It had just been an accident but she was immensly frustrated. No, thats not entirely true because for it to be an accident something bad had to have happened. Right now she just wished something had happened but was feeling guilty for it at the same time, guilty and frustrated. Things were confusing and most certainly not in a good way. She had only wanted one thing, one simple thing. She just wanted to be a named Adventurer and it seemed like a simple thing, not that it was easy but it wasn't exactly hard. At least not hard to understand and certainly not harder than being a Gold rank adventurer as she was now.
She raised her head slightly and peared out from the shadow of the tree, watching the Silver rank team on the path to Liscor. 89% chance this was the right team. 65% chance she needed to weaken them. 91% chance there were goblins waiting to ambush the adventurers within a mile of their current location. All good odds.
In theory named adventurer wasn't any harder than a good gold rank adventurer and she had done that, was doing that. She was a damn good gold rank member of any team. She was good solo, better than most but you alwasys fought to the best of your ability and pushed yourself just that little bit. The key was, as things got harder you got better so nothing was out of reach as long as you kept going. She had done everything right of course, it had been the plan right from the start but it just wasn't working and that wasn't something she said of any of her plans. The silver rank years had dragged on slowly as she honed her skills and pushed her limits but none of her hauls ever had that artifact that could push her or her team to gold. She had dragged her way to gold with nothing but natural ability. It had been years of hard work with years of working hard but in some strange twist of fate it had been those years that had stopped her becoming a named adventurer. Looking back on the years past she was proud of what she had achieved and couldn't understand why her efforts were not being recognised but now she really examined the details, the more she thought about it the more it made sense. Sadly, that had lead to things just not making sense anymore. Who knew you could achieve everything you wanted without actually doing so at the same time? So many people knew her name, so many teams, gold, silver, even bronze rank teams still knew her. She had worked with so many people it wasn't possible that people didn't know her name and yet, that was part of the problem. She felt like she could have been a named adventurer long before she was officially rated gold rank but maybe that was just a self inflated ego, maybe. No. She couldn't doubt herself now, not now as she was both achieving her dream and not at the same time. She just had to work out how to change the situation from a confusing accident into what she wanted it to be. It was time for a new plan.
The thing about being a named adventurer was the name. It had seemed like such a little detail at the time and she hadn't considered it to be as important as it really was, which turns out to have been the critical mistake. It's not like many adventurers don't make mistakes in the beginning, except that hers didn't get her or anybody else killed. It slipped by without being noticed. An insideous mistake that lurked for years before being noticed, before starting to hurt her, while not physically but in a very very real way that she felt every day.
Instead of rushing into things and getting cut up she had worked hard at making sure everybody in her team came back alive. Planning. It was all about planning. Being careful, not out stretching the teams ability and making a careful considered choices on what they did was the way she had kept them safe. She thought as a named adventurer right from the start, she actually planned almost all her quests solo and used teams to make sure things went according to plan. She would scout out the dungeon or terrain or enemy, whatever it was that time but she would plan it all alone. It was very early on she had received her [lesser stealth] skill. She hadn't even known it was part of her class but then, not many had that class so some of the rarer skills were probably going to crop up and she was making the most of every one as she got it. It was a surprise to find that a single class could provide everything she had needed and she wondered if other named adventurers had the same class, or just her. She hadn't ever met anybody who claimed to have it so she had kept it quiet and worked hard to build her skills, her levels. The progress had been painfully slow some years but it had been progress. Constant progress. They had never gone hungry, or lost a team member but then they had never come back with that haul that made people in the streets stop and stare. Which apparently was part of what you needed to do to become a named adventurer and the other part... She had taken far too long to realise. Her first and worst mistake.
