Jace’s crew materialized next to his stronghold’s outer travel node. Delly’s mission had been the shortest of the three they had attempted so far, and so, instead of returning many hours or even days after they had left, it was still morning, and daylight drenched the cavern’s opening. Granite, Jace’s stone elemental, stood guard, having grown a few inches now that Jace had leveled up. The stone Shaman kept forgetting to use his summoned ally in missions, but that was mostly because he couldn’t guarantee he would have a line of unbroken stone on which Granite could traverse. Plus, while he was allowed to keep permanent Armor, Damage Sink, and Mana Bank totems in his stronghold and still cast them elsewhere, Gracie had advised him that only one copy of Granite could ever exist in the game. So, if he summoned him while on a mission, he would disappear from his front door. Since Jace allowed goblins and other monsters to run free in his stronghold’s outskirts, his elemental doorman was essential in keeping the vermin out.
As the group crossed the bridge leading to the entrance, they saw it wasn’t a goblin Granite had denied entry; instead, it was someone they recognized from a previous mission.
“Shelah!” Esther cried, running up to embrace the new husband of her mermaid friend. “What are you doing here? I expected you and Tami to be busy for a while.”
The merman returned the embrace awkwardly, not finding any safe places on the curvy woman to rest his hands. “Uh, we had our time. We had all night. She laid her eggs, and the other mermen in our kingdom are already preparing for the next generation. Timnah is saved, thanks in large part to you.” He pushed Esther gently away and looked up toward the rest of the approaching crew. “After we knew the kingdom was secure, Tami said she needed to attend to something else urgently, and I realized I had a debt to repay.” His eyes focused on Jace.
The orc smiled. “You were able to find it?”
The merman nodded. “I was.”
“What secret is this?” Draya asked, exchanging looks between the two men.
Neither said anything as Shelah extended his right arm and opened his fist. On his palm lay a small silver figurine.
“Adam!” Gromphy shrieked. “Never dist I think I wouldst see him again. But how?” He raced forward and plucked the adamantium charm from the visitor’s hand.
Shelah shrugged. “I told Jace I was in his debt for saving us and told him if there was anything he ever needed, he shouldn’t hesitate to ask. He didn’t.”
“But it was lost at sea,” Gromphy argued.
“I’m a merman,” he explained. “We have a strong affinity for finding magical things beneath the waves. I had to swim about for an hour, but it wasn’t hard to find. Jace gave me access to the shoreline in question and an estimation of how far out it was.”
The goblin was flummoxed and, for once, speechless. Jace spoke for him. “Well, thank you, Shelah. You can consider your debt paid in full. Now you should return to your bride. Whatever she had to do, I’m sure it will be quick, and she won’t want to return to your honeymoon suite to find you missing.” The merman nodded, shook hands with Draya and Psycho, and left toward the travel node.
Gromphy still stood frozen, staring at his open palm where Adam’s statue lay. After a few more moments, the crafter tucked the object into his vest and looked up at Jace. The orc thought he saw a tear in the goblin’s eye. “And now, I have something for thee,” Gromphy said and raced into the stronghold.
“A gift for me?” Jace asked the retreating goblin, but he didn’t respond.
“It’s about time,” Draya said, following after their crafter. “Come on, Jace. Your upgrade has been in the works for a while.”
The orc let the rest of his crew enter before him as he pulled up the rear. “Gracie, what are they talking about?”
{Beats me, boss. Who knows what they do while you’re away?}
Jace followed through the vaulted entry and into the laboratory. “What is it, Gromphy?”
The goblin hustled about, too busy to answer. He placed the green medallion he had taken from Kelrick on his table and turned to eject the trunk from his inventory and onto the shelf it usually occupied. He popped the lid and began rummaging through it.
“I think he got the last piece he needed for the spell he’s been working on,” Draya said, walking up to the table and picking up the discarded jewelry. She scoped its powers and nodded. “Yep, this should . . .”
“Put it down, dragoness!” Gromphy barked, turning back to the table with an armful of supplies. “I shan't be needing thy fire for this. Step thyself back. Remain out of harm’s way.” Draya obeyed.
“Harm’s way?” Jace repeated. “What do you mean to do? Turn me into a snake?”
“Hardly,” Gropmhy said. He didn’t elaborate other than to produce a large diamond from the pile of equipment and then press it into the medallion’s center. Crafting magic flared white and blue as the goblin worked, and within six seconds, the necklace had lost its green color. Snakeskin flakes lay around the object as if the jewelry had molted. Gromphy picked it up and brushed the dead scales away.
