SpeedRunner (Tower of Babel Book 1)

by Adam Elliott

  Shifty hits You for 227 Physical.

  His eyes couldn't linger on the weapon for long, not with more of its compatriots raining down from above. The second missed by a handful of inches, while Cayden deflected a third with the flat of his blade, an action that was more luck and reflex than training or skill.

  He could see his attacker now. Sort of. The shadow clad shifty was above him, half in and half out of an alcove that led out onto one of the bridges. No doubt he'd been passing by when Cayden had launched himself out into the open. Another few seconds and the man might have walked by none-the-wiser. Bad luck.

  “That looked like it hurt.” Came a voice from above, half hidden by the bridge.

  “Just a little.”

  “Bad news for you then. Skill Use: Fan of Knives!”

  The shout accompanied a blistering wave of knives, each trailing a line of firey red light back to their source as they streaked through the air towards him.

  Good news and bad news. The bad news was that this newest attacker was at least smart enough to use his skills. The good news was that he was dumb enough to waste his TP on area of effect attacks against a single target.

  Cayden dodged back, taking only one of the ten knives on his shield as he retreated. His eyes were on his foe, but his mind was elsewhere, running strategy as he fought on instinct.

  The man had the high ground, and if Star Wars had taught him anything, that was bad news in a straight fight. He could equalize it first, jump up to his level and then press the attack, or he could try and retreat. Once he was back into the caves, he wouldn't be a sitting duck like this, and if his opponent didn't have a movement skill to jump the difference between the bridges he'd have a hell of a time finding his way through the caverns to confront Cayden again at all.

  That was the question then. Did he have a movement skill? There were over twenty classes that got Fan of Knives as a skill, but only four that got it comparatively early. Shifty hadn't killed him with his first throw, which meant he didn't massively over level Cayden. That narrowed it down to Scoundrel, Dark Lurker, Consigliere or Carnivalist. Two of them had a tumble skill that could close the gap. And this guy definitely seemed like a bit of a clown.

  Fight over flight then.

  "Not as much as this is going to. Personal Skill Use: Leap Attack!" Cayden shouted, leaping off without a moment's hesitation. The bridge above him was parallel to his own, which made the second landing far easier than the first. He hit the ground running, clearly spooking the other man, only to slide to a stop, crouched behind his shield as the other man drew back to throw.

  “Skill Use: Grasp the Earth.”

  “Skill Use: Flurry of Knives.”

  With blinding speed, Shifty drew and threw, drew and threw. Knife after knife clattered against Cayden's shield, a forward facing downpour of damage chipping away at his HP. The blades came faster than any human being could have possibly moved, but they were imprecise, unable to clip the parts of Cayden that peaked out from behind his shield.

  Flurry of Knives was a channeled skill, Cayden knew. So long as he chose to, Shifty could keep throwing knives until he ran out of TP or he ran out of knives. And judging by the sheer number of knives that had been thrown at him so far, he imagined it'd be the former before the latter.

  "Personal Skill Use: Trick Shot." Cayden barely heard the words over the clatter of the last few knives thudding into his shield. His arm felt numb from the impacts, and his shield felt as though it had doubled in weight in the last few moments. No doubt the result of the dozen or so daggers protruding from its surface. Intentional or not, it was enough that he couldn't hope to stop what came next.

  The trick shot came in at a right angle to his body, bypassing his shield entirely by first bouncing off a supporting pillar of one of the nearby bridges. It buried itself to the hilt in his thigh, sending a stinging jolt of alarm and a much more worrisome wave of fear through Cayden's entire body.

  Shifty's Trick Shot hits You for 414 Physical. (Critical) [Bleed, Movement Impaired]

  At least that narrowed it down. Carnivalist was the only class who got all three of those skills. Not that the knowledge would do him much good at this point. Even if Shifty had used up most of his TP, Cayden was now well below half HP, bleeding 5 HP a second instead of regenerating a similar amount, and had just had his movement speed reduced by 25%. He couldn't run away now even if Shifty had lacked a movement skill.

