Occultist

by Oliver Mayes

  Regardless, this was clearly the harder quest. Mobs were significantly easier to kill than players; they followed predictable patterns and had set moves. Players, on the other hand, could think for themselves and choose their own abilities, making them almost as difficult as an AI-controlled boss monster.

  “How can you expect me to take on a whole guild at level seven?”

  Bartholomew looked at Damien quizzically. He answered in a lilting, almost comedic tone, yet his words were patient and honeyed.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Level seven? Is that some means of measuring power in your own home world? And I’m only asking you to dispose of three, one after the other if you like. You could always pursue the simpler quest instead. But while that quest is simpler, this one comes with material rewards.”

  Bartholomew produced folded garments of deepest, darkest blue, overlaid with leather bindings and bronze plates that were equal parts decorative and protective. On top of them sat a curved and serrated blade, bound to varnished wood with two perfect rings of silver. Damien immediately started to salivate. Bartholomew stowed the items before he could finish gorging his eyes.

  “I crafted these while you were gone. One of the perks of being a lonely vampire is having an inordinate amount of time to hone my crafting skills. The silver rings were a real annoyance for me, I hope you appreciate that. You didn’t really think it would take me the entire day just to finish your bag, did you?”

  Damien was taken aback. It was true; Bartholomew would have finished crafting the bag long ago, but Damien had forgotten all about it following the difficult events of that morning.

  “It’s quite all right. I know that whatever was going on in your home world made you most troubled of mind. The bag has been ready for you since you returned and now I have made you something to replace your wretched rags and bones as well. However, rewards under my tutelage are earned, not given freely. Make your choice.”

  He procured the rat-fur bag and tossed it underhand to Damien, who caught it squarely and looked up to find Bartholomew had disappeared. End of discussion. The second quest had appeared in his HUD when Bartholomew vanished.

  ‘And I’ll Take the Low Road - Kill three members of player guild Rising Tide (0/3)

  Rewards: Occultist Apprentice Robes (set), Sacrificial Dagger (unique).’

  Damien swapped packs, transferring his scarce items to his new inventory one by one as he weighed up his options. He needed that gear. Since he had no access to shops, he wouldn’t be able to buy equipment like normal players. He looked down and pinched the rags he’d looted off the skeleton that morning between a thumb and forefinger.

  He needed those robes badly. But was he ready? Level 10 seemed a more appropriate level to start targeting Aetherius’s guild directly, and even then only barely.

  However, there was another factor to consider as well.

  The item transferral finished, Damien left the empty bag on the ground for Bartholomew to collect at his leisure. Then he opened his skill tab and scrolled through until he found what he was looking for: the section of his Soul Harvest ability related to player killing:

  ‘….In addition, when you contribute to a player-kill, you absorb their experience points towards the next level that were forfeited upon death. A kill will result in all experience points being absorbed, an assist will yield EXP proportionate to how many other parties assisted. This ability does not function on creatures or players five or more levels below you.’

  Damien read it through. Then he stared. Then he read it through again, his eyes widening as the revelation hit him. When he’d first become an occultist, it had all been a little overwhelming. He’d been so busy getting to grips with his new spells and his status as an ‘Enemy of the Realm’ that he’d sorely underestimated this ability. He’d mistaken it for a little extra perk on top of his new resource, soul energy, set at the bottom of the skill description as a footnote. In fact, it might be the most important asset he had. The foundation of his entire class.

  He checked his experience bar for reference. He currently had 258/2000 experience points. Usually, upon death, all this exp would be lost. If he’d understood correctly, if an occultist killed him, they’d absorb the 258 exp instead. That was a fairly modest amount, but it could’ve been as high as 1999. An occultist could potentially get a vast amount of experience by killing a single player on the verge of hitting the next level. That wasn’t all: since he was a human with the ‘Adaptable’ trait, the experience he stole would be increased by a further 15%! An exceptional combination of passive abilities!

  The inference was clear; the Occultist faction were dedicated player killers. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given the role of occultists in Arcadia’s quest plotlines. The earlier quests had been warm up exercises, allowing Damien to familiarize himself with his abilities and hone his playstyle. This one was forcing him to decide whether or not to play the class the way it was designed to be played.

  With a very limited amount of time to kill a very high-level character, abusing the player-killing mechanic of his Soul Harvest ability would be the fastest way to bridge the level gap.

  A smile began to form on Damien’s face. This could work.

  At the very least, he could try the ‘Low Road’ quest and move on to the ‘High Road’ quest if things didn’t work out. He was going to give it his best shot, though.

  Damien finished fantasizing and looked down to find the empty bag he’d left at his feet was already gone. If only his stealth was as advanced as Bart’s, player-killing would be easy. Then he turned to Noigel, who was looking up at him expectantly.

  “We’re doing the Low Road quest. We’re going to kill three members of Rising Tide, the people chasing you down that tunnel earlier. Up for some revenge?”

