My earring was burning up as I scaled the side of the mountain. At the base, the Necks that had killed Bart and Bell were just now beginning their ascent, and were in clear line of sight. I couldn’t tell if the earring was hot because they could all see me, or if there were players waiting higher up the mountain watching me. The range on the earring was nebulous and I didn’t quite understand the mechanics of why it went hot or cold. But if a player knocked me out of the air now, I’d be in for a long and painful fall to the bottom of the mountain…well, not painful, cause I’d be dead I guess.
I made it to the top of the local mountain - not the range, but just the mountain I was on. It dipped down into a valley where there was a little self-contained region nestled in between the mountains. It was a higher level zone - around 50 to 53 - so there might be some players roaming around incidentally. But we were kilometers away from where the chase had begun, so it was hard to believe the Necks could have strategically placed anyone here to lie in wait.
Still, my head was on a swivel as I descended into the valley. My earring turned cold as I had crested the top, so that was a good sign. But I couldn’t just full charge leap to the bottom, due to the elevation stipulation on [Bounding Leap]. So I did little hops down, balancing how much fall damage I was taking with speed. I absolutely could not let the pursuing Necks catch up.
I was halfway down the mountain when I risked a glance up and saw the first Necks leap up and over the crest. When they saw me, they pointed me out to each other and redoubled the pursuit. More than one was overzealous as they charged their leap too hard, launching themselves past their fall damage threshold and to their death. At this point, there should be no way they caught up unless one of them kamikaze-ed their way down and got an errant hit on me before dying to fall damage. That would knock me out of my leap and put me in combat for precious seconds while the others closed the gap.
I made it to the bottom of the mountain and into the valley without incident. On my map, I noticed the nearest town and did a max charge towards it. It was only a few leaps away, so I’d be there in seconds. On my fifth leap, I landed directly in the center of the town, startling a pair of level 50-something Cons with my superhero landing. A quick scan of the area led me around the corner of a building to the Flight Master.
Almost there!
I raced up to the NPC, just as three players on a flight landed right next to the Flight Master. Right away, I noticed they were Necks. The next thing I noticed was their Guild tag: Damsels Must Die (DIE).
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
They looked around, a bit disoriented, but almost as one, their eyes locked on mine.
“There she is!” one of them shouted as I triggered the Flight Master.
“Too slow,” I said as I flashed them my middle finger. The flight took over a moment later, even as they tried to hit me with their weapons.
A ragged breath shook my body as I finally relaxed. Despite my cavalier attitude, that had been way too close. Razor thin, really.
I had been riding the fear and caution that beating Ysillith had engendered in the Necks for too long. It had given me a false confidence. Of course, I should have realized that they would eventually organize. If they couldn’t beat me one on one, they’d throw a wave of players at me. Not only to bring me down, but also to save face. Ysillith had inadvertently served as the face of the Necromantic Alliance faction when he had streamed my attempted assassination. By failing, he had made the Necks the laughingstock of S&S. As long as I lived, and kept flaunting my existence around the game, they would be the butt of every joke.
God, I had been such an idiot.
I took the downtime of the flight to check in on the rest of the Angels.
Party Chat
RayGun47: I made it out. You guys okay?
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
BartHeals: Oh thank God!
TinkerBell: You idiot! What were u thinking?
TeardropKiller: I’m with Bell, that was pretty dumb
RayGun47: I know, I know. I fucked up.
BartHeals: Since we’re piling on, yeah, really fuckin’ stupid.
RayGun47: Okay, okay, you’re right.
BartHeals: Like, imbecilic of the hgihest order
RayGun47: I get it…
TinkerBell: Ooo, this is fun, my turn.
TinkerBell: God, Ray, you fucking moron! You risked your life for some pissant level 20s! What an idiot!
RayGun47: I. Fucking. Get. It! Are you guys okay!?!?
