by David Petrie
“Let’s get through this fast. Yes, I am sure. And no, the PVP ban won’t save us.” He beckoned to Larkin who joined him on the stage. “This is the guy that built it, but he did not plant it.”
“Hello, hi there, sorry for the inconvenience.” The crafter gave an awkward wave. “The device in question uses eighty pounds of refined black powder infused with dragon’s breath for added oomph.” He jabbed a fist forward to emphasize the explosive’s power. “The trick to it was getting that much powder to remain stable–”
“Not the time for explanations.” Ginger hoisted herself onto the stage, letting out a lingering cough as she stood and turned toward the crowd. “Look, we’re going to need to work together to find it and disarm this thing.”
“Yes, yes,” Larkin said awkwardly, “disarm it.” That was when Max noticed a troubling expression on Larkin’s face, like he had just let out a fart but wasn’t going to own up to it.
“Umm, Larkin. It can be disarmed, right?”
The crafter fidgeted with the buttons on his vest for a second before looking back up.
“Ah… sort of?”
Chapter Twenty
While Max and Ginger dealt with the bomb situation, Seven skulked away from Kegan and the others, with the intent of checking in with Leftwitch to get the truth. She raised her house ring to her mouth, but said nothing.
Christ, what am I going to say?
Hey Leftwitch, what’s up? Are we the baddies?
“Shit.” She shook her head.
That was when she realized she just said that last word out loud and was still holding her house ring close to her mouth.
“Having a rough time there, Seven?” Leftwitch’s voice responded.
“Shit, crap.” A few more uncontrolled words fell from her mouth before she got a grip on herself. “No, no, everything’s fine.”
“Uh huh.” Leftwitch sounded skeptical. “I imagine you’re at least having a better night than Cassius has been.”
“Yes, sorry, but I didn’t kill him this time.”
“Well, that’s good.” Leftwitch chuckled.
“I haven’t found Ruby; didn’t you send him here with Cassius?”
“Yes, and don’t you worry, he’s around.”
“Okay.” Seven didn’t like the sound of that.
“How is the mission going? Get any decent items?”
“The auction is taking a break right now, but I did obtain an egg of a dire scalefang. I was thinking since you’re a Whip class, that you could–”
“I hope you didn’t spend too much on that.”
“I’m sorry, was that not something I should have purchased?”
“Meh, a scalefang is more of a frontline pet. I’m not really one to get in the thick of things. I use Ruby for reconnaissance and I don’t really want to give him up to bond with a new pet.” Leftwitch paused. “Although, I suppose I could use a scalefang as a throwaway pet. A dire monster would certainly make for a good distraction if things got hairy. It could probably take out a few players before it dies. Good choice, actually.”
“Thank you.” Seven’s voice wavered, feeling a little sad that the egg that she’d claimed might be used once and then tossed away.
“What about your other mission? Have you made any progress gaining Lockheart’s trust and finding anything out?”
Seven’s voice got stuck in her throat, unsure of what she should tell the Lady of her House. She settled on a partial truth. “Yes, I believe they trust me.”
“Good, try your best to keep it that way. And find out what their little war with this Nix player entails. The world is dying to find that out after they broadcasted their intentions months back. My views would double if I could get that story.”
“I understand.” Seven held back anything more. Of course, she could have told her everything and become employee of the month, or gotten herself committed. Instead she took a deep breath and asked the question she was dreading. “Is there a bomb on this ship?”
There was a long pause before Leftwitch said anything, just enough time to lower her house ring and swear a few times.
“Let me guess, Larkin built a notification into it?”
“Yes, it pinged him when it activated and he told Max and Ginger. They’re organizing a sweep of the ship now.”
“And I assume from the fact that you’re asking, that they all know that I commissioned the bomb?”
“They do. Larkin recognized Cassius.”
“Well damn, that isn’t great. Now I’m going to have to spread a few false rumors to keep that hidden.”
“Why would you want to blow up the ship?” Seven put her foot down, getting sick of always being the person in the conversation that had no idea what was going on.
“I can’t let the auction happen. Just think about how much damage those contract items might cause if they fell into the wrong hands.”
“I realize that, but if that’s the case, why send me here, and why send Cassius to make sure the auction happens?”
“Plan B.”
“What?”
“You’re plan B. The bomb is plan A. If I can’t stop the auction, then it’s up to you to win bids on anything you can to keep the other houses from getting anything too dangerous.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. You said earlier that Noctem was thrown into chaos when the House of Serpents fell, and they only ruled over three cities. If you blow up the ship and kill all of Noctem’s rulers at once, then the damage would be far worse than if they were allowed to get a few contracts.”
“Look, Seven. You’re new and I apologize for giving you a job that might be more than you can handle.” Her words cut deep, scoring a direct hit to Seven’s insecurities. “I have a city to run and sometimes that requires me to have several irons in the fire, and I can’t be expected to keep everyone in the loop.”
