That afternoon I used the mini map and portal to get back to the forest clearing where I’d fought the wolf. Like a noob, I’d forgotten to loot the body, so I set out to fix that mistake. Luckily, bodies in IF took a full 24 hours to despawn if no one looted them, and didn’t become available to public looting for 6 hours. Touching my knife to the gross mummified wolf corpse was convenient, because it meant I didn’t actually have to touch it with my hands. The corpse blurred and turned into a fat pile of 18 wolf pelts, two giant wolf canines, and a “rare quality” piece of gear.
Big Bad Fur Cloak; this riding cloak covers your full body, with the wolf’s arms wrapping around the neck to secure the cloak in place. It’s head can be placed over your own like a hood. An intimidating piece of apparel, this heavy cloak provides great protection against cold, and provides the impression that the wearer is inside the belly of an enormous wolf. The dark grey fur of this cloak is like iron, sturdy and tough. Effects: Immunity to cold weather, -50% damage from cold based attacks, -25% damage from other elemental attacks. Any blow that hits the cloak before striking the player is muffled, reducing damage by 25% before armor is calculated.
It was odd that I couldn’t wear the cloak over my t-shirt, but apparently, the game considered both items to use some arbitrary “over armor” slot, and no matter how securely I tied the wolf legs that served as fasteners, it would immediately fall off if I tried.
Taking the T-shirt off, I donned the cloak, hoping I wouldn’t be sweltering hot underneath the heavy garment. Luckily, the cloak seemed to maintain a nice cool temperature, almost as if it was air conditioned somehow, and was not uncomfortable to wear. It covered me completely, almost like a robe with the front split open. It sort of looked like I was a legless werewolf with flat boneless arms tied in a knot, so completely did the cloak cover me. Sticking my knife out through the gap, it kind of looked like I was coming out of the wolf's belly, I thought to myself, using the mini map to examine my appearance from overhead. The cloak split open, flashing my chainmail bikini to anyone in front of me, as soon as I started walking or used a weapon.
I would have bought new armor, but the chainmail bikini, despite being skimpy, and almost see through with its mesh-like quality, actually did provide a base amount of defense that exceeded that of any armor offered in the starting town. Femme even tried to convince me that amazon had a hidden passive; bonus defense if belly button is exposed.
The 18 wolf pelts seemed to just be “vendor trash”; items that could be sold for gold at a store, because they didn’t even really seem like they came from one enormous wolf. Rather it kind of looked like, for some odd reason, the Big Bad Wolf had been carrying the neatly skinned pelts of 18 identical smaller wolves. Why not just give me gold, I wondered, as I stuffed the items into my inventory.
The canines were some sort of quest item, based on the description, and I couldn’t do anything with them, yet. “Any idea what I should do with these?” I asked Illona, guessing she might know, as she was part of the same quest-line.
“My grandmother is a blacksmith, she should be able to use those canines to make something good,” Illona suggested.
“So where is your grandmother?” I asked Illona.
“She lives in a small hidden town in the forest, somewhere to the north. We can follow the river to find it.”
I sighed, “Ok, we’ll go find her.” I told Illona. A small orange triangle appeared on the edge of my minimap, to indicate in what general direction this town was located. Thank god the game didn’t actually expect me to search for the town, I thought to myself. A system message announcement appeared:
To Grandmother’s House: you have accepted a quest to take Illona to her grandmother’s house. The trek through the woods is likely to be dangerous, be prepared. Time limits: None, Reward: Experience points and a reward crafted from the enormous teeth of the Big Bad Wolf. System Comment: “My, what big teeth you have, grandma.”
With the silver ring Chyrel had given me, I was getting 3x the normal number of skill points from every use of my knife, which meant I had a lot more skill points than was normal for my level. I purchased knife dual wielding, since I already had the prerequisite ambidextrous knife fighter and it looked like I might be getting a new knife soon. At least, I better be getting a knife soon, I thought to myself, please let this be a simple quest.
Thinking about the silver ring Chyrel had given me did remind me that I hadn’t heard anything from the customer service rep, and she’d promised me that the issue could be resolved within a few in game days. Clearly what she’d promised didn’t line up with the 60 days of in-game time Aida had told me it would actually take. I took the time to write Chyrel an mildly angry text:
Hey, it’s been 18 in-game days since we spoke, and still no word? Please keep me informed, I am worried that you haven’t said anything. Will it really be another 42 in-game days before I can log out and get my memories back?
Really, why had Chyrel told me it would only be a few in-game days if she knew that my real body would probably not be back for sixty in-game days? Had I misunderstood her? I didn’t want to complain, but I wasn’t happy about being misled. Also, she’d not been online, so why had she even bothered to have me add her to my friend’s list?
Eight wolf packs later, we finally reached a river. The orange arrow on the edge of my mini map had not budged, and I was mentally exhausted. Maybe this is why the big wolf had owned 18 small wolf pelts, I thought to myself, since this forest is so infested with them, maybe in the end, he had resorted to cannibalism.
With Illona’s help, I’d managed to kill over fifty of the little bastards, normal sized grey wolves ranged between level 22 and 24, and they showed no signs of running out. In fact, I was pretty certain that Illona herself was some sort of wolf generator, causing them to appear out of thin air, as we advanced towards the hidden town.
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I’d used my Fatal Kiss ability four more times since then, mostly as a way to heal myself after Illona’s magic was depleted. I was forced to admit, she was proving useful, allowing me to keep fighting even after taking multiple hits. If nothing else, I’d have run out of my limited stock of healing pots by now.
