The magic knife worked. In fact, it worked so well it felt a little overpowered—I didn’t need to cast any Magic Arrows, Cuby was so deadly with it. She’d throw the knife to start a combat, call it back to her hand with her 2nd level ability, then just shred any jawspray or beamling in a couple hits, barely giving them time to damage my mana shield at all. I knew the game probably wasn’t supposed to be hard at level 2, especially not for a group, but our pace had almost doubled.
And if she had been put in danger, I could’ve just refreshed the Mana Shield.
We cut our way through a narrow mountain pass with confidence, noting as we did that the monsters had gotten a little stronger—still jawsprays and beamlings, but now occasionally leveled to 3 or 2, respectively. A few encounters with two monsters saw me cast a couple of Magic Arrows, but were still pretty unthreatening. They were basic monsters, after all.
Then as we came out of the pass and to the lip of a small gorge, Cuby put her hand out to stop me.
I stopped. Listened. Sure enough, there were voices coming from below. They weren’t loud enough to be heard, more like the blare of a radio in another room, but there were definitely people.
“I took the sneak skill,” she whispered. “I can sneak ahead and check it out.”
“We’re level two,” I said. “Is that high enough that we’re valuable to player-killers?”
“Sort of,” she said. “You get a lot of experience for killing someone your level. I don’t know how much, but a couple people is supposed to be enough to level up when you’re low. We don’t have any items to take, though—but a group of 3 or more might just choose to kill us.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”
“Hide in those bushes,” she said before stepping lightly away, low to the ground.
It wasn’t very dignified, but I did as she asked. But hey: low levels. I’m sure when Gandalf and Dumbledore were level 2, they hid in like, loads of bushes.
It wasn’t long before Cuby returned. “They’re NPCs!” she whispered. “Two of them are baddies and one is a captive!”
“Can we take them?”
“Worth it to try,” she said. “The captive can probably lead us to a safe zone!”
Worth it to try wasn’t exactly the glowing endorsement I’d imagined, but Cuby had been pretty adamant that taking risks to level quickly would save us the risk of being seen by any player-killers as the slowest gazelles in the herd.
“Let’s go,” I told her.
She led me along the ridge until the slope downward leveled out enough to be traversed, then we crept up to the lip of the little ravine.
“There!” she whispered, pointing.
Sure enough, two goat-formed jawsprays were pulling a small cart with a person tied to it. Ahead of them walked a person in black robes—and while it was difficult to see at our distance, their head looked somewhat misshapen. I doubted it was a hairdo.
“Tagging things doesn’t make them aware of you, right?” I whispered.
“No,” she said.
I tagged them.
Machine Cultist - Level 3
Jawspray - Level 3
Jawspray - Level 3
“Looks like they’re already past the point where we can shoot them from up here,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
“Charge them,” she answered, with no hesitation.
“Uh… you sure?”
“It’s a rescue quest,” she said. “And we’ve got potions if something goes wrong. Let’s go for that one on the right first.”
I thought about this for a second, then nodded. They outleveled and outnumbered us, but we did have potions.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Ready?” Cuby asked.
I nodded.
We half-stepped, half-ran down the steep slope, then moved for the demons and cultist. They spotted us before I got in range of Magic Arrow—I started casting the spell just after Cuby threw her knife at one of them.
The cultist turned, and sure enough I saw that his face was a grotesque affair—three metal plates sticking out of his face in odd places, splitting it open and stretching the skin. He began casting a spell, out of range.
Cuby met the first jawspray and started stabbing it, but both of them closed with her and began to bite at her legs and waist. Not good; we hadn’t seen it yet but only a few attacks would bring down the Mana Shield and let them grab her for their acid attack.
I loosed my Magic Arrow at the jawspray we were focusing just as the cultist finished his spell. A sudden splash of darkness filled the air beside him, and out of it came a new creature, a small thing like a winged gremlin:
Imp - Level 3
Not good. My Magic Arrow and Cuby had almost killed the first creature, but her mana barrier was low.
