Conjuration – Level 13 – 85%
Abjuration – Level 13 – 72%
Weapons:
Unarmed Combat – Level 14 – 38%
Swords – Level 14 – 2%
Axes – Level 11 – 35%
Daggers – Level 12 – 73%
Other:
Stealth – Level 11 – 12%
Wordplay – Level 12 – 31%
Perception – Level 13 – 85%
I’m going to have to start specializing soon, I realized as I looked at my character sheet and noticed that my three main attributes, Strength, Agility, and Intelligence, were all reasonably balanced with regards to one another. I had done my best to try and keep them that way, at least for these early levels in the game, but with my next Class Skill Point available to me at level fifteen, I had to start thinking a bit more of how I was going to develop my playstyle.
I knew that no matter what, all three attributes would be important to me, but it was likely in my best interest to focus on one over the other. But with that being said, I had no idea which route appealed to me the most. Going a strength route would allow me to hit harder and wear heavier armor, but the tradeoff would have me sacrificing mobility. In comparison, going an agility route would raise my mobility to almost impossible to match levels, but would limit my raw damage output.
Then there was also the option of going into an almost pure caster build, and focusing on intelligence, like the one Mozter had shown. If I had a large enough mana pool, I could dump spells into people from near point-blank range and not have to worry as much about keeping up with them physically.
At least until I ran out of mana, I told myself grimly, remembering the nature of my Ætherwarping and unsure if I’d ever find a way to cure it. As useful as it would be to have a larger mana pool, if only for my own piece of mind, not being able to regenerate it naturally or being at risk of dying if I ever ran out didn’t make that path as appealing to me.
I let my thoughts wander for a while as Amaranth, Edanea, and I walked slowly across the plains in silence, my mind bouncing between what my future playstyle could be and going over the one point that had largely been forgotten during the meeting with Stanton. In her letter to Aldwin, Emilia had effectively divested herself from Aldford and given up any claim to the settlement, essentially recognizing the town as an independent entity, which was something that we had all wanted, but something that also had the side effect of withdrawing whatever protection her house had been able to offer.
Before learning that there could be potential spies in our midst and other Houses moving against us, I wouldn’t have even second-guessed her absolving Aldford of its debt and accepted it at face value. But knowing what I knew now, I wasn’t all that confident anymore. With my cynicism and paranoia working in overdrive, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more going on behind the scenes than she was willing to tell us.
You have no frame of reference for any of this, Marcus, an inner voice tried to tell me. It’s not like you took ‘Espionage 101’ back when you were still in school. That’s probably why the Queen assigned Stanton to us, likely to give us the basic grounding in what to look for and how to react.
Which forces us to trust a professional liar and killer, I mentally countered, making a note to myself to pick up some real-world material about the spy trade and medieval politics the next time I logged off. I had no idea if anything I read would even come close to applying to our current situation, but knowing myself, I’d feel better if my mind was occupied.
Shaking my head to pull myself out of my reverie, I was surprised to find that I had unconsciously pulled up my quest log, specifically the portion of it pertaining to the espionage quest that I had become all too familiar with in seeing over the last few days. Once again it hovered in my vision, full of information that was questionably useful at best and downright aggravating at worse.
Statecraft, Deception and Veracity!
After a particularly tense confrontation, Lord Stanton has revealed himself to be a House Denarius Agent, a spy directly in the employ of Queen Emilia. Proving his credentials with a letter from his mistress, the agent then went on to warn you that the other Houses have taken notice of Aldford and either already have, or are looking to insert their own agents into the town.
Writing off his past actions and Lazarus’s warning as an attempt to force any other agents to reveal themselves, Lord Stanton then went on to explain what he had learned of any other House Agents, mentioning that he has already detected and eliminated one during the bandit raid, but that the potential existed for there to be others hiding in Aldford.
Under orders from the Queen, Lord Stanton has been assigned to train those in Aldford in the arts of espionage and subterfuge, while ensuring that Aldford remains independent and free from any of the Eberian Noble Houses’ control. You aren’t sure what sort of politics is being played behind the scenes or if you can truly trust Lord Stanton and Queen Emilia, but for now, they appear to be on your side.
Or are they?
Discover any Agents in Aldford: 0/?
Pass Stanton’s Training: 0/?
Difficulty: Very Hard
Reward: Unknown
Penalty for Failure: Unknown
I was fairly confident that I was going to develop an ulcer the further I progressed down this espionage quest chain, if not in game, then certainly back in Reality. I had no idea what Stanton’s training would entail, or if I would be able to stomach what was bound to be a morally questionable experience. But for the sake of Aldford, I knew I had to try. Especially if I was serious in trying to follow through on my idea of founding an Adventurer led nation out here in the region. If I didn’t get a good grip on how to play the political game now, while I still could, I was more than likely going to regret it later.
“Is that them?” Edanea’s voice had me looking up from the ground I had fixated on, and spotting her hand pointing towards a slow-moving shape in the distance.
