Three paces later, Val came to an abrupt halt. ‘Why are you limping?’
I stared blankly back at her, and then gestured to the three wolf carcasses behind me.
Val’s furrowed brow suggested that the confusion remained.
‘They… attacked me? Dug their claws in?’
‘And that hurt?’
‘Hello? Level three? Well, level four now. Yeah, wolf claws are gonna hurt.’
‘Ugggh…’ Val said, dropping her shoulders and rolling her head backwards like a sulky teenager. ‘Come on, then.’
‘What?’
‘Come on, then,’ she said again. ‘Let me sort you out.’
‘Oh, so you can heal too, can you?’
‘What, jealous?’ Val replied, and continued before I had a chance to deny it. ‘Healing? Sure. A little. Just enough to get rid of a bad hangover, really, but good enough for some light wounds, too.’ She placed her hands on me, her touch surprisingly soft for someone who didn’t seem to worry about getting into scraps.
A warm, light yellow glow spread around my wounds, and through the mild itchiness I could feel the gashes close, and the skin regrow.
She tapped the nearest wound—or, rather where the wound had been. ‘Very nice work.’
‘If you do say so yourself.’
‘I do.’
With that, she continued walking, leading us onward to Plainside, and away from the setting sun. I let the unseasonably warm breeze wash over me, lifting with it the aromas of the region’s forest, and then concentrated my attention to the minimised notifications.
Knifework increased to level 4!
Knifework increased to level 5!
Base Points gained — +2 DEX, +2 STR, +4 Free Points (VIT/DEX/STR)
These four free points I would come back to later. Normally, I’d invest them straight away, but in this particular circumstance there was something else worth doing first—to know exactly where my points would be best invested.
Ability selection unlocked
Select an ability from the list below:
Option 1: Stab (Knifework) — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR].
It was a basic skill, sure, but that would have been more than handy in that fight with the wolves. And it was another ability that scaled on Strength, too, as well as Slice. If I chose to focus my base point investment into this stat then this might be the way to go, but I couldn’t shake the idea that I wanted to focus on Dexterity more this time around, and build up my Stamina more. I minimised this option and moved onto the next.
Option 2: Throw (Knifework) — Throw blades at great speed towards your enemy. Damage scales with [DEX].
It was another uninspiring one—I was secretly hoping at this point that I’d have fulfilled some special condition to unlock a hidden, more advanced, ability. But when would that have happened? The only other skill I really had was Identification, with Stealth also barely unlocked. At least this one scaled with Dexterity, and if I wanted to go this route, it might be an option. It’d give me some range, too, meaning that I wouldn’t have to get right in my enemies’ faces. That would have kept me well out of reach of those wolves’ snapping jaws, at least for a few moments…
I turned my attention back to the notifications and brought up the third and final option.
Hidden condition met! Alternative ability choice unlocked.
Option 3: Execution (Knifework) [Requires: ‘Stealth’ skill unlocked]— Attack a target while undetected for +100% damage.
Oh, hey! I did get one hidden option after all. Sure, it was one I'd been given the choice of last time around—stealth and knifework did go hand-in-hand, to an extent, after all—but it was a nice option. It didn’t scale with any of my base points, was the downside, and after a while even that +100% bonus wouldn’t be enough to counter that… Besides, it was an ability I’d unlocked last time around, and in order for it to be useful, I’d had to upgrade it to Execution II and Execution III at future ability selection points. Did I really want to miss out on other abilities because I was constantly upgrading this one?
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Though my gut reaction was to pick the hidden ability choice—it often was the most exciting—I pulled up the first two options instead. If I was going to train up from scratch, then chances were that I was going to be fighting a lot of low level beasts. There was only one of these ability choices that gave me a larger advantage in those circumstances. With some hesitation, I picked option 1.
Ability unlocked — Stab
Stab (Knifework) — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR].
And then, there were the base points to accept. Now that I knew I was picking Stab, there was an obvious choice out of Vitality, Dexterity, and Strength. I placed all four free points into Strength.
