Heat surged into me, as a house-turned-pyre stood at my back, only a couple metres from where I’d fallen. I immediately got back up and moved forward with my hands settled on my katana and its scabbard.
My Quick Draw carved through the black taloned claw as though it was but smoke, momentarily turning half of the limb into two disjointed flaps that quickly melded back into one before I even finished the move. The momentum carried me past Rian, but before I could turn to face him and take in what damage I’d wrought, the claw grasped the back of my head painfully and flung me away.
This time I didn’t land before the burning house. Instead, I went straight through its burning façade, shattered the burnt-black and brittle furniture that I collided with, before having half the ceiling collapse on top of me. I managed to escape the burning building before the rest of the walls fell in on me, but not without sustaining several serious burns to my scalp and hands, though fortunately my jacket underneath the cuirass fared well against the fire.[1]
As I leapt from the building, aiming for Red Rian who’d lost sight of me, I trailed a cloud of grey-and-black ash. I scored a vicious rend down the front of his torso, before he swung his shadowy claw for me again.
This time I managed to duck under it, and, as I came up behind him, I rammed my blade into the back of his ribcage and through one of his lungs, burying my weapon all the way to the hilt. I drew it out sideways, scarring and severing several of his bones, and partially cutting through the tissue of his spine.
I flourished my blade, spattering rotten and foul blood on the ground, believing my quarry to be defeated. But then Red Rian turned towards me, and the shadowy limb became thinner as the some of it moved to cover the mortal wounds I’d inflicted, somehow keeping him alive.
Just as I was about to swing my blade to meet his claw, a feathered shaft appeared in his neck and he froze, turning his head back to the perch that I’d jumped from. I looked as well, just in time to see Jakob fire a second arrow that this time buried itself in the left eye of Rian.
I knew what he was trying to tell me, so I quickly composed myself, and two-handed my katana, hammering it sideways at Red Rian’s neck, before he had a chance to dispel this momentary daze. The obsidian edge of my Passing Breeze cleft his neck in two, instantly releasing the shadowy magic that controlled him, as his head left his body behind and sailed over the cobblestones, landing next to the burnt-down husk of a stall some metres away. Then the rest of his body simple fell to the ground, every last drop of the purple-black blood within oozing from it as though trying to find a new host. It didn’t make it far however and quickly dried out from the heat of the nearby fires.
There’s definitely something cursed within their blood, I thought to myself.
Jakob jumped from the rooftop, with his bow still trained on the dead ‘Bandit Lord’. The fires started subsiding, as villagers rushed in with buckets of water or they burnt out on their own. The pounding rhythm in the background faded too, and shortly thereafter Captain Tabian came around the distant corner of the street with a couple of men trailing behind him. All of them were covered in blood and soot.
Jakob breathed heavily beside me. “We did it. Well… you did most of the work, but I helped.”
“You did plenty,” I commended him.
I stuck my hand into the wisp floating above Red Rian’s corpse, and, as expected, the other ‘Red Rian's Fang’ popped up, alongside Father Adam’s ‘Map of the Forbidden Catacombs’.
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‘Map of the Forbidden Catacombs’
-Quest Item-
“Stolen from Father Adam who lives in the Old Church outside of the Forgotten Village.”
Weight: N/A
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The item art just showed a generic image of a map and the tag named it a ‘Quest Item’. Looking over the tooltip, I realised I didn’t have the ability to discard it, which was probably to ensure I didn’t lose it on accident or tried to give it to other people. Fortunately, it also had no weight, so it would just take up a slot in my inventory and nothing else.
A third item also sat within, but it seemed unrelated to my quest.
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‘Heart of Shadow’
-Consumable-
-Ingredient-
“A heart borne by those who gorge on darkness.”
Use
Discard
Weight: 0.2 kilos
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Another edible heart? Is this simply a coincidence or perhaps an indicator of the proclivities of the Watcher God?
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Do you want his dagger?” I asked Jakob, knowing it was no good to me and would otherwise just be sold.
He looked at it for a moment, inspecting the trait, weight, and likely everything else. “No, you can keep it. It won’t be of any use to me. I’d probably just sell it.” Fair enough. Though I’d do the same.
“I will take the Heart though, if that’s okay with you.”
“Go for it. What’s it for though?”
“It can be used as a reagent in a rare potion made with Alchemy, but there are recipes for Cooking that use it too. It also has some uses as an ink for Scribing and Summoning, but it is especially sought-after by those who have Scrying as a crafting skill.”
I’d seen Scribing and Cooking on the crafting list, but hadn’t noticed Summoning nor Scrying on there. Granted, I’d only given it a cursory look and the list was like several pages long…
“You’re probably wondering why Summoning and Scrying aren’t on the crafting list,” Jakob then commented.
“Oh, so I hadn’t just missed them.”
