The Curse of Hurlig Ridge_World Tree Online_1st Dive

by M. A. Carlson

  Rose attacked immediately, taunting them to start. “Come get me, boys, if you’re man enough.”

  “Get her!” ordered the archer, running away about twenty yards before he turned to fire.

  “I’ll get the archer, try to get them turned so Micaela and Olaf can help fight them,” I ordered.

  “And how are you going get around them, we’re pretty much taking up the entire hallway,” said Rose, grunting occasionally as she blocked, stabbed and bashed the two bandits.

  “Like this,” I said confidently, running forward, I jumped toward the cave wall, using it as a springboard to jump off of, and dove over Rose and the two bandits, tucking and rolling as I hit the cave floor on the other side of them. I rolled right back up to my feet and sprinted down the tunnel toward the wide-eyed archer, who clearly had not been expecting me so suddenly.

  I engaged the archer, in close range melee combat before he could even get a shot off. I lit him up with ‘Lesser Holy Fire’ with the goal of building up to three stacks, as quickly as possible. Then I started attacking with my spear. Without his bow, he was mostly defenseless, even when he pulled out a dagger to try to fight me. He scored a few glancing blows, but with my ‘Acrobatics’ at work, I was hard to hit. I think it was more due to him having to constantly turn and change directions. He’d barely start an attack, and I would no longer be there. Instead, I’d be a few feet to the right or left and hitting him as hard as I could with my spear, even if most of the damage was from the ‘Lesser Holy Imbuement’

  It was over before I knew it, the archer was dead, and I was alive. The archer was dead. It took a minute for it to sink in and when it did, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I’d just killed a man. Or it felt like I did. There wasn’t a ton of blood, nor were his eyes staring at me accusingly, as I half expected him to be. He kind of just looked asleep. Still, he was dead and never coming back, even if I did kill him in self-defense. I wasn’t mentally prepared for the how real it would feel. Sure, I’d killed the troll bandit on the road a few days ago, but the troll didn’t look human or rather looked just monstrous enough. I didn’t equate it with a human, though I should have.

  I turned sharply away from the dead archer, looking for my friends. They looked the same as I felt, shocked.

  “You guys alright?” I asked, trying to be strong for them.

  “That felt too real,” said Olaf, his voice soft and filled with regret. “Mic and I were in the army, we’ve been in firefights before even. That just felt too real, too familiar.”

  “I know it’s a game, I know it but . . .” Rose shuddered.

  I looked to Baby to see she was crying, two streams of tears running down her childlike face. Part of me wanted to join her. Part of me wanted to just log out and never look back. But a bigger part of me knew why I was doing this, and why I had to continue on.

  I took a deep breath before I spoke. “I’m not going to lie. Taking life in here, in this game world is . . . awful. This is the second humanoid I’ve killed in this game, and it’s weighing on me. I did not enjoy it, not this time, not last time. I will probably never enjoy it. But we came here for a reason. These men, these bandits, these criminals, have been killing and robbing the citizens of this World Tree. We have the power to stop them, the civilians have asked for justice. It’s for that reason, I’m continuing, even knowing I will have to kill more people.”

  Rose was the first to recover, which surprised me, then again, I didn’t know her all too well yet. I thought Olaf and Micaela would have been first given their military experience.

  “He’s right. I hate agreeing with Jack here on anything but there is a good reason for being here. Hurligville is depending on us to stop these men from causing more pain and suffering. I say we finish this quest,” Rose spoke, a fierce determination in her voice.

  Olaf and Micaela shared a look, their entire demeanor seemed to change. Olaf spoke, “We’re with you, Bye-bye.”

  “Why couldn’t they just be monsters?” said Baby. “I could deal with monsters. Why use people at all?”

  “Because just like home, real people can cause the most hurt. But unlike home, there are no cops, no detectives or anything to stop the bad guys. Only the adventurers, only us,” said Rose, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder.

