by Mars Dorian
“I don’t care—”
I located the stable and made a run for it when a shadow hushed over my head. This Preshaar had two long, bone-shaped blades and decorative armor with the skull logo of her tribe. Her feline face blazed with streaks of red war paint.
“Dwarf,” Kharra said.
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That had to be the goddamn algorithm working its conflict maximization protocol. Of all the Preshaar, all the hundreds of units swarming through the chaotic village, it had to be the leader of the beast men towering in front of me. Good for the viewers of my stream, bad for me and my destiny. This was a fight I wanted to avoid at all costs.
“Hello, Kharra,” I said, trying to avoid choking on my own words.
Her tongue cut sharper than her blades. “So you’ve finally gone to the enemy. Looks like dwarfs are all the same, after all.”
“I didn’t defect. They captured me, remember?”
“I will cut out your red tongue for lying to me.”
“You let me go, and this quest will be over with. I promise.”
“Stop talking to that beast,” Cadfael said.
“Don’t tell me whom I can talk to.”
“You fight for the Syndicate now,” he said. “Remember your place, merc.”
Well, actually I fought for myself.
Kharra chuckled with a deep roar. “Dwarfs fighting each other. How cute.”
If only she knew the truth. But Kharra’s script had no place for nuances. It was the same old beast man versus the dwarf rhetoric. Behind me, Cadfael and his enabler moved into their close combat stance.
“Your bounty will make us rich.”
Kharra’s answer? A foul hiss.
Enemy: Kharra, Chieftain Leader (BOSS)
Type: Beastman
HP: 16,500
Armor: Light-medium (+3) shock absorbent plating
-75% damage from projectiles
Weapon: Advanced mecha-claws, double-coated bone blades
Special: 20% more movement speed
If HP<60% = hi-bloodrage
Drops: Mid-rare weapon
The enabler caste a speed accelerator on me. Good on her, because I needed every boost to avoid Kharra’s blink-and-you-miss-‘em attacks. Her twenty percent speed increase over her brethren made all the dangerous difference. The chieftain jumped over me after I failed to hit her with my forward thrust. She threw bony shurikens at me and hit hard. Fifteen percent off my health already. Damn. Cadfael launched his gunblade and fired a pellet. Of course, he missed. “She’s too fast.”
She was. And more importantly, she was furious. “I will skin you alive and sew a bed sheet for my offspring.”
“We’ll see about that,” Cadfael said.
This guy was way too cocky for an NPC with his average stats. If it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have lasted five seconds against the chieftain. I threw a couple of smokers in the back alley and clouded the area.
Kharra shouted in the fog. “You can’t escape from my rage.”
We’ll see about that.
Kharra climbed up the facades to escape the smoke. I threw a couple of sticky explodas at the walls and tried to prevent her from approaching us. Cadfael raised his gunblade and fired at Kharra, spidering around the window ledges. He pulled the trigger. The multi-pellet blast hit clay-colored walls and blew off the coating. Rendering rained down in crumbs.
This wasn’t going to work at all.
“We need a tactic,” Cadfael said.
“No shit.”
My mind ran on tactical overdrive. I swiped through my inventory and ability set when the chieftain launched another volley of bone shurikens at us. The enabler in our fire team was down to her last fifty percent of HP while Cadfael launched a stunner grenade that Kharra deflected with her mecha-claw.
Bad.
I aimed my harpoon at Kharra and hit. I tried to pull her down and wham her into the ground, but she was too strong. I could merely slow down her frantic movements on the wall, which brought me an idea: spider mines! Why the heck did I spend skill points and money on them if they collected digital dust in my inventory?
“I think I got an idea,” I said to Cadfael.
He observed me with narrowed eyes while ducking from another throw attack from the chieftain. I unleashed my first Reepo-powered spider mine. Its tiny metal legs crawled along the chain which connected my harpoon gun glove to Kharra’s armor. After the five second cooldown, I released another spider and then another one. The first reached the other end of the chain and exploded near Kharra’s gear.