Dependable. Safe. Stable. You could always count on her, but nobody ever called her name in desperation. She never pulled anybody back from the brink, from being nearly killed. She never got the fame from saving people because they never got into that danger, entirely because of her planning which she felt was a greater achievement than screwing up and pulling things out of the fire but it turns out she was wrong about everything. The thing about the name was that it had a life of it's own. Being a named adventurer was in actual fact two things. It was being an adventurer and being a name, a name people called out in awe and a name people looked up to or feared. She had thought that once you reached a level you would just become a named adventurer but that wasn't the case at all. A named adventurer was a name people wanted to know. A name that could travel further and faster than any adventurer could ever manage. The name itself had a life of it's own and could grow if fed correctly. An adventurer fed their name with deeds of note, of heroics and not with security. Then others fed that name too with stories getting larger with each and every telling and it would grow beyond a mere person, beyond a simple adventurer gold rank or not. That name would become half the legend and that was why they were called named adventurers. It was all in the title and she hadn't seen it.
Nobody spoke the name of Jessica the dependable. She wasn't a destroyer. She wasn't a crusher, a killer or any of those things because she was so good at planning that nobody ever realised she saved her teams lives before they left on each and every quest. Jessica also wasn't a good start, but back at the start she hadn't thought about it and that too had been a mistake. Too many people knew her and her name. She had a reputation now, a good one for sure but not one that would ever make the likes of a named adventurer. People knew going with her was a smart move. If she was on your team you knew you were coming back, usually with loot but definitely coming back. Not once in the last few years had she had trouble joining a group of adventurers. Everybody knew her name! She SHOULD be a named adventurer but she wasn't. She wasn't because that wasn't her name and she knew now it never could be, so she made a choice. It seemed simple at the time but she realised now that such a choice could not have been simple. There was no way such a sequence of events could possibly be simple.
It all started how she usually started, with a logical conclusion... Ok so people know her name and know who she is but she can never become what she wants because they do, so she had to go backwards. She had to start again and do it right this time which seemed sort of simple, just difficult. How to erase your name? Start with your face. If people didn't know your face you could say your name was anything and that had lead to the next problem. She had never really collected powerful artifacts and certainly none that could change how people saw her, so even with skills beyond reproach she couldn't [sublte Disguise] her way out no matter how hard she tried because that always lead to being less noticable than before. When she had heard the story it had seemed logical. She hadn't intended to steal as much as she did, just an idea was all. She hadn't intended to steal an identity. She just liked the idea of a mask. It was simple, cover her face and she could be any name she wanted and oh my how many she had come up with. She knew of course that half of it had to come from others. She could only pick the first part of her name, nobody picked their own title and she was lucky she would get to pick the first half as it was, most people didn't pick their own name. What she hadn't expected was quite how powerful the story she had heard was and how much it would take over and grow. A masked adventurer. A woman. It had seemed like a good idea! She hadn't intentionally copied the mask but logic had followed and form followed function. It needed to not just hide her face but protect it, it needed to be strong, light and at the same time allow her to be identified. So the story of the adventurer with a mask drove her to create her own and she had set out to make a name for herself in the way she knew now was the right way to do it. Throw causion to the wind and perform amazing deeds, except this was Jessica so she still planned it in intricate and excrutiating detail. She was used to planning things that went so well people didn't even realise they could go wrong but now she had to plan for things going wrong, but within the plan. This was going to be a challenge even for her.