  “Can’t we just capture them? That’s what the police would do, right?” asked Baby.

  “We can try,” I said, I hadn’t even considered the option before now. “I know it’s possible, but I can’t say for certain it will be an option with all of them.”

  “Then we try it, next time,” said Rose firmly.

  “Do we . . . loot the bodies?” asked Micaela, it may have been distasteful, but she wasn’t wrong.

  “I think we have to,” I replied. “We need to at least remove the weapons and armor. We can’t allow another of these bandits to take them to use against us.”

  “How do we divide the loot then?” asked Baby.

  “We don’t,” I answered firmly. Part of my answer was simply me not wanting to be rewarded for killing people, but then, I also knew the procedure from the last bandit I had captured. “We turn it into the town and then they give us a share of the spoils as well as any bounties on the men we capture or kill. Just like the mayor paid me for earlier.”

  “We need to find a wagon to load the dead bodies onto,” said Olaf. “But for now, we’ll have to risk leaving them here. Hopefully, there won’t be another patrol down this path.”

  “Okay, so we go on then, everyone agreed?” I asked.

  Everyone nodded but Rose who said simply, “Let’s go.”

  We followed Rose through the tunnel, being much more careful with the blind corners until we came to a large open cavern filled with cages. It was disgusting, to say the least, the cages were filled with men and women, most likely the missing merchants or just some misfortunate traveler, who ran afoul of the bandits. It left me feeling such righteous anger.

  Baby flew quickly to the cages, shouting, “We have to free them.”

  I went forward quickly to the closest cage.

  “Help us,” begged a man inside.

  “I’m working on it,” I replied, hoping my lockpicking skill would be enough to open the cage. Unfortunately, as soon as my picks hit the lock, I got a nasty jolt of electricity knocking off a quarter of my HP and leaving my hands numb for 30-seconds. It was a new debuff I hadn’t seen before, ‘Shock Nerves’.

  “It’s a magical trap. You have to have the self-proclaimed Bandit King’s key to open it,” said the prisoner, the only one appeared to be coherent. The others, at least, appeared to still be breathing, but in bad shape.

  “We’ll get the key, where can we find this Bandit King?” I asked.

  “One of the other tunnels. I only ever saw him once, when he told us he planned to turn us all into slaves, once he took over the province,” explained the man. He was dirty, and I wasn’t sure what color his hair actually was with all the dirt and grime he was lathered in. I couldn’t really see the shape of his face behind the scraggly beard either, but he had bright blue eyes, looking at me with such hope. I didn’t want to let this man down.

  Quest Alert: A self-proclaimed Bandit King (Recommended Level 5-7)

  Stop the self-proclaimed Bandit King and use his key to free the captured merchants.

  Reward: Experience

  Do you accept this Quest?

  Yes

  No

  I accepted the quest for all of us.

  “Baby, can we try healing some of these people? The ones in red at least. I’ll help.” I wasn’t much help, but it was better than nothing. Baby and I both replenished our mana pools at least once before we went about healing again.

  Between drinking and casting healing spells it took Baby and me about thirty-minutes to heal everyone enough to be sure they weren’t about to die. Twenty-two lives depended on us saving them. Now, if that wasn’t enough motivation, then nothing would be.

  While we were doing w
orking on healing the prisoners to the best of our ability, Olaf searched the room for anything useful or treasure related. It was lucky for us, he found a large supply of shackles, something we’d need if we wanted to take prisoners.

  “Middle tunnel next,” said Rose, returning to the original tunnel fork.

  There was no conversation needed or discussion, we were following our tank. After seeing this, after witnessing the evil that exists in this game world, I didn’t feel as conflicted. Not about what we had to do.

  The middle tunnel was much larger than the first, wide enough for Micaela and Olaf to walk side by side. About twenty yards from the entrance to this path we found a small tunnel offshoot, leading to a closed wooden door ten yards from the path. After a quick discussion, we decided it would be best to fully clear this place out which meant leaving no room unexplored. It turned out it was a small bunk room, just four beds and two of them were occupied by sleeping bandits, both trolls.

