The Cheater's Return

by Brian McGoldrick

Still smirking, Raven Goddess puts her feet up on the bench. "Even if I hit the damaged armor, I do not have the strength to do any damage to one of them. Even being doubled for a two-handed weapon, my Physical Damage Bonus has too low of a base value."

  I toss the staff back to Raven Goddess. "Leech."

  While Raven Goddess laughs at me, I go to work on the second automaton. This one has bad corrosion on its left leg. The part of its armored shell that serves the same purpose as a poleyn, in a suit of armor, has been almost completely destroyed.

  It does not even take me half an hour for the armor around its knee joint to crack and fall off in pieces.

  "You are not even Level 10, and you have disabled two monsters of at least Rank 4 in single combat. In the entire history of Primacy Online , this is probably a first. "With her hands raised over her head, Raven Goddess claps enthusiastically. If it was not for the smirk that she cannot seem to repress, I would consider taking her seriously.

  "I don't know much about the internals of automatons. Do you know where the control center for these things would be?"

  Raven Goddess give me a slight shrug. "Probably, it is near the center of the chest. There should be a Mana absorption array in the middle of the torso, and the control array will likely be directly above it. If you destroy either one you will 'kill' the automaton."

  I sigh. "Why can't they make it easy on me and put it in the head?"

  Raven Goddess laughs. "If I had a copper coin for every time I heard something like that, I would be the richest woman on Tathlum."

  This second automation has a badly corroded section on the lower left side of its back. I hop onto one of the stone benches and stab it with the tip of my staff.

  Crunch!

  Seeming to move in slow motion, the automaton slams its arm into the bench next to mine and crushes the end of it. While the automaton can only drag itself a few feet a minute, getting too close to its arms would be a bit problematic. Even though it has a slow speed, its raw strength is probably a hundred times my own.

  While the automaton worms its way around, I keep stabbing it in the back, and it demolishes a couple more benches.

  Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

  Glancing in the direction of the noise, I see Raven Goddess pounding on the back of the other automaton.

  "I thought you were going to spectate."

  "I decided to draw this golem away, but a certain big lump of muscle has acquired too much aggression from it."

  "You could just call it aggro like a normal gamer."

  Raven Goddess sniffs in a disdainful manner. "That is a slang term that is applied to a specific mechanic in games. Aggression is the reasonable way to phrase it."

  "You're weird."

  Raven Goddess gives me a flat stare. "I am not. How much longer are you going to take? I do not think I will be able to acquire enough aggression to keep this automaton away from you."

  I shrug. "Who knows? A while."

  Raven Goddess frowns. "That is not very precise."

  "Have you tried jamming its shoulder joint with a Starter dagger?"

  Raven Goddess stops beating on the automaton and stares at it for a moment. "That might work."

  With the automaton ignoring her, Raven Goddess has no trouble sticking a dagger in one shoulder joint, and the near complete immobilization of its arm draws that automaton's aggro onto her. As the automaton tries to turn far enough to attack her, she jumps backward to avoid the mostly disabled arm and laughs.

  Moving to the opposite side of the temple from me, Raven Goddess sits down with her elbow on her knee and her head in her hand. With a small sigh, she watches the automaton struggle to chase after her.

  "This is boring."

  "Then help."

  "No. Destroy them faster."

  Raven Goddess looks over her shoulder at the arched doorway behind her.

  "Is something else coming?"

  Shaking her head, Raven Goddess looks back toward me. "Each automaton is probably restricted to certain areas, and there may be nothing else left after all this time. Even undead are not immortal, and after time, they will fade away. With as long as this tomb has been sealed, it is a bit surprising that the Tomb Lord still exists."

  After another hour, the armor on the automaton finally cracks. "I'm inside."

  Raven Goddess laughs and rises to her feet. The other automaton only managed to cross half the distance between her and itself, and as she comes over to me, the automaton starts trying to spin around to follow her.

  "Lead it toward the back wall, and I should be able to stab it through that hole."

  I move toward the back of the row of benches and the automaton twists to follow.

