Fifteen minutes later, Rowan and Olivia were getting instructions from Bron.
“Good, you’re here. We’re a little short on manpower.” Bron got right down to business as soon as he saw them. “We’re going to shore up the defenses at the village as much as we can over the next few days. That means wood. We’re sending some lumberjacks to the eastern forest. My men will protect them, but someone needs to scout around for threats. I don’t want them caught out when the attack comes.”
“You need us to scout? What should we be looking for?” Rowan asked.
“It should be obvious when it comes. More than obvious. If an attack comes, it’ll be slow and heavy. As long as you keep moving, it shouldn’t catch up to you.” Bron paused. “There’ll probably be some loose packs of corrupted beasts roaming around. I’m sorry to put the two of you in danger, I wouldn’t be asking if this wasn’t absolutely crucial.”
Rowan nodded. “No, I’m happy to help.”
“Just the woods? What about the plains to the north?” Olivia asked.
“Just the woods and only daylight scouting while we’re working on the defenses,” Bron responded. His gaze focused on something beyond Rowan as he rushed off. “Chief, we need to talk about your men.”
Finding himself dismissed, Rowan traded glances with Olivia.
“Bron couldn’t have just told that soldier to relay that to us?” Olivia quietly grumbled.
“He probably wanted to do it himself,” Rowan said. “Just in case anything got lost along the way.”
“What’s there to lose? It’s just, go scout in the woods to the East. Anyone can deliver that message,” Olivia said.
“I’m sure Sir Bron had his reason,” Rowan said, walking back to his room. “What should we do about the fragments?”
“Store them somewhere safe,” Olivia said. “I’m too tired tonight to deal with them.”
Rowan agreed. “Goodnight then.”
“Goodnight.”
—
Rowan realized that he was not a fan of the woods.
In his mind, they were these wonderful pockets of tranquility, unspoiled nature away from all the concrete jungles he’d grown up in. And on Earth, that might have been true.
In this new world? They were a sort of hell.
Bron had said that there would be small groups of corrupted beasts. What he hadn’t mentioned was the fact that the beasts were ambush predators. Until now, Rowan had been fighting the monsters on flat plains where he knew exactly when and where they were coming from.
So when a corrupted fox sprang at his face, Rowan’s manliness vanished. He shrieked two octaves higher than what his voice should have been able to do and used every single point of his stats to twist and skewer the thing with his spear. It was easy fighting these corrupted beasts now, even if they were a jump scare.
“What would people think if I told them that their hero was screaming like a little girl at a corrupted fox?” Olivia laughed. “You should have seen yourself. I don’t think even I can scream that high.”
Rowan toughed the ribbing out.
“Do you think we’ll see more beasts like this?” Rowan asked as he pointed his spear at the fox.
“Maybe, it’s possible that some of them are circling back in hopes of a good meal. The blood from the fight at the village is bound to attract stragglers,” Olivia said. “If that means I get to see more of a hero screaming, I’m not complaining.”
Rowan paused and checked his cardholder.
Rowan’s Soulbound Cardholder (4/5):
* Inspect (Uncommon, Active)
* Nimble Body (Common, Passive)
* Eerie Stare (Common, Passive)
* Light Step (Common, Passive)
Note: The cardholder can’t be used in combat.
In theory, a cardholder was the same as carrying a stack of cards in a person’s pockets. Olivia explained that the difference was the speed at which a swap could happen. Without a cardholder, someone would need to stop, unequip a card, fetch the card, find the right card, and equip it. The cardholder made that instantaneous. And the fact that cards in a cardholder couldn’t be lost or stolen was an extra bonus.
Rowan removed the Stable Footing card from his deck and replaced it with a Nimble Body card. With how close quarters the fighting was going to be, it was probably a good idea to focus more on flexibility than solid footwork.
Soon, Olivia’s wishes were granted. They came across a small group of corrupted beasts, and Rowan fell upon them in an attempt to wash away his dishonor.
Nimble Body was exactly the right choice for the confines of a forest. Typically, a spear would have been rather limiting, especially since the deeper they went, the more clustered together the trees got. But with the card, he could perform moves that would have previously left him writhing on the ground with a bad back.
The beasts were soon dispatched and the duo began to sweep through the forest.
