Twilight Templar (The Eternal Journey Book 1)
Page 40
“It might work, but it would be extremely expensive. Our best shot would be to get a Level Twenty Scryer to do the job. That’s the best we could find here in the Common Realms. As far as I know, there is only one of those in Akila. Maybe half a dozen in all of the Ruby Empire. The local one is a Grandmaster of the Council of the Wise.”
“And they don’t care much for us,” Kaiser said. “As in they hate our guts.”
And that was my own fault, he admitted to himself. He had antagonized the mages’ society by refusing to have his pet spellcasters pay their union dues. At the time, the nascent Nerf Herders had been strapped for cash and he’d had better things to do than bend over for a pack of rent-seeking NPCs. He had overreacted, and the Herders had turned the Council into an enemy. Kaiser had two concurrent programs in the works to deal with that situation: one to smooth the Council’s ruffled feathers, and another to wipe it off the board.
“All right,” he told the Mage. “We’ll try again when we get you to fifteenth level. I’ll put you on the fast track for the Malleum Mallum. One run through that Labyrinth should be more than enough.”
Aristobulus went white as a sheet. The Malleum Mallum Labyrinth had zeroed out three Nerf Herders already. Kaiser didn’t care. He’d made one run himself, and hit level fourteen thanks to it. Great rewards required great risks.
“Unless you would decline the honor,” he told the magician. “That would be disappointing. The Herders are building a reputation as go-getters. A can-do attitude is paramount. But if you’d rather concentrate on crafting, say the word.”
“No, no, sir. I’ll be happy to join a Party.”
“Glad to hear it. On your way out, let Girlhas in.”
Kaiser smiled as Aristobulus all but ran out of his office. People always started to sweat when he brought up the Crafting Center. Probably because once you went in, you only came out feet first. As far as Kaiser was concerned, a little hard work didn’t kill anybody, but people from Earth were too soft. Put them in a harsh environment like the Realms and most of them wilted like so many hothouse flowers exposed to the wild.
Case in point: Rowena, Kaiser’s personal servant, who entered his office along with his next appointment. Rowena had been a casual gamer who’d caught the hype for Eternal Journey Online and, under normal circumstances, would have played for a couple months before rage quitting and badmouthing the game on social media for assorted real or imaginary offenses.
Circumstances had been anything but normal, of course, and Rowena (born Meadow April Durham) had found herself in the same swamp Kaiser and several other unlucky players woke up in, unclothed, scared and with nothing but each other and an idiotic notification and Quest beamed directly into their brains by some bastard going by the name Arbiter Primus.
They had survived – after a few deaths and other mishaps – and reached civilization. Kaiser had been among the first to make it, as well as the quickest to understand the situation and take advantage of it. He rebuilt his own Guild, not because he had any affection for the name – he hated it, actually – but because a handful other members had also shown up in Akila, and the stupid Star Wars reference would serve to attract the attention of other castaways from Earth. Kaiser wanted to take as many of them as he could under his wing. Or dispose of them otherwise.
At first, Rowena had been enthusiastic about Kaiser’s reform plans. But her ideas had focused on dismantling the admittedly patriarchal system in the Ruby Empire. Kaiser had no intentions of upsetting the local social structure, however. He wanted to co-opt it. Rowena saw reason after being subjected to a number of object lessons. The bruises had faded away, eventually; the lessons he had taught her had not. Now she was a part of the patriarchal order, as well as his concubine and personal servant. A number of magically-enforced oaths ensured her obedience. Rowena brought him a glass of chilled wine and sat on his lap, just like she’d been taught. Good girl.
The short, dark-haired woman that followed Rowena into the office was completely different. She didn’t care about changing society. Her only concern was amassing power, and she had decided that the best way to do so was to hitch her wagon to Kaiser Wrecker’s rising star. She also greatly enjoyed hurting people. Kaiser was okay with that, within reason.
