by Ryan Rimmel
Phillip frowned while Su-Kar thought. Their two targets were Princess Julia, who was at least a known entity, and O’Really, some Easterner who showed up in her logs as a low-level Cleric. O’Really could either be a fabled Remort, the stuff of legends, or a higher level Chosen who had taken the Disguise skill.
Phillip, the twat waffle, had decided on the far less likely scenario; the Cleric was a Remort. That was stupid for a very straightforward reason. Your level still determined the highest rank of a skill you could use. A Remorted Level 2 Cleric would not be able to access multiple Journeyman or higher-level skills. That meant that the target was at least 15th level, the minimum to use a Journeyman skill. That would lead any sane person to the conclusion that the Cleric was using the Disguise skill to pretend to be a level 2 Cleric. In reality, he was a higher level Chosen.
The Disguise skill let you show a host of incorrect information on your character sheet, like your level, skills, and even your class, if you were sufficiently skilled at it. O’Really was probably level 30 and reasonably skilled, not a Remort like her prat of a partner thought.
But they had escaped hours ago, and the Trap Making skill of O’Really was quite irritating. Su-Kar didn’t mind Phillip wandering into a large number of traps and possibly shitting himself to death. She did mind wandering into them herself, though. She also very much minded that doing so wouldn’t accomplish their objective. The boss would be very upset, and that could have deadly consequences for Su-Kar. Fortunately, she had other ideas. The princess had gone off the easy paths down the mountain. That plan held two complications. It was far more dangerous than the regular way, and, once you did get down, there were only a few places to come out, due to the mountain’s geography.
Waving to Phillip, she gestured down the trail. Hopefully, she could find someone to resolve her immediate problem.
Chapter 10 - The Hills have eyes
“There are leagues left to go,” I said, looking down at Julia. She had just sat down for the twentieth time or so.
“I’m exhausted,” she groaned. “I’m hitting the limit of what my magic can do. Not all of us have the Hiking skill, you know.” Exhausted was a condition one earned if you spent too much of your time with a significant amount of Stamina depleted. My normal pace didn’t bother me at all, but, for Julia to keep up, she had to expend a considerable amount of Stamina. Now, her Stamina recovery was significantly reduced. She was having massive issues keeping up a pace that would prevent the Woodsman from quickly catching us.
“Shart, is there anywhere we can safely rest?” I asked my former shoulder demon. Shart grumbled.
“Probably, but I think the temperatures have warmed enough now. You can ditch her,” stated Shart. We had been traveling down the mountain for several hours. Julia’s all too frequent stops had originally been handy; they let me place a few more traps on our tracks. Unfortunately, none of those traps had triggered recently. Either the duo had stopped chasing us, or they had figured out how to bypass my traps without triggering them. Neither was preferable.
“I’m not going to ditch her. At least, not yet,” I said. While she wasn’t currently helping me in my quests to get back to Windfall and kill the Dark Overlord, there was still a chance she might be useful. I could have traveled down the mountain without her Resist Cold spell now, but I wasn’t sure it was quite safe yet. That might have been Old Jim talking, though. He was a pushover that got people he cared about killed.
Still, she was nearing the end of her utility to me and O’Really could dispense with that sort of unhelpful person. On the other hand, Julia was a princess. Protecting her on her journey to the Vineyards, the place that I was headed anyway, might be beneficial to me.
Julia was watching me carefully and seemed to understand her predicament. She was slowing me down. I didn’t need her nearly as much as she needed me now. I could see the decision flash across her face. She was about to offer me something very personal to get what she wanted. On Ordinal, a young woman had options that she might not have had on Earth. Suddenly, I got a prompt.
● Help Julia find a place to rest: Quest reward: 1000 XP. Julia requires a place to rest. Find her a safe place and protect her.
Feck, I could use 1000XP.
I could have turned down sex, money, and things, but not experience. I needed that to defeat the Dark Overlord. Ordinal had a fairly straightforward experience system. Each new level cost 1000 XP times your next level. I was currently a level 3 Cleric. A thousand XP was a fourth of the experience I needed to get to level 4. I needed a place to level up anyway. Cleric wasn’t my only class.
“Fine! If you need to level up, there is a cave nearby that you could use,” grumbled Shart, offering the directions. It only took a few minutes to reach the cave. It was dry, empty, and well hidden; my favorite three requirements for a place to hide. I strung a few traps, while Julia enchanted the place for warmth. That was a bit of a misnomer. All she did was make sure that it didn’t get too abjectly cold, but beggars can’t be choosers. The main issue was that we couldn’t light a fire. The smoke might alert the Woodsman, who might be tracking us. I had figured for a long cold night.
“Is your name actually Julia?” I asked. I was used to everyone having longer names so Julia was refreshing.
“Of course not! My name is Julia Angela Claudia Carrington Ewing Gioberti Napa Ewing,” she said, grinning. “That is quite a mouthful, though. I typically follow the old ways and just use my first name.”
“Ewing is in your name twice?” I asked.
“Yes, it's a prominent name from two sides of my family. Each ran their own show, so to speak,” she said. “Do you have a first name?”
“Not really,” I said, trying to keep Jim out of it.
