I returned to the platform, but one of the dwarves moved to intercept me before I reached it. It was Oderion. Tears glistened in his eyes.
“I know you saved my life,” he said, voice heavy with emotion.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel. How I did feel was just sort of… awkward. I wanted to skip this entire social interaction, not relish the glory of helping this man.
But what was I supposed to say? No problem, don’t mention it? I wanted to complete the quest?
“I’m glad I could help….” I said in an uncertain voice.
The dwarf brought me into a tight embrace, made uncomfortable by his scale mail armor. I sort of… reached around and patted his back, a little.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will go home tonight. Thank you.”
“We defended the town,” I said. “That meant keeping each other alive. You did your fair share, too.”
“You there—Alatar.” It was the healer who’d spoken, and both of us turned toward her. “How did you cast that spell, the one that destroyed the spirefiend? What was it?”
Uh-oh. A jolt of sudden worry wracked my gut. “Look—I hate to leave you all so soon after victory,” I began. “Really, I wish we had time to celebrate. But I have friends in this town, and little doubt that they also rushed to the defense of a beacon. Right now I really just want to find them and see that they’re safe.”
It was a lie, of course—Cuby could wait awhile, and I wasn’t at all certain that she’d rushed to the town’s defense. But I didn’t want to stay and answer questions.
“I understand,” said the healer. “Go—but don’t forget your loot, yes? Somehow I doubt that burning spirefiend was assigned to anyone else.”
“Right,” I said, looking over at the massive carcass. “Yeah.”
As I walked away, I heard the healer continue speaking: “you should have seen it, Miradel. Three shots right into the thing’s eye, more than four hundred damage each time….”
“Yeah,” I said as I came to the spirefiend, its head almost completely crushed by the implosion, but also partly transmuted into the glassy substance that I recognized as a marker of magic-type damage that had broken through a creature’s HP.
“Who would have thought that it’s greatest weak point was the gigantic, glowing eye in the center of its face?” I asked quietly. Without video games to train me to target this otherwise innocuous position, I wondered if I’d have been able to guess.
The thing was way too large to stash into my whole inventory, so I circled it looking for items. The first was easy to find, because I knew where to look:
Rare Item – Demonstone
My first rare item. Not bad. Then, as I scanned it with my eyes, looking for parts to tag, I found some of the talons, which I picked off its body:
Common Item – Wyvern Claw (3)
I circled its body, then heard a voice behind me: “You can just open its inventory, you know.”
I turned back to see Oderion. “What?” I asked. “How?”
He shrugged. “Just… do it.”
I frowned back at the spirefiend. I focused on what I wanted to happen—a loot window opening. And it did.
Burning Spirefiend
Common Item – Wyvern Claw (3)
[4] Uncommon Item – Fledgeling Wyvern Heart
Great Machine Scrap (5)
Derunium-Infused Scale (31)
I looted all of it, then turned back to Oderion. “Thanks.”
He nodded. “You owe me, now.”
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I stared at him for a second—his face was so serious. Then we both just burst out laughing, and I felt some of the stress of combat leave me, my going easier.
“I’ve got to go find my friend,” I said at last.
“Go.”
I mounted the steps and began to jog back to town, wondering about how the defense had gone elsewhere. The only creatures that had attacked the beacon near the observatory had been those who could reach it—climbers and one flyer. That, along with the fact that we’d finished before the quest triggered as a success, made me wonder if the closer beacons had been hit harder.
I finished the quest completion as I ran, faced with a choice of item as the reward:
Rare Equipment – Spellward Amulet
An engraved, silver amulet on a derunite chain. Enchanted to increase your defenses against spells.
+ 2 All Resistances against spells
Rare Equipment – Bladeward Amulet
An engraved, silver amulet on a derunite chain. Enchanted to increase your defenses against techniques.
+ 2 All Resistances against techniques
I took the Bladeward Amulet, unsure of which choice would be the best but also understanding that my simple robes made me squishy.
