“So what do we do now?” Knob asked as he and Barry stood beneath the pines with only the moonlight to provide them light.
In front of them were the two orc men, much larger in stature than the average human, their eyes blank and their bodies still.
“Has the link to the other manipulation user been fully severed? Is that something you can tell?” Barry replied with his own question.
“Yes, it seems my powers are more potent but less broad than the other person. Provided my targets are below my normal willpower level requirements I can take over full control. Thankfully these two both have a willpower level of just two, so I could probably put another one or two people under my control if it comes to it, although it will drain my mana,” Knob explained.
“Ok, that’s good. Why don’t you release one of them from your spell and we will just see what the reaction is. Hopefully they will appreciate that we have saved them from the control of the other person,” Barry suggested.
Nodding, and taking a big breath, Knob released the mana specialist orc from his control, and the two men watched as the orc’s eyes cleared, focussed, and then narrowed in on them both.
“Monsters!” the orc bellowed as he gritted his teeth and looked between his fellow orc and the humans.
Barry and Knob just blinked and glanced at each other in response as the orc continued shouting whilst gripping his hammer and trying to shake the other orc out of his stupor.
“Villains! How dare you take over my mind. What a foul trick. You will pay for this. My community will not sit idly and allow you to capture and humiliate us like this. What harm have we caused you? Peltra will destroy you for your crimes,” the orc continued.
Barry, stunned by the outburst attempted to calm the orc, “You don’t understand. We are trying to save you. You’ve been under someone’s mind control within your village, and currently so is our friend. We have come to try and save you. Yes, we briefly had to use our own mind control skills to get you away from the village, but we only did that so as to not alert the rest of your people who are also under someone’s mind control. It’s quite complicated, but we come in peace; we do not want any trouble,” Barry ushered, in as calming and reassuring of a voice as he could muster whilst stepping forward slowly with his hands raised in front of him. “Also who is Peltra he thought.”
This was not the expected response. How did the man know that Knob had been controlling him, and yet seem to be oblivious to the mind control of the other manipulation user?
“Lies! Get away from me you fiend!” screamed the orc as he raised his hammer in Barry’s direction.
At the same time a jet-black fog appeared around the tip of the weapon that was now pointed at Barry’s chest.
“Knob, use your ability. He’s going to attack!” Barry yelled.
Instantly, Knob responded by sending forward a tether of light towards the man which quickly wrapped up his leg and around his chest and forehead. However, the darkness around the orcs weapon did not vanish, and his eyes did not lose their focus.
“Something’s wrong!” squawked Knob, but it was too late.
A black cube of energy shot forward from the hammer and slammed into the centre of Barry’s chest before he could dodge, knocking him off his feet and slamming him into the ground.
Knob panicked; he didn’t know what to do. Why wasn’t his skill working? This had never happened before. It had just worked on this very same man mere moments ago. This thought triggered something, maybe that was the problem? He had never tried to use his skill on the same target twice in quick succession before. Maybe there was a cool down time, or maybe it was possible for the target to build up a tolerance to his ability. Knob gave up on using his skill and rushed over to his fallen companion.
“Barry, are you ok?” he stuttered as fear filled his heart.
At that moment Barry opened his eyes and sat back up, rubbing at the bruised mark on his chest.
“Wow, that attack blew the air right out of me,” he coughed as he met the teary eyes of Knob, “Relax mate, I’m fine. You need to get a grip though, haven’t you noticed the charging orc?”
Knob looked puzzled for a second before he glanced back in the direction of the orc. His eyes widened as he saw the large man rushing at them with his hammer raised, ready to swing it down at their heads. Knob stumbled backwards at the sight, whilst Barry quickly got up and met the man’s hammer with his chain. The collision of soul items caused an almighty metal tang to echo through the pines. However, it was Barry who came out on top of the clash as he had only summoned half of his chain with his right hand to meet the hammer. The other half had been formed from his left hand and was now looped around the orcs neck, finally stilling the raging man as he understood his predicament. Barry pulled on the chain a little tighter causing the orc to stiffen and drop his hammer.
