Bushido Online: the Battle Begins: A LitRPG Saga

by Nikita Thorn

  Yamura turned toward Seiki. “Five gold,” he said.

  Seiki chuckled as he reached into his cloth pouch and managed to find the correct amount.

  “Don’t worry,” Yamura whispered. “I swear it’s worth it.”

  Amaya pocketed the gold in disbelief as if she had not expected them to really pay. Seiki realized that, since PVP was disabled in her territory, there was no way she could have forced them to keep their word.

  “Okay, thanks,” said the girl, obviously happy about the trade. “I’m a gracious host and you can stay a while for tea or something until the patrols give up.”

  They decided that they needed to sit down. Even when there was no real physical fatigue from all the non-stop fighting and running, it had indeed been a long while and Seiki was feeling exhausted, not to mention very thirsty.

  “Come on up,” said Amaya as she leapt back up onto the tatami floor. “Shoes off.”

  She then scowled at Yamura as he was about to protest. “I know. No dirt. Dirt fades. I don’t care. Shoes off.”

  Seiki noticed that on her walls hung scrolls of paintings in the traditional style, one of which he recognized as Kakura Village, with Manji’s house in the foreground. Amaya tossed the extra cushions into one corner as she made room in the middle of the floor, before lighting a conveniently smokeless coal stove.

  A few moments later, they were sitting on her colorful cushions, drinking her tasteless hot tea which she brewed from some dubious-looking dry leaves she found in her cabinet.

  “Would it have been so bad if the patrols catch you?” Seiki could not help wondering, looking at one of Amaya’s painting on the wall that depicted a lively parade scene. He recognized the city patrols’ uniform in the painting.

  “Depends on how much the Shogun likes you,” Amaya said.

  “Of course it’s horrible,” said Yamura. “You waste half an hour sitting there in prison, and you can’t cheat. Even if you log out, when you come back you still have to do your time.”

  “And the guards take all your stuff from you,” Amaya added. “So you can’t do your crafting or anything while you wait.” She nodded towards the paintings.

  “But you get them back?” Seiki asked, to make sure.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Amaya. “After they let you out, you just go to the counter and they give you your things. It’s a bother that you have to consciously re-equip your weapons though.”

  Yamura sipped his tea, grimaced and quickly put it down. “Actually, if your Shogun reps are low, they sometimes lose your stuff on purpose.”

  Amaya blinked. “What? The guards?”

  Seiki was also surprised. If anything, it sounded exactly like the real world, complete with its own version of corruption.

  “Yeah,” said Yamura. “Just to mess with you. One time, they took my health potion. The other day, they took my carving knife. Can you believe that? Carving knife, of all things! I had to run back to the ryoushi shrine to get a new one so I can make my arrows.”

  The girl pointed a finger at him. “The Shogun must hate you. Do you have negative reps or something?”

  “What? Never happened to you?”

  “I’m almost Lady of the Court,” she said proudly.

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Yamura muttered.

  It was like they were speaking a foreign language and Seiki was about to ask them to explain, when Yamura turned to him, grinning heavily as if he had a secret to tell. “Well, it would be really bad if they pinched this.”

  Yamura wants to trade.

  You have received: Mysterious Scroll. Open to read!

  “What’s this?” Seiki studied the scroll Yamura had just given him. It was a piece of yellowish parchment wrapped around a simple green wooden roller and tied with a green string.

  Yamura could no longer contain his gleeful laughter. “I looted it!” he cried. “When you were fighting that robber guy, I managed to loot the thing. It dropped two scrolls, so one for each of us. Actually, it dropped some other craft items too but I didn’t have time, so never mind.”

  Seiki understood now why Yamura had been so worried about dying or getting caught by the patrols. He had no idea what the scroll was, but it seemed to be a highly desirable reward, judging from how excited the ryoushi was.

  Amaya perked up with interest. “What was it?”

  “Aka Man, something like that. The red or blue guy,” said Yamura.

  “Red or blue?”

  “Yeah.”

  Amaya shook her head. “I mean, did you pick red or blue?”

