by Scott Seier
"I see. By any chance do you know the name of the call to arms that was just contracted?" I asked casually. Cransts' eyes glazed for a moment. "Of course. The name of it is simply 'Call to Arms Four Flags Bounty'. Don't tell me you have it. That would really be unfortunate." I checked my quest log, and sure enough still sitting there was that trap bounty that Hael had gotten from that corrupt guard. Apparently Baron Flags, whoever that was, suddenly thought it was a completely valid quest now.
Quest Alert!
New Quest Shared
Call to Arms!
Four Flags - Bounty
Outlaws have taken refuge in the forest surrounding Four Flags.
These individuals all have the 'Murderer' mark and/or the 'traitor' mark.
For every murderer mark that you collect, you will be awarded 1 silver and an increase in reputation with the town of Four Flags.
For every Traitor mark that you collect, you will be awarded 20 Silver and an increase in reputation with the town of Four Flags.
Capture or kill as many of the marked players as possible.
Murderer Marks: 15
Traitor Marks: 7
"Huh, and if I happened to have that quest, deleting it probably wouldn't do much, would it?"
"Deleting a contracted call is impossible." Cranst stated plainly. "Also, in this situation, there are more than two hundred outlawed players that fall under the purview of that quest. Each of them are heading to the mountain in an attempt to integrate themselves into the event. As it stands, anyone who has that quest is about to be held responsible for the results of the entire scenario. We're talking thousands of golds worth of damages, not to mention if any of those outlaws kill an npc as the town is evacuating, that too would be laid at your feet." I started to sweat a little. "Alright, so my options? I go and die? That would fail the quest right? Failed is better than ignored. Or should I go out there? Kill as many as I can, fight the outlaws during the event?" Cranst glanced at Milenta who was busy sending out orb after orb and issuing orders to Janis. No help there. "Once the contract is out, you can't fail the quest. It's simply active until it's called off. In the same vein, going out and fighting a battle in the middle of a category four event is almost assured suicide for a player of your level. I would honestly recommend heading south after we handle what is to come. The kingdom only extends so far. You can't be held accountable for damages if you aren't around to stand trial."
I cursed under my breath. That just figures. Run away. That's my best option... I was even planning on heading south when I got my feet under me properly anyway, but I would be damned if I would be just shuffled off. Cranst turned to engage with whatever Milenta was babbling about, but I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around. "What if I was a member of your guild? Would you guys be willing to help me then?" Milenta tuned in to our conversation then, looking like I had just punched her in the gut, but answered instead of Cranst. "Look Lyst. If you were a guildy, in this situation, we would do the math and figure out if it would be worth putting our necks on the line to try and shelter you from this shit show. As it stands, there's just no way any of the officers would allow your addition to our ranks with your current involvements. I'm sorry."
I smiled. Grinned really. "Oh, I wasn't asking for me. Hael is the one who shared the quest in the first place. It's the quest he's doing right now as a matter of fact. In the forest."
The look on her face was priceless, somewhere between disbelief and deep calculation. She sent three orbs in ten seconds, this time yelling orders to find Hael and bring him to the rear command post immediately. She scowled at me, but shrugged after a minute, and when the order was given for Janis to port them to the rear command post, she pointed at me and said "This one too."
Yay me, included!
To see a high level group of players working together was awe inspiring. Earth manipulators of various classes created fortifications in the field to the west of Four Flags. the construction was so solid that I didn't doubt it would still be there in a thousand years if left alone. Above the new maze of trenches and reinforced bunkers that were half sunken into the ground, about a half-dozen magic users floated about and wove intricate magical defenses into the air to match the physical ones in the earth.
"Do we want fixed values, or percentage decreases?" I heard one call down to Cranst, whom I was still glued to the side of for some reason. "Percentage for all of the usual suspects. Fixed values for the contingencies, if you please." The well dressed man responded smoothly, getting a nod from the caster in return as he went back to work.
It was awe inspiring and very humbling... words were being flung around that I had no concept of, only half of them even rang a bell with Vigil, who was usually great at pulling random knowledge out of nowhere.
Players from the Eleventh Division had begun appearing on their own a few minutes before, but the real hustle and bustle came after Janis tore a truly impressive portal open right in the center of the earthen defenses, spilling thirty incredibly powerful people out of it. They all wore full armor, something, I realized, that the high level players that I had met so far really didn't. Looking at Milenta, her clothing looked nice, but I suddenly was shown that it was nothing but leisure clothing. The same with Cransts' suit-like attire. Just clothes to fit his position. Janis seemed to have a full set of functional armor on, but it was tame compared to the gear that the raid members were toting around.
All of them were massively overdone, incredibly stylized, glowing, frothing, smoking, freezing, and about a hundred other weird visual oddities adorned them. It was... did I say awe inspiring yet? Yea, awe inspiring.