The only close call Rowan had was when Olivia ran in front of him to chase down a couple of squirrels and in his haste to back her up, he let two foxes ambush him. In a moment of card-enhanced genius, he pivoted on the spot, stabbed one of the ambushers, and contorted into a low crouch. The second fox sailed over his head in its attack, and he swept the spear upward against the beast.
Rowan knew the baron would have disapproved of how reckless and ‘pointlessly flashy’ the sequence of attacks was. But the moves were good. His spear threw the fox off balance for long enough for him to use Empowered Thrust and dispatch the second attacker with ease.
As Rowan took a deep breath to calm himself, he was beginning to appreciate the power of Keen Spear. But when he saw Olivia trudging back, even Keen Spear wasn’t enough to keep his anger in check.
“Squirrels got away?” Rowan asked.
“The flighty little bastards,” Olivia cursed. “I hate them. I’m going to have a feast one day and the only meat allowed on the table is roasted squirrel.”
“I mean, did you really have to chase those squirrels? That put both of us in danger,” Rowan hissed.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who asked for this assignment,” Olivia retorted.
Rowan took a deep breath, pushing down his emotions. “Are you okay? Hurt anywhere?”
“No.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Rowan asked.
“It’s just, I can’t exactly fight here properly, can I?” Olivia said.
It made sense. The alchemist had always hung back and chucked various explosive potions at their foes. The potions were powerful, but with trees all around, she’d be lucky if they didn’t bounce back.
“You have the sword right there?” Rowan asked.
Olivia scowled at the sword in her hand. She had always kept a short sword at her waist and drew it as soon as they entered the forest. He supposed that should have been his first clue that not everything was going to plan.
“Yes, and I am trained how to use it. Neither my class nor my heart card lock me out of holding a weapon but they do stop me from using combat cards. So the only card I have that’s somewhat fighting oriented also drains my mana like crazy,” Olivia said as she sent a screen of the card in question.
Honed Mana Edge (Rare, Active)
Coat the edge of a blade with a dense layer of mana that makes it possible to cut through most common, uncommon and rare materials.
It was the very first rare ranked card Rowan laid eyes on, and its power was apparent from its description alone.
“The card, it’s impressive,” Rowan said. Empowered Thrust was great but it wasn’t an unstoppable attack.
“There’s only one problem, it’s me.” The admission seemed to cost Olivia her pride as she bunched up her shoulders. “My first class was [Alchemist] and I’m now an [Experimental Alchemist]. The last time I put points into strength, dexterity, or even vitality was when I was level 5. Sure, I can use a sword just fine, but I don’t have the stats to back it up. It’s meant to be a last-resort kind of thing, not my main method of combat.”
“What about the other potions?” Rowan asked. “Maybe you could use that poison cloud?”
“Well, I can’t very well waste all of my expensive potions on some random animals.”
Olivia was getting agitated again, but Rowan’s temper was flaring right along with hers. He hadn’t forced her to come with him. She’d signed up for it, combat and all.
“So what do we do? Stick together, keep scouting, and if we start hitting danger, you use the big potions?”
“Are you saying that I’m useless, is that it?” Olivia demanded.
“No, I’m…” Rowan fell silent. There was something else going on here, and he was just the punching bag for Olivia’s emotions. Once again, Keen Spear came into play, keeping Rowan from escalating the argument.
“I just, I wanted to get away from my family. To fight for myself. To contribute.” Olivia’s voice was almost a whisper, and it hitched for a moment as the fight went out of her. “All father wants is for me to become a glorified healing potion dispenser. But what I want is to become a [Combat Alchemist] when I hit level forty. I want to adventure. It’s just, the fighting parts of my path don’t appear until I get a rare class.”
Rowan was about to apologize when a series of grunts sounded to his right. He turned to see a handful corrupted boars and foxes in the distance, huffing as they began their charge. Before Rowan could do anything, Olivia ran forward. The blade of her sword suddenly erupted in a blue glow, and Rowan could hear it humming with power every time she swung it. It went straight through whatever happened to be in its path, whether it was wood, skin, or bone.
The boars were no match for an enraged Olivia. She took out all of her anger on them, and didn’t even blink when they tried to rush her. In some very overtaxed swings, she sliced through them.
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Rowan’s contribution to the fight was minimal, merely acting as her backup so she wouldn’t get ambushed and taken down by a cheap shot.
That’s weird, there’s not a single squirrel among them. Did Olivia scare them off earlier?
By the time the last corrupted animal fell, Rowan realized he had a bigger problem. Olivia began stumbling and then almost face planted to the ground. He caught her.
