“I think one of them might have survived the fall into the chasm,” Baby chimed in.
“And found the food you tossed in after it,” Micaela added, looking accusingly at Rose.
“How was I supposed to know?” Rose asked, her voice slightly raised.
Micaela looked like she was about to rebut when thunder rumbled through the sky above us and words filled with power, filled our minds.
Kill it, save my people!
Quest Alert: The Gremlin Eater Must Die! (Recommended Level 12-14 & 10 or more Adventurers)
The God Ivaldi has set you a dangerous task, to kill the Gremlin Eater that you and your companions foolishly created through your own ignorance.
Reward: Experience, Collectible Trophy, Hidden
Do you accept this quest?
Yes
No
“We caused this, we’ll finish it,” I said, accepting the consequences of our actions and the quest.
“Was it me, or did the God Ivaldi just sound pissed?” Heath asked, appearing out of nowhere.
“Where is Ash?” I asked.
“Right there,” said Heath, pointing over his shoulder to Gras who was walking toward us.
I wanted to ask Heath if Gras got up to anything, but with Digren there, it wasn’t an ideal time.
“And yes, the God Ivaldi did not sound happy,” Olaf said.
“The God Ivaldi, he spoke to you?” Digren asked, looking at us in a combination of shock and awe.
“Yes, he ordered us to save his people,” I answered.
Digren teared up instantly. “Thank you . . . thank you and the Great God Ivaldi. I know now, we can win. If God Ivaldi is with us, how can we lose?”
I didn’t want to ruin his hope for success, but a quest that recommended 10 or more adventurers sounded less than favorable. Also, that the quest was recommended for a higher level didn’t instill much confidence. I was hoping the runner Digren sent to the city was smart enough to shout it loud enough for other players to also hear the call. With a recommended 10 adventurers, that would suggest we would need at least another tank and a healer in addition to damage dealers. That was also hoping that some players had started to show up.
“Well, I need to see if I can put my gun back together while we wait,” said Olaf. “Digren, do you have a workbench I can make use of?”
“Sure, follow me,” said Digren, leading Olaf away. He stopped short and turned back to us, “We will be going back in the mine in 2-hours, be ready to go by then.” With that, he resumed leading Olaf away.
“I suppose if he is going to work on that, I can go into the spirit plane to train my bears up,” said Micaela, following just behind her husband and Digren, presumably to find someplace comfortable to sit down.
“Ash, let’s go see if we can’t get a few more bears or rock giants,” Rose called to our wagon driver, making plans for Baby and me at the same time.
Gras rolled his eyes but started toward the barn his oxen were stabled in.
“Baby can heal, Jack, work your magic again and I’ll focus on tanking,” said Rose. “If we’re going into a boss fight, it is probably for the best if we get as much training in as possible before we go.”
“Heath, care to join us?” I asked.
“I’m going to sneak around here a bit. See if anyone of these fine upstanding Dwarves knows anything about the source of the gremlins. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I smell a rat,” Heath said, butchering the British accent as usual.
I agreed with Heath, something about this was way too convenient. I wanted to ask him about what Gras got up to, but it could wait for now. I had two hours of casting spells to look forward to.
“Okay, so Baby, we’re going to do this just like in Hurlig Ridge,” said Rose.
“I don’t want to be the bait,” Baby pouted.
“Sis, we need as many monsters and beasts as possible as fast as possible, you acting as the bait works best,” said Rose.
“Oh, where is Vision when you need him,” Baby whined.
“I’m here, I can be the bait,” the wolf pup volunteered as he appeared from a ghostly haze that wasn’t there a moment before.
“Even better, you can both play bait,” said Rose.
“We better not die,” said Baby, zipping into the air and rushing ahead of us.
“Vision, if you think you’re in danger, disappear, do not risk yourself,” I ordered the wolf pup.
“I can do that,” said Vision, vanishing from sight.
“Ash, you’re on clean-up duty,” Rose added as a final order.