  Yamura shrugged. “Both, kinda. Not sure if that’s a glitch. It was kinda freaky, actually.”

  “The right answer is ‘no cape’ and it will despawn,” said Amaya, nodding to herself.

  Yamura made a face. “Why would you despawn a rare? You always take on a rare. Chances are that someone is going to tap it too and help you kill it.”

  “Yeah, and dilute your drop,” said Amaya. “Or worse, kill you, and get all the drops. Totally not worth it, in my opinion.”

  “So that thing was a rare,” began Seiki, as an invitation for them to explain further, deciding to ask one thing at a time. They told him that certain monsters, appearing randomly and at unpredictable times, were harder to kill, and generally gave better loot than common monsters. The Aka Manto was one that roamed the alleys of East City. It had a reported sighting rate of about a few times a month, making it one of the more common ones—at least according to a group of people who called themselves the Shinshioka Scientific Society, who published their findings in a newsletter they sent out every month via the pigeon post.

  “Things you can’t find in the manual,” said Amaya. “Only three gold every month to subscribe to. You can find them on Trade Street in West City near Daibuji Temple.”

  Seiki was starting to feel that the more he asked, the more questions he had. Yamura was no longer listening, but was fondling his own scroll, which was identical to the one he had given Seiki.

  “Let’s do this,” Yamura finally said. Holding his breath, the ryoushi untied the strings, then winced in anticipation as he yanked it open to read.

  Yamura has received: Ability Enhancement Scroll – Extra Arrow. Rapid Shots fires up to 4 arrows at a time, up from the usual 3, but costs 10% more energy. Read the scroll aloud in the Ryoushi Shrine to apply the enhancement.

  Seiki never imagined you could enhance your abilities this way. He looked at Yamura to see what he thought. Yamura was speechless. “No kidding. I don’t even have an Enhancement Slot yet.” He looked up at Seiki. “You know what this would have cost if you were to buy it from the market?”

  Amaya guessed a few hundred gold, quoting the Society again.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” said Seiki. He was wondering if there would be something that reduced the energy he needed for his moves, since from his experience he seemed to always be running out of energy very early into the fight.

  According to his two companions, it turned out that Enhancement Scrolls were rather hard to come by, and there were literally hundreds of variations, allowing people to tweak their abilities in one way or another. The first slot unlocked at Level 11, then at 13.

  Even rarer were Modification Scrolls, which could turn abilities into something else entirely, which, according to Amaya, cost hundreds of gold. The rare ones could be in the thousands.

  Yamura put his scroll back into his pocket and grinned at Amaya. “See? You always take on a rare.”

  The girl shrugged. “Or you can take up Enchanting and Calligraphy and make your own.”

  “Yeah, if you have like millions of gold for the materials,” said Yamura. “Plus, you can’t really get the rarest ones from crafting anyway.”

  Amaya shrugged again. “Who’s going for rare ones? Anyway, I’m trying to max out both crafting skills, so if you bring the ingredients, I will make low-level scrolls for you for real cheap.”

&nbs
p; “Five gold for an invite wasn’t cheap,” Yamura pointed out.

  “Five gold for two invites,” Amaya corrected him. “Dirt cheap. Right, uh, Seiki?” She consciously took notice of his name.

  Seiki laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “He’s new or something,” Yamura explained. “But somehow, he’s damn good at not dying. You should see these level twenties coming at us. I really thought we were done. One’s a samurai with this huge sword and then you have this obake, who’s pretty nasty.” Yamura shuddered. “There’s something seriously wrong with these people.”

  Amaya shot him a dark glare, which Yamura did not pick up.

  Seiki then figured something out. “You’re one, aren’t you?” he said to the girl. “You’re an… obake.” He tried out the unfamiliar word.

  Yamura seemed surprised. “I thought you were a ninja. That vibe, you know.”

  “So, an obake is a…” Seiki began.

  “Ghost,” explained Yamura.

  “Spirit!” Amaya corrected him.