  “I don't suppose I can convince you to surrender?”

  Cayden glanced over the edge of his shield to take his first real look at the man he was fighting.

  Shifty was no more what Cayden expected than the older woman he'd put down twenty minutes before had been. Middle aged, balding and slightly overweight, the man's stubbled face was spread ear to ear in a bemused grin. He looked as if he had just thrown down a groan-inducing pun in the middle of combat and was waiting for Cayden to get it. Perhaps stranger still, the grin seemed to extend to his eyes. For a person trying to kill him, there didn't appear to be a drop of malice in the man.

  “Pretty sure if you hand me over to that murderer it is going to be the same as killing me here.” Cayden retorted. “So, thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Last I heard you were the murderer.”

  “Don't believe everything you hear on TV.”

  Cayden's words brought a bark of laughter from Shifty. The other man strolled forward slowly a knife tossed from hand to hand with each step. "All the more reason to surrender. If I bring you to the cops, I'll probably still get a reward, and we can sort things out that way."

  “You are awfully talkative for a hired killer.”

  The words seemed to hit shifty like a slap in the face. Some of the mirth bled off those lips, and his jaw clenched as he tightened his grip on the knife. “Yeah. I suppose so.”

  “Skill Use: Leap Attack!”

  “Personal Skill Use: Trick Shot!”

  Cayden dove towards Shifty at the same time as Shifty's knife flew once more. It bounced off the ground, ricocheting up into Cayden's sword arm just as the latter descended for a crippling blow to the Carnivalist.

  Shifty's Trick Shot hits You for 238 Physical. [Attack Impaired]

  Your Leap Attack hit Shifty for 155 Physical.

  Current HP: 441/1560

  It wasn't enough to deflect the attack entirely, but it was enough to turn a critical blow into a glancing one and to cripple Cayden even further besides. That was all Shifty needed. Cayden probably had close to twice Shifty's HP at max, but he wasn't going to win a damage race when he was nearly dead with a damage impairment. He was one crit away from bleedout.

  Good news and bad news. Bad news the guy probably baited him with the Fan of Knives. Shifty was way better than he had initially given him any credit for. The good news? Shifty had no idea what sort of a trump card Cayden had up his sleeve.

  Cayden didn't even bother to block a casually thrown knife as shifty retreated. It stung as it sunk into him, and his HUD began to flash a warning message as he dropped below 20% HP. The damage didn't matter, and for just a moment he relished the smug look on Shifty's face as the other man planted his feet and dove in for the kill with a knife flashing in each hand.

  He only had to push a single button. Accept.

  You have reached Guardian Level 4

  +40 HP

  +20 TP

  New Skill Learned!

  In an instant, the various alerts cleared from his HUD. The debuffs Shifty had placed on him, the low HP warnings, all of them vanished as his HP bar rocketed from below two hundred to its new max.

  Current HP: 1600/1600

  The glowing wounds and rents in his flesh flashed with vibrant light, then sealed in an instant, while Cayden met Shifty's rush of weapons with his outstretched shield. The sudden shift in momentum had staggered the other man; his dual thrust parried with contemptible ease. "What the h-"

  “Skill Use: Southern Cross.”

  Two quick slashes completed the switch. Now
it was Shifty on death's doorstep. Now it was him staggering backward, struggling to gather unsteady legs beneath him. Cayden pondered just letting him run, but he couldn't. All it would take was a few potions, and he could be having this exact fight again in mere minutes, and next time he wouldn't have a trick up his sleeve to save him.

  Instead, he hooked the toe of his boot beneath the pommel of one of the discarded knives, kicking it up in the same motion as he dropped his longsword. Shifty was retreating, turning his back to the armored man who he rightfully expected he could outrun.

  “Skill Use: Throw Weapon.”

  The dagger shot from his throwing arm with the speed of an arrow. Shifty hadn't even been trying to dodge, ignorant of the danger he was in. The weapon found its home in his back and Shifty's remaining HP, with ease.

