<Okay. I only have spells, and the best one needs one second to cast. Healing requires three seconds. How far is the cave?>
<We'll be there in twenty minutes.>
<Can we lose them in there?>
<No. Too many enemies in the cave, we'll eventually get slowed down.>
<That sucks. If we can't lose them, we should deal with them in a terrain of our choice, instead of chancing being surrounded by monsters and Earthens alike. Is the entrance at least a narrow one?>
<No, it's as large as large as your mom's... Heart. See, that's how you do it.>
<You should try stand-up comedy; you are good at this. I guarantee I can't stop laughing on the inside.>
<You should ask your mom about ways of dealing with things inside you.>
I sighed.
<I know,> Ted said. <I hate him too.>
<The plan is a simple one: we kill any visible monster as soon as we get in there. Ted positions herself as far from the entrance as possible, and Bear tries to block as much of the cave entrance as he can. I get between the two of you and try to act as a second defense to Ted.>
<What if someone gets to me?> She asked.
<Then you try to run to me. Do not, under any circumstances, go deeper into the cave, or you'll die. I'll focus fire on whoever is attacking you, even if I take more damage because of it.>
<Okay.>
<Bear, use everything you have from the get-go.>
<Even the Rage? What if I attack you guys too?>
<Then we deal with it.>
When we got to the cave, I summoned all the morbs I could, ending with five fire spheres and a death one.
<I see no monsters,> Ted said.
<There must be some people hunting in here,> Bear said.
<Let's just hope they don't find us in the middle of the fight, then. Let's do this, people.> I put my shield before me and crouched a little, getting into a defensive position.
<What if they aren't enemies?> Ted asked.
<They're following us without getting close enough to talk, naïve archer of mine. Trust me; they are enemies.> Bear replied.
<But what if they're just coming here to hunt? I don't want to kill innocent people.>
<Killing?> I asked. <Who said anything about killing? We are simply going to introduce them to the fine art of weapon speech. Now, if they prefer to talk to our swords with their bodies, it's their problem, not ours. >
<Listen to him,> Bear said. <His mother must have taught him all she knew about using his body on other people's swords.>
<Ted, I don't think I like him anymore,> I said.
<Join the club. I have no idea why I hang out with him.>
We didn't have to wait long. Five minutes later, the first four people appeared.
It was a slaughter.
Ted opened with an arrow to a sorin's face. Bear raged – becoming slightly red – and used the Typhoon Swing to damage them all. My five fireballs flew and finished three of them, except for a dude who was wearing what looked like good scale armor.
Before the survivor could even react, Bear's huge bastard sword hit the guy on the side and Ted's second arrow hit him in the face. A second fireball in the man's face ended him.
It was all over in less than three seconds. Out of curiosity, I checked the damage logs.
[Ted] Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
[Ted] 153 damage dealt to Shorty
[Bear] 201 damage dealt to Shorty
[Bear] 189 damage dealt to Tall Guy
[Bear] 162 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
[Bear] 205 damage dealt to Probably Mage
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Shorty
HP: 0 / 576 <?>
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Tall Guy
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Tall Guy
HP: 0 / 633 <?>
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Probably Mage
HP: 0 / 427 <?>
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
[Bear] 91 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
[Ted] Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
[Ted] 102 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
Critical damage for 2.0x damage!
222 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
[Bear] 91 damage dealt to Good Armor Dude
HP: 0 / 890 <?>
I couldn't even read it all, because when Bear suddenly found himself out of targets, he turned to us.
Shit.
We were saved by a woman's scream behind him. A drow wearing the characteristic white robe of her people was there, and a second drow in Blackguard's cloak appeared right beside her.
Bear attacked.
His sword cut the woman almost in two, and she dropped on the floor, probably with an Open Wounds status effect. The Blackguard reacted fast and shadowed, striking Bear three times.
Something weird happened next. Bear's helmet opened by itself, revealing his now completely white eyes and sharp teeth. He dropped his sword and hugged the drow.
Then he bit the man's face.
A horrid scream followed. Four more people appeared, two other drow and two zombies. My fireballs flew, so did Ted's arrows. They counter-attacked.
They had a mage and a guy with a crossbow, who focused their attacks on Ted. Or at least tried to.
I didn't expect it from her, but she rolled to put me between the attacks and herself; she also somehow hit the mage's light spell mid-air with her arrow.
Meanwhile, the Blackguard had stopped screaming, probably having logged out after the shock of having his face bitten off. The other two players were a sword-and-shield guy, and one with two axes. Axes guy screamed in fury, and they attacked Bear.
<Ted, focus fire on the mage!>
<Okay!>
I waited for five fire morbs before throwing them, guessing their crossbowman would do the same to them as Ted had done. I made the spells move erratically, but the guy still managed to destroy one with a bolt, and the mage destroyed another one with her spell.