Gras quirked his head to the side.
“We kill, you scavenge and load the wagon,” Rose ordered.
Ash rubbed his fingers together in the sign for money.
“You get an equal share of whatever we kill,” Rose said. “We need to train and using our combat skill is far more important right now than leveling up Jack’s ‘Scavenging’ skill.”
Gras frowned and huffed but didn’t argue beyond that.
An almost non-stop flow of bears and rock giants followed from there. Vision was the more cautious, which I greatly appreciated. He would bring one bear or rock giant at a time for us to fight and kill. Baby, on the other hand, threw caution to the wind. She would be gone for ten to fifteen minutes at a time before she came flying back with three to five bears or rock giants following after her.
For Rose, it was great practice multi-tanking. She got hit hard, but it never seemed to phase her when her HP would dip, she had complete confidence in Baby’s ability to heal.
Once Baby handed off to Rose, she picked up her usual task of healing, interspersed with the occasional bolt of mana from her wand. I was a little jealous at Baby’s seeming ability to be able to just throw around mana like it was nothing at all.
Meanwhile, killing that many monsters at once was rather slow, my magic damage was subpar. Even if that was the point of training like this, I felt bad that I wasn’t pulling my own magical weight.
In those two extra hours . . . well more like one and a half, we killed eighteen bears and seven rock giants. I found myself questioning why we didn’t do this the first time we went hunting.
Gras, naturally, looked less than pleased. He wasn’t able to scavenge even an eighth of the bears we killed and ended up needing to burn the bodies. When asked why, Gras played the mute and gave us a funny facial expression with his arms out in front of himself and a foot dragging behind him. I didn’t get it. But Baby did, apparently, leaving dead bodies lying around was just asking for a zombie outbreak. Suddenly, I found it perfectly reasonable to burn the bodies. I also made myself a promise to go back to the magic shop and buy myself a fire spell, preferably the spell Gras was using.
I hated to waste that much meat, but with our time constraints as they were, it couldn’t be avoided. In the end, adding three bears to the wagon left us three bears short of a full wagonload, it was better than nothing but still not very satisfying.
Returning to the mining camp, I was hoping to see dozens of soldiers and spellcasters from Hammerton, there were two soldiers and a single Mage. The two soldiers I recognized from that first morning, Denslo and Dinger. The mage was new, his nameplate read
Digren motioned us over to talk to him and the Mage.
“I’ll check in with Digren, can you go with Ash to square away the wagon?” I asked Rose.
“Yeah, just don’t get into any trouble without me,” said Rose.
“No promises,” I replied, grinning and rushing ahead before Rose could reply.
“Mr. Jacko, this is Mage Zid, a Fire Mage Apprentice,” Digren introduced the Mage as I approached.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Zid. “I am an Apprentice Fire Mage, obviously I specialize in fire magic. I do hope you are as blessed as Digren claims you are.”
“And these are Guards Denslo and Dinger,” Digren introduced the pair of sold
iers with him.
“We’ve met, but it is nice to see you both again,” I said, shaking each of their hands in turn. “I don’t suppose any adventurers followed you up here?” I asked, hoping we got lucky.
“Matter of fact, some did,” said Denslo. “I tried to shoo them off, I told them this was Hammerton business, but the daft fools would not hear of it.”
“They are in my office, signing the proper forms,” Digren added helpfully. “The leader claims to be a Steam Mage though he said he only knows fire magic at present.”
That was a good sign, another Fire Mage could only help us.
“You said it was a group, do you know the group make-up?” I asked.
“They have a Blackstone Dwarf Paladin, a follower of the God Geb, no idea who that is,” started Digren.
“Egyptian God,” I said.
“Meh, do not know why any self-respecting Dwarf would pledge to follow any God except for the Great God Ivaldi or one of his kin. Anyway, there was a Desert Dwarf, a Combat Medic I believe. A Beast Mistress, an Elf Druid and a Harpy Enhancer,” Digren explained.