  As soon as the automaton's path straightens out, Raven Goddess moves closer and stabs her staff into the hole in its armor, angling it toward the center of the automaton's torso. With her third stab, the automaton flails in her direction and tries to spin around.

  Waiting until I have a good angle, I stab into the hole, and the automaton's aggro is back on me again.

  Boom!

  After the fifth round, something inside the automaton detonates and it stops moving. Thick chains of blackish-gold XP rise from the lifeless shell.

  Ding! Ding!

  I manage to get three shares in total and my experience rises by 10,500 points. Raven Goddess acquires even more, but she does not Level-up.

  I check my character sheet and see that I am already Level 10.

  Crom Cruach

  Half-Giant : Neophyte

  Fighter : Level 10

  HP: 320/320

  MP: 86/86

  Basic Attributes

  » Strength: 100

  » Agility: 40

  » Toughness: 80

  » Reason: 12

  » Perception: 12

  » Willpower: 20

  Hidden Attributes

  » ???

  Derived Attributes

  » Physical Attack Bonus: 28

  » Magic Attack Bonus: 2

  » Physical Damage Bonus: 40

  » Magical Damage Bonus: 2

  Talents:

  » Danger Sense, Item Ancestry, ???

  Abilities:

  Identify Monster (Active)

  Skills:

  Basic Melee Weapons; Martial Melee Weapons; Basic Ranged Weapons; Martial Ranged Weapons; Armor Proficiency: Cloth, Light, Medium, Heavy

  System Assist Mode: Off

  Once you hit Level 10, you cannot go any higher without acquiring a class. You will still stockpile your experience, but you cannot use it.

  Looking at me with a pitying expression, Raven Goddess shakes her head. "You are so unskilled at this. For the man once called the greatest cheater, this is such a sad performance. You should have acquired twice as much loose experience."

  When my only reply is a single finger salute, Raven Goddess laughs merrily.

  With the second automaton having only one properly working arm, it takes barely half the time, as the first one, to finish it off, and I get another huge chunk of XP.

  "We're going to need to find class trainers."

  Raven Goddess nods. "I have plans for that. Once we finish in here, it will be time to acquire some very special classes."

  I shake my head. With the smug look in Raven Goddess' eyes, there would be no point trying to pry any information out of her. She is going to be mysterious, but she must know the location and method to obtain some hidden classes.

  Raven Goddess looks at the two arches leaving the room and frowns. "Left or right? Which one feels lucky to you?"

  "Neither. I say let's go left."

  With a brilliant smile, Raven Goddess turns to the right. "Right it is. You have terrible luck."

  After reaching a T intersection we go right again and find an engineering workroom. The storage shelves and workbenches are filled with the mostly rusted and useless parts for automatons, but a few maintenance cradles still have barely functional automatons in them.

  With a
laugh, Raven Goddess bows to me and gestures toward the cradles. "Free experience. You should get to work."

  Since the automatons are secured in the maintenance cradles and have their armor partially removed already, it is only a matter of minutes to destroy their internal part.

  "This seems more like a base than a tomb."

  Raven Goddess shrugs. "Originally, it probably was a base, and the Tomb Lord most likely had it converted into a tomb, after the time of his death. If the Tomb Lord is who I think he was, he would have been a Warrior and a Priest that served Tethra, one of the Fomhoraigh Lords. That temple where we destroyed the first two automatons was a temple consecrated to Tethra."

  "Is this Tethra still around?"

  As we continue to explore, Raven Goddess does not answer for a long time. "Tethra is dead, but he might not be gone. After his death, he invaded Mag Mell, one of the realms of the dead."

  I frown. "Primacy Online II: Warriors of Mag Mell ."

  Raven Goddess' eyes fill with a mix of sorrow and anger. "The Quantum Control Program somehow forced or tricked Tethra into shifting a portion of Mag Mell onto Tathlum. The continent-sized land mass is still there, but the players are long gone. Now, it is only occupied by the forces of the Church of the Sun and the spirits of the dead."

