“I want fresh agents in Zolunheir to see where they are going. Have our forces move to cities with teleport pads. When the Stone Raiders leave for their next raid, I want us to be ready for them. We’ll show people that not even the top guild can survive the PKP,” Hevard said to the cold smiles that came from around the darkly garbed assassins in the room.
A Portal Opens!
In the mystical lands of Opheir, a portal connecting to the Alturaran lands has been awakened. Keep an eye out for Alturarans trying to capture portals into Emerilia! Go forward, build cities, and push back the Alturarans!
Hevard looked at the notification and dismissed it. He’d seen the videos of those who were fighting against the Alturarans. Their materials went for a fair price and the experience gain was high, but it was not what Hevard enjoyed.
Hevard indicated for Koloa to stay behind. The rest of the guild officers left the room, closing the door behind them.
“What do you want, Hevard?” Koloa asked.
“I heard that you are having some troubles with the Golden Sabres?” Hevard asked.
“Yeah, it’s a damn nightmare. Nearly as bad as the Stone Raiders. Since the Boran-al thing, spies and assassins have been kicked out of the guild continuously. Some of our people who participated in Boran-al have been hunted down to their spawn points so many times that they needed to restart characters.” Koloa shook his head.
“Something the matter?” Hevard asked.
“We don’t know much about how the Stone Raiders work, but we do know that there are two rules. One is to have fun; the second is to come to the guild’s aid when it calls. The Stone Raiders have nearly five hundred members, all of them loyal, and only a hundred and fifty are currently raiding. The others are working on gaining levels and doing their own thing. Their core group is strong. If they band together and come searching for us, I feel that we might have to change characters,” Koloa said.
“We have to hit them hard enough that they’re scared to come after us,” Hevard said, undeterred.
“Hevard, most of the Raiders are E-heads. They’ve turned this into their reality. If we threaten it, they’ll do everything in their power to take us out. We might propel our names into history with this, though Stone Raiders aren’t to be underestimated. I’ve been watching them awhile and they die nearly constantly. Where most people are scared by the pain, the Raiders rush right back into battle, only stopping to get items that their clan might need before grouping up and returning to their raid.”
“Koloa, you’re overthinking this. Don’t worry—even if they do attack us, their levels will be so low and we’ll have all their gear, so there won’t be a thing that they can do,” Hevard said.
“I hope you’re right,” Koloa said.
***
A tall hooded man walked through Nadorf, reaching the teleportation pad. He carried a large sword and shield on his back.
“Do you have enough gold now?” the man at the processing station asked lazily.
“Yes.” The man’s voice was hot and angry as he dropped a handful of gold on the table.
“Okay. You do know that the Ashal northern frontier should not be taken lightly and beginning with a minimum level 350 is recommended?” The man took the gold and held out a ticket.
The man under the cloak made a deep guttural noise. The kind a dog might make before attacking. “Just give me the ticket.” The large man held out his hand.
The ticket master’s eyes went wide as he studied the hand for the first time. Scars in the shape of tribal markings coiled over the hands and up the cloaked man’s arm. It wasn’t the most surprising thing. The red hands with black fingernails were. Every child had been told the tale of the Demons.
He quickly put the ticket in the man’s hand, shivering as he remembered the tales his momma used to tell him.
“You’d best not tell anyone what you saw,” the large cloak-wearing man said.
For the first time, the ticket master saw the man’s face.
It was completely bald, with two horns, pointed ears, and obsidian eyes.
“Y-yes, sir!” The ticket master’s eyes widened. How, how are there still Demons on Emerilia?
The demon turned and headed for the teleport pads as the ticket master remembered tales of the Demons in Northern Ashal, tales of their rebellion against the gods and their ability in battle.
***
Alkao stepped on one teleportation pad in Nadorf and exited another in Selheoq, the most northern of the Ashal cities.
He passed through customs. People stared at him and his gear as he passed. Sensing others using Aura Detection on him, he let out some of his aura, making sure to keep it weak. Alkao had a hungry smile on his face as he headed out of the city. He quickly left the roads and headed deep into the underbrush, unsheathing his sword as he came to a clearing.
“Fight me if you desire; otherwise, I have places to be.” He turned to face the direction he had come.
“Ahh shit, well, what gave us away?” a dirty Human asked as others ranging from some kinds of Demi-Humans to Dark Elf melded out of the forest. There were five in total, with two hiding.
“Your smell.” Alkao looked at their levels. None of them were under 200 and their max was 315, which belonged to the Human who was talking.
“Ahh crap, well, give us the shield and sword and then we’ll let you wander out into the wilderness all you want,” the human said.
Alkao looked at the two weapons. A twinge of regret went through him. “I am sorry, but these are not my weapons. I have not yet earned them. I am holding onto them to return to the man who made them.”