“Yeah. They’re pretty difficult to unlock, and technically aren’t crafting skills. You can learn how to make things with them, but they have no associated levels or menus. Everything about them is tied to books and scrolls. Pretty analogue, right?” He suddenly held out a scroll. “This is something a friend bought for me. I need the ‘Heart of Shadow’ for it, but then it’ll let me create a coin-sized mirror that I can connect to someone else’s eyes and use to spy what they see.”
“That’s pretty creepy,” I commented. “Don’t use it on me.”
He laughed, but didn’t say he wouldn’t…
Before I could force him to promise he wouldn’t use it on me, Captain Tabian’s party finally reached us. “Well done, Travellers!” he exclaimed proudly, as soon as he had taken a look at the deceased Bandit Lord. “Come see me tomorrow once the damage to the village has been assessed and dealt with. As promised, you will receive a prize for finally bringing this bastard to justice.”
Jakob and I nodded in response and together headed back to the Ornery Pig tavern, leaving the guardsmen behind.
On the way back, when the still-glowing fires were several streets behind us, I looked at Jakob. He had taken a few hits dealing with the remaining archers, but had managed to fix the arrow wound to his thigh with a bandage wrap. I realised I hadn’t been hit a single time, and all the blood that covered my armour and blade were from those I’d killed. Though I had sustained quite serious second-degree burns that were starting to become very painful.
“Take this,” Jakob suddenly said, as though sensing my pain.
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‘Weak Healing Potion’
-Consumable-
Drink > Potion
“A weak healing concoction, which once imbibed grants instantaneous healing of superficial wounds, but very slow healing of more serious wounds and is unable to regenerate lost limbs.”
Use
Discard
Weight: 0.15 kilos
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I immediately drank it and felt the comforting warmth spread throughout my body, before concentrating itself on my scalp and hands. Compared to the Potent one that I’d used in the Hideout Stage, the Weak one felt diluted and cheap, but it did its job nonetheless.[2] Soon the scalding pain subsided and was replaced by a soreness that was easy to ignore.
“You said something just before our fight, like you knew what was supposed to happen,” I started. It was something that had made me very curious.
“After I beat the Hideout, I paid another player for information about this Stage. The info was for the normal version of the fight, but somehow you triggered an alternate version when you beat the Hideout. It was supposed to have been a very easy and predictable fight, but when I watched you fight Red Rian, it was completely different from normal.”
“I had no idea that other players would be selling information about Stages they’d already beaten. I sort of expected them to be unable to be in the same place as those who had yet to beat the same Stages or something.” This was another potential avenue for making money at least, especially since I had no plans to take the slow, patient route like Jakob had with the Errands in town.
“Players can always see each other in the hub city, but those who have beaten a Stage cannot do it again, unless they are invited by players who haven’t, but it rarely happens, since it’s one of the ways PKers operate, so everyone’s wary of people who actively try to join their group.”
Oh, that’s right, Kerebor did mention the same thing. I really should pay more attention…
“I’m assuming this was different, since it seemed like we had no choice but to group up.”
“Mhmm. This Stage is supposed to be a Grouping tutorial, but players also often kill each other here... However, the Bandits never usually manage to kill people…”
“Pretty punishing for something that’s supposed to teach you.”
Jakob laughed. “That’s how this place is. At least that’s what everyone says.” To be fair, it seemed pretty in line with everything else I’d seen so far. I mean, even the training boss had been eager to hurt me, and if I hadn’t had Kerebor to explain everything for me I would’ve had to learn it all by myself. My belief that the Watcher God was a twisted and disturbed creator only grew stronger the more I experienced of his realm. Less of a voyeur and more of a sadist, it would seem.
A soft ping sounded in my ear. “Oh, I can advance my katana skill tree.” I’d have to figure out which skill to go with when I made it back to my room.
“I think I’ll focus on using this bow instead of my sword and shield. It seems that I’m quite good with it, I might have used the bow a lot before I died.”
“Two weapons? Won’t that be heavy to carry around?” I hadn’t actually considered using more than one weapon, but maybe that was just intentionally limiting my possibilities?
“A little bit, but I think the versatility will be a benefit, as long as I can stay within my weight class at least. My fighting style isn’t very mobile anyway.” He already knew himself well enough to know something like that. It made me kind of envious. For all I knew, there could be a better weapon for me out there, but I’d just been handed this one without any say in the matter.
When we entered the tavern, the chairs were stacked on the tables downstairs and all the lights had been blown out. Since we were the only two players in this dimension of the city, there was no risk of being harassed by people who recognised my cloak, so I was able to go up the stairs uncontested. I said goodnight to Jakob before going into my own room, and passing out on my bed, fully-clad and covered in Gods-knew-what.
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[1] It was odd that in that moment I was more worried about my equipment than my body, but then again, the adrenaline of the moment was obscuring the pain of the burns.
[2] The flavour was the same, in case you’re wondering: dirt soup.