Awaken Online: Catharsis

by Travis Bagwell

  Before Morgan could move on, Jason interjected, “I've been meaning to ask, what exactly does my affinity do? For example, I gained 5% dark affinity for completing a quest.”

  “Well, that question doesn’t lend itself to a simple answer,” Morgan replied, as she assumed her usual professorial air.

  These lectures always make me feel like I should be sitting in a classroom taking notes.

  Morgan began her explanation, “A person gains or loses affinity based on whether they behave in a way that is consistent or contradictory to each affinity. For example, you gain dark affinity if you act on your desires. If you resolve quests in a way that is consistent with a particular affinity, you may receive bonuses to that affinity. I expect this is what happened with your particular quest.”

  That makes sense. As the old man said, I gave myself over to my desire for revenge and power when I rampaged through Lux.

  “Your ability to learn spells is a function of both your level and your affinity,” she continued. “Of the two, your affinity is much harder to raise. Over time, it takes a much more significant commitment to the trait represented by a particular affinity to increase it.”

  So the rampage around Lux was actually a windfall in a way. I will need to be careful to balance acting on my desires in a way that is still constructive.

  “I suppose that all makes sense,” Jason said. “So I guess I get to select some spells now?”

  Morgan chuckled, amused by how eager he was. “Yes and just like the last time, you will only be able to choose three. You may choose any of the old spells you gave up last time or any of the new spells from the list.” She waved her hand in his direction, and a prompt appeared.

  “Oh, by the way, I have included more detailed information regarding the various spells this time. Hopefully, this should save us some time discussing your options.” She said this last part with a grimace as she turned back to her book.

  Jason stared at the window for a few moments with his brow furrowed.

  These were difficult choices. He was leaning towards selecting Curse of Silence since he had already experienced how powerful a decent enemy caster could be. He was also considering whether the spell could be used to silence a target before it was assassinated. That left two spells.

  A direct-damage spell would be useful since he didn't have one. However, flashy spells would just draw attention to him, and he didn't have enough Intelligence to put much punch behind them. What he really needed were more summoning spells.

  He decided Zombie Lieutenant was a priority since it would allow him to split his army without being forced to give minutely detailed instructions. That left one additional spell, and he decided that this one was also a no-brainer. He was going to choose Custom Skeleton. It sounded like this would give him an unusually large selection of options to choose from in creating minions.

  Jason turned back to Morgan, “I've decided on Curse of Silence, Zombie Lieutenant, and Custom Skeleton.”

  She looked at him evenly. “I can't say I'm surprised. I would quibble with you about the usefulness of Custom Skeleton though. You're going to need to have a large assortment of bones to be able to get much use out of that spell.”

  Hmm. I was actually thinking that it was an obvious choice. Now she is making it seem like a gamble. I might be better off taking Enrage. That could turn my zombies into berserkers for a short time. Especially since there is no decay near the Twilight Throne.

  He decided to ask some questions first. “How does summoning skeletons work? Do I need to have every bone that made up an original skeleton to summon it?”

  Morgan stared longingly at her books and sighed before answering. “Of course you have questions! I shouldn't have expected anything different.”

  “To answer your question, no. Usually you can make do if you have most of the bones for a skeleton. Let's say 90% as a rough approximation. Your mana will fill in the rest.”

  “Hmm. Do skeletons level in the same way as zombies? The prompt indicates that they will be set to a level dependent on my personal level and my Willpower.”

  Morgan scratched her chin as she responded, “Skeletons aren't really my specialty. I've always preferred zombies. However, in my experience they don't level.”

  “Essentially, summoning skeletons doesn't make you as picky about the corpse, but their potential is lower. They don't start with any abilities and they don't get stronger over time.”

  Jason was still intrigued. Skeletons could be much stronger if he was mass summoning creatures. Assuming of course that he had an ample supply of bones. “So what about creating a custom skeleton. How does that work?”

  “Well, if you were standing near a large number of bones, you should be able to design a skeleton using your available resources. I also understand that you can save the designs. Again, skeletons are not my area of expertise. You will have to experiment.”

  What should I do? I'm still intrigued by the idea of creating my own skeletons.

  Jason hesitated for a moment and then made a decision. “I'm going to go with my first choice. I will take Custom Skeleton.”

  Morgan frowned, obviously annoyed that he didn’t take her advice. “Don't say I didn't warn you.” With that, she pressed her hand against Jason's forehead and the words and gestures associated with each spell trickled into his mind. He could have sworn she gave his head a little push before she drew her hand back.

  “Now if that's all, I have some reading to do,” Morgan said gruffly, as she turned back to her book. Clearly, he was dismissed.

  Shaking his head, Jason walked out of the office. Onyx padded silently behind him. As Jason stood outside the door, he considered what to do next. What he really wanted to do was try his new spells.

  “Well, Onyx, what do you say we go visit the graveyard?”