“Not O’Really?” she asked, as if tasting the name. “Sounds made up.”
“It's been my name for as long as I’ve been here on Ordinal,” I said.
“If you insist. If I were you, I’d pick a better fake name,” she chuckled. “I suppose I am just going to call you O’Really, then. Are you from out east?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I groaned, continuing to string traps.
She snorted and walked over to the middle of the room. I tossed her a chunk of the deer I’d field dressed. “Do you expect me to eat this raw?” she asked, disgust in her voice.
“I expect you to cook it,” I said.
“I’m a princess. Princesses don’t cook,” she stated.
“I guess princesses go hungry, then,” I replied, holding up my own hunk of frozen deer and licking it. “Yum, deer popsicle.” In my mind, I heard Shart gagging.
Julie grumbled before snatching my dinner from my hands and walking back to the center of the room. “This isn’t going to taste good.”
“Not raw is good enough,” I said. Her shoulders slumped. With no fire, she could only prepare the food with magic. She muttered a few creative prayers, and one of the nearby stones suddenly grew hot enough to cook meat on. She tossed our dinner on the rock, watching it with the growing fascination of a child.
“I’ve never actually cooked anything before,” she said finally. “This is kind of fun. I suppose it’s a bit like camping.” When she wasn’t being a princess, Julia was almost tolerable. When she noticed me watching her, she instantly dropped her smile.
I had prompts to deal with anyway.
● Level up, Cleric 2.
● Level up, Cleric 3.
● You have gained two perks!
● Your Hit Point total has increased by 20. Your current Hit Points are 210/210
● Your Mana total has increased by 20. Your current Mana is 70/70
● You have learned new spells!
● You have learned Endure Elements!
● You have learned Smite!
Ordinal capped your experience at a maximum of one level per encounter. That meant I’d gained two levels in two separate encounters. The first level had been during the fight in the lodge. The second was wh
en my trap had incapacitated one of the two adventurers that were following us. I was going to need to come up with some other sources of experience soon.
I checked my new spells. Endure Elements was a lower-level version of Resist Cold. It was the multipurpose version of that spell, designed to handle all environments. However, as a jack of all trades, it was a master of none. Like me. The spell would have been ineffective at higher altitudes where the wind was freezing. Smite was a new Damage type, Holy. It allowed me to charge an object with Holy magic and direct it into a target physically. In practical terms, that meant hit something with a weapon while shouting a prayer. Hopefully, this new Damage would expand my combat options, considering how ineffective my hand-to-hand strikes had been in general since the Remort.
That left me with two perks to select and some decisions to make. What did I want to get out of my Cleric build? Magical healing was useful, but I had to factor that against my mission to kill Charles. Did I want to focus on healing or branch out and see what other options a Cleric provided. Cycling through my choices, I found two perks that I thought would be useful.
● Self-Renewal: Whenever you cast a spell, you recover Hit Points based on the Mana expended and magical type used.
● Empowered Healing: Your Charisma bonus is doubled when factoring in Healing magic. You can activate Healing magic without verbal action.
Self-Renewal was obviously useful. Whenever I cast a spell, it would allow me to recover Hit Points, including spells that I cast upon myself to regain Hit Points. Empowered Healing was less useful on its face, but I had come to realize that Charisma was more beneficial than I’d initially thought. My level 4 buff was going there. That meant that next level, my Heal Damage spell would increase from 26 points to 36 points. The ability to cast any healing spell without having to say the ridiculous prayers was just icing on the cake, as far as I was concerned.
I cast Endure Elements on myself.
● You have been affected by Endure Elements. Target: Self. Your comfortable temperature range has expanded by 13 degrees. Base 5, +1 Spirit, +2 Willpower, +5 Charisma.
Of course, Ordinal used something similar to Celsius. That meant that 22 degrees was the optimum comfort point. You could manage temperatures around 15 degrees either up or down without suffering terrible penalties. However, going beyond 15 degrees in either direction started to cause status effects. You could compensate for that, to an extent, by wearing proper gear. For example, in my heavy winter coat, I could go down to -15 degrees without further penalty. The coat itself typically caused other penalties, but my Hiking skill allowed me to ignore those. With the coat an active Endure Elements spell, I could go all the way down to -28 degrees, which was about -18 in Fahrenheit back in America.
Julia’s Resist Cold, on the other hand, was significantly better. It expanded my comfort zone in colder temperatures all the way down to -40 degrees, period. I could have been wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, and I’d feel just as comfortable as if I was wearing a hefty coat.
The top of the mountain had been considerably colder than -30 degrees. If I’d been trying to survive on Endure Elements there, I would have eventually frozen to death. I wasn’t sure how Heal Damage would have impacted that. Perhaps I could have done some combination of Heal Damage and Endure Elements to survive, but it would hardly have been comfortable.
“Shart, what are my weapon options?” I asked after a moment.
“Maces, clubs, staves,” replied the demon. “You know, the usual stuff.”
“I don’t understand why they have hang ups on edged weapons,” I said.
“Do you ever get tired of saying that?” the demon asked.
“Saying what?” I questioned. “The gods' choices of weapons make no sense.”
