“You think that crab asshole is still up there?” D asked.
“The level 37 one?” I replied. “Yeah, no thanks. I don’t have a death wish.”
“I’ve got enough arrows for one or two more clears,” D replied. “Then we should head back to town.”
We managed to get through the dungeon two more times. D hit 18 and Vayde was a sliver away from 17 when we decided to return to Stoneburg.
“Don’t they have a bow that like… creates arrows or something?” I asked D as we pulled out our Bindstone Shards.
“They do,” he replied. “But it’s a high-level quest item you can’t use until like… level 80 or something.”
“Well, come on then,” I told him, activating my Bindstone Shard. “Let’s see if Cavey knows anyone who can make you a bow.”
19
A New Plan
“Any luck?” I asked Vayde, who had his back turned to us while he chatted with a couple of Cavey’s men. He turned around, a huge smile on his face.
“Booyah!” he exclaimed. In his hand was a tall bow made from dark red wood, with a handle wrapped with tan leather. He held the bow out for D who was standing beside me. “It’s nothing special, but it’s better than what you’ve been using.”
D took the bow and inspected it. “Red Oak Yubi.” He nodded, obviously impressed. “65 base damage. I’m not exactly Legolas or anything, but this ain’t bad. Where’d you get it?”
“Xavier,” Vayde replied. “Looted it somewhere while we were gone.”
“Thank him for me.” D nodded.
“Thank me yourself!” Xavier’s voice boomed, and we turned around to see him and Cavey standing behind us. “Picked it up off a Dumerick Archer on the outskirts of the swamp. Was going to sell it but figured someone could use it.”
I quickly inspected them and saw that Cavey had reached level 17. Xavier was still 15. D and I had actually out leveled them with our trip to the cave dungeon.
“You have come a long way,” Cavey remarked.
“Yeah, we’re here to take over the town,” I joked. Cavey roared with laughter.
“Hey, if you want to trade places and take over as Protector of Stoneburg, I’ll retire to a cabin in the woods and wait for this all to blow over.”
“You see Jack’s sword?” D asked, raising his eyebrows in my direction. I didn’t need any coaxing. I pulled it out and brandished it in front of everyone. A crowd started to form as I held it on display.
“Is that the Executioner’s Blade?” Xavier asked with disbelief. “The Artifact Weapon?”
“Sure is,” I replied, grinning ear to ear.
“That’s a really rare spawn,” Cavey added. Some of his men, clearly having overheard the conversation, began to cluster around to get a better look. “You guys brought down the Executioner? Weren’t you like level 12 when you left?”
“A little ingenuity goes a long way,” I smiled, twirling the sword in my hand.
“Don’t listen to him,” D scoffed. “We weren’t planning on fighting him, but… things changed.”
“Wanna see the special ability?” I said quickly. Xavier nodded. “Stand back, everyone!”
The crowd parted in front of me as I took a strong stance and raised the blade above my head. Grinning like a skull, I brought the blade down. Flames spewed forth, rippling across the ground and spraying embers into the air. Cavey’s men were clear but leapt back to put even more space between themselves and the fiery torrent.
“Jesus!” Xavier shouted as the flames dissipated. He looked genuinely impressed as I hoisted the blade over my shoulder.
“Not bad, eh?” I replied. I was acting a bit cocky, but I was proud of myself for once, and if we were going to take on The Ripper, I had to toughen up.
“I’d like to see how Bonecrusher reacts to that!” Cavey said.
“That makes two of us,” I replied.
“Are you going to stick around for a while?” he asked. I knew what was on his mind. It looked like his guild had thinned out some since we left for the cave dungeon. It was probably hard keeping people around to defend Stoneburg with everything that was at stake.
Honestly, it was admirable that Cavey and his guild were taking a stand at all. Most people, when faced with the reality of these circumstances, would have folded up by now and joined up with a larger guild that could protect them. The fact that they hadn’t done that made me like them.
“We’re heading for the Crimson Catacombs,” I told him. That was the answer he was hoping for. I stepped up close to him. “Listen, we have to see if that exploit they’re using to level is still there. If it is, and they’re using it to level, you guys are never going to be able to hold Stoneburg against them. Who knows what level they’ll be the next time they show up!”
The more I spoke the more my anger started to rise up within me. I felt isolated, like my back was against the wall. There were so many threats in Carrethen: The Ripper, Sinful, The Mercenaries, Bleed—and any person who wanted me dead to guarantee them a free ride home. There was no easy way out of things. It was either level up and defeat our enemies or wait around to die.
“If they’ve been using the Catacombs to level, maybe we can take it and use it against them,” I told Cavey. “At least that will give us a fighting chance.”
“It’s a dirty job,” D chimed in. “But somebody’s gotta do it.”
We all smiled, but I could see the concern in Cavey’s eyes.
“You don’t have to do this, Jack,” he said. “This isn’t your fight.”
“Half this server is after me, Cavey,” I replied. “Maybe even more. But you and your guild took me in and made me a friend. I owe you. I owe… Gehman.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” he said firmly.