That also meant that Milenta was just that much of a badass without any of her real gear on... noted. The raid members formed into an organized block, then began taking an accounting of what was still necessary to get them all to full fighting strength. Everything that they called out was instantly provided for them by one of the dozen or so support players that had come through with them. The support team was just as geared, but their attire was less "aggressive destruction" and more "I'll save you and your whole family" . So not so jarring.
I followed Cranst and Milenta up to ground level, where they met with a player that wore, what I could only describe as, a liquid version of the night sky. It conformed to her body perfectly. Her name was Caritel... and that's all I got form inspecting her. All of these players walked around with only the bare essential information showing. In this case, the name was it.
"It's confirmed a beast. The white is actually incredibly strong hair that grew out of every surface available. The hair, we believe, is it's primary physical defense. The melee are going to be completely waylaid by it, we suggest a spear be set up for them, or trade them for a full caster compliment for The Pinch. On the side of magical resistances, we haven't been able to test yet. The mountain is still just reading as a mountain, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. We'll have to wait until it emerges. Initial predictions are..." Caritel looked at Cranst for confirmation. "Fire, then acids? Or have you omitted acids in your forecast?" Cranst straightened slightly. "I did, we lack the numbers to commit to an elemental strategy of that type. My forecast has us switching to a free for all strategy after the initial few clashes anyway. Too many unknowns, too many loose cannons." Cranst bowed slightly when he finished speaking and then backed out of the conversation completely, letting the two ladies talk amongst themselves then.
It looked like Cranst was going to actually go back to overseeing preparations, but as he turned to do so his brow furrowed and his eyes glazed over for a moment. Whatever he read didn't make him any happier.
"Milenta, sorry to interrupt, but it has been confirmed that Hael is indeed in possession of the contracted quest." Milenta's brow bent to match Cransts'. Caritel simply nodded once, as if she expected the news.
"Well shit." Milenta muttered as she paced. "This means we are going to need a strike force to round up the towns people, escort them to make sure this doe
sn't blow back on the guild." She glanced at Cranst. "You think we should just raze the forest? Wipe out the outlaws? It would be faster..."
Cranst shook his head and straightened his already perfectly straight jacket. "I wouldn't recommend that path of action. You know that the crown will hit us with sanctions if we go and massacre a bunch of weaker players. It's in our bylaws. It would essentially force us to forfeit any profitable outcome that may come of this event."
Caritel cleared her throat with a soft cough. "If I may?" She looked only at Milenta, ignoring Cranst altogether. "I find the answer to be staring right at us. Quiet literally." She turned to me. "If the cascaders are the problem, then they are also the solution. They will need to deal with the problems they are able to, while we deal with those that we are able to." She jerked her head at the white mountain meaningfully.
Milenta was silent. She just looked at the ground, and me occasionally. She stayed quiet for a long time, longer than I thought it should take to make a decision like this. Which probably meant she just had more information than I did. This thought must have occurred to her two lieutenants as well, because as the silence stretched out, they both began to look increasingly uncomfortable. So, Milenta kept secrets from even her top officers? Interesting.
"Alright. The newbies defend themselves." Milenta said. "Cranst, I'm upgrading your Forecast to a cat six, minimum." Cranst blanched. "Caritel, I need an inquisitor sent to check in on our friends in the desert. Send Baker, He'll know the place." They both looked confused, but nodded in unison anyway. Caritel sending an orb immediately and Cranst burying himself in his internal windows to reevaluate a few things. Milenta pushed on, even as they both worked to complete her previous orders.
"I need the Alphabet brought in. All of them. Tell them we won't pay premiums, but they can have twenty percent of the haul. Cranst, I mean twenty percent. They get no more, start negotiations at five. I'm moving to the forward base now. We can no longer afford to let whatever is coming move more than a few feet in any direction. I want every top player to be there within ten minutes. I need a full lock down protocol enacted the second we can manage it. Hael is now in command of this position. No high level players are to interfere in the cascaders conflict. The game meant to provide an event for both the most powerful players in the world, and the weakest to participate in, all in the same zone. This is a whole new thing. I need everything documented." This last part was said to Caritel. Those four words seemed to allude to a huge amount of work, because Cranst looked at the girl smugly while she just bowed slightly and tapped her temple with her index finger.
The night sky gear that she was wearing instantly reacted when she touched her head. Her eyes glowed like stars, and the actual stars that were in the fabric glowed like hot coals. She suddenly looked like a divine embodiment of the cosmos. "I will watch...Everything." She said, with a finality and confidence that shook me to the core. Then she was just gone.
Her display of power obviously stymied Cranst, but he still seemed happy that she had been sent away. Apparently he forgot that Milenta had just ordered him to do a bunch of work too, because when Milenta threw me a quick wave, a brief "good luck." , and then also disappeared, he looked confused for a second before re-composing himself. "The Alphabet...right. I really hate those guys...cat six...wish she would share..." then he was gone too, a small egg shaped item being taken out of his inventory and popping loudly, teleporting the both of them away.
Boo, alone again.
