Finding themselves in front of the gargantuan tower in the middle of New York, they walked towards the area of its influence. Janik was pondering as they walked and started a conversation.
“How much do you know about the Fields in Aetheria?” He didn’t look in Sam’s direction when asking but was rather focused on the tower itself.
“I was in the first level a few days ago, and I know we have managed to beat three of them, unlocking the fourth level.” Sam went into loose detail about the different Floors. The first one was the grass and woods plains, the second was just mountains and caves, the third was a large island in the middle of a huge ocean, and the fourth was a world of floating islands. Nobody knew how to beat the fourth floor yet.
He also mentioned that when a new floor opened it lead to a massive influx of players going there, many getting rich in new resources before things stabilized. Still, many also died to the unknown dangers.
“That’s a good starting point.” Janik commented as they moved closer to the Tower. “I think we should both hit level 20 before we go to the second Floor, just for safety’s sake.” He smiled.
Sam knew there were rough level brackets for known monsters on the different Floors, though that didn’t mean that all of them were equal. Two level 5 monsters of the same race could have vastly different stats depending on their Rank, one could be trivial and the other a group Player fight. This is why the Scanning skills were in such high demand, the main problem was their scarcity so not everyone had a chance to get one. Based on what Janik had said before, he had at least the lowest rank, he mentioned that he could see the Health of targets around, or lower than his power. That was a good starting point and could stop you from going into a bad situation. Aiming to at least be on the same level as the expected lower-tier monsters was a good idea.
Sam nodded in agreement to Janik’s statement, he intended to live as long as possible as well, so avoiding to go in against too much power was often a good idea.
Coming within the Tower’s influence the System message asking if they wanted to enter Aetheria popped up. As they accepted the warm white light enveloped them like before and they found themselves in the Plains of Floor One. The grassy plains, forests, gentle pleasant breeze and sun stretched far into the distance. The only thing stopping them from reaching the horizon was the mountain range that stretched around the whole place. It was still massive enough that driving cross country with a modern car would take a few hours. Though the towers around the world were massive, they weren’t large enough to keep even a part of this inside them.
Near the landing area of the first floor was a village, it was the same one that the newbie group walked through the other day,
“So... what are the plans here, anyway?” Sam asked Janik. He knew they were going here today but besides perhaps finding a PvPer, he didn’t know of any plans for why they went here instead of some Dungeons.
“Ah, mainly a change of pace.” Janik replied as he started walking in a seemingly random direction. “There are plenty of monster camps, groups or just roaming creatures to fight. We might even get lucky and find an unexplored cave or whatever, they sometimes pop up even today.”
Sam had heard of this, though the first Floor had been accessible for quite some time now, there were still new things discovered in it.
They spent considerable time roaming about, picking up plants and resources they came over. Sam’s Psyhands made the poison or unstable things much easier to handle, avoiding the need for clumsy gloves or being too careful, as long as it was properly bagged or jarred, it was safe to handle afterwards. Exploring like this felt surprisingly nice, just walking about and seeing nature. Not something Sam was too used to, having lived in the city all his life. There were parks and the off out of town trips when he was young, but this was something else entirely. Elara also enjoyed it, being able to slither between plants and hunt the fieldmice, managing to snatch one she almost beamed with pride when she showed Sam, before consuming the dead creature whole. Sam had seen videos of this happen so it wasn’t weird on its own, but the fact that he saw Elara as a person made it an interesting contrast in his mind.
The only combat they saw today was a few Goblins who decided they could attack them, needless to say, they didn’t stand a chance as level 1 scrubs. They didn’t have anything of interest on them, too weak to have a proper Core to be harvested and not even enough XP for Elara to level up. Outside of that the day was extremely uneventful. The sightseeing was nice, but not much to speak about.
Setting up camp for the night, a simple camping set was part of the TAC gear they brought, Sam felt a bit weird when it came to camping. On one hand, it was an interesting change of pace, on the other, having lived on the streets this just kind of felt like it hit home in a weird way.
The addition of a fire, that Janik lit with a normal lighter and some dry twigs and leaves, changed the experience dramatically, it turned pleasant and interesting instead of a cold concrete corner or trying to find some heat-exhaust from a large building to sit in. Just sitting around a fire, even though it wasn’t that cold in the area, was extremely comforting and relaxing. Janik had started heating some food by placing it on a warm stone near the fire, Elara was coiled up surprisingly close to the fire, soaking the heat, and Sam was sitting there, playing with the sticks within the fire with his Psyhands.
Knowing from earlier testing, it was still strangely illogical in his mind to feel and touch things in the fire and embers, without feeling the pain or discomfort of the heat. He could do whatever he wanted in there while at a safe and pleasant range. They mainly talked about what was going on, some chatting about the versatility of the Psyhands given how he could feel with them, but they couldn’t be touched in return, and just random chatting about their thoughts of things.