If I had to complain about something, it was that much like trying to use healing pots in a fight, which seemed to drive enemies into a frenzy of attacks, whenever Illona did use her healing spell, she attracted too much attention. I was forced to drop everything and focus on defending her.
Femme had discussed the concept of “agro” or managing the attention of enemies, but when we’d been playing together, both of us did about the same amount of damage, drew about the same amount of hostile attention, and could take about an equal amount of punishment. We had both started out as front line warriors types, although as we’d leveled up, I’d noticed that my mana was getting bigger faster than my health, while Femme’s health had increased faster instead.
But, even though I was no longer as sturdy as Femme, I was still much beefier than Illona. She took far more damage per blow than I did, to the point where she almost died several times in the five fights we’d had together so far.
“We need to think about this,” I told her, “you are going to die at this rate.”
“Don’t worry about me, if I die, it will be in your service,” she said stoically, hiding her face by ducking her head.
“I don’t want you to die.” I told her, lifting her chin to face me, “I want you to stay alive so you can keep helping me.”
“I’m sorry I’m being such a bother,” she said tearfully.
I sighed and let go of her chin. She took this as a sign of disapproval and started to sob softly. I wasn’t mad, I was frustrated, and not at her, but at myself. I was simply not a very good “player”. I had no doubt Femme would have known what to do.
“Please stop crying, Illona, I know you are brave,” I told her softly, putting an arm around her shoulder, comfortingly. “I just need to think of a plan.”
Illona cheered up considerably, and nodded. Her eyes shone with absolute confidence. She had faith I would solve the problem.
I did my best, thinking back to what Femme had taught me. I knew, from Femme’s comments about companions, that followers actually didn’t die permanently, so long as the player was still alive. They merely went “unconscious” instead. I would just need to use a healing potion after every time Illona got chewed into ribbons by all the wolves who flocked to her.
The problem was, I couldn’t just let her get ravaged, my instincts drove me to try to protect her every time, even to the point of taking hits aimed in her direction. I wasn’t willing to treat her as a reusable chew toy. It felt like it would be a breach of contract between us; I would be failing her as her leader.
The thought of contracts reminded me of my new ability, “Create Arcane Contract”, and more to distract myself than anything else, I pulled up the old trusty help menu interface and started reading up on what this new ability did. And it gave me a simple solution to the problem, albeit, a rather risky one.
“Illona,” I said, “would you mind entering into an arcane contract with me?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said, without a moment's hesitation.
“According to the help menu, this contract lets me link our health and mana pools, so that damage to either of us is shared between us, and we can only die if both our health pools are deleted. Also, our spells will use both our mana pools too, so you can use my mana to cast your heals.” I told her.
To be honest, this last bit was the main advantage so far as I could see. Illona’s health and mana values were smaller than mine, and my mana was sitting largely unused. My only spell, Fatal Kiss, was completely overkill on these smaller wolves, and I could only use it once per hour. By drawing on my mana, Illona would be able to cast heals more often, and more importantly, she could afford to use her shield spell more often. It would also link our mana regeneration together, which would make a big difference in longer fights.
The shared hp would make it much harder to kill Illona, but it was also a vulnerability, as she wasn’t very good at dodging. I could take a lot of damage from sharing my hp with her if she started to get mobbed by wolves. A smart enemy would focus attacks on her rather than try to kill me. She wasn’t as armored as I was either, with only a small defense bonus from her red riding cloak. Could I fix that? I wondered. Was there a rule that said shrine maidens couldn’t wear heavy armor? A thought for later, I figured.
As Illona had no objections, I went ahead and performed the contract. It was a rather flashy affair, creating a silver cord of mystical energy between us, linking our lives and magic together as one. The cord faded away after a short bit, becoming invisible, but the awed look in Illona's eyes showed she’d been more impressed by the flashy graphics than I was.
I got the impression that Illona was rather moved by my willingness to link our lives together, because she teared up and hugged me afterwards, unable to say why she was so happy about it. I also figured out there might be side effects to the contract, because I could feel the joy being poured into me through our link. I also started to get snippets of raw lust transmitted into my head that I knew came from her, as she let the innocent joyful hug turn into something else.
“Alright,” I told Illona, prying her loose, “that’s enough hugging.”
Illona looked wistful, but nodded.
“Ok,” I told her, “Now that you have more mana to use, you should use the shield spell more often, instead of heal.”
“Aren’t you worried about running out of mana?” She asked me.
It was true that the shield spell was less efficient, using more mana, but it had a couple big advantages. “It’s ok, use shield so the enemies don’t get interested in attacking you,” I told her. The shield spell didn’t generate agro, because it prevented damage, rather than healing it.
The other advantage was that, so as long as she kept spamming that shield spell, I wouldn’t feel the pain of getting bit. It was a win win, in my opinion. How did other players deal with all the pain from enemy attacks, I wondered. I’d have to ask Femme about it, I thought to myself. Did they just enjoy pain? Maybe Femme was into that sort of thing, I thought to myself, then quickly dismissed the mental image that prompted, blushing slightly.
Illona readily agreed to the change of tactics. I could tell she was relieved, she understood the benefits of using shield instead of heal, but had been reluctant to use it with her small mana pool. With both our mana to draw from, she could use her magic much more liberally.
The next fight went much more smoothly, Illona was able to avoid getting attacked, and we were even rewarded by leveling up. Two levels ups in one day? I was making good progress, and Illona’s clear joy from gaining a level made me think that maybe, the endless chore of grinding away levels was funner when you weren’t alone.