With Fracta’s fear-laden voice still echoing in his ears, Jeff’s determination surged into overdrive.
He allocated every single unallocated attribute point he had to Speed. He gained momentum still further—running at over fifty miles an hour—his feet churned up clods of wet soil as he propelled himself across the terrain with increased urgency.
Congratulations! Your Physical Fitness Skill has now reached Level 8
Reaching the outskirts of town, he burst into the inn’s storeroom, to be immediately confronted with a scene of utter chaos. The wooden door was flung wide open, and the small room was a total mess, littered all around with the unmistakable signs of battle.
Blood splatters painted the walls, evidence that extreme violence had occurred, though it was unclear who had been the victim.
Abandoning all further attempts to keep a low profile, Jeff rushed out of the storeroom and charged through the courtyard and into the alleyway, storming back onto the main square of Tantalus.
Scanning back and forth through the darkening umber twilight shrouding the square, Jeff’s gaze darted between the usual buskers, hawkers and indigents lingering around the fringes. At the square’s center, near the gruel fountain, stood the ever present detachment of Sharkey’s soldiers, overseeing a small queue of famished Contestants.
Fracta was nowhere to be seen.
Jeff turned his back on the square and smashed through the front door of The Autoch’s Head. He paused in the entrance, the sudden hush among the patrons only interrupted by the sound of the ruined door clattering to the floor behind him.
Ignoring the stares of the assorted drunks, gamblers and courtesans, Jeff marched towards the bar where an increasingly agitated looking Tafaf stood, clutching a half filled tankard of ale in his hand.
Nervously, the lizard-man began to babble in his lyrical rap-like voice, the leathery ruff around his neck flapping up and down as he delivered what seemed almost like a pre-prepared verse:
“Ah Sir Jeff. Good to see you. I prey you are most well,
Of your eight legged companion, a tale of sorrow I must tell.
Sharkey’s henchmen came hither, not one hour prior.
The whereabouts of Lady Fracta they did enquire.
My lips were sealed. By our pact my devoted silence was bound,
But through devilish Skill use, her location was found.
To the Crystal Citadel, she’s been whisked away through the air,
No doubt a gruesome fate is awaiting her there.
As a friend, I suggest you put this whole episode behind you,
Forget Fracta, It’s likely what she would want you to do, too.
The next three nights here are on the house,
Would you like a drink? You look worn out…”
Tafaf finished his pour, offering the mug of ale to Jeff across the bar with a practiced flourish. A slender elf standing at the bar, clearly the original intended recipient of the drink complained in a croaky voice.
“Hold on a second! That was my—” the drunken elf’s slurred objection trailed off uncertainly as his eyes widened, no doubt having taken a second look at Jeff’s stats and his imposing presence.
Ignoring the proffered flagon, Jeff stood for a moment, his mind racing as he deliberated over his next move. With [Mana Essence] active, he detected a faint aura of guilt around the innkeeper, but he decided now was not the best time to press the matter.
Shooting one last icy stare at Tafaf, Jeff turned on his heel and stormed back out through the shattered entrance of the inn. He cut a determined path straight across the square, headed directly towards the avenue that led to the Citadel.
The gazes of the inn’s patrons followed him curiously, their eyes flickering behind the grimy windows as he departed.
As Jeff entered the avenue he expected to gain a clearer view of the Citadel, directly across the water in front of him, but the ever-present fog bank he had noticed before still stretched from the end of the causeway, encompassed the entire island and obscuring the Citadel from his sight.
Approaching the beginning of the causeway, he noticed a small guard post had been set up, manned by two surly looking soldiers.
Initially, after evaluating the pair’s miserly stats, and still fueled by the righteous feeling of wrath that had overtaken him after Fracta’s last communication, Jeff had planned to bulldoze right on through the guard post—as the two guards’ combined attribute points were less than a quarter of his, he strode forward with confidence.
But a whisper of caution echoed in the back of his mind.
Despite his newly acquired powers, he knew he was not invincible…yet. Perhaps a more strategic approach would pay dividends in the long run? An old adage sprang to mind—appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak…
He changed tack, deciding at the last moment to employ subterfuge. Slowing his pace, Jeff feigned disorientation, adopting a glazed look to his eyes. He stumbled forward towards the pair of guards.
Their eyes widened in shock, no doubt noticing his formidable, overpowered stats. The nearest soldier, a towering Wolfen covered in long, greasy black fur, clumsily reached for his sword. Beside him, his companion—a slender blue skinned reptilian with three eyes—hastily bent down to pick up a spear lying on the ground at his feet.
