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Chapter 8.

Correspondence between Planet Wide Wrestling Agency and Sword, Board and Song™ from the 15th of August to the 18th August, 2103.

(Sent on the 15th of August.)

Greetings sir,

After full deliberation, the board has empowered me to act as our emissary that we might come to some mutual advantage by a unification of specialties through mercantile agreement backed by the force of law. Our proposal is thus;

1. Per the terms of your recommended pay scale we will be offering [see link] as well as extra pay directly to the coders specially tasked with this product as an incentive tom improve the roll out of this product, so as to avoid undesirable stresses.

2. We would like to recommend that each of our 78 gold belt and 149 silver belt winners be added in as part of the legendarium of the lore and backstory of the server-world. We propose that each of these characters could leave behind a scroll or inheritance that would teach a unique skill or ‘takedown’ associated with these characters. Further, in universe books could be placed in appropriate and suitable libraries and allow characters the pleasure of learning these arts as tasteful readers, or that melee trainers could be given a percentile chance to know one or two of these moves, so that there could be spread among tasteful players.

3. That winners of our Platinum belt have their statues carved into the following locations [see link.]

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Lemuel M. Roberts, Alias The Heinous Devourer.

(Sent on the 16th of August)

Greetings Lemuel,

I very much enjoyed your shows as a kid! I started watching back in 85! Loved the ‘Weightless Arc.’ Wow, I never expected a letter from your account, I have rushed this letter to my superiors and they are going through with it! I am going to show this letter to my wife and three year old!

Bob

This letter is from a SWORD, BOARD and SONG™ verified account.

(Sent on the 17th of August.)

Greetings sir,

Always nice to meet an admirer of my earlier work. Especially, one who withstood my character at that time. I am unduly distinguished by your praise. Should you wish to visit my home, I have attached my private email for coordination of this nature. [see link.]

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Lemuel M. Roberts, Alias The Heinous Devourer.

(Sent on the 18th of August)

Greetings Lemuel,

How, thank you so much for the invitation! I wish I still had my cast, so I could get you to sign it, but I got over the broken foot just last month. Anyway, business is good. I leaned a little on the coding team and they have produced what was asked. I have also reviewed all of the lore on each of the wrestlers and you may be sure that everything is correct and not just stuff pulled from a wiki or a website like the ‘WRASTLER’. I have never forgiven them for the article they ran about Hot Stone Sam, back in ’97. Also, if you want, we have also included everyone who has ever earned an Electrum Belt, Iron and the speciality Steel Belt of ’91.

Bob

This letter is from a SWORD, BOARD and SONG™ verified account.

(Sent on the 18th of August.)

Greetings sir,

Thank you for your touching concern for accuracy. Far too many persons of otherwise goodwill fail in this crucial step. I was deeply shamed for having after read from the ‘WRASLTER’ after that article. All of the evidence points to Hot Stone Sam being innocent, no matter what that court found.

I am also pleased with your expansion of the original roaster. It saddens me that we cannot expand it to include every man who has worked for my organization in this form of digital immortality, but I would not detract from the achievement of my belted champions!

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Lemuel M. Roberts, Alias The Heinous Devourer

Jake. 28th of August.

School was picking up and Jake found less time to play. Organizing with his friends was even harder. He had been at what to do, but the problem had resolved itself. He had become fairly good friends with the Campers from the Keneth Landsman Guild, led by a player who had that name. They were building a road to link the town to a village and the area was kind of dangerous. Jake and three other fighters had drifted into the group as guards and now sat around and talked about things.

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“So did you see the video from Madbooy45? He just showed a walk through on how to bring a new Fighter character up to [Gray Paladin].”

“What is that?” Keneth Landsman asked.

The first speaker, spoke easily as his character tore a stone out of the hill in front of them and crushed it to gravel with his gloves, “So like a [Paladin] except it is not bound to one of the kings, temples or holy orders. Instead they have to get the same amount of experience in similar kinds of fighting, get the levels in riding and then go to the Stone Palace of the Giants and swear an oath on one of the statues. Then they get the stats upgrades, except the one’s against Chaos, but that doesn’t really matter does it? Like, most people who play a variation of a Paladin just want to be a normal knight, don’t they? None of this weird religion stuff.”

“If I was going to do a fighting class, I would go full [Paladin]” Keneth noted as he moved another shovel full of dirt and looked over their road.