“No, not that, Dum Dum. I was referring to your near constant use of the phrase ‘I don’t understand’,” Shart responded. “You use it a lot. Don’t you find it tiring? I find it tiring.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed loudly. Julia spared a quick glance in my direction before turning her attention back to our meal.
Shart also sighed before saying, “The gods decided no edged weapons as one of their requirements for Clerics, so no edged weapons are one of the requirements for Clerics,” stated Shart, “It turns out gods can do things like that.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just make myself a top-quality club, then.” I began pulling out my knife as I headed toward the entrance of the cavern. Stepping outside, I found a decent chunk of wood and brought it back into the cave. Even at the lower altitude, and with my coat and Endure Elements active, it still felt colder than when I’d been running with Resist Cold.
Julia had stood when I stepped outside. She returned to her seat once I returned with my small log. “Did you hear something?” she asked.
“No, I was just searching for something I could use to make a club,” I responded, brandishing the log and my knife. Now that I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone with it, my knife worked perfectly. I knew that I could eat a good steak dinner with the knife, just as long as I didn’t cause a Bleed effect.
“Don’t you want a staff? I’m kind of unarmed here and I know I miss having one.” asked Julia, repositioning herself. She had removed her coat and had the deer meat sizzling on the rocks. Dinner smelled about done.
“I’ve always been more of a hit until it squishes into a small pile of goo sort of guy,” I said. “Do you want me to make you a staff?”
She tapped on her collar, “I am unable to wield anything until I get this off.”
Taking the knife, I brought up my Initiate rank Carpentry skill and examined my weapon options. They were very limited, based on my available resources. The image that came to mind was that of a pretty basic caveman club. Well, I wasn’t going to be caught dead using something so primitive. I continued weighing my options, rotating the mental image of the club in my mind. I could change a blueprint slightly, just as long as I didn’t change the item's purpose. I lengthened the club and adjusted the taper and knob until I had it just the way I wanted it.
● You have crafted a Baseball Bat +1. Damage 2-7. Bludgeoning. Special Flag: Bonus to powerful Blow, + 1-3 Damage per rank. Durability 80/80
I spun the weapon around in my hand, slapping it against my palm several times. It felt good. I noticed Julia staring at it, then at my dinner. She had plated it on a rather flat piece of wood and set it next to me while I had been crafting. Placing the bat aside, I thanked her and began eating. The meat was slightly cold, despite the warmth of the room. I thought it best not to mention that fact.
The deer meat was tough and none too tasty, but that was all that one could expect from a chef that didn’t have any cooking skills. I couldn’t have done any better. I’d always had someone to make my food in Windfall, so I’d never worked on those types of skills. I hadn’t even considered taking cooking skills when EstherSasha was the town’s lone cook. Now, I was regretting it slightly.
“So, you are an Easterner,” she said after a moment, walking over to my new weapon. She picked it up and experimentally swung it a few times. She swung it like a weapon and not a sports implement. That was the nice thing about bats. They were just the right size and shape to do some real damage, but no one used them like that on Earth. On Ordinal, well, I could crack a skull with that quite easily.
“Just because I made a club?” I asked.
“Just because you made a baseball bat,” she retorted. “No one plays that game anymore, except for out east. I think it’s mostly only played on the Isles.” She handed me back my weapon. She looked longingly at where the food had been prepared, but we had eaten all of the deer meat.
Reaching into my pack, I broke off a chunk of cheese and handed it to Julia. She frowned, “If you had this why did you have me cook?”
I shrugged. Julia rolled her eyes. I’d given her the meat because I had it. Anything we could do to stretch out our food supplies was worthwhile.
“So, what’s the plan f
or tomorrow?” I asked.
“We are going to head to Angwin. It's a logging town,” stated Julia confidently.
She was using the royal “we,” but I didn’t have a better direction to go. Then again, “You realize that’s the first place those two people chasing us will go, right?”
Julia’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t considered that. “We can sneak into the town.”
“Not to burst your bubble, but you don’t look like the sneaky type,” I replied.
“I have the Disguise skill,” she responded with bravado. “I will just change my appearance and name, and no one will know the difference.”
“We could just avoid the town,” I suggested. That seemed less complicated.
“O’Really, the only trail down the mountain starts in Angwin. Unless you plan on jumping off the mountain, we have to go through the town. They are constantly on the lookout for illegal lumberjacks,” she said. “I doubt either of us could sneak past their sentries.”
“They have sentries?” I asked. I didn’t really employ sentries around Windfall.
“Of course,” grated Julia. “There are monsters and lumber thieves. It's not like this town has a barrier or anything else to protect them.”
Windfall’s barrier did change how we protected the town.
I was confident that the sentries would spot her. I was pretty sure I could sneak by them if I needed to. Of course, that would leave Julia to the tender mercies of those two adventurers. I was trying to define who O’Really was in my head, and I realized he was the kind of guy who would just move toward his goal. I just needed to get back to Windfall.
“Well, if you can get into town by yourself…” I began. She stiffened, so I stopped.
“I could use your help,” she said. “You seem quite handy, despite your lower level and lack of a Disguise skill.”
