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Bruce wound up, trebuchet projectile of a fist balled up, more than enough to finish off the remaining 12 HP on Calaf’s rapidly fading health bar.
Why, at this rate he would never encounter Jelena again. Funny how his thoughts turned to his rival at a time like this. Hmmm. What would she do in this situation? Dodging – a disgraceful act under the Menu – would be the only thing that could save him now. Even so, he’d still have to overcome this glacier of a man.
Calaf turned off the Interface just as Bruce began to slowly force the muscles of his massive arm forward. The knight jumped back, and Bruce shotgun-punched nothing but air.
“Oh. Are Stalwarts allowed to do that?” Metzger stifled a chuckle. “You’re more of an apostate than we are.”
“Don’t lecture me, thief.” Calaf spat. “Besides, I learned it from a friend.”
Calaf let out a morose chuckle. The murderer of his foster father – a friend? Never! Though, mortal enemies could make fair teachers, in a sense. Eh, the Port Town Thieves Guild didn’t need to know the ins and outs of his rivalry with the relic thief.
“Hey, we pay our taxes and trade our stolen goods within the Interface. We’re practically legitimate businessmen.” Metzger got up from his desk, wine in hand, and made for a far door. “Hurry up, Bruce.”
Another strike, another dodge that sent Calaf… flush up against the far wall.
Nowhere to run now. Bruce began to wind up again…
What could possibly save Calaf now?
Just as Bruce prepared another mighty blow, a shadowy blur moved along the cistern rafters.
Special Skill: Double Attack
Description: Next attack hits twice
Skill: Sneak Attack
Description: Quadruples damage when attacking from behind.
A figure in robes damp from a drizzle outside leaped up at around Bruce’s neck height.
High-pressure blood spray splattered over the cistern walls. Bruce’s stockpile of hit points had a chunk taken out of it, down to eighty with the first blow, then all the way down to the low forties with the double attack’s second strike landing a lucky critical hit.
Critical Hit!
Name:
Bruce
Status:
41/120 (Dumbfounded)
Calaf leapt to his feet. Bruce was already turning to take a swing at this new foe. But his rescuer’s light armor wouldn’t last more than a hit and a half from the mountainous monk.
A shield bash turned Bruce away from the attacker at his back, exposing him to more sneak attacks. But Calaf didn’t have the HP to last another hit against Bruce either – let alone the rest of the thieves in this cistern. There was a narrow path by which Calaf and his new ally may be able to turn this around, and it ran through Bruce’s unarmored jugular.
Twin knives sliced into Bruce’s mountainous form. Plainclothes offered little defense, but there was just so much HP and the knives possessed relatively little in the way of damage multiplier such that, sans sneak attack damage bonuses, they still just shaved tiny slices off the remains of Bruce’s mammoth health bar. Defense-minded Calaf would have to put his newly crafted spear to the test.
A second shield bash inflicted the discombobulation stat onto Bruce, HP falling into the mid-twenties. They had to land the final blow before Bruce could get a proper hit out…
Calaf’s spear flew forward. No time nor stamina left for any special techniques. But…
Critical Hit!
The spear embedded itself right into Bruce’s heart. The result of this one-in-a-million blow was seen by all in the Menu’s Interface.
Name:
Bruce
Status:
-18/120 (Gored)
A personal best with regards to Calaf’s damage on a single blow. And more than enough to kill Bruce dead. The mountain collapsed onto the stone floor with a mighty thud.
XP was awarded when the battle ended. But the rest of the thieves’ guild had put their weapons away. Experience and gold for felling such a high-level foe flowed into Calaf and his mysterious rescuer…
Items Obtained:
Gold x 95
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Sewer Trash x6
Mark of the Thieves Guild x2
Experience: 200 xp
Calaf Leveled Up! Level 25:
Strength: 35
Endurance: 50 (+1)
Agility: 23 (+1)
Intelligence: 17 (+2)
Charisma: 14 (+1)
Arcane: 6
Luck: 25 (+3)
A bit off-meta as far as leveling up goes. But he did crack that crucial Endurance threshold. He’d be able to don heavy armor for the endgame stations.
And as for his mysterious ally:
Gerard Leveled Up! Level 22
Strength: 20 (+4)
Endurance: 16
Agility: 41 (+5)
Intelligence: 25 (+2)
Charisma: 18 (+2)
Arcane: 8
Luck: 33 (+3)
Gerard, their handy scout, twirled his knives around. All at once the pair was back at full HP, full stamina, and with a moderate stat bonus to match.
“Fortunate timing!” Calaf said, then turned his shield towards the rest of the thieves’ guild.
Only, Metzger and the others had beat a hasty retreat. One of the thief class’s special techniques was withdrawing all stealthy-like. Slinking away was not necessarily smiled upon by the Menu scriptures, but it was in their toolkit. Calaf and Gerard had the cistern to themselves – well, themselves and Bruce’s festering corpse.
“So, what happened to bring you down here?” Calaf asked, putting away his spear.
“Eh, y’know, just went for a walk…”
Gerard checked under Metzger’s plain desk. He stealthily pocketed some bottles of wine, then used ‘Loot’ on Bruce’s corpse for some extra gold.
“… Not at all trying to hawk some wares on the black market,” Gerard concluded.
