Current Quests
The Safety Of Walls: Reach a walled town with Samorn Khantong.
When they woke up, Dave, in fact, hadn’t solved many problems at all so he made ham and cheese sandwiches as an apology which they could eat while walking and Sam walked off for a bit to -
“I need to take the traps down,” said Sam.
“Traps?”
“Yes! I set them up while you were studying!” she said brightly.
“Oh! Erm, I didn’t even notice. Thank you for not letting me walk into a spike pit, I guess.”
She attempted an evil look but only managed to look mischievous and then broke into a wide smile.
“Is fine! They only make loud noises to give us a warning.”
Once again, Dave was reminded that he was in a hostile world and this wasn’t a typical camping trip. The fire at the entrance of their little hollow was no guarantee of keeping threats away. It had been a cold night and they’d slept side-by-side to stay warm under an improvised blanket of mostly spare cultist robes. They’d lit a second fire and slept between both to maximise the warmth. Sam had warned that they’d be covered in ash but Dave had a utility, comfort prestidigitation, [Grand Mage’s Gravitas], which he got for free with his living spellbook ability. It was a good magic cleaning and refreshing effect that they’d tested last night and used seriously now.
Prestidigitation: Grand Mage’s Gravitas
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: none
Description
A creature or object in the area will shed anything from it that sullies, dirties, makes impure or the like. Also your clothing will lose rumples, look and feel fresh. This effect takes one minute to complete. If the object is larger than a human, the effect can be applied to a human-sized area of it every minute.
Detailed Information
While Dave and Sam broke camp, Dave used Grand Mage’s Gravitas on himself first, just in case there were any unexplored side effects, which there weren’t, and then on Sam, who stretched and smiled broadly as the soot and grime on her body, sleep-sand in her eyes and the unpleasant moisture in her boots all just fell away.
“It’s good, hey?” said Dave.
“Yes!” said Sam with an open mouthed smile.
As they picked their way across the mountainous terrain away from the hollow, Dave felt a certain sense of blankness about himself so he checked his HUD for alerts and when his eyes fell upon his available spell slots he remembered.
“Oh damn! I don’t have any spells to memorise,” said Dave, letting out an exasperated, forlorn breath.
“Oh yeah! You told me. You pick a few spells and then you only cast those?” asked Sam.
“Yeah but I’m supposed to research new ones and write them into Tome,” said Dave, indicating the spellbook that was balanced precariously on his shoulder and was using its flight ability to stay perched there. “The ones I have right now are just the default spells I got with my awakening stones.”
“I only remember the falling brick one!” said Sam
Dave laughed and grinned.
“Yeah, that’s The Papyral Conception of Pulp and Press. It just lets me make paper where I like. Up to a tonne and in any continuous shape that I can think of.”
“It’s very powerful!” Sam called over her shoulder while they made their way through the mountainous terrain.
“Yeah, I’ll slot in four of them for now. It doesn’t matter since my default spells can always be substituted for what I memorise,” Dave muttered as he memorised four Pulp and Press spells and then had a brainwave. “Hey, Tome. What are some hours-long fight spells that last multiple fights?”
The book fluttered open in front of him but the mountainous terrain constantly going up and down made it difficult for the book’s clumsy flight to stay level.
“Summons? Cool. They sound versatile. Since my spells get a time boost and a power boost with extra effects on top, my summons should be more powerful than most with cool abilities.” Dave nodded to himself, “I’ll look it up with you once we’re on a trail and you can fly without fear.”
Sam grinned back at him. In the mountainous terrain, you were either using your hands to help pull yourself up or holding onto something so that you didn’t fall down. The constant need to look at your footing and hand holds made even a floating book impossible to read. A new thought occurred to Dave.
“Hey, Sam? Why don’t you have a full essence set?” asked Dave.
“I have bad essence! You forgot already?” said Sam sharply.
“Well, yeah, but now that I’m thinking about it, aren't there quite a few confluence essences from life and death that aren’t evil?” asked Dave. Before she could answer, he had his spellbook open to a page in the adventurer’s guide book, used Stop And Think and double-checked his knowledge. “Yeah, I just looked it up. Sure there’s a whole bunch that give the undeath confluence but master, mystic, eclipse and animate are also options. None of them are anywhere near restricted.