  Noigel only had to think about it for a moment before he nodded in agreement. Damien hoped he was up to the task. He needed Noigel to keep watch while he completed the quest. He was going to have that gear, and he had a pretty good idea how he was going to do it.

  It started with him making his way up to the entrance of The Downward Spiral and logging out. The waiting time was extended from ten seconds when he was safe in his base to thirty in potentially hostile territory, a feature designed to prevent players from escaping combat. He wouldn’t be able to log out at all in dungeons, and the process would be cancelled if he took damage or moved.

  The extra twenty seconds spent standing around were a small price to pay in exchange for getting the traps out of the way. Damien shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying not to think about his rumbling stomach, until the timer finally hit zero.

  He opened his eyes on the inside of his pod and cast his eyes towards the digital time display. It was 17:00 on the dot. There was no point starting the quest while there was still daylight in Saga Online, so it was a good time to deal with some of his real world problems instead.

  The old man was still on duty in the pod hotel but Damien took the bag and IMBA set with him. As long as he wasn’t there, the pod would be available for use by anyone. He put them back on and went hunting for food down the street, eventually finding a hot dog stand had come to replace the fish vendor from earlier that day.

  Not a moment too soon.

  While he waited, he also found some cheap disposable face masks. They were intended to help with pollution, but Damien saw they had potential as disguises. All he’d need now was a pair of dark glasses so he wouldn’t have to put this hot helmet on whenever there were cameras around.

  He got his hot dog, attracting only a couple of bemused glances, and made his way back into the pod hotel where he could eat in relative privacy.

  Before logging back in he decided to look up Rising Tide online. Sure enough, the guild with the most famous player in the game was doing well enough to have its own website.

  It was really quite professional looking, and could easily have been mistaken for a company website – especially considering t
he tabs were labeled with terms such as ‘Recruitment’, ‘Technical Support’ and ‘Human Resources’.

  Damien navigated his way to recruitment and was rewarded with a page showing off the guild’s in-game benefits to new recruits: namely several settlements spotted around the starting zone with like minded players and useful features.

  He found the one nearest the Goblin Warren and clicked on it. ‘Rising Tide - Tintagel 1.3 headquarters’. It sounded like a military facility. It also sounded like they took themselves way too seriously. Damien checked the stats.

  Level 1 Guild Outpost

  Capacity:17/20

  Services: Inn, Vendor, Blacksmith, Tailor, Portal Stone, Guild Hall (Guild Quests).

  Defenses: Guard Towers, Wooden Barricade, Fortified Gate.

  Damien was impressed. He hadn’t been sure what to expect from a guild settlement, but it sounded more like a small village. He’d got at least one piece of useful information out of this: seventeen current lodgers. So those would be the people currently using this settlement as their home base, huh? A lot of them would be logged off, and then quite a few more would be out questing later that evening.

  A plan started to form in his head. If he attacked the players while they were questing, they’d be in groups and combat-ready. But if he attacked them while they were idle in the outpost, waiting to join a group or perform guild duties, they’d be off-guard. That could work.

  He took a screenshot of the outpost layout for later use and checked the time. It was 18:30. Dusk would have settled over Arcadia. He was ready.

  He logged back in and blinked as he looked around. As expected, he was still at the top of The Downward Spiral, in the center of Bartholomew’s private forest. As he got his bearings, a portal opened next to him and Noigel dropped out of it. Damien hadn’t been sure if Noigel would still be bound to him after he logged out, so it was a relief to know that minions bound to himself would come back into the world as soon as he did. Damien assigned his new stat points before comprehensively checking all his stats and spells, except for the Maleficium branch of magic, which he wasn’t using.

  Account Name: Damien Arkwright

  Character: Daemien

  Class: Occultist

  Level: 7

  Health: 160/160

  Stamina: 160/160

  Mana: 460/460

  Stats:

  Strength 16 - Agility 16 - Intelligence 16

  Constitution 16 - Endurance 16 - Wisdom 46

  Stat points: 0

  Experience: 258/2500

  Soul Summon Limit: 1/7 - Soul Reserve: 6/7

  He’d improved a lot since he’d started. Of the skills he’d accumulated, he thought he knew which ones would be best for this particular mission. He was going to use Possession and Summon Wraith, as they posed the least risk to him personally.

  It was already dark even outside of the forest, so Damien had no reason not to put his demonic task force together. He summoned the wraith first, then, one by one, summoned as many imps as he could. He’d managed to fill his Soul Reserve after wading through corpses to leave the Goblin Warren, so in addition to the wraith he could still summon three more imps to join Noigel.

  All assembled, four imps and a wraith wasn’t much of a force to be attacking an encampment with. He’d have to plan his moves carefully. At least the Rising Tide website had been helpful enough to provide him with a map of the facilities.

  “All right, we’re moving to a Rising Tide outpost. Stay out of sight whenever possible. If I tell you to stop, everybody stops what they’re doing and drop down. We need to get to the encampment without being seen. Follow my lead.”

