“Interesting,” I said to myself as I surveyed the landscape. It was definitely new territory for me. I’d never run into a valley like it before, or anything even remotely close. For the most part, everything around the fort was hilly with the occasional small stretch of flatland.
There were two Wooly Ratkers on either side of the valley, both level 65. They wouldn’t be any real problem, and neither would the small group of Arctic Horngrin clustered around a bonfire. They were level 70, and I was surprised to see them that far North.
But that wasn’t what I was interested in.
What interested me was at the far end of the valley—a cave entrance. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see whether it was just a small cutout in the rock or an actual deep cave, or maybe even a dungeon. But either way, I was in the mood to explore, so I set out down the slope towards the first Wooly Ratker.
I opened with Swordmaster’s Fury. The sound of the skill going off alerted the Ratker to my presence, but it didn’t matter. It was ten levels lower than me and I took off a quarter of its health with my first blow.
It swung at me as I activated Frenzied Slash. His blow dinked harmlessly off my chest plate. Mine, on the other hand, almost killed him.
The Ratker cried out with rage and raised a claw to strike out, but I was ready for it and dodged easily out of the way. A single blow would have finished him off, but I activated Execute for the Hell of it and finished him off. With a final roar, the Ratker collapsed and exploded out of existence.
“Easy,” I said bitterly.
I didn’t even bother checking his loot. It would be garbage anyway. I just moved on and quickly engaged the Artic Horngrin around the bonfire.
Their blows did decent damage, but not enough to really worry me. A quick run through my abilities was enough to finish them off. They were dead before I was even close to half health, and using a charge from my Flawless Health Kit, I restored my HP to full and moved on.
The second Ratker was all that was standing between me and the cave entrance.
He snarled at me and charged, but I dodged out of the way and dispatched him in a similar fashion to the first.
“Trash mobs.” I chuckled as he disappeared.
My eyes were on the cave as I stepped forward. I could see now that it was more than just an alcove in the rock. A few small torches hung on the wall as I crouched under the overhang. There were signs of a campfire that had gone out, and a few piles of bones lay in the corner, obviously put there by the developers to scare players. But based on how easily I’d cut down the mobs outside that were guarding the entrance, I wasn’t too worried about what lay inside. Either way, it would be fun to explore.
Flipping my sword carelessly from hand to hand, I started off down the tunnel. The walls were predictably frosty, frozen stone and earth with shards of ice hanging down from overhead. The torches lit the way through the first bend, but as I rounded the corner, I found myself surrounded by shadow.
Grumbling, I scrolled through my inventory and found my Glowbug Bauble I’d picked up from an Archmage NPC way up North past the Ice golems. He sold all kinds of magical items, but most of them were of no use to me with my Focus and Wisdom only at 80.
I’d been raising them enough to make sure I could cast Menace reliably and was up to the level 5 version of the spell. But most of the Mage’s items had Focus requirements of at least 150, and I wasn’t going to waste experience getting them that high.
My HP was a monstrous 235. I had 225 Strength, 220 Quickness, and my Sword was 375. Compared to the level 23 I’d been in Stoneburg; I was basically a God.
No, not a god… I corrected myself. There’s only one god in Carrethen…
I hung my Glowbug Bauble on the hook on my belt. It cast a warm sphere of blue-green light which illuminated the walls of the tunnel, allowing me to continue on.
Sadly, it was pretty bland and there wasn’t much to see. The walls had changed from a dull icy blue to a tan, earth-colored rock, which seemed strange for being up North. I continued on for a while, heading down more and more, but found nothing. I was just about to head back when something moved in the corner of my vision.
I stopped and turned, looking for the source, but all I saw were the bland walls of the cave and the blue-green glow of my bauble.
“Hmmm…” I mused. “You’re seeing things, Jack. It’s just some lame cave.”
Putting my sword away, I turned to go, but again, something flickered in my peripheral—this time it was almost like a light.
“What the Hell?”
I turned back and looked for the source, but again. Nothing.
An invisible monster? I thought, starting to get nervous. That would make sense I guess. Get players to drop their guard then ambush them.
I drew my sword.
Something flashed overhead, and I swung around quickly, slicing through the air with my blade.
“All right, come out!” I shouted stupidly. Whatever it was wasn’t going to respond to me yelling at it. My voice echoed off the walls of the tunnel as my eyes searched for danger, but there really just wasn’t anything there.
With a heavy sigh, I let my sword hang at my side. As I did, my blade passed over my bauble, casting a shadow across the wall beside me. It was then that I saw it.
A tiny flicker of light, hidden behind a tree root protruding down from the earth above, that had been completely obscured by the light from my bauble. Quickly, I put it back in my inventory.
Without its illumination, I was finally able to see it—a tiny strobe of light emanating from a hole in the wall just above my head. Brushing the tree root aside, I pulled at the earth with my hands. To my surprise, it crumbled away easily and fell to reveal a hidden tunnel.
“Hmmmm,” I said with a smile. “Maybe not as lame as I thought.”
52
The Sparkling Arlan Stone
The flickering light grew brighter as I progressed down the hidden tunnel, which had begun to slope down steeply in front of me. With each step, I felt as though I was walking into the center of the Earth, or the center of Carrethen or something.