She yelled in pain.
Blood droplets rained down on us.
When the second spider mine detonated, the chieftain fell from the upper wall. I quickly rolled in my chain and used the motion to swing the beast woman into the opposite facade of the back alley. The slam attack cost about five percent of her total HP and brought her down on the stony ground, where more percentages chipped off her health. She was still in stagger mode so I dashed forward and ram my fully-charged BlitzBlade into her body, causing electro-damage. Kharra screamed her feral lungs out, rolled back, and covered the bleeding parts of her hairy body. She gasped for the first time in her digital life.
“You are tough, dwarf. Like a blood leech you can’t scratch off no matter how sharp your claws.”
This was so wrong.
With her HPs down to the 7000 mark, she changed her tactics. Kharra roared and turned full rage mode. Her speed increased even more, turning her jumps and slash attacks into blurry slashes. I could deflect only few attacks with my blade. My new armor took the full brunt.
HPs dropped.
Our enabler was too slow to heal me fully, so I popped health potions like jelly beans. Meanwhile, Cadfael fired and tossed more grenades, but Kharra evaded his attacks with ease. She stormed after me with rage cooking in her yellow eyes. I prepared for close-ranged combat, but Kharra ignored me and somersaulted over my head. She targeted the weakest unit in our formation—the enabler girl. With only 1200 HPs in total, she was the perfect target for the furry predator. Kharra somersaulted over the enabler’s head, unsheathed her poison-dipped crescent blade, and impaled the healer support unit from behind. She inflicted almost twice of her normal damage and halved the enabler’s health in a matter of seconds.
Hi-bloodrage officially sucked.
Cadfael threw a stunner at her which lasted for three seconds.
“Now attack her.”
“Don’t order me around. I’m doing the most damage here.”
The first lieutenant squeezed his face and swallowed down his next statement. I switched to my gunblade and fired a pellet. The projectile hit Kharra in her last second of being stunned and caused 150% of the normal damage—critical. The chieftain roared with rage and decapitated the healer with one final slash.
No more healing, no more stats boost.
“You rotten beast,” Cadfael shouted.
She pointed at us with her blood-soaked mecha-claw. “You attacked us first. Remember that.”
I sighed. Two NPC factions fighting each other and I was stuck in the crossfire. And yet, Kharra was right—the Syndicate had invaded the Western Crescent. They had mined the crystals without permission and fought the locals living here.
So maybe I could still turn this around.
After all, this was my last chance.
In the middle of the fight, I placed a smoker around me and clouded the area, including the first lieutenant.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“This fight is useless. It’s not what I want.”
“Who cares what you want? Your order is to fight the savages.”
“I only follow my orders. Now return to your captain, Cadfael.”
“What?”
Even Kharra looked bewildered and stopped her attacks. She watched me closely as my next words formed. “My original mission was to convince the Preshaar to join the Blue Flame Rebellion. I still want that, so I’m giving you a fair cha
nce to leave.”
I paused for dramatic effect. Cadfael hesitated.
“Accept and leave, now.”
Cadfael swallowed and realized he faced two formidable fighters now—Kharra and me. He squeezed his face in disgust.
“Once rebel scum, always rebel scum.”
He blasted off and disappeared around the corner. Kharra was about to hunt him down when I held her back. “Let him go. He’s learned his lesson.”
“He won’t. You dwarves never do.”
I don’t know why, but I gave her two of my potions via the trade menu. “Are we even?”
“Fight off these invaders and I will think about it.”
She climbed up the spire to join her brethren in the fight against the Sunblood troops, and I snuck back to the central plaza where the remaining Sunbleeders fought the Preshaar. While watching Kharra decapitate a soldier from behind, I noticed that Cadfael joined his superior, Wedge, and was pointing at me. The captain barked an order and sent three soldiers after me. They lacked HPs due to their ongoing skirmish, so the poor suckers didn’t stand a chance against my blade strikes and parries.