After following the silver rank team for a few weeks she knew their routine. They were on the way to Liscor to enter the dungeon the same as everybody else, the story of the masked adventurer and the enchanted mace was spreading like wild fire so she knew that this dungeon was a place to spawn a legend and it had been a lucky break that she had been close when she heard the story. It all fitted together so well, she knew her plans were right when they felt like part of a larger plan that wasn't hers. She watched them plan, very poorly she noted but at least they tried and they might not die. Well, not right away at least. So she did her own recon too while they did theirs. She followed gold rank teams and watched them work, gathered intel from their efforts and decided after a few more weeks she knew what the silver rank team would do, and where they would fail. Careful study of each of their abilities during several fights on the way provided her with vital details for this plan. It also provided the injury that would keep them one member down. Details such as the first response when surprised, their go-to moves and the blind spots were all easy to work out and she knew them. She probably knew them better than they knew each other. She knew how to save them. The worst part about this was it went against everything she had done for her whole life as an adventurer, knowingly letting others get into danger! She could plan this so even they had a great chance of coming through without serious injury but that was the old way and how else was she meant to do it? This was the only way and she knew, she knew that if she wasn't there they would die. Maybe they would learn a lesson from this so she would be doing them a favour but that rang hollow in her mind and it hurt her deep inside knowing this was the only way but she would be a named adventurer no matter what. She avoided the town. She avoided the inn, now that was a strange place indeed and there was a feeling that the story wouldn't be about her if she went there and this was going to be HER story. Everything about the area around Liscor was strange and she knew now this was the right place to make her name. Hah. How hollow that idea sounded now. It had worked and backfired at the same time. She couldn't have known!
It was their third journey in that they reached the room she knew would kill them. If it had been her team they would have left, not gone in. There was no way this dungeon was worth the risks and she had no real intention of going very deep in but she knew what she had to do because she knew the stories of what had been done. A masked adventurer, a solo adventurer. She had come from nowhere and saved a group of adventurers only to return to nowhere. Had she just told them her name, she would be a named adventurer and Jessica was not going to make that mistake. She followed the silver rank team, Goblins gift. Even their name showed poor judgement to a point she was surprised they made silver rank but then, she was surprised most adventurers made it to the next day considering how they operated and all things considered Goblins Gift was a better name than hers. The shadows welcomed her and she felt at home, which was strange but she had spent so many hours in places like this and so many days alone that this felt natural.
The room was going as she expected. The scouts were searching brick by brick for physcial triggers with the [Mage] looking for magical ones. The [Warrior] stood guard at the door with the other fighter. They were both alert and watching for danger, one inwards and one outwards ready to fight at the slightest movement but she knew they couldn't fight what was coming. They were all inside the room. It was almost inconceivable to her that an entire team would all be in the same room, how were you meant to prevent attacks from the rear? Or save trapped team members, or a million other things. There were too few of them and they were not spread out enough to cover themselves. The lure of this dungeon, it's biggest threat seemed to be how it tricked people into thinking that they could be the ones to tame it.
*click*
That was her 15 second notice, they heard it too of course and were in panic now, another sign they were not ready for this dungeon but then again who could be? Jessica, that's who. No, not Jessica. She hadn't decided on the name yet but was sure the right one would come to her when asked as the list was short with only four to choose from and it mattered the exact situation when asked. It mattered as that would shape the title. She had to pick the name to make the title flow naturally. So a list of four is what she had to choose from and they covered almost all possible situations.
*click*
It was time. The group had started to back out on hearing the first click and they had just triggered the second. The tiny holes in the wall had gone almost unnoticed by the first scout. The second one had examined them in quite some detail and declared they were not triggers but possible damage from another adventurer or monster. It was a simple mistake that would have ended the lives of all of them looking at the way they were backing up. [Warrior] first then [Mage] and then scouts. They were litterally just backtracking the way they had come in while not noticing at all what had happened. She burst into the room ducking the inevitable blow as the [Warrior] struck out with her predicted response, this had been a worry as there were three main attacks she expected and only a 75% probability of this one. Had it been one of the others she might not have reacted in time to avoid a minor injury but this was a mission of risk and that had been the biggest one. She knew what came next for sure. The whole silver rank team froze as they looked at her, poised ready to attack and then their eyes changed as they knew she wasn't a monster but was she there to help? There wasn't any time for introductions however, they would have to wait as the danger was only just beginning so she leapt.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Albron the [Mage] was completely surprised to receive a blow to the shoulder from the stranger who had just leapt into the room. She had ducked Jhontis's blow like she had expected it and he was trying to remove his axe from the wall he had struck so hard. They were all on edge and this had not helped calm their nerves. [Dangersense] was ringing in his head as he was pushed to the ground and was so totally and utterly surprised to see a flash or silver pass where his neck had been just moments before. Without any time to react the stranger had leapt on. He cast [shimmering shield] and the top of his staff started to glow, another silver flash deflected off the bubble that was forming around him as he looked towards Jermia who was furthest into the room.