“I understand that.” Seven backed down.
“Don’t worry about the bomb, okay?” Leftwitch’s tone softened. “None of that is your problem. The ship will either explode or it won’t. If it doesn’t, just make sure you get some of the contracts at the auction and report back everything you can on Lockheart. That’s your mission, just focus on that.”
“What will happen to me if the ship explodes?”
“You’ll respawn, no harm no foul, and you’ll have performed well on your first job. Sound good?”
Seven wanted to let herself relax. She wanted to tell herself that it was okay to do nothing, but something about knowingly letting herself be blown up made her sick to stomach.
“Sound good?” Leftwitch repeated when Seven took too long to respond.
“Yes, I can do that.” She did her best to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
“Good, then keep doing what you have been, and you’ll do fine.”
“Okay.” Seven let her hand fall to her side and slid down one wall to sulk on the floor. “This job sucks.”
She remained like that for about ten seconds, then, at a loss for what to do next, she pulled out her player journal and opened it to her character page.
CHARACTER NAME: Royal Assistant Seven
TITLE: Born in Blood
HOUSE: Silver Tongues
LEVEL: 11
RACE: Human
RACIAL TRAIT: Versatile – All stats develop equally.
CLASS: Venom Mage
Upgrade points earned: 55, 0 have been assigned.
STATS
Hit Points - 50
Mana Points - 20
CONSTITUTION: 0
STRENGTH: 0
DEXTERITY 0
DEFENSE: 0
WISDOM: 0
FOCUS: 0
ARCANE: 0
AGILITY: 0
LUCK: 0
PERKS: NONE
SPELLS: 2
Poison
Pulse
She read her title, Born in Blood, a second time, wondering where it had come from. She flipped to her notifications.
You have ga
ined a title.
For successfully defeating an opponent much more powerful than you without assistance from another player, and without setting a single upgrade point, you have unlocked the title Born in Blood. This title has only been obtained 17 times. Due to its rarity, you will be granted a bonus of plus 100% experience until you set your first stat point. Good luck, you masochist.
That must have been from killing Cassius back on the ship’s engine wheel. Now that she thought about it, she was the only one that had landed a hit on him. Granted, she wouldn’t have been able to kill him if she hadn’t pushed him off the ship. Really, it was the ground that finished him off, not her. But, apparently, the game didn’t see it that way and saw fit to help her out. The bonus experience explained the multiple level ups.
Seven tried to remember how many players she had killed so far, catching herself off guard when she realized that she wasn’t sure. Reading further, she found that she’d also gained access to new spells from leveling up.
You have 1 new primary spell rune and 7 modification runes that may be learned
Primary Rune:
Fragility. Cost to learn: 3 upgrade points. Casting cost: 10 mana.
Description:
Inflict Fragile status on a target, making it weak against specific types of damage.
Modification Runes:
Pierce, Slash, Blunt, Ice, Fire, Spark, Wind. Cost to learn: 1 upgrade point per rune. Casting cost: +5 mana for each modification rune used per spell.
Description:
Apply an attribute to a primary spell rune.
You have 55 unassigned upgrade points. (Warning! You have not assigned any points to any stats. This will hinder your ability to remain alive.)
She stared at the last line for a good thirty seconds. Then she shook her head.
“No way I’m just waiting here to die.”
Seven pulled the small, silver pen from its slot in its binding and reached for the page. She held it there, hovering just above her stats.
But what should I do?
She flipped through the book for a help section, finding a tips page. She read over her class description.
Venom Mage: A caster specializing in quick cast spells, designed to cause damage over time and enfeeble targets.
Her mind began to process the numbers. There was something comforting about it. Numbers had never betrayed her.
She skipped over her constitution; it wouldn’t matter how many points she dropped into it, she would still probably be killed too easily with her level as low as it was. Nix or whoever else could end her in an instant, making more health pointless. The same went for defense.
Seven skipped over strength and dexterity as well, finding them useless for a mage. She ignored agility and luck too.
That just left wisdom, arcane, and focus.
She flipped back to the tips page. Okay, my main stat is arcane to increase damage, and my focus will increase my total mana.
Seven scratched a 33 into her arcane stat, dropping her unassigned upgrade points to 22. She used 3 to learn the Fragility rune and another 1 to learn the Pierce modifier, hoping it was the right choice. She didn’t know anyone that could use elemental attacks, but Kegan was fast and seemed like a good shot, so if she could inflict a weakness to piercing, she might enable him to deal more damage.
She assigned her remaining 18 points into focus, bringing her mana pool up to 200. That would get her plenty to cast all the low-level magic she had.
“There, that should do it.”