This was a whole new me indeed—the last me would’ve gone hard into execute, adding the free points into Vitality on the basis that more health points were always good. But what was the point in surviving for longer if you couldn’t do any meaningful damage? I might have got out of some fights with fewer scrapes if I’d thought this way in the past…
With a new ability registered, I closed the notifications and concentrated on keeping up with a hurrying Val. At the speed she was going, we’d get to Plainside before nightfall, no problem.
* * *
It was nightfall by the time we reached Plainside.
I don’t really know how that happened; I thought we had plenty of time, and I might have even slowed us down some. Val didn’t seem too upset about this, though—all I received was a dirty look as the sun faded, and no cutting remark—but perhaps that had much to do with the sight before us.
Plainside was charred.
“Charred” might have been an understatement. I knew that the Player and his two accomplices had set the town alight, but I hadn’t until now realised the sheer scale of the devastation. Not a building was untouched—those at the outskirts of town just as levelled as those around the Collector’s mansion; the fire had spared nothing. Plainside, once a bustling stop on the journey to the Badlands in the east, was truly quiet for the first time in living memory. Not a single being stirred amongst the remnants.
‘Where are…’ Val started.
‘The bodies,’ I finished; the question had been weighing on my mind, too.
Brow furrowed, we trudged further into town, and the answer soon became clear.
In the centre of the town square was a large patch of freshly patched dirt, two shovels stuck into the ground at one side as though forming a makeshift gravestone.
‘Survivors?’ Val asked.
‘Or good samaritans,’ I replied. ‘Plenty of people pass through here, on the way to the Badlands. Used to, at least.’
Val nodded thoughtfully, staring on at the unpacked dirt of the mass grave. I felt my legs begin to buckle beneath me as I watched her, and took a seat on what had once been the town square’s low stone wall.
‘Do you remember those wolves, back there?’ Val said.
‘It was literally this morning. Yeah, I remember.’
‘How guilty do you feel for killing them?’
This question caught me by surprise, wrenching my attention from the mass grave. ‘They were wild animals, Val. I have sympathies, sure, but I’m not gonna wrestle with some grand moral quandary over whether I have a right to defend myself. If I’d sought them out, maybe that’s even a question, but in that scenario…’
‘Wild animals,’ Val repeated.
‘Am I wrong to call them that?’
‘Not at all. They’re animals. They’re undomesticated. The definition fits. But what you’re really saying with that label is that they’re below you. On the food chain, or in society, or in the great hierarchy of existence. Right?’
‘...Sure?’
‘Look at the ground. How many bodies do you think are in there? How big a town was Plainside?’
It wasn’t a matter I wanted to dwell on, and I answered quickly. ‘A hundred people. Maybe two. Where are you going with this?’
‘Your Player slaughtered two hundred wild animals.’
I felt my blood boil. Couldn’t help it. To compare what the Player had done to what—
‘That’s how this Player sees them,’ Val hurried to clarify. ‘How they see us. As lower than them. As “wild animals”. As pests. That’s how they see us, whether they act like it or not.’
The town fell silent around us but for the howls of distant wolves.
Val was right, of course. Though the social contract of Alterra meant that nobody—nobody normal—would ever say such a thing, the Players had rights that none of the rest of us did. They’d descended from the great Architects themselves, the creators and gods of our domain. We treated them as our saviours because, often, they were—slaying dragons and crumbling evil empires and disbanding terrifying cults. But even when they did such things—even when they were heroes—we knew they did it for themselves. To advance their skills. To collect their rewards. When was the last time a Player ever failed to accept a reward for such missions? These Players, they thought us lower than them, and it was only a matter of time before we grew too insignificant to each and every one of them.
‘Are you in?’ Val asked, without pulling her attention away from the grave.
I nodded, though she wouldn’t see me. ‘I’m in. Let’s kill this monster.’
"Styk"
Level 4 Peasant
Base Stats:
Vitality — 2
Intelligence — 5
Dexterity — 8
Strength — 13
Wisdom — 8
Charisma — 0
Skills:
Knifework — Level 5
Identification — Level 4
Stealth — Level 1
Abilities:
Slice (Knifework) — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].
Stab (Knifework) — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hinds and armour. Damage scales on [STR].
Basic Stealth Attack (Stealth) — Passive. 10% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.
Basic Identification (Identification) — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +400%