“That’s them,” I confirmed, following the woman’s hand and squinting, seeing the blurry shape resolve itself into a long flatbed wagon being pulled by a team of horses with several other people walking alongside it.
“Whew, you certainly have a lot of people in your guild,” Edanea replied with a note of surprise as we picked up our pace now that our goal was in sight.
“And always looking for more,” I told the Adventurer in what I hoped was a good-natured tone. “Feel free to mingle about today and see if you’re interested in joining. We have a pretty good group so far.”
“Hmm, I may do that,” Edanea said, thinking thoughtfully to herself as we covered the final distance between us and the guild, Constantine’s waving hand signaling me from his standing position on top of the wagon.
Letting the now rescued Adventurer move away from me as she went to join Cerril’s group walking alongside the wagon, I shifted my approach towards Constantine, seeing the rogue take a seat at the edge of the flatbed, his feet hanging over the side.
“Feeling better now that you’ve managed to blow off some steam?” Constantine asked me by way of greeting, stroking Amaranth as the big cat rushed past me and leaped onto the wagon, lying down beside the rogue and letting his paws hang off the edge. “Saw you picked up a stray too.”
“She was lost on the plains for the last couple days,” I replied, answering Constantine’s second question first while angling myself to keep pace with the wagon as it continued its steady trek eastward. “As for your first question, no, not really.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Constantine said sympathetically while glancing over at Edanea, who had since struck up a conversation with Cerril. “Also, that’s not bad for surviving out here alone.”
I shrugged at my friend while giving him a serious look. “You ever get that feeling where you’re over your head and just trying to stay afloat?”
“Pretty much ever since I fell out of my mother,” Constantine answered crudely, despite matching my star
e. “But that’s a natural state for me. The moment I feel that I finally ‘get’ something, I’m instantly bored and start screwing around looking for something else to do.”
“Hrm,” I grunted back at the rogue, knowing all too well what Constantine meant. Having grown up with him, ‘being bored’ often precluded an event that almost always ended up getting him or the both us in trouble.
“I take you mean more about everything that Stanton dumped on us today?” Constantine went onto ask.
“That’s a big part of it,” I replied, despite shaking my head at the question. “Léandre hasn’t come back yet either.”
“He’s only half a day late,” Constantine told me in an understanding tone. “And like you said, he has a hell of a long way to wind back the clock.”
“Assuming they were able to wind it back at all,” I countered, remembering what the man had told me. “His odds of living weren’t the best.”
“As opposed to the one-hundred percent chance nearly everyone else has to die?” Constantine shot back with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t borrow any more stress than you need to, Lyr. Sure Léandre may be late in coming back, but there could be ten thousand and one reasons explaining that. All of which still leave him alive.”
“You’re right,” I said with a sigh before continuing to walk along for a while in silence. “This wasn’t quite how I expected the day to unfold today though.”
“Well, you should start adjusting your expectations then, Lyr!” Constantine exclaimed, waving a hand at our surroundings. “We’re living in a fantasy world now! Who’s to say what will come our way next?”
“Maybe Aldwin is really an ancient dragon in disguise,” he said dramatically. “Or that tomorrow one of the moons will fall from the sky, or that Amaranth here will suddenly sprout wings and be able to fly.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at my familiar’s serious tone of voice while understanding what Constantine was getting at. “Amaranth says he’d prefer to have super speed over wings.”
“Smart,” the rogue agreed, moving to scratch the cat’s back. “Flying’s overrated.”
“I understand what you were getting at though,” I told Constantine. “We shouldn’t expect things to stay the same all the time, and to know that the game will throw us curve balls from time to time.”
“Exactly,” he acknowledged. “Could be a blessing that we find out this way from Stanton now, instead of later. I figure with all the Adventurers we’re looking to recruit, being a little cutthroat and manipulative may be the difference between getting our way and getting steamrolled.”
“I had a similar thought earlier,” I admitted. “I can’t help but cringe at what Stanton’s training is going to be like though. I’m not expecting it to be all roses and sunshine.”
“I don’t either, Lyrian,” Constantine agreed while holding up a hand. “But there’s one important thing to note.”
“Oh?” I asked, suddenly curious. “What’s that?”
“I’m not bored anymore.”
Chapter 25
“Great job, everyone!” I called out while looking over all the exhausted and sweaty guild members before me, each and every person having spent the last four hours helping load the jagged, fifteen-foot-long piece of dark metal onto the flatbed wagon. “Take a few minutes to rest up, and we’ll start the trek back.”
It had been a long and laborious process as we extricated the broken length of metal from inside the fallen tower, with more than a few mishaps and one outright near catastrophe marking our day. But at long last, our first recovered chunk of metal was finally secured to the wagon and ready to be taken back to Aldford, where I was sure we would no doubt face an entirely new set of challenges in unloading it.
At the moment though, that was a problem for the future and one I would be happy to tackle solving, now that I had a way to smelt the metal.
