by Ryan Rimmel
I took my two free skills and found Curse Breaker in the skills list. It was at 1 of Unknown, so I purchased the skill.
Curse Breaking 500/10,000, Amateur. You can now expend mana to break curse and reduce the effects of failed attempts.
Glancing at my status bar, the duration of the mana burn was down to 12 hours.
That left one more skill. I considered for a moment and then closed the menu. A prompt appeared.
You must select a skill within the next 48 hours, or the skill will be randomly assigned.
I could live with that. I might randomly assign it myself.
Standing, I walked over to the statue again. Shart almost said something then quieted down with a harrumph. I placed my hand on the statue’s chest and focused. This time, it was easier. I could see my ‘magic hand’ and the ‘curse’ which still wriggled around like an eel. Instead of blindly searching for it, I was able to corner it quickly, and grab ahold of it firmly so there was no backlash.
You have discovered a Curse of Stone, you can Break the Curse for 600 mana.
“600 Mana!” I exclaimed, selecting “no”. “Yes” had been greyed out, so it wasn’t much of a choice.
“That’s fairly normal for breaking a curse that’s mid to high level,” stated Shart, who suddenly peered at me again, “Wait, now you are a woodsman? This doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Yes, I leveled up again,” I replied, sheepishly.
“How the hell did you take Curse Breaker? It’s a higher level skill,” questioned Shart, before he remembered, “Oh, Unbound. Well, that’s silly. You took a skill that you can’t possibly use, because you don’t have nearly enough mana. There is a reason it's a higher level.”
“Yes, 600 seems like a lot,” I said.
“There are buffs,” replied Shart, “and skills for that matter, that either reduce the cost or increase your own mana pool for specific spells or abilities.”
“So, I can break the curse later?” I stated and Shart nodded.
“If you want to,” replied the demon.
He became silent and I was still looking towards the stars. It had been late afternoon when we’d gotten there and now it was quite dark. Yawning, I figured it was the mountains, possibly enchanted, turned day into night earlier than should be possible. Then, I remembered the second coin; I selected that.
Level UP, Warrior 2
You have gained one Perk. Please select it from the Warrior menu.
Your Hit point Total is increased by 10. Your Stamina is increased by 10.
No stat bumps this time. Looks like those were saved for special occasions. The Perk was new, though, so I flipped open the Warrior menu and was greeted with a large series of tiles. It was a Warrior skill tree, and I couldn’t read anything past the first few tiles.
There was Dual Wielding, which required above average dexterity, though that was blurred out. It improved your handling of two weapons. Sword and Board improved your use of a sword and shield in tandem, but it required above average endurance. Next was Great Weapons, which required above average strength. Finally, there was Resistance, which increased your base defense by 7.
I had to contemplate that. I had everything but the two-handed sword, so investing a perk into something I couldn’t use didn’t seem smart. I had a sword and shield, and the goblins with the sword and shield had seemed pretty effective against my daggers. Then again, fighting with two weapons seemed to be useful, as well.
Above those, several larger tiles could be seen; I just couldn’t quite make out what they said yet. I suspected they were some sort of sub-class to Warrior, but I couldn’t be sure yet.
I flipped open the Woodsman page and checked my experience there. I earned experience points most recently for the two weapon fighting. Checking the rogue page, I’d earned experience there from fighting with daggers and through the sneak attacks. Sneak attacking appeared to be far more worthwhile.
Selecting Dual Wielding was the best way I currently saw to gain experience points in most of my classes, so I selected that. I might not try to compound my advantages quite so much later, but right now that seemed to be the best choice. After I locked in the Perk, I suddenly felt askew.
I’d been a righty my entire life. My left hand was my off hand and it always had that slightly noticeable, if you focused on it, feeling of an offhand. That was gone. I tried flipping a dagger in my left hand and it felt identical to doing it in the right. Taking a dagger in both, I started performing flips and spins to the best of my ability, which had grown since I’d gotten here. However, if you had to guess which hand was my dominant one, you would have failed.
Interesting.
I reviewed my Two Weapon Fighting. It had advanced from amateur to Novice. That improved the damage with my main hand weapon slightly. It also noted that both of my hands were considered main hands now. I also had Twin Weapon, but that simply improved my speed and damage when wielding two weapons of the same type.
I grabbed a short sword and swung it with a dagger. It was impressive to see how easily I moved both weapons, but I also realized that wielding large weapons would still be a challenge due to the weight. Also wielding large weapons drained my Stamina faster. Two longswords would probably not be practical until I was at a higher level, or at least with higher Stamina. Maybe there was a perk that would help with that. Two greatswords would have been impossible.
I didn’t have a bow to test my archery, so I decided that would be my next project. I also noticed a flashing exclamation mark, so I selected it.
Quest: You have found a cursed statue in your Town. Will you seek to remove the Curse? Reward Toomen Masterbrook will become active in your town.
