by Charles Dean
Territory
Rating:12
Tech / Utility Rating: 12
Influence / Tourism Rating: 4
Public Persona:
Kirshtein (-2: Unkind)
Birnefeld (0: Unknown)
Divine Skills:
Golem Sculpting Journeyman Level 5
Appreciative Drunk Novice Level 10
Nectar of the Gods Initiate Level 6
Spirit Smithing Initiate Level 7
Faith Healing
Ignis Veritas
Spirit Builder Initiate Level 1
Divinity Powers:
Life in Death
Titles:
Cheat Code Fighter
The Great Deceiver
The Aggressive Mile-High Chef
Lee woke up to the pleasant feeling of pain racking his sides as he took a breath. He instinctively grabbed at his aching ribcage, only to have his hand run into a soft, unidentifiable head of hair. “Masha?” he asked as he suddenly became cognizant of the feeling of a body pressing against him under the sheets.
With that question, however, came a thump on his injured ribs, and he took another 10 damage. “Ow, what the heck?” Ignoring the pain, Lee lifted up the covers to see what was going on.
“What the heck is with you?” the blue haired woman snapped at him, but she kept her head right where it was. “Do I look like a Masha? Are you really thinking of other women after all we did last night?”
Lee froze. I didn’t . . . I didn’t sleep with her? Did I? he wondered as he looked down at her figure. “I mean, no. What do you mean?”
“Really?” She lifted her head up and gave him a coy smile. She was only wearing a blue satin dudou and lace panties that matched her hair color, and as she sat there giving him that pouty face, Lee found the usual morning assault twice as strong. “Are you really going to play innocent when even he remembers?” she said, gesturing at his wake-up call.
“I . . .” Lee was having trouble collecting his thoughts when he remembered both his injury and the source. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Ugh! You would doubt your own flesh and blood?!” Jade grumbled at him. “Here I was, cuddled up and waiting for round two, and you tell me that not only is there another woman, but you don’t even want to take responsibility for round one?”
“My own flesh and blood?” Lee was incredibly confused. “What are you talking about?”
Jade sniffled. “I . . . Our blood. I had to mix it to stop you from dying. You could say that, since your blood and mine have already mixed . . . you’re like my blood brother, and I’m like your blood sister, like kids in a pact.”
Lee began using his magic to heal up the wound. He was still in too much pain to try and lift himself normally, so he decided to take care of that problem first. “If we’re like brothers and sisters, isn’t that even more of a reason for you to get out of my bed?”
“Aww! Don’t be like that. We might be bonded, but it’s not like we’re blood-related,” she said. “Anyway, don’t you know . . . wincest for the best rest?” Jade teased. If it weren’t for the fact that she was suggesting stuff that cranked the awkward meter up to eleven, Lee might have continued to find himself tempted by the sight of her.
“Yup, nope.” Lee shook his head. “Out. I need to get dressed properly.”
“Wha? Not even a thank you kiss for saving your life?” Jade harrumphed. “I hope this MASHA is worth it. Because . . . Because right now, you’re being a total meanie!” She then jumped out of the bed and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“A meanie?” Lee blinked. “Did she just . . .?” But before he could finish that thought, Jade opened the door and stuck her tongue out at him before then closing it again.
“I have no idea what the hell just happened,” Lee muttered, throwing his mana into healing himself up as he recalled the events of last night. Satterfield. The word struck him like a brick as his memories flooded back to him, and he remembered what had happened. He felt somewhat guilty that it hadn’t been the first thought on his mind, but he knew that was probably what Jade was after with her antics. Crap, he thought, holding his side as he finished the last bit of healing. How long have I even been out?
“‘Just for the night,” Augustus’s voice answered. “Even if you do manage to make it down to the town in time, what are you going to do? You were stomped by her. You barely managed to hold onto your life and dealt absolutely no damage in return.”