  Chapter 25 - Creative

  It was dusk in the game world, and the army had stopped for the evening. The NPCs went about their usual routine of setting up camp, caring for the animals, and cooking dinner. Riley had observed that nearly two-thirds of the army was comprised of NPCs, which made for an unusually realistic march towards the Twilight Throne.

  She was standing a bit apart from the player campsite, which itself was set up in a hasty manner some distance from the busy NPC encampment. The players usually logged off during the in-game evenings, leaving little need for an elaborate camp. The NPCs had also made it clear that they weren't interested in putting up with naive travelers after a long day of on the road.

  Riley had built a small mound of branches and then laid a cotton target she had borrowed from the NPCs over the mound. She was fifty yards from the target. Between the campfires and numerous lanterns, there was still sufficient light for her to make out the beige cotton from this distance. Riley pulled the string of her recurve bow back until it was even with her ear. She carefully sighted down the length of the arrow.

  Her breathing slowed and then stopped, the world seeming to still around her. After a long moment she released. The string snapped, and the arrow launched forward at an arc until it thumped into the target. Even from this distance, she could see that the arrow had struck close to the center of the target.

  She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

  “Good heavens girl. You're a great shot.”

  An aged man sat on a log nearby, watching her. She hadn't noticed him before he spoke. Most of his face was obscured by a hooded cloak, leaving only his wrinkled lips visible. In his hand, he held a gnarled staff.

  A small smile graced Riley's lips at his compliment. She had always wanted to try archery in the real world, but never had the opportunity. She remembered posing the idea to her parents many years ago. They had explained that it was a silly hobby. They insisted she should be a cheerleader or play a team sport. What sort of girl shot a bow for fun?

  “Thank you,” she said to the old man. “I didn't even notice you there.”

  The old man's wrinkled lips cracked into a smile. “At m
y age, I move slowly. This at least affords me the benefit of walking quietly.”

  Riley almost chuckled at the old man's words until she saw Alexion's gleaming outline behind him, his metallic form weaving its way throughout the camp. Her fleeting moment of cheer was quickly extinguished as the familiar miserable despair twisted within her stomach. She could almost forget the feeling each time she practiced with her bow.

  The old man interrupted her thoughts as he observed her expression. “You seem gloomy for such a pretty girl. Not that I blame you, these wretched woods could make anyone feel depressed.”

  When they had initially started the journey to the Twilight Throne, they had passed through sunny, thriving fields, and rich green forests. As the journey continued, the plants withered and died. Now leafless branches hung over the road like claws. Each day, the sun shined a little less due to the swiftly thickening cloud cover. Soon they would be forced to light torches and lanterns during the day to make their way forward.

  “Yes, these woods are quite gloomy,” she agreed distractedly, her eyes following Alexion.

  The old man turned his head to follow her gaze and caught sight of Alexion. “Hmm, our fearless leader is making his rounds.” He turned back to Riley and said, “What do you think girl? Does he have a chance against this undead city or this traveler you all speak of? What was his name again? Jason?”

  “I don't know,” Riley murmured distractedly.

  Along with the other players, Riley had seen the system message when Lux was conquered. When she had seen the player's name, a strange feeling had welled up inside of her. It couldn't be the Jason she knew. There were likely millions of people who shared that name. Yet the unmistakable image of Jason's face had flashed in her mind's eye when she saw the notification. A flood of guilt accompanied the image. She couldn’t believe that she had gone along with Alex’s story.

  She shook her head to clear it. Regardless of who this player was, she was impressed that one person could conquer a city and stand alone against an army of players and NPCs. As the feeling of despair slithered and tightened in her stomach, she desperately wished that she had that kind of power.

  “If only I had the strength to stand up to Alex,” she thought bitterly.

  She turned her attention back to the old man and discovered that the log now sat empty. The old man had disappeared.

  * * *

  Jason stood in the middle of the graveyard Morgan had once called home. It was just south of the Twilight Throne and now empty of the living.

  A heavy darkness hung over the area and there was almost no sound, save the occasional chirp of insects. Jason could detect the smell of fresh dirt and grass. Onyx sat beside him, gazing with a bored expression at the gravestones and tombs that riddled the area.

  Jason was curious about his new summoning spell. He wanted to try it out and see the results. The graveyard had an ample supply of bones, and he figured that it would be a good place to test the new spell.

  He began the process of casting Custom Skeleton. His hands moved in a complicated series of gestures as his lips formed the words of a long-dead language. Instead of the typical ball of dark energy forming in the air, the world around him began to slow and took on an otherworldly cast. The effect was eerily similar to what the old man had done to him in the marketplace in Lux.

  He looked up as he cast. A bird seemed to hover in the air, its wings beating ever so slowly. As he completed the spell, the world nearly stopped. He looked around. He could now detect the faint blue outlines of bones throughout the graveyard.

  Onyx yawned and stretched. He jumped up onto a nearby gravestone and laid down to sleep.

  Jason eyed him quizzically.

  Why isn't Onyx affected by the time slowing aspect of this spell?

