“You saved my life, Chaucey,” I replied, speaking to him and to myself at the same time. I just couldn’t believe it. He simply shrugged.
“I mean, you would have done it for me,” he said. “Besides, I already owe you big.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I simply forced a smile and turned my attention to the eggs.
“Well, let’s grab as many of these as we can,” I told everyone. “Head back to Beatle and turn them in.”
“Yeah…how do we head back to Beatle?” Baltos asked, glancing around the island.
“Beatle said it would be easy,” I replied, grabbing one of the Targanic Eggs from the ground and stuffing it into my inventory. “So, look around for something.”
“Wish I had a Sail Cloth,” Curafin said, catching my interest. I glanced over at him.
“Breath of the Wild?” I asked. He smiled and nodded. “Nice reference.”
“Seriously, the best thing ever.”
We grabbed every egg we could find. Everyone else took 15 but I only took 13 as there weren’t enough to go around and I was the highest level anyway. But there was still the matter of getting back to the ground without jumping off and crashing to our deaths.
“Hey, what’s that?” Chaucey called out from across the island. Making my way around the small pools of water, I made my way over to him. He was standing at the edge looking down at something.
“What is it?” I asked as I stepped up beside him, but he didn’t have to answer, I saw it immediately.
Far below us, on the ground, was a hole in a spire of stone, and twisting out of it was a thick torrent of air like a mini-tornado that rose all the way up to the island and beyond. Smiling, I dipped my hand into the current and felt the enormous force behind it.
I smiled, waving the others over. “Come on! Chaucey found it!”
Chaucey looked pleased as punch, but I still couldn’t help but feel the wide divide between us, and I wasn’t sure if I could truly trust him or not. I could have been making a huge mistake. What if his memories from Carrethen came rushing back to him? Who would I be dealing with then? The New Chaucey, or the old?
“No way,” Curafin groaned as he saw the vortex. “You’re saying we just—”
“Jump down,” I grinned, taking a step towards the edge. “Not quite a Sail Cloth, but close.”
And then, without hesitation, I turned to my friends, grinned, and stepped backwards over the edge.
66
The White Rose
The whirlwind caught me as I fell. It was like a bed of tiny hands all over my body carrying me slowly down to the ground. I looked up as the other three faces of my friends appeared over the edge, looking down to make sure I hadn’t just gone splat on the ground. I waved casually up at them as I reached the ground. With a simple twist, I was out of the currents and back on my feet.
“Come on, pussies!” I shouted back up at my group. None of them had jumped yet. They were so high up I could barely make out their faces, but I could have sworn I saw Baltos smile before backing up and tossing himself off the edge.
“Whoa!” he shouted as he entered the vortex and slowly began his descent to the ground like a leaf falling gently from a tree. “This is crazy!”
Chaucey jumped next, followed by Curafin. It was like a line of three skydivers falling lazily without parachutes, as though their descent had been caught in slow motion. I looked around as they came down and saw that Beatle had returned to his shop. Groups of Horngrin wandered above and Condors soared through the sky. It was a shame we couldn’t spend a little more time in the Targanic, but finding Vayde and the rest of my friends was the priority and the more I thought about it the more anxious I became.
I turned around as Baltos landed on the ground beside me. He stumbled as he rolled out of the whirlwind, and I caught him before he toppled over.
“Wow! That was awesome!” His childlike glee was back and that was a good sign. Maybe his anger over me taking Chaucey along with us was gone, at least for a little while. The other two came down and landed beside us. Curafin glanced back up at the island as though he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Come on,” I chuckled, heading towards Beatle’s. “Let’s go turn these in.”
We made our way quickly back over to the shop to find Beatle behind the counter, just where we’d found him the first time.
“Welcome back, travelers!” he exclaimed.
“We’ve got your eggs, Beatle,” I told him. Beatle just about jumped out of his clothes.
“Fantastic!” he cried out. “I have a great reward for you if you care to part with them!”