“Reporting to Sharkey for branding and tax registration…” Jeff mumbled, putting on a semi-coherent and dazed tone, doing his best to simulate the effects of Bonifak’s spell of compulsion.
Your Stealth Attribute has risen by 1
Relief washed over the guards’ faces as they visibly relaxed.
The Wolfen guard, Uiro-ku, pushed his sword back into its scabbard, casting a sneering glance at Jeff. They eyed his fine store-bought clothes, avarice and cruelty flickering across their faces as they exchanged knowing glances with each other.
“Hand over your storage ring and any weapons about your person. You’ll get your stuff back after your audience with Sharkey.”
No doubt my inventory will be significantly lightened in the process, Jeff thought to himself.
Still maintaining the facade of befuddlement and compliance typical of someone under one of Bonifak’s geasa, he obediently placed his ring into the outstretched hand of the guard on the left, his expression dazed. Prior to approaching the causeway, he had already stowed all his weaponry and other equipment in the storage device.
The two soldiers patted him down cursorily, entirely overlooking the Periapt of The Erstwhile Tree Gods, which Jeff still wore around his neck beneath his clothes.
Although the slight boosts to his HP, Vitality and Endurance he gained from wearing the amulet were now negligible, Jeff had grown used to its comforting presence against his skin.
The guards also failed to detect the RemoteTalk Bangle on his wrist, which Jeff had deliberately not stowed away, still hopeful he would be able to use it to regain contact with Fracta.
The guards obviously placed great trust in Bonifak’s compulsion Skill, and were convinced it was still keeping Jeff docile and obedient to their orders.
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Brackish, foul smelling waves lapped sluggishly at the embankments flanking the causeway, and a thick layer of mutated enzyme mats and rotting organic material lay washed up along the shoreline. To Jeff, the sea appeared to be lifeless, but Emwarr had warned of the dangers lurking beneath Tantalus’s dark waters—under its oily surface lay a whole ecosystem of monstrous sea creatures waiting to strike.
Jeff had complained to Emwarr about the discrepancy between Misty’s glowing description of Tantalus and the grim reality. The rodent woman explained that it hadn’t always been this way— Tantalus had once been a flourishing tourist destination, a wonder of the Glogly Sector.
Sightseers and researchers had traveled from far and wide to relax, cruise the crystal-clear waters of the vast ocean, and marvel at the Crystal Citadel, a pre-System relic of a long-extinct race, predating both the Makers and The Old Ones who came after them.
After the Vogelian Ascendancy, Tantalus had been designated as a local Tournament marshalling point.
The changes inflicted on the planet led to an ecological collapse—most of the life died off or mutated into something dark and malevolent. In sympathy, the once brilliant Citadel dimmed, its inner light nearly extinguished as the planet slowly succumbed to death around it.
A fatberg sluggishly drifted past the causeway, borne on the receding tide, and despite the lateness of the day, the temperature and humidity of Tantalus had risen even higher than before.
Jeff felt a bead of sweat trickle down his neck as the Wolfen guard, Uiro-ku, led him onwards towards the Citadel. Jeff made a mental note about the location of his Storage Ring—right pant’s pocket. Uiro-ku’s blue-skinned companion had chosen to remain behind at the check-point.
As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, guttering oil lamps flared to life on the outer ramparts of the castle ahead, dimly illuminating more of Sharkey’s soldiers standing guard below.
The poor illumination and the magical haze hanging in the air rendered the structure an amorphous silhouette. Jeff squinted through the gloom, concentrating on the vague outlines of the building, attempting to see through the fog and mentally map out the fortifications and defenses of the looming castle looming before him.
Suddenly, everything seemed to spring into focus, as if a light switch had been flipped to the ‘on’ position.
Jeff was rewarded with a System notification.
Congratulations!
You have successfully overcome a Charm of Concealment.
Your Cognition Attribute has risen by 1
Your Night Vision Skill has risen to Level 3
Congratulations!
You have learnt the Skill Covert Surveillance (Level 1)
With the new [Covert Surveillance] Skill, his surroundings snapped into further focus, providing Jeff with an enhanced level of clarity.
The magical fog surrounding the Crystal Citadel was dispelled completely and he was able to see the walls and layout of the building before him in their entirety for the first time.
Once again he was struck by the disparity between Misty’s glowing description of Tantalus’s facilities and the grim reality.
When hyping the Citadel earlier, Misty had painted a picture of a beautiful crystalline structure, glowing with an unearthly internal light, a wonderful sight to behold. The reality couldn’t have been more different. The main body of the huge building in front of him was indeed formed of some sort of clear crystal, but black veins were embedded deep within its matrix, the resulting material looking like an unholy cross between anthracite and diamond.
