by Pavel Kornev
Damage: 115
Bleeding wound! Additional damage: 2... 2...
The hound whined loudly and quickly bounded aside. One of its paws was damaged, but then it still easily dodged my next strike and flew through the air in a high leap. I had no time to parry, so I protected my neck with a raised shoulder.
Its terrible fangs bit into my flesh and the beast hung upon me, pulling me down to the ground. There was no chance to use a two-handed sword in this situation, so I let go of the hilt and smashed my fist into its side, but to no avail.
The hound began to shake its head, worrying at my wounds, and then I surprised myself by biting into its neck. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to bite through its coarse and thick coat of fur and my mouth was full of hot blood in an instant.
Fearsome Bite! Damage: 30
Bleeding wound! Additional damage: 5
Poisoning! Additional damage: 5
Health: +30 [494/504]
Stamina: +30 [462/462]
The hound’s jaws went slack and the hound let go of me and leapt away. Plenty of blood was pouring from its lacerated side and pumping out of the deep wound on its neck. I spat out the chunk of flesh that I had torn from the beast and picked up my sword. The leader jumped, but the undulating blade caught it in its flight and brought it down to the ground.
The Dog Pack Leader has been killed!
Experience: +50 [2079/2500] +50 [2123/2500]
Undead: You have gained a level!
I exhaled loudly and went over to the roadside, sitting down in the high grass, completely out of strength. When the level rose, the Fearsome Bite skill got automatically upgraded and I spent a while thinking before I spent the free stat point to raise my Perception. This attribute wasn’t just used to find traps and secret places but also affected the accuracy of attacks and the probability of causing critical damage.
The holes that the fangs left in my shoulder were still there, so I set off towards the village without much hesitation, deciding that I wanted to get the chainmail hauberk back no matter what. I found the armor at the location of my previous battle and heard the barking of dogs by the gates as soon as I put it on.
I flinched with surprise and stepped towards the forest, but then I immediately stopped. Only two dogs ran out of the open gates — a constantly barking bitch and a hound that was just a little bigger than her.
Would I manage? It would be easy!
The barking bitch came out ahead and ran onto the point of the blade by herself. The hound tried to attack my legs, but my Dodge skill saved me. I moved aside just in time and then sliced across its spine with all my strength, cutting it in half.
Both down!
I stepped towards the forest, but then I stopped and looked at the village thoughtfully.
Why don’t I clear it out? The experience will definitely come in handy and I can look through the possessions of the dead. If they tear me apart it’s no problem. The skull is hidden in the forest. I set off towards the open gates with determination.
THANKFULLY, the pack had scattered and the dogs were separated, so they attacked when they could instead of as a group. I only had some bother with a shaggy wolfdog, while the others were no problem to dispatch. I even earned the Dog Slayer Grade 3 achievement by the end of the massacre. It didn’t give me any particular advantages, only allowing me to find the most vulnerable parts of four-legged victims. However, something that was a trifle for high level players could be quite a bit of help for my dead rogue...
3
IT WAS NEARLY MORNING by the time I left the village. I looked through all of the houses first, but I didn’t have much loot to show for it. I only found a couple of gold coins and five silver coins as well as a handful of small change. I also took a threatening looking kitchen knife. The damage it caused was not that impressive, but if one of my hands was disabled and I couldn’t use the flamberge the knife would be easy to handle.
The rain had already stopped at night and the low clouds started to disperse. I crossed the field in the twilight, dug out the buried skull and went deep into the forest. I walked fast, wanting to make the time I’d lost with the dogs back, so my Stamina soon started to fall. This forced me to lower my pace.
When I reached a crossroads I came across a figure in a dark cloak, so I took the flamberge off my shoulder and slid into stealth mode, but my worries turned out to be unfounded. A blind preacher stood amidst the forest with a clay cup for donations. This was a strange place to collect alms, but this was just a game, wasn’t it?
However, that was also the difference, as a lot of things in a game are not what they seem to be at first glance...
I carefully approached so the preacher hadn’t noticed the presence of another in some amazing way.
“The times of strife are coming!” he announced hoarsely. “Death has spread her black wings over the world! The prophecy of the return of the Kingdom of the Dead is coming true and none can escape the wrath of the Master of the Tower of Decay!”
I slowed down and asked the preacher, “What do you know of the Kingdom of the Dead?”
Now that my main class was opened again, the skill of human speech had returned to me and I doubted that the blind man could determine that I was a dead man by ear.
“The Kingdom of the Dead is born of love and hate! Once upon a time, the Lord of the tallest Tower of Power lost his wife and firstborn in childbirth and neither Dark nor Light could help him in his plight. For Light and Dark are parts of one whole, which is called Order and death is an essential part of the universe. Only Chaos answered the call of the Lord, but the gifts of that force always have a double bottom. The Scroll of Rebirth could only bring one to life, either the wife or the son. That is when the Lord declared that he’d banished Death from his lands! But where there is no death, there is no life either. His subjects became undead!”