“That’s why we got them, Beatle,” I replied, opening a trade window. I selected my entire stack of 13 and handed them over to him. As soon as I clicked confirm and the trade window vanished, I heard the satisfying sound of a level up. An experience reward!
I checked my character sheet, and instead of being 128, I was 130.
“Wow,” I said in amazement. “Guys, this is a ton of experience.”
“Me next!” Baltos cried out, stepping up to Beatle and handing over his stack of eggs. Rainbow sprites swirled around him as he leveled up. I must have inspected him at the exact same moment that he checked his character sheet, because at the exact same moment, we both said, “Wow!”
Baltos—Level 128.
“Okay, I need to get in on this,” Curafin said, brushing past Chaucey and handing in his eggs. He leveled up and I inspected him to see he’d gained an entire 7 levels, bringing him to 97.
“This is nuts.” I grinned, nodding to Chaucey. “Hand yours in, dude.”
Baltos glanced at me for a second, but said nothing as Chaucey opened his trade window with Beatle and handed over his eggs. Sprites swirled around him as the level up sound rang out and I inspected him.
Chaucey—Level 85.
“Holy shit!” I gasped as I broke out laughing. “Dude, you just gained 35 levels!”
“I did!?” he replied, opening his character sheet. “I did!”
“I’d suggest assigning that exp immediately,” I told him. “Maybe you won’t be one-shottable anymore.”
“Good idea,” he replied. He and the others went ahead and started eagerly assigning their fresh pool of experience. I, of course, wasn’t able to go as crazy as Chaucey or Curafin, but managed to get a few more points of Health, bringing my total to 384, and another point into Coordination, bringing it to 319.
“Wow, you really don’t gain much at this level, do you?” Baltos remarked.
“Diminishing returns.” I grimaced.
“It must take like five levels to raise anything in the 200s.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” I shrugged. “But you know what else that means? It means that players higher level than us don’t have that much of an advantage over us. If we run into a level 150 he won’t be that much more powerful than us compared to a level 40 and a level 20, for instance.”
“That’s true,” Baltos replied.
“Hey, Jane,” Chaucey asked. “What are these skill tree things?”
I laughed. “You found those, eh? Something new.”
“Precision and Battle,” he mumbled as he looked through the trees. “Looks like I can pick up five. What did you pick?”
“Well, I picked up a bunch of dagger stuff,” I told him. “I didn’t even have a bow when I got here and then completely forgot to pick up any bow skills. So, I just have Scatter Shot.”
“Well, seeing as how I don’t have a melee weapon,” Chaucey replied, “I guess I’ll just do bow stuff…Charged Shot looks good, Explosive Shot, Volley, Knockback and Trap Arrow?”
He turned to me for approval. I could only shrug. “I don’t know, man. Sounds good, but I haven’t used anything beyond Scatter Shot, so you could be completely gimping your character.”
Chaucey frowned and looked back at his character sheet.
“I’m just messing with you, dude,” I chuckled. “I’m sure they’re fine. T
rain them.”
I heard a voice outside and instantly had my bow in my hand and a frost arrow nocked and ready. The others drew their weapons and Curafin quickly began to refresh his buffs.
“You in there!” a man’s voice rang out. “Come on out. We know you’re in there!”
I drew my arrow back, ready to blast a Scatter Shot at whoever dared try and enter Beatle’s shop. Curafin and Baltos were ready, but Chaucey looked like he was about to fall into complete panic.
What a complete reversal, I thought.
“Come on out!” the voice shouted again. “We’re friendly.”
“Why should I believe you!” I called back.
“Well, I guess you don’t,” the man shouted. “But do you really want to stay in there with Beatle forever?”
He had a point, we couldn’t just hide in the shop and there was no other exit but the front door. If we didn’t go out to meet them, our only other option would be to wait them out or fight, and there was no telling how many of them there were. As if he could read my mind, the man called back.