The stranger had now past half their team and reached the scouts at the front as she dove low sweeping Jermia's legs out from under him. Jeria looked at his brother thinking the stranger was attacking but he was fastest and always had been smarter. He saw the blade cut the air above their heads and ducked almost too slow as the blade sliced his bow in two and cut deep into his shoulder. Jermia hadn't quite had time to get to his feet as the blades had passed by overhead and he looked towards Jeria and saw the blood. These blades were impossibly sharp, in fact he wasn't sure they were real blades at all. They had to be magical or they would have spotted the slots in the walls for them to launch from so that meant..
*CRACK*
Jermia felt pain in his back and saw his dagger fall to the floor sliced in two but his eyes were on the stranger who seemed to be dancing around the room. He hadn't noticed it at first but every movement either deflected one of the magical blades or pushed somebody out of the way, almost as if she knew where they would come from. Sadly, nobody else knew and these things were undoubtedly deadly as his back felt quite damp and the intial hot feeling was turning colder. Jhontis had recoverd his axe and swung for the stranger in the room, never quick on the uptake presumably still thinking they were under attack and Jermia worried for a moment as the axe swung for.. her. Yes, it was a woman, as the axe swung for her and she reached FOR it. If this woman couldn't predict the future then Jermia was no [Scout] because she gripped the handle of the giant two headed axe just above Jhontis's hand and guided it towards a spot on the wall. The wall exploded in shards of stone and they all caught a glimpse of a brief glow of runes before they dimmed.
Albron had located all the runes now he knew what he was looking for. They were concealed under a layer of normal stone until activated and the blades sliced their way free but you had to watch, because as fast as the stone cracked away it repaired itself leaving no trace
"[Stone dart]" he called as he smashed two sets of runes and reached out a hand to where he thought the next one was only to be kicked! Except it wasn't hard, it was... directional and his hand was now aiming higher and more left than it was as the next [Stone dart] flew, perfectly crushing the center of the runes. The stranger cartwheeled over him, resting a hand on his magical shield as she flew over one of the blades and kicked something across the floor. Something shaped like a human... Something soaked in blood. Something he hoped with all his heart wasn't who he knew it was. A blade sliced the leg of the stranger as she pushed the body out of its way but there was no blood from her, instead a flash and a reflection as if from something under her clothes as the blade deflected. His friend was now next to him, under the shield which he was extending as the two [scouts] pressed against his back. A giant axe again crashed into the wall as two more [Stone darts] hit their mark and the blades stopped.
There was a lot of blood. Jessica knew that she hadn't saved them all, she had tried but the axe getting trapped in the wall hadn't been part of the plan. The fury and power of that first blow had been honestly the first surprise of the day and not a good one, she was glad she managed to predict it and not get hit but he had clearly never hit with full force while she was watching before. She also knew it was safe for now. Actually it wasn't safe at all but at least the blades were stopped. This was the moment she had been waiting for. She noted the positions of everybody in the room as well as who had caused each blow to the runes, who had died, who was injured and who was angry. Every part of this situation was about to shape her name. She was about to become a named adventurer she was sure of it, she had saved them! An 83% chance that a name given now would start stories that could spread to any of the nearby cities. Despite their own best efforts they would almost all leave this dungeon alive and with all their limbs.
"It's you!" this... This wasn't what they were meant to say! They were meant to ask her NAME!
"We heard the story, of a masked woman alone in the dungeon, saving a team of silver rank adventurers but we never dreamed we would meet her" ok, she wasn't THAT person she just had a mask! It wasn't the same mask or..