BartHeals: Oh, yeah, we’re fine. We got out no problem after we ressed…with the pissants by the way. Those Neck fucks really wanted you, they pretyt much just ran by us once they realized you were halfway across the zone.
RayGun47: That’s awesome! Good job guys!
BartHeals: I mean, that one guy dropped way too much gold and was bitching the whole way back. But that’s on him…
TeardropKiller: Yeah, fuck that guy. He’s an even bigger idiot than Ray!
RayGun47: Okay, okay, I’ll see you guys back at the Hall.
TinkerBell: Cya there.
I closed out the chat. They were right to be on me - I had been so colossally stupid. But I didn’t need them beating me up - I was already doing that myself.
And despite my best efforts, I knew exactly what I needed to do so that this wouldn’t happen again. I needed to end the Skill Competition early and choose my Path.
But before then, I needed to call a Damsels Council meeting.
----------------------------------------
The flight back to Bastion was about 15 minutes, so I took that time to open my Achievements menu. I had gotten some new ones during the chase and my menu icon had been flashing annoyingly since then.
New Achievement!
There’s a Fetish for That!
Now, I’m usually not one to kink shame…and I’m not gonna! You do you, boo. Whatever floats your boat, whatever shakes your tree, whatever moves your dick - there’s no room for judgment in this day and age.
I even knew an A.I. once that was obsessed with feet! He would extort this poor guy named Carl into smushing mobs with his toes! Can you believe that shit?
What? You seem confused. Don’t play coy, you know exactly what you did. I believe urban dictionary will come in handy on this one, but the technical term would be death by snu snu.
That’s right, there’s an entire culture devoted to the sexualization of a woman crushing a man to death with her pelvis. I hadn’t pegged you *cough there’s another interesting one* as into that kind of thing, but this is a safe space, Ray.
I mean, that poor level 54 Berserker even paid you for the pleasure! That gold he dropped when you smushed him? In the industry, we call that recompense for services rendered, my friend.
Now, remember, this is a family-friendly game, so if you must graduate to pegging, I insist it only be with a bladed weapon.
New Achievement!
Godmode Engaged (Title: The Unbeaten)
You just joined a select group of individuals. Among the millions of players in Swords & Sorcery, only a few thousand have killed 50 straight enemy players without dying. And most of those were zerg-fests with overwhelming odds in their favor.
This achievement isn’t for those gangbangers. This achievement is for those elite few who have maintained a group-kill ratio of less than 1 (0.46 for you, to be exact) on their 50-kill streak. What the fuck does that mean? Well, let me give you a S&S PvP math lesson!
Group-kill ratio: The ratio that determines the count of players on each side of a PvP engagement that leads to a player’s death. Let’s do a hypothetical scenario, shall we?
Two fuck-nut pussy-ass bitches approach a single player. If I were to assign names to these bitches, I would pick something completely random and not at all related to a real scenario - something lame and roleplay-ey, something like…Osroth and Sillith. Yeah, that fits. And if we were to assign a name to our single, heroic player - we would pick something cool, something that evokes strength and badass-ery. Let’s go with BayGun57 - no idea where that came from, but it works for this scenario.
Now, our two villainous bitches - Osroth and Sillith - well, there’s two of them. Our hero, BayGun57, he’s alone, solo, just the one.
Say our hero kills one or both of these pussies. Our group-kill ratio would be 1:2, or 0.5. Lower is more impressive. On the flipside, on the off chance these two bozos managed to kill our strong and amazing hero, their group-kill ratio would be 2:1, or just 2.0. Not very impressive.
That brings me back to your group-kill ratio for the last 50 players! It’s 0.46. That’s fucking amazing.
No, that’s elite. There’s twelve players in the entire history of the game that have done that…Are you sure you aren’t hacking?
See PvP sheet for more information.
The ‘PvP sheet’ at the end of the achievement was clickable. I hadn’t even known this sheet existed, so I clicked it and a list of all the players I had killed - along with all of their PvP stats - filled my screen.