Calaf nodded. It was fortunate that he’d happened by at this time, and followed Calaf into that secret passage in the cistern, and knew the way through all those wily traps. Yes, it was a good thing they had a morally upstanding Scout in their party, rather than an unscrupulous thief.
But alas, the thieves’ guild had escaped. And they seemed to have plans for the reliquary of Port Town. What more could Calaf do to counter this new threat?
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The Port Town cathedral guards rebuffed all warnings Calaf gave about the cathedral reliquary. That night, it was far too late to wake the bishop, they said. Then in the morning, the line was that the guard had already been doubled for this pilgrimage season. What else could he do, if nobody would even heed his warning? Why, the guards wouldn’t even explore the cistern network. Maybe they really were on the payroll.
The three other members of the party were none the wiser to the miniature adventure Calaf and Gerrard had been through that night. As far as anyone knew, they’d all been asleep.
“Huh, did you two gain levels while we weren’t around?” Sarah asked as the group prepared to head out.
“Ah, yes. We encountered a dire-rat while looking for the loo,” Gerard said.
No evidence of the thieves guild remained, even after the pair checked the cistern again on a lark come daylight. They’d filtered out into the aqueduct network and were off somewhere about town.
Still, Calaf wondered what they were planning, and where their machinations would cause trouble next…
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The group remained well ahead of the glut of pilgrims that heralded peak season (the plains and swamps were a frequent roadblock for all but the most combat-focused).
Calaf was rapidly integrating as a fifth member of this new party, the designated tank and defense-minded shielder. The former shielder, Jorge, was now an alternate tank and typically just two-handed his mace. Sarah seldom had to heal anyone other than Calaf these days. Gerard’s surprise level-up helped a great deal on the damage front. And of course, Isaac was beginning to enhance his shattered two-hander with elemental damage as a sort of sub-dps.
The group mustered at the northern gate to Port Town after a quick stop at the market for some additional rations. The squat wooden gate awaited, as did many more miles of endless swamp.
A commotion gathered at the north gate. Still, the party squeezed through and out of the town’s squat walls.
The swampy canopy on this northern half of the delta rapidly waned, giving way to rolling fields cordoned off by simple meandering thatched wooded fences.
And in these fields, they saw…
Name:
Dire-Cow x3
Title:
Bovine, Domesticated Beast
Level:
65
Status:
1567/1567 (Well-fed)
“Huh.” Calaf said audibly.
That was… a higher level than expected for cattle in the region. Most were capped around the mid-forties. Still, perhaps some farmers just overfed them or used them for a dire-bovine fight club. The cultures of the various regions along the path were unique. Anything could happen.
Onward, the party marched. The roads through this portion of the delta were rather lax, meandering with the river. It was an easy journey, until the dire-cassowarys blocked the road at a rather swampy junction.
Name:
Dire-Cassowary (x4)
Title:
Terror Bird, Beast
Level:
45
Status:
500/500 (Out for Blood)
The exact limit of the Delta’s level range. And a bit much for level twenties to try and take on, certainly in a pack.
“Hmm. I’d heard these were supposed to be solitary birds,” Sarah said.
The way was blocked. Rather than wait for more pilgrims to show up and form a temporary alliance to divide and conquer, the party doubled back.
Junctions with minor trading posts and riverside docks awaited every twelve miles or so. It was roughly the distance a cart laden with goods could travel in a day. Travel from the farm to the crossroads, load your goods onto a river boat, and head for Port Town. Some of these larger junctions were small hamlets themselves.
The idea was to go double back and take another crossroads further inland, then keep traveling north towards the next station on the itinerary. But at this nameless junction, they found another roadblock.
“The dire-gators have gone haywire!” said a local merchant. “Crawled out of the river at level 52!”
Calf stopped the party.
“Level 52?” he asked the merchant. “What level were they before?”
“Thereabouts 26.”
Double the expected range. Suddenly those dire-cassowarys seemed the lesser roadblock. Why, that was the exact symptom that befouled the other stations with pilfered relics. With Jelena nowhere to be found, it had to be the thieves guild making good on their machinations.
Over-leveled dire-gators waited in the shallows along the roadside to their south. Aggressive on the best of days, an encounter with even one would mean death.
“Well, the plan hasn’t changed,” said Jorge. “Everything should be… tamer, further from the river. We’ll head inland, be in Firefield within 3 days.”
Firefield itself would have unique dangers from the moment they entered the region.
“I am honor-bound to return to Port Town and at least assist in clearing the route,” Calaf said. “Continue onward. You have a full party and have gained all manner of XP in our short time together. You’ll do fine up to the border at least. If you’re still in Firefield when I return, we can always regroup.”
“Well, we’ll miss ya,” said Isaac.
“Before I go…”
Calaf approached Jorge and brought up a trade menu
Calaf
· Steel Kite Shield (x1)
To:
Jorge
· Banded Steel Shield of Finesse (x1)
“There. It offers 100% physical defense,” Calaf said. “It’ll save Sarah all manner of healing mana over the long run.”
Calaf tried out his new buckler. It was an uneven trade, immediately, but good deeds were the cornerstone of charity, and this less-than-total physical blocking shield had its advantages.
“Until we meet again,” Calaf said.
Somewhere along the path, they would be reunited. He was certain.
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