"What's your name?" Albron had asked. That meant something. She knew now which of the four choices she would use. She knew now how her future would unfold, her history as a named adventurer, her title. She drew in her breath and paused for dramatic effect before speaking a name to be told across the lands.
"Don't be an idiot!" shouted Jermia just as she was about to speak, deflating the wind in her lungs and confusing her. She began to breath in again, this time she would,
"She's mute! Everybody knows the story. You can't ask her name you'll just scare her off. I'm so sorry for my friend he is no doubt a little confused as it looked like you were attacking us at first. It took a minute to work out what was going on. I don't know how I didn't spot those triggers, light activated?" he didn't stop talking and she just looked like she was panting for breath now. Why wouldn't they shut up and let her tell them her name. This was the important bit! She didn't care how or why they missed the dangers because she already knew and they just needed to stop talking long enough for her to introduce herself if they were not going to ask.
"Yes, Definitely. I'm sorry I didn't spot the runes or the enchantment before but they were so well concealed! I think my light triggered it as I passed by the second. The second activated the first trigger to make sure we were all in the room, we would have died for sure without the assistance." Albron was talking now and they were just not stopping,
"Mute huh? Well we can't thank you enough but for the moment we must tend to our injured." He turned away and started handing out healing potions. The two scouts were almost completely red, either from their own blood or that of the body on the floor. Jion. The eldest of the team and their leader, she was meant to save him with the axe but the axe had been so deeply lodged in the wall that hadn't been possible and any delay would have put the whole sequence of events out and lead to all their deaths so she... She had to sacrifice him, she couldn't save him or push him out of the way without being in the wrong position for the next blade, then the next and the next and it hurt. She had tried but the fractions of a second she had allowed as contingency just were not enough. Now her legs and arms were throbbing of course, the pain of each blade she had deflected was not easily dulled and she didn't want to take a healing potion in front of them as that would appear weak. The plates had done exactly as she had planned of course, it hadn't taken long to design something specific to deflect these blades but it had been expensive. No blade could penetrate these plates but the force carried though and each impact was like a hammer on her skin. She didn't dare touch the ripped cloth for fear of exposing the bruising she was sure covered most of her body by now. They were dragging Jion towards the exit, even now after all this they were not thinking straight. They just assumed it was safe as she was standing still so she ran forwards and deflected the last blade across the doorway before they got to it and smashed the rune with her [Iron fist] so it couldn't fire again. The whole team froze for only a moment before pulling closer towards her as they retreated while constantly talking. They thought she was the same woman she had heard the story about and talking now, giving a name would only have 5% chance of starting the right story. Tis would take some untangling if she was to get the right name, the four she chose were right out by now and she was down to the second list, this was past the backup plan and the backup backup and onto names she hadn't considered more than 10% likely, but it would still work if she just waited for the right moment.
"JION!" a crying woman waiting near the entrance screamed as they dragged their leader out of the dungeon. Had it been a mistake to go in via the front door instead of the shortcut everybody else was using? Clearly. Having an injured member of the team was responsible for that decision. None of them knew how hard Jessica had worked to arrange that specific injury. She had known they would go in the wrong way if they thought they were at full strength. She had scouted ahead and made sure they encountered exactly the right monster at the right time and with an 83% certainty that this particular person would be injured it was only a matter of making sure the monster was just weak enough to not be able to kill her. While it went against all her normal planning making sure this injury happend ensured the whole team would not die so she had done it. They would never know she saved their lives before they even arrived at the Dungeon.
The Drake guards on duty looked onwards wearily, eyeing the adventurers as they came out with the strange woman at the front, striding towards them.
"HALT! Who goes there?" a deep red scaled Drake called out and Albron replied before anybody else could do so, she once more drew breath to call her name...
"It's us! Don't attack her she is with us! She is the famous mute solo adventurer! She saved us too!", again! They just couldn't keep their mouths shut. That was the idea of course, to spread the story. They had to let her say her name first though or there was no story to spread.