“Woah, hey, Olivia. Easy there. Are you hurt?”
“Uuuurgh, mana. Out of. Need potion,” Olivia muttered.
Rowan managed to awkwardly reach around her and grab the pouch. That’s when the real problem presented itself. All of the vials looked different and they all looked dangerous. The last thing he wanted was to feed Olivia an exploding or poison potion.
“Um, what does that look like, exactly?”
“Blue. Glows. Silver specks,” Olivia said softly.
Her pouch was also a maze. There were the outside pockets, each of which had at least two to three vials. Rowan went through all of them and found potions of every color minus blue. Moving onto the center storage, he threw the main flap back and froze.
The pouch was so much bigger on the inside.
It was like he was looking at a suitcase. One of those extra large ones that was borderline legal. Compartment after compartment was filled with what he assumed were materials, several odd-looking tools, and so many potions. Thankfully, the blue ones were in a section all their own, so it didn’t take him long to locate one.
“Good,” Olivia said, the effusive expression of gratitude for Rowan’s hard work. She snatched the vial and threw it back like one would a shot of alcohol.
The effect was immediately apparent. Color crept back into her skin, and her expression, previously scrunched up in pain, eased. She gave a happy little sigh, and finally opened her eyes. It was only then that she seemed to realize that she was still in his arms, and her face erupted in crimson.
“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Olivia sprang away, almost tripping in her haste to make distance.
“Don’t worry about it.” Rowan liked to think his voice was steady as a rock, but he really didn’t trust himself when his face was also heating up.
Olivia looked at Rowan, then at the slain monsters, then back at Rowan. A smile crept onto her face, which then burst into a round of giggles. The laughter was infectious, and Rowan found himself grinning as well.
“I guess that’s the end of Olivia the swordsman,” Olivia said. “I’ll figure out a formula for some kind of cheap, mass-production poison and we never talk about this again?”
“What’s with you and trying to make destructive potions?” Rowan said as he got back up and headed along their scout path. “Aren’t alchemists supposed to be making all kinds of support potions?”
“Sure. I can do those too. But those are far more dangerous than a simple poison potion,” Olivia said. “What do you think those potions draw on? They produce the bursts of strength, endurance, speed or whatever by draining your body. But in the moment, you feel invincible, which makes them addictive. If you drink one too many, you’ll outright die due to exhaustion or malnutrition, depending on the potion. It’s the same reason you can’t just keep chugging healing potions to become an unstoppable juggernaut. Your body would literally eat itself alive.”
“So, no enhancement potions?” Rowan said.
“Some enhancement potions. Occasionally. I never said I don’t have them. I’m just saying we don’t need them for everyday stuff,” Olivia said. “If the beast waves get worse or a dem… never mind. I’ll bring them out when we need them.”
“Sounds good.” Rowan nodded.
The rest of their day shaped up to be more productive. Neither lingered on their spat and instead spent their extra attention picking useful plants, herbs, and fungi.
“How did you even find that?” Rowan asked when Olivia once again beat him to a plant, this one had been tucked underneath a large stone.
“You can do it too. Inspect. It’s useful for more than artifact and enemy appraisal. The key to using cards is understanding where their limitations are. A master can use a common card to beat someone with a rare card.”
“Wait, hold on.” Rowan rubbed his temple. “We came out here to scout and you’re using one of your deck slots for Inspect?”
“It’s useful. I might not have a physical enhancement card in its place or whatever, but I can spot all these plants, and I can tell you that not a single beast we’ve come across so far today was over level four.”
Rowan frowned and brought up his status screen. She was probably right, since the monsters were only giving him around four or five experience each, and that was with the hero blessing experience bonus.
I know that experience is technically getting split between us, but that’s still low. It’s going to take me forever to get to twenty and upgrade my class.
“Why does everything have to give less experience once it’s below your level?” Rowan complained, glaring at the surrounding trees like they were personally to blame.
“I mean, it makes sense. Experience is the system’s reward for overcoming challenging situations. If you could get experience, no matter the difficulty, things would be absolute chaos,” Olivia said.
“Just because people could level up faster?”
“Not only that. If every enemy slain gave you some experience, people who wanted to hit max level would have every incentive to go out there and hunt down everything they can get their hands on. When you do that, you’re no different than the [Corrupted].”