  15

  The Lion’s Den

  Damien picked his way through the undergrowth and his retinue followed. He checked through the miasma to make sure it was suitably dark. As always, the dusk period had come right on time at 6:30pm. The only light left was a warm orange shimmer on the horizon. By 8pm it would be pitch black, save for moonlight.

  He took one last look around and set out at a jog. Looking behind to make sure everyone was following, he sighed with relief when the wraith looked perfectly normal. It wasn’t translucent, but it could travel at dusk with no adverse effects. The imps were flanking it on all four sides, the five of them moving in perfect unison. Even Noigel was taking it seriously.

  After twenty minutes of traveling, Damien finally got his first glimpse of the outpost. It was every bit like the pictures had shown.

  It had been placed in a sensible strategic position, at the center of an open plain so that large groups would be clearly visible from the walls. These were thick and tall, fashioned from wooden poles that stretched two stories high. Most of the encampment was made of wood, as was attested by those buildings that were tall enough to be spotted over the parapets.

  The central Guild Hall was the tallest of them, complete with a bell spire and a matching 500-pound bell. The copper to craft it was mined from the dungeons surrounding the outpost shortly after it was first settled. Thanks, Rising Tide website.

  The site had also informed Damien that the bell was primarily used to announce emergencies. Damien hoped he wouldn’t hear it ring tonight.

  He couldn’t see the gate from his position around the back, but that was only part of what he needed. He was searching for some kind of cover he could use to close in.

  Occasional stumps dotting the landscape showed where Rising Tide had acquired the wood from. This had once been a forest, and they’d picked it clean to house their members. Not quite all of it, though. Further around the side toward the gate, Damien spied a cluster of trees that had either avoided the purge or grown back and not been cut down since. That would get him as close as he needed to be. It would be a safe vantage point from which to watch people enter and exit until night truly fell.

  Damien circled round the edge until he had put the trees between himself and the outer wall, then he crouched down and moved toward them, not stopping until he was safely behind the largest tree. He turned to find the demons had all followed in his footsteps without making a sound.

  That was no surprise as far as the wraith was concerned, but Damien had expected at least two of the imps to break into a game of rock-paper-scissors by now.

  Instead, they were all watching him intently, occasionally glancing at their surroundings but otherwise entirely focused. Damien was very grateful for this. He needed them for protection, but had been worried they’d actually end up drawing attention to him. It was one of those rare occasions where he was entirely glad to be proven wrong.

  He checked the time in his menu. 18:55. Still just over an hour until true nightfall. That would give him plenty of time to watch their movements as he planned his own.

  But there were no movements to be seen. No one patrolling the ramparts, or any other such defensive measures. It figured. This outpost was in the middle of the Empire’s safest zone.

  With nothing to see, Damien brought up the screenshot he’d taken of the outpost layout to memorize the buildings. His plan was starting to look pretty good. At least, that’s how he felt until 19:46, when nine people arrived at the settlement.

  He knew from their usernames that a good many of them were the players who’d nearly caught him using the Goblin Warren. They’d obviously been playing all evening, because they were all much higher level than Damien by now.

  The lowest level among them was a level 9 priest. The rest were anywhere between level 10 and 12, with the paladin towering above them all at level 14. He’d been level 12 when Damien last saw him.

  Busy night.

  Ten minutes passed, and Damien was beginning to think he might have to call the attack off.

  But then a party of four set off from the gates, much to his relief. Even better, the paladin was among them. That meant a dangerous threat was leaving, and more likely than not most of the other players would have gone offline, leaving a skeleton crew in the outpost itself. That was what Damien needed.

  At 2
0:00 precisely, the laboriously long sunset faded into a blanket of pure shadow, sweeping over everything.

  Showtime.

  Damien turned around and one of the imps stood up and saluted. He didn’t have to ask if it was Noigel.

  “I’m going in with the wraith. You and the other three imps watch over my body while I’m gone. Stay hidden, but if anything detects us and tries to run away or attack, kill them by any means necessary. Got it?”

  Noigel gave a thumbs up and the other imps each gave a sharp nod. Everything was in place. There was no reason to delay. Damien lay down on the ground at the foot of the tree and looked over at the wraith.

  “Possession.”

  He opened the wraith’s eyes on the world and immediately twisted toward the wall. The biggest problem with infiltrating a structure like this would normally be getting past the gate, but Damien had solved that problem during his earlier test run. He leaned forward and shimmered out of the trees, scanning the top of the wall for any movement as he covered the open ground swiftly and silently.

  Damien reached the wall and his lower body clung to the wood, pulling him upward. He committed, leaning directly into the wall. The shadows latched on and dragged him until he was horizontal and climbing straight up the side.

  When he reached the top, he peered from the outer wall into the compound. It was deserted. There were torches scattered around the camp, but aside from those at the gate none had been lit yet. Damien had arrived in his perfect window of opportunity. He needed to act before it closed.