  Cayden collected his weapon, then walked the short distance across the bridge to the alcove where Shifty had fallen. He was face down, staring at nothing while Cayden's shadow loomed over him. Cayden couldn't even imagine what it must be like, waiting to see if the person you just tried to kill was going to save you, or just leave you to die.

  "If I were actually a murderer, I'd just let you bleed out. I hope you understand that." Cayden sighed, kneeling to bandage the other man's wounds. "Just staying here this long puts me in-"

  Cayden had no sooner tempted fate with the words than he heard the footsteps and shouts of other players. With the echoes of the cavern, it was hard to place their direction, more difficult still to guess how close they were. But with his luck, it wouldn't be long.

  He finished tying the bandage around Shifty's wound, ignoring the light show as the cocoon surrounded the defeated rogue. He dashed back out into the chasm and targeted another nearby bridge. A single leap was all it took, though in his haste he'd used in picking his landing spot left him precariously close to the edge.

  All he had to do was make it to the far end of the cavern, but it wasn't to be.

  They spotted him at roughly the same time he spotted them. A group of four sprinting their way across a bridge perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above him. Their archer was the first to announce his notice, a trio of arrows cracking off stone as Cayden made for the exit on the far side of the bridge.

  The sound of chanting came next. While the spellcaster had wisely chosen not to shout out his skill choice, there was no hiding or mistaking the arcane words he was required to chant as part of its completion. Nor did Cayden have any difficulty discerning its effects as all four members of the party stepped off the side of the bridge, floating instead of falling as they descended towards him.

  So close! Cayden wanted to scream in frustration as the feather fall spell dissolved and dropped the enemy group directly in his path. Two of them were robed, one the spell caster, the other a healer in some form or another judging by his white robes and the blatant house insignia that served as a 'holy symbol.' The archer was clad in tight fitting leather and very much did fit his expectation of a sexy, sultry archer from a D&D manual.

  Most troubling of all, however, was the seven foot tall, tattooed, bare-chested beast of a man. The man screamed at him as he charged the distance between them, greatsword held ready just over his head.

  Physical prowess in the outside world didn't mean much when it came to Babel, but it sure did poke at the fear center of Cayden's lizard brain.

  "Really? This is how I go?" Cayden shouted in anger, fighting through his fear. He blocked the massive overhand swing with his shield arm, slashing twice across the taller man's exposed midsection. "Taken out by a goddamned iconic tabletop party?!"

  Before he could say anything further a second swipe of that enormous blade forced Cayden to backpedal to keep from being bisected from left to right. For all the good it did him. He'd taken nearly a hundred damage from a skill-less, blocked hit of that sword, and done lest than a tenth of the man's HP despite two clean crits. This wasn't going to be a fight he could win, even if he didn't hear the cleric beginning the first intonations of a third-level healing spell.

  “All gotta go sometime.” The massive man said with a wicked grin. “Look on the bright side, at least we have a reason to kill you, I've done worse for less.”

  PKers then. Player Killers like these were part and parcel of Babel the further one got into the game. Some were bandits, others bounty hunters, assassins or simply plain murderers. In a land where force was the law, violence thrived. The corporations, toy soldiers, and progression guilds tried to keep them down, but new groups were always popping up. It didn't take a skilled player to make a good bandit; it just took a bunch of mediocre ones and a complete lack of morals.

  “Personal Skill Use: Shield Bash!” Cayden cried, turning his body into the blow. The attack did next to no damage to the hulking berserker, but the damage wasn't the point. It stunned players equally as well as it stunned mobs.

  In his youth, Cayden had loved watching his father play action RPG's like Dark Souls V., And if he'd taken one thing away from that, it was that you didn't have to be able to drain something's HP to kill it.

  His kick took the stunned berzerker in the unprotected groin due to the height difference, one extra little bit of satisfaction as the force of his blow sent the staggered warrior tumbling off the edge of the bridge.

  "Jerimiah! No!" The archer cried. For a moment it looked like the woman was going to go after him, but a hand on her shoulder from the mage stopped her. The latter leaped off the bridge, already incanting another spell as he raced after his friend, while the archer nocked another arrow and let fly.