Fluted, spiraling towers, reminiscent of blown glass, rose from the center and sides of the structure, giving the building the appearance of an inverted chandelier. Shard-like outcrops and glossy black and clear crystalline deposits jutted out at odd angles from the main edifice, adding to its surreal design.
Directly ahead, a massive drawbridge rested in the lowered position, spanning the moat that separated the causeway from the main entrance.
Beyond the wooden drawbridge loomed a raised portcullis, further reinforcing the Citadel’s almost medieval air of impregnability. Around the entrance, more of Sharkey’s troops clustered, the flickering torchlight glinting on their armor and weaponry.
Jeff surreptitiously observed the robust iron chains that extended from the wooden platform to the windlass mechanism used to raise and lower the drawbridge. The windlass itself was housed within a chamber above the arched gate-passage.
Positioned on either side of the portcullis were strategically placed arrow slits, providing the castle’s defenders with ample opportunity to launch ranged attacks on any intruders foolish enough to attempt to cross the threshold below.
Jeff’s stealthy scrutiny of his surroundings paid off as he was rewarded with another System generated vision.
Jeff saw the Vanguard version of himself running nimbly across the darkened rooftops of a city at night, somehow disappearing into one shadow and simultaneously reappearing in another some distance away.
Eluding the guards stationed around a portcullis, he slipped through the gates into a heavily fortified castle.
Once inside, a glowing nimbus enveloped him. When the glow subsided he had transformed into the shape of a stooped, elderly butler, garbed in the drab attire of a servant.
The Vanguard navigated his way through the labyrinthine halls and corridors of the castle with ease, unchallenged and unnoticed.
Reaching the royal bedchamber, he stood for momentbeside the slumbering king, before removing a small vial from his pocket. He carefully dripped poison into a beaker resting on a table by the King’s bedside.
Mission accomplished, he melted into the shadows before slipping soundlessly out of the window into the night.
System Challenge: Eight becomes One—Break the Chains of Fate
Complete 3 More Tribulations to Rewrite Your Path(Vanguard) 4/7 Complete
The Wolfen yanked Jeff out of his reverie, forward onto the drawbridge, his confidence noticeably increasing as he joined his comrades.
“Get a move on. We haven’t got all night…” He growled, slaver flying into Jeff’s face as he shoved him roughly onwards, almost causing him to lose his footing. The guard’s pretense of civility quickly evaporated as they crossed into the Citadel’s outer defenses.
Amidst the raucous jeers and mocking catcalls of the assembled troops, Jeff was briskly frogmarched beneath the raised portcullis and through the gate-passage.
As he moved forward, his gaze drifted upwards, noting cunningly placed murder holes set into the ceiling—no doubt designed to enable the unleashing of various unpleasant objects or substances on passers-by.
Any future assault on the Citadel would have serious issues contending with such a potentially hostile environment.
After passing through the outer gatehouse, they traversed a crystal-walled barbican, the southernmost end serving mainly as a storage area, littered with barrels, coils of rope and carts. Tucked away in one corner was a row of low-slung cages, each one imprisoning tournament Contestants of various species. These forlorn individuals peered through the bars with a mix of curiosity and despair as Jeff and his guard swept briskly past.
Jeff peered into each cage, hoping to catch a glimpse of Fracta, but alas, she was nowhere to be seen. Above the cages, several gibbets were crudely fixed to the stone and crystal walls, containing the decaying remains of various corpses—a stark warning to anyone thinking of challenging Starkey’s regime.
“You better behave yourself or you’ll end up like this vermin,” the guard snarled contemptuously, jerking with his thumb towards the gibbets and the unfortunate caged Contestants as they passed.
Continuing onwards, they reached the north end of the barbican, which hosted a diverse crowd of individuals promenading around, garbed in casual, civilian attire. This motley group, comprised of various species, stood out starkly from their poverty-stricken counterparts back in Tantalus town. Unlike the gaunt and emaciated figures on the other side of the causeway, these individuals were all glowing with health, and, indeed looked extremely well fed. Some in fact even looked overweight.
Clearly, these lucky few were the beneficiaries of Sharkey’s largesse. Despite the pain runes seared into their foreheads, they lacked the general air of gloom which characterized the denizens of Tantalus outside the Citadel walls.
The one percent of the one percent… Jeff mused, as he watched a rotund individual waddle past him and disappear through an open doorway leading away from the barbican.
