Chapter 2

Sleep was easy, the meeting with the others had dragged on and painted a terrible picture. Nobody was sure when the horde would attack, but everyone was on guard for it. Some of the younger Captains, those who had bought a commission and had no experience, panicked and wanted to demand more reinforcements from the surrounding cities and counties. But then the Chaos Horde could just lay siege and Middenhiem would quickly starve to death from having an overstuffed population, far beyond what they could handle. Their inexperience had warred with more level heads, and then it became a shouting match of rank and privilege, nobleman against commander rather than a collection of military minds. Estaria welcomed the general dismissal when it came, and fled to eat and sleep. She wasn't a great captain but today she had shown herself that there were far worse out there, and what was worse, these incompetent brats were part of the command structure in a city about to be hit with a wave of savage violence.

Morning brought its own surprise. A small box offering tips about enemy name colours, and something called a Daily Quest. Maybe, from the name, a quest that was held every day? She opened the tips box first.

Enemies difficulty is rated in colour. Dull grey means the enemy is far below your level, and you suffer

-50% exp gain from these and reduced loot.

That’d explain the 20xp instead of 40 that mooks gave in the firing ground.

White indicates a minor level advantage, or equal level enemies. Orange, indicates a level disadvantage, with the shade of the orange indicating the depth of the disadvantage. Red, indicates a severe level disadvantage, requiring great skill and courage to emerge victoriously. The shade of the red indicates the depth of severity. Black, indicates a legendary disadvantage, such that slaying these enemies will require a heroic display of skill and courage, and your name will go down in the myths of the world. But in all likelihood, you will just die. Fighting an enemy of orange or higher grants extra experience and better chances at loot.

Estaria read that and then nodded softly. She wondered how it would affect her xp when the footmen of the chaos hordes were dull grey. She needed all the exp she could get if she was going to survive in this world, with Chaos coming down from the North and Norscans crossing the Sea of Claws and other frightening tales. Still, she was glad to know what the colours represented, and now she could better gauge when a fight was beyond her and decide that hightailing it was better than dying. Courage was good so long as it wasn’t unfounded and suicidal. And before she did the daily quest, she had something else to do first, so she got up and dressed, took care of her personal hygiene and then was out, walking with purpose and determination in the brisk morning air.

Middenhiem was an exciting city to be in, so different from Altdorf she could spend weeks here. But that was only if the Chaos Horde took weeks to arrive, which was something she doubted. Doing some opportunistic sight-seeing, she arrived at where she was heading, the Great Temple of Ulric. Estaria wasn’t sure, but she thought it was the biggest temple to Ulric in the Empire. And as such, it had the greatest fire. Every Ulric temple had a flame, and it was heresy of the greatest magnitude to ever let the flame go out. But, she wasn’t away from the game system here, as she got a box as soon as she entered the ground.

Entering Holy Ground. Open Offerings tab?

Estaria knew she didn’t have any of them but was curious about this thing, so opened it and was shown confirmation that she had no Offerings. But there was a button to open the Offerings Shop. Which she did, and was confronted with four items. Average offerings for 20gp, Anointed offerings for 200gp, Blessed offering for 2,000gp, and Holy offerings for 20,000gp. Estaria wasn’t sure where she would even get twenty thousand gold pieces from, because none of the quests had handed it out so far and the tokens sold cheaply in comparison. But, she did have enough money for the Anointed offerings, which sounded a lot better than the average offerings. She wasn’t going to be here again after the Chaos Horde, so might as well make a splash. She bought it, and then it slotted into her inventory with the icon of a handful of grass.

At first, she pondered what to do with this, but decided to just fall back on what she knew. Throwing the offering into the great flame to honour Ulric. Withdrawing it, and getting a small, silk-wrapped box, she tossed it into the flame. It was consumed voraciously, and then she got a luminescent box pop up.

Ulric’s Boon - +10 to Strength, +10 to Constitution. Lasts until replaced

A grin blossomed, as she got free stats! Ok, they weren’t free and she could only get the blessing of one God, but still. Her strength and constitution were now nearly equal to her Precision, and her Precision was pretty good. Wondering what kind of changes that would make to her combat, she opened up the Daily Quests, and read them. Two small boxes and several checkpoints greeted her.

Physical Training:

0/2 “Mook” Dummies killed (Melee)

0/10 Sword Drill

0/5km run

Agility Training:

0/2 “Mook” Dummies killed (ranged)

0/1 Beam Walk

Agility Training looked easier than Physical Training, but a Beam Walk was no joke. Plus, it was something you could fail, which made it harder than Physical Training. You could hardly fail at swinging a sword, and a run could be completed in stages. So she first headed off to the firing range, and success for that was simple. But, she wasn’t entirely sure where she would do a Beam Walk. Did they have that sort of thing here? Her map gave her some guidance, and she followed it, Eventually finding herself at what looked to be an obstacle course. Completely empty, but without any gate or door to bar her entrance. Figuring she had nothing to lose, she went up to the Beam, got on top of it, and then her mind wandered off into how she really needed to get her breastplate into the blacksmith to repair that hole that had been made from the axe. And her shield to boot. And while her stuff was in the blacksmith, she might as well get her sword touched up.