“Yeah, it was kinda sad to watch,” Mary’s voice chimed in. “Almost as sad as watching my poor Herald humiliate herself. I swear, Augustus, you’re a terrible influence on Jade.”
“What?” Augustus asked indignantly. “It was funny! You should lighten up! I swear, you’re tenser and stuck up than Lee is.”
“He’s not tense and stuck up. He’s just a man with a plan who understands the gravitas of what he is doing. You should take more after--”
“Please shut up,” Lee said to the both of them. “I swear, you two bicker back and forth like an old married couple trying to decide where to eat.”
“That is not what is happening!” Mary protested, but Lee figured it was better to just ignore it.
Lee frowned as he looked at the hand that had clutched his now-healed wound. The damn old geezer is actually right. Even if I do make it down the mountain, there is nothing I can do to stop her. She easily bested me. I need to do something to save Satterfield.
Lee pushed himself out of bed and found the inventor Dwarf waiting for him outside his door along with a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten.
“Sir,” the man began apologetically. “I’m sorry for what happened last night. This here is my grandson, and after those events, I’m the only one he has to look after him. I wouldn’t have run otherwise, and I hope you can forgive me.”
He’s feeling shame for staying alive? “Forgive you for what?” Lee asked. “You did as I told you to, and I’m assuming the fact that my friends showed up was due you.”
“Yeah . . . I went to them as soon as I could,” the Dwarf explained, still looking abashed. “They were both asleep in the same room, but the blue one bolted out the door right away . . . and I’m glad she did.”
Lee just shook his head slightly. He didn’t have the time to deal with this Dwarf’s insecurities, so he tried to be blunt without being cruel. “There isn’t anything to forgive. What’s the problem? Should you have stayed there and died with me?”
“No, it’s just”--the man looked down at the kid--“I wouldn’t be here to take care of him if you hadn’t sent me back. I can’t let that debt go unpaid. We Dwarves ain’t the tallest of races out there, but we hold our head high when it comes to unpaid debts. I gotta do something for you for the kindness you showed me last night. It might be true that me getting help kept you alive, but you kept me alive first to do it. So . . . is there anything I can do to help you out?”
Lee studied the man curiously. Normally, he wouldn’t bother with this type of thing, but knowing that there was a cultural difference, he wondered if not extracting a price would cause a bigger grievance than any recompense he could collect. Hmm . . . I could just ask him to follow Augustus, but . . . that would only be one follower. This whole town could follow Augustus, and it wouldn’t boost the numbers as much as Kirshtein did. No, actually there is something I could really use. “Stonework,” Lee answered. “I don’t know anything about Masonry. Can you teach me that?”
“What in the heck?” Augustus exclaimed. “That’s what you asked him for?! No beer, no prostitutes, no food, no dancing women or musical songs? You want to learn the most boring profession there is in all the kingdoms of this stupid food-named empire? Bricklaying?!”
You really don’t live up to your name as the God of Crafts, you know that? Are you trying to switch professions on me?
“No,” Augustus groaned. “I just think that my book would provide better, more adequate explanations, and you could use the good fai
th you’ve accrued on something you clearly don’t know how to get without help.”
Your book might provide the instructions, but having someone hold my hand through every mistake would help me more, and this guy is clearly a professional when it comes to crafting of any sort.
“That’s no problem at all,” the Dwarf answered, interrupting an argument between Lee and Augustus that he couldn’t know was going on. He sounded excited, and there was a glimmer in his eye having heard Lee’s request. “I’ll get my kit and the boys who owe me a favor right away. We can run you through everything you need to know about it without a problem. This . . . This I can do.”
Lee sighed. He should have felt happy getting what he wanted, but the threat looming over Satterfield was still there. There has to be something I can do. The situation can’t be that bleak.
“The stone . . . You must use the stone, Luke,” Jade’s voice teased him as she popped out around him, this time in her usual adventurer gear.
“The stone?” Lee turned to find the blue-haired girl who had only moments ago run from his bed in mock anger.