Sam gave a strained smile over her shoulder.
“Might be evil,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” said Dave with a furrowed brow, “I did a lot of reading after you went to sleep and the evidence that essences affect your personality is very faulty. It’s clearly possible to get abilities that are evil, the sacrifice essence does that a lot, but death essences seem to just use death as a source of power. I think in the past that’s made a lot of death essence users kill people for power so it ended up on the restricted list. It doesn’t look like there’s anything inherently wrong with it, just that it attracts nutcases who start killing people. Besides, if essences changed your personality, why is it only the evil ones? Why not find really talented criminals and start shoving life, purity and renewal essences into them? It makes no sense. I’ve only skimmed it but I think that while essences bond to you, they aren’t actually you. Besides, you’re just too darn nice.”
Sam laughed self consciously.
“People will change their mind when they see death essence,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Okay, let’s take that as true for now,” said Dave. “Death essence is the bad essence? Sure. But you already have it and you can’t remove it and the only danger is that any further essences you take will be tainted by it, right?”
Sam nodded, keeping up with the logic.
“But that can’t be true because if it was, then the order that essences are taken in would matter. Would it be different if you took life, balance and death essence in that order? The laws don’t think so. So, It doesn’t seem likely that the death essence is uniquely corrupting of other essences. It’s only considered bad because of the way it works, which is to draw power from the concept of death. Once you’ve already taken it, though, it doesn’t matter if you complete the set because if the bad thing has already been done, you can’t undo it.”
“This doesn’t make me feel better!” wailed Sam.
“Sorry!” said Dave brightly, “but it’s true! If you’ve done something bad, it’s already happened. A bit like falling over and getting a scar. You can dwell on it for the rest of your life but why would you? Move forward and keep learning. I think you should complete the set and live the best life you can. Besides, apparently gods can remove essences? So, if you get powerful enough, maybe you can ask a god to remove it? But, you’ll only get that power if you’re ranking up as an essence user. Alternatively, everyone is wrong about the death essence and the only way you can prove that is also by ranking up as an essence user. Again it comes back to pretty much every problem for both of us in this world is solved by ranking up. So, slaying monsters is our best move no matter what, yeah?”
Sam stopped, turned around and furrowed her brow, looking at Dave in sudden thought and then brightened.
“Yeah!” said Sam and she smiled. Dave was happy to see her walk lighter and laugh louder with this new thought in her head. Quest or no quest, he was enjoying his time in the woods with Sam. She was naturally a talkative person and seemed to enjoy absurdity.
“Anyway, Sam. You think aeroplanes are funny. Does this world have trains?”
“Yes!”
“Powered by steam?”
“What? No! Crazy.”
“Let me tell you.”
They soon exited the mountainous part of the terrain and were walking along a flat path in the woods. Dave had finished explaining steam engines to Sam and pulled out Tome to review his spells. They were… wordy so he wrote his own summarised version.
Maestro’s Instant Image Of Manifested Illusions
Illusion spell. Manifests pigments into reality. Will stay if manifested on correct medium. Visual quality varies with size and dimensions.
Dispel And Quell Magic
Removes magic. Target area (about 5m radius) or target creature/object. Area effect = handful of seconds. Single target = dozens of seconds or minutes.
The Stationary Scry Of Farseeing
Send your senses to a known location/creature/object. Target may resist. Much trouble seeing/hearing locations/creatures/objects you’ve not personally witnessed.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Mail By Appointed Rounds
Properly address a letter and post it from anywhere. Moves at heidel speed.
The Papyral Conception of Pulp and Press
Make about a tonne of continuous paper. Is real and won’t sublime.
The Clairvoyant Eye Of Transvection
Make invisible, magic eyes and ears at location you can see. Fly it around at will.
Looking over these, Dave figured that his best bet for a summon would be to make a large amount of paper and animate it into a pseudo-intellect using magic derived from the moving pictures in Maestro’s Instant Image Of Manifested Illusions and the animated eye in Clairvoyant Eye Of Transvection.
Lost in chatting with Sam and speculating with his Tome, the day passed quickly until mid afternoon when Sam suddenly turned around, half-pushed Dave into some bushes and shushed him.
“Something’s coming!” she hissed.