“There’s five of us! We’re pretty high level too and can take out your lowbies easy enough. But that’s not what we’re looking to do, so why don’t you just come out and talk?”
I glanced around at the rest of my group, trying to think what Jack would do. He’d probably trust them and go out for a chat, and I’d be the one telling him how stupid it was and that they had no intention of being peaceful at all. But Jack wasn’t with me anymore. I was the leader now and I had to make the decision.
“What do we do!?” Chaucey hissed from beside me. It felt surreal, having one of Carrethen’s most feared PKs asking me for advice on whether or not to fight someone.
“Well, he’s right. We can’t just stay here forever,” I told the group. “We’ll go out, but keep your weapons up and be ready for anything. Curafin, be ready to Menace the highest level one, and we’ll focus him down fast if they start anything. Chaucey, stay behind us and use your bow abilities.”
“Got it,” he said firmly.
“Let’s go.”
Keeping my bow at the ready, I stepped out of Beatle’s hut. Whoever had been calling out to us hadn’t been lying—there were five of them. I inspected them.
Korwin—Level 112. He was a mage and wore a purple robe with blue fringe and held a slim green wand.
Osium—Level 119. An archer. He wore white leather pants with black studs and a dark grey top, one piece made from the hide of some animal. He also had a purple helm like Chaucey.
Moon—Level 105. Moon was a girl, with long red hair spilling out of her plate helm. She wore a full set of sea-green plate armor and held a thin steel longsword.
Selune—Level 99. A tall plate-wearing halberd knight with a thick bowl looking helmet that completely hid his face and eyes.
Motomo—Level 117. Motomo wore dark black studded leather armor and held two short swords. He wore no helm, but instead wore a head wrap that more than likely had stat bonuses that he valued over armor level.
There was no doubt they were a bunch of heavy hitters, and getting into a four on five fight with them probably wasn’t the greatest idea. There was a chance we’d be able to take them down, with Baltos and me being higher level than any of them, but they weren’t that far beneath us and with Chaucey being only 85, he would go down pretty easily.
“What do you want?” I called out, trying not to let them see my concern. Korwin spoke, and I recognize the voice as the one who’d called out to us when we were inside.
“The Dark World is dark,” he said with a smile, his face visible with the hood of his robe thrown back. “Making friends can be hard but valuable.”
“You want to be friends?” I asked skeptically.
“Is it that hard to believe?” he replied.
“Based on my experience? Yes.”
“I am sorry to hear that. But as I said before, we could defeat your group if we chose to,” he said as a matter of fact. “But that is not our intention.”
Uh huh, I thought as I looked out at the group in front of us. With the exception of Stitches, our encounters with other players in the Dark World had so far been friendlier than most of our time in Carrethen. Sinister, The Mercenaries, Bleed, the random bandits and PKs—we’d been constantly on edge. Was it possible that simply by being in the Dark World and all its terrible, twisted nonsense that players had become less aggressive to each other?
“What is your intention?” Baltos asked as I was thinking.
“I am Korwin, guild leader of the White Rose. We are the protectors of the Underground City,” Korwin replied. “Are you familiar with it?”
“We’ve heard of it,” I told him. “We were actually on our way there now.”
“Perfect!” Korwin replied happily. “We’re not far. Come with us. There are merchants of all types and a Bindstone if you’d like to stay.”
“You are very hospitable,” I told him. “Especially when you don’t really know us. We could just turn on you once we reached the city.”
Korwin chuckled. “There are plenty more of us there! So…you could, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
I looked around at the rest of my group for their opinions. Baltos looked slightly hesitant, but Curafin nodded with approval. Chaucey still looked completely out of his element and simply shrugged.
