“You can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
I strutted through the potion lab, up and down the thin passage like a red-carpet show. Flasks bubbled, mixtures spat, and Otto sat on his stool while he ruined my plans.
“It won’t work. Ya can’t just chug endless potions and call it a day. Like your abilities, these bad boys have cooldowns.”
He passed me an extra potion, the same as before. There was another that caught my eye, an aqua-coloured creation with tiny bubbles constantly ascending to the cork stopper.
“How long? And can you counteract the cooldown by making the effects last longer?”
My bartender-cum-alchemist shrugged his shoulders, stirring three solutions while his spare tentacles diced up ingredients and completed other chores.
“A couple hours maybe? I haven’t tried. And yes, you can, but you’ll need either a better alchemist, or better ingredients. Possibly both.”
“Great. I’ll ask the Asterians if they’d be willing to help out.”
“Good luck with that.”
I was laying low after the attack, giving things a chance to die down. Each minute I waited was another one lost, but players from the other side were dropping out, too. This early in the year, people were counting the days, and every one of them counted. Standing around playing dress-up just wasn’t worth the potential reward.
So, I was left with a conundrum. I could choose the brute-force method — going on a rampage and ruthlessly destroying anything in blue and white — or I could wait two and a half days until the tie-breaker fight and hope that whoever I was pitted against wasn’t an eight-foot ungodly creature with a broadsword bigger than me and a desire to use it.
Of course, if I were to ‘liberate’ Bill’s Yard from the Royal Army of Asteroth, I’d probably have to face them down regardless. It would be nice to get the jump on them though, which made the ‘kill-all-rampage’ more desirable.
Plus, the EXP would be nice.
At this point, I couldn’t really make the excuse of ‘Mindless killing isn’t my thing’, because I’d decimated enough troops to level up about five times, clocking in at around two hundred kills, minimum. I called it desperation, but a different word was edging its way into my mind.
Acclimatization.
I didn’t hesitate anymore. The feeling of my spear plunging into a soldier’s gut was satisfying, not horrifying. I was proud to say that I didn’t look forward to killing other players, but was it just because players didn’t reward me with EXP?
Either way, I had to make a choice.
“Say, Otto, you got anything that could make me invisible?”
“Not unless you happened to have some spare {Dissolutaur Jelly}. Wouldn’t recommend going close enough to one to get any. Awful louts, I hear.”
“Wait, {Dissolutaur Jelly}? Like this?”
I opened my Inventory and selected the Jelly I’d collected in the dungeon with Claire. Getting things out of my Inventory was easy, but I kept forgetting to check the Options or ask Annette how to get things back in.
“Blimey! Don’t sit it on the table, it’ll burn right through!”
Otto grabbed two flat blades and juggled the wiggling mass back and forth, building up momentum before tossing it into a steel pot. Sure enough, the jelly had eaten into the wooden bench, leaving a shallow depression about the size of a dinner bowl.
“Shit! Sorry Otto, I'd forgotten that it does that. Hope the table’s alright.”
It clearly wasn’t, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was busy adding ingredients to the pot, along with a liquid that looked and smelled like vegetable stock.
He noticed me watching and held up the liquid.
“For the taste. Because of the {Dissolutaur Jelly}, the potion can be a little…tart.”
I’d forgotten I had to actually drink the thing that just bored its way through a table in half a second.
Otto handed me a few more potions, explained their purpose, then shooed me away. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next, so I stalled for a while by opening my Messages and selecting Joey Abermeyer.
[Hey man, you busy?]
[Depends if you’re gunna go off at me like last time.]
He had a point, but I was pretty sure my actions were justified.
[Ha ha. Just wondering if you’d be keen to catch up at some point?]
[‘Keen’ probably isn’t the word, but sure. A certain Government Report suggested you might be busy for the next few days?]
[You’d be surprised. If you pick a time, I’ll be there.]
[I’ll talk to Dad.]
‘Talking to Dad’ was Joey-code for not likely, but asking was all I could do. There was a glimmer of hope.
For now, my best bet was going on a sixty-hour rampage and praying that I didn’t slip up. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but the EXP gain from the NPC soldiers wasn’t to be laughed at. Of course, neither was the 400,000 EXP from completing the quest, but it was starting to stretch further and further from my grasp.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I had some spare skill points, so I lumped them into Defence. Against the swarms, no amount of Agility would save me, not at such close range.
Attributable Stat Points: (0)(-5)
Strength (10) (+0)
Defence (15) (+5)
Vitality (5) (+0)
Affinity (0) (+0)
Restoration (0) (+0)
Endurance (4) (+0)
Agility (11) (+0)
Next up was skills. I had no idea what I was looking for, but it didn’t hurt to check things out once in a while. I’d scraped together two tokens, which would grant me a full roster of options.
Warrior’s Rage I (Passive)
Upon enemy kill, deal 4% increased Damage for 20 seconds. Refreshes with each kill. Max Stack: 25.
Warrior’s Wrath I (Passive)
Upon enemy kill, increase Agility by 4% for 20 seconds. Refreshes with each kill. Max Stack: 25.
Dash III (Ability)
Dash distance increase greatly. 2-minute cooldown.
Shield Bearer II (Passive)
Increase strength of all shields by 25%. Shield durability replenished.
The [Shield Bearer II] skill taunted me, despite giving in and taking its predecessor during the [Dark Naga] boss fight. It might’ve been a mistake — the system probably thought I liked the skill.