Eventually turning in for the night, they woke up the next morning as the sun grew bright enough to become a nuisance. Getting out of his little tent and stretching he looked around. Janik was still sleeping, Elara woke up as he moved around in the one-man tent and was slithering out as well, she aimed to slither over to the fire looking for hotspots to pause nearby.
Sam didn’t want to wake Janik up, and he didn’t think there was a need to reignite the campfire as they were leaving once he woke anyway, so he used the time to pack down his small camp instead. Janik woke up during the process and joined in packing down his stuff as well.
“Well, well, well, what’s all this then?” A voice asked from the forest, causing both of them to turn around. Janik instinctively grabbed both his swords but didn’t pull them right away.
As Sam turned to the voice he saw a man, looking to be in his 30s somewhere, with short brown hair, a nice set of leather armour, a sheathed dagger at each hip, a few throwing knives along a bandoleer on his chest and what looked like a small quick-access bag on his hip.
“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to just leave your stuff here and leave, can I? That dagger of yours looks pretty nice.” The man commented with a smile as he eyed the ornate handle of Sam’s Vampiric blade.
Janik pulled his swords but stopped before they got properly out of their sheath, Sam noticed a woman who was just standing behind Janik, she had a knife against his throat, and he could see that she was holding a second dagger against his back. Sam hadn’t seen or noticed her before. She was about his height, had long black hair in a high ponytail, athletic build and a tight-fitted chest piece that almost looked like a leather corset.
“I suggest you don’t do that.” She smiled with an alluring voice.
Janik complied and lifted his hands, showing that he was doing as told. The swords were a bit less than halfway pulled out but he couldn’t do anything with them, lest his throat got a new opening.
“Good, good. You seem to get it.” The bandit commented as Janik gave in.
Sam thought about a few things. The first was that he was kind of lucky to have PvPers show up on the first night, but that sort of made sense. They had probably tagged them, at least Sam, as a new player in this place. And stalking them was probably a simple way of getting hold of them. Though he didn’t know why they didn’t strike in the night rather than wait for the morning. If it was him he would just attack when his target slept.
“Why didn’t you attack last night? Why now?” Sam asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.
“Well, we were busy last night.” The man replied with a lecherous smile. It was clear that they spent the night together in more ways than one.
It was still kind of interesting that they got to Sam and Janik this early in the morning. And it was a strong hint that this was not a spur-of-the-moment thing, they took the time to be intimate before doing this, so...
“And don’t get any ideas.” The man added as he pulled one of his daggers in his left hand and a throwing knife in his right. “I don’t see any mana on either of you.” He pointed the dagger in Sam’s direction. “You only have 35 health, even with a good piece of armour I can kill you before you get a hit in, and you-” He moved the dagger over to point at Janik. “Even your 140 health will disappear at a double critical damage from my lovely associate here~” He drew out the tone of the end of his sentence, cementing the statement.
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Sam considered this for a brief moment, he didn’t know how all the math would work without calculating them properly, but considering that critical hits were double damage and that she had two weapons, he expected her to do much more damage than he could do with the Vampiric blade, meaning a double crit sounded like it could easily clear 140. Not to mention his meagre 35 health... Perhaps he should consider raising his vitality...
Not expecting that fighting other players would be easy, he somewhat didn’t expect to be ambushed right away like this... And judging by Janik’s face, neither did he.
His mind was racing, what should he do, what was the smartest thing to do, they looked and acted professionally, this was not their first time doing this. He needed a distraction, if he could get the man’s attention away, he could get the woman’s blades away from Janik, that would let him do his thing. But what could he do?
The answer was stupidly simple, to the point that had it not been for the situation, he would have slapped his forehead in shame. He just needed a sound!
Manifesting a Psyhand as far away as he could, extending the distance to its max gave him one hand moving 22m/70ft away, this was plenty. Picking up a stick from the ground, light enough for him to move, he hit it against a tree.
This caused the stick to make the expected noise from the interaction, as well as breaking. Both the man and woman’s heads snapped towards it, in the man’s case this forced him to turn his head around as well as parts of his body.
Perfect.
Despawning everything to regain his energy, he manifested four of his Psyhands, two of them next to each of the woman’s hands, facing her fingers. Activating the Force Pulse he slammed the energy into the finger-side of her hands, the total force estimated around 2kg/4.4lbs into each of her hands. His Psyhands were angled so that the force would move the blades away from his body, making sure that he didn’t cut him with the interaction.
Since he had time to line it up and plan, and this was completely unexpected for the two, his attack landed properly. She let out a loud yelling swear in pain and shock as the force wrenched both daggers from her grip.