Five cultists were tromping along the trail, heads down, watching the way ahead. One of them had a handful of colourful rocks, one of which they placed on a false trail which they didn’t use. Another was using a large knife to mark trees, indicating their passage.
“...see why Raph’s group gets all the good bread,” said one.
“For the last time, Meike, it’s because Raph is a boot licker. Just focus on the search,” said another in a strained voice.
Quest: Hunt Cultists
Description
Kill all cultists in the area searching for the local guide. 0/10. Reward: [Wand Of Mage Bolt].
Accept? [Yes]/[No].
Detailed Information
Suddenly, one of the cultists sniffed the air strongly and looked around.
Dave acted instantly.
“Milled for my purpose,” he said, casting his paper summoning spell through a precious spell slot. A wall of layered, corrugated cardboard now surrounded the five cultists that extended above their heads. “Summon your bugs!” shouted Dave as he drew an arming sword, accepted the new quest and ran at the encircling wall. The cultists were initially stupefied but from the sounds inside, were split between climbing the wall and kicking it down. Dave climbed up on a large rock to see the top of the wall and saw hands and a head appear.
Dave flicked his fingers towards the climbing cultist. Five iron-nibbed quills flew out of his pocket and shot at the climbing cultist like bolts, burying themselves into the cultist’s arms and face. The cultist screamed and fell back.
“Sam, get high and bug them if they climb!” shouted Dave, seeing a glance of Sam as he ran towards the paper wall. She was not smiling but her face was focused and she carried her sickle, heading towards a tree with low branches.
Dave ran around the construction, listening for the thumps of the cultists’ escape attempts. He cursed himself for not making parts of the wall see-through so that he could harass them with his quills, which had been his plan. Many spells and abilities were line-of-sight based but Dave forgot that about his quills. Fortunately, these cultists seemed to be mostly a mixture of normals and single essence users but no iron rankers.
“Forget going up, then! Hack at this wall with me. You lot, keep the bugs off!” came the voice that had mollified Meike earlier.
There was the sound of hacking against the wall. Dave guessed hand axes or machetes were being used against it. Having a brain-wave, Dave pressed his own sword tip into the cardboard and made a small hole. There was a woman with an ornate, summoned battleaxe, likely from an axe essence. She snarled at Dave and kept swinging. He mentally commanded his quills to attack her. The next moment she shouted in pain and left the aperture. Four of his quills returned to the sky but the fifth had either been damaged beyond repair or captured.
A crack, swiftly followed by a shout of pain, came from within the walls. Upon hearing that they’d abandoned climbing.
“The bitch has got a sling!” shouted a voice. Sam had climbed a tree opposite to their chopping efforts and, Dave guessed, was using a sling to hurl rocks.
“Damn it, outta the way, Miles use your nose and point at where the man is, you three focus on the woman,” growled the mollifier, followed by a frenzied hacking at the wall. The wall was cut through very easily with the axe but the hole had to be widened if the mollifier was going to fit through. Dave stood just outside in a tense standoff, waiting for someone to get close enough to stab them with his long, tapered sword. The mollifier, seeing this, smiled evilly and kept chopping, keeping her arms well back.
“Good trick, but we’re going to kill you.” she grinned.
“Dave!? You should drop on them,” shouted Sam, implying that he should just drop a tonne of paper on their heads. It’d work but there were five more cultists after this that Sam didn’t know about and quests typically got harder as they went, not easier.
“No, keep chipping at them! It’ll all be over when one dies!” he shouted back, staring straight at the mollifier but knew that Sam would understand he wanted her to use her corpse explosion ability. He jumped and craned his neck to get a look at Sam over the top of the walls. She was using the tree trunk as cover since three of the cultists inside were throwing rocks back at her. She was using the beetle swam to disrupt their sight while she aimed at whoever didn’t have rocks.
The stand off continued, those inside weathering distressing beetles, slung rocks, and aggressive quills. Everyone inside was bloodied but no cultists had gone down. The hole was getting bigger with Dave and Mollifier playing a game of cat and mouse; Mollifier swinging rapidly but carefully and Dave searching for an opportunity to stab her arms. She grinned at him, knowing it was only a matter of time.