  Shaking his head at this unexplained phenomenon, Jason turned his attention back to the spell. A semi-transparent control panel had appeared in front of him. It looked like some sort of graphical design program with floating, translucent menus that hovered in the air in front of him. This program seemed to have a static number of usable pieces. He could see a complicated menu off to one side that listed all nearby bones by individual type, including a counter indicating how many of each type of bone were in the immediate area.

  As he skimmed through the menu, he noticed that there were options for creating whole humanoid extremities and for reconstructing many different complete skeletons. He figured that the complete skeletons must be the corpses that were buried in the graveyard. His guess was that the game also helped simplify the process of building a skeleton by providing prefabricated, default extremities for people who hadn't taken multiple college anatomy or graphic design courses.

  Intrigued, he started fiddling with different combinations of bones.

  Nearly two hours later, his eyes were becoming bleary from staring at the graphical UI for such a long time. He now had a firm grasp of how the editing program worked and was reasonably competent at creating basic skeletal forms. He had quickly learned that the interface allowed him to manipulate all of the bones in the area without touching them. With a thought, he could organize and rearrange the nearby bones to form a skeleton in the air in front of him.

  Once he had the frame completed, he had to imbue the joints and skull with dark mana. This involved summoning pools of the substance in the air and attaching them to the joints like some kind of unholy putty. From what he could tell, his dark mana operated as both a power source for the skeleton as a whole and served as its muscles and tendons. Once the skeleton was completed, the editor gave him the option to save the design and name it.

  After experimenting, he could see why Morgan thought that the spell had limited usefulness. Images of skeleton raptors and giant flying monstrosities of bone had flashed through his mind at one point. He imagined himself riding a bone dragon and had started getting excited.

  However, the problem was he didn't have the materials. It wasn't just a problem regarding the raw number of bones he would need (which was a lot!), but he also needed bones of a certain shape and size. He couldn't exactly create a skeleton raptor using human bones. He would need the corpses of various animals or he would need some way to mold the bones.

  He paused.

  Now that is an interesting thought. Can I mold the bones? Perhaps I could use raw dark mana to try shaving a bone while the editing program for the spell is still running.

  With a thought, he lifted a bone from the ground and set it to hover in front of him. He then drew in dark mana as though he was about to add connections between the bones. However, instead of forming a pool of mana and attaching it to the bone, he imagined it forming a delicate blade in the air. The dark mana swiftly formed into a blade. Jason visualized the magical knife cutting the edge of the bone in a smooth arc.

  The result was unexpected. The damn thing actually worked!

  Not only that, but it gave him a new skill:

  New Passive Skill: Bone Crafting

  Surprisingly, you actually figured out how to manipulate the summoning spell to create custom skeletons. In spite of everything people said about you, your experimentation has enabled you to use the spell's editing tools to alter bones. Since you can’t be trusted with magical knives, this skill allows the modification to be performed automatically through the summoning editor.

  Skill Level: Beginner Level 1

  Effect: Access to bone modification in the skeleton editor. May currently alter the composition of a bone by 5%.

  I have to agree with the prompt this time, it is actually surprising that I figured this out.

  Jason gave out a shout of triumph in the nearly silent graveyard, and Onyx looked at him with an annoyed expression. He stuck out his tongue at the cat. It wasn't the sort of thing the future ruler of an undead city should do, but sometimes the cat could be really judgmental.

  Wow this is a cool skill! If I level it up, I will be able to create some truly unique creatures. I could alter any bones that I have available a
nd use them any way I want. Morgan must not have discovered this skill or she wouldn't have given up on summoning skeletons so easily.

  The ability to alter the bones, even slightly, gave Jason a lot more wiggle room to create new skeletons.

  However, the question was what should he create?

  He scratched his head and considered for a moment what type of minion he would need in the upcoming battle. After he had overseen the training of the city's fledgling army and reviewed their low average level, it had quickly become apparent that they couldn't win against Alexion in a straight battle. He would need to adopt the same type of guerrilla tactics he had used in conquering the city.

  It's clear that I will need to take the fight to Alexion while they are still approaching the city.

  The aura of darkness would extend well past the city limits, causing Alexion’s army to walk in perpetual darkness. It was unlikely that the players and NPCs had Night Vision, so their visibility would be limited. The players and NPCs would also be weakened by the large concentration of dark energy.

  What Jason needed to do was attack preemptively, using the darkness and stealth. He was already intimately familiar with the terrain around the city from pouring over the maps. If he could whittle down Alexion's numbers, then the Twilight Throne might stand a chance.

  I might also be able to delay them for an extra day. Any time that I can buy the new army to train and get ready is worth it.

  He expected that the psychological aspect of the attack would work wonders. He hadn't forgotten the traumatic experience suffered by the beginning players when they had discovered the feral zombies that Jason had left at the training grounds. Now, most of the enemy army was comprised of NPCs, and they had only one digital life. If Jason could harass and demoralize the army before it made its way to the city, that might also help swing the odds in their favor.