by Scott Seier
"This guy claims to be a summoner, I thought you'd be interested in him." The guard, Ed apparently, spoke with poorly disguised excitement in his voice. The owner of the busy voice appeared from behind a nearby tree with two books open in her hands. Who read two books at the same time?
"Really now? There hasn't been a Summoner through here in months, not even with the influx of heroes pouring into our world." The girl moved further into the light. She had large circular glasses that seemed to not magnify her eyes in the slightest, along with a long dark blue robe that hung open, revealing worn looking leather armor, similar to the stuff that Hael had been wearing. She walked right up to me. Her expression was restrained, but there was a spark in her eye that I noticed. It looked like hope if I had to put a name to it.
She brought out her hand and tapped me on the forehead. I stared back into her now confused face. She eyed me up and down and then tapped me in the chest the same way. Instantly I felt a surge of power inside me. "A spirit user huh?" the girl was smiling now. "Ed, you nailed it. Summoner he is! Thank you so much!" she jumped up and threw her arms around Ed's neck.
"Aw, I just led him here Kara, you're the one who'll make the best of the opportunity." Kara pulled away beaming at the guard. "That's for sure. I'm not letting another year pass without pushing into tier 3. At the very least!" she added the last bit to the delight of Ed who was already edging his way out of the grove.
"Okay, okay. I have to get back before the captain notices I'm gone. Be good, and come by for dinner sometime, Denise is dying to hear about that project you promised to tell her about." The two NPC's finished their farewells and Kara turned back to a very dumbfounded level 1 Summoner.
The level of detail in their interactions was about a thousand times more advanced than the priest or any other NPC that I'd observed so far. Even Gred the guard seemed to not be quite as interconnected as Ed and Kara. What made them so special?
I was pondering the possibility of them being 'main story' characters in some grand scheme or something and by that privilege perhaps had upgraded AI running them, when Kara plopped herself onto the ground and smiled brightly up at me. My A.D.D fueled speculations would have to wait.
Kara gestured for me to join her on the ground. "Let's get a look at you, shall we?" she said with an air of excitement that I personally didn't believe I warranted. "Before we... look at me or whatever, do you mind if I ask you what opportunity that my presence is affording you? I thought that Ed was dragging me back here to kill me to be honest. So I was sort of not one hundred percent paying attention to your conversation." Kara blanched.
"Ed would never kill anyone. Jeez, I bet he dragged you all the way here without explaining anything didn't he?" when I nodded she sighed and continued. "So, not many Summoners exist in Acrion, and out of that small number, many of them quickly choose one of the other magic using classes instead of staying with the Summoning branch of magic. The reason that Ed was so quick to act was because he was probably trying to get you to me before a warlock or mage could come in and convince you to change your class." That made enough sense I suppose.
I nodded. "And what's this tier 3 all about?" at the mention of it Kara's expression darkened. "The strength of a class is denoted in a tier system. You, for example, are a tier one Summoner. I am a tier two summoner. Ed would be a tier two Warrior and so on. The tiers have certain thresholds that have to be met to pass into higher ranks. One of the many different thresholds for a tier two Summoner is to mentor a Tier one Summoner and bring them up into the second tier, at which time the teacher will be pushed into the third tier." So she was using me to get stronger herself. I respected that. She waved away her own words suddenly. "Enough of that though, we need to go all the way back to basics." Excitement boiled up in my chest, like the power Kara had conjured with her magic poke.
"The first thing you need to learn is how to actually cast a spell." Kara said after I admitted that my experience in that domain was exactly nil. "It's pretty easy. A spell will cost either mana, or some other reagent, or sometimes a reagent and mana. Which spells did you start out with?"
I focused for a moment and brought up my Spellbook interface. Summon: Veil Imp, and Veil Siphon. "I can summon an imp and by the looks of the other one it will let me drain enemy health in some way." I said. She nodded "Thats fine, okay, in your bags there's going to be a core, right?"
I remembered the core from when I grabbed bread for the creepy priest. I nodded. "Perfect. To summon an imp there's usually no mana cost, just the core. So go ahead and cast the spell." I was sort of disappointed that there wasn't some big long ritualistic means of doing this. But honestly this game had been designed for the masses. They couldn't really make it too difficult to grasp the concepts. I selected the spell and triggered it. I felt a cold breeze on the palm of my right hand, immediately after that, the core disappeared and the spell icon grayed out.
I looked at my palm, concerned that the strange sensation wasn't normal. This fear was only reinforced when a deep furrow made its home between Kara's brows. The breeze grew in strength and the cold increased in intensity. For a moment it felt almost like it was on fire. Instinctively I flung my hand out, as if to toss the sensation away from me. The instant that my palm was facing into open space a sound burst forth. It sounded like a flag being blown violently in a storm. The sound only lasted for the briefest moments before space folded around the area of my hand. It looked like a curtain had been swept aside and through the opening appeared an Imp.