The medallion retained its old shape but now pulsed with new power, seeming to draw the room’s stone walls inward as it sparkled with swirls of crystal and minerals. “You’re not going to turn me into a snake,” Jace confirmed. “You’re going to turn me into stone.”
“No,” Draya spoke up, acting as the crafter’s mouthpiece while he arranged his equipment on the table, moving with speed Jace had never seen. “He’s going to give you a stone essence. Like I have a dragon essence in me.”
“And he can do that with just that medallion?” Jace asked.
Gromphy grumbled a few goblin curses at the incredulity in the statement but didn’t respond directly, still turning between the table, his shelves, and the open chest.
“It helps that you are already a stone shaman,” Draya said. “And an orc.” Gromphy paused his frantic preparation to give her a pained look. “And that Gromphy is the best crafter in the realms,” she added. He seemed content at that and raced around the table to retrieve the level 50 crystal. “And he has access to more crafting mana than is probably safe,” Draya finished.
“Tis what is necessary,” Gromphy mumbled, inspecting his setup one last time before looking up at Jace. “Now I need thee prostrate on my table.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Jace said, holding up his enormous hands. “Explain exactly what you are going to do.”
“I shall insert this,” Gromphy said, placing a mesmerizing pulsing gray object on the table, “into thy chest and shall link it to thy being by giving thee a stone essence.” He lifted the medallion from the table.
“How?” Jace asked, his eyes transfixed on the glowing 20-sided quartz gem.
“With this,” Gromphy said, holding up a scalpel.
Jace took a step back. “A little help, Gracie.”
{That’s a mana core on the table,} the operator said. {It looks immensely powerful. I have no idea where it came from.}
“We got it from the armadillion,” Draya said. She couldn’t hear Gracie, but Jace was staring at the gemstone. “We call it the Armanacore.”
“We?” Jace asked. His eyes went around the room. “How many of you were in on this?”
“I only knew they needed an ice core,” Psycho said. “I helped with that.”
“They tried to tell me,” Esther said, “but it didn’t make sense, so I mostly ignored them.”
“He practiced on Zorn.”
Jace spun around at the husky feminine voice to see Trixna enter the room. The orc priestess wore her typically revealing robe but, for once, didn’t throw flirting looks at the male shaman. “I trust the goblin, Jace. I won’t let him kill you.”
“I . . . I trust him too,” Jace said unconvincingly, returning his eyes to the potential operating table and the massive gem Gromphy wanted to stick in his chest. “But I still don’t understand. Why do you want to do this to me?”
“To make you unstoppable,” Draya said. “You’ll be like me, only instead of a dragon core, it will be a stone core, and you will have unlimited mana at your disposal to cast spells.”
{If what she is saying is true,} Gracie said, {you’d be a fool to pass this up.}
“You’ve been letting us do all the spellcasting so far,” Draya said. She looked around the room. Psycho and Esther weren’t the realm’s best magic users. “Well, me and Gromphy anyway. It’s time you had a turn.”
“And what if the procedure goes wrong?” Jace looked at the crafter and let the room know he wanted the goblin to answer for himself.
“It shan’t,” he replied. “But if it brings thee comfort, offer a prayer to thy god.”
Jace nodded. “What do I need to do?”
“Remove thy shirt, drink this potion, and lie on my table,” Gromphy said, offering the orc a bubbling purple concoction.
Jace stepped forward and took the vial. He looked around the room one last time to regard the expectant faces of his friends, and then he downed the potion. He felt dizzy at once and reached out clumsily to catch himself.
“Lie down before thou falls! We’ll never be able to lift thee!” Gromphy ran around the table to push Jace toward the table. The short goblin could do little, but Trixna and Psycho were next to their leader in a second and guided his large bulk to the stone slab. Jace’s mind spiraled into a blur of confusion, and he wondered if he should count back from 100. He didn’t make it to 98 before the room went black.
----------------------------------------
Jace opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a wooden ceiling with hanging electric lights and spinning fans. He lay on a table and propped himself to his elbows to look around. He was in a church. Not a temple, or crypt, or some other fantasy-style worship hall, but a bonafide church. It reminded him of where he went as a child in the south suburbs of Chicago. Jace looked down and saw he rested on the communion table and quickly hopped off.