“Now, we need to have a little chat,” Barry huffed into the orcs ear.
“Kill me, I will not betray my community,” the orc said between shallow gasping breaths.
“Listen pal, I get how this might look, but I promise you we are telling the truth. Someone within your village has been manipulating you all. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why, but it is clear you have been controlled without you even realising it. We don’t want any trouble, but we need to get out friend back, and we would appreciate it if you could help us out,” said Barry as calmly as he could manage, “Now don’t do anything stupid and I will let you go, ok?”
After a moment of thought the orc appeared to relax and let out a soft “Ok.”
In response Barry retracted his chain and allowed the orc to step forward and catch his breath. Unfortunately, the orcs next move was to quickly reach down for his hammer and swing it at Barry again in a vigorous, backhanded, horizontal strike, aiming for Barry’s knees. Sighing, Barry jumped up as the hammer passed harmlessly below him. He followed up by summoning his entire aura chain and flinging it around the man’s neck once again. This time however as Barry slipped behind the orc he positioned his own back up against his opponents with his legs positioned firmly in a lunge position. He then proceeded to heave the chain forward over his shoulder with all his might, forcing the orcs head to hyperextend and snap backwards, breaking his neck and immediately ending his life. Letting out a regretful sigh, Barry retracted his chain again and felt the orcs lifeless body crumble to the ground.
“Such a waste,” he thought as he dusted himself off and felt the familiar rush of energy enter his body.
You have slain Orc Geltry Rahk, level 4.
Soul item level 10 achieved – Milestone ability granted:
Ability choices:
1. Remote chain: Summon an aura chain remotely from the earth. Once summoned the chain remains fixed in place at one end, whilst the rest of the chain can be mentally controlled. The number of chains that can be summoned, and the available range of the skill, increases with soul item level.
2. Spiked chain: Aura chain can be altered to form a spiked chain that significantly increases damage output. Causes bleeding damage over time. Size and quantity of spikes increases with soul item level.
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Secondary affinity uncovered: Earth
Finally, Barry had broken through to level ten in his soul item. It had taken much longer than he had expected. In the time that it had taken him to go from single to double digits in the stat, he had gained multiple soul magic levels. Barry wondered if level ten was a particularly important milestone and was therefore more difficult to reach, or if it was just that levelling became harder to achieve the stronger one got, or some other unknown cause. Whatever the reason, he had done it. As a result, he had received some fantastic rewards, but he found it difficult to celebrate given the fact he had just ended another person’s life. Barry was beginning to fear that he was becoming desensitised to death. Not just the concept of death, but also being the cause of it. He had only briefly tried to reason with the man before ending his life. Should he have tried to do more? In the moment Barry felt that he was never going to be able to convince the man to cooperate. Barry had not initiated the battle, so surely he wasn’t to blame, was he? He was simply defending himself and his friend. But why did it always have to lead to death? No, he couldn’t dwell on that now. The last time he’d shown mercy he’d come to regret it, and he wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. Not when the very person who had made him realise the potentially devastating repercussions of making decisions like that was the very person who needed his help right now.
Shaking his head and moving his thoughts Barry studied his rewards. He had two amazing skills to choose from. And not only that, he had also somehow uncovered a secondary affinity, and quite an appropriate one hot a human... earth. Focussing on the abilities Barry thought through the pros and cons of the two options. The first one sounded incredibly versatile, being able to create some sort of remote chain from the very ground. It also seemed to match better with his new secondary affinity than the second option. But that wasn’t to say the second option wasn’t equally impressive. Having the ability to create spikes from his chain would greatly increase his damage output and make up for his relatively unimpressive strength statistic. Plus, the bleed effect sounded incredible handy. But as he considered the current situation he found himself in, and his strengths and weaknesses, the remote chain just seemed the better choice. It would makeup for his current lack of any ranged attack, and he thought it would work extremely well with his increased vision when using his clone. It also sounded more versatile than the other option as he figured it could have both offensive and defensive uses, whereas the spiked chain was almost entirely offensive. With his mind made up, Barry selected the ability ‘remote chain’, and he felt the information on its use rush into his mind. Barry instantly understood that he had a range of around twenty metres for his ability, and he could use it twice in quick succession. He wasn’t sure what the cooldown was exactly, but he had a feeling it was around the five-minute mark. The good thing about the skill was that it didn’t use any mana, it was more or less a free skill in terms of resource consumption. He was desperate to try it out, but he decided to just trust his instincts and the information he got when selecting the skill. It was just too risky to allow the skill to be on cooldown in his current predicament.
