“It’s working!” Cuby said.
I had one end of my Hardlight Tether over my shoulder, and was pulling what was essentially a sled made of hardlight through the streets of Mirrakatetz. The Hardlight Construct spell had to be fixed to a solid object, but the solid object could be a set of chests—and could still be moved around, along with the whole construct.
And so after I’d locked the dungeon at the system pane, I’d formed the spell into a tray with two skis on the bottom and a bar on the front to tie the tether to. We’d spent a while using Mighty Leap and the tether to pull the chests out of the collapsed pit that led to the machine, then conjured the sled again once we were out.
Now we were dragging it through the streets of Mirrakatetz, looting the bodies we’d left and killing any demons we found still remaining. I was pulling the thing so that Cuby could run around looting and killing—I could always support her with investiture if she needed it.
I would cast Emotive Attenuation, which had a range over 360 meters when doublecharged, as we walked—and it would easily pinpoint where the hate-filled demons were nearest. We’d find entire, unexplored rooms full of them, along with the buildings that hadn’t been searched, and Cuby would handle them while I read the class cards we’d looted. Erialda had dropped paladin, we already had berserker, and Haroshi and Nerien had been carrying two stacks between them: elementalist and high priest. One of the high priest cards was missing—it had probably been used by Haroshi.
Paladin was a divine hybrid class that granted grace for having iconic abilities that didn’t normally grant grace—one grace per two such abilities. It also granted an aura that gave resistances and secondary stats depending on how much grace you had from either source and an iconic hybrid ability called Lay on Hands that instantaneously healed someone or caused massive damage to an undead.
In other words: useless for both of us.
Berserker was a pure physical class that let you use physical resistance in place of any other resistance for the purpose of resisting crowd control effects, as long as your physical resistance was higher. It also granted you bonuses to all resistance for every point of Strength you had that you weren’t using to meet requirements on armor—but if you gained Defense Rating from Strength for any reason, this ability wouldn’t function.
Which was sad, because it made an otherwise powerful option useless for Cuby. The intro iconic ability was a rage—lower Precision for higher damage—that wasn’t particularly impressive.
High priest had the longest class description I’d seen yet, all to describe a pretty simple concept: high priests regained their grace charges over time, with the time it took to regain one charge dropping depending on how much grace they had. It was a convoluted progression that changed every 5 grace, but eventually—at ridiculously high amounts of grace—a high priest would regain a grace every time their global miracle cooldown finished, effectively granting them infinite uses of miracles.
Interesting, and even useful if your build was to stack grace and miracles. But useless for me and Cuby.
Elementalist converted all the non-basic affinities into a single affinity called elemental, one that could be used as any of them. Then it gave a bonus to spellcasting stats, critical hit damage, and affinity effects that grew as your elemental affinity grew higher—essentially encouraging you to stack affinity as high as possible. The iconic was a damage-over-time spell that could change its affinity each tick. All in all, the class wasn’t very flashy, but let you find a target’s weakest resistance very easily, then target it. It was a pure damage class, and probably a very effective one at that—but that wasn’t what I was after.
They all just told me what I already knew, and what Cuby had told me: that I was still holding out for the wizard class. But if other dungeons had drops like this one, we’d surely run into someone with a stack of wizards we could trade for. I felt sort of ridiculous going on my 16th level having failed to find a second class, but then I supposed that was a built-in consequence of being first: if the locked dungeon still dropped cards, the world would soon be swimming in them.
We cleared the rest of the Mirrakatetz over a boring several hours. We found the bodies that Nerien and Haroshi had left from killing their party in a library on the upper floors, one of its entrance hallways still collapsed from where they’d dropped it on us. They had killed the boss, then turned on their companions immediately—if the boss hadn’t granted a level to most of their party, it would have been the perfect time.