She flipped back to the tips page or anything she might have missed, landing on a list of racial traits. She started to flip past it but stopped, realizing that she hadn’t checked them when making her character. She had just selected human because that was what she was and saw no reason to change it.
That was when she remembered that she needed to learn everything she could. If she was going to be fighting other players, she should at least understand their strengths and weaknesses. After all, Noctem was just numbers, and numbers could tell her anything.
She ran her finger down the list, taking in everything.
HUMAN: Versatile
All stats develop equally.
ELF: Control
At creation, choose one stat to receive a bonus for each upgrade point used, and choose two stats to receive a soft-cap.
FAIRY: Fragile
Receive a significant bonus to arcane, wisdom, and focus, however strength and constitution are soft-capped. Physical capabilities are also limited due to character size.
REYNARD: Nine Tails
All nine attributes gain a bonus equal to half your lowest.
FAUNUS: Imbalance
Plus ten percent to all stats for each one that remains zero.
“Wow.” Seven hadn’t realized what kind of difference each trait made. There was so much more than just having a tail and pointy ears than she’d thought.
The human and elf traits were pretty straight forward, but the rest had a lot of depth. The fairy seemed designed to be a pure magic user, but came with a price. It was no wonder why Echo could barely lift anything. The reynard was interesting too, as it was balanced incredibly well, but really couldn’t stand out at any one category. Even more curious was the faunus, since it could get a huge bonus in exchange for a massive weakness. It seemed that along with horns, they could build highly-specialized characters.
Finally, Seven stood up, wishing she had more time to learn. She looked over her character page one last time then shoved her journal back in her pouch. She couldn’t help but notice she stood a bit taller, knowing that she had some more tools in her arsenal.
Debating on what to do, she settled on the idea of helping with the bomb sweep. It wasn’t like Leftwitch would find out if she ignored her order to do nothing.
Seven looked both ways down the hallway.
“Now where did Kegan and the others go?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Corvin tried his best to be stealthy as he followed Kegan down a hallway through the bowels of the Night Queen. Though with his Blade class, he didn’t have any actual stealth skills to speak of. Then again, considering it wasn’t an enemy that he was hiding from, skills wouldn’t have helped anyway.
Piper’s eyes bored holes into his back like daggers as she stalked her way down the hall behind him. “We should start searching where we ran into Cass and his men back when we snuck aboard.”
“Yeah,” Corvin tried to keep his response to a minimum. During the night, he’d found that his best course of action was to keep his mouth shut.
“Maybe the reason they attacked us was because they had just planted the bomb and didn’t want us finding it,” she continued.
“That’s a good point.” Corvin tried to be supportive.
“Yes. It is,” Piper added, an icy cold filling her voice.
Corvin shut his mouth again, still trying to figure out what he had done that was so bad. Sure, he wasn’t that experienced at dealing with girls, but he didn’t think he was that off base.
It didn’t seem fair.
She had to know that there was no way he could have said yes when she confessed to him earlier that night. He had a criminal record already and dating a girl almost four years younger than him was not going to help the situation. It wouldn’t have mattered even without his past mistakes; she was still in high school.
Is she really so immature not to see that? He let out a silent sigh and refocused his efforts not to provoke her further.
“Does anyone remember where that lift that we took earlier was? I can’t find it on the map.” Corvin held his journal sideways.
“We were hiding in a crate at the time, so no.” Piper passed by on his left.
“I tried to keep track how many turns we took based on the motion of the crate but I lost track,” Corvin added, apologetically.
“Of course you did.” Piper continued her assault on him.
He let out a small growl without meaning to.
“What was that?”
“Nothing…”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
“Okay, you know what…” Corvin raised his voice, finally having enough of her attitude.
“Oh, here we go.” Kegan cringed and covered his ears.
Corvin pointed a finger in her direction. “All I wanted was to remain friends and let this weirdness just pass by, but you are doing everything you can to make sure this is as uncomfortable as possible. I have been trying to be nice and you have been a jerk all night.”
Piper just stood there saying nothing for a few seconds. Corvin started to feel like he had said too much, afraid that she might burst into tears at any second. Finally, she smirked, looking a lot like her mother.
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Clearly I don’t.”
She didn’t say anything more. Instead, she just shot him.
“Argh! My penis!” Corvin keeled over as Kegan burst out laughing.
“Okay, that’s pretty funny.” The elf nudged him with his foot. “Thank god the PVP ban is in effect, am I right?”
Corvin shuddered as the pain in his, well, private area faded to a numb throb. His mind had trouble reconciling what had happened. It shouldn’t have hurt, even for a second. Not with the ban in place. He looked down at the fading crimson glow, then to his health.
He was down twenty percent.
“Ah, guys…”
Kegan continued to laugh as Corvin tried to get their attention.
“I just took damage.”
“Oh, fuck.” Piper’s eyes went wide. “Sorry, it was supposed to be funny.”