I launched a spider mine and fired my harpoon then swung around a nearby soldier and hurled him into his comrades. Together with Kharra, we fought back the last soldiers. The Sunbleeders were losing the battle and they knew it. Their airship descended and rolled out their ropes. Cadfael, Wedge, and a couple of survivors coiled up and disappeared into the landing deck of the ship’s troop section. The vessel levitated into the clouds and disappeared from the canyon.
The Preshaar around me jubilated by raising their blood-soaked mecha-claws and crescent blades. They chanted foreign sounds but seemed more determined than ever. The beast men had suffered horrendous losses, but they had just wiped out an elite squad.
Meaning, only one human ‘dwarf’ survivor was left.
Me.
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After the collective chanting, their yellow eyes turned to me.
I was surrounded by at least forty or fifty furry creatures, and they were closing in on my position.
No pressure.
“Stop,” Kharra said and demanded everyone’s attention.
She stomped toward me with her mecha-claw raised. Her injuries had healed already—probably due to my health potions. Maybe I should have kept them for myself.
Kharra said, “I should cut off your head, but you confuse me. What do you want?”
“In life, or right now?”
She hissed. “Stop wasting my time. Innocent brothers and sisters died today.”
“And the Syndicate will keep on attacking you until no Preshaar are left. If you join the rebellion, we can kick these Sunbleeders off your land once and for all.”
Kharra squeezed her eyes and ground her teeth. At least she stopped hissing at me—for now.
“I don’t like you, smelly dwarf, but you’re a warrior. Let’s hope the rest of your people fight just as well.”
Before my mind could comprehend the news, the quest update floated into my virtual vision.
Quest update: Where no man had gone before
Congratulations. You have convinced Chieftain Kharra and her Preshaar tribe to join the Blue Rebellion. Return to Balzac to receive your rewards.
Followed by the quest update from the Sunblood Syndicate.
Quest update: Where the Wild Things Are
Bummer—you failed to kill the beast men leader Kharra.
Affiliation with the Sunblood Syndicate has dropped.
Conflicting quest messages, but at least I was back on track.
When I asked Kharra to lend me one of her fowls to ride back to the sea village, she chuckled. “You tricked the Syndicate, so you’re smart. You find a way back to Balzac without my help.”
And with that, she turned around and helped her brethren take care of the corpses. Before I left the plaza, the beast men leader shouted my name. “Tell your leader to send us backup. The Syndicate may attack very soon.”
“Right.”
Back in the sea village, the Preshaar NPCs strolled around as usual. I looked out for hostile behavior, but the war for the main village hadn’t traveled to this place.
Yet.
Granted, some beast men stared me with bewildered eyes, but that mistrust sprang from their bias against humans. I hurried toward the pier and spotted a creamy-white, angular building taller than any shed around. It reminded me of a stylized crystal shard dipped in snow, but the surface design and symbols rang familiar. A sanctuary from the followers of the Aeonlight, here, far away from the mainland. Was that the embassy Celeste and Caspian were talking about?
A young woman stood in front of the entrance and distributed scriptures with the core messages of their belief. She wore the same clothes that Celeste had back when she was still a simple pilgrim at the Holiplaze. The second the new girl saw me, she waved me over with a warm smile. “I see you, fellow human.”
I hesitated but followed her invitation. Maybe she could help me out here. “Is this the embassy to forge relationships with the Preshaar?”
“It’s a place of solace and union, but yes, it also functions as a bridge between the humans and the Preshaar.”
I peeked through the opened entrance gate. Dozens of NPCs, mostly Preshaar, knelt inside the oval-shaped chamber and looked at the priest in the center teaching the scriptures. Hums and mantras echoed. Everyone repeated the melody of the priest and floated in trance. Listening to the choir made even me dizzy, but the gravity of the situation broke the spell.
“Looks more like a conversion therapy than an intercultural community center.”
