Ch.25

My killing the evil baddy had resulted in a thunderous round of cheers and applause from the men on the walls! It was pretty damned gratifying.

No matter how much I enjoyed it, though, my job wasn’t done.

So, I kept at it, smashing my way through the remaining cultists, Quasits, and the horde of undead, the gates of the city opened and a line of soldiers sallied forth, grim determination on their faces.

I moved around to the opposite side and the squad of soldiers basically started grinding the undead down between us.

With the squad of soldiers, it was almost TOO easy by this point. Compared to the damned Large undead in that desecrated temple, these things were a complete joke. I started moving around to take out the ghouls, specifically, because they were the only things that was left that could really be a threat. I'd killed all of the cultists and Quasits by this point.

The remaining zombies and skeletons were nothing more than a chore after that.

I was happy to notice that the five town soldiers that had been crucified were still alive and were being carefully taken down by their comrades. I was relieved to see them being fed what I assumed was a healing potion, since I saw their wounds closing while I watched. They were being carried away on stretchers even as I helped the shield wall of soldiers whittle down the few, by that point at least, remaining undead.

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The reward for completing the Quest of saving the city from the cult and its undead and demonic followers was a huge number of Records above and beyond what I got for the individual kills...

It also granted me another Hero Point, and raised my maximum Hero Points by one, to five. It also gave me an Achievement granting a permanent +2 to all social skill checks in the town or on anyone with ties to the town, which was called Thistleglade.

The Achievement? Hero of Thistleglade, naturally!

The Quest completion reward also gave me an almost addictive combination of a head rush and a full body high that left me feeling the very best kind of high-on-life!

It was like the feeling of hitting a buzzer beater in a basketball game to eke out a last second win, combined with beating your friends in a super intense couch co-op session of Super Smash Bros., added together and multiplied by ten!

I felt on top of the world! What! A! RUSH!

Holy shit! If that’s the reward for doing good deeds, I need to go out and do that more often! A moment later, a cynical voice inside my head told me that was probably the whole point.

I hardly cared. Helping people was something I wanted to do, anyway! If I got experience, ahem, sorry, Records, and an amazing high out of it, too, well that was just another reason to do the things I was gonna do already!

I found out after asking around a bit that the reason the soldiers hadn’t come out to attack was twofold... first, only a few people in the town had access to magic or supernatural abilities, and three of those people were among the five that had been caught and crucified.

In other words, they’d already sent out their Billy Bad Asses and they got their butts whupped. That makes sense, I guess.

Second, the Hellfire rays that the leader had tossed at me a few times had an affect that let it bounce between up to a half a dozen enemies as long as each target was hit along the way... and it was a touch attack, so it pretty much never missed.

Non-magical armor or shields didn’t help against that kind of attack at all, either.

The town’s militia relied on a shield wall and either spears or short swords to fight groups of enemies, basically a phalanx, and one use of that ability could completely collapse an entire section of it, guaranteeing that everyone they sent out would be reduced to zombie chow.

They knew, because that’s where the cultist had gotten a big chunk of the zombies that I’d had to fight! They’d sent out a twenty-man squad, and two uses of that one ability had been responsible for massacring them. It was a brutal combo obviously designed to break their fighting strength, and it had worked exactly as advertised.

You know, until some jerk comes along with an ability that just stops it cold, like Arcane Shield does. Apparently, those Hellfire bolts are pretty infamous, as they didn’t do a huge amount of damage in and of themselves, they just hit multiple targets and set them on fire, and you needed a powerful dispel or a remove curse to get rid of the Hellfire once you started burning from it! Otherwise they burned long enough to easily kill most targets...

But it was still a ray that needed to hit, and my counter Maneuver had stopped it cold!

No wonder Mr. Big Evil Cult Leader was so pissed off! He’d had the perfect plan alongside the wombo-combo of doom to begin his dream Cultist kingdom! Entirely filled with demonic strippers, sexy vampire hookers, blackjack, and blow!

Then I came along. Hah! Screw that guy, anyway. I mean, sure, it's hard not to feel for the guy, what male doesn’t want their own kingdom like that!? I snorted. But killing a bunch of innocent people to get it isn’t cool!