  I do not ask any questions. I do not want to stir up whatever ghosts haunt Raven Goddess about Mag Mell, and I am not sure what she could tell me would be of any use in the present time.

  After finding and killing two more automatons, we finish exploring the right side and head back through the temple to the left side. The left side turns out to be much larger, with more decaying automatons. Most of them are nothing more than rusting piles of scrap, but we find another ten that are still functional.

  In the far corner of the left side, we find a room that seems to be a study with a blacksmith's forge in the room next to it. Most of the books and scrolls in the room have turned to dust, but a few still remain that radiate magic. In the center of the room, the lifeless corpse of a Half-Giant in plate armor sits in a stone chair behind a stone desk.

  "Ha! Ha! Finally, something in my size!"

  As I reach the corpse and try to lift the helm off of it, the metal crumbles into rusted shards and fragments. The bones inside the armor turn into dust, and the armor falls to the floor breaking into more chunks of rusted metal.

  "Pfft!" Raven Goddess puts her hand over her mouth, but she does not hide the amusement in her eyes.

  "This isn't funny."

  "No. The armor being useless is not funny, but the look on your face…" Raven Goddess' words trail off into snickers.

  While I stand and stare at the pile of rust, Raven Goddess looks around the room.

  "Crom, I have something for you."

  I look to see Raven Goddess bringing me a thick tome made from silvery metal pages. The look in her eyes makes me think something is up, but I take it anyway.

  Flipping through the book, I see plan after plan for smithing armor and weapons. "I hate fucking Tradeskilling."

  "I know, but if you become a Blacksmith, you will never lack for gear."

  Without responding, I just glare at Raven Goddess, and after a moment, she bursts into laughter.

  Turning my back on Raven Goddess, I put the tome into my inventory and look through the other surviving books and tomes.

  "Crom, you should take these." Raven Goddess' voice drifts out of the forge, and when I enter, she has an amused smirk.

  Looking at the two open chests next to her, they are both filled with metal bars that have not corroded.

  Raven Goddess' smirk disappears. "I am serious about you taking up smithing. Even in Toraigh, Half-Giants are not that common, and more often than not, you will need to have gear custom made. You are dexterous, and with your comprehension of how Tathlum works, you should be able to make better quality gear than most of the blacksmiths you will encounter."

  I sigh. "I recognize the Star Silver, but what is the black metal?"

  "Black Iron. It is mined from many kilometers beneath the surface, near to the world's molten core. It is nearly as resistant to corrosion as Star Silver, but it is much harder and heavier. I would have thought that the Tomb Lord's armor would be made from it, but if that was the case, it would not have corroded like it did."

  I glance through the door, at the pile of rust and dust around the Tomb Lord's stone chair. "When I touched it, there was a faint feeling of decay, but I do not know if the armor or the corpse was the source."

  "Even the undead cannot last for eternity. Its body decayed to the point of uselessness, and the Tomb Lord that went to the village was probably nothing more than a materialized spirit. I do not understand why it left this tomb. The farther it gets from its remains, the weaker it will become. By ruining its armor and bones the way you have, you should have given the Tomb Lord a terrible blow, and when you meet, it will recognize you as the source of its woes."

  I shrug. "Whatever. I think this chain quest will probably force us to destroy it. The only question is, how do we finish this part? What is left for us to explore?"

  Raven Goddess reveals a cynical expression. "We are sure to have missed another secret door."

  "Oh joy." I do not look forward to searching something as large as this tomb for secret doors.

  "I would expect the secret door to be in one of these two rooms. You should start banging on the walls." As she walks away from the piles of ingots, the amused glint is back in Raven Goddess' eyes.

  Suppressing my aggrieved sigh, I collect the ingots of Star Silver and Black Iron. The book of smithing plans is already in my storage.

  As I turn back to the door, Raven Goddess turns away, but I still catch a glimpse of that brilliant smile that is like a new dawn. In Primacy Online V , I seldom saw her smile. I cannot help but wonder what brought about the change in her.