“Well,” Helix greeted me with a weary breath. “That was both harder, yet easssier than I was expecting.”
“And as easy as it’ll ever be,” Freya added tiredly as both she and Thorne moved to join us. “The other pieces are going to be even worse to recover. They’re buried too far into the ground to be easily pulled out. We’ll have to come back with a team and spend a day or two just digging.”
“I’m not looking forward to it either,” the dark-skinned dwarf added. “But let’s leave problems like that far off in the future; we can worry about them later. We still need to get ourselves back to Aldford first!”
“That we do,” I said, unable to disagree with Thorne’s sentiment. “Hopefully we can stretch this metal long enough so we won’t need to make a second trip anytime soon. It’s going to be one hell of a learning curve before any of us are able to craft things with it reliably though.”
“We sshall see,” Helix replied with a shrug of his large shoulders while inclining his head towards the solid hunk of metal sitting on the wagon. “We certainly have plenty to practice with.”
First nodding at the lizardman, I then turned my attention towards the Tower, seeing the burnt-out shell of what was once its roof littering the ground before it. The fire that I had set what seemed like a lifetime ago, having done a number on the fallen tower, devouring all the wood that had once been present in the structure as well as crushing all of the goblin huts below it when it had fallen free.
“Might as well get moving,” I said after a moment, my eyes landing on the blackened remains of the tiles that were once the roof of the Tower. “Hopefully we can be back before it gets too dark.”
“And hopefully we don’t get stuck,” Freya added, her eyes glancing down nervously at the wagon’s wheels. “This metal sure weights a lot.”
“Here’s to hoping,” I agreed, motioning towards the front of the wagon. “I’ll check on the horses, and make sure they’re ready to go. Might as well start getting the rest of the guild ready to move in the meantime.”
“I’ll be sure to tell them that the sssooner we get back, the sooner they can eat a hot meal and go to bed,” Helix replied with a chuckle. “They may just end up pulling the wagon themselves in hopes of getting back faster.”
Parting with a laugh, the four of us then split up, each of us heading off to take care of our last-minute tasks before we set off back on our journey to Aldford. By some miracle, our combined efforts managed to get everyone to leave within the next fifteen minutes, all the newer Virtus members suddenly moving with renewed purpose, no doubt motivated by Helix’s promise of food and sleep when they returned to the town.
Before long, we had left the Tower behind, taking a narrow route through the forest that we had discovered a handful of weeks earlier. No doubt cleared out by the goblins that had once inhabited the fallen tower to move their own wagons in and out of the forest. It was slow and careful going at best, given the oversized length of the wagon and the proximity of the trees , but we managed to press through the woods gradually without getting stuck.
“I can see the plains up ahead,” Thorne called back to me from his position driving the wagon. “We should be able to make great time once we get out in the open.”
“Great!” I replied, from just behind the dwarf, sitting in a loose circle with Freya, Caius and Halcyon. The four of us shamelessly enjoying the perks of our rank within the guild and catching a ride on the wagon, while everyone else was forced to walk alongside it.
“We’re making pretty good time all things considered,” Caius said leaning back in his seated position, his skull bone staff sitting across his lap. “I was worried that we might get stuck on—”
Caius paused halfway through his sentence, a frown coming over his face as he looked out towards the forest, a worried expression coming over his face.
“I hear something,” he said, his eyes suddenly widening. “Shit! A lot of somethings!”
“What?” Thorne gasped
from ahead of us, his head whipping around to look behind him.
“Where?” I asked pushing myself up to my feet and looking out into the woods, realizing that Caius was referring to his Bloodsense ability, which allowed him to hear the heartbeat of anything that carried blood in its veins within a certain range.
“Straight ahead to either side of us,” he replied, shaking his head as he followed my lead and stood up.
“An ambush?” Freya asked as she readied herself to stand up.
“Don’t all move at once!” Halcyon exclaimed in a nervous tone, catching Freya by the arm before she could stand up. “If someone’s watching us, you’re going to spook them!”
“What do we do then?” Caius asked, belatedly turning the quick ascent to his feet into a stretch.
“We—” An arrow flying through the brush cut off my reply as it suddenly slammed into my shoulder, filling my world with a burst of pain and causing me to fall down onto my knee in shock.
“Oh, fucking hell!” Freya spat as she scrambled over towards me, her voice then splitting the air. “AMBUSH!”
Freya’s shout barely had time to register in everyone’s mind, before the sounds of screaming voices and rushing bodies began to echo from the forest ahead of us. Looking up in the direction of the noise, I saw the world shimmer, as Halcyon threw up a wall of force before us, catching a handful of follow up arrows before they could fall upon us.
“Shit!” Thorne yelped, flinching from the onslaught of arrows that bounced off Halcyon’s shield, the mage thankfully having the foresight to include him within its protection.
“Lyrian, are you okay?!” Freya asked as both she and Caius turned to look at the arrow sticking out of me.
Legacy of the Fallen Page 31