  Rose and I introduced ourselves rather violently, a ‘Shield Slam’ each. Olaf shot one hitting him at the knee and taking the leg clean off. That troll was quick to surrender and get the captured debuff. Baby healed him quickly, stopping the bleed effect but doing nothing for the missing limb.

  The second guy just wouldn’t surrender, even after we had him down to just a few HP, he kept attacking us. He ended up dead for it.

  “Such a waste,” I said sadly. It was so unnecessary. He had to know there was no way he could win.

  After taking all of their equipment, we used one of the shackles to chain the surrendered enemy to the dead body. It would keep him here for the time being at least. Micaela then knocked him out with the knob of her ax for good measure.

  We found a few more bunk rooms as we went, some had sleeping bandits, other had awake bandits and some had none at all. We ended up capturing just six more bandits. If there was a bunk for every bandit, then we were still missing 10 bandits.

  At the end of the tunnel or what we assumed was the end, was a wooden barricade with a heavy door blocking off the tunnel behind it. We were far enough back, to not be seen, but I had to get closer to see what we were dealing with. I used ‘Stealth’ to creep up quietly and slowly, but also not going too far, my skill level was still rather low.

  In front of the barricade stood three guards. Of the two male orcs, one was labeled as a and the other , if those two weren’t bad enough there was also a single ogre warrior wearing two spiked gauntlets on his hands, this was going to be trouble.

  I didn’t think it was anything we couldn’t handle but we’d have to be careful.

  “So, what’s the plan?” asked Micaela, after I had described what we were dealing with.

  “I’ll have to tank the Ogre,” said Rose. She was absolutely correct, the bruiser had to be contained.

  “Expect slow but powerful hits. Ogre Bruiser class are top melee damage dealers right now,” warned Olaf.

  “The earth mage explains why there were no tracks. It also explains why these tunnels are so smooth. It means he’s probably got some powerful spells and underground, he is going to be even more dangerous,” I added.

  “The archer is the least problematic except for one thing. If he runs for help, we could be in trouble,” added Olaf.

  “We need a CC,” added Micaela.

  A crowd control would certainly be useful.

  “I wish I knew ‘Pollen Burst - Slumber’, it would make things so much easier,” complained Baby.

  “What is that?” I asked. I assumed it put the enemy to sleep.

  “It’s a level 10 spell. I conjure a ball of pollen that explodes in a targeted area putting everyone inside of the area asleep for 30-seconds,” she explained.

  “That would have been good to have, but we don’t have it, so let’s focus on what we do have,” said Olaf.

  “Kill order, mage, archer and the ogre last,” ordered Rose.

  “I can take the archer again,” I volunteered. I seemed to have that particular enemy’s pattern down, at this point.

  “That puts me and Mic on the mage,” said Olaf.

  “Okay, I’ll pull the ogre away from the others, try to fight the mage and archer at the door. Baby, position yourself between us for healing,” Rose laid out a basic positioning strategy for us.

  “I think we’re good to go,” I said. “Pull when ready.”

  Rose nodded and started forward. “Yo, fat, dumb and ugly, come at me!”

  “She has such interesting taunts,” said Olaf, grinning a little.

  “Do I look fat?” asked Micaela, looking at herself and getting a small laugh from the rest of us. It definitely lightened the mood.

  The took notice of the taunt and charged at her, while the mage began chanting, and the archer nocked an arrow.

  I sprinted forward myself, in an effort to close the distance and start my assault on the archer. I put two stacks of ‘Lesser Holy Fire’ before I even got to the archer due to having to dodge a wild swing from the bruiser. When I did get to him, I had him good and angry with me. I approached this the same way I did with the first archer I fought. Once I closed to melee range, he pulled out a dagger to try to defend himself. I took a few glancing blows before my spear went clean through the Orc’s leg giving him a crippled debuff and a captured debuff a moment later.

  I looked to help Olaf and Micaela, but they already captured the mage.

  Finally, I looked back toward Rose fighting the . Every time he struck, a third of her health would disappear, only to be healed back to full a moment later, compliments of Baby.

  I looked at Baby’s status bars in my UI to see she was almost out of mana.

  “Baby, start replenishing mana. I’ll heal her.”

  “Can you keep up?” she asked.

  “Not forever, but long enough for you to replenish some of your mana,” I answered. I started chain casting my ‘Lesser Heal’. It barely made a dent, but I could cast it a few times before the ogre’s next attack landed. I couldn’t quite get her health back to full with my heal only doing +71-90-HP per cast, but it bought Baby the time she needed.

  I was also watching, as the bruiser began to steadily lose health, now with Micaela and Olaf beginning to attack. Then it lost a sudden chunk of health when one of Olaf’s bullets got a critical hit.

  “What was that?” asked Rose, straining to block.

  “My subskill,” answered Olaf, sounding overly pleased with himself. “I’ll be using it again in two minutes.”

  “Hopefully this fight will be over in one,” laughed Rose, grinning as she fought toe to toe with the towering aggressor.

  “Okay, Bye-bye, I’ve got the healing from here, start helping to whittle this guy down,” said Baby, her mana back up over 50%.

  I didn’t hesitate. I ran forward, stabbing my spear into the back of the ogre’s knee, causing it to drop to the ground, the leg no longer holding the weight. I also saw a new debuff, ‘Hamstrung’. That wasn’t my goal when I struck the leg, but I wasn’t going to complain. Especially as my next attack was able to reach the ogre’s neck for a critical strike.

  With the bruiser temporarily down on one knee, he seemed to suddenly take a higher amount of damage from the group.

  “Surrender,” I requested of the ogre, not sure if it could understand me. Whether it did or not I would never know, he just kept fighting until, with the last-gasp, he dropped to his other knee, falling face down, dead.

  “Everyone still alive?” asked Rose, panting and trying to catch her breath. Her stamina bar was almost zero.

  “Looks like it. Okay everyone, let’s take a five-minute break to recover. Eat and drink, you know the routine.”

  Olaf and Micaela sat down back to back, leaning against each other. I guessed it was something they had done many times before, probably something from their military days. Rose sat against one of the cave walls with Baby sitting right next to her. />
  I chose to sit down on one of the crates by the barricade, appreciating the soft wood of the crate versus the rock-hard cave floor. Well, not exactly soft, but more forgiving than the stone floor at the very least. I didn’t expect to hear a conversation taking place on the other side of the barricade.

  “Two of my men are dead. Mind explaining why that is? I thought we had a deal,” complained a man.

  “We do have a deal,” replied a much more guttural voice, more animalistic. “But I am not going to risk my position for two of your underlings. Besides, does this not mean more money for you?”

  “Heh, you may have a point,” said the first voice.

  “And they failed, Duke Johnson did not die,” added the second voice.

  “I thought you said destroying the Moonshine and the still, was more important,” argued the first voice.

  “It was, and I am glad they at least did that right,” agreed the second voice.

  “Can I ask, why was it so important?” the first asked.

  “You can ask, and I will even answer. It is none of your business,” snapped the second voice.

  “Fine, fine,” said the first voice placatingly. “Just pay me my money.”

  I heard the sound of something jangling briefly, followed by a thump, and louder jangling against wood, probably a table or desk.

  “Any other work you want to hire us for?” asked the first voice.

  “No, I am leaving,” said the second voice.

  For a moment I panicked thinking the door was about to open but it never did.

  “Creepy bastard, glad he is gone,” complained the first voice.

  Quest Alert: Shiny Delivery Service 4 (Recommended Level 4-5) - Completed

  Conspiracy? Who hired the trolls to attack the Johnson’s Farm and why?

  Reward: +500-Experience