by Dante Doom
“Well, minimum entry to get in there is Level 20. Minimum level to survive is somewhere around 35.”
“Well… Level 20’s not too far off,” Sang said, “but 35 seems like a long time.”
“Yeah, we’re looking at a minimum of at least six months of full-time play to get to that kind of level.”
“Urg, we don’t have time for that at all,” Sang said. “How about this? I’m fairly confident in my hacking skills, so why don’t we just—”
“Look, the fact that Draco hasn’t just swooped out of the sky to murder or kidnap us is miracle enough,” Van said. “Let’s not push our luck by starting to hack around. We’re going to have to play this the normal way.”
“The normal way is going to take forever!” Sang snapped. “We seriously don’t have that kind of time.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it? I’m just one poorly put together bard! We’d need an entire freaking army if we were going to go into Bloodrock and capture their king.”
“Is… is that possible?” Sang asked. “Can we get an army?”
“What? That’s crazy—you’d have to build a town first. That takes forever and…” Van trailed off as a flash of inspiration struck him. “Aha! Of course! Sivlander built his own town! Back when I was running Sivlander, he created an entire settlement known as Silver Peak.”
“For real?” Sang asked.
“Of course, and it makes so much sense! That place was filled to the brim with people who liked my style of leadership and my stances on treasure-splitting. Before I was forced away from my old character, I had nearly 150 NPCS who were in that village, and at least 30 players who’d pledged to be defenders of the town. All we have to do is reach Silver Peak, tell everyone who I actually am, rally up a few higher-level players, and we can march straight to Bloodrock. They can power-level us along the way. It’s perfect.”
Sang slowly nodded at that. “Van, that is brilliant! It’s about time we stopped worrying about getting jumped by groups of people!”
“Awesome!” Van said as he pulled out his map. “And all we have to do is pass through the Lagoon of Terror, into the Stormswept Valley of Nightmares, take a quick shortcut through the Wretched Barrows Of Eternal Darkness, and we’ll be there in no time.”
Sang stared at the map for a few minutes. “Is there any way around those terrible, terrible places?”
“Despite the names, the Lagoon of Terror is surprisingly safe,” Van replied as he picked up Jet and slung the dragon over his shoulder. “Onward! To victory!”
2
Sang nervously glanced at the horde of children that was following them. Everything had been going well up until Van saw a fork in the road that led to a place called Drohm Teg. He’d then begun excitedly babbling about video game stuff, ranting about a few things that she’d had trouble following, and then taken all of her gold and made a dash for the “black markets of Drohm Teg.” In his excitement, he had completely left her behind.
Now she was following Van through a maze of merchant stalls and huts in some kind of poorly lit marsh. The floor squished beneath her feet as she kept her eyes on the potential pickpockets roaming the area. The smell was beyond offensive; it was as if someone had collected all of their moldy socks and then cooked them for a solid three hours.
“Here it is!” Van shouted as he rushed up to one of the stalls. There was a nasty-looking man with an eyepatch sitting by a wooden table. He was quietly whittling away at a piece of bark, never taking his gaze off of Sang.
“So, uh, what are you looking for, exactly?” Sang asked as several orange dots appeared on her mini-map. The orange dots indicated the presence of players who were marked as bandits, meaning it was perfectly acceptable to kill them. She glanced over to see six players all standing amongst themselves, talking and laughing as they shopped.
“Drohm Teg is one of the best black markets in this entire game,” Van explained as he fiddled with several pieces of jewelry on the table. “It’s unmarked, hard to find, and most players end up here by accident. You can find just about anything you need—even stuff that’s been officially banned by the game.”
“How does that work?” Sang asked. “How could a player sell an item that was banned by the developers?”
“Oh, I have no idea, but I fully believe the rumor,” Van said as he picked up a small necklace with a piece of amethyst in the middle of a steel box. “Here it is... the answer to my problems.”
“It’s a piece of junk,” Sang said as she reviewed the item.