The stand off continued for a few more seconds as the hole went from the size of the dinner plate at chest height to the size of a large platter. Dave was anticipating they’d be able to push through any second when there was a good crack indicating rock against skin and the sniffer, Miles, stumbled sideways towards the hole and cursed.
Dave lunged forward, sticking his arm in and took Miles in the neck with the tip of his sword. Roaring, the Mollifier quickly flicked her axe out of the cardboard and across Dave’s arm as he rushed to withdraw his exposed limb. The blade of the axe drew across the outside of his arm from just above his elbow and halfway to his wrist. Dave yelped in pain, dropped his sword and lost concentration on his quills.
“I got one!” shouted Dave, staggering away from the hole. Now that Dave wasn’t a threat, Mollifier had quickly cut straight down and was pulling and folding open the cardboard below the hole.
“I’m coming!” Sam shouted back, scrambling to come to Dave. Dave figured that she couldn’t see the body and he’d have to buy time until she could.
“Jas, Eisa! Go, go! Get through the hole, Jas,” shouted Mollifier, gesturing at two of her subordinates who were throwing stones and pushed one at the hole who began squeezing their body through the sliced partition.
Thinking quickly, Dave summoned a handful of loosely connected shredded paper into his good hand which he threw into the face of Jas as she was only halfway through. She raised her machete and winced defensively as the cloud of paper came at her face and Dave darted in to control her wrist and brace his shoulder against Jas.
“He’s got my arm. Push me!” shouted Jas, which was immediately followed up by a vastly increased pressure as Dave tried to hold back a scrum, pushing Jas, tearing more cardboard as she slipped further and further out.
“Now, Sam! It’s got to be now!” shouted Dave in a strained voice. His legs burned from pushing back so much that he momentarily forgot about his injured right arm.
Suddenly, a wet explosion was felt through the walls and the voices inside stopped. Jas stumbled slightly and winced in pain. Then, beetles started landing on her face and swarming over her. Her free hand on the other side of the wall started scrabbling and pushing against the wall to get her body back inside but as she did so, Jas suddenly let out a shrill scream and went limp.
“Hey, Dave?” sang out Sam’s voice from inside the wall. “Can you use your cleaning spell on me?”
“Sure thing. Just let me use some healing unguent,” said Dave, inspecting his arm wound. It hadn’t hit any arteries but was long and deep.
“Sure,” said Sam, who pulled Jas’ corpse out of the way and pushed awkwardly through the hole. Her shoes were completely soaked in gore and she smelled of raw flesh. As soon as he could focus again, he concentrated on his Grand Mage’s Gravitas prestidigitation and started cleaning Sam off. Eventually he remembered his quills which he flicked his fingers at to fly back to him, and then retrieved his long, tapered sword.
“HEY!” shouted a voice coming up the trail.
“Oh, shit! Get inside” said Dave hurriedly, his eyes flicking towards his quest counter. Which had silently changed to five out of ten during the battle. He looked up the trail and saw three cultists coming. One with a bow and arrow, one who was activating an ability that changed their skin texture to look like a hardwood tree and one who was holding a dagger in each hand with three more daggers floating close to their body. The bow and arrow wielder stopped and drew a nocked arrow while the other two charged forward.
Sam dived back inside the cardboard walls while Dave dodged the long arrow shot and followed her. Then, he activated Stop And Think. If they ran, the arrow guy would get them but if they could lure them into the walls…Dave returned to real time.
“Sam, put your beetles into the air and prevent their archer from aiming. We need to get all three into here,” hissed Dave.
She did as she was asked and soon, the archer was jumping down from a tree, coughing and swinging his arms around. Then, the one with a tree form, Dave guessed a plant essence user, rushed the slit-entrance with shoulder charge and busted in, Dave retreated to the back of the rectangular, paper walls and didn’t even have to feign fear when all three advanced inside while he kept them at bay with the tip of his sword flicking nervously from one cultist to another.
“Poor, Jas. Looks like you trapped her but now, we’ve trapped you,” gloated the knife essence user.