  Seiki could finally tell what had been strange about the girl this whole time. A glance at the tatami floor under Amaya confirmed it: she did not cast a shadow.

  “You don’t have a shadow,” said Seiki. Somehow, he felt the need to mention it.

  Amaya smiled. “No. We can also run on water, which is the best Perk in the game.”

  “And when you kill them, they’re gone in a puff of smoke,” Yamura interjected. “And they have the nastiest abilities, like a vengeful ghost or something out to steal your soul.”

  “Spirit!” Amaya corrected him again, angrily.

  “Hey, chill,” said Yamura to the girl. “You’re cool. I’m just saying that stuff like the obake Freeze is pretty horrible, like, uh, a vengeful spirit.”

  If Yamura had been trying to pacify the obake, it was definitely not working.

  “Do you know what Life Steal is?” asked Amaya, squinting her eyes.

  Yamura did not seem to like the direction this was going. “Uh,” he said. “You steal a fifth of the target’s health and get a fifth of your health back?”

  “Well,” she said in an unreadable tone. “Check out my Life Steal.”

  “Why?” asked Yamura.

  “Just do it.”

  Seiki focused his attention, wondering what she was getting at.

  Life Steal [Ability Information]: steal up to 20% of the target’s health percentage and turn it into an equivalent health percentage for the user. Can only be used on targets with a higher health percentage than the user. Cannot be used on targets more than 2 levels above the user. 2 minute lockout.

  Life Swap – Modified from Life Steal [Amaya - Level 14]: swap health percentages between the target and the user instead of stealing a fixed percentage from the target. Cannot be used when the user is below 25% health. Required energy: 262. Ability modification: yes. Enhancement: Backstab – allows the user to use the ability on group members; Soul Steal – removes the Life Steal restriction that the target be at a higher health percentage than the user but increases the lockout by 3 minutes.

  He had assumed it to simply be a strong ability that she could potentially use to intimidate Yamura. He did not expect anything to this level of complication. For a moment, he struggled to make sense of it.

  Yamura stared at her. “Okay, you put a mod and two enhance on that? What does it even mean?”

  Amaya giggled.

  Amaya has removed Yamura from the group.

  With a cry, Yamura vaporized. Immediately from outside the room, the ryoushi could be heard yelling, “Hey!”

  Amaya leapt to the door, and Seiki followed her in alarm, not sure what was happening. She opened the door, revealing the confused Yamura, who was not pleased at all, and was ready to protest. “What did you—”

  Amaya stepped across the room threshold and held out her right hand. A faint stream of dark fog shot out and engulfed Yamura. It caught the ryoushi unawares and his health drained rapidly.

  “Wait,” cried Seiki. However, he was still in the non-PVP territory and he could do nothing to stop her. As Seiki was trying to leave the group, Yamura’s life had dropped to half, and the ryoushi tried to strike her hand away. But the girl gripped him hard.

  Then, just as quickly, Yamura’s life was full again, and Amaya was at half health.

  “That’s what it does,” said the girl with satisfaction, as she casually leapt back into her territory. Seiki stared at her in surprise, trying to process what he had just witnessed.

  Amaya has invited Yamura to join the group.

  Yamura was still standing at the doorway, gaping, entirely confused.

  “Coming or not? Or you can wait for the patrols again.” Amaya smiled as she walked back onto the tatami floor.

  Yamura stared at her for another whole five seconds, before giving in.

  Yamura has joined the group.

  “What the heck just happened?” cried the ryoushi as he walked back into the territory. “And was that Life Drain really necessary?”

  The girl shrugged. “Would have taken forever to explain.”

  It was all meaningful. “Give me a minute,” said Seiki as he carefully thought about it. Apparently, she had turned Life Steal into something called Life Swap, which came with its own advantage and disadvantage, and on that she added two more enhancements to tweak it further.

  Then it hit him. “This allows her to give health,” Seiki cried. That was what she did at the end by swapping her health percentage with Yamura’s. The ability was originally an offensive ability but, with this modification, Amaya could actually use her Life Swap to give health to people with lower life than hers. The Backstab modification also made it possible for her to give health to her own group members, but in the demonstration she had to remove Yamura from her territory first since it had PVP disabled.