Three of them were still enough to kill the mage, though.
<Now the guy with a crossbow!>
<I know!>
Bear had dropped the drow on the ground and kicked the guy with the shield far enough to grab his own sword from the floor. Then he used the Typhoon Swing: he rotated with his arms extended, sword in hand. Right after that, he dealt a massive blow to axes guy, right in the face. Then to the man's arm.
Something fascinating was happening: he was recovering HP. Not only because of the drow he had bitten; with each blow he dealt, he shone slightly redder and recovered HP.
The crossbowman ignored us and started attacking Bear, too. Ted and I killed him after a short while. He rolled on the ground, trying to dodge our attacks, but it was to no avail.
Bear's HP hadn't even dropped to half. Between regeneration and his armor, it was very hard to kill him.
Without saying anything, both guys suddenly disengaged and ran.
Bear tried to run after them, but the guy with the shield bashed the zombie in the face, and he received a dazed status effect for thirty seconds.
<Let's go!> Ted said and begun to run, but I grabbed her arm and stopped her.
<No!>
<Why not?>
<It might be a trap! Even if it isn't, they might call for help from nearby players, and some might help. Come with me. We must hide and wait for Bear's Rage timer to end.>
She complied.
As we hid around a corner and heard Bear's rage screams, I felt burning anticipation inside me.
The zombie was a monster. How many more like him were there in the Underworld?
That war of mine would be even more amazing than I had expected.
Jack Thorn
Unbound Deathlord
Legendary Spotter, Hedge Wizard, Pioneer, Da
rk Archmage
Level 20
Hit Points:620 / 620
Mana Points:510 / 950
Stamina:305 / 305
Attributes:
Strength:19
Agility:17
Dexterity:19
Constitution:14
Intelligence:18 + 2 [Items]
Perception:16 + 10 [Items]
Willpower:18
Charisma:8
Traits:
© Adept Controller:22
© Adept Energizer:14
Adept Mage:12 + 10 [Items]
Scout:3
Athlete:2
Diviner:2
Gold Digger:2
Meditator:2
Scavenger:2
Shadow:2
Antimage:1
Crafter:1
Healer:1
Herbalist:1
Mind Seer:1
Negotiator:1
Nitpicker:1
Ranger:1
Strategist:1
Tactician:1
Warrior:1
26. My Life
'Ice-cream! Gimme the ice-cream! No, don't run! I just want a bite, I swear! Maybe two. C'mon, it won't be more than three!'
- Aunt
I shook the sword a little to loosen it from the corpse on the ground. People these days couldn't even die without being a pain in the ass to their murderers.
<I worry about the state of the world sometimes.> I cleaned the sword on the body's clothes.
<I know what you mean, bro.> Bear spoke with his mouth full of drow meat. <Look at all these corpses around us. Not a single copper on all of them. How can a man earn his keep like this?>
<How can you two enter a weird subject like that out of nowhere?> Ted was walking closer to us.
<If you can't understand the problem, you're probably part of it,> Bear said. <How much money did you bring with you, when we left the Slums three days ago?>
<Nothing.> She crossed her arms. <Why?>
Bear and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Ted sighed out loud and began to loot the bodies with us.
There were sixteen corpses around us, killed in three distinct battles. We had started the first against a somewhat isolated group of five people. Another group of three people, more or less nearby, decided to help the first group and attacked.
They hadn't expected us to finish the first fight as quickly as we did, though, and soon found themselves fighting without backup. They tried to run and screamed for help and found eight paladins of justice willing to save them.
Such paladins, while confident in their numeric superiority, hadn't believed we would kill the second group so fast, and suddenly found themselves having an intimate physical conversation with our swords by themselves.
We explained to them, in very didactic terms, why you never help unknown people in MMORPGs. Especially when you don't have a way to be sure of the enemy's strength in comparison to yours.
<This girl's scale armor has a defense factor of forty.> Bear was parting a zombie woman of her equipment.
We had decided on an ecological approach to after-battle scenes: we took everything the dead people had instead of leaving non-organic waste around.
<Mine has forty, too.> I knocked on my armor.
Low-Quality Scale Armor
» +40 defense
Low-Quality Scale Pants
» +40 defense
My new scale armor was made of copper and ugly as hell, but gave me better defenses than my old chainmail set. Sadly, I couldn't fit one over the other, and ended up selling the chainmail to Bear. Even while complaining that it disturbed his movements a little, he was now using it under his plate armor for some extra defense.
After receiving a few hits in some battles, I had been enlightened to changes in the defense system that the lack of a Destiny Spirit hadn't made me aware of.
Since an update in the last week, if you wore a piece of armor above other ones, it halved the worse ones' defense.
Meaning that my leather armor, scale armor, and half chest plate didn't mitigate damage by a hundred and five – the sum of all defenses – as I thought.