Cuby had all her hit points left, but I was worried about the grab, so I started casting a new Mana Shield. It wasn’t fast enough: just as Cuby cut the throat of the first demon-goat, the second managed to break the Mana Shield and clamp its oversized metal jaw over her leg.
And the cultist and imp were both casting spells. Not good.
My Mana Shield spell finished, renewing the buff on Cuby just as enemy spells flew: as I’d hoped, the jaws of the demon were pushed away again by the new jacket, losing their purchase and letting Cuby roll out of the way of a small bolt of fire that had been launched by the imp.
But the cultist’s spell had been targeting me—a bolt of blue-black darkness swooshed through the air and struck me in the chest, dealing only 3 damage but placing an unfriendly-looking icon in one corner of my screen.
As with other system text, I found I could read it effortlessly, without focusing on it:
Curse of Isolation
You cannot target or be targeted by your allies.
Well that was it for refreshing the Mana Shield. Costly as it was, Cuby was most of our damage, and keeping her safe was more important than dealing a little more damage. till, I cast another With no choice, I cast another Magic Arrow at the last jawspray.
Cuby’s attacker had broken the mana shield, and Cuby took the next firebolt head-on for a startling 18 damage, but in another moment the second jawspray was dead.
“Get the cultist!” Cuby shouted.
As she spoke, a second spell whizzed through the air. I was expecting this one, but had no luck dodging it—the spells were just so fast, fast like arrows, far speedier than the projectiles I was used to from games on Earth.
This one also dealt only a little damage—6, not enough to break my jacket—but came with another curse:
Curse of Incompetence
Your Prowess and Spellcraft are reduced by 3.
Well, there goes… actually, the only thing that really shut down was my elemental weapon spell.
Cuby reached the cultist and started stabbing him, and—wait, I thought, was she smiling right now?
A film of black smoke enveloped the cultist very suddenly, but whatever it did didn’t stop Cuby—I couldn’t see either of them well, but I could see the cultists hit points dropping, slice by slice. My next Magic Arrow swooped into the fray…
… and missed.
“Damnit,” I said. Whatever that smoke-screen was, the cultist had given me my first-ever miss.
But it wasn’t about to turn the tide of battle. Cuby had more than a 100 hit points remaining, and the cultist had, by my guess, 40 or 50—and these were hit points that were being eaten away like they were naught but cheese held to the grater. By the time my next Magic Arrow finished, they had so little hit points that it finished them off when it struck.
Then we rounded on the imp. It didn’t take long—but something curious happened toward the end. Cuby got the imp down to about a third, then materialized a potion from her inventory and starting drinking it.
As my Magic Arrow killed the imp, she finished her potion—it had brought her up to full again. In fact, it had been about 20 hit points too many.
I looked at her, curious, and she returned my expression with a wink. A wink? How did she know what that meant? And why drink a potion at the end of combat—even if she’d been low, battle was over.
Then I realized why she’d done it. She had been making sure I didn’t have the opportunity to leave the group and attack her as soon as combat ended. It was decent strategy, I realized, even if it was utterly heartless: let her tank the damage, then finish her off at the end. Leaving the imp for me while she drank the potion had spared her the possibility.
Cuby wasn’t going to trust me where she didn’t have to. I had to admit, I kind of admired it. She’d just met me less than two hours ago, after all. And after watching her grinning through the whole of that combat, I wasn’t so sure I trusted her, either.
“See?” she told me. “Only took one potion, and we’re almost level 3. Say, you should’ve been here to see the cultist up close when your Magic Arrow took him down—he fell in a funny way, sort of twirled on the way down while his shoulder exploded.”
“Yeah,” I said, heart beating fast even though she’d done all the physical work. I looked around at the mess, then at the person in the cart, who stared back at me with an uncertain expression—even they didn’t know if I was going to murder them, it seemed.
Oh well. Time for loot and introductions.