Janik seemed like he was waiting for it as he instantly grabbed both handles of his sword, and in one fluid movement, he turned around, pulled them and whipped them past her throat. It took a split second before any reaction happened besides her utter shock before copious amounts of blood started flowing from the wounds of his two slices.
It seems he did the same to them as she intended to do to him.
The man turned around, cocking his arm to make a throw, but Sam had already reacted. Using the two daggers the woman was using, and supplementing with two of his own, he sent four blades flying at the bandit man. He knew he didn’t have the damage to one-shot him, but it should be enough to get some damage done.
Having just turned around and not gotten a proper moment to handle what was going on, all of Sam’s four attacks landed. Sam didn’t take the proper time to aim so nothing hit a vital point, but he still landed four daggers, one being the Vampiric dagger, two of the female PvPer and one of his own.
Sam’s expression soured as the man smiled widely, even after all attacks landed. Not a drop of blood fell from him.
Janik didn’t intend to wait, even before the attack landed he had started moving towards the bandit, swords ready to strike.
The bandit threw his dagger at Sam, expecting this he had already despawned one of the Psyhands, dropping the cheapest dagger, only to manifest it with one energy to spare in the path between them. As the dagger came flying in he managed to ‘connect’ with it and his Psyhand, activating Force Pulse was more than enough to send it off course, missing Sam entirely.
As Janik got in close, the bandit was ready, he had pulled his other dagger and as Janik’s slices came in, he parried them beautifully. Janik sliced again and again, but none of his attacks landed, all of them being parried effortlessly.
Daggers again started flying as Sam knew what he needed to do, he had two proper choices, one was to try and disarm or fuck with the bandit, giving Janik an opening, but the second was what he went for. As Janik was keeping his focus, Sam moved all his daggers in behind the bandit, taking valuable seconds to line up his attack. He second-guessed his actions as a few solid hits made their way through to Janik, drawing an alarming amount of blood, but Sam focused on his plan.
Finding an opening he sprung to action, though he was standing still and looking like he wasn’t doing anything, it all happened behind the male bandit, four blades had slowly been creeping up behind him, aiming themselves from his flanks and suddenly darting inwards towards his neck. All four hit!
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
He had no idea how much damage got through, but this time it drew an alarming amount of blood from the man’s neck. He still stood and still fought, but it affected his parrying ability considerably.
Janik started landing hits, first one, then two, then a third. The man was looking like he was in horrible shape, but managing to bring his parrying back up, parrying Janik’s attacks again and again. He tried looking around for the floating daggers, but this time Sam had another idea.
Dropping some daggers he moved two of his Psyhands onto his face, somewhat grabbing or at least placing them over his eyes. Sam could tell that he felt something weird and tried to shake his head away from it, but it was too late. Activating a single Force Pulse in each hand aimed into his eyes. It wasn’t enough to pop his eyeballs, the force was surprisingly considerable but due to how short-lived it was, and the fact that it was a non-damage ability, it didn’t do any lasting damage, however, it messed with his ability to see properly.
Sam moved the Vampiric dagger, as well as one of the daggers he stole from the woman, towards his throat. The Vampiric dagger missed entirely, he hadn’t taken the time to line up the attack properly, but the borrowed dagger landed!
[ Critical hit, double damage. ]
The dagger raked across his throat, this time the wound didn’t seem to stop bleeding like many Player wounds tended to do, but rather pulsed out as the man, in panic dropped his daggers and grabbed his throat. As he tried to speak only gurgling sounds could be heard as he fell over to the side with his face in severe shock.
[ Ascendant Challenge 2/2
1: Pickpocket something from another player.
-Condition: Do not get caught. - Completed!
2: Kill another player - Completed!
Rewards:
A significant boost to an ability. ]
The window was updated and listed both steps as completed. He didn’t know if the man or woman triggered the completion, but his surprise when he looked at the XP log opened his eyes.
[ Experience gained: +2000. ]
[ Levelup +1! ]
[ Companion Elara, level up +3! ]
“Oh shit, that’s a lot of things.” Sam commented as he relaxed, not considering the gear around them yet.
“Yeah... PvP is lucrative, in gear as well as XP... Sadly.” Janik commented as he sat down on a rock, breathing heavily from exhaustion. Though his wounds had stopped bleeding, Sam could tell he was in decent, but at the same time surprisingly bad shape.
“You... doing ok?” Sam asked him with worry in his voice.
“Yeah... Fine now...” He took out a potion and uncorked it. “Fucker took out 2/3rds of my health.”
Sam was surprised, he didn’t see more than two hits land. But his focus was split, the array of System messages had given him lots of things to consider!