After being halved twice and rounded up, my half breastplate – the piece with the worse defense in the breast area – had an effective defense factor of eight, instead of thirty.
The leather armor – the second best piece – was lowering the damage I received by half its total: eighteen.
Only the scale armor defenses were being kept intact.
Any damage I received in the breastplate would be lowered by sixty-six, way less than what I had expected. It seemed like V-Soft didn't want cheap people like me skipping the more expensive armors.
Such lower defenses were actually visible in the items descriptions after you equipped them, but I hadn't cared to check. I mean, who did?
<Alright, people, let's go. Bear, would you do the honors?> We had finished looting, and there were some players around looking at us.
<Why, it'd be my pleasure, good sir.>
He put his hands beside his mouth. "This is White Tree territory!" He yelled with all the power he could muster. "We obey Jack Thorn! We challenge the drow to a fight over this land tomorrow, thirty hours from now! Come to the Slums if you have the guts!"
I nodded to him. <Good. We've enough killing now, enough that the White Tree might stop being lenient about it. Plus, Ted has to log out. Let's go to the cave and wait for tomorrow.>
A three-dimensional red 'C' letter the size of my head was rotating a few centimeters above me. We were on day twenty-nine, at midday, and had been killing people close to the drow cities for hours.
The most fragile point of my plan had been counting on the drow not attacking us immediately when we killed the first few players and yelled our summons. If they had, we would be dead, and it would've been the end of the Challenge for me.
Thankfully, I had read them well enough. Daggers had told me the drow considered players as distant cousins, but it was more like unwanted neighbors your parents – the gods – ordered you to treat well. The drow didn't care that we were killing the players, as long as it was outside their cities.
They should be downright pissed at the territorial claims, though.
Still, if you are a gang member in a neighborhood full of people you dislike, and a random dude starts to clean the streets of unwanted neighbors for you, you just let him do his job.
Even if he is yelling that the streets are now his, as long as he sets a place and date to decide that once and for all, and as long as such time is not too far in the future, you don't bother with him.
If you are going to confront a cleaning lady for stealing your stuff, you only do that after she finishes her job.
Unless she makes a point of yelling about the thievery every damn second of her workday, of course.
So, we had killed people for ten hours, and I had decided it was enough.
<Are we there yet, mommy archer?> Bear asked in a kids voice while dragging his feet.
<Shut up!> Ted was leading us to a smaller cave in the Catacombs' cave chamber. Bear knew where it was, but it seemed his life's mission was annoying people around him.
The drow and the White Tree weren't my only concerns. We had fought a few close calls, and I wasn't interested in dying by mistake in the middle of nowhere. Also, about one in every hundred people I saw walking around had the 'C' letter floating above their heads; Challengers were common in the areas around the Slums and looked my way with far too much interest.
<Damn, spoiled already.> Bear threw a drow foot on the floor.
Watching him eat people's bodies was one of the most disturbing things I had seen in my life. The fact that he didn't seem to care only made matters worse. In the cave where we had been the last few, he had at lea
st eaten giant ants.
It was a blessing that the meat lost its healing effectiveness and good taste after a half hour. I made a point of not looking his way after the fights.
Bear had already visited the cavern that Ted led us to: it was the rat's cave of their bet, the one that the specter had failed to clear using daggers, which forced the archer path upon her.
A series of narrow passages with turns every twenty paces made it excellent defensive terrain. Ted left us there and logged out immediately. She'd only come back when it was time for us to leave.
<Alone at least.> Bear put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him. Side by side, we barely fit the tunnels. <We should talk.>
<About?>
<Our little female companion. Just so we're clear, if you ever make her shed a single tear, I'll kill you. On Earth.>
I laughed. <No need for that, bro. She told me you're interested in her. I have no intention of sailing those waters.>
<Hah! Nice try! She's a sister to me; I'd never touch her. Just remember that I'll be watching over your relationship with utmost care.>
With some difficulty, I forced myself out of his hold. <I'm not joking, man. She told me you're interested in her.>
<And I'm telling you that makes no sense! Didn't you see how we act with one another? We grew up together; we're all but blood-related.>
Realization hit me, and I rolled my eyes. I couldn't believe the universe would make me act cupid. <Bear, you big imbecile, why do you think I take all your bullshit jokes?>
He made a confused expression. <Because they are funny?>
<Because I joke back. That's a healthy relationship, we piss each other off and move on. It doesn't mean we are close friends, but it means we can tolerate each other without any overheating on anyone's part.>
<Look, archer- Oh, she's not here. Look, rock! He thinks he's wise!>
Ignoring him had become a habit by now. <Ted doesn't talk back. She gets really annoyed but accepts it. She claims we are nerds for traveling to Valia, but does the same. She never wanted to live as an archer, but she does it. Why, you moron, do you think she does that?>