“No. You have to stay here and protect Stoneburg,” I replied, shaking my head.
“It’s because of me that you’re tied up in this,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” I replied firmly. “We had to come back here at some point. And if you guys weren’t here, we would have been facing Bonecrusher and Chaucey on our own.”
Cavey still didn’t like it, and opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off.
“I can portal tie there!” Vayde chimed in. I turned around to see he was standing pretty close and had obviously been eavesdropping on our conversation.
“What?” I asked.
“Portal tie,” he repeated. “D says, the Crimson Catacombs is a portal dungeon. I can tie to it, come back here and summon a portal to bring the others.”
I looked at D to get his opinion. He nodded.
“That work for you, Cavey?” I asked. He nodded. “All right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “D, are you all stocked up?”
“Yup,” he replied. “Potions, healing kits, arrows. We’re good to go.”
I turned to Xavier and extended my hand. He took it and I shook it firmly.
“Don’t worry, fellas,” I said, trying to project as much confidence as I could. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” Cavey replied.
“In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.” D grinned. I rolled my eyes and laughed.
“All right, all right,” I said quickly. “Let’s get going.”
I turned away from the group and started to lead the way out of town. D and Vayde followed behind me. I could feel the eyes of Cavey’s guild on our backs as we made our way across town, past the Blacksmiths, the Healers, the cow pasture, and up past the Bindstone.
But I refused to look back. If I did, I knew I’d start to question myself, and that was the total opposite of what we needed right now.
“Good luck!” Xavier shouted behind us. I waved a hand over my head, still not turning around.
“In my experience, there’s no such thing—”
“Oh, shut up, D!”
20
The First Portal
I was still amazed how we’d been walking for h
ours and I still wasn’t tired. We’d been on the move all day and had left Stoneburg far behind us and I still felt like I was ready to run a marathon.
No one anticipated people staying logged into the game for such extended periods of time, so sleep and hunger were never built in. There was realism, and then there was realism, and no one wanted to log into a game where you got hungry and tired, or enemy attacks actually hurt.
So instead, the developers of Call of Carrethen had gone down the route most other video games had taken in the past and turned food and sleep into simple ways to boost your stats. A good night’s sleep would give your character a temporary stamina buff, and certain foods raised other stats depending on their ingredients. Of course, I’d yet to experience any of this beyond the horrible-tasting food dropped by Horngrins.
“How much farther?” Vayde asked from beside me.
“We’re getting close,” D replied. “See that grove of trees down there? That’s where it is.”
We were on our way to a portal that would take us closer to Daric, the town where Sinful was based. There were portals speckled all across the world of Carrethen that allowed players to cross the enormous distances instantly, but there was no map to find them, so unless you knew where they were, or knew someone who did, you were walking.
Luckily for us, D played Beta and knew of one.
“And how do we know Sinful won’t have someone waiting for us at the drop?” Vayde asked nervously.
“We don’t,” I replied quickly. “But I’d doubt they’d waste their time on something like that.”
“Too arrogant,” D said. “They’re so much higher level than everyone else.”
“I doubt anyone’s ever even tried to attack them first,” I agreed.
“I need some fire arrows,” D growled.
“Can you buy them from anywhere?” I asked. He shook his head angrily.
“No, you have to train Fletching in order to make them,” he replied. “I can use them now, but I’ll have to get them from… someone else.”
“How many more levels do you need until you can train Fletching?”
“Three,” he replied. “Level 20 and I’ll be good.”
“What about you, Jack?” Vayde asked. “What are you going to pick up next? Smithing? Alchemy?”
“Psssh,” D scoffed. “Trade skills are a waste.”
“Except for archers?”
“Fletching is a necessity,” D corrected him. “Not some fun little hobby to indulge in.”
Vayde rolled his eyes and turned back to me. “What do you think, Jack?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I replied, which wasn’t really true. I was still mulling over the idea I’d had that seemed insane, but I couldn’t get out of my mind.
Void Magic…
Psycho had cast a debuff on Chaucey, I was sure of that, and if Vayde was right, it was part of the Void Magic school. It had made Chaucey so vulnerable to damage that Kewtypie’s frost arrow had almost killed him in one hit. If I trained Void Magic, no one would see it coming, and with a debuff like that on my side, I’d be a total badass.
According to Vayde, no one really knew what Void Magic was or how to use it. All the other mages were too low level to have picked it up yet.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t picked up a single skill since I created my character, and I had 18 skill points just waiting to be spent. I scrolled through my character sheet.
Void Magic—22 skill points to unlock.
Magic did require a decently high Focus and Wisdom, and mine were still at 10 where they’d started. But I didn’t need to be the most powerful all-round mage on the server—I just needed to be able to cast that one spell.
The sun was setting as we pressed on. The last of the orange-purple glow fading over the tops of the trees. We were making our way across a long stretch of open ground, not quite hilly but not quite a plateau either. There weren’t many monsters. I’d seen some kind of giant catlike creature off in the distance, but it was too far away to inspect.
