Despite the System giving me a spellcaster-adjacent Class, I didn’t care much for reading that often. Not to sound like a dullard—but I was much more passionate at engaging with learning through practice. Words just got in the way when I could dissemble a mystery by observing it. While most of the enemies we came across weren’t the sharpest of tools, they did enjoy writing down important things. Currently, I am staring at this page as I write it, wondering if I appreciated the irony. Perhaps I did.
Ren pulled out a chair from her Inventory and sat down on it. “Anything good in the book?”
I wrinkled my nose up, glancing between her briefly before looking back at the tome I had stolen from the spellcaster. Wolf was asleep, having had his fill of the corpses. “You want the abridged version, or we have time for a tale?”
“We’ve already established you’re a shitty story-teller,” she said, then gave me a glum smile. “Just a summary, please. I left the wizard’s remains for you to loot. Then I want to be far away from this place.”
That was fair. I was somewhat numb to the smell of death and burning wood here, but it was still eerie with all the frozen-in-place villagers still standing around. “Okay. It’s both this chap’s spell book and diary—so most of it is useless… but some of it paints a useful picture.”
I stood, my chair vanishing into my Inventory, as I started to pace while holding the book open in my hands. “They were originally two groups of adventurers that hung around just north of here. When the Lady came through, she offered them a way out of the System. He even wrote down her terms and all—but his diction has a remarkable drop off at what looks like the point after they took the blood.”
Ren slowly nodded. “So our thoughts on it possibly lowering Stats might hold water?”
“Indeed.” That was why he was trying to intently stare at the pages. He probably had issue understanding his earlier work. I stopped and tilted my head at her. “It’s almost like a doomsday cult, from reading between the lines. Everyone can only be free if everyone is on the same page.”
“So that’s why it’s a ‘join us or we’ll kill you’ kind of deal?” The elf rolled her eyes and sighed.
It was pretty basic on the surface of it. Have an in-group and an out-group and pit them against each other. I snapped the book shut. “This is mostly only gathering speed due to her blood—once she has persuaded them to join, it brings out their hatred for the System and their inability to abide by living within it.” Even if joining up was their own choice at the outset, I wondered if they had the option of changing their minds once they had drunk down the red stuff.
“Plus, we don’t exactly know her abilities,” Ren agreed, “there could be even more going on there.”
I put the book into my Inventory and brought up the Map. There could be no way—even if the Lady had broken abilities—that she could have gone across the whole area already, or even twisted everyone present here to do her bidding. Unless she could infect the System itself… but then maybe that was her end goal after dethroning the current occupants of the palace.
“Hey, trickster?” The elf brought me out of my thoughts. “Do you think it is ironic that while she is erasing people’s ability to suspend their disbelief, you are defeating them by tricking them?”
“No.” I shook my head impassively. “I usually defeat them with demons or cutting their throats open.”
She narrowed her glare to try to gauge if I was intentionally being dense. I was.
“Let me loot this unfortunate disbeliever then, and we’ll be on our way.” While the grin I shot her was genuine, my joy in having to interface with looting something was not. Despite my aptitude for filling my Inventory with junk for potential tricks, the rest of what the System wanted from me I felt was beyond the pale.
Something I was soon to change my tune on, I could feel, as I opened up the window to see what he had.
[3452 Gold]
[Health Potion (8)]
[Smart Bindings] [+3 Int, +1 Wis]
[Smart Leggings] [+3 Int, +1 Wis]
[Shoulders of the Trickster] [+3 Int, +2 Dex]
[Arcane Ring] [+15% Mana, +5% Magic Damage]
“Alright, you can both be witness…” I stood and saw that Wolf was still sleeping. “Well, one of you can be a witness to my character growth. I now enjoy the looting process.” It wasn't lost on me that the best Stat distribution for my Class seemed to be items of the trickster.
Ren blinked, but her expression otherwise remained unchanged.
A hard sell, perhaps. Internally I rolled my eyes that it was easier to convince these hardened murders that I was an assassin called ‘Man in Purple’ for the Lady in Red, than me to have suddenly become an avid loot goblin. That’s what they called that sort of thing, I was sure.
“What did he have on him?” she asked, clearly seeing through my announcement to the core reason behind the change of heart.
“Mostly Intelligence equipment, but the Stat bonuses are higher than the first area.” I grinned. “I suppose I’m more contented that killing other spellcasters seems to be the most efficient way of increasing my own power.”
Ren stood and put her chair away in her Inventory—a slower process than what I was capable of—before turning back to me. “You’re not wrong, but you need to be careful about how you approach that line of thinking.”
I gave her a bow. “Of course. Crimson Shadow only, and only if we are already intending on combating them.” Or if I could find a good reason to fight them, or if they’d be easy pickings... maybe she was right.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
She went over to wake Wolf up. While they both had the outfits to match whatever mania I had dragged them both into, we still hadn’t gotten a proper show organized. For me, it was easy to weave in the performance as my combat skills had been flavored to my previous profession by the System. Magic and trickery was my bread and butter. For the other two, it was something they’d need to grow into.
Ren was an Oathwarden—some mix between Ranger and Paladin. Although she was vague on the details, her main Class function was to assist and keep alive those she had sworn an oath to. At some point this had become me, although any attempt to dig through my memories and remember when or how was just blinded by her radiant hair and piercing blue eyes.
Wolf was… well, gullible wasn’t a fair label to put on him. He had emotional intelligence and some smarts about him. He didn’t care much for most of the System, but was content enough with the life he now had. While he had agreed to kill and protect us in return for eating his fill at the start, it was hard to not see him as the backbone of the team. He saw us as family now and had more than earned his place by being an unequaled mass of strength and damage absorption.