Barry then threw one of his free stat points into wisdom, bringing it to a raw level of ten. He was somewhat hopeful that he would receive another free ability when he hit double figures in the stat just like he had with vitality, but alas he had no such luck. He then decided to place the other stat point into mana, wanting to increase the time he could use his clone and other illusions, bringing the skill to level seven. After finishing his mental task list, he finally refocused and looked down at his feet. There he saw the crook necked, lifeless body of the orc he had just slain staring up at him. There is no better reality check than being face to face with a corpse, and Barry found his focus fully return upon seeing the lifeless eyes.
“Knob, that did not go to plan. What happened with your ability?” Barry asked.
Knob, still shaking, stuttered a reply, “I, I don’t know. I think my ability must have some sort of hidden cooldown. Or maybe people can build up a tolerance to it. It’s hard to say. I’ve never tried to use it on the same person more than once before.”
“Hmm, well better we found it out now, but it’s still a real shame what happened with this guy,” Barry said as he pointed towards the dead man whilst stepping over the body to place a comforting hand on Knob’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it mate, we just need to come up with a new plan. It seems we were naïve to think we could just pick them off one by one, release them from their mind control and then everything would be fine,” Barry sighed. “But we did learn something useful. It’s clear the other manipulation specialist’s skill works differently to yours. It seems the person doesn’t know they are under the control of someone else, like with yours.”
Knob looked down in shame at that comment.
“But you are clearly more powerful!” Barry added as Knob glanced back up in confusion. “I think your abilities are more impressive. The fact that you can so easily overpower the other persons manipulation skill is incredible. You are by far the superior manipulator.”
Knob smiled shyly at that comment, and stood back up, puffing his chest out in renewed determination.
“So what are we going to do?” asked Knob with a newfound fire in his eyes.
The pair conversed for the next five minutes debating over the best, and safest course of action. They could continue to abduct the weaker villagers one by one to weaken their forces, but neither of them wanted to have to be responsible for ending them if they turned hostile like the orc. They both still felt terrible for how things had escalated so quickly. They considered walking the captives far into the forest and leaving them there, but that seemed just as cruel. Many of them were comparatively weak compared to their own levels and had likely only survived due to the fact they were living and working within a larger group. Plus, it’s likely some of them would quickly find their way back to the village anyway which would defeat the purpose, and make the task never ending. They considered just walking back into the village and taking Tuti, but this made them both nervous. They both felt that something shady was going on, and walking directly into the heart of the town where they would be immediately surrounded was suicidal if things turned violent. They also doubted the mysterious leader would just let them walk away with such a powerful ally like Tuti. After dismissing all other options they decided the best course of action was to try to covertly enter the village and locate Tuti as quickly as possible. That way even if they were discovered at least it would take the villagers some time to organise themselves and it would likely be a smaller force they would have to face. Then Knob would use his mind altering ability to get Tuti out of there and Barry would use his full arsenal of skills to block any attacks and hold any pursuers in place. With their decision made, the pair nodded at each other and turned to head back towards the village under the cover of the night sky. At that very moment, a burning arrow flew forward at Barry from some distance in front of him and slammed into his side, penetrating deeply. Immediately, he reached down and painfully pulled the arrow out, throwing it to the ground along with some chunks of his own flesh. Forgetting the pain Barry’s eyes widened in panic as he saw the treetops light up from the glow of more arrows and other sparkling projectiles heading in their direction.
“We’re under attack!” he screamed.