I looked up at the stars but had given up trying to find constellations I recognized and, had instead, started to search for Easter Eggs the developers had added. I’d already found the triforce from Zelda. Vayde found Pacman, and D pointed out the Halflife 3 logo.
“Took them long enough to make that damn game,” D remarked.
Everything in Carrethen was more dangerous at night, as you’d expect from a video game. Visibility was low, and the long shadows hid potential threats. We all had our weapons ready to greet any unwelcome visitors.
We reached the top of a small ridge and D motioned to us to stop. Getting down on our hands and knees, we looked down the slope ahead of us to the grove that held the portal.
It was a tight group of trees, filled with impenetrable shadows. The landscape was bare around it, but not too far in the distance, I could see the lumbering shapes of some kind of large monster we’d yet to encounter.
“What are those?” Vayde whispered, pointing.
“Plains Giants,” D replied. “We don’t want to attract their attention.”
“I thought you’d been here before!” Vayde hissed.
“I have,” D replied indignantly. “But it was during the daytime. And plains giants were only up in the Plains of Arana back then. Obviously, that’s changed.”
“They’re high level?” I asked.
“You could say that.” D chuckled. “Level 45 elites. They’d one-hit every one of us without even breaking stride.”
“Oh, I see,” I smirked. “This is going to be easy!”
D chuckled at my reference and nodded approvingly. With a quick glance to one another, we started down the hill towards the grove.
No one spoke as we crept across the open expanse. The tension was high, as were the stakes of our journey. Nothing was certain about what we’d set out to do. We were out on our own with no one to come to our aid.
The cold night air was invigorating, and reminded me of when I was a kid, before we moved to The Sprawl, and my friends and I would go “play pretend” out in the woods, coming up with fantastical scenarios to take part in.
If only this was pretend too… I thought as we moved forward.
My eyes scanned the shadows as we grew closer to the grove. If anyone else knew about this place, it would be a perfect spot for an ambush. Would Sinful be that nefarious and camp a portal waiting for travelers? I would have felt a lot better of the portal was out in the open.
A small branch snapped under Vayde’s foot and everybody froze.
“Quiet!” D hissed angrily, his bow at the ready.
There was a small break in the trees that gave us room enough to pass through. As we entered, the sounds of the night quieted around us. My body was tense, ready for anything, but as we pressed on, it seemed as though we were really alone.
“There it is,” D whispered, pointing ahead of us. The trees opened up and we stepped into a small clearing. At its center, was the portal, a sphere made up of countless shimmering rings, almost like lightning, twirling and twisting in and out of each other, spinning a few feet above the ground. The whole thing hummed with energy.
“So far, so good,” I said quietly, still on edge. Our side of the portal was clear, but there was no telling what we would run into on the other side.
“Let’s just hope half of Sinful isn’t waiting for us at the drop,” D whispered.
“Stop that!” Vayde scolded him. “Don’t jinx us!”
“Yeah, because that’s really a thing,” D replied, rolling his eyes.
“Well, there’s no use waiting,” I said, raising my sword as I approached the portal. “Let’s go.”
Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the portal.
21
Mr. Glorious
As my feet hit the ground, I spun around, sword held high. I heard the sound of Vayde and D portal in behind me, and instantly, we were back-to-back, searching for danger.
“See anything!?” I hissed.
&
nbsp; “No!” D replied.
“Nothing,” Vayde whispered back.
I let myself relax a little as I looked around. Daric was in an area North of Stoneburg, and a light coating of snow covered the ground. The trees that dotted the landscape were dark firs and it was cold enough that our breath was visible in the air.
“I think we’re good,” I said slowly.
“Looks that way,” D agreed. “But we should get away from the drop as fast as we can—”
“Train to portal drop!” a voice rang out.
“What the Hell?” I muttered, gazing towards the direction of the sound.
“Train to portal drop! Look out!”
“Train?” I asked, starting to worry. “What’s he talking about?”
“A train means he’s aggro’d either a ton of monsters, or one big one he can’t handle on his own,” D grumbled, backing up. “And he’s either asking for help or warning us to get the Hell out of the way.”
“Well, let’s do that then,” Vayde said, starting off in the other direction.
I took a few steps to follow, but then the voice rang out again. “Train to the portal drop! Help!”
Whoever he was, he sounded terrified.
“Wait!” I called after my group. “We should help him.”
“Are you nuts?” D replied. “There’s no telling what he’s got chasing him up here. Could be a Frost Leopard, or a Luthian Womper!”
“Let’s at least see what it is before we completely abandon him.”
“He got himself into this,” D replied, shaking his head. “And he can get himself out. We have other fish to fry.”
D turned his back, but as he did, I heard a whistling sound from the direction of the voice and spun around just in time to dodge an arrow the size of a mini-van, cutting its way out of the darkness.
It struck the ground beside me, spewing frozen earth and ice into the air.
“Look out!” the voice cried out as I spun around. Out of the darkness emerged a figure, the owner of the voice. A young man, clad in studded leather, who didn’t appear to be holding any weapons.
“Help!” he shouted. “Help me!”
And then, I saw what he was running from.
Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1) Page 9
