Chapter 13
The odd behaviour , and the god in the flesh.
.........................
AUTHORS NOTE AT THE BOTTOM
..............................
A week had passed since the first players arived in the town of Rothrien and Grims mood ... well at best he was just pissed off ... at worst ... no lets not talk about it.
On the second day a bunch of lvl 30s arrived and they were severly lacking tanking classes , so Grim had to fill in. After a whole day Grim had only gained 40 % of his level and that was when it started.
Grim kept complaining on how their commitment was to low since everynight they would return to the town instead of killing Goblins all night. Grim was smart enough and rented 3 rooms from the beginning of the quest inside of the Inn so atleast he had a bed , and had no need to camp outside like the other people that wanted to do the quest.
Every morning he held speeches but with each day his commitment to these at start grand speeches to which every politican would have bowed to , just became copys of the ones from the day before.
During the day he hunted with the overly ' green ' players as he started to call every bunch of newcomers. Even though bulky was helping the new guys too it was just not enough. Soon Clash had to assist as well.
But during the nights Clash , Grim and Bulky all stood in the forge and crafted ... and crafted ... and chewed on stale bread ... while crafting ... and crafted. Grim got only 2 hours of sleep each day and his mood was sacking.
Clash mentioned the rest of the original group yesterday and he never was so terrified before in his life. After a cursing parade of the slacking off guys of his group he will never mention these things infront of Grim again.
Some more hunting and more forging later and another speech from a drained Grim Viena arrived. Grims exhaustion , the mental kind that also drained his physical body in the real world as he claimed , took its tool and he was force logged out that second as his will power faded.
After 24 hours , or is it better to say a full 8 hours of sleep in real life later he was the warm smiling and ever appreciating Grim he first acknowledged , instead of the rough and moody Grim he feared now.
He greeted everyone that joined the together with Crow who arrived now in a manner that made it seem an illusion that he was dragging himself along yesterday. Well Clash on the other hand logged out for a few hours every day while he predicted Grim had not.
Clash understood why Grim was forced logged out and told everyone to use cats paws when talking to him or walking around him but now the relaxed Grim was making jokes as he used to and equipped the new commers with a smile on his face like it was the most natural thing to do.
What also pleased him was the report from Bulky he received that no one had died so far in the Goblin training grounds of HELL ! as the players called it affectionatly. Bulkys contigent that arrived first were all around 50 - 47 now and Grim was deeply gratefull to him.
Yesterday he cursed muttered and spat out at all the Blacksmith work he had , but out of appreciation to Bulky he forged him a set of Armor and a new weapon. The suprised receiptant cried and hugged the wryly smilling Grim while he just patted him on the shoulder.
Clash saw him operating the invisible , to him at least , console and as he began huming Clash knew what was going on. As Grim crafted and gave the steadly increasing new commers advice and gear we has humming , his mood has skyrocketed and Clash knew who was coming.
As every newcommer and all the ' veterans ' were assembled during the night inside of the plaza while Grim was standing on a podium he told the story how he and his group defeated 300 Goblins that were 20 levels above them all alone.
With a few well placed words and comments the audience he had created himself was glued to his lips as if they were jinxed to listen to his every command. But soon something disturbed the story.
A loud tumult formed outside the city as pondering hoovs of about 50 horses approached in a fast manner. All of the front line , and the horses as well , were clad in the finest armor that only Grims armor himself could rival while the back line was dressed in the finest robes.
Grim smiled a warm smile , and he made sure ALL of the audience saw it , and gazed dreamingly towards the approaching group.
Grim saw 50 riders unmounting directly as they halted in the middle of the plaza. The players made way for the high level royal guard of the king , as they saw at the pheonix crest they wore , and the priestess of Palanthalos.
They dismounted but only one figure remained saddled through out the process. As they got off the saddles the Npcs of at least lvl 100 + all kneeled before the figure that was in the middle of the mass of 400 players and saluted before taking a knee.
" We hail the future King of the Elfs , Grim Gwachilmar , we have heard your call and rode as fast as we could. " The leader a exceptionatly armored Knight said out loud.