The wooden pews before him were filled with people. They all stood with hymn books in their hands, singing glorious music. Jace couldn’t pick out any words, but the music stirred his soul and sent chills down his spine. The families looked familiar, not that Jace recognized any of them specifically. Still, he had been in dozens of churches and recognized men wearing suits and ties, women in floral dresses, and children trying to sing along with their parents. The older kids sang just as powerfully as the adults while the younger ones fiddled idly with their hands or stared at open books and pretended to follow along.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
For a moment, Jace wondered if he had actually been transported to a real church outside the game. A quick look down at his body, an orc in a loincloth, told him otherwise. None of the congregants noticed his ill-conforming attire, and he used that apparent anonymity to walk up to one of the families and peer at their songbook. While the outside looked like any number of hymnals he was used to, the pages didn’t hold anything he recognized. At first, it appeared like an alien language scrolling across the pages, but the closer he looked, he saw Ones and Zeros, Hashtags and Ampersands.
It was computer code.
While he couldn’t pick out what they sang, the people were definitely pronouncing meaningful syllables. It sounded like a modern movie soundtrack backed by vocals that added depth and harmony with no articulated words. That returned Jace to the actual music. He pivoted to face the front of the church to see a massive collection of pipes covering the wall behind the pulpit. The sound contained more complexities than pipes could produce, with brass, strings, and percussion binding everything together.
On the left of the main stage sat the organist, grinding away in a frenzied interpretation of Beethoven. Unlike his congregants, the man did not wear modern clothing but shiny full-plate appropriate for the realms. Each piece of armor rotated perfectly on unseen joints, allowing the musician a full range of motion. He wore no helm, and his feathered blond fair bounced and swayed in rhythm to the music.
Jace sensed the song was nearing its end. After several high notes from the singers and a dramatic clash of cymbals, the church grew silent, and the congregation took their seats. Jace watched the organist rise from his bench and walk swiftly toward his position. He was a handsome young man, reminding Jace of Heath Ledger from the movie A Knight’s Tale.
The orc shaman bowed slightly at his approach. “Dexmachi, I presume.”
The god’s mouth turned upward in a slight grin. “Correct as usual, my loyal servant.”
“That was some lovely music, sir,” Jace said, wondering how he should be addressing a god in the game.
“Thank you,” he said. “Gandhi demands a lot to manipulate the numbers. It isn’t always easy. Your play style keeps me on my toes.”
“So, is this how it’s done?” Jace made a broad gesture to the church and the silent people. “Is this how you ‘Conduct’ my fortune in the game?”
“We make some incredible music together, Jace Thorne,” Dexmachi nodded.
“And you’ve brought me here . . . why?” Jace asked. “To keep me company during surgery? Was this presentation tied to what Gromphy is doing?”
The knight shook his head. “No, your goblin doesn’t serve me. He’s on his own with that. I’m sure you will be fine. You’re presence here is unrelated. We would have met the next time you tried to skip until dawn or logged in.” He paused for dramatic effect. “You are here for a mandatory mission.”
“A what?” Jace asked.
“Tsk, tsk,” Dexmachi shook his head disapprovingly. “Gracie has left you unprepared.”
“Want to explain, Gracie?” Jace rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He didn’t get a response.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the god said, “she isn’t with you now. Our meeting is taking place in your subconscious; she wouldn’t be able to keep up. Only about five seconds will pass for her between the start of your surgery and when you wake up.” He paused. “Assuming Gromphy doesn’t kill you.” He shook his head. “Never mind, that won’t happen.” He sighed. “I find it hard to think without music sometimes.”
“I could hum the Jeopardy theme,” Jace said.
“Sarcasm will get you nowhere.”
Jace shrugged. “It got me here.”
His god smiled. “Touché. Anyway, where was I?”
“A mandatory quest,” Jace replied.
“Ah, yes, right. There is a monastery in the mountains devoted to Shimbatu. He is a newer god, like myself, and has few followers. He is an ally and has asked for my help. For our help.”
“How few is few?” Jace asked. “How many followers does he have?”
“One,” Dexmachi said. “Just like me.”
Jace nodded. “And if he were to lose that follower?”
Dexmach only nodded, confirming Jace’s assumption. “Some might argue that he already has, and Shimbatu might be days, perhaps hours from deletion. His lone PC follower has led a rebellion against him, inviting a demon into his monastery and turning most of the monks against him. Without control of his stronghold, he can not initiate quests for new recruits, and a god can not survive with only NPC devotees.”