Girlhas Noname bowed before him. She was a Rogue and Shadow Assassin, an elite class that was outlawed in Akila. Her secret was safe among the Nerf Herders, of course. Nobody in the Guild gave a damn about the laws and customs of the Empire.
Her name still made Kaiser cringe, though. Yes, he also had picked a dumb name for his first EJO character. Why not? He rarely used early characters in a game for long; he was an alt character maker, always chasing a new and different power trip. Nobody had known their first choice would be their only one until Final Death took all choices away. But his name had been nowhere as bad as hers.
The player in question had been a George R.R. Martin fan. Somebody in the game had already snagged the character name she wanted, so she’d gone with the character’s iconic saying instead. She had even used the character creator in the game to make her look as much as her idol as possible. Unoriginal and silly, but nothing else about Girlhas was silly. She had dropped over a hundred bodies in the two months since her arrival, and those were the ones Kaiser knew of.
“What’s the good word?” he asked her. While Aristobulus had been using magic to find the damn Paladin, Noname had been doing some old-fashioned sleuthing.
“I have two separate witnesses claiming that the subject claimed he had come from Herona, a port in the east. I have dispatched four agents there to see if they can pick up his trail.”
“But you don’t think he’s there. You’d have gone there yourself, otherwise.”
She shook her head. “He was very careful. Why give away his point of origin? It smells like a cover story. It’s still worth checking out, of course.”
“What else have you got?”
“I turned my attention to two Eternals he was seen talking to the day before he visited the compound,” she said.
Her voice had an emotionless inflection that set people’s teeth on edge. It was as if she was an alien trying to pass for a human being and not quite pulling it off. She must have been a delight on Earth.
“I have positively identified them: Desmond the Destroyer, a Warrior, and Nadia Morganna, Sorceress. They were given an entry interview at the gate, but there was an incident and they left before it was complete. It was Gerrod, getting handsy with the girl, just the way he gets with every girl.”
“That idiot should have never been on gate duty,” Kaiser growled.
He didn’t mind if members in good standing indulged in their hobbies or vices, but not during gate interviews, when the Herders were trying to convince people to come in of their own free will. You wanted to put your best foot forward for that, and Gerrod was definitely the wrong man for the job.
Little Gerry and the moron who had assigned him to gate duty were off in the Labyrinth, grinding levels and getting killed on the regular; last he’d checked, Gerrod’s Identity had dipped below eight and the guy could barely remember Earth, or his old name. That was fine with Kaiser; having a level fifteen Warrior around who had forgotten most of his old life would come in handy, moving forward.
Girlhas went on: “Yesterday, I was able to confirm those two spent the night at an inn with a third party who paid for their room and board.”
“Hawke.”
“Can’t confirm it; he was wearing civilian garb at the time, but the general description matches. The next day, they left. I have a possible sighting of them in Dwarven Hills. That’s where the trail has led so far.”
Kaiser grimaced. The Guild didn’t have a lot of connections with the damn Oompa Loompas, mainly because the only Eternal player who had picked a Dwarf for his character’s race had gone native. Attempts to recruit him had ended poorly; now nobody in the Hills wanted anything to do with the Nerf Herders. Being too proactive could backfire sometimes.
Girlhas thought about it. “Two hundred gold denars in bribes. I’ll have to go through intermediaries, but I already have a few assets with access to the Hills.”
“Any other news from the Oompa Loompas?”
“Word is that someone was recruiting miners for a hush-hush project. They were also hiring mercenaries for a war with a Goblin Horde off to the west. I will look into both events, just in case they are related to the target.”
“This is a Priority-One project. That bastard made a fool out of us in the middle of our compound. The only way I will live that down is if he doesn’t live any longer than it takes to find him.”
“I’ll find him,” Girlhas said. “And I’ll bring him to you.”
“Don’t underestimate him. I did. A vocational school grad managed to waltz in and out of here, and sent two of my best bodyguards off to respawn. He is a lot smarter than I thought.”
One
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Hawke Lightseeker said as the giant shadow monster prepared to crush him like a bug.