The [Dash III] upgrade would be nice, though another skill caught my eye.
[Warrior’s Wrath I].
I’d been thinking of Agility in the typical way, picturing someone darting left and right in quick succession, doing step-ups at lightning pace. But there was a different side to Agility, too.
Dexterity.
Higher Agility meant I could hit faster, and with a spear that one-hit basically everything it encountered, that was what I needed.
I chided myself for my idiocy, immediately regretting placing my spare points into Defence. I could weather a few cuts and grazes from the Asterian foot soldiers, but if I found myself pitted against a Commander or Sentinel, maybe even a reasonably adept Captain, they’d be going for a lot more than a measly flesh wound.
What’s done was done. I had to move forward, with increased dexterity or not.
I acquired my new skill and began the hunt.
The fringes of the town were the most sparsely defended, and it was here that I began my work. The rooftops provided the best cover, allowing me to see out over the broken town, tainted by destruction. It used to be monotone, a constant brown that made the place about as interesting to look at as a lump of dough. Now, poisoned by Asterian soldiers, it had the black of gangrene plastered on every building, slowly creeping up pillars and across beams as spot fires ignited and died out, an endless cycle until all the fuel burnt to ashes.
My blue and white targets stood out against the backdrop they’d created, making them all too easy to locate. I got into a rhythm, leaping in on unsuspecting foes, doing away with them, then disappearing before a horn could be sounded or the bodies found. Like monsters, they disappeared over time, but it took longer, and I found myself dragging defeated Asterians into ditches and alleys.
{You have defeated a Level 28 Asterian Swordsman.}{+130 EXP}
{You have defeated a Level 29 Asterian Swordsman.}{+136 EXP}
{You have defeated a Level 32 Asterian Swordsman.}{+154 EXP}
{You have defeated a Level 42 Asterian Captain.}{+320 EXP}
My second Captain kill went much smoother. He fought back about as much as a punching bag might, which made slipping my spear into a gap in his armour all that much easier.
After a couple of hours of admittedly mindless slaughter, I’d gained three levels, and upgraded [Warrior’s Wrath]. The bitter feeling hadn’t completely gone away, not helped by the fact that —had I not completed Marge’s quest already — any of these soldiers could have been Braith.
How many of the [Asterian Swordsmen] had anxious NPC parents back at Asteroth? How many quests could I have received to find lost sons and daughters if I hadn’t killed them here?
If I was to save the Yard, I’d never find out.
As I crept closer to the centre of town, my domain expanded. The outer rings of the Yard were my territory, and it was death to those who set foot there.
The density of soldiers increased as I went deeper, and so did the number of players. My EXP gain fell dramatically as I pushed closer and closer to the trading hub and larger shops and stalls. The few NPC soldiers were of higher level than their earlier counterparts, but it didn’t make up for the fact that killing players left me with no reward whatsoever.
At last, the groups became too large for me to achieve any level of stealth. The horn was blown.
[Dash] [Warrior’s Wrath] [Tsunami Strike]
I’d developed a new combo. By activating [Warrior’s Wrath] directly before I detonated [Tsunami Strike], I could almost always achieve the maximum ‘stack’ of 25. With a 100% increase in Agility, my spear lashed out and bit soldiers faster than the lot of them could swipe at me.
To bolster the combo even higher, I put all the points from levelling up into Agility. The change was immediate, and drastic. Saying I had a spring in my step didn’t cut it — it felt closer to rocket boots.
I dodged, ducked, and dived between crowds, activating abilities as I needed them. The horn only served to bring me more prey and EXP, with the NPCs flowing in while the players stayed back. The real people made the right decision — choosing not to concern themselves with the sea of soldiers being culled by a semi-naked [Hoplite] and his glass spear.
Write an article about this, eh?
For fun, I tried Esko’s overhand stance that he showed me the previous evening. Instantly, my opponents backed away, expecting a crushing ability to flow out from my spear. I took the opportunity to chug another of the potions that would refresh my abilities.
[Dash] [Warrior’s Wrath] [Tsunami Strike]
It was akin to bowling at this point, the soldiers falling like pins with every thrust. I considered downing the other two potions Otto had left me with, but I doubted he’d be happy for me to throw away his hard work on a fight as easy as this.
I could see the plaza now, along with the sad remains of my courier stall. I’d had big plans for it — upsizing and relocating closer to the fast-travel zone. With enough Strength, I could deliver large packages, and with employees I might’ve raked in enough krad to pay back my monstrous amount of debt.
If there was still someone to pay it back to...
The weapons shop had burnt along with everything else, but I’d never checked to see if the storekeeper had survived. Raoth and Purg would’ve fought back, surely, but could the two of them really hold back the Asterian Army?
I didn’t like their chances.
I split from the battle, leaving the soldiers stunned as I stopped mid-thrust and gave back a life I could’ve taken. The weapons shop was more important.
If they’d discovered the secret room where those unimaginably expensive armour sets were, I was in trouble.
Tren hadn’t even shown me all the weapons — only those within my price range. If there was another like {The Sentinel Spear}, one that could do absurd damage regardless of where it struck, even the most junior of players could become a powerhouse.
And I’d have to face them in a little over two days, assuming I didn’t give in to my prior thought and just lay down in the plaza with my armour off.
I reached the weapons shop, breathing a sigh of relief when I noticed just one guard outside the shop. I broke out into the street, sprinting straight for him.
Then I saw the weapon in his hand.
{Ayari’s Bliss}.