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So, what if I talk to myself sometimes? It’s the only way to get an intelligent conversation most of the time!

One of the guardsmen I’d been talking to earlier came back to me, and said, “Battlesage Ramirez, uh, I’m Private Roberts, remember? The mayor would like to speak with you, if that’s ok, sir?”

The first time one of the soldiers had called me that, I’d asked what the Battlesage title was about. After convincing the poor guy I wasn’t insulted, he’d told me that what they call martial artists that wield magical powers like I do. It sounded like a cool title to me, so I went with it.

I grinned at him. I’d been expecting this. Of course, the head honcho wants to talk to me. The only question is if it's to reward me, try to get me to leave, try to get me to stay, or just get rid of me.

Or some combination of those things, maybe? “Sure, Bob, lead the way!” I told the private cheerily.

He winced when I called him Bob. Huh? Are nicknames not a thing here? I shrugged off the thought and followed.

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The mayor was setting off all kinds of alarm bells in my head the moment I saw him... and as I got closer, I realized why. He looks just like the cult leader could literally be his brother! Like, he’s the twenty-five percent cleaner and fifty percent less crazy version of that guy! Shit! If they’re related, even if Mr. Cult Leader was an evil psychopath, this guy’s not gonna be happy with me.

Private Roberts walked up to the mayor and whispered into his ear, a whisper that I could easily hear, and told him, “This is the hero you wanted me to bring, mayor. Ray Ramirez, a wandering Battlesage.”

The mayor grinned and threw open his arms in my direction. “Our hero has finally decided to join us!” Was that a hint of sarcasm I detected? That wouldn’t be surprising if the Cult leader really was a close relative. “First, welcome to Thistleglade and thank you for your aid, warrior!” he told me. “You appeared just in time to save our strongest protectors!”

Every word out of his mouth was giving me a weirder and weirder vibe from this guy.

I stood there, silent, just staring at him. I was positive that he’d just tried either a Bluff or a Diplomacy check, and my Sense Motive had beaten his roll, basically. It felt almost like he really wasn’t happy, at all, that the guards or the town had been rescued?

I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on here, but now I really wanted to find out!

Before I let the pause drag on for too long, I put on my best smile, and decided to play humble. “I was simply glad I could be of help, particularly to the poor men who had been crucified!” The mayor twitched when I said that, though I doubt anyone else would have noticed. Yup, there was something weird going on with this guy. “I’m sorry, I come from a far-away land, and understand little of your people’s ways. Please forgive me if I am hesitant when I respond. My understanding of your local customs and language is barely more than rudimentary.”

A little humblebrag never hurts. People always expect martial artists to act humble, right?

The mayor waved his hand, dismissing the notion. “Ridiculous, Battlesage Ramirez. You are our town’s savior! Please, be my guest for as long as you desire! I’ll put you up in the lap of luxury, then we’ll have a great feast to celebrate this incredible victory over the Cult of Ka’ar-Ghuz’ar!”

In my mind, on the spot, I swore to myself to not go anywhere near the mayor’s home unless I had no other viable choices. “I’m sorry, mayor, I have a vow which prevents me from taking you up on your offer. A simple room in a humble inn will be more than enough.”

I didn’t need to tell him that I’d only made that vow a few seconds ago, after all, and it was still the truth. For some reason, being truthful felt important when I was dealing with this shady guy.

The mayor tried to blow my objection off. “Please, Battlesage, take some time to relax! Surely a few nights won’t do any harm?”

I sighed. Yeah, he’s trying too damned hard. Hell, no! “I’m sorry, mayor, but I will not break my vow. Please do not ask again.” I told him, point blank.

That really took the wind out of his sails. “Forgive me if I’ve offended you, Battlesage Ramirez. I merely wished to try and express our gratitude to you!”

Now I waved him off. “It is less than nothing. I am not offended by your invitation in any way.” Yeah, it was the way you were acting that was insulting, not the invitation!

By the way, no I don’t normally speak that way. I wasn’t completely sure why I was acting like that, to be honest, other than the mayor was really creeping me out for some reason.