Everyone he had tried to get aid from had demanded money or favors from him. Dave was the only one to not demand favors and had given him the finest weapons that Alkao had ever wielded. I was too quick to judge a man by his appearance rather than his abilities. With time and the way that people treated him knowing that he was a Demon, Alkao had learned humility and an understanding of how wrong he had been to attack Dave.
“Well, that’s very nice and all but well, weapons are at a premium in Ashal and those ones have some weird properties that my friend said will be useful. So, you’re going to have to hand them over. Either that or you die here. We all know no one is a Player here, so if we die, we’re gone. Your choice, pal.” The bandit leader shrugged, secure in his own strength as the others around Alkao advanced, waiting for his decision or the Human’s commands.
Alkao let out a deep laugh that made them stop in their tracks. “It has been some time since I had a real fight. It will be good to see if I can reclaim my lost levels from you.” Alkao’s smile made the bandit leader’s eyes grow dark in anger, only to widen as two red wings pushed out from under Alkao’s cloak.
“Since you’re all People of Emerilia, then I won’t need to hide my true abilities.” Alkao spread his wings out, flicking them to get rid of the kinks.
It had taken him much gold and pain, but Party Zero had given Alkao one more gift. They’d used their contacts to send him to a training medical mage from the Stone Raider guild. It had taken some long days, but they had been able to regrow his wings. They were still weak, but Alkao never hoped to have his wings back after he was struck down and the angels ripped them from his back.
“Now, let us see what those levels truly mean. Quick of speed, of mind, of body and soul.” The heavy buff created a red aura around him. “Blessing of the Fire goddess. Castration of the Dark God.” New buffs of red and black fell around him as he let out his full killing aura and power.
An arrow whistled out of the forest; Alkao’s shield slammed it away.
“Thank you for completing the final condition. It really is a pain having to wait to be attacked before attacking.” Alkao lowered himself down, his blade down at his side and his shield forward.
“What are you?” one of the bandits asked.
“Alkao, one of the seven brothers of chaos, first of my name and reign, commander of the Third Demon Horde a
nd leader of the Xerzit lands.” Alkao seemed to disappear and then appeared before the speaker. His large sword cut through his armor and into his chest as if it was nothing.
His hood had been blown back, revealing a smile that would make the Grim Reaper pause. “Tell the Dark Lord that I am coming for him.”
Creatures that regularly claimed the lives of those who wandered the woods ran away in fear, sensing an old predator had once again come to claim its lands.
***
This bloody Mirror of Communication was expensive as hell, but worth it. Josh sat with Cassie in his arms, just enjoying each other’s company. Some movie played on the TV in front of them. A fire crackled off to the side in a gas stove and London was visible outside of the wraparound windows of the apartment.
She sat up and looked at him.
“What?” he asked, warily. He knew that look in her eyes. He’d seen it before when she had been bargaining or working her position as guildmaster.
“What would you think about an alliance?”
“Terms?” Josh asked.
“Trade, people, quests,” Cassie said.
“Why?”
“Because it is a pain in the ass trying to make sure that everyone is not a spy and I need some damned help!” She rubbed her head in frustration.
“And what did you tell your guild?” Josh smiled.
“Well, you’re primarily a raiding guild. Our people want to train and play in raids, but we’re not as good as you. Our people are good at charming people’s socks off and getting different quests. We can give you the raid quests and we share all other kinds of quests, working together with one another and make a damned powerful alliance.” Cassie smiled.
“Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, your guild is still filled with all kinds of shits, so you’d need to clear that all out. We’ve got a few things that you can use in order to do that.”
Cassie gave him the stink eye. “Why didn’t you tell your girlfriend this like a month or two ago?”
“You don’t tell me all your guild stuff and same here,” Josh said.
“Fine,” she said, not looking happy with it, but knowing that there were certain things that they couldn’t share with each other due to their positions.
“You know that having our two guilds band together is going to make the other guilds think about doing it so that they can compete with us, right?”
“Of course. That is why we’re going to have to spend some long hours figuring out the alliance, if we have one or not at the end of it.” Cassie gave him a sultry look.
“Calm down there, love.” Josh smiled; he seemed to consider the TV, but his mind was working. It would certainly make us more powerful. Also, we are looking to make that trade agreement with Exdar’s Traders. I don’t want to rush into this, even though it is Cassie and the Golden Sabres—they are so big. And with two feeder guilds, it will make managing things hard. I’ll have to get Lucy to have a look over it all.
“I would like to join the two clans in an alliance. I’m going to have to talk to Lucy over the details, maybe bring her here to conference. You bring Naylor and whoever else you need to make sure this meeting is good,” Josh said, excited to connect their guilds together, but also knowing the kind of work it would take to ratify everything.
“Isn’t it fun when we can decide tomorrow’s gaming news?” Cassie asked.
“Melding the first two guilds to find an Alturaran portal together?”
“Yes, and the most powerful and followed. I checked out your guild’s website the other day. The number of people watching your feeds is nuts!”