He was going to need every one of those abilities to overcome the Guardian of the Mana Node he was trying to claim.
It was the biggest critter he had encountered so far. Fifteen feet tall, maybe twenty feet wide, with four elephant-like legs supporting a barrel-shaped torso from which four tentacles protruded, tipped with sharp pincers. And it was solid black, a thing made of pure Darkness. The only reason Hawke could see it against the equally black background was that he had Dark Vision. Anybody else challenging the Guardian of that Mana Node would have been effectively blind and helpless while the monster sliced and diced them to death.
Darkness Guardian (Shadowling)
Level 12 Elemental (Elite)
Health 1200 Mana 600 Endurance 1200
The Shadowling roared a challenge, a sound like nails on a chalkboard turned up to eleven. Instead of quailing in fear, Hawke used the time to trigger Analyze, one of the abilities of his Monster Handler Class. In the course of three seconds, he had a clear understanding of the creatures’ Attributes (its most impressive scores were Strength and Constitution, at 58 and 60, respectively), weaknesses (not surprisingly, Elemental Light topped that list), and other information that would have allowed him to write an entire Wiki article about it, if the Realms had a Wiki page and he had access to a computer. Just as he was finished analyzing it, the Guardian charged him.
The monster covered the two hundred feet separating it from Hawke at the speed of a runaway train, or maybe a runaway elephant. Hawke spend the first couple of seconds buffing himself. Energy auras made of Light stabbed into the surrounding shadows. The Guardian hesitated when the inimical power revealed itself, but only for a moment. It soon resumed its rush, pincer-tentacles cocked back and ready to lunge from thirty feet away to crush, render and flail the Half-Elf who had dared challenge it in its domain.
At ninety feet, Hawke unleashed Dazzling Light, a blinding flash that would stun most creatures, with much greater effect against nocturnal targets and even more against beings of Darkness. The Guardian’s Elemental Resistance levels were high, however: the flash disoriented it for a couple of seconds, nothing more.
Next, Hawke pointed with the short sword in his left hand and a Hammer of Light sprang to life and darted towards the Guardian faster than a crossbow bolt, followed by a Hammer of Twilight, which did half Light, half Darkness damage, and, less than a second later, by a Burning Light, a cone spell that did less damage than his Hammers but affected an entire area. The trio of attacks tore huge chunks of darkness from the monster. Its Health dropped below eight hundred before it could recover from the first spell.
Under different circumstances, Hawke would have followed the devastating volley of spells with his go-to move, Twilight Step, which allowed him to teleport behind his victims and deliver a devastating double backstab. Unfortunately, the spell didn’t work in a battleground made of Darkness. Saturnyx had tried to explain the dimensional mechanics involved; he had smiled and nodded and forgotten all about it afterwards. He was a doer more than a thinker. As long as something worked, he didn’t care much about the details.
So, instead of rushing towards the monster, he cast Consecrated Ground under his feet. The spell would supplement the continual healing of one of his other buffs, Aura of Light, and between them he might be able to survive the pounding he was about to receive.
The monster shook its whole body the way someone would shake his head to deny something, maybe because it didn’t have a head to shake. It charged on, and its depleted Health began to tick upwards at a rate of 10 Health per second. Annoying. The cooldowns on his offensive spells reset just as the Guardian whipped its tentacles at him. Missiles and waves of Light and tentacles of Darkness flew by in opposite directions. All his spells landed on their target. He ducked one of the tentacles but the other three tore into him like so many cannonballs, each doing enough raw damage to cut down his 312 Health by more than half. Luckily, he had a few buffs on his side, including a Shield of Light that reduced all damage by 42 points, an Armor of Life that halved Physical damage and turned some of it into healing instead, and a Bulwark of Light that could absorb another 210 damage, all of that before the pincers hit his Armor of the Battle-Mage with all its resistances and damage reduction bonuses.