As I progressed, the walls around me began to change. Veins of gold and purple glowed softly like exposed power lines, pulsing slowly as if they were alive.
They grew in number as I continued on, and as the tunnel began to open up ahead of me, they had almost completely taken over the walls, enveloping me in their light. It was hard to believe that a few minutes ago I’d needed my bauble to see.
I heard a low humming sound, like bass, as the tunnel opened into a cave, its walls completely made up of a complex pattern of the glowing gold and purple lines.
The cave was absolutely massive, and I began to understand why I had gone down so deep—there wouldn’t have been room for such an enormous cave up near the surface. A beam of golden light emanated down from the ceiling where a single stone pillar stood.
It was made of a white rock, similar to marble, and looked like something that wouldn’t have been out of place in ancient Rome. Beneath it was a crystal clear pool of water that was surrounded by a cluster of flowers, almost like roses, but with golden stems and purple petals.
There were no obvious threats in the room, but considering I’d never seen anything even remotely like it in all of my time in Carrethen, I kept my sword at the ready as I walked up to the pedestal.
As I got closer, I saw a small item on top of it—a tiny stone the color of faded gold. On its own, it would have been brilliant, but compared to the sheer intensity of the rest of the room, it was almost bland. It glowed slightly, not unlike the veins running through the walls around me. I inspected it.
Sparkling Arlan Stone.
“Hmmm…” I thought out loud as I stepped right up to the pedestal. “Sparkling Arlan Stone. Why do I feel like I’ve heard that before—”
But before I could finish my sentence, the realization hit me.
“Say, none of you have come upon a Sparkling Arlan Stone in your trave
ls, have you?”
Boddry, the merchant NPC we’d met the first time we came to Stoneburg.
“If you find one, bring it to me and I’ll hook you up with something real nice!”
We’d all shrugged it off, dismissing it as some sort of low-level garbage quest that would never amount to anything, but here I was, 52 levels later, staring at one of them.
“Wow,” I said, addressing the room as though it was actually watching me. “Can’t be a low-level quest if it’s here, right? What the Hell is this thing?”
I started to get more excited as I bent forward for a better view. There wasn’t anything remarkable about it. It was just a small golden stone that looked like it could fit in the palm of my hand. It was slightly oblong, and definitely looked like something that had been specifically designed and not randomly generated.
I reached forward to pick it up but stopped short.
“Yeah, right…” I said out loud, taking a step back. “I’ve seen Indiana Jones. I know how this works!”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist, or an overly experienced gamer to recognize a trap when they saw one, and this was certainly that. There was no way those lame monsters out front were the only ones guarding this item, and it had to be pretty special if an NPC in town was reminding newbies to keep an eye out for it. My guess was this Sparkling Arlan Stone was part of an epic quest of some kind, and that meant that getting back to Stoneburg with it wasn’t going to be easy.
I looked around the cave, trying to make out any potential traps that might spring on me when I took the Stone. Call of Carrethen wasn’t known for its traps, but they did spring up occasionally. A bed of spikes in a dungeon. A floor trap with a nasty debuff. Poisonous spores in the swamp that dealt damage over time. But as I searched the cavern, I didn’t see anything that worried me.
“Well,” I said out loud as though I was speaking to the game designers. “I know I’m in for some shit when I grab this. But I’m gonna do it anyway.”
Without waiting, I reached out and snatched the Sparkling Arlan Stone from the pedestal and stuffed it into my inventory.
Then my sword was back in my hands and I had my back to the pedestal, waiting for whatever inevitable ambush was about to be sprung upon me.
But nothing moved inside the cave. The purple and gold walls pulsed around me like nothing had changed. The crystal clear pool at the center of the room was still and nothing moved.
“Huh…” I remarked with genuine surprise. Was it really going to be that easy? Maybe I was wrong about the Sparkling Arlan Stone. Maybe it was just the start item to a longer quest chain and the real hardships still lay ahead of me. I felt myself start to relax, but I wasn’t putting my sword away. Not until I was back outside.
Leaving the mysterious cavern behind me, I made my way back up to the main tunnel. The purple and gold began to fade and vanished entirely as I stepped out from the hidden entrance I’d discovered earlier. Again, I equipped my Glowbug Bauble for the walk back to the surface.
My mind was swimming with thoughts of what I’d just stumbled upon and what the reward would be.
An amazing suit of armor?
A weapon?
Or maybe a magical item that would increase my attributes. It could be anything.
D had told me about an item back in Everquest… Journeyman’s Boots, that increased your movement speed and made travel easier. That game didn’t allow you to increase your quickness, so an item like that was really valuable.
Did anything like that exist in Call of Carrethen? As I made my way back up the tunnel, I found myself actually excited for the first time ever. But then, when I realized what I was actually going to have to do to start the quest, I felt my heart sink.
I had to return to Stoneburg.
And returning to Stoneburg meant running into my friends again.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want to see them. I did. Of course I did. I’d been getting lonely without them, and I wondered every day how they were doing. It would be great to see them again, but would they feel the same way?