Amethyst Necklace
Class: Junk
Value: 1 GP
“Maybe to the average, untrained eye. But to someone like me? This is a fine, fine treasure. Hard to locate, too.”
“Maybe because no one wants to locate a piece of trash; it’s not even worth anything,” Sang replied. The orange dots on the mini-map began to move closer to her, causing her to straighten up a little bit. She could see that a few of the players were beginning to take notice of them, and were moving very slowly to spread throughout the stalls.
“Five hundred gold!” Van said as he dropped almost all of their gold on the table. “Oh, and some trinkets, too!” He threw a few of the wooden charms that Sang had been crafting in her spare time on the table. The man with the eyepatch slowly nodded at him and leaned forward, sliding all of the gold towards himself with one arm.
“Van, are you nuts? You just gave him all of our money! And my trinkets! Which I kind of liked,” Sang protested.
“Trust me, Sang. This is well worth the price of admission!” Van said as he held the necklace up triumphantly.
“Is it worth a fight?” Sang replied as she drew her bow.
“I thought we were past the point of pointlessly arguing about everything,” Van replied as he turned around to see that they were completely surrounded by players.
“Wasn’t talking about you,” Sang hissed.
“Hey there,” said one of the players; she was a tall woman with strawberry blond hair. She wore leather armor and carried two wicked daggers. “The name’s McKenzie, but around here, they call me Captain McKenzie.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Van said, bowing. “But as you see, we just traded all of our gold for some worthless crap, so robbing us would be a colossal waste of time, and I can guarantee you that my ally here will ensure at least one of you dies before you stab us over and over again.”
“Wow, way to sound intimidating, Van,” Sang groaned.
Captain McKenzie chuckled at that. “Her inventory seems pretty full. Now, before you begin to fuss about this being a robbery, you do need to realize that we provide security to this black market. My team has worked diligently to make sure that there are no other bandits in this area for miles and miles.”
“No bandits except for you,” Sang growled.
“Come now—is it really banditry if we charge a security fee for using our property? I mean, we guard this land, we cultivate it, we watch over it. Really, it would be silly for us not to charge people for coming here,” McKenzie said with a curt little laugh.
“What’s your price?” Sang asked.
“Those arrows of fire seem very handy. They return when you use them, right? Sounds high-value enough for a trade. So, you can just hand them over to my little band of merry men and we’ll make sure you are nice and safe in your visit to Drohm Teg.”
Sang glanced at Van. The bandits were only Level 12, a few lower than Sang, but there were six of them. At this kind of range, it was going to be a tough fight. At the same time, she really didn’t want to hand over her best weapon to these thugs. Van shrugged at her. He didn’t have any gear other than a crappy necklace and a bagpipe, so there wasn’t much he had to lose.
“Tell you what, I’m willing to make you a one time offer,” Sang said. “If you and your merry band of jackasses decide to take a step back and reevaluate your life choices, me and my companion here won’t brutally kill each and every one of you.”
This caused McKenzie to laugh. “Looks like you have some guts! I like it. In fact, I’d like to see those guts all over the floor... kill them, boys!”
The bandits all chuckled as they drew their scimitars.
“What the hell is that!” Van shouted, pointing in the opposite direction and causing the bandits to immediately turn around and look behind them.
“Holy crap, it worked!” Van cried as he scrambled away from the bandits, climbing up one of the merchant stalls and running across the little hut-like rooftops.
“Are you kidding me? We actually fell for that?” McKenzie screamed as Sang also ran off into the distance. “Chase them! Chase them!”
The six bandits split up, three following after Van and three chasing Sang. The throngs of people shopping in the stalls paid no mind to Sang and gave her plenty of cover as she ran in and out of the stands, trying her best to lose them.
She dove into a large pile of garbage and held her breath. She could hear the footsteps of the pursuers running right past her. Sang grinned widely as she activated her Stealth. Her skin turned translucent and the words You Are Hidden appeared. Her enemies were scattered and confused. She had very little interest in just running away, though. On the contrary, it was time for the hunt to begin.