The young woman nodded. “The Preshaar falsely believe that they’re separated from us mainlanders. They believe their difference in looks is a separation, but that’s a fallacy. We’re all expressions of source energy, molded by the Aeonlight. Look at your core essence and you will experience the unity.”
She stretched her arm with closed eyes and allowed the sunlight to shine on it. I had no time for the light. “Looks more like you’re getting a tan.”
“That’s a simplistic view of what I’m trying to explain here.”
That girl sounded way too stiff for her age. For some reason, every pilgrim and follower of the Aeon religion sounded like a self-reading instruction manual penned by a part-time cultist.
“Would you like to step inside and take part in our lecture?”
No, I had to return to the mainland and talk to Balzac.
“Maybe later. I’ve got some business to attend to.”
The pilgrim girl nodded with another smile. “Remember that the Aeonlight shines through you, no matter the vice of your current vessel.”
“In other words, I should lighten up?”
Her face twitched for a micro-second before it formed into the service smile again. “Trust in the Aeons, that is all.”
“Got it.”
Back on the docks, a couple of small boats awaited me. A single wind rider board, a handful of sail boats, and a hybrid became rentable. Unfortunately, no mid-sized frigate or Reepo-powered boat, which would have granted me the speed I desperately needed. I charged toward the elderly Preshaar in charge of the dock. The analyzer function showed me he dealt with business measures.
“What do you want?” he said in semi-annoyance.
“I need to ride to the northern peak of the mainland.”
“That’s quite the distance. You might want to get an airship for that.”
Like sweet honey to my ears. Local Preshaar had access to airships? Maybe they weren’t so primitive after all.
“Do you have one?”
The Preshaar laughed with lungs blazing. His mighty chest moved from the deep roar. “You’re a funny one, pinkie. No one owns airships. Not anymore.”
—except for the Syndicate, I added in my mind. I looked at the boat selection and opted for the hybrid sail boat. It reached speeds up to forty knots and used four major Reepo batteries in case the wind power la
cked force.
“It will be one thousand and eight hundred credits.”
“Are you kidding?”
He pointed his claw toward his nose. “Do you see me smiling, human?”
He did expose his sharp teeth, but probably for the wrong reasons. Unlike the Holiplaze back in the main continent, I had no twenty percent price bonus, and I had failed to invest in my basic bargaining skills. Worse, loud grumbles echoed from the sea village. I spotted a Preshaar in war gear approaching the market. Blood spatters and hairy wounds pestered his body. Shit. If he saw me, the whole sea village would hunt me down and grill me alive.
No time to stay.
I bit my lips and paid the hefty sum without trying to bargain. My character life mattered more than an overpriced boat. The merchant gave me a scroll explaining the mechanics of the boat. The information copied to my help logs in the e-scroll. I boarded the hybrid sail boat and left the pier as fast as possible.
To hell with this cursed island.
From now on, I’d focus on quests dealing with the mainland.
I updated the journey on my world map. A zigzag line connected the Western Crescent sea village with the Academy on the northern peak of the main continent. Thankfully, the wind blew into my sails and pushed my boat forward. I steered the ship toward the coastline of the main continent. In a matter of minutes, the coastal cliffs graced my view. White rock formations almost as impressive as the Killa Kanyons. Too bad the mountains stood in the way between me and the Cloudkiss mountain village. After all, the skyline from the Preshaar sea village to the rebellion village was only a dozen kilometers. Instead, I had to circumvent the mountain range and steer all the way to the north where the land became somewhat flat again. Bad choice on the game designer’s end?
I’d never know.
Midway through the journey, the waves pushed against the rears and swayed my boat. Controlling the sails functioned, but I feared getting thrown off the ship and sinking into the abyss of the ocean. My new armor weighed a lot, not to mention the crazy amount of items that lingered in my inventory. I even pondered throwing all the collectibles away, but that equaled tossing over ten thousand credits into the red sea.