“I guess it makes sense,” Rowan said. On second thought, he could easily see several very negative effects of such a thing. “They’d completely exterminate all of the weaker monsters. The lower classes would be completely incapable of advancing.”
At that, Olivia paused and gave him a look, before her eyes suddenly widened. “Weaker monsters?”
“Yeah? Did I say something wrong?” Rowan asked, pausing in his step.
“Monsters aren’t the only ones who give experience. Part of why we hunt down the [Corrupted] is because they’ll slay entire towns for experience,” Olivia said.
The image brought a chill in Rowan’s mind. He thought back to the painting he had seen in the palace. A whole group of soldiers walked into the darkness.
—
The day only improved from there, and they fell into a nice rhythm. Olivia used her sword, helping to cover Rowan’s blind spots now that she wasn’t trying to hide how uncomfortable fighting without her potions made her.
Rowan was also really benefiting from getting to practice actual combat. All the theory and being shoved around by the baron or his maid was beneficial, sure, but in an environment that could turn hostile at any moment, he could feel himself improving.
Part of that was due to his experience bar ticking up and some extra stats. By the time they took a break for lunch and Olivia broke out a traveling alchemy kit to brew up some potions, Rowan had managed to hit level seven. He immediately threw the two points into strength, bringing him up to sixteen in both strength and dexterity.
Frankly, it was ridiculous how much stronger and faster he already felt. If he was gauging things right, ten had put him firmly above average and roughly at an Olympian level of fitness. With sixteen in a stat? He was superhuman in both strength and dexterity.
Olivia was much happier after the break too. Her brewing had been successful and she was now a proud owner of a whole new array of deadly potions.
So when they ran into a small pack of wolves, nine of them in total, it was an almost-easy fight. Their attacks were sharper, movements more nimble, and their coordination was night and day compared to what they had started with.
It felt like nothing in the forest could threaten them.
Of course, that’s when it all went wrong.
—
“Why do you hate the squirrels so much?” Rowan asked as he twirled his spear.
“It’s not that I hate them,” Olivia said. “I just don’t like it when they look back when they’re running away like they’re taunting me.”
“Personally, I’m a bit more worried about the fact that they can half-fly through the air,” Rowan said as he swerved the spear to avoid hitting one of the trees.
“Wait.” Olivia froze.
Rowan immediately fell into a combat stance, eyes scanning for the threat. He found it sitting in a tree a moment later. “A squirrel? I guess we’re taking our revenge then.”
Olivia held still.
When he didn’t get a response, Rowan pulled back his smile. “Wait, what level is it?”
A motion to Rowan’s left made him jerk in that direction, and the same thing happened to his right. There were at least a dozen squirrels around them.
All of them holding perfectly still.
All of them watching the duo.
That’s when Rowan saw them. His eyes spotted squirrels hiding behind roots, or in the bushes, or in the crowns of the trees. There was a whole army of the tiny critters. They might have looked cute, had they not been corrupted. Instead, they looked like irate squirrels on steroids.
“Friendship is power,” Rowan whispered. If all the squirrels had that card, and beasts tended to get the same sets, and if they all got a single point of stats for every ‘friend’ that shared their card…
Oh boy, are we in trouble.
The infernal squirrels waited just long enough for Rowan to realize what was happening before they struck.
Juiced by their dexterity stats, the squirrels didn’t just leap forward. They flew. Before Rowan knew what was going on, he already had a couple of critters on his armor. And they weren’t shy about using their claws.
The only saving grace was that despite ridiculously boosted stats, the squirrels hadn’t suddenly turned into apex predators. Their claws, even with high strength, were still tiny. And as they scratched away at Rowan, their paws got caught in his armor.
To his credit, Rowan didn’t hesitate either. His whirling, slashing, and stabbing spear still carved through the little furry monsters.
It didn’t matter. Every fallen squirrel was immediately replaced, and if a single strike of their claws couldn’t make it through his defenses, a hundred would. What filled Rowan with dread was that most of the squirrels shook off his attacks. The extra vitality points meant Rowan’s attacks just weren’t strong enough.
Olivia had become a storm of steel. Her card was doing miracles, slicing through the buffed up squirrels like they were made of butter. She was putting a serious dent in the monster numbers.
But it was a losing battle. The squirrels soon realized that they didn’t need to leap at the humans and could instead scale them like trees. Rowan punted as many of the monsters away as he could, but the hissing and spitting critters kept coming dangerously close to his neck.