“Keeping my word of honor and vows are very important to me.” That’s true, but mostly it was that I didn’t trust this fucker enough to sleep under the same roof with him. “I have a place to stay outside of town. The feast will be tomorrow?” I asked.

The mayor nodded. “I’ll return then. May I meet the men who were rescued from crucifixion?”

The mayor nodded, and I was led to them. The place where they were being treated looked like a barracks recovery ward. Grey stone walls, floor, and ceiling, with a row of small cots on either side of the room. Small windows near the ceiling to let some light and fresh air in, all kept scrupulously clean.

The five men weren’t looking much better than they had when they’d first been pulled off the crucifixes and been fed what I assumed to be a healing potion.

A man who felt kind of like an army medic type to me was rushing around looking confused and upset. The mayor had accompanied me. In the back of my head, I felt a few Lore checks, a Heal check, and an Alchemy check go off one after the other.

I looked at the mayor. “Those were Cultists of Ka’ar-Ghuz’ar, you said?” I asked, pointing outside.

The mayor nodded. “Yes?” he asked, and I was pretty sure he was only pretending to be confused.

“Ka’ar-Ghuz’ar. The Demon Prince of Pestilence?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

The mayor nodded, and looked even LESS happy than he had since I first saw him.

“Does your town not have any priests, clerics, or shamans? Bed rest and a healing potion won’t heal these men! They’re running a fever, right? The whites of their eyes are bloodshot? Hair starting to fall out?”

The medic looked at me and nodded. The poor guy looked really horrified. “Yes, all but the captain!”

I sighed. “He’s got a lot more Qi than the others; he's just fighting it off better than they are. There’s simply no way the Cultists of a god of pestilence didn’t afflict them with some kind of horrible disease! They’re probably poisoned, too.”

Everyone looked at me aghast... particularly the mayor! But that’s not actually news to him, it seems? No, he’s surprised that I knew that, isn’t he?

Whatever. I looked at the medic. “I take it your reactions mean that you do not, indeed, have a divine healer to call upon?” The man shook his head. That felt like a curious coincidence. “I am a more than competent alchemist and healer. Bring me an alchemist’s kit, some CLEAN water, meaning from a river or stream with healthy fish and plants around it, some devil’s bane herb, some...” I listed off a half dozen ingredients I’d need to make enough doses of alchemical antiplague and antitoxin to give them a shot at living.

It was all common stuff, a lot of the common ingredients for basic stuff like this was. The hard part was being good enough at Alchemy to put it together without making something that would kill the person you administered it to instead of helping them!

I went around and spent two Qi on each of them to use Qi Regeneration on them. For one extra Qi, I could use it to heal others. Healing them for 6 HP certainly wouldn’t cure them of the poisons and diseases that likely infested them, but it just might help and it certainly shouldn’t hurt!

The results were better than I’d hoped. They all instantly looked a lot better, and seemed to fall into deeper, more restful sleeps.

Nearly all healing in The Game came from channeling positive energy, whereas the undead relied on negative energy. Therefore, anything that used the powers of necromancy and undeath was hurt by positive energy.

It was the biggest reason why clerics and paladins were the bane of the undead; their ability to channel positive energy could heal the divine spell caster’s allies even while it damaged the undead!

Not only that, if Qi was helping the captain fight off whatever was infecting them, then me injecting mine into them in a way it would accept should only help!

Unfortunately, my Qi Pool’s regen was too slow for me to keep doing it. I got back twelve Qi per hour – a simply huge amount, of course, compared to someone without my Talents and Feats, but I’d just spent ten Qi. Sure, I COULD do it again, but then I’d be completely out of Qi... and there was no CHANCE I was going to make myself that vulnerable with this shady mayor around!

I definitely wanna help these guys... but I don’t know that doing this again will fix them, while I do know it will leave me weakened and more vulnerable!

Screw that! There’s a difference between being a hero and being a danged martyr!

Still, it only took a minute or so to go around and do it, and if it helped I’d be happy to keep doing it... after I’d had time to fully regenerate back to maximum Qi!