  Cayden watched his HP diminish substantially even as he weathered the arrow behind the wood of his shield. One clean hit and any of them were likely to put him down, which left him no margin for error. Not exactly a great place to be.

  She fired three times more as he closed on her, but she had no more luck with those arrows than the first three she'd fired his way. She refused to lead him as he advanced on her, which meant that all he had to do was keep shifting from side to side to confuse her aim. Shot after shot went wide as he closed to within ten feet of her without a plan in his head.

  They weren't going to let him pull the same trick twice, and he wasn't even sure he'd be able to follow through on it if there was no one there to catch her. The priest had also been casting spells non-stop during his approach, which almost certainly meant that one or both of them had a bunch of buff spells he couldn't even begin to guess at.

  “Get out of my way and let me pass. I don't want to fight you!”

  "Are you for real?" The woman scoffed, dropping her bow and drawing a pair of wickedly curved short blades from her hips. "You pull that shit and think we're going to walk away from a million plus each? You should have just let Jerimiah do the deed. I'm not going to be so sweet."

  For all her bluster, the archer was no swordsman. Cayden suspected, if only from her choice of weapons, that she was some ranger by class or by fancy. She had the marks of someone who fancied herself a Drizzt but was actually one of the thousand nameless thugs such a warrior defeated. The two of them danced, circling this way and that on the thin bridge, trying to pressure each other towards the edge, inflicting damage wherever the opportunity arose, but in their dance, Cayden was the lead.

  He pressured her again and again, a hundred damage here, two hundred there. He dodged away from her awkward Skill Use attempts with ease and punished her as she came out of them. But there was a level difference that he wouldn't be able to overcome. He couldn't be sure without knowing her class, or her build, but just from the way her HP ticked from his blows, he'd put them fifteen, perhaps as twenty levels higher than him. In a one on one, he might have pulled off a ridiculous upset. In a two on one with the cleric healing her, and laughing while he did it, Cayden never stood a chance.

  “You!”

  Cayden glanced briefly over his shoulder as the woman across from him lowered her blades. He knew the voice even before he looked, and he felt the way the bridge vibrated as his first
opponent returned to the fray. "Me."

  "You think you're funny, pulling that crap?" The bestial man growled, the wizard once again flitting into view behind him, arms down at his sides. The archer too was already drawing back. None of them had any intention of intervening. No doubt it'd be more fun just to sit and watch.

  "Like, funny ha ha? Or..." Cayden spun, casting a sidelong look at the pit on either side of the bridge. He could jump before Jerimiah reached him. If they had to float down maybe, he could find some escape at the bottom of the pit? Or maybe he ought to just deny them the money by jumping and landing on his head. Immolatus seemed like the type of guy to stiff someone on a technicality. Not the worst plan he'd ever come up with.

  “Spirits of Fire, Dance.”

  The softly spoken words barely registered to Cayden's ears over the bellowing sound of the onrushing warrior. Their effect, on the other hand, could not go unnoticed. In unison, his attackers burst into flame; their bodies wreathed in it as their HP bars dropped from full to empty in the blink of an eye. They screamed, more in surprise than pain, though so much damage in such a short span was undoubtedly agonizing. Then they fell, Jerimiah tumbling to a stop in front of Cayden, his sword falling off the edge of the bridge to spin through the air for several seconds before disappearing back into his inventory when it became apparent to the game that he'd lost it.

  "Wha-" Cayden started, his mind not even fully processing what he'd just seen. Four high-level players, obliterated in an instant. By... what?

  “E-excuse me. Are you okay?” Cayden whirled at the voice from behind, sword and shield held up in leaden arms as his chest rose and fell in heavy breaths that were half exertion and half panic.

  Twenty feet away, at the mouth of the cavern, he'd been trying so hard to reach stood two women. Neither looked battle ready regarding their demeanor or actions, no bared steel or raised weapons. In fact, the rear of the two looked like more of a child than a warrior, standing half concealed behind the wide red cloak of her compatriot with only her eyes and a tuft of styled blonde hair peeking out.