That was good for us, if the Paladin was a tank that is.
“What’s an enhancer?” I asked.
“An Enhancer is an amazing buffer, best you’ll ever meet,” someone answered before Digren could, drawing our attention to him,
“Have we met?” I asked, while the clothes were unfamiliar the face wasn’t.
“I don’t think so, where did you level up?” Icyhot asked.
“I started in Hurlig Ridge,” I replied, then it hit me. This was the guy that asked Trinico about becoming a Fire and Ice Mage. Something about making burning ice or frozen fire maybe . . . either way, it was kind of silly.
“Yeah, must have seen me there,” said Icyhot. “My whole group got their start in Hurlig Ridge.”
This gave me a lot more hope. There was a good chance this group had cleared the Hidden Norse Temple before leaving the province. If that was the case, then they knew how to work as a team.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking Icyhot’s hand. “Have you and your team cleared the Hidden Norse Temple?”
“Yeah, just a couple days before we logged out for our week. It was such a good group, we agreed to meet up and see what kind of trouble we could find this month,” said Icyhot. “No more than a day back online and exploring Root City when I get these flyers about a war between Dwarf cities and I thought to myself, now that could be a lot of fun. It got even better when we arrived in Hammerton and no more than five minutes later some runner comes barreling into the city shouting about gremlins and causing an absolute panic. It was mad. Anyway, we followed, heard the details and now here we are.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Is your Paladin a tank?”
“Yeah, why?” Icyhot asked.
“Got a big quest, recommends 10 or more, you and yours want in?” I asked, leaving off the level recommendation for the quest. I didn’t want to scare them off.
“You bet we do,” said Icyhot happily.
“Jack, who’s this?” Rose asked, coming up from behind me.
“Rose Thorns, meet Icyhot Jelloshot,” I introduced the adventurer. “Rose is our tank.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Icyhot, shaking Rose’s hand.
“Icy, are we done here yet? It’s absolutely filthy,” a voice complained, coming from the same direction Icyhot came from. It was a small birdman, not much bigger than Baby was.
Icyhot turned. “Jay, over here,” he waved his companion over.
“I said, are we done here yet? Or do you really intend to drag me into that mine?” Jay asked, hovering about a foot off the ground.
“Jay, I told you, if you really want to advertise your wares, you need to adventure more. If they see your products in action, people will commission you to make some for them,” Icyhot replied, sounding a little exasperated, as if they had this conversation more than once.
“And a mine was your brilliant idea to do that?” Jay asked.
Icyhot groaned. “Jay, trust me, please.”
“Fine,” said Jay, rolling his eyes. “But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”
“Understood,” said Icyhot. “Anyway, where is everyone else?”
“Kimmie insisted on reading the fine print. Duncan went to find a workbench, something about his sight being out of alignment by a degree. Rock and Dawn went straight to the bar as if those two would go anywhere else. I swear, Rock is in heaven around all these Dwarves, all they do is talk about drinking, digging, and fighting,” Jay expounded on the state of his group.
“Alright, can you go get Kimmie, tell her we are running with another group and we’re going into the mine in . . .” Icyhot paused to look at Digren.
“15-minutes,” Digren replied.
“Thanks, Dig,” said Icyhot before looking back to his companion. “10-minutes.”
“But he just said 15,” Jay protested.
“Yeah, and with Kimmie, if you give her more time, she will use every last second of it. We’ll meet up at the cave entrance,” Icyhot answered, explaining his reasoning.
“If your companion Duncan is at the workshop, that works out well for us,” said Rose. “Olaf and Micaela should both be there now.”
“Right, lead on, Miss Rose,” said Icyhot, all smiles.
“Hang on,” Rose said before turning back. “Baby, Ash, let’s go!”
Gras marched along, looking less than pleased to have Baby flying over his shoulder, watching his every move.
“Is that an NPC?” Icyhot asked.