53
Bleed
Mountaintop.
The portal spun in front of me like it did every day, only today was different. Today I was going to take it.
“Here we go,” I said out loud. I stood there, staring at the spinning rings that would take me back to Stoneburg. “Okay, here we go!”
I lifted my right leg but put it back down again.
Damn it… I thought as my nerves got the better of me. It seemed like such a stupid thing to be nervous over. I wasn’t nervous to go Ice Golem hunting or to explore the cave where I’d found the Sparkling Arlan Stone. But I was nervous to go back to Stoneburg and see my friends.
“Some things are more important than others, I guess.”
The portal hummed in front of me, and I tried to think about what I would find when I reached Stoneburg.
Cavey would probably have scouts at the edge of town, but they wouldn’t be as high level as me. But I didn’t want to get into a fight. Maybe I could avoid them and just race into town and find Cavey, so he could tell them I was friendly.
“But that’s not what you’re worried about, Jack,” I told myself. Fighting wasn’t the issue. I wasn’t worried about combat with strangers. I was worried about what my friends were going to say after not seeing me for two months.
“Well, there’s no use standing here all day,” I said, taking a deep breath and glancing over my shoulder. “See ya, Frank!”
And with that, I stepped into the portal.
After hesitating for so long, the trip through portal space actually seemed to take longer than usual. But finally, the blue and purple walls began to strip away, and I was back on solid ground.
“Mountaintop” really should have been named hilltop. Having been to the Iron Mountains, the bluff I was standing on was nothing more than a slight incline in the landscape. Stoneburg was directly to the South, and I wasted no time moving forward.
After so much time in the North, not being surrounded by snow was strange. The area around Stoneburg is where I’d begun my time in Carrethen, and I felt a pang of nostalgia in my chest as I passed a camp of low-level Horngrin that completely ignored me. They were only level 4 and knew better than to attack me. I smiled to myself as I remembered just how hard of a time I’d had with them when I was first leveling.
To the West, I saw the Bandit Tower. Alfrin was there, and I realized I’d never thought too much about whether or not NPCs in Carrethen respawned after they were killed.
“Guess so.” I chuckled.
Finally, I reached the tree line above Stoneburg and looked out over the town. It, of course, looking exactly as I remembered. All the familiar buildings were there, but one thing had changed dramatically—the population.
Stoneburg was absolutely swarming with people, none of whom I recognized. But as I looked closer, I saw they were all wearing the same tabard with a red drop of blood on the front.
Bleed.
They were absolutely everywhere. The town square was packed with players of all levels. There was a mass clustered around the Bindstone, and a line leading out of Gehman’s hut. New recruits no doubt waiting for whatever the smith had to provide them.
Did that mean Kattenschind was working for Bleed? Or had Cavey’s entire guild been wiped out? It was useless to try and scan the crowd for him, there were simply too many of them, and it would be equally as useless to head down there and look for him. It was a miracle I hadn’t already been spotted.
“Intruder!” a voice rang out.
As if on cue.
Two scouts had spotted me and were pointing their halberds in my direction. Quickly, I leapt to my feet and ran.
“Get him!”
I looked behind me as a horde of them came bursting into the trees in pursuit. It was like a horde of fast-zombies chasing after me with mindless determination, their identical tabards fluttering in the breeze as they ran.
I was faster th
an most of them, but two of them were managing to keep up with me. In fact, they were gaining on me.
How can that be!?
I was level 75 and had started the game with 20 levels on everyone. The exploit spot had been fixed, was it really possible that members of some lame zerg guild had actually surpassed me? I couldn’t believe it, but they were definitely catching up to me, and fast.
An arrow struck me in the back. It wasn’t a lot of damage, but if the whole group swarmed me with attacks, I could be in some actual trouble.
I hung a left around a grove of trees and ran straight through two camps of Horngrin. Even at close range, low-level monsters would aggro you, which led to a group of eight of them chasing after me, forming a wall between me and the Bleed members pursuing me.
An arrow from one of the Bleed players struck one of the Horngrin chasing me. It howled, and I heard the pack stop behind me and turn on them.
“You idiot!” one of them shouted.
“I was aiming for him!”
It was exactly what I wanted to happen. The Horngrin were now locked onto the Bleed, and even though they were low level and would be dispatched quickly, it would slow them down and give me time to lose them.
But when I looked back, the two fast players were still hot on my heels.
How?
They didn’t look that high level by their gear, which was basic plate mail, and they were clearly both melee characters. But they were fast, and that meant lots of experience, which meant lots of levels.
I wasn’t going to lose them—not in this area. I had no choice but to turn and face them.
Just what I wanted to avoid, I thought as I slid to a halt and drew my sword.
54
Superior Numbers
The two men coming at me drew their weapons as they closed the distance between us. One held an enormous two-handed battle-axe, and the other, a set of short swords.
The one with the axe leapt at me first.
He swung so fast I could hardly believe it. The blow didn’t do a lot of damage, but before I could react, he was swinging again. The man with the short swords leapt at me and unleashed a flurry of blows, and before I knew it, I’d lost 25 percent of my health. And it was then that I understood.
Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1) Page 23