I wasn’t interested in a lecture about the history made up by the game plot writers, so I interrupted the preacher and immediately changed to the main thing that interested me.
“Where is the Kingdom of the Dead?”
The blind man seemed not to hear the question.
“The Lord wanted to free the whole world from death,” he continued, carefully going through the plot line, “and then the Gods of Light and Dark had to unite to banish the forces he had called forth. The Kingdom of the Dead was drowned, but the spire of the Tower of Decay has already broken the surface of the Lake of Glory, which has become shallow.”
“The Lake of Glory? Where can I find it?”
Instead of answering, the preacher rattled the coins at the bottom of the cup. There was nothing I could do but throw a copper coin there.
Blessing: Immunity
“Where can I find the Lake of Glory?” I repeated my question.
“The days of strife are nigh!” the blind man started again. “Death has spread her gray wings above the world! The prophecy of the return of the Kingdom of the Dead is coming true!”
I didn’t listen to his tale for a second time, cursed and strode away. The road twisted between the high trees and sunk in the heavy shadows. As soon as I reached an open space, the rays of the sun expanding above the horizon found their way under my hood and slashed at my eyes. My Perception immediately dropped. The world shrunk to a few hundred feet as my burnt skin started to smoke.
My flesh eater’s Health didn’t suffer from the sunlight, but my Stamina immediately started to decrease. I covered my face with my hand and returned to the shade of the trees.
Until the sun rises properly and the sunlight stops reaching under my hood, I’d never cross the cornfield. I was lucky that the dogs hadn’t torn my cloak to shreds! Only two points of Durability remained...
I didn’t waste time at the edge of the forest and trudged back the way I’d come along the road. I reached the crossroads with the preacher and turned in the other direction, but the sun had risen above the trees and started to get to me there as well. Even though its rays didn’t g
et under the hood and burn away my Stamina, the substantial Perception penalty made a dead rogue as blind as a mole. I had to leave the road for a narrow path which went to and fro under the thick crowns of the trees. That’s when I got some relief.
The path led me to a sun-drenched clearing as it got closer to midday, so I decided to have a rest and let my Stamina restore itself as it had firmly established itself in the yellow zone by that time. A grassy mound at the edge of the clearing attracted my attention. I walked around it and saw that it was a dark and damp pit-house.
I pulled my head into my shoulders so that I ‘d not hit the logs of the roof and climbed into the underground shelter. I looked around its bare contents — a table, a bench and a bed hammered together out of thick planks and that was it. There was also a fireplace made from rocks in the corner and a small chest by the table, which was unfortunately empty.
It didn’t look anything like a forest bandit hideout and looked more like the home of a hermit. Perhaps it was that blind preacher’s?
The bed was covered in some sort of suspicious rags, which was why I decided against lying down on it and spread myself along the wide bench. I felt no need to do so, but it just seemed that my Stamina would be restored a little faster for some reason that way.
I decided to use the time wisely and opened a window with the game forums to study the news about the coming expansion, but didn’t find out anything new about the location of the Kingdom of the Dead. However, there were constant mentions of the Lake of Glory. That would’ve been good, but this body of water was nowhere to be seen on the map. Those on both the side of light and dark were lost in their theories on that account.
Was that bad? Well, it wasn’t good, that’s for sure.
Still, I had time to level my character. According to the open statistics, the overwhelming majority of active players was between levels thirty and seventy. They could put paid to my dead rogue easy as pie. It would be good to find an appropriate place and carry out a little genocide of the local fauna.
I GOT UP off the bench when the sun started to set towards the horizon. The light coming from outside dimmed and deep shadows extended from the trees. I stopped in the entryway for a moment and carefully looked at the nearby bushes and then stepped aside. As soon as I did that, I heard an unpleasant chuckle from the top of the mound.
I flinched in surprise and spun around, taking the flamberge off my shoulder. The figure of a man seemed to be cut out of a piece of darkness with the bright sky as the background, but that didn’t stop me from recognizing him.
Garth Deathblade! He was already at level 17!
When had he had the time to level up?
“Thought you’d run away?” the white-haired necromancer asked mockingly, the air around him sparkling with the blessing he had recently received. “No one has ever escaped me yet! Especially an undead scumbag!”
“Get lost!” I retorted.
Garth just laughed and waved his hand. Through bitter experience, he didn’t try to attack me with death magic this time around and used the Summon Undead spell. The earth started to pucker and move, as skeletons climbed out, tearing through the turf with their clawed hands. One, two, three...
Eight! There’d be eight of them, one creature for each of the necromancer’s levels!
Even though any remotely accurate hit would easily turn any skeleton into a pile of bones, a gang of the things under the control of a necromancer could easily turn me into a piece of battered meat.
I retreated towards the forest, but Garth predicted this move and immediately cast a Quickening spell on his minions, immediately cutting off any hope of escape. They would catch up with me!