  Seiki was both fascinated and overwhelmed by the evidence of what was possible.

  “Oh.” Yamura narrowed his eyes, most likely still disconcerted by the uncalled-for scare. “But that’s quite a stretch. I’m sure they didn’t intend it to be used that way.”

  “That’s the whole point,” said Amaya.

  “So, a benevolent spirit, then?” Seiki asked.

  “Nothing benevolent about that,” Yamura muttered.

  Amaya glared at the ryoushi. “Oh, of course I can use it to kill pesky group members too.”

  Yamura whispered to Seiki, “See? I told you obake have a cruel streak.”

  The girl obviously heard him. “You want to see cruel?” she asked, in an unreadable tone again.

  “Open your scroll,” Yamura said to Seiki, deciding to change the subject.

  Amaya was still frowning, one hand on her hip, as if weighing whether to kick the ryoushi out of the room again.

  “Uh, let’s look at this then,” Seiki said slowly, sitting down on the floor. He untied the green strings on the scroll and rolled it open. Unlike Yamura’s scroll, this one contained only three lines of elegant Japanese characters.

  “A Piece of Lost Poetry?” Amaya turned to him with interest, forgetting her quarrel with Yamura.

  Seiki guessed that must have been what the group notification told them. He read it aloud.

  O’er the Dragon Gate

  A green sparrow sings her song

  In the evening gale.

  Quest accepted: A Piece of Lost Poetry.

  “Poetry?” Yamura asked, dubiously.

  The quest information also contained nothing but a tease.

  A Piece of Lost Poetry [Quest Information]: What does it mean? What does it mean?

  It also did not escape Seiki’s notice that the quest had no level and no reward information.

  “It’s a treasure quest,” said Amaya. “You figure out the meaning and it leads you to a treasure.”

  “What kind of treasure?” asked Seiki.

  “Well, could be gold, could be a weapon, could be a c
rafting ingredient, or just about anything,” said Amaya. “No one knows how it works. Even the Society hasn’t got a proper record on it, because these quests are quite rare. Or maybe it’s just because most people who get these either don’t bother or don’t manage to find it.”

  Seiki looked at the poem again, helplessly. “Any idea what it is?” Poetry was one of the things he never really paid attention to.

  “Dragon Gate must be the East Gate,” said Amaya, kneeling down beside him to run her finger over the text. “Beyond that, I have no idea.”

  “Maybe you go to the East Gate and follow a green sparrow and it will lead you to a treasure?” Yamura suggested. It was likely this was his first time coming across something like this.

  Seiki shrugged. Then, he noticed that the text was fading, and the scroll was soon blank. When he looked at it again, it had turned into a Blank Scroll ingredient, which he gave to Amaya as she seemed to want it.

  “Since the scroll fades, I’m sure it’s a personal loot kind of thing,” said Amaya. “The treasure will only be instanced for you. But of course, people can still kill you after and loot it, so better not let anyone know you’re after it.”

  “If I can even find it in the first place,” Seiki said. He doubted going bird-watching at the East Gate would turn out to be very fruitful. He did not even think it would be realistic to spot a tiny green sparrow, let alone follow it, if that was what it meant after all.

  Yamura cursed, looking even more worried than when he saw the patrols. “Two hours. I said two hours. I’m going to be in so much trouble. Hey, see you around,” he clapped Seiki on the back. “Shogun next ti—” He disappeared in the middle of the last word.

  Yamura has left the realm.

  Amaya frowned.

  Amaya has removed Yamura from the group.

  “Don’t do that when you’re still in a group,” she said to the absent ryoushi, shaking her head. “I forgot once and suddenly this guy just popped up in my room the next time he logged in. You know, what if I was changing?”

  “Uh,” said Seiki. “Maybe I should go too. Thanks for saving us.”

  “No, thank you for the gold. Every little helps when you are trying to level crafting. I can do that right now and calligraph an easy enchanted scroll for you. Anything you need?”