“Ash is our wagon driver, we hired him out for the rest of the month,” I explained, not feeling the need to give him all the details about Gras’s situation.
“Nice, I didn’t even know you can do that,” said Icyhot.
“So far, the quests have been mostly gathering based, trying to earn enough reputation with Hammerton so they will give us a tougher quest. In fact, this one here is the first non-gathering quest we’ve gotten,” Rose explained.
“And we’re jumping the line, even better,” Icyhot crowed excitedly. “Any incursions with Anvilton yet?”
“They ambushed us when we first arrived,” Baby volunteered. “It was nasty business, would have been so much worse if not for Bye-bye’s spell.”
“What spell?” Icyhot asked.
I knew there wasn’t much use in hiding it. I was going to end up using ‘Justice Bringer’ a lot this month to deal with the player killers in Anvilton. That didn’t excuse Baby for blabbing. I was about to let her know that when Rose did it for me.
“Baby, Sis, not cool,” said Rose.
As if suddenly realizing what she did, Baby cringed. “Sorry Bye-bye, I forgot that not everyone knows about it.”
“It’s fine,” I said, reassuring her. I wasn’t overly pleased by it, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Looking back to Icyhot, I explained.
His response was naturally, “Hax!”
“Isn’t it?” Rose asked.
“Well, it just ensures I will never kill another player with that kind of a level gap, not that I would kill a player anyway except in sanctioned PvP or self-defense, but you get the point,” said Icyhot.
The workbench was inside a small shed behind the barracks. Micaela sat just outside with her legs crossed under her and her eyes closed.
“Hey, Micaela, time to go,” I said, knowing Micaela wouldn’t even twitch.
“Um, she’s not waking, should I give her a shake?” Icyhot asked.
“Nah, she heard, sometimes it just takes a minute to get back to her body,” I explained.
“Back to her body?” Icyhot questioned. “Last time I checked, there was no such thing as AF
K in this game.”
I chuckled. AFK or ‘Away from Keyboard’ was a good descriptor for what Micaela was doing.
“She’s spirit walking,” Baby explained. “It’s a kind of out of body thing Shamans can do.”
“That sounds kind of awesome,” said Icyhot.
“So, where did you get those robes?” Baby asked.
“Oh, Jay made them. He’s an Enhancer and a tailor, so, not only are his buffs the strongest in the game, he can make far and away the best clothes a crafter can make,” Icyhot explained.
“Does he do Fairy dresses?” Baby asked, looking hopeful.
“I don’t know if he has the pattern, but you can ask him,” said Icyhot with a shrug.
Inside the shack, we found Olaf in a heated discussion with a Dwarf with sandy skin and more than his fair share of scars to go with his buzzcut and mustache that combined looked very un-Dwarflike.
“I’m telling you, the Colt .45 ACP was the finest bullet firing sidearm ever produced, your Walther PPK might be more famous, due to that spy character in those old movies, but it is also a German sidearm, not British,” the Dwarf insisted,
“It’s still more famous because of the Brits than because of the Germans,” Olaf insisted.
“For all the good that did. The sidearm itself was underpowered as a combat sidearm,” Duncan retorted.
Olaf seemed to have swallowed something sour as he realized the old Dwarf had him beat. “Fine, you win this round, old man.”
“Well, if you ever feel like a rematch, just let me know, sonny,” Duncan replied, sounding all too pleased with himself. “I’ll be happy to school you again.”
“Two wins does not mean you schooled me,” Olaf insisted.
“Anyway, looks like your about done there,” said Duncan, motioning to the reassembled hand-cannon.
“Thank the Goddess Pasiphae for that,” said Olaf.
I hadn’t considered it really, but given Olaf and Micaela were now Minotaurs, did that mean they worshipped the Goddess Pasiphae? For the purposes of the game, at least?
“Ah, Bye-bye, how did hunting go?” Olaf asked, noticing our arrival.
The Mountain Valley War Page 16