  Taking out my staff, I start pounding its tip on the walls of the forge. If the stone covering the secret door is too thick, it will be wasted effort, but neither of us has the Abilities of the Rogue Archetype, so we have little in the way of options. At least, I do not think Raven Goddess has the Abilities of a Rogue. Despite her claims, I am not entirely certain that her Archetype is Fighter. If it were not for the fact that I have never caught her in a lie, I would think that she was lying about her Archetype.

  "Crom, come here! I found something."

  Leaving the forge, I join Raven Goddess in front of one of the stone bookcases, and she points to a metal tome. "It will not move."

  Grabbing the tome, I pull on it, but it feels like it is adhered to the bookcase. I put all my strength into it.

  Click.

  As a section of the wall nearly three meters wide swings silently outward, Raven Goddess takes a victorious pose and grins. Behind the open wall, a stairway leads downward, and the stench of rot and decay wafts upward.

  As we glance at one another, Raven Goddess frowns. "When compared with the rest of this tomb, that smell is entirely too fresh."

  Wrinkling my nose, I keep my expression bland. "I wouldn't call it fresh."

  "You are well aware of my meaning."

  With a shrug, I snort and turn back to the stairs. After pulling out my staff, I start down the stairs. From behind, I hear the faint sound of metal on metal, as Raven Goddess draws her swords.

  After following the stairs downward about forty meters, we step into a torture chamber, a very well equipped torture chamber. Unlike the rest of this tomb, the equipment in this room appears to be relatively new and well maintained. It has an air of being well used.

  Cages hanging from the ceiling that resemble bird cages have the remains of bodies of generally human-size and proportions. In one of the cages, a more or less intact body sits up and turns its desiccated eyes in our direction.

  I check it out with Identify Monster .

  Undead (??) Level ??

  » HP ??/??

  Ding!

  My quest updated, so I check my journal.r />
  Find the Tomb Lord (Unique) (Storyline Quest: 2 of ??) (Difficulty: ??)

  » Explore the Tomb Lord's tomb: Complete

  » Interrogate the undead.

  » Reward: ??

  » Quest cannot be shared.

  "Is that a zombie?"

  Raven Goddess observes the undead with a frown. "I am not certain."

  "I am not a zombie!" Anger and hostility reverberate in the voice of the undead.

  As she rubs her lower lip with one finger, Raven Goddess' frown becomes more pronounced. "It may be closer to a revenant than a zombie."

  Frowning myself, I stare at the undead in the cage. "Huh, I've encountered a couple revenants. They were a lot better preserved than that thing."

  "I said closer to not is. If it was not for it being sentient, I would be certain it was a zombie."

  "Hey! You heathens! Stop talking about me like I am not here! My El cast you out from his light and damn your souls to hell!"

  I do not bother to hide my sneer. "It looks like it's a Church zombie."

  Raven Goddess glances at me, with a faint smirk. "Church zombies are normally among the living."

  Grabbing the door of its cage with both hands, the undead shakes the cage. "Let me out of here! If you don't, the Holy Church will hunt you down and –."

  Crack! Clank!

  As I slam its fingers and cage a couple times with my staff, the undead pulls back its hands.

  "Bastard, you broke my fingers."

  I smile mocking at the undead. "If it's anything like a revenant, its fingers should regenerate."

  While the undead screams at us, we look through the rest of the cages. The corpses are definitely corpses.

  "Crom." Raven Goddess holds the tattered remains of a Church of the Sun tabard.

  I approach the cage with the undead. "Hey, undead, were all these corpses your Church cronies?"

  "They were soldiers of the Holy Church of the Sun. Now, release me, heathen Monster!"

  Raven Goddess joins me next to the undead's cage. "The Church of the Sun considers Half-Giants to be Monsters. In their territory, you would be hunted down and killed."

  "Nice to know I'm loved."

  I take out the letter we acquired from the ghouls in the barn and hold it up.

  After staring at the letter for a few moments, the undead glares at me. "Why do you have my letter?"