After a brief word and a hand-shake between Grim and the leader of the knights , Grims attention turned towards the single mounted horse as if all of the world had seized to exist. As if enthralled , with compassionate eyes , Grim was pulled towards the rider of the beautiful pure white horse and everyone in the crowd forgot to breath for over a minute.
He extended a hand towards the Lady and helped her down with trained movements , after a brief period where the lovely couple exchanged glances alone , that said more than a thousand words , a single sentence was heard through the city of Rothrien.
" I have missed you , my love... " Grim whispered towards the priestess and the whole assemblance of players and npcs had a few silver droplets at the corner of their eyes at the breath taking scene.
Grim quickly kissed her on the cheeck , which was answered with a ' OHHHHH ' from the female crowd , and locked arms with her before he introduced her.
" I am sorry , you had to witness my moment of weakness ... but i just can't calm myself when it comes to her ... Let me introduce you all to her , the spouse of the kings line and my bethroed lovely Celuidh Soc-relma. "
The crowd broke out in cheers after his short speech and once again Celu wondered how much he is a devil and how much an angel. She later claimed that she wondered if she should slap him now or later , for upholding the moral of course.
........................
Early morning , the birds were chirping as a slow wind rustled all the leaves in the surrounding forest. Grim had gathered his companions , Viena , Crow and Clash together with him , Thalia and Celu and they were discussing plans.
" Okay now , the best thing we can do is split up before we head back into the dungeon. Alberthos , the leader of the knights , will stay with Viena and train the new ones. Now bulky who is in the advanced group will get help from Crow and keep on training the ' veterans '. Clash will come with me and Celu , as we need a scout with stealth. " Grim calmly explained his plans.
Grim had discussed his plans with Celu yesterday and she concented. While giving each one ' supervision ' there was a slight chance Grim could uncover the traitor as well as keeping tabs on all of the suspects.
They all agreed to it and headed their different wats , surely Grim had made the easily to manipiulate Bulky into his henchman and even told him to instantly message him if crow did anything suspicious.
Alberthos who kept track of Viena had to report anything he saw to Grim , as he was honor bound to a pact he had forged to the kings house.
Lastly , which was a bit of a gamble , the stealthy Clash was going to scout the Goblin invasion city but Grim also had a plan for this. Just to keep Clash ' safe ' he would be accompied by a little small Fae that could give him a means of escape , air surveilance and all.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
......
Grim and the group on npcs , with the addition of Clash and Celu , bought some supplys and were headed out of Rothrien. They passed the fields and saw all the ' greens ' , as Grim affectionatly called them , killing Goblins by the hundreds. Viena and Alberthos were assisting them in whenever they were in trouble so up till now not a single player had died.
As they continued on they saw the ' advanced ' group , that was already being trained in combat maneuvours by Bulky. Strangely enough Crow was no where in sight. Grim thought that most likely he was further out training with the rest of the group.
The entourage of 50 elfs , 3 players and 47 npcs , entered the fissure and walked along the way until they all got a message.
* tring*
You have entered the Goblin forward invasion city > Nerghul <.
Triple Xp until the event ends since you are the first to discover this event dungeon.
Double drops from ALL mobs until this dungeon is cleared or Rothrien is conquered
After veryfing this with Celu and Clash , they both got the same message while the npcs also got a message just telling them they entered Nerghul.
They went deeper into the city that was kept in darkness. All of the Npcs had oil maps with them that could be doused to create dimmer lights. So Grim order the knights that were guarding their rear to ingite them and 3 more that stood at the front.
There was not much information available but one thing Grim found out very quickly while searching the net for the term Goblin. They have dark vision. They can see in the dark and like moths are attracted to light.
With only illuminating the bare minimum Grim wanted to prevent hords of goblins instantly swarming his group and leading to the failure of the quest. The knights also put pieces of cloth between their plates to hush the noise the made will they walked.
On Grims signal Thalia flew over to Clash and landed on his shoulder. Now Clash nodded at Grim and he disappeared from plain sight.
The operation had begun.
.......................
3 days later.