“Yeah, you were talking about stonework, so I just thought . . .” Jade was leading him on, but it took a second for Lee to get what she was trying to put out there.
“The world stone fragment!” Lee shouted, as if an idea had struck him. “That’s it! I can use the world stone fragment!” It won’t be everything I need, but it might be enough to at least close the gap some in the next fight! The last two were a huge power boost!
“Yup. If it’s still on this mountain. Hey, maybe one of your bearded brothers might know. You’ve been pretty chummy with that one Dwarf. I’m sure he has some idea.”
“He might so long as Meadhbh hasn’t gotten it already, but . . . that still doesn’t answer what we’re going to do about Satterfield. Maybe Miller and Ling might have--”
“The dead guy?” Jade asked, tilting her head.
“What?” Lee asked.
“You said ‘maybe Miller’ like you were going to rely on him, but isn’t he the party member that died?”
“What?” Lee felt a lump form in his throat that was rather hard to swallow down. “What are you talking about?”
“Huh? Did you not check your notifications after you woke up? I mean, you’ve got people leveling us without either of us having to lift a finger, but you don’t even check their progress? That’s really mean. They’re working super hard like good NPCs should.”
“Miller is dead?” Lee stumbled over the words while fumbling to open up his notification list. The messages there were bleak. There were several tiny, innocuous, renamed kill-notifications that Ling had sent to update him on what was going on, but the system updates were ugly. He sifted through them at lightning speed and with a growing sense of dread. The party was wiped out, their troops were dead, Pelham was dead, Miller was dead, and only Ling, Dave and a handful of others were left of what was originally a sixty-man expedition. And, to make matters worse, they had four days at most to reach Satterfield before Meadhbh culled the population there.
Ling had been thorough with her messages. She described how Pelham had killed the bear-man and then went into detail about the stampede of boars that had crushed their ranks. That’s . . . System, will fortified walls hold up against those attacks? Lee feared he already knew the answer.
Of course not. Those walls you wasted two full days of mana on will get crushed like pixie sticks under the assault of a stampede of boars. I take only very small--no, quite large actually--amounts of pleasure from knowing that you spent so much time and effort protecting a city that will die out anyway. I told you that you should have just worried about the infrastructure and not the population. Now, I can say I was right.
But would stone walls? Lee thought. I mean, if I get my Masonry up high enough today, wouldn’t that work?
I believe we had this discussion, Lee. You said you would give me a week before you asked me to do any more defensive improvements.
“Yeah, but is there any way you can let me off the hook? Just this once? Satterfield is going to be attacked. I need to do everything I can to stop it,” Lee protested. “I have the ability to upgrade the defenses and save lives. Do you mind if I do it? Just this once?”
Well, you could. You could be the type of man who breaks his word after having said that he wouldn’t upgrade the town’s defenses for a week, and I might just have to become the type of system that says it will help you facilitate an upgrade but won’t. This could also happen, right?
“You’re not going to let me do a single additional defensive upgrade, are you?”
No, and I am also going to highly recommend you don’t try to save Satterfield. The town will repopulate after Meadhbh kills everyone, but you will not. You are a Herald, and a new Herald won’t randomly regenerate. That’s why I have some great recommendations for upgrades that are incredibly unlikely to be destroyed or affected by a barbaric invasion. Would you like me to generate that list now or after your polybolos project completes, and it is time to select another upgrade?
Lee sighed. “Just . . . later. Later, please.” I have the power, but an agreement with the system won’t let me. Great. “So, Jade . . .”
“Yeah, what’s up?” she asked
“Do you think you could do me a big favor?” Lee asked the perky, blue-haired psychopath.
“I mean, I can, but I kind of wish you had asked me this when we were still in the bedroom. You have no idea what a hassle it is to take these clothes off. It’s like the worst part of being in a video game. It takes forever to put these on and take them off!” She pulled at the incredibly-tight leather pants that were hugging her butt. “I mean, look at these.” She turned around, flaunting her perfectly-curving, bouncy-looking bitable booty for him. “It’s so hard to get pants over them.”