They were both happy enough to play their roles as the System had doled them out. It wouldn’t be fair to expect them to do the sort of things I was capable, or approach a problem with the thought processes that I did. But likewise, I couldn’t do the things that they could. The fact that they had agreed to be part of my big charade was a show of their strength of trust in me, more so than my capabilities as a leader.
“Everything fine, Max?” Ren came up to me and pressed her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m…” My brain halted before it could say fine. “I’m apprehensive about what this area will bring.” The truth was hard to get out of me sometimes, and I had needed to be humbled before I stopped putting on such a good front when I was crumbling within.
“Same.” She looked back at the flickering fire. “Sometimes it feels like we stumbled into some kind of apocalypse, and we’re the only sane ones.” With an eyebrow raised, she looked back up at me. “For certain definitions of ‘sane’.”
[Quest: Save the Villagers]
“Huh?” I could see her eyes unfocused and we had both received the same message. “So it wasn’t the Crimson Shadow that did this?”
We turned and looked at the small forest of statuesque figures. Perhaps it had been, and now the System wanted us to fix things back to normal. Was it able to make procedural Quests like that? We had only completed a relative handful after the starter island, mostly settling for the challenging town board ones, or simple pop-up tasks like this one.
“You think it’s worth our time?” I asked them both.
“Is the reward more meat?” Wolf huffed, looking like he would prefer to be napping still.
Ren tilted her head and sighed. “It’s experience, and we’re already here. No meat, though, Wolf. Haven’t you eaten enough?”
“Yeah,” he said, and returned a glum expression.
“Let’s get this done, then.” I nodded my agreements. It would be nice to leave the village in a better place than how we found it. Not only to correct the trouble the Crimson Shadows had caused, but also for the newer Players—it’d be nice for them to come to find a normal world when they eventually got here.
“Initial thoughts?” Ren asked, crossing her arms.
I took off my top hat and rubbed my forehead with the back of my forearm. “Magic, probably, for it to be this persistent. Close by, like an aura given off by either an artefact or a person hiding.”
She nodded. “And what do you think, Wolf?”
“Wasn’t in the house I destroyed.” His amber eyes looked back at the wreckage off to the side. “Can’t smell anything else over the smoke and death.”
“That’s becoming standard fare for us, huh?” I grimaced and eyed up the remaining buildings. Even if the spell was local area only, it could be just outside of the village in the sparse trees and hills. As much as we needed the experience to catch up to level ten, I didn’t fancy rooting around in the undergrowth when we weren’t certain of how hostile the area was.
I rubbed my chin. “Usually I’d suggest splitting up, but that might not be a great idea at present.”
“Agreed,” Ren nodded as she began to walk off. “You’re likely to find something to crack your skull open on, otherwise.”
As she turned away, I caught the slip of a smile at the corner of her mouth. A rarity, and always a delight. Slightly more common these days, where we were… oh, were we dating? It had all been so casual and natural that it hadn’t occurred to me there might be a more official label for our close companionship. Not that I had anyone else to tell that I may have a sort-of-princess elven girlfriend. Ah, even thinking about it just made me cringe. Probably better I table that train of thought for-
“You think it’s in that building, Max?” The bear nudged into me. “You are staring at it.”
“Call it a hunch,” I said as I quickly rolled with the play, “but that’s where I’d like to start.”
Ren stopped and turned from where she was headed to look at the cottage that had been the focal point of my absent mind. “Want to make a bet on who can pick the right house?”
“I’m not a gambling man,” I lied, knowing full well how often I put simple things such as my life at risk on the regular. “Plus, you already owe me a something, if you recall.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times as the memories came to the forefront. “You ass, trickster.” She sighed. “Double or nothing?”
“On one condition.” I raised up a single finger. “I get to change my first choice.”
She narrowed her eyes, but shrugged. Wolf just looked confused as to why I’d change my mind after staring at the other cottage for so long. That’d stay my little secret—probably even from myself if I could help it.
Turning around to glance at the small alcove filled with stout cottages, I tried to imagine which would be the most cliche place the System might have stuck the offending item or person. My knowledge of the tropes was pretty thin, but if I viewed it as a show, then I considered where I may put it for the reveal with the most flair. And then I’d dial it down a couple of notches, because the System was not as sharp as me.
I felt that I would probably live to regret that inner monologue.
There was no well in sight, or cottage that looked like it might belong to a morally ambiguous—yet still mustache-twirling—spellcaster. I settled for the next best thing, and leveled my finger at what might be the village hall, on account of it being slightly bigger than the other buildings. The sign saying ‘Hall’ out the front helped with my deduction, too.
“A bit cliche,” Ren smirked, “but we’ll see, I suppose. After, I’m saying it’s that house.” She pointed toward one of the cottages. The only defining point that made it differ to the others was that it had more flowers out front. A suspicious amount of flowers, almost.
“Okay,” I said, narrowing my eyes at it. She returned the same expression, and I stared at her blazing blue eyes.
Wolf cleared his throat. “I pick the one over…” he turned and raised a paw to what looked like either a bakery or butcher. “There.”
I smiled and gave him a nod, before leading them towards the Hall. As to what favors I would ply from them, should I win… well, once we found a safe haven, I had a few tricks in mind that I would like us to learn as a team. I hadn’t pushed them in the aftermath of the fort battle—I hardly cared to perform magic in those almost three days of rest. Now, though, back where the stakes mattered…
It was time to become greater, truly reach for the pinnacle of what we were capable of.
My grin furthered as I put my hand on my magic card deck in my breast pocket. I had a good feeling about this area.