So I didn’t run. Instead, I slashed the wavy blade into the skull of the nearest skeleton and broke it in half, smashed another to the side with the hilt and jumped into the bushes. The game log exploded with messages about the damage I received and my health fell almost by half, but I managed to escape being surrounded — all that the skeletons got was some torn pieces of my cloak.
The minions of the necromancer quickly followed, but I’d already activated stealth mode, The skeletons had no supernatural power of detection, so they immediately lost sight of me and started to run through the bushes.
Garth was still there. I couldn’t maintain stealth mode for that long because that skill took my Energy too quickly and the necromancer would never give up looking for me. That was the problem...
A confused Garth ran down the hill and broke into the thicket. The necromancer had probably focused on raising his Intelligence, but he could also have raised his perception, so I hid behind a hazelnut tree.
Garth didn’t notice me. He looked around and angrily shouted, “I’ll still find you, you bastard! You won’t get away! You will die, you scum! Die!”
The furious necromancer turned around and walked back to the clearing, angrily breaking off the branches that were getting in his way. I silently went behind him and followed him. My hands itched to use the flamberge, but there was still a risk of catching the long blade on a random branch when swinging it, so I had to choose an opportune moment. It was only when Garth entered the clearing that I sped and up slashed down with my double handed sword at the necromancer with full force. The wavy blade went into his body unexpectedly easily, slicing through his collarbone and several ribs, getting stuck fast in his chest.
Garth’s clothing turned the color of blood, as he made choking sounds, trembled and fell on the grass. The skeletons that were following their master fell apart in a rain of bones.
He was done!
I did gather loot this time, so I was soon trying on a nearly new necromancer’s robe instead of my cloak and it wasn’t even too soaked with blood. It didn’t provide any armor and I didn’t need the death magic damage bonus, but it had a deep hood which seemed like it was especially made for protecting my face from the burning rays of the sun.
I also took the money. Garth was now definitely a mortal enemy and anything goes when fighting such foes.
He was so cheap that he’d only been promised fifty thousand...
4
I DIDN’T SPEND too long by the pit-house. The sun didn’t shine so strongly now and the necromancer could return. He’d probably been taken to the closest Tower of Power for resurrection, but what if Garth had spent money on a portable altar? It’s something he would do.
Having decided to make my tracks harder to follow I didn’t follow the path, but instead returned to the road and followed it wherever it would take me. I walked for two or three hours, getting to the middle of nowhere and even started to feel a bit sorry for my choice. However, I didn’t have the right character to go into the cities and villages. They’d cut me to pieces.
This was when I really thought of what to do next. Ideally, I should base myself somewhere in the forest and level myself by killing some local animals, but then the stubborn necromancer would be sure to find me. I didn’t know what Garth would think of next time, but I was sure he wouldn’t give up on his attempts to get my skull.
Understanding this fact made me no less worried than the impossibility of quitting the game. At the end of the day, I had a vague but real chance of getting out using the Scroll of Rebirth, while I could never get rid of the necromancer no matter how much I wanted to. We were all immortal here!
The forest became full of twilight and the evening cool came to replace the heat of the day. Animals got out of the way of a deadman before I reached them, while I hurried to get as far away from the location of my fight with the necromancer and didn’t waste time on tracking them. I earned fifty points of experience only once, when I cut down a rabid wolf.
The flamberge showed itself from the best side again — I managed to attack the beast just before it struck, so the animal didn’t even have the time to bite me.
I only had to have a little more experience to increase the level of the Rogue, so I started to think about which of the skills to increase — Dodge or Stealth. There w
as no point in developing anything else.
What sort of burglar could I be with my level of Intelligence and Perception? And what sort of pickpocket? Who would I steal from, the dead? I also had no intention of choosing a one handed weapon as my main yet. Even though my Agility had risen, the focus of rogues was on short blades and critical hits, and the chance to notice a vulnerable area depended exclusively on the level of Perception.
Everything was rather sad with Perception. I did intend to get it up to at least 10, but gradually as a result of my dead side, while planning to increase Agility and Strength when the rogue achieved new levels. I had great Constitution anyway, while Intelligence would have to be left at the current level. That wouldn’t be that good in terms of Energy, but there was nothing that could be done here — it was unrealistic to raise all of the stats.
While I was deep in thought, I almost entered a crossroads between two forest roads, but I noticed green smoke floating over the ground just in time and went into the thickness of the forest. I sat down beneath a wide-crowned pine tree and started to think about what to do. Should I go around the crossroads or should I investigate what was going on?
Energy did get restored by itself, unlike Stamina, so I really didn’t want to spend it, but it felt too risky to just thoughtlessly plough on ahead. I hid the enchanted skull in a tree hollow inside a dried out oak, activated stealth mode and moved towards the crossroads, but immediately retreated as soon as I glanced out of the bushes at the roadside.
I was lucky enough to have come across an Order of the Fiery Hand roadblock.
I really was lucky, as the fire at the crossroads was being tended by standard warriors and they didn’t have any player paladins or high-level NPCs with them. Otherwise they were bound to have felt the presence of an undead...