The instant my summon appeared, the distorted spot in the air smoothed out and regained its normal air-like qualities. Unfortunately, my new teacher wasn't as relieved that it worked as I was. This was demonstrated when a large ball of air and fire came flying at my new companion. The imp popped into the air like it's legs were spring loaded, easily dodging the rushed attack.
The long limbed imp then kicked off a nearby tree and hit the ground rolling to hide behind my legs. The little guy was only about two feet tall which allowed for my body to offer plenty of cover for him. Not exactly to my delight... "what in the dark is that?!" Kara yelled, already folding up a more condensed version of the same spell that had left a smoldering circle of burned ground not three feet away from me. "You told me to summon my imp!" I said helpfully, pointing at the long eared head that was poking out from behind me.
Kara calmed down after a second, keeping an eye on my imp the whole time. She snapped and her hostile spell winked out of existence. "Lyst, thats not an imp, an imp is a small demon that a summoner or warlock can summon and bind to their wills. That" she said vaguely waving at my knees, which made me oddly self conscious, "is not a demon, and is already bound to your will."
I looked down at the little guy and he looked up at me. His eyes were like a cats, except they slowly were changing color as I watched. His ears were long and fluffy like a foxes and he had a tail similar to a foxes as well. His whole body was covered in arctic white fur and he wore a small pair of deep black shorts.
"I'm not following, looks like an imp to me." I was still a little thrown by her use of my characters name, Lyst. Kind of forgot I was going by an alias here and her use of it reminded me of the circumstances. A loud crack thankfully distracted me from my sudden melancholy thoughts. Kara stood next to yet another smoking circle, although this one was occupied by a shorter, stouter, redder, and hairless version of my, much cooler and more awesome, imp.
"Well, now I can see the confusion." I said with an apologetic smile. Kara seemed annoyed. It never ended well when the ladies in my life got annoyed with me. "Lyst, please read me the name of the spell you just cast." I already knew my mistake before I opened my Spellbook. Well I guess that confirmed that the 'Veil' actually meant something.
It took Kara five minutes of lecturing before she believed that I fully grasped the necessity of properly understanding the spells that I was casting before setting them loose on the world. Her emphatic warnings actually only brightened my spirits. I heard
her words of warning, but all I was really hearing was 'yes lyst, there are way more dangerous and complex spells out there, be careful or you could blow up the planet'. I could be wrong, but I don't think I was on this one.
Kara and I went over my siphon spell briefly. Confirming that It functioned similarly enough to the standard spell that it was safe to use. Cast on a target, does damage over time. Pretty simple. It also would sometimes grant a 'Veil Core' when the target died with the debuff on them. That was the way to replenish the cores after using them to summon imps.
With that done, Kara looked as if she wanted to dig into a lengthy discussion involving the reasons I should reject any offers to change my class from a summoner to anything else. Honestly, I wasn't tempted in the slightest to make a change. I told her that I needed to go meet with a group to explore the surrounding area. Kara instantly agreed that a few levels would do a world of good, but she aggressively reminded me to get back to the town before nightfall.
She took a second to warn me that the gates would close and that I'd need to bribe the guard to get back in after the sun set, otherwise I would be sleeping in the cold and a random wolf would probably kill me. I thanked her for all the help and promised to come back soon, making it very clear that I intended to pursue the whole summoner thing instead of anything else. The reassurance seemed to put her mind at ease.
After making sure my imp could keep pace with me, which he could easily, I jogged back towards the main gates. For the first time noticing that I had a stamina bar that slowly depleted the longer I exerted myself physically.
As I arrived at the gates I spotted Hael standing off to the side of the road with another person.
"Hey there Lyst, thought maybe you'd got yourself sent to respawn and was gonna miss our little expedition." Hael called in greeting.
"Nah, I got dragged to my trainer by one of the guards...long story I guess" I let it drop after seeing Hael's shocked expression. I turned to Hael's companion instead, shaking her hand and introducing myself, officially, as Lyst, for the first time.
"My name's Gleer" she said without even looking at me. "I'm sorry, but what is that?" she said pointing at the white furred imp that was now wandering around the area, shooting nervous glances at the nearby guard, who was returning those glances with increasing frequency.
I noted that it wasn't Gred who was on duty anymore, so I sent a mental command to not wander that far from me to the imp. To my mild surprise the imp immediately walked over and settled next to me.
"Umm.. Lyst?"
It took a second to remember what she had asked me. "Oh, yeah, I'm a summoner, this little guy is my companion it seems." I answered, sure that my lapse in attention was completely overshadowed by my super smooth recovery.