Slowly, she slipped out of the pile of trash and began to search the area for her targets. A surprise attack with her flaming arrows would probably be enough to instantly kill most of them. They were all the same class, rogues—meaning that they had low hit points, but could deal sufficient damage with sneak attacks. They primarily specialized in using poisons, as well, making their weapons far more of a pain to deal with. Fortunately for Sang, they wouldn’t see her coming.
She slowly approached two of the bandits, Kevar and Marvin, who were arguing with each other.
“Look, I’m just saying we should look in the lagoon,” Marvin said. “It’s not too far, and she was probably fast enough to get there.”
“The way she vanished means she’s using Stealth; she’s probably gonna hide in this marketplace until we give up searching,” Kevar said.
Sang aimed her bow at Marvin and loosed an arrow right into the back of his head. The words CRITICAL! SNEAK HIT! rose above his skull and he crumpled to the ground, dead in an instant.
“Aw, crap, she’s here!” Kevar shouted as he spun around and grabbed one of his throwing knives off of his bandolier.
Sang fired two arrows into his chest, using her multi-shot skill. The damage was high enough to drop him to the ground, but he wasn’t dead yet.
“Ahh, I surrender, I surrender!” the bandit yelped, raising his hands as he lay in a prone position.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you!” Sang said as she strung another arrow onto her bow.
“Aw, come on, we’re just bandits! No need to—”
His words were interrupted as she delivered the killing shot to the side of his cranium. It was harsh, but she was worried that he’d use some kind of poison on her when she wasn’t suspecting it.
“Two down and four to go,” she whispered as she reactivated Stealth mode. A horrific blaring of bagpipes in the distance indicated that Van was probably in some kind of trouble. This was perfect; as long as he was distracting the majority of them, she’d be able to take them out. She glanced at her map again and noticed that there was still an orange dot nearby, although she couldn’t physically see anyone around her. Her spotting skill was probably high enough to see that there was a person, but not high enough to actually see the hidden individual. She’d have to watch her back if she was going to survive.
As she swiftly navigated through the streets, she kept her eyes on that orange dot; it kept following her, but each time she’d look around, the bandit was nowhere to be seen. Sang wasn’t particularly sure what to do when her spotting skill was far too low to identify her foe. Fighting an invisible rogue armed with poisonous daggers did not sound like a fun idea. Even though she was in Stealth mode, she had a suspicion that the dot following her had a high enough skill to see where she was moving. She had to think quickly or else a sneak attack would probably one-shot her.
Sang knelt down on the ground and opened up her satchel. Jet was quietly sleeping in her bag. For a little dragon, he seemed like a very sleepy creature. He opened one eye and looked up at her. “Help me find a bad guy?” she asked. Jet yawned a little and climbed out of the bag, stretching his arms and legs. He looked around and began to sniff the air. Immediately, he began to hiss and growl at an abandoned merchant stall.
Sang drew her bow and pointed it at the stand. “I see you!” she lied. “Come out and I won’t kill you!”
“Aw, man, a dragon?” replied a voice from the merchant stall. “I can’t fight one of those! I surrender.” A short man wielding two daggers emerged from the stall and dropped his weapons.
Sang grinned as she released an arrow right into his chest, killing him immediately. “That’s what you get for stealing from innocent players!” she shouted as she quickly looted him before running toward the screeching bagpipe.
“Bad?” the dragon said as it scampered alongside her.
“Yeah, really bad! He wanted to steal my stuff!”
“Surrender?” the dragon asked.
“Oh, uh, yeah. I don’t really take prisoners…” Sang said, before realizing the dragon was just repeating a word it had heard. She knew Van wouldn’t like her method of dealing with problems, but the last thing she wanted to worry about was taking prisoners who would probably just shiv her in the kidney later.
“No prisoners!” Jet cheerfully said.