“You want me to kill the demon?”
Dexmachi shrugged his shoulders. “The hellspawn’s name is Karo’Kaffellon. He is the sworn enemy of Shimbatu, not me. I will not direct your actions in this, lest it be interpreted as an act of war I am not prepared to engage. I ask only that you help my ally restore his monastery so he can recruit new followers. There is no single solution to this problem, and I would not wish to hamper your play style by insisting that you do anything.”
Jace nodded. “I am in the middle of another quest.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Dexmachi waved a hand to dismiss his concern. “You can finish with Kai Morte and Esther, but don’t wait much longer than that.”
“Or what?”
Dexmachi looked sternly at him. “Gracie can explain the consequences. She owes you that much.” He turned away and walked back toward the organ.
“Wait!” Jace said. “Is that all? I have so many more questions.”
He shrugged his shoulders without turning around. “Sorry. Time’s up. The last suture is tightening now.”
“But?”
Dexmachi turned once he reached the organ with a goofy grin and pointed a pistol finger at Jace. “Don’t worry. I have faith in you.”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?” Jace responded but only got half the phrase out when the church blinked out of existence.
----------------------------------------
Jace opened his eyes and took a massive gulp of air. He got the impression it was the first breath his lungs had taken in a while. As his chest rose, he felt his whole body expand, not just because it regained consciousness and feeling but because it now seemed to encompass his entire stronghold. He could feel the gnomes moving about in distant caverns as if they were ants crawling over his toes. He sensed their forges burning strong as if he had just drank a shot of whiskey, and the alcohol burned tracts down his esophagus. Wind blowing over the chimneys felt like a lover breathing into his ear.
Before the enhanced sensory input overwhelmed him, he took several calming breaths with his eyes closed. He could get through this. It would only take concentration. He remembered looking at old 3D posters that were popular over a decade ago. They appeared to be random scribbles, but if you allowed your vision to fall out of focus, a distinct image would emerge. The first time you saw it required many seconds of concentration, but with practice, you could summon the three-dimensional image in a flash.
Jace did that now, letting each of the new sensations fade into the background as he focused on the pulsing mana core in the center of his being. Once he embraced that, all the other inputs started to make sense. Jace had heard of amputees who still retained feeling in their missing limbs. The hand might not be there, but the section in their mind that had controlled it still was. Now, Jace’s mind opened to “body parts” he had never felt before. Soon, he could sense each tunnel, each cavern, and everything that moved through it as if they were limbs awakening from a deep slumber.
He wondered if this level of awareness was due to this being his stronghold or if he would be afforded this much information about every cave he entered. That could be answered in time, and Jace looked forward to finding out. Eventually, he opened his eyes and sat up.
His party members looked back at him expectedly, their eyes tracing up and down his body. He did the same and found the stone medallion pulsing on his chest. At first, he worried that wearing the jewelry would prevent him from using his illusion necklace. However, upon closer examination, the circle of stone didn’t hang from a chain but was embedded into his chest like an Iron Man. Jace rotated his torso and flexed his massive chest muscles, feeling no discomfort or pulling from the foreign object secured to his flesh.
The orc hopped off the table, and as soon as his Boots of Grounding touched the stone floor, the cavern came alive again. His mind raced down each corridor and tunnel in seconds. Instead of overwhelming him, it felt comforting, like he was home after a long trip.
“Gracie,” Jace said as he moved away from the table and toward the exit into the open cavern. His friends parted wordlessly for him. “Talk to me.”
{It’s . . . it’s almost too much,} she replied. {You definitely have a second mana core now. It isn’t as big as Draya’s, but it replenishes quickly, and you will never run out. It looks like you are now considered to be permanently connected to stone, so all of those spells that only worked when you were standing on rock now work all the time. You will still need a line of stone to connect you to your totems, but you have enough mana now to basically pave every surface you might fight on with an inch of marle for free. Of course, with these upgrades, you might not need your totems as much.}
Jace heard her clicking away like mad and waited for her to pull up more information. {Okay, here it is. You are now Stonekin, and, like Draya, you get stone-specific abilities every five levels starting at zero. At level 19, you have four of them. The first is Stone Flesh, which makes you resistant to slashing and piercing attacks. At your current level, you have 75% resistance from attacks by characters at or below your level. At 20, you’ll get 100% resistance, and someone will have to be at a higher level than you to do any damage.