The Turtle, The Demoness, And The Pinch
Six hundred and five. That's how many players showed up to defend the residents of Four Flags from the outlaws. It was frankly a lot more than I expected. Hael, who had appeared not long after Milenta and the others left, took the news that he had been left in charge better than I would have. He, thankfully, was a pretty decent commander, spreading all of the people who had any sort of stealth skill throughout the surrounding woods to act as an early warning system and organizing the ranged dps players in self sufficient squads. The melee for the most part were left to their own devices. There was too much diversity in their ranks to effectively force them to conform to a singular formation. We were all spread in a crescent, extending from the east, down to the south, and around the western walls of the town. Our job was simple enough. One of Milenta's people had flattened a portion of the towns walls, giving the npcs a straight shot to the north, where the kingdom had dictated they should evacuate to. We would stand in the way of any lower level player who thought they could reap the free experience from the mostly helpless npcs. On top of that, try and stop as much property damage as possible. Easy.
Unfortunately, the npcs would only evacuate when the real event commenced, so we couldn't even get a head start. They wouldn't listen to our suggestions to leave their homes until the correct set of conditions were met. So, as it was, we waited. The earth beneath our feet trembling every few minutes. The Mountain to the south just an amorphous mound of stark white hair at this point. The tremors emanating from its pale shape, while most of the players near us spent their spare time speculating on what was about to happen.
Not long after Hael got everyone sorted out and in place, a massive thunderclap shook the valley and a huge sailing ship appeared in the sky above Four Flags. It glided peacefully over our heads and angled itself to orbit the summit of the mountain in question. Even as we watched players were tossing themselves from the sides of the ship. Some of them just plummeted and crashed into the earth with no thought of their own health. Others glided, flew, or teleported their way to the ground in the distance. Many more simply had a parachute of some kind and took the trip to earth in a more mundane way.
I spent most of this time deeply locked in thought. There were about twenty things that I was trying to get done before whatever was about to happen, happened. First and foremost on that list was lock down a specialty. I spent a good thirty minutes trying to bend my shaping spell just enough to allow my micro casting to work on it. There just seemed to be a block in place for that particular spell though. I stumbled across the answer to my problem nearly by accident. Instead of trying to make the shaping spell micro, I just made my mana micro, and used that to cast the shaping. Even though the shaping said it took a minimum of three mana to cast, it accepted the half point of mana just as readily.
It still took some time, but eventually I was rewarded with an Alpha that was small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. Unfortunately for me, this was still the absolute smallest that I could manage to make him. Which meant my plan for the specialty of my dreams was slowly going right down the drain. In a last ditch effort I tried to bend the spell even further. Forcing my will on both my micro casting skill and the shaping skill at the same time. The result wasn't what I was hoping for to say the least.
There was a ripple in the palm of my hand, a single moment where I thought I'd finally succeeded, but instead of producing a perfect tiny Alpha, the ripple folded in on itself and exploded. It was a small detonation, but enough to sting my hand and earn some dirty looks from anyone nearby. That wasn't the real issue though...I lost the shaping skill completely. I got a nice notification telling me that, due to the strange combination, I lost access to the Shaping: Spectral skill. luckily my micro casting stayed unchanged, but I was not happy. After that, as if the behind the scenes of the game was lagging, a full ten minutes later to be precise, ten very stressful minutes, I was thankfully rewarded with another notification.
Skill Alert!
New Skill Learned!
Micro Shaping
Allows the creation of semi-sentient shapings at a much smaller scale than any other shaping skill would allow
The scale of the shapings will be dictated by the scale of the mana used to cast it
Depending on how small of a shaping you are attempting to create, you may be rewarded with wildly varying degrees of success
Warning
This skill is now listed as a Forbidden technique
If you
wish to train someone in its use, you must contact a member of the Magus Guard
A Magus Guard house can be found in any founding city
Note
The Shaping that you have currently saved within the 'Shaping: Spectral' skill, "Alpha", can be transfered over to your new 'Micro Shaping' skill
Do you wish for this transfer to occur
Y/N
I clicked 'yes', not wanting to waste the time I spent designing my little Alpha and then dove into experimenting with the newly minted skill.
It was a while after that, after a couple miserable failures at pushing my new skill even further, that Vigil pulled me out of my stupor. I don't mean to distract you, but I'm curious about something. I was hoping you could perhaps humor me? Glad to set aside my failed experiments, at least for a short time, I moved my attention over to my friend instead.
It didn't take long for Vigil to outline his plan, and even less time to execute it. Within a few minutes I had Frightener's Song in my hand with two shiny rituals inlaid on the weapon. Vigil donated a small portion of his body's mass in the process, but as a result I didn't need to even charge the rituals with mana. His own infused power being more than enough to keep the rituals functioning.
Frightener's Song
Mace
Binds when equipped
Main Hand
4-6 Damage/Speed 2.5
Enchanted
Runic Weapon: Halt
Runic Weapon: Consume