“Perfect battle cry!” Sang replied as she scooped Jet up and put him back in her bag. He was turning out to be a handy little asset. While, officially, he didn’t seem to have any kind of level or stats, he had a strong sense of smell. That would come in handy on plenty of occasions.
She reached the edge of the murky town to see that Van was tied to a tree and had been stripped down to his underwear. One of the bandits was trying to play the bagpipe and was somehow playing it better than Van could. Captain McKenzie and another bandit were busy laughing at Van’s predicament.
“Come on, let me go! I already told you, I have no idea where she went! We aren’t even friends—I was actually her slave. You guys rescued me!” Van said.
“I highly doubt that,” McKenzie replied as she took out her cutlass and placed it against Van’s cheek. “Now, you better start talking before I cut that pretty little face of yours.”
“Joke’s on you, this face is nowhere close to pretty! My charisma score’s so low that you’d probably improve it by scarring me!” Van taunted her.
“We just want what is due to us,” the captain said, oblivious to the fact that Sang was slowly advancing towards them. The bagpipes were giving Sang a surroundings bonus of +15% to her Stealth, due to the noise. It was high enough of a bonus to where none of the bandits would be able to see her, meaning she could probably kill two of the lower level ones quickly. McKenzie herself was Level 14, but was still a rogue, meaning that she wouldn’t do that well in open combat against a ranger.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Van said, “I’ll make you a deal. If you give me ten million gold pieces, I’ll tell you where she is.”
Before McKenzie could respond, Sang fired two volleys into the bandit bagpiper and his companion, killing them immediately.
“Ah, crap!” McKenzie shouted as she spun around, holding her cutlass high. “How did you escape my crew?”
“I hid from them, and then I progressively hunted them down,” Sang said, “killing them one by one. And the best part was? I even killed the ones who surrendered!”
“Well, that’s just great,” McKenzie said, glancing around. It was clear that she was looking for some means of escape.
“Don’t be thinking about running, Captain,” Sang instructed as she aimed her bow at the woman. “You’ve got a lot to answer for.”
“Oh, and for what? I tried to rob you, boo-hoo.
At least me and my team kept this place free of all the other bandits. Now, without a good crew, this place will be swarming with undesirables who will just murder anyone they see.”
“Wow, you make a really good case for why I shouldn’t shoot you. You were just providing a community service by robbing us!” Sang growled. She felt the jumpiness in her fingers, too; it wouldn’t be that hard to kill the woman, but maybe there would be some kind of advantage in letting her live. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you?”
“Okay, uh, how about this? I give you all of my stuff and the key to my private quarters? There’s plenty of treasure in there! You let me go, and I’ll skip town.”
Sang frowned. It seemed like an odd deal, for the captain to give away all of her stuff. If she died, she would lose everything anyway, so it hardly seemed like a bargain. “If I kill you, I get all of your stuff anyway.”
“Not my key!” she replied. “My key is a personal object, meaning you can only have it if I gift it to you!”
“Eh, I dunno. Thoughts, Van?”
“Let’s take it!” Van said. “She’s probably got a ton of treasure in her hideout. And hopefully a better pair of boots, because these are seriously two sizes too small. I don’t even understand how I managed to jam my feet into these things.”
“Alright, deal,” Sang said. “Hand me the key and then get out of here.”
“Thank you!” McKenzie said, “oh, thank you!” She threw her key to Sang, dropped her entire inventory on the ground, and then darted off into the lagoon.
“Nice work, Sang! I see my clever plan of getting tied to a tree and tortured worked just as intended!” Van said as she began to cut him free.
“Yeah, definitely worked according to plan,” she mumbled. “Why was McKenzie so freaked out about dying? I mean, giving up her private stash just to avoid a few days’ worth of skill point loss?”
“Actually, after gaining a certain amount of player kills, bandits become Marked for Death,” Van said. “Meaning that, when they are killed by another player, they can’t respawn. Essentially, they lose their favorite character.”