“Yes, well. She was Milled For My Purpose,” said Dave disguising his incantation as he conjured a three sided container. Dave envisioned three sides of a box; a barrier between him and Sam, a barrier between the cultists and the opening the axe wielder had chopped and a roof to keep them in and all in the middle of this three-sided conjuration, twirling off from the inside and filling the middle was almost a tonne of long, curly, shredded paper bits. He didn’t summon it high because he didn’t want to have to look up to give them time to move. It just appeared directly above their heads and fell. The walls landed hard but the shredded paper merely was uncomfortable and restricted the cultists’ movement, pushing them down with the sheer press of paper around their limbs.
The cultists were shouting at each other about their situation and didn’t notice Dave reached his hand between a gap in the walls and used Magician’s Meagre Magics to light a small candle flame on each of his finger tips. The fire quickly caught and soon, Dave’s quest counter ticked up to 8/10. He continued cleaning Sam, who was blocking her ears while humming, and then himself off while the cultists died noisily even though his stomach didn’t feel quite right.
“Two more to go,” said Dave.
“Two more?” asked Sam.
“Yeah, it’s on my quest,” said Dave.
They’ll probably come because of the smoke,” said Sam pointing at the smoke from the rising flames.
“Well, I have another plan.” said Dave with a smile that was half grimace.
Three minutes later, a huge cultist carrying an oversized weapon and one with glowing eyes came jogging into view. They saw Jas standing perfectly still on the trail and ran towards her. As soon as she saw them she threw her hands up and shouted in a horse voice, “Don’t move! Runes on ground!”
The two stopped moving.
“Jas, what’s going on?” asked the huge one over the sound of Jas coughing.
“Magic runes on the ground. They find you if you move. Just stay still!” Jas insisted and kept coughing. The one with the glowing eyes pointed behind Jas at the burning cardboard ruin.
“What’s tha-”
Half a tonne of paper brick slab absolutely crushed the heads of both cultists. Dave stood up from his vantage point halfway up the slope and began picking his way down to Sam who was watching his Maestro’s Instant Image Of Manifested Illusions spell dissolve away from her skin and clothes, removing her disguise as the dead cultist, Jas.
Dave eyed his chat box. You have completed the quest: [Hunt Cultists]. You have gained, [Wand Of Mage Bolt]. [Wand Of Mage Bolt] has been added to your inventory. Dave clicked on the wand and then clicked on [Mage Bolt] in the description.
Mage Bolt
Mage bolt is a low power attack of pure magic energy. Upon impact it will transform into all types of physical and elemental damage.
Dave retrieved it from his inventory, used Pauper’s Paper Production to make a serviceable holder for it on his belt next to his sword, looted the bodies and followed Sam into the wilderness towards her cabin.
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‘High and mighty? Is that what they call me? I dare say I am. This world has social and political attitudes that were outdated in my world a thousand years ago. Which… how do I even explain it? Things don’t change here. Let’s say it converts to about ten gold-ranked rulers ago. Imagine a place that’s had gold-ranked ten rulers in succession—how much it would change from the first to the tenth. That’s the kind of ideological gap between your world and mine. On a good day.
I’ve thought about this lethargic progress for a long time, and I’m convinced it all stems from a lack of philosophy—that’s the intellectual art of thinking. Even in my world, dictators find it inconvenient but here? It’s barely been born. Oh sure, there are books. Tucked away at the back of libraries, ignored and gathering dust. But to call it an intellectual field? Laughable. How could it thrive in a world like this? Thoughtcrime isn’t just possible here—it’s the norm. What freedom does anyone have to think honest thoughts when a silver ranker can crush their will with a glare? When a gold ranker can sense the faintest dissatisfaction with their totalitarian rule from the next street over? The people here have shaped themselves to survive, learned to find happiness in grovelling, because being anything else is a death sentence. And the ranked think this is humanity’s natural state. It’s sick.
Take my old friend Sam. Everyone in this world would’ve killed her without a second thought and pat themselves on the back for it. Why? Because of a correlation-causation error—a common mistake in my world too. Happens all the time. But there, you can call people out on it. Here? It leads to atrocities. I saw a gold ranker backhand someone’s head off because they’d just moved to town and monsters attacked soon after. How do you tell someone like that they’re wrong? You can’t. So yeah, I’m fine with being called high and mighty because I’m living in a world full of uncivilized barbarians. Next question.’
* Excerpt from The Booker Interviews, 2686th year of His Majesty Byzas The Great’s reign.