“Hey, another quest,” I said, “I might even take this one.”
“Screw off,” replied Shart, still upset that I hadn’t accepted the quest to find his stupid Demon Door. “You can take a quest and get a reward. The more difficult the quest the greater the reward. My quest has a great reward for you.”
“But you are planning on betraying me,” I stated. “Not to mention, I am nowhere near leveled up enough to even open the door if we found it.”
Shart growled, then nodded.
“Ya, so I’m not going to do that,” I said, as I mentally flicked the acceptance prompt.
You have accepted the Quest: End the Curse on Toomen Masterbrook, you will need to find a powerful curse breaker to end the curse!”
There were no more details than that. I already knew how to remove the curse; the art was finding enough mana to do it. It filtered into my quest tab and I more or less set it to ignore. I noticed that several other quests were listed there, so I selected one at random.
Local Blacksmith
I looked at a few others.
Local Baker
Local Tailor
Down the list went. I was apparently quite popular in the quest series, with over 12 different kinds of quests related to crafting.
“Why is my name appearing as someone offering quests?” I asked Shart, as he glowered at me for again refusing his Demon Door quest.
“Oh, that. You are the only one here, so any quests that the town would offer related to any skill you possess is going to default to you. Even at your level, there are probably one or two that you qualify for.”
“Neat,” I replied, “So I get bonus experience for that?”
“Probably. Maybe a few items too. This is where you are supposed to get your better starter gear.”
I cycled through everything until I found one for a bow.
You have selected
“Damn right I do.”
Chapter 9: Town Square
Shart and I spent the next day gathering up materials, searching for the items I instinctively knew would allow me to make a starter bow. I had the actual bow stave from my trip th
rough the woods. What I didn’t have was anything else, particularly decent bow string.
The town was picked clean. Probably picked clean a very long time ago, honestly. Searching for anything useful took quite a bit longer than one would hope. I ended up finding something I knew could be fashioned into a bow string, as well as a handful of iron ingots.
Just holding the components didn’t do anything, however. I had to find the bowyer’s shop and, more specifically, the tools located therein. This was easy with the town map. There, I’d turn the materials I’d found into… myself. As soon as I walked into the door, I heard a ding in the back of my head and noticed that Quest Marker was flashing in the corner of my vision.
You have completed
I could only see one option, the bow I had chosen earlier. I selected it, but nothing seemed to happen. Well something happened; I felt like I should be making a bow. That was impressive, considering how destroyed the shop was. I very seriously doubted that anyone would be making anything here. As I continued selecting the reward and not receiving the bow, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to complete the quest without first making a bow, because I needed to reward myself with it. Great.
Fortunately, the materials left my inventory and were turned over to the town’s resident handsome bow maker who took them and attempted to make a bow… with several broken pieces of equipment and a dagger. The town’s resident bow maker was some sort of idiot who didn’t actually have any tools. After a good 30 minutes of flailing around to the hysterical laughter of the town’s resident mascot, Shart, and not quite ruining his chance of making a bow, I’d had enough and looked back to good old Mr. Skill Tab.
Crafting: Amateur You can make just about anything!
Bow Making: Unskilled, you know what a bow is.
Bonus Skill:
Improvised Tools: Unskilled, you have tried and failed to use improvised tools to make equipment.
Selecting Improvised Tools and assigning my amateur skill rank to it, I suddenly became aware that I was doing this all wrong. Gathering up a square piece of stone, one goblin corpse, a small piece of a saw blade, a cabbage, and several sundry items, I proceeded to craft one Simple Bow 12 minutes later.
You have found: Simple Bow Base Damage 1-6, Durability 25/25 (durability -10 due to Improvised Tools)
I held it aloft and smiled, only then noticing the peculiar expression on the demon’s face as he tried and failed to comprehend what was going on.
“Why did you do that to the goblin?” asked Shart.
“Well I needed something to keep the bow in place and he was getting kind of rigamortisy…”
“That’s not a word,” stated Shart.
“Sure, it is. It means something that has had enough time for rigamortis to set in enough that he can be posed, if one tries aggressively enough,” I replied.
“You used that old broom stick and he swivels now,” stated Shart as his eyes continued to survey the scene, “That’s a work of art.”
Sighing, I returned to the quest prompt and selected Simple Bow and was rewarded with 250 experience. Not quite enough to level up anything, I thought.
I’d actually kind of expected the quest rewards to apply to all of the classes I hadn’t taken yet; but that didn’t seem to be the case. Wizard didn’t show an experience bar, for example. Neither did Cleric. Those were both caster classes, so I guessed I hadn’t unlocked them yet. My Unbound ability only seemed to apply to things if I’d gotten past the initial steps.
“I switched classes again,” I said.
Shart nodded, “I noticed when you started playing with your knives. Warrior 2. I wonder how many times you can change classes?”