"Mute huh? No wonder she spends her time in the dungeon, just as well for you fools too! We told you not to go in. What was it ? 3 hours? That might be some kind of record for you stupid humans."
"Yeah, when will you adventurers learn to listen to the [Guardsmen] on duty? There is only one team who go in regularly and still come out and I swear they just have tea in the entrance hall then leave for all the loot they bring out." a muddy yellow scaled Drake chimed in and then spat at the [Warrior] as he heaved part of the barrier out of the way to drag the fallen adventurer out. "Stop that! Don't break the defences you stupid..."
The whole silver rank team was out but instead of shouting the name of the Adventurer who had saved them they were telling everybody she was mute. She couldn't speak now, it would be.... stupid. If she spoke now there would be suspicion, doubt, it would break the spell that she had spent so much time crafting. Not a true spell, or at least not in the sense any [Mage] would understand it. It was a spell of planning, of logic, of situation. It was crafted to create a named adventurer but they had wrecked it! How could she have a name if she couldn't speak! They all thought she was this other adventurer now and to say otherwise would ruin everything she just achieved and the cost had been so high. So high. The first death she had ever experienced in her own team. It had been a long time since that day, but she had vowed to never again follow the plans of another. They didn't know she was in their team, or to be more precise that they were her team because she hadn't told them but that didn't change the facts. She had watched and guided them from far beyond Liscor. She had killed Goblins and they didn't even know. She had held back Crelers from swarming them while they searched the room and they couldn't know. She had planned how to save them from themselves and they didn't even realise they were destined to die without her. Yet, it had all gone so horribly wrong. The force of one blow with an axe had ruined her plan. Jion was meant to live, injured sure she couldn't avoid that and quite frankly without him it was a miracle the others had survived too. Albron had stood in the right place but the [Scouts] hadn't made it back fast enough, one had nearly been cleaved in two and the other had nearly lost several limbs.
Jessica was despondant. There was no way to describe how she felt seeing her plan unravel with the unruly talk from her team as they constantly thanked the mute adventurer for saving them, offered her money and begged her to join their team without knowing they had been in hers from the start.
"Where are you going?" Jermia called as she walked away from them.
"Oh.... no, but..." Albron started to call out but she was alread over the barrier, past the [Guardsmen] and halfway back into the Dungeon.
"What the hell do you think you are doing now? You thin scaled idiot!"
She passed through into the darkness and walked just out of the light before blending into the shadows almost invisible so anybody following would go straight past her. She sat. It had been such a good plan, a named adventurer and now... Now she had no name at all, even robbed of the one she had before. Months of planning unravelled because of a stuck axe and a dramatic pause. Something wet started to grow around the floor at her feet. Tears falling from under the mask, slowly pooling around the rim until they finally fell and splashed to the ground. She had never believed in destiny, but this felt personal. This felt like something didn't want her to be a named adventurer, like being robbed of any name was punishment for trying to control her destiny. She could take the mask off, or just speak but she knew this wasn't the time or place for either. For one thing, it would look weak to cry in front of zombies.
[Iron Fist] was actually quite useful for lesser monsters. It was messy of course but she didn't care at this point as she pounded rotten flesh into the wall hitting so hard she chipped tiny pieces of stone away with each punch. With each pounding blow blood splattered the wall, ceiling and finally the floor mixing slowly with the falling tears. She needed a new plan, but that would take time. This would do for now. Punching till the pain stopped, there were plenty of zombies here to keep her busy at least. Busy, not thinking. Not planning, just hitting. Until it was time to plan again.
"At least there are no monsters following out this time. Looks like we get a quiet shift after all!" said the red scaled Drake to his companion as he pulled a small square board out of a pack on the floor.
"Rot that, I was looking forward to something to do! If I have to put up with your constant nagging to play chess all day I swear I'd rather face a hoard of zombies."