Wish you were here, Jack, I thought as I looked back at the members of the White Rose standing before us. It was true—they could have already attacked us if they were hostile. Why would they bother bringing us back to their city just to ambush us there? It felt wrong to place my trust in so many people I didn’t know, but if these guys were up to something, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I looked at Korwin and shrugged.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
67
The Underground City
Our group had more than doubled in size, which made progressing through the Targanic a lot easier. Not only did Korwin and the rest know the best way across the zone, but they were also able to help us cut down the Horngrin camps and occasional Condor that would swoop down from the islands above. The experience was decent too, and by the time we were nearing what looked like the end of the zone, Chaucey had hit level 88 and Curafin was 98. Slowly but surely, the Targanic’s lush green grass began to fade as we approached a rocky terrain that looked completely impossible to cross.
Rows and rows of spiked rocks stood in our way, thin like spears, but clustered so closely together that there was no way to pass through. Climbing them was obviously impossible, and it looked to me like the only way across would be to fly. But of course in Call of Carrethen that wasn’t an option.
“Nice landscaping,” Curafin joked as we came to a halt and gazed out at the impenetrable lines of stone.
“You like it?” Moon asked, speaking for the first time since we’d left Beatle’s shop. “Did it myself.”
“She speaks!” Baltos remarked.
“Yeah, well I didn’t want you to hear my incredibly sexy voice and fall in love with me,” Moon replied. I had a feeling that if I could see her face through her helm she’d be sticking her tongue out.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I interrupted, not giving Baltos any chance to get stuck flirting. “So, how do we get through?”
“We don’t get through,” Korwin replied slyly, stepping forward and placing his hand on one of the stone spires. “We go under.”
He slid his fingers into a tiny crevice in the rock and tugged. Something clicked and the ground beneath us shifted. My group leapt back as a massive slab of earth began to move, pulling back to eventually reveal a well-lit tunnel and flight of stairs leading down.
“Down we go,” Selune said, tossing his halberd over his shoulder as he started down the steps. The rest of his group followed after him. I was still a little hesitant, but followed them anyway.
After a few steps down, the enormous slab slid back into place behind us. Rows of soft orange
torches lined the walls as we made our way down. I could hear the sound of more voices at the bottom of the stairs and when we reached the bottom the tunnel opened up to a spectacular view of the Underground City.
It was more of a town than a city really, but it looked incredible. Huddled together at the center of a cozy cave of smooth red earth covered with hanging green moss, was a cluster of buildings made from warm brown wood with red clay tiled roofs. Green grass lined the cave floor like a carpet and flickering lanterns hung from tall wooden posts that lined the edges of a gurgling brook that snaked its way across the cave. There was no obvious town square, but I could see people down below moving around between the buildings.
“Not much of an entrance,” Curafin remarked. “But this is a nice looking place.”
“We like it,” Korwin replied, turning left down a slope that led towards the town.
“You really should call it Underground Town, though,” I joked as we stepped onto the grass. It was soft and welcoming beneath my feet. “It isn’t much of a city.”
“Underground City sounds better,” Osium replied. He was a snippy little guy and I didn’t care much for his tone. The D in me wanted to put an arrow squarely into his face.
As we approached the buildings, more of Korwin’s guild came out to meet us. There were at least eight of them that I could see, various classes, all in the low 100s. It looked like they had this place locked down pretty tight and Korwin was right, there was every NPC you could ever want.
I spotted a Mage shop, a Blacksmith’s, General Merchant, Healer Shop and what looked like an Inn that probably just sold foods with different type of stat buffs. At the other end of the cave, at the center of a circle of low torches, was a Bindstone.
“Mind if we use that?” I asked Korwin, pointing to the hovering crystal.
“Be our guests.” He smiled. “Just don’t start any trouble!”
“We won’t!” I laughed as I made my way over to the stone. The way the torches were set up around it gave it an impressive feeling, as though it were an altar of some sort. We wasted no time binding and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted from my soldiers. Now, if any of us died, we wouldn’t end up all the way back in Cara, but would simply return here and be able to restock if we needed to before heading back to our bodies to pick up whatever loot we’d dropped.
Lord of the Flame: A LitRPG novel (Call of Carrethen Book 2) Page 32