"Minion, they're called minions Lyst, usually companions are a higher level type of pet or minion." Hael mentioned distractedly as he gazed into empty space, clearly looking through interfaces that were invisible to my eye. I shrugged. "I like the sound of companion better." Hael shrugged as well, matching my own movement even though I was pretty sure he hadn't seen me make it. I couldn't help but notice my furry friend make a subtle head bob of approval.
"Okay!" Hael's eyes came back to us as he closed out of all his character screens. "We're going to move out, the three of us, and try and push to the copper mine that's up the road, south of here." Hael looked around briefly before confidently gesturing in a direction. He ruffled his eyebrows after a second and then pointed about forty degrees off from where he had first decided. "That way." He said with gusto. I smiled. The guy seemed to have just the right amount of authority to pull off leading a group, but not enough to rub anyone the wrong way.
"Once we hit the mine we can meet up with our fourth member, and then after we rumble a bit, our fifth will find us. She's a bit ahead of the rest of us on levels, so she decided to skip the mine grind, at least for today." Hael made a point of meeting everyones eyes, gauging how well his plan had been received. After a generally positive response from myself, Gleer, and the imp, he nodded happily and we set off, out the gates, and across the wide open grassy plain that surrounded the bustling town.
The scenery was beautiful. Amber colored grass leading all the way up to the trees that seemed to spread in all directions for miles, mountains ringing the visible horizon on all sides. Dozens of groups of players were jogging around the grassy fields, some fighting with bunnies that would jump out of their dens and try and scratch nearby adventurers to death. Even as I watched, a group of three melee fighters were slowly overrun when the warren they had been poking around turned out to house four dog-sized rabbits.
No one moved a muscle as the three guys were killed, leaving small glowing grave markers where they gave up the ghost. I knew they would return to life wherever they had bound their respawn point, but it still felt off to me as another group of three fighters moved in excitedly to give themselves a shot at the four rabbit challenge. I didn't pay attention long enough to see how they fared.
We moved through the grass until we hit a road and then followed that as it curved around the dark forest and led us towards our destination.
"Personally I really, really hate spiders Hael, so you had better be telling me the truth about their venom being useful alchemically." Gleer said out of the blue, probably just to break up the peaceful silence that had fallen over our small team. My ears perked up at the sound of 'spiders' and 'magic venom' though.
"The eleventh division's briefing marks their venom as one of the most mana rich resources in the area. I'd assume that makes it useful right?" Hael sounded like he already knew the answer to the question, but he waited for Glee to answer.
Gleer, instead of answering, simply took Hael's comment as answer enough and pulled out a book, scribbling notes into it. "If we're going in there I'll need a few blood samples as well. Seeing as I'm a mage...Hael, can I contract you to get me some? I assume you'll be applying bleed effects fairly often? I currently don't have the spell arsenal to get up close and personal with a spider the size of a shopping cart."
"What now? Giant spiders who now?" I sputtered. I didn't have a fear of spiders really, I just didn't like them. In a blood curdling way. Thats all.
Hael just nodded to Gleer and waved a hand in her direction. Her eyes glazed over and she smiled, blinking to clear her vision. "Contract signed, pleasure doing business with you."
I waved a hand in front of Hael's face. "Hey, sorry, I'm just stuck on the giant spiders thing. Care to elaborate?" Hael gave me a quizzical look. "The mines, they're infested with the things, they're going to be our main source of experience until level five, maybe further if we can push deep enough. Their fangs are also highly sought after so we'll be able to off load them for some extra experience and some cash." Hael responded succinctly and logically, frustratingly not leaving much room for me to find a reasonable objection.
Hael chuckled at my obvious discomfort. "Don't worry Lyst, the reaction that you're having is the reason that the mine won't be crawling with a bunch of players. Most newcomers are off farming the boars in the lightly wooded areas. They're all probably living in constant fear of running into a random wolf or mountain cat though, which will slow overall progress. With the spiders, we'll start off at a level disadvantage, but will be able to fight without worrying about suddenly finding more dangerous mobs stalking us. The only place the spiders are stronger is deeper in the mine, so we can very easily regulate the enemy difficulty." Once more Hael being annoyingly logical.
We walked in relative silen
ce from that point on. Gleer was still scribbling in a book as we went and Hael was barely looking at his surroundings, constantly staring off into space while he read whatever screens he had accessed in the moment. I felt lonely all of a sudden. Was I the only one worrying about this?
Without knowing what I was really doing I reached out and rested my hand on the imps head. He looked pissed by the move and was about to jerk away from me when I gifted all of my mana to the fuzzy little guy. He froze, a dumbfounded expression playing at the edges of his feline-like face.
At level one I had exactly ten mana. The mana scaled one to one with my intellect stat, so even a level 100 could still have only ten mana if they never invested any points into it.
