Oromar’s Bastion lived up to its name by being encircled with ramparts that were made of mountain stone, tall enough to be visible even beyond the many buildings that could be seen in the town square. I could only imagine how steep the drop beyond those walls was, but the town was obviously built on a steep plateau.
Kontor led us forward, into what I guessed was the town square, a collection of several multi-story stone buildings arranged around a plaza and a central fountain. People wandered along the street in groups, milling between shops and stalls while the voices of hawkers carried as far as our corner of the square.
Haroshi’s group had apparently not been the only ones to arrive in town before us, because some of the people ahead of us were obviously not natives to the town. I felt like it was easy to pick out who was an NPC and who was a player—the NPCs looked much like normal, natural people—sure, many of them were dwarves and gnomes, but their faces had been made by age, experience, genetics.
The players had clearly been designed. All of them were perfectly symmetrical, and almost all of them were young-looking, two things I shared in. But some of them looked as if they’d dragged the some of the sliders in character creation as far as they could be dragged, perhaps seeking some kind of look that made sense only to alien standards. To me, they looked like the kind of joke characters you’d roll in Oblivion or Dark Souls.
I saw a dwarf just ahead of us who was so muscular his shoulder span was longer than his body was tall—he was such a freakish-looking heap of meat that I doubted he could fully lift his arms, and if he took off his shirt I half-expected he’d have sixteen abs running down to his navel like the segments of a millipede. I saw a gnome whose chin was so pointed, so elongated that it could have functioned as a weapon. I saw an elf looking at some weapons who was so tall and thin that it looked like she’d just come from a life in low gravity. Some of them were just blandly pretty, like Cuby and I—but Cuby said she had worked for the Taxin El directly, and I was beginning to suspect that Taxin El looked—and behaved—suspiciously similar to humans.
Cuby nudged me in the side as we both looked over the town, and the crowds. “Let’s go turn in Kontor! Where to, friend?”
“This way,” Kontor said, moving out ahead of us.
As he led us down the street, a new thought occurred to me.
I wanted to use my legendary card and take a second class—not because I was a fan of the bizarre speciesism that dominated this place, or because I had any desire to win the ladder season, but simply because I didn’t want to die. Unfortunately, the power that would help me protect myself would also draw the biggest target on my back imaginable—you could kill me to get it.
“Say, Cuby,” I asked, berating myself for not having this idea before. “If there are illusions that make objects, are there illusions that hide or change the level on our nameplates?”
“Hm?” she asked. “You mean, if someone tags you, they see you as level 8 instead of a level 4?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Could be a good deterrent in the future.”
She shrugged. “Could be. There are a lot of abilities in the system, and new abilities and classes get added to each ladder season.”
“The spell you want is called False Identity,” said Kontor. “You can probably pick up a card for it at Miradel’s shop—she’s our scribe. Spellcraft requirement may be a little high for you right now, though.”
I tried to hide how much my heart soared from the news. The name False Identity raised my hopes that it would let me hide the chosen designation. If that spell could help me hide the fact that I was dual-classed but keep all the power….
“That’s a good idea,” said Cuby. “I bet if you could illusion your gear, too, you could really scare people off… or bait them into attacking you by making them think you’re weak.”
My stomach lurched a little as I thought of the rogue I’d killed in the cave, their skull striking stone with a sound that I wouldn’t forget.
“Now that I think of it, I probably should have asked you before Cuby, Kontor—your people probably know the system very well.”
“Only at these low levels, where it’s important for us to survive,” he said. “I can tell you all the spells you’re like to find in town—but not much of what to expect if you ever reach level ten. Anyway, here we are,” he said, nodding to the building ahead of us. “Let me check in with my wife and my guess is that’ll be your turn-in.”
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He’d led us to a gray stone building that had been set behind the town square. The signage above the door showed a gear.
Inside a few people perused a selection of contraptions and parts that were displayed beneath thick glass, where they could still be tagged but not taken. Behind the counter the room opened up into a large, neatly kept workshop whose walls were lined with machinery I didn’t recognize.