Grims group was still complete but they were running for their lives. Tens of thousand of Goblins were chasing them but the priests of soc-relma were wise enough to leave magical runes behind on stones or even buildings to guide them through the underground tunnels.
Grim , Celu and Clash had accomplished what they wanted. Now it was just a matter of escaping the caverns alive without any losses. After that Grim would make a strategy that would lead them to success , Celu was sure of it.
They passed ruins , the size of whole towns , that were infested with more goblins. As they ran along an underground river they were shot with arrows from both sides but the healers kept up with the barrage of hundreds of arrows at a time.
Some knights fell down , due to the slippey cavern floor , but even though Grim was leading the group he turned around on the spot , picked up the knight and ran once again. They had been running for 2 hours straight now.
And for 2 hours straight goblins were right at their heels , speaking and cursing them in their guttural language.
The last magical rune , that was engraved on a boulder , came into view and a message window appeared before Grim.
* tring*
You have exited the Goblin forward invasion city > Nerghul <.
The goblins have stopped following you since a magical barrier is keeping them inside of the city.
They will be released in 1 month , 13 days , 7 hours and 15 seconds.
All of the group , Grim had lead underground , were still alive. A few npcs were badly wounded , since the healing magic of priests can only heal npcs in a limited way. Loosing an arm or a leg as a npc meant they would need to give up the career as a fighter or even worse , loose the ability to walk.
If the same happend to a player and a priest was around , regardless if it was a player or a npc healer , the limb would just grow back. It was painful but bearable.
But Grim had managed , with the clever plan of engraving runes every quarter mile , lead them to safety with 7 badly wounded , inability to fight for a few months. None had lost their lives or limbs.
A few other knights and priests were slightly wounded with a few arrows sticking out of them but they would be fight for the battle that would come in a few days.
Grim let them rest , as they had earned it , as most of them just simply collapsed to the floor. Celu and Clash also collapsed the only one of the 50 man group still standing was Grim. Surely he had some sweatbeads running down his forehead and the rubys that adorned it , but now Celu was convinced.
Grim was a god in the flesh . No mortal , especially not a commander of troops , could have the ability to stand after 3 days of marching , without rest or sleep. Celu was drained of her ability to move her body and her mind was also drained from the constant danger they faced.
But here Grim was standing like after a slight jog , going around and asking everybody how their conditions were and if he could help anybody. He bandaged a few , while at others he pulled arrows out. One knight was in high fever as a poison arrow had struck him and he was delirious.
Grim simply went to help the priestess that took care of him , held him down with one hand broke the arrow shaft with the other and pressed the tip through the elfs intact shoulder without flinching even once.
The priestess was surprised at his ability to judge the situation correctly and almost forgot to clean the wound with her holy magic and heal the knight back up. At Grims warm smile and reminding her , she resumed her work and the knight would live this day to die in another battle.
But Celu ,even though she thought Grim was a god , knew something was terribly wrong. He was just too calm , to composed or even to collected at what he had just seen.
..........................
After the rest they made their way back to Rothrien.
Bulky came by and asked how it went , Grim just smiled at him but did not say anything. Crow came by but they didn't even exchange a word. Crow simply looked in Grims face and went back to his group for training.
As Grim passed Viena she was first relieved to see he was okay , but the shadow on Grims face that she did not miss , but he was brooding.
Alberthos was relieved to see their expedition had no casualtys but at a slight wave from Grim instead of helping with the wounded , since Grim was carrying 2 wounded knights in a complete set of armor by himself , he resumed training the now lvl 55 and above ' green ' group.
But everyone he passed knew something was wrong. Grim smiled his usual warm smile but had no friendly words. He made some jokes but he didn't laugh at the jokes himself as he usually did.
As soon as they entered Rothrien he gave commands to set up a field lazaret and tend to the wounded. After the lazaret was half way built and the wounded knights had it comfortable Grim excused himself and went to the inn.
He just left everyone where they were and returned to the dark room he had rented.
Celu was wondering what was going on , but soon a button on her friends list turned from green to gray. Grim had just logged off without giving anybody a word.