As Jeff crossed the square, he peered through the entrance at an extraordinary sight. In the glinting, diamond-walled room beyond, more of the citizenry of the Citadel were seated around a long metallic table, indulging in a feast of some kind. Punctuating the center of the table a row of ornate taps continuously disgorged streams of multicolored, semisolid substances into a trough-like groove.
The strange ‘food' being pumped from the taps resembled clotted cream in consistency. Signs inset into the notches atop each spigot helpfully labelled the types of foodstuff on offer. Thanks to the advanced tech of the System, the writing resolved itself into English, allowing Jeff to identify the gloopy offerings being dispensed: Sugars, Fats, Proteins and Carbohydrates—Sugars were a vivid bubblegum pink, Proteins a soft blue, Carbs a rich red, and Fats a striking yellow.
The aliens around the table appeared utterly intoxicated by the brightly colored, creamy streams, some greedily scooping the sludge straight from the taps and shoveling it into their mouths with orgiastic abandon, while others experimented, mixing the different food-types together in bowls, the new concoctions they crafted morphing into shades of deep purple, orange or even inky black.
Their moans and squeals of delight spilled through the doorway and out into the bailey as they gorged themselves.
As Jeff was led away, he couldn’t help but wonder what compromises these strange gourmands had made, or what price they had paid to enjoy such special treatment.
Jeff was hurried on past the strange feast, through a second, even more robust looking inner gatehouse, secured by another stout looking portcullis. The path led down a lengthy, tunnel-like crystalline corridor, which opened abruptly into a huge palisaded Bailey, easily the size of two football fields, its walls clad in overlapping sheets of black and transparent crystal.
The central edifice of the Citadel stood before Jeff and his chaperone, resembling a surreal fusion of a cursed fairy tale castle and a deranged Escher print. Impossibly steep buttresses soared upwards along its walls, while defensive box-machiolations jutted out at gravity defying angles from its crystal flanks.
Adorning the circumference of its upper floors, jagged, torch-lit crenellations cast serrated shadows onto the square below. Steep staircases zigzagged across the outer walls, forming a vertical labyrinth of access points connecting to impossibly tall and slender grey-glass towers protruding out from the main crystalline structure, like stalks of alien bamboo.
Complementing the crystalline, extruded walls and towers, the makers of the Citadel had utilized that ubiquitous gray material, which seemingly could be molded into any shape or form. The construction techniques utilized used here were orders of magnitude more advanced than anything on Earth.
One corner of the bailey buzzed with at least twenty soldiers immersed in various combat drills, ranging from traditional swordplay, spear maneuvers and archery, to displays of magical Skills.
As wells as physical projectiles, the air was filled with mana bolts, fireballs and arcs of lightning streaking towards targets lining one wall. These bursts of offensive magic cast vivid flares of technicolor light, briefly illuminating the castle battlements.
All the soldiers had been professionally kitted out in matching uniforms—high-Grade brigandine chainmail or plate armor under fine cloth, sturdy metal helms and gauntlets, with matching grieves—and their weaponry looked to be of a high-tier too, but Jeff was relieved when a quick scan of their stats revealed the soldiers themselves were all unevolved Grade Js, their Total Attribute Points low.
However, one exception stood out amongst the gathered soldiery. Facing away from Jeff and overseeing the training was a towering, burly humanoid, fully eight foot tall. Clad in a short-sleeved leather shirt adorned with interlocking iron rings, the enormous humanoid had massive, bulging biceps and legs as thick as telegraph poles.
Gripped in one massive hand was the haft of a impressive looking double bladed battle-axe, the butt resting casually on one shoulder. His authoritative voice echoed around the bailey as he barked commands at the troops.
NAME: Hazinarr
RACE: Scafulan Troll, Grade I
HIT POINTS (HP): 190/190 +90
MANA POINTS (MP): 70/70
REWARD: 930 Coins
Total Attribute Points (TAP): 379
As Jeff crossed the bailey, Hazinarr, as if sensing something, swung around to face Jeff.
The brute was almost standard human in his facial features, with dark brown hair and piercing, slate grey eyes that bored into Jeff’s as he approached. Only his monstrous size differentiated him from an Earth human.
As their eyes met, Jeff felt an instinctive, visceral dislike for the troll welling up in him. Something in his expression, a coldness and a propensity for violence lurking there raised Jeff’s hackles.
Uniquely, among all the people Jeff had encountered in Tantalus so far, Hazinarr stood out as the sole individual whose forehead bore no scar—there was no rune of pain branded upon him.
One of the leaders, Jeff concluded.
As they proceeded past the practicing soldiers, Jeff felt Hazinarr’s eyes boring into his back. Waves of killing intent rolled off the axeman, making the hairs on the back of Jeff’s neck stand on end.