{Next, you have Animate Stone. This allows you to control the rocks around you. The level to which you are able to do this depends on how much mana you spend. Since most people have limitations, they use this ability to start landslides or have stalagmites stab at their enemies. With your mana pool, the sky’s the limit.}
Jace found this spell and activated it. Standing near the center of his large, domed entry hall, he reached out with an open palm and slowly curled his fingers into a bowl shape. Before him, five slender stone pillars rose from the floor, following the movements of his orc digits. Jace snapped his hand closed into a fist, and the stalagmites collapsed inward into a tight boulder several feet across. He heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him and assumed Draya and the others were watching him explore his new powers.
{Yes,} Gracie said. {Very cool. You also have Granite Strength, which allows you to increase your Strength depending on how much stone is around you. In a mountain like this, you could raise it by 10. On a gravel road, you might be able to increase it by 1 or 2.}
Jace found this spell and noticed that he had a +3 permanent bonus to it since his stone nature ensured he was always touching stone. This meant he could increase his strength by at least three, even if he stood on a wooden floor.
{Finally, you have Mountainous Size. This lets you draw on nearby stone to increase your stature. This will also increase your strength and constitution slightly and give you a massive bonus against enemies smaller than you. They will need to spend multiple criticals to double damage, and characters like Esther won’t be able to Grapple you as easily.}
Again, Jace saw he had a permanent bonus to this spell and saw he could increase his height to 12 feet regardless of his environment. With adequate stone, he could grow to the full height of his current level, 19 feet. He chose not to test this now.
{But the best thing,} Gracie continued, {is that at level 20, you can transform into a stone elemental to gain all these bonuses at once, and nothing short of a dragon or a level 40 mage could hurt you.}
“While I was asleep,” Jace said. “I got a mandatory quest to go fight a demon in a monastery. It is located in the mountains. How close am I to 20?”
{Still a ways off,} Gracie said. {You’ll need to kill a ton of minions or a few more PCs to advance.} She paused. {Oh, you got a mandatory quest. I was wondering when that would happen.}
“Yes,” Jace replied. “My god said he was surprised you hadn’t mentioned it to me before. Care to explain?”
{It is the downside to serving a deity,} she said. {Without them, everyone would serve a god since the bonuses are so great. Periodically, you are sent on mandatory missions. If you delay performing them, you start to lose your divine bonuses, and eventually, they turn into banes. Each quest is different and created from various templates based on the god you serve. They offer few, if any, experience points outside of the monsters you might kill, but, more critically, no walkthroughs exist for them. There are guides on what you can expect and whole forums for each god where players recount the mandatory quests they’ve been on, but to date, no one has ever seen one happen more than once.}
“What’s the issue with that?”
Gracie laughed. {You keep forgetting how normal people play this game. You march into uncharted waters with reckless abandon constantly, expecting you’ll survive anything. Other players don’t do that. They usually only play modules with extensive walkthroughs telling them everything they need to do. Even the adventurous players who attempt to pass modules no one has yet have all the information from the failed attempts. When it comes to mandatory quests, no one knows anything, and everyone walks in blind. From what I can tell, few players die from them, but it does happen, and it happens more frequently than players dying from MIMs with extensive guides.}
“So I should be worried about this quest?” Jace asked.
Again, Gracie laughed. {No more than any of these other crazy missions you go on. I’m sure your god will test you, but I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Did he give you a time frame?}
“He said I could finish our current mission first, which is good. It will let me get used to my new powers.” He started reaching out to the stone again when a voice from behind interrupted him.
“How dost thou like it?”
Jace turned to look back toward Gromphy’s lab and the collection of characters watching him explore his new settings. His eyes found the goblin standing at the front of the crowd. “It is amazing,” Jace said. “Thank you very much. I am in your debt.”
“Bah,” the crafter said, waving his hand in dismissal. “I am still in thine. Thou hast provided me with more. . .” it sounded like his voice got choked up, and he faked a cough to mask it.
Psycho came to his rescue. “What next? Do we have another mission to aid Esther? Do we have a good opportunity to test out your new abilities?”
“We have one more,” Jace said. “However, it needs approval yet.” His voice turned inward. “Gracie, do we have authorization from the higher-ups to proceed? Or are they going to play hardball?”
{It’s late here,} Gracie said. {I haven’t heard anything. Let me make a few calls. Feed your people lunch, and I should have an answer for you when you're done.}
Jace nodded and suggested a meal to his party. Esther vociferously agreed to the plan.