“You were already changed by the time I left my room. That was like . . . twenty seconds? At most?”
Jade sighed longingly. “Which is eighteen seconds longer than it takes to remove normal pants and pull up some sweatpants. Anyway, if you really need me to, fine. Let’s go get this done so you can get this whole depressing death of your buddy and loss of your troops out of your system. Sex is cheaper than therapy, but I never expected you to have the equipment needed to ask for it.”
Lee let her ramble on before finally stopping her when she tried to walk back into his room. “Oh, no. That’s not the favor. I need you to go send Ling a few messages through the rename-and-kill system. She’s no doubt panicking right now, and she needs to know that things are okay up here, that the radio silence is over and that we have a game plan. Or at least, that I have the rough makings of a game plan.”
“Huh? How did I get downgraded from the booty call to the cell phone you’re using to text order an NPC booty-call?” Jade grumbled. “This is ridiculous.”
“Just cut the act and do it,” Lee snapped impatiently. “I need you to send several messages to her, and I’m going to need to talk to Brigid about what happened to her men. This isn’t going to be easy . . . And I need to figure out how to reach Satterfield after we get the stone fragment.”
“Wait, you’re still thinking of going? I mean-- I suppose there will be a lot of bodies if the whole town is massacred, so I can be helpful against the Phouka, but do you think we’ll still stand a chance?” Jade asked. “She messed you up pretty bad last time, and that’s even with your broken healing skill.”
“Yeah, but I gotta try,” Lee insisted. “If I do nothing, then everyone relying on me will die.”
“Hasn’t that already happened? Not to be the Debbie Downer, but if you had stopped the crazy lady, she wouldn’t have made it down the mountain and destroyed your little matchstick army, right?”
Jade’s question was an emotional gut-punch that Lee had been trying to avoid by focusing on what he had to do and not what had already happened. He was trying to keep busy not only to make sure that Satterfield would live but also so that he didn’t have to
consider the ramifications of what had happened.
“Even if I’ve lost them, that doesn’t mean I’ve lost everyone,” Lee replied.
“Right, that old ‘don’t wallow in the past; throw water out of the ship’ approach,” Jade said with a sigh as she put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “Tough one, brother. It’s not the wrong approach, but you really can’t let these things beat you up. Are you ever going to be happy again if you cry every time an NPC dies? While we’re talking, one is dying. You go stop Meadhbh, and she’s got NPCs with her, so some will be dying--maybe all if we do our job right. Two towns go to war ‘cause people in video games suck and have to kill each other like all the time or turn into lowbies and then get killed, so people are going to die. Why are you sweating this so much?”
“Because they’re not just NPCs,” Lee proclaimed loudly. “They’re people. They have wants, desires, and even freaking kids for heaven’s sake. How can you just treat them as NPCs and move on like they don’t matter? They have more reason and feelings than you and me sometimes.”
“That only means they’re better-programmed NPCs. You really need to stop stressing over this. I mean, seriously, I literally saw an entire town lose every person in it, and then within a month, it was all right as rain as if nothing happened. They’re NPCs, Lee, and you can’t let their dying bother you. Otherwise, what kind of mad killing monster are you? How many of them have you butchered for your own agenda? Don’t think that Brigid hasn’t told me what’s happened, what you did to her people,” Jade said. “You really gonna say, ‘Oh, they are all people just like us, but it was totally cool when I picked which ones lived and died in a political squabble?’”
“I did what was right for my people.”
“Right. So, it’s like summons or portable monsters for you? You’re like a warlock or a beast trainer in one of those fantasy games or anime, and these people are like the pocket pet or summon you’re trying to keep alive? I can kinda dig that,” Jade said. “Alright, cool beans. We can do this, but you need to not get so beaten up emotionally when a few of them die.”