“Ah, well, if you’re going to have fun together, then others are interested.” Josh shrugged. “Did you hear about that new Alturaran portal opening?”
“Yeah. We’ve got agreements with a dozen other guilds to give them access to the portal we found and it’s nuts. There are thousands of Players over there every day. The new portal opened in Gudalo. Three guilds did it: the Jeserie Cats, Dender’s, and the Wraiths.”
“As much as that is cool, Lucy was saying that through her checking, it looks like the enemy might be able to open portals to Emerilia and there is a lot more than just one other planet connected to us. It can take years for more portal locations to show up, but when they do, then that’ll be nuts. There’s supposed to be over fifty other planets.”
“Damn.” Cassie whistled. “Every time it seems like I’ve kind of got a small grasp of what is going on in Emerilia, I’m reminded of just how huge this game is. It could take decades in-game to finish all of the content.”
“Pretty exciting, huh?” Josh grinned.
“Damn right!” She laughed, smiling like a Cheshire cat.
Chapter 10: Alephir
Dave looked to Shard. “Damn, I didn’t even try to hope of tech on this level.”
“You have met other AI?” Shard asked, interested. His body moved in parts to face Dave.
“Yeah, kind of had one built for my house and company. I miss my Jackie.” Dave looked to Suzy, who nodded in agreement.
She might have been an AI but she’d lived in their lives so completely, she was like the third woman to their Three Musketeers.
“All right, Shard. What the heck happened while I was asleep? Alephir looks like it’s been going to crap if you’re having to use him as a battery.” Anna pointed at Dave.
“Thanks.” Dave sighed.
Shard winced and scratched his head. His image lagged and froze, though it was getting better, Dave noticed.
“Well, it was kind of like I spread myself too thin, too fast. I tried to save everything so it was like the Aleph never left. Then, it turned into me having so many issues to fix that I couldn’t do it all and I was all over the place. By the time that I had started consolidating, I didn’t have the resources or materials I needed to just keep Alephir running. I only noticed that there was something going wrong at the substation you were in because of the high magical activity going on.”
“So, you need us to get you power and back up and running?” Deia tore her eyes from the city beyond.
“With your help, I will be able to initialize a series of repairs that will allow me to bring Alephir online. Here are the different locations I will need you to return power to. I have some understanding of the different issues. Once those are complete, then I will have enough energy to start connecting to other Aleph installations. I will send scouts to check the facilities. Once that is complete, we can move to clearing out the various facilities that have been infested, bringing them online and securing them from further aggressive forces.”
“What kind of power systems do you have?” Dave asked.
“We have Fire systems,” Shard said.
Deia and the others were talking about their map and the new waypoints that had appeared to lead them to the different power stations. Malsour was still looking over the teleportation room.
“How do they work?”
“We burn an item, usually coal, then we use an extraction process, channeling that Fire energy into a soul gem to be used throughout the city.”
“No boilers or rotating wheels?” Dave asked.
“Ahh, Earth’s power solutions. No, there is no need for that. There is more power loss with the increased motions. We have an eighty to ninety percent power draw from our process compared to the seventy-five to eighty percent of Earth methods, not including material cost which would make our process cheaper.” Shard sounded a bit smug.
“I’m impressed. What about latent energy taps, though?” Dave watched as he reached four thousand charge in his armor and disconnected from the console.
Quest: Power up
Aleph’s AI Shard needs more power. Fix his substations or supply him with enough soul or Mana energy to bring more systems online in order to fix it himself.
You must provide 5,000,000 Mana points equivalent of power. (Power provided: 1,350,000/5,000,000)
Or
Activate a class A Power Station
(0/1), three class B Power Stations (0/3) or Nine Class C Power Stations (0/9).
The more systems powered on, the larger the reward that will be offered.
Rewards: ???
Do you accept?
Y/N
“I do not understand.”
“You cast a web of energy siphons out over a large area—different things like thermal energy, soul energy, all kinds. It siphons power from the area. On the surface of a planet, it’s not that good, but down here buried under it all, it would be a good idea. Also, the power just keeps going, can be fed direct into systems, and doesn’t use up resources like coal.”
“I am interested in this. Would you have any plans for it? Alephir is a contained city, but I have deemed that alterations might need to be made if I am to stay active for an extended period of time.” Shard sounded almost sad, but he hid it behind his voice becoming more mechanical. Dave didn’t miss Anna’s twitch at hearing it.
“I would be happy to help. Do you have a faster way to transfer information?” Dave asked.
“If you were to send it to me in an information file, I could then interpret it and make the integration faster,” Anna said.
“Right.” Dave opened up his notepads, going through his doodles on Magical Circuits. He moved to the one labeled Boran-al’s Citadel.
There’s a lot of information and thoughts here. It might be an idea to keep some of it to myself. He looked at Shard, who was talking to Anna and smiling, clearly happy to have someone to talk to.
For The Guild (Emerilia Book 2) Page 12