With his mental command skill it had taken mere minutes to gather all twenty six members of his community into his hut. It was quite the impressive collection of warriors and mages for such an early point in these training grounds trials if he did say so himself. Individually they might be considered weak, but together under his command they were a powerful army. Twenty six was good, but it should have been twenty eight. His chest was burning with fury knowing that two of his puppets had been taken. He was the one who decided their fates, he was the one pulling the strings, and such brazen disrespect and thievery must be punished.
“My people. Thank you for gathering here so quickly. I only wish it was under better circumstances. Unfortunately, it appears that two of our valued members of the community have been kidnapped,” Peltra announced from his throne.
A murmur of shocked gasps spread out across the crowd and Peltra hushed them with a wave of his hands.
“I am just as appalled as you are, but we must not sit idly in shock, we must act. Geltry and Razlar need our help, who knows what horrors they are facing. It is up to us to bring them back safely.”
More gasps and some angry shouts continued before one of Peltra’s followers spoke up.
“Who is responsible? Was it a beast?”
Peltra let the female lizard mans word rest over the crowd for a moment, bringing about more anxious anticipation before he responded. “These were the actions of no beast, but fellow initiates. Two humans Barry and Knob, the ones who recently visited with our newest recruit. It seems you got away from them before they showed their true colours Tuti,” Peltra said.
By now the crowds shock and anger was palpable. Many even directed seething looks in Tuti’s direction or muttered derogatory comments towards her. Internally, Peltra relished the collaborative vexation shown by his followers, but he knew he needed to keep up an impartial front.
“We mustn’t blame Tuti. She did what she needed to do to survive, a decision most of us would have made if we were in the same position. And now she is one of us, part of the community. I will not tolerate such derogatory comments towards her.”
Immediately the grumbling ceased and all eyes returned to their respected leader.
“Prepare yourselves my friends. In twenty minutes we set off to rescue our people, and slay our enemies.”
Tuti didn’t understand what was happening. People were staring at her with such anger in their eyes. And they were saying such terrible things about her friends. She’d been sad to see Barry and Knob leave, but she’d wanted Swirly to be safe. Reaching up to the bonded beast on her shoulder she gave him a scratch on his belly. Tuti had always tried to act confidently since this training grounds started, but the truth was she was frightened of this new world, and terrified of losing Swirly. She wanted to protect him above all else, and this place, this village, seemed like the safest place around. But why was there so much hostility towards her old friends? She knew they weren’t bad people, and there must be more to the story than what Peltra had said. But for some reason she couldn’t think clearly right now. All she could do was follow the crowd as they filed out of the hut and eventually headed back into the pine forest.
Peltra was still furious when thinking about those human scum interfering with his growing community, but he had to admit this whole situation was a great test of his skills. By leaning on his people’s sense of belonging, he was able draw out their anger and fear, and then use that to influence them to fight. This situation proved a wonderful pilot study for the future conflicts that would inevitably arise between other initiates and his own group. Knowing that he could sway his people to go to battle so easily was valuable information. As his community continued to grow, so too would his power and influence. He had to fight back a smile as he thought of the potential… it was limitless. He could rule the world. To make things even better he had managed to sway the vixant girl into telling him about the abilities of the men they were after, which only further increased his chance of successfully capturing or killing them. There was a vitality specialising human with an illusion affinity, and the other a manipulation specialist like himself who could control some moving beams of light. Their skills might make them more elusive than the average initiate, but he was confident he would soon be standing over their corpses.
It didn’t take long for the community scouts to locate the humans as they hadn’t made it far into the pine forest. Shortly afterwards news that of one of the orcs, Geltry, had been slain by the men also reached Peltra’s ears. However, thankfully Razlar was still alive. This information fuelled Peltra’s rage, how dare these fools kill a member of his community. But it also instilled and reinforced in his people the need for bloodshed, any hesitation remaining was now gone and they were all ready and willing for battle.
“Ranged fighters you will strike first and surprise our enemies. If they manage to survive the first assault then our dexterity specialists will be immediately on the scene to follow up. The rest of us will be there shortly afterwards with further support. Scouts, I want you on either side of the men to monitor their movements and ensure they don’t escape. They must be put down here and now!” Peltra hissed.