“Well you’re weird,” the other fighter said with a smile, “I just don’t like horses. Or the religious stuff. Just let me game, you know? But the stats are pretty good.”

“Can they beat a broccoli boy with a can of greens and a can of soda?” Another fighter asked and Jake looked at his name. He was not surprised to see that the fighter’s name read, “Casimir Morgan.”

“Yeah, the guy did that actually. He was being stream-bushed by watchers with some freshly made broccoli assassins and soda slurries. Beat them up, when they were full powered. He did have four levels on them, but it was pretty impressive, given that there are just dozens of videos of those guys just destroying ordinary people in the arenas.”

“I’ll have to give that video a watch,” Jake said as he wiggled his character around.

They sank into companionable silence for a while as the in-game evening came on. Jake still had an hour set aside to gaming, but he had muted his audio and listened to a reading assigned for school and mostly thought about what sports he would stay in. He was getting worn out physically and either cross-country needed to drop or he would.

As his thoughts were torn between the lecturer’s postulations about how different the world would have been if Pompey Caesar the Great had not beaten Julius the Traitor, and whether archery could stay in his line up or not, he noticed that the road workers were running away. He shifted his view and saw why.

A chimeric creature had slithered into view. The body was the body of a snake. The head that of a goat, though its hair was exchanged for scales that matched the snake body. The tail ended in what looked like a lion’s tail, but after a moment of looking closer, he saw that the fur partially concealed lion’s claws.

Jake remained muted as he moved his character ahead of the others. At least one of the fighters had left, so that they could log-off safely and the other two were still distracted.

The evil goat eyes glared at him. The mouth opened, but he could not hear the noise. His character still took some damage and a 2% speed reduction.

Jake drew his sword and held up his shield. The goat head reared back and flaps of skin along the goat’s horns spread like a cobra, revealing multiple new eyes and scales that looked like eyes.

Your Character has been hypnotized! Your character cannot move or attack until it has taken damage!

Jake stared at the statement in confusion and then growled as he frantically tapped at his controller. He did not want his character to spend a week resurrecting! This couldn’t be happening.

The goat head reared back and the loops of the serpent body swirled into the air. This thing could eat him whole! The middle was wide enough for it to hold a horse. The mouth opened and the head descended.

A rock crashed into it and the monstrous creature reared back further as other rocks flew past him and struck the snake monster. It shook its horns and fan, but Jake couldn’t move.

Then the thing came down again. Just before the oversized goat incisors, snake fangs and lion fangs bite into him a rock hit him in the back of the head for 15 damage. Had he not already been tapping at his controller, it would have been too late, but Jake barely avoided the yellow and dripping fangs.

His unorthodox roll complete, Jake stood his character up and rushed towards the snake’s body. The head rounded on him, but he avoided it without letting his view screen settle on it. He landed a slash on the scales and was pleased to see that it made the snake bleed. He jumped on top of it and fell off, but he avoided the tail strike and moved to get back into position.

His friends were throwing rocks at it, but they were not going to kill it that way.

“Run back to town and start a quest. I will hold it back!” Jake said and almost yelled, but he didn’t want to scare his mom, so he restrained it.

He was almost glad that they ignored him and kept throwing rocks, broken tree roots and whatever else came to hand as he fought with it. Then one of the fighters returned from being AFK and added the magic sword he had found in a dungeon to the fight. The chimeric creature tried to retreat, but they had cut it badly and it could not escape them.

Jake noticed a notification on the corner of his screen, but he did not read it as he successfully followed up with a deep incision after cutting the spiked tail off of the monster. He then ran up the length of the snake, furiously tapping at the controller as he dropped his shield and put both hands into the attack.

He ran up a final rippling section of flesh and buried his sword well behind the horns and watched as the chimera fell forward in death.

Congratulations!

You have leveled up!

That was gratifying! He needed the boost, but he also looked at the other announcement with a bit more surprise

Leg Biter, (Iron)

For taking off ten legs in a battle, you have earned a 5% odds of taking off a leg with every hit of a melee weapon, assuming other thresholds are met. If the target has more than two legs, this stacks by 2% per extra leg.

For taking a leg (sorta) off a monstrous Chimera you have have improved your title in a way so that these bonuses applies to tails as well as legs.