Kalmond growled aloud, and stepped out into the clearing towards a shrubby-looking bundle of plants that looked like what he needed.
Just in case, he drew cloudsplitter and the axe of warding, then circled the plants before identifying them. No foe revealed itself, and sure enough, he’d found tenant’s bane. He picked leaves and branches quickly, filling two of the herb satchels looted from the would-be assassins.
“Huh,” Kalmond muttered. “I wonder why they call this tenant’s bane.”
When he turned around to leave, he found out. The plant had wrapped stiff branches around his ankles. He reached down to pull them away, and more branches whipped out silently and grabbed his wrist.
He almost made the mistake of grabbing at the branches around his wrist, but instead drew the axe of warding. He used it to make short work of regaining his freedom. But the plant’s behavior gave him pause. He used his axe again to chop off more leaves and branches. The plant would make excellent defenses. He imagined a high wall of the stuff around the cabin. He hoped it was plantable. He’d soon find out.
The only herb left to find was the reeking ichary, and he did that quite easily by the smell. After wandering the forest for a while, the pungent odor came to him on a puff of wind where the forest floor grew mossy, then soggy. The reeking ichary grew at the edge of a bog that brought foul smelling brackish water to Kalmond’s hips. He fought his way through the muck and collected all the ichary he could carry, filling both herb satchels to capacity.
Back at the cabin, he set to work crafting the foemaker poison first. At the workbench, he added the poison to all but ten of his crossbow bolts. He had enough herbs to make two more mana potions, bringing his stock to seven. After collecting some more herbs from around the cabin, he ended up with five more fire bomb potions to use for endurance attacks or for traps. The whole operation earned him another 100 XP.
The sun cast long shadows through the trees by the time he was done, which was fine. He worked best in the dark. Inside the cabin, he stored everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary in a single cabinet. When he was done, all he carried were two axes, two daggers, his crossbow and his potions. He took off the mirrored plate mail and replaced it with the silenced iron boar armor.
“Open channel to Driskroll,” Kalmond commanded. “Drisk, you there?”
“Yeah,” Driskroll said.
“Come to me. I’ll show you something,” Kalmond said.
“Hell yeah,” Driskroll replied. “Now you sound like the old Kalmond.”
“It’s always been me,” Kalmond replied.
Driskroll showed up seconds later looked around and said, “What is this place? Very cool.”
“Nevermind that. Follow me. You can fight if you want to, but two guys are mine alone. I’ll point them out.”
Driskroll laughed over voice chat, then trailed off. “You are seriously pissed off,” Driskroll said. “I haven’t seen you this mad since that King Jarod dickhead conned those noobs into being mob bait to clear that level ten dungeon.”
“Do you remember what we did to him?” Kalmond asked.
“It was a thing of beauty,” Driskroll replied.
“Well,” Kalmond said. “I aim to make this one a symphony from hell.”
“OK,” Driskroll said. “Now you’re scaring me.”
“In or out?” Kalmond asked.
“In, of course,” Driskroll replied. He stashed unneeded items inside the cabin by throwing them on the floor. This included his plate mail armor, which he nearly took back. In the end, Kalmond decided to use the lighter, quieter iron boar leather armor. Kalmond sent the coordinates to Driskroll and teleported.
***
The enemy village sat in the middle of the Fourth Circle in a jungle region thick with dangling mosses and vines. Kalmond set the destination just south of the town where he hoped to get a
height advantage. Instead, they both ended up downhill and deep into the trackless jungle.
“I get sneaking up on them, but…” Driskroll said, trailing off.
Kalmond said nothing and trudged a path that angled north and uphill. By the time the village sounds reached Kalmond’s ears, the sun began to set, and he still had no clear sightline. He wasn’t expecting so much foliage. He’d need to get close to the village for a clear shot, and he still didn’t have a clear picture of the village layout.
Driskroll ran a few paces ahead to get his attention, stopped, then turned away. Kalmond followed Driskroll further east where the trees grew thinner, and a pile of boulders rose up to give them about forty feet of elevation. But that vantagepoint took them very close, so they both activated invisibility before crawling up the rocks on their bellies to look out over the town square.
The center of town was dominated by a massive boulder carved into a bull head. Fires burned in its eyes and nostrils, and torches tipped the statue’s horns. Zither music drifted up to them accompanied by pan flute.
“That sounds like…” Driskroll said over voice chat.
“Wedding music,” Kalmond finished for him. “Lucky break.”
“Mylos freaks,” Driskroll said. “This should be interesting.”
“Where do you think the armory is?” Kalmond asked.
“Looking for the guards,” Driskroll replied. “And I counted about twenty of these assholes in total. Can’t tell who the guards are.”
“OK, then,” Kalmond said. “I’m asking you to fight now.”
“You don’t have to ask,” Driskroll replied, his voice displaying what must have been an ear-to-ear grin. “I hate Mylos freaks. They burned down our shop in the war.”
Kalmond pointed to a large stone hut by the village entrance where two ogre paladins stood wearing red enameled plate mail armor. “Found the guards,” Kalmond said, pointing.
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