It was the same story for Olivia. One of them slipped past Olivia’s blade and started to clamber up her robe. She flung it away with her free hand and then immediately followed up with an explosive potion, consequences be damned.
The resulting explosion bought them a few moments as the squirrels staggered, seemingly impacted by the noise much more than they were.
I guess high perception stats aren’t entirely a good thing.
“Run?” Rowan yelled.
“No,” Olivia yelled back.
Rowan tried to think of why. His mind worked faster than it had ever done before.
The main flaw of the squirrels is their diminutive size and weak bodies. That’s why they can’t take advantage of their increased strength. But dexterity, they were already fast. Now, they’re probably supersonic.
And then, in a moment of clarity, Rowan realized that he had been wasting brain cycles on the wrong thing. He could have used the time to think about how to get out of this situation.
I’ll do that next time. If I’m not mobbed to death by squirrels.
Olivia was thinking for the two of them. She barreled into Rowan, knocking him over as her left hand shoved something into his mouth when he tried to protest.
On the ground, Rowan saw the tide of squirrels flow toward them and closed his eyes in resignation. They could have delayed their fate by a couple of minutes if they could fight standing up. On the ground and with Olivia on top of him? There was nothing he could do.
“Hold your breath,” Olivia whispered into Rowan’s ear. Instinctively, he took a deep breath and watched as a purple fog obscured his vision.
Poison. She’s using poison to cover us.
The squirrels didn’t have the benefit of Olivia whispering in their ear. They charged right into the fog and most of them began to stagger as soon as they took their first breaths. A few persisted long enough to reach them and attempt an attack or two.
Rowan rolled himself over, trying to shield Olivia from these determined critters. Their attacks were like tiny needles, enough that he could feel the damage but not enough for him to take them too seriously.
But the squirrels were the least of Rowan’s issues. The two of them had traded a swarm of corrupted squirrels for being stuck in one of Olivia’s poison clouds. Rowan’s earlier exertions caught up to him as his lungs screamed in ever-increasing agony. He needed to breathe and soon.
That’s when he noticed the lump in his mouth, the thing that Olivia had given him earlier. He nudged it with his tongue.
Some kind of candy? It was definitely melting in his mouth, even if extremely slowly.
Rowan managed to endure another few more torturous moments before instinct finally overpowered reason and he gasped for air. Predictably, the miasma surrounding them rushed into his lungs, producing and unpleasant tingling sensation.
We’re going to die because of squirrels. The mighty hero, killed by breathing an ally’s poison after being surrounded by squirrels. That’s going to be a tale told for generations.
“Rowan?”
Something was calling his name. He assumed that it was the grim reaper.
“Rowan?”
The voice sounded like Olivia, which shouldn’t have been possible. Rowan ignored it as he took another breath. It was better to die a quick death than a slow one.
“Rowan!”
Rowan flinched, opening his eyes as he realized that it was actually Olivia calling out his name. He could barely make out her face, since the cloud of poison was frustratingly persistent.
“Thanks for uh, trying to protect me. Good to know that chivalry isn’t dead. But can you let me up?” Olivia said.
“Okay,” Rowan said, still unsure of how he was having this conversation. He collapsed to the side of her. “So, did we die? I’m going to be honest, this isn’t what I expected at all.”
“You know you’re fine right?” Olivia muttered. “I gave you the antidote. It just needed a bit of time to work, which is why I told you to hold your breath.”
“Oh, that’s neat,” Rowan said. His mind began processing what had happened and he sat back up. The poison was heavier than air, pooling across the ground and rapidly losing altitude. Sitting up brought his head above the cloud, giving him a rough view of what had happened.
It was a slaughter. Dead squirrels were littered on the ground around them.
Next to him, Olivia stood back up and stomped at the nearest squirrel. When Rowan looked in her direction, she had a mischievous grin on her face. “You remember how I was talking about a feast of squirrels? The poison I used fades quickly, and the residue left inside the body isn’t harmful. So guess what’s on the menu tonight?”
For a few long, tense seconds, Rowan just stared at her. “Olivia, you really are your father’s daughter.”
“Hey, what does that mean?” Olivia asked. Rowan ignored her and began collecting some of the squirrels. “Hey!”
As they stumbled back into the village later that day, ridiculously weighed down by all the squirrels, Rowan still wasn’t sure whether he’d meant that as a compliment or not.