“Yes, that would be interesting, if I could keep doing that,” I stated, “I’m curious. How do you gain experience points for Clerics or Wizards?”
“Well, Wizards is easy,” he stated, “Just start casting spells or using activated magical items. Before you ask, your magic dagger is a passive item. Items like that improves the related skills, while an activated item uses mana and basically casts a spell of some sort.”
“Well, I’ll have to keep my eye out for a wand,” I said, “What about the Cleric stuff?”
“You have to visit the Temple of Light,” stated my companion, “Several problems there, as the ceremony is deep inside the temple and I can’t enter it. Like at all. I can’t even get close to the place”
“Because you’re a demon?”
“Yes, you insufferable moron,” replied Shart, “You must have been pretty when you were on Earth, because there is no way your wife was attracted to your brains. Now, there were a few expansions made to this world. One allows you to be a Druid, but you’d need to find a wild grove to have that power unlocked. There was a pirate expansion, so if you get a ship, you’d unlock Swashbuckler. Finally, they added Martial Arts, so you could start punching people until you become a Monk.”
“Nope, I want a boat.”
“So, you are going to be a pirate,” replied the Demon.
“Shiver me timbers, and all that,” I chuckled.
I spent the next hour crafting several arrows out of nearby trees until I had a small pile sitting next to something I’d found. I was calling it a quiver, but it appeared to be more like a repurposed wrapping paper tube. It was strange crafting arrows. It wasn’t quite like woodworking on Earth, but it wasn’t entirely dissimilar. There was quite a bit of actual hand eye coordination required, as I used an old bowl and a leather belt to sand down the hunks of wood into shafts. That might have been Improved Tools. I’d been earning skill points there steadily.
I could also see why Improvised Tools wouldn’t be a common skill. First, the end product was always less base durability than a product made with the correct tools. Base durability was important because it was the ‘base’ that other values were calculated from. The second issue was the slow growth rate and high failure chance. Without my Crafting skill, even at the amateur level, I’d have broken 1 in 2 arrows. As it was, I had a few that were flawed, but overall the majority of my arrows were just less durable than normal. However, despite all this building in Improvised Tools, I’d only gained 45 skill points. That brought my Improvised Tools to 5045, and I needed 50,000 to jump to the next rank. By the time you got to the point where you could have enough materials to train to amateur rank, you wouldn’t need it anymore. I’d managed to jump the gun by taking it using one of my free skill boosts. Most players wouldn’t have.
However, Improvised Tools applied to every one of my crafting skills. Furthermore, I had the core Crafting skill, which granted me crafting ability in all crafts. So, my Improvised Tools also assisted me in almost every circumstance. In practical terms, if I saw something that needed repaired, I could also see how to best improvise tools and get the materials in position to do that repair. Thankfully, I had the ability to push that back a notch, so I had to focus on things to notice. Until I’d figured that out, I saw ways to repair every building in town using every building in town. It made actually seeing anything challenging.
With my last arrow completed, I sat inside the bowyer’s shop and pondered what to do next. I was reasonably confident that I could go back out of town to gather food and other supplies. Aside from that, what else did I have to do? I couldn’t go back to Earth. I didn’t actually want to help Shart because, like it or not, this was my life now. I was in a whole new world, one with quests and fantastical elements. Just sitting around idly, I kept thinking about my home, my wife, my family, and everything I’d lost. Everything I’d lost and there was nothing I could do about it.
I was truly alone for the first time in my adult life. My wife had always been there for me or needed me. So had my kids, but far more the latter than the former. I had built my entire life around my family and those responsibilities. My love thought I was dead, and now I had nothing but a ruined old village and a stupid gremlin companion bent on betraying me.
&nbs
p; I leaned onto my back and looked up at the stars through a hole in the roof. The stars were far crisper than I’d ever seen on Earth. Possibly because I was a city boy, and possibly because I’d never really looked at them. Sitting there in the quiet, I wondered if I could even die in a place like this. Would it matter to me if I did? What was I here and what could I accomplish? Maybe I should just do Shart’s quest and end it all.
I needed my wife. She would have been able to tell me what to do or at least prod me in a more reasonable direction. She wasn’t here, though, and never would be. So, I sat looking at the stars and wondering what ideas she would have. Better ones than me.
Suddenly, a new quest prompt entered my vision.
Quest: Save the hostages, Several Humans have been kidnapped by a local patrol of goblins. Can you save the humans before they make it to their camp?
I selected “yes” as I stood up with my bow, arrows, and other assorted weaponry.
“The quest is afoot,” I stated. Shart groaned.
“So, any quest other than mine you are all for?” he asked.
I nodded as we started off towards the edge of the barrier, “It wouldn’t be proper to ignore someone in need.”
“I’m someone in need,” replied the demon.
“Your needs involve terrible things happening to me,” I replied.
“Well yes, but what you are doing is still very impolite.”