The bodies been stripped of their gold and little else, so we wound up adding both the wizard-boss’s chest and Eradicia’s chest to the sled to carry all their gear. Then, after being led to some lower streets by my Emotive Attenuation, we found a massive, pillared hallway with a large complex of interconnected rooms to both sides—we guessed it was the old town’s seat of government when, after purging it of a considerable amount of demons, we found a system pane hanging in front of a huge stone throne:
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Territory – Mirrakatetz
The Mirrakatetz territory includes the Mount Mirrak, the settlement of Mirrakatetz, and the surrounding lands. The territory ends at the surrounding mountains, the two outposts guarding the roads that lead toward Aranar and Oromar’s Bastion, and the bridge that leads to Veleth’s Rest.
Claiming this territory will cost experience points: you will be brought to 93% of the experience needed to reach level 16. It will also give all players currently within the territory an optional quest to contest your claim.
Claim Mirrakatetz?
I read this over with a sense of trepidation, but also noted that despite what it said, it wouldn’t cost experience—I would be “brought to” exactly what I was already at. “If I say yes, everyone here will get a notification that I’m doing this.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Cuby asked.
“I just want to be done fighting for now,” I said. “Something tells me that if someone contests my claim, we’ll be expected to go kill them.”
“Probably. But having territory gives you stuff.”
“Like what?” I asked, dreading something complicated.
Cuby shrugged. “An extra use of Waypoint Warp, I think. And gold, if you have a settlement. Other than that, I think some abilities might deal with it. Anyway, if I accept this it puts me back to 21% experience required to reach level 15—more than a level and a half. Take it!”
“All right,” I said. I confirmed the claim, and the pane disappeared. After about 30 seconds, I got a new system message:
No one has contested your claim to Mount Mirrak.
Congratulations! You are now the Master of Mount Mirrak.
You have gained a new Fixed Ability – Territory Warp
Quest Completed: Claim Mirrakatetz
“Great,” I said, bringing up the ability. It was the same as Waypoint Warp, but with only 1 maximum charge—which I currently had. It also specified that it could only warp to Mount Mirrak. “If I warp to Oromar’s Bastion and read the load-screen there, I can warp back here and get another load screen.”
“It’s a waste of a warp, though,” said Cuby. “Don’t you want to save them for when they’re useful?”
“We’ve practically cleared this place of demons,” I said. “I can’t pick up anything with Emotive Attenuation despite a range over 360 meters—not down here and not on the main road above us. Whoever I was supposed to meet either isn’t here or has no emotions. I think the loading screen theory is the best choice—if Waypoint Warp and locked dungeons are the only way to trigger them, we’d have to finish a dungeon for them to give me any more messages.”
“All right,” said Cuby. “That makes sense—but even if that’s true, you still shouldn’t waste your warps. Let’s find the dungeon gate outside and try that before we start spending warps.”
“You’re right, fine,” I said, raising my hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I won’t waste two teleports. Also….” I brought up my quest log and finished the Claim Mirrakatetz quest—it gave me several percentage points of experience—I still wasn’t level 16.
We found the way that Nerien and Haroshi’s group had entered the mountain after dragging the sled of chests up a wide staircase—a broad gate, in front of which was a grand terrace containing nothing but the empty boss chest for High Priest Axxonni. We added this to our sled, then made our way down the mountain, making a stop to pull the loot from the cave we’d slept in—noting while we did this that it was still technically our camp, and still functioned as an area where our adventuring clocks would count up.
We mostly spoke about the system and game mechanics on the way down—about classes and potential abilities, about using and abusing my new invisibility spell and about the absurdity of the triple-strength, quintuple-cost spells I could cast with two applications of Supercharged Spell. Mostly I just wanted to talk about these things because I was nervous. What if we didn’t find my Helpful Hinter after all?
We found the gate at the base of the road that led up the mountain: an ornate, multi-storey mass of polished black stone with a rippling field of red energy between it—the sort of thing that you really couldn’t miss.
“Ready?” Cuby asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think there is any being ready for a thing like this. But here goes.”
I stepped into the gate.
Everything went black. Then, disembodied, I saw a picturesque view of Mount Mirrak before me. What was more:
-Helpful Hints-
Well—you found me. If you’ve made it this far, there’s hope.
Use the gate again and I’ll tell you where to find my spell card.