“Laida!” Kontor called as he entered.
There were two people behind the counter—a wizened gnome man currently operating some kind of press, and a younger dwarf woman who was speaking to two customers. When the latter saw us, she broke away from them without a word, letting out a cry of relief as she ran to Kontor and took him a tight embrace.
Quest Completed - Rescue the Sacrifice
You Receive 200 Experience Points
As a Quest Reward, you receive 15 Virtue Points
Reward: Belt of Magic Resistance, Belt of Physical Resistance, or Belt of Psychic Resistance
Congratulations, you’ve leveled up!
You are now a level 5 Mage.
You have gained a new Passive slot. Open your Ability Selection pane to choose a new Passive.
Your Hit Points have increased by 30 and your Mana has increased by 70.
Human Adaptability increases each of your Strength, Agility, Focus, and Spirit by 1. You have 1 stat point to distribute.
“Nice!” Cuby said, her face breaking into a grin. “A level! Killing people and doing quests really gave us a boost!”
Laida pulled away from her husband and blinked. “Killing people?”
“We were attacked in the mines,” Kontor said. “Other players.” He left out the part where Cuby had wanted to attack them first, but I guessed he’d tell her later. “I’ll tell you everything while these two take their level.”
“Level and then some!” Cuby said cheerfully. “We’ve got a quest reward and skills to choose!”
“We’ll leave you to it,” Laida said wryly, pulling Kontor back behind the counter.
“What’d you get?” Cuby asked, excited as a kid on Christmas.
I shared my Ability Selection results with her:
Ability Selection
Choose a new passive to learn. You may replace this spell with any other passive you are eligible to learn by consuming its Spell Card or using a Spell Book.
Passive - Soul Font
Add 25% regeneration rate to your base mana regeneration.
Passive - Farcaster
Add 25% to the range of your spells
“I haven’t run out mana once yet,” I said. “We keep leveling up and it goes to full. But the time to level up should be getting longer and longer,” I said. “And in large groups, buffing anyone with elemental weapons and Mana Shields will get costly, fast, especially if I double their effect with my Supercharged Spell Augment.” I frowned. “Still, once there are more spells that cause slows, stuns, and area-of-effects, the range increase won’t be bad…. I think I’m still going with the regeneration. Thoughts?”
She shrugged, another oddly human gesture for her. She seemed to be picking them up naturally. “I got this.”
And she showed me:
Passive - Fast Hands
You triple the rate at which you can stow and materialize items from your inventory into your hands.
“That seems nice,” I said, thinking that there were probably plenty of items in town that she could pick up to use it with.
“Mhmm!” she said, nodding. “But I don’t know which of these belts to take.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at the quest reward. Each of the belts was exactly the same, but gave + 2 to a different resistance.
“So far most everything’s been physical,” said Cuby. “But psychic stuff sort of scares me?”
“The magic stuff doesn’t?” I asked in a tone of mock offense.
“No,” she said bluntly.
“Well we don’t have to figure this all out now, right?” I asked. We only had to choose in order to free up the quest slot–until then the reward would wait in my quest log. “Before I spend my gold and choose my skills, I want to check every store in town and see what the options really are.”
“Same,” said Cuby. She looked over at the counter display. “Though something tells me I’m going to end up back here anyway.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. “I’m going to go find the scribe—if I’m not there when you’re finished here, or you’re not here when I’m finished there, let’s just meet back up at the fountain in the center of town.”
Cuby’s smile was small and knowing—unlike many of the vacant grins she’d been giving me since we met. Was she amused by the fact that I didn’t want to part ways? She might be something of a… well, a sociopath, but she obviously saw a benefit to teaming up—and so I could trust her as long as I was useful to her.
Not the best relationship, admittedly. But if the False Identity spell that Kontor had described to me would work to hide a dual class, it wouldn’t matter if she decided to surprise me with betrayal. She’d be the one who got surprised.
I stepped outside and began to look for the scribe’s shop.
Time to see about becoming… very, very overpowered.