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Her mind drifting away was the worst thing she could do, as she slipped from the beam and crashed into a pile of leaves. Her luck meter reduced from the fall damage - Environment did damage as well as direct, it seemed - and she felt that pile of leaves was only there because she had a luck meter. Shaking her head to clear it of all the thoughts but also putting them away to be done with later, she got back up on the Beam and cleared it with only a bit of wobble and one near-fall before she got to the other side and the quest updated with her completion. Balance wasn’t something she was great at but it wasn’t something she was terrible at either. You didn’t get promoted to Captain by being terrible at things. Except reading, she still couldn't read. Which….made...how she read the text on the luminescent boxes a question. But it did manipulate reality on a grand scale and could telepathically communicate with her. Maybe the words were getting sent into her brain and so her ability to read them was rendered moot.

Basic Agility Training Complete - 1 stat point gained to spend between Dexterity, Agility, Precision.

Estaria pondered that. It was pretty decent to get from a daily quest. Added to level up and training, the possibility of getting 100 stats in something if she trained every day for a few months was enticing. Dropping the one into Agility to make the Beam walk later a bit easier, she then thought a bit. Not getting any more bullets from it, would mean she needed to get them from a different source to be sustainable….then it occurred to her. The Hidden Quest was...Hidden. There was nothing to say it wasn’t daily until it popped up as finished. So Estaria quickly headed over to there, her Physical Training amusingly getting a 0.3km/5km on the run quest. Here at the firing range, she took headshots at the Elite and then the boss. Powder Teen did a nice increase on damage, so bullets weren’t expended as quickly. On the hit to the Boss, the hidden quest did indeed pop up.

Hidden quest complete!

Headshot Mook dummy: 2/1

Headshot Elite dummy: 1/1

Headshot Boss dummy: 1/1

Cracking a grin, she took the other two - Precision rolling badly and spending two shots on the Boss, so it ended with the other tree - shots and then got her medal and her random box, and the final boss got her a level up. Probably the last one for a while since Elites were a dull grey now and Bosses were barely orange at all. Rolling it, she got something helpful but not what she was wanting. An ‘Engineer’s Maintenance Kit’. Inside were good quality rags, tools for disassembling and reassembling, some nice looking oil, and finely crafted brush. The case itself was even nice leather. A girl could keep a gun in near pristine condition for years with this kind of kit. Serviceable condition without any oil. Didn’t solve her bullet problem, but she had enough for a few days. And if worse came to it, she could buy some with her tokens. Next, was off to the Physical Training. Kill two mooks, run 2km and do a 10-swing drill with the sword. It sounded easy, so she got down to it.

The mooks fell like wheat, with her Ulric’s blessing giving her hearty damage increases to her melee. Then, she did the ten swings, which were of a different sort swing and so didn’t count from those that killed the mook dummies. It would be quite the monotony to do all this every day, but that is how a person got fit. And looking at Borrago, there were certainly benefits to being a person of robust physicality. One thing, however, was both interesting and annoying. After the 10th swing, she got a popup box telling her about her Fatigue. It was “25%, consider resting”. Which wasn’t very high, so she would consider it later and headed to the track.

There, she found some others doing a run as well. She had thought she was up early enough for it to be empty, but these looked more veteran soldiers and so they would be getting in their work early before their duties began. And among them, was Borrago. Of course, he wasn’t a big guy like he was from just messing about in the dining hall. So Estaria went over and joined them on the run, thinking it wouldn’t be difficult since she was a Captain, and had been doing this war thing for a few years.

However, she had underestimated it quite considerably. Running like this was a much different exercise to a march or a fight, and so she got a rapid pop-up telling her her fatigue had hit 50%. Rather than give in and admit defeat, she couldn’t let herself be seen like a woman that would do such a thing in front of her men, and so pushed on, running with them as hard as she could. Halfway through this, she got a message telling her her stamina had gone up from extensive training, which was always welcome, but not enough to hold off the next box of “Fatigue 75% - Stats have been halved”. This sucked. Really...really….really...and then it was done.

Fatigue at 95%, ready to collapse and just sleep forever, she got the one attribute point and quickly slammed it into Stamina. Borrago walked over with a laugh and handed her a drink, which she took with relish and downed to the dregs.

“Any reason you decided to come join us on the track?” he asked as Estaria just gave up on standing and fell to the floor.

“Gotta get the points” she murmured, too tired to remember that nobody else could see her status screen.

“Ambition! Ha, well now is the best place to have it. I myself want to be a Captain, so I can go home to my mother and see her beam with pride!” He had a passionate voice while telling Estaria his goals. And it made her smile, and sit up. Stamina increased fatigue recovery rate as well as it increased max fatigue, so it was slowly draining down the sinkhole.

“For now, we should just look to saving our asses from this coming Norscan horde. Then we can think about ambition. Speaking of, I need to get to the Blacksmith. The last guy I met didn’t do me any favours” she nodded to Borrago, got up, and slowly ambled off to her room. Her sword, shield and armour were recovered, and given the option, she decided against storing them in her inventory. It would be weird to explain that to the blacksmith. And some actual real money to pay the man with. All her preparations done, Estaria headed off and got her stuff repaired, before spending most of the remainder of the day snoozing to recuperate. Ulric, that run was a monster.