He still got whacked for over a hundred points of damage. Worse than that, one of the pincers grabbed him by the waist and began to crush him. Grimacing in pain, Hawke cut at the limb with the Saturnyx Twins, as he called the paired-sword set that currently held the soul of the Fury. Each slash, imbued with extra light damage, fortified with a lightning aura, and delivered with enough strength to cut clear through both ends of a suit of steel plate armor, tore deeply into the tentacle’s fleshy darkness. He didn’t quite sever the limb, but the sudden agony forced the monster to release him while its other tentacles descended on him with their pincers closed, seeking to pummel him to death.
Hawke activated his newest Elemental Path sword power: Dome of Force. The semi-sphere of Light Energy only lasted three seconds, but during that time it would stop any attack inflicting fewer than four hundred and twenty points of damage. The tentacle-pincers smashed ineffectively against the energy barrier while Hawke cast a couple of healing spells and then opened up with his three-spell offensive combo. Even with its regeneration, the Guardian’s Health had been reduced by two-thirds by the time the dome disappeared and a fully-healed Hawke rolled into range and stabbed the monster’s underbelly with both blades. He landed three solid stabs – one of them a critical for 104 damage – before he had to duck away from the stomping trunk-like legs of the Guardian.
The Darkness monster was an Elemental, and they didn’t suffer from low morale, fear, or any foibles affecting mere flesh-and-blood creatures, but it had slowed down from the massive amount of damage and the corresponding pain it had suffered. Hawke tried to finish it off by summoning a copy of the creature, another Monster Handler trick he’d been dying to try out since he’d become a member of that Class.
Summoning Failed! No entities may be brought into a Mana Node Challenge.
Hawke didn’t have time to argue with his sword. The Guardian came at him, ready to stomp, pummel or rend him to death. He remained on the move, dodging tentacle strikes and alternating between slashing at the monster and burning it with Light spells. Eliminating the last third of the Guardian’s Health was the toughest part of the fight. It became a deadly dance where a small misstep meant getting hit on t
he head with a hundred-pound pincer and a big misstep would end with said pincer closing around your neck and popping your head like a cork.
It was painful and terrifying – and Hawke loved every last moment of it.
One of the Guardian’s legs collapsed after being crippled by multiple passing slashes, and the giant creature staggered and fell. Hawke leaped a full twenty feet into the air, propelled by a strength than on Earth would have earned him a cape and a movie deal with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and delivered a double blow onto the monster’s back. It only had a sliver of Health left when Hawke, struck by a sudden burst of inspiration, directed Hammer of Light through both of his twin swords, something he had never done before. At first, the spell sputtered; some instinct made him pour more power on it, and it went off. The Mana cost of the spell exploded from 2 to 37 Mana, nearly draining his energy to dangerous levels, but a giant-sized energy hammer exploded through the monster, inflicting double the spell’s normal damage. That did the trick.
Hawke laughed out loud. He had never imagined how great it felt to win a fight until being brought to the Realms. On Earth, he’d been in a couple of adult brawls, and he’d just been angry, scared, and drunk. Very little joy there. But here, the contest of skill, strength and willpower made him feel alive like nothing he’d ever experienced as Ben Velasco from Ohio. The only other thing he enjoyed as much involved the two gorgeous women in his life, including the one inhabiting his paired swords.
He had spent over a week in one meeting after another, trying to get a town of almost two thousand people back into working order after its previous Ruler had sold them out to a Necromancer. It had been useful, important work, and he had helped a lot of people, but there was a part of him that demanded action, driven by an addiction to adrenaline that people on Earth would have deemed unhealthy and toxic.
As the monster died, several notification prompts appeared on the right corner of his field of vision, demanding his attention. He waited until the shadows dissipated and he was back on the hidden cave where the Mana Node and his Reincarnation site were located. Then he started opening messages. In this world infused with game-like rules, he was constantly bombarded with text messages from the Arbiters, entities that even the gods feared. Most of the notifications were clearly automated. Hawke suspected the Arbiters were, like a computer nerd buddy of his had once explained, SysOps Administrators, watching over the system while they let it run itself most of the time: