“I woke up here,” Sam said, nearly glaring at the man.
“No need to be testy. I’m just here to offer a warning.”
That was incredible. The NPCs (non-player characters) could actually respond to a player’s emotions as well as their words. No other game on the market had that kind of sophistication to it. The digital man responded as precisely as a real man would, picking up on Sam’s annoyance as well. Sam looked around at the gear the man had around him. It was halfway out of a large sack that sat on the ground next him. Sam saw some weapons in it and some armor as well.
“What’s that?” Sam asked, pointing at the sack.
“Ah, those are my wares. There’s a lot of treasure to be found in this assassin’s forest. Most of it dropped from adventurers like yourself after they ... expire.”
“Can you show me what you have?”
“Hehe, sure. My items will keep you from losing that precious quintessence of yours.”
A menu opened in front of Sam with the man’s item stock neatly categorized into sections for consumable items, weapons, armor, ammunition, and miscellaneous items. For consumables, he had some Absorption Herbs to heal poison and some Bandages to stop bleeding wounds. The herbs were one hundred souls apiece, but so very worth it against the enemies of this forest. Sam currently had approximately no souls, so he’d have to brave the forest without it for now. He flipped over to the weapons just to see what the man had. His selection was pretty crappy. He had possibly every type of weapon from daggers to axes, but it was all basic stuff. There were a few swords there, but all of them required too high of a strength stat to wield properly. Sam only had a six in strength. The only good thing Sam spotted here was a simple mid-sized wood and metal shield. He looked at its stats and found it to be to his liking. It had a nice balance of physical defense and sturdiness even if it was lacking in most other categories. The shield had cost a whopping twelve hundred souls though. In his current state, Sam found that to be worth it.
He moved on to the armor and saw absolutely nothing that was more useful than the Twilight gear he was already wearing and that was the most expensive gear that the man had. For the ammunition, he spotted some nifty Wooden Arrows for five souls apiece. The only problem was that the merchant didn’t sell the bow to go with it. Sam cursed under his breath.
“Asshole.”
“What was that, traveler?”
“Brass pole ... I don’t see one. Just thinking out loud.”
These NPCs had some damn good hearing. Sam had no clue how the NPC would react to an actual insult and though he was curious, he still wanted to hang on to his human form for a bit longer at least. This guy seemed like a secret badass to Sam and he didn’t want to piss him off yet, at least not at this point in the game. He’d avoid death for as long as he could. He skimmed over to the miscellaneous section and found an item called Blank Map. It was ridiculously overpriced at five thousand souls. He opened a screen for taking notes and mentally dictated that the price of the map should be lowered, the merchant should sell more useful items, and he should definitely sell a bow with his arrows. He closed the notes window along with the item shop screen.
“Nothing suits your fancy, eh? The younger me would’ve taken such a blatant waste of my time up with a blade, but I’ve come to see that we live in a tough age, traveler. So no hard feelings.”
Sam was terrified not only by what the merchant had said, but by the way he stared at Sam, as if he could see right through him, and then there was the wicked smile he bore.
“Hehehe. To prove my good intentions, I’ll give you this for your nightly travels along with two warnings.”
He produced a torch from his bag and handed it to Sam. Though Sam towered over him, he was still leery of such close contact.
“Are you a Cutthroat like me?” Sam asked.
“From the look of ya, I’d say you’re barely a Cutthroat hehehehe. But I wouldn’t call myself a Cutthroat.”
“Then why are you wearing a Cutthroat’s gear?”
“I told you, lad, you ask too many questions. Simple ones too. I’m in an assassin’s forest, why would I dress as anything other than an assassin? Do you think I want to be killed ... again? Hehehehe. No, lad. I’m just here to make a wage off some unlucky souls. Make sure you don’t die out there, hehehehe.”
What a creepy sense of humor, Sam thought to himself. Sam did want to hear the man’s warning though, so he promptly asked him.
“There’s a madman in the forest up ahead. If you were smart, you’d avoid him. I’ve heard it said that he’s killing anyone that crosses his path.”
It was just a game, but hearing that greatly unsettled Sam. He needed to know more.
“What does he look like, merchant?” he asked.
“He’s been described as a monstrous brute of a man. More demon than human. He wields a giant greatsword that he uses to cut revenants down indiscriminately. Some say he was once a king in an age long ago, but now he is just a ghoul out for souls. He will pillage the quintessence from your very being if you aren’t careful.”
“Where is he now?”
“An answer not known by me. I’m staying out of the way myself. All I want to do is sell my wares to needy travelers. I don’t need all this madman business scaring my customers away. If you come across anyone strong in your travels, you could ask them to kill the madman for you. Otherwise I’d stay away.”
That stung the old ego for Sam. He lacked the strength now, but he swore that he’d soon gain the levels, gear, and skills needed to beat this mad king. He just needed to avoid him until he got strong enough.
“Okay, what about the other warning?”
The Merchant’s grin widened.
“I’m amused that you’ve come to this forest without knowing of its dangers. What a foolish endeavor.”
He paused and looked at Sam with a gleam in his eye then continued.
“There is another man in the forest, more depraved than the mad king, though barely. Watch out for him and the quick death he brings. He has a fascination with stringing up the bodies of those he considers to be strong. You shouldn’t have to worry about that though. Hahahaha. Just thought I’d give fair warning anyway.”
Sam bristled at the insult and wondered if it were really true.
“Am I really safe from that killer?” Sam asked.
“Who’s to say? I’ve never met him myself. I only know of him through his wicked reputation. From his reputation alone, he is to be avoided, no?”
That was definitely something that Sam could agree to, at least until he gained some more levels and attained some better gear.
“And where does he reside?”
“It is said that he haunts near the front entrance of this part of forest, the perfect place to snare unsuspecting warriors, but no one is safe anywhere in the Assassin’s Forest. Hehehehe. Best to be on the move.”
Sam had to agree. From his equipment menu, he placed his torch in one of his Quick Select slots. It made it easy to select on the fly since the item would hang somewhere from his body. He had space for ten items in his accessible slots. His Soul Fire had already taken up one space. Items that were put in his accessible slots hung from his body, and so he could just reach and grab what he needed instead of mentally scrolling through menus. He kept his torch slotted until he needed it later and moved on, out of the cave. His next plan was to grind (collect a lot of resources, in this case souls) in the forest until he could afford a better shield and could level-up some more.
“Alright Hardasses, here comes round two.”
9 Assassin’s Forest
Sam’s efforts at grinding had been quite taxing at first. He had started his fight against one Forest Barker, like before. And like before, it was completely docile initially. Resting at the Soul Beacon seemed to reset all enemies’ positions, so now the aggressive clones were gone. Once he killed the first one with a backstab, parry, then opening blow, he found that fighting the other Forest Barkers the secon
d time wasn’t much easier than the first. Killing them almost seemed pointless as each time you killed one, it would leave its remains and grow into more identical Forest Barkers.
Sam was somewhat lucky this time since the Barker he killed had only split into two clones. The splitting was worse than he initially thought, because Sam didn’t understand the timing for when the new clones would sprout up. It seemed random to him. He’d missed some easy parries and got punished hard for his mistakes. The enemies seemed a little smarter this time around and he wasn’t able to hide behind the trees as much as he did before. They also varied their attacks and timing more.
By the end of his second outing, he ended up limping back to the cave, past a grinning merchant, worse off than the first time he had come with hardly any health, a depleted Soul Fire container, and only four hundred measly souls to show for it. He kept his goal in mind. His next purchase would be that shield.
He rested at the azure Soul Beacon until he regained full health and filled his Soul Fire container, then went back to the forest for more souls. His timing was a little better now when it came to roll dodging and parrying. He lost most of that anxious feeling that was over him last time and he was more focused than the first time he fought the Barkers. Whenever he rolled, he kept the position of the trees in mind so that his enemy would strike those instead of him. By moving, using cover, and isolating the group of Barkers into one-on-one fights, Sam was now up to two thousand hundred souls. He’d quickly killed four of the Barkers including the first docile one. Getting backstabs and opening blows on each enemy behind cover had helped him greatly. He’d only drank his Soul Fire once amidst those kills. But the odds had quickly stacked up against him and he found himself facing six enemies at once. His limit was three at a time, he’d decided. If he was really pushing it, he could maybe challenge four, but six was out of the question. They had too much of a range advantage.
Sam cut and ran and found himself in a similar situation to before. He ran and jumped off the cliff and into the cliffside cave entrance rather than the one that opened in the middle of the forest. He went straight to the merchant and stared him in the eyes. At this range the merchant looked quite weary. There were dark rings under his brown eyes and baggy flesh. Now, his eyes even seemed to sag.
The torchlight covered both men, as Sam made his request, “Inventory please.”
The two dimensional dark gray and white grid panel opened up and Sam scrolled over to the shield he wanted and read its stats in great detail.
Metal Crest Shield
Mid Blocking Shield
A wooden shield with a mid-sized iron crest of falcon on the front of it. The crest sits in the middle of the shield and is scuffed from all the times it has deflected sword blows. An iron border around the shield increases its defensive capabilities even more without sacrificing much of its light weight.
ATK 18
Weapon Damage 10
S ATK D = 8
D ATK F = 0
M ATK F = 0
B ATK F = 0
F RAT 0
L RAT 0
P RAT 0
D RAT 0
B RAT 1
The first page of stats looked to be all offensive. Sam found these stats to be pointless for a shield, so he flipped over to the next page with the defensive values.
Metal Crest Shield
Mid Blocking Shield
P DEF (Physical Defense) 93%
M DEF (Magic Defense) 71%
L DEF (Lightning Defense) 65%
F DEF (Fire Defense) 25%
D DEF (Divine Defense) 30%
A DEF (Abyssal Defense) 30%
P RES (Poison Resistance) 85%
D RES (Dust Resistance) 70%
C RES (Curse Resistance) 30%
B RES (Bleedout Resistance) 100%
Sturdiness 54%
Durability 300/300
Weight 2.8lbs
This shield definitely had its uses. Right now Sam just needed to be able to properly block. He quickly purchased the shield which depleted the amount of souls he held down to eight hundred.
“Great purchase!” the merchant yelled with joy, “I knew there was a reason I liked you. It’s always better to spend a soul than to hoard one. You never know when you might die and of course your corpse has no need for them, hahahahahaha. Imagine that, a corpse with no need for souls, hahahahaha.”
Sam ignored the creepy merchant, who seemed to be having the time of his life laughing at his own macabre jokes. He quickly exited out of the purchase menu, since there was nothing else that he wanted right now and ran over to the Soul Beacon. He sat and rubbed his cold hands near the warm totem. He accessed Soul Beacon menu and mentally scrolled to the Level Up options. He looked at his stats and pondered which one he’d level-up next. He currently had enough to gain one Soul Intensity, which of course meant that he had one attribute that he could increase.
Name: Sarem the Sanguine
Class: Cutthroat
Soul Intensity: 7
HP: 180
Held Souls: 800
Souls to Next Level: 640
VIT 9
DEF 6
RES 7
STR 6
INT 10
DEX 15
SPD 15
SPT 4
BLF 4
PCP 3
It didn’t take him long to figure out which path his character would take. Even though he’d only now just figured it out, he was glad that his previous stat increase would favor his newly thought up build. He still didn’t know too much about this particular game, but it was similar enough to The Death Planes that Sam could form a good grasp on how he would specialize his character. His start of a Cutthroat build ensured he’d have to play a certain way and so far he was doing better than he thought he’d do with his playstyle.
He placed his next point into vitality which increased the stat to an even ten and granted him two hundred health points. He told himself that it would be the last point he’d invest in vitality for a while.
His next focus would be on getting his dexterity up to twenty. Since it directly affected the attacking power of the skill based weapons he planned on using. His Dagger had a B-grade scaling (power adjustment) with his dexterity stat, meaning that the weapon would attain more and more attack power as his dexterity increased. A B-grade meant that the Dagger would receive a bonus eighty percent extra damage whenever Sam would attack with it. If Sam’s Dagger had lacked a listed grade then it would only do the base amount of damage, which was only ten. With A B-grade scaling in dexterity, Sam’s Dagger had gotten an extra twelve points of damage. With the weapon’s base ten damage, along with the fifteen points of damage added by Sam’s DEX stat, and the twelve from the Dagger’s scaling; Sam did thirty seven points of damage with his weapon.
Weapon scaling was enormously useful as even an E-grade with the weapon insured that he’d get the whole fifteen damage from his DEX and at least a twenty percent extra on top of that. As long as the weapon didn’t have an F-grade, he’d get at least some benefit from scaling.
After all that, he’d increase his speed to twenty or maybe just increase his dexterity all the way to twenty-five and wait to see if he needed more speed or health at that point. If he came across any useful abilities, he could add a point to spirituality along the way to get a single spellcrafte slot. But that was it. He didn’t need any of the other stats at all. Putting points in defense would only slow his growth down in other needed areas. Increasing his health and mobility was the priority along with his pure offensive power.
With high dexterity and a good DEX based weapon, he didn’t need the strength stat at all. The default six amount given at the start was good for equipping all the small and mid-sized shields, so he wouldn’t need to increase it at all. Resistance could come in handy, but Sam figured that the points were better spent in speed so that he could just avoid potential status afflicting attacks with quick dodging. A ten in intelligence was a good base to learn some b
asic level spellcraftes, but Sam couldn’t see himself increasing it. While a four in belief was four points too many as far as he was concerned. He wished he could take all those points and put them into his dexterity right now. The belief stat only affected the power of Blessings, Blasphemies, and divine as well as abyssal weaponry, four things that Sam had no desire to use with this character.
With his plan in place, Sam set out again on his quest to gain more souls. He tested out his improvements in live combat. With his new shield, he didn’t have to rely on the trees for cover as much. Though his enemy limit remained at three at a time.
Each blow he blocked with his shield consumed a sizable portion of his stamina gauge and after so many consecutive attacks, his guard had been broken. After that happened, he was left vulnerable to attack. He quickly learned to block only at specific times while mostly using his dodging to avoid damage when possible. He’d also noticed with the Metal Crest Shield that the opening to attack after parrying was about a second less than with his Deflector.
He returned to heal and reset the enemies again at his Soul Beacon and did it all over again, attaining forty-eight hundred more souls before deciding to move on. He still hadn’t figured out the trick to killing the Barkers for good. Alex had earlier eluded to there being one. Instead of vainly focusing on that, he used all of his souls to increase his dexterity to nineteen. He was one point shy of his goal, but figured it was best to move on to find his first glitch before he lagged behind too far in that competition.
******
Sam had bypassed a few lone Forest Barkers as he journeyed deeper into the forest. He made sure to creep by them silently in case even one of them proved to be aggressive. Way past them, he found a large bear decked out in knight’s armor from its head to its hind legs. It sat on its rump like a human and stared listlessly at its feet. Sam was curious about why the hell a bear would even be wearing armor in the middle of this forest, but something told him to leave the whole issue alone and just sneak past the bear. He did just that and far from there, found himself near another clearing. This time he stayed hidden amongst the trees, so he could better see his surroundings.
Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure Page 8