I also received 20 Virtue Points, though these weren’t enough to level up my Virtue Rank, leaving me just shy of rank two. It still labeled me as being of the “Pure Virtue” variety, which, well… as long as nobody told the system that I used to work in advertising.
The next thing that I wanted to do was my skills. I had a huge number of skill points—14 general, 6 Mage, and 15 Psychic—but I hadn’t done much other than briefly glance at the professions.
It was just, there were so many skills. The professions alone went on for a page, containing things that seemed useless to the role of adventuring or questing, like carpentry. I knew that the lore skill seemed a good idea—knowing a monster’s weaknesses felt like it would be very useful, if I actually used it like I’d failed to do when I replaced the Unnatural Confusionspell.
“Damnit,” I said, scrolling through the massive list and realizing that there was no way I’d be making an informed decision before I found Cuby. I was already coming up on the town square. A crowd was gathered there, denser than the one that I’d left. I scanned it, easily picking out the gigantic lizard-man, Karrol Stir, but not seeing—
“Alatar!”
I turned and saw Cuby running toward me from the edge of the square; I’d passed her coming in. She sounded relieved, and I was shocked when she drew me into an embrace. As with Oderion, I sort of… patted her back, a bit.
“I was worried that because of your moral scruples, you’d have gotten involved and died,” she explained bluntly. Then she released me, stepped back, and looked down at her arms in confusion. “I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know what that was.”
I smiled. “It was a hug, Cuby.” When she fixed me with a curious expression, I said: “One of the dwarves gave me one for saving his life.” I jerked my head toward the gathered crowd. “Why are all these people here?”
She shrugged. “Talking about the attack, mostly. They want to stay in touch. A lot of them are talking about going after Haroshi’s group, since he’s already left to find and confront the dungeon. Of course, if they do he’ll probably kill them.”
“Unless you were wrong about him,” I said, sounding unconvinced myself.
“Which I hope I am,” she said. “But I’m probably right. Did you get an amulet?”
“Yes,” I said. “I took the physical one. Did you?”
She nodded decisively. “A lot of us helped with the east gate. It was pretty easy not to put myself in too much danger—plus I got to try out all my new stuff! I took the magic amulet. And when I leveled up I got the Charm of Gliding ability.”
I nodded. She was level 7, and I could only imagine how she’d fight now that she had all her professions and so much more mobility.
“The group that I helped defend the beacon was all NPCs, as far as I could tell,” I said. “But we didn’t take any losses—much in thanks to your grappling gun, actually.”
“You mean your grappling gun,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “But what about the others? Did the town suffer any losses? If you’re right, and Haroshi attacks….”
“I don’t think this weakened the Bastion defenders,” said Cuby. “Two of them died at the south gate—I saw them bring their bodies into the church. Oh, and by the way—” she materialized a small bottle from her inventory, a little glass bulb with a stem, its inner fluid an unmixing whorl of color.
Uncommon Item — Potion of Primeval Resistance
Drinking this potion grants you 10 Fire, Frost, Nature, and Lightning Resistance. This effect lasts 2 hours.
“Great,” I said, tucking it into my inventory.
“I bought more because we might need to give them out to our allies if we do run into trouble. That Karox we sold to earlier, I think he bought out many of the ingredients. Bought some from the place Kontor works at, anyway. He sold me these. I wonder if he suspects what we do—he may have helped Haroshi assemble his weapons, I think.”
“That’s… interesting.”
“Speaking of,” said Cuby. “I’ve got all my profession stuff done, and I’m guessing so do you, so unless you want to do some more shopping… where did you grind, earlier? It was inside the mountain, right?”
She was smiling at me with a hopeful expression, as if she expected me to tell her it was bedtime and send her off alone. “Some mines separate from the ones that open up below the mountain,” I said. “I can show you, if the dwarves let us through. There’s something I want to do first, though.”
“Oh?”
“I desperately need to spend some skill points.”