Cat's Quest

by Roman Prokofiev

  “I’ve heard that before,” whispered the handsome looking blond guy on my right. So had I. Balian had definitely been watching too much of The Game, an epic war drama.

  “My task is to train you to fight just like any other member of the Watchers. And the mentors are here to help me. Hey, you!” He said, poking the smirking guy next to me in the chest.

  “Something funny? Whatever your name is, Lionel? Tell everyone, we shall laugh together.” Lionel didn’t respond. Raccoon picked him out from the line and shoved him into the center of the arena.

  “Hermione. Try this one.”

  One of the mentors, a short brunette in a leather jacket, stepped forward and threw a wooden sword and a shield at Lionel’s feet. She was armed only with a two-handed sword, also a training version. The blond guy picked up the weapons, holding them confidently, clearly not new to the task.

  He attacked Hermione without warning, striking with the tip of the sword, and tried to knock her down with a blow of the shield. No use. The female mentor slipped away, and with mocking slowness, stretched Lionel across the ridge of her sword and kicked him in the butt, sending him flying into the sandy ground. He jumped up, his face all red. Clearly having a high opinion of his combat skills, he was not used to being rolled up, and thrown to the ground in front of the other recruits. He jumped up beautifully and skillfully. They came together again. This time Hermione attacked first. Try as I might, I could not track the movements of her long sword. Lionel gasped, his shield flew in one direction, his sword in the other. The recruit was punched in the mouth by the mentor and now lay in the sand again.

  “Just a regular noob!” Hermione concluded, approaching Raccoon.

  “Anyone else finding something funny or want to say something?” Balian roared. “Get in the arenas and prove to us that you deserve to be respected. Anyone? I didn’t think so!”

  “Now I will introduce you to the mentors. Hawk and I….” I was surprised to see my first trainer among the mentors, “will be teaching you the art of fencing.”

  “Hermione is my deputy and assistant! She will teach you hand-to-hand fighting and spear throwing!”

  “Lorindale,” a tall elf with long, silver hair bowed, “Lorindale will teach you how to shoot a bow.”

  “Argentum will train you in equestrian combat and the art of spear fighting!”

  “Gather for training every day here at the same time! Check in with Hermione! You miss training a second time, whether there’s a good reason or not, you’ll be kicked out of the clan!”

  “In a month you will face the exam! Whoever passes will join The! Best! Clan! Ever!”

  “Now take these sticks and come up to me one by one. I want to see what kind of shit you lot are made of.”

  * * *

  And so it began. We were being trained ruthlessly hard 4 hours a day. No mercy. Of the 28 recruits who originally joined, there were now only twenty left. Four were kicked out for missing training practice, while two others proved to be ‘too difficult’… one just disappeared, and the other was kicked out in disgrace and added to the KOS list for being verbally abusive to a trainer. Hawk, who had turned out to be a Liberty trainer, shared with me in confidence, that even if 10 players made it to the final, that was a good result. The system of selection and training was tough; only true fans of the Sphere could withstand it. True nerds.

  Like me! The Free Liberty School concept was simple: all the promising newcomers who the Watcher had spotted could join. And these were not only fighters but also those developing magic skills, or advanced crafters, or merchants like me. There was one condition: no lousy fighters could join the clan. Besides basic skills, every player must be able to fight at the level of a clan "pro".

  I developed my own routine pretty quickly. In the morning, I got up, had breakfast, and lay down in the capsule. I checked my lots at the Ayer auction and made any necessary changes. Casually buying a dozen lots for sale through auction representatives brought in a little money, five to ten gold per day, but that was enough for now. Then, when I could, I completed city quests trying to improve my reputation with the city, and I went hunting with Valkyrie and Flame, if they were online and up for it. Usually, we managed to complete one or two simple quests around the city together. Every evening, I went to training and sweated there until late at night, mastering my combat skills with other Liberty School players.

  They did all kinds of things to us. From the simplest exercises in pairs, training to block strikes, to the skills of evading a thrown weapon. For example, one half-naked recruit was attacked by a mob throwing darts. He had to dodge, run, and fight them off, do everything he could to avoid getting hit.

  We were split into groups, in which the recruits practiced fighting one against two, one against three, two against five, and so on. We were taught to fight on horseback, to knock the enemy down with a shove of the mount and finish them off with a spear. We learned to dash past the enemy at speed, striking them down with a sword. Or on the contrary, to deftly move away from the rider’s strike and thrust a dart or throwing ax into his back. We were taught to shoot a bow and competently leave the line of fire when in the sight of a shooter. Raccoon promised to teach the most advanced students how to repel arrows with the blade of a sword. Yes, such a skill exists!

  We turned out to be quite a good team, although there were some unique individuals, like the show-off Lionel. However, the truly weird ones dropped out during the first week of training. Maria, Vanya and I made friends with two more players, Diarey, a young guy from St. Petersburg, and Helga, a quiet, fair-haired girl, who never said very much. She was an advanced minstrel, and the physical trainings were very hard on her, but suffering through them, she kept at it because she was determined to get into the clan. The other group in Liberty formed around the ‘star’ Lionel and his friend Lannister. Cupid, Niko, Antares ... There was also a huge, blue-skinned orc called Step, a strong man and a brawler. The level of training was different for everyone, but the coaches cut us with the same brush.

  At first, I did not notice that I was making any progress, but I knew I must be. A training system like this, tested on many newcomers, had a huge advantage over self-study: the players definitely grew much faster.

  I realized this properly for the first time when, having come to the arena a little early, I conducted my ‘duty’ duels with the locals. By the way, after I received the Liberty tag, the local ‘pros’ were much more willing to give fights. During one such fight, I unexpectedly defeated St. Lucifer, a previously inaccessible authority, the ‘Varyag’ clan pro.

  “Why did you give in, Lucifer?” I reproached him, helping him rise from the sand.

  “I didn’t give in,” he answered in a serious tone. “You just improved, Cat.”

  Nevertheless, I only took one out of five or seven fights with ‘pros’, if that. The beginners and fighters without a clan who came here to practice no longer posed any danger to me after the second week of classes. My fighting skills were definitely improving.

  By the end of the second week, those who were surviving the intensive training program began to discover clan secrets, such as how to gain experience effectively, where to get unusual, rare achievements, and how to cheat the system a little by getting free attribute points. We visited the Kondor clan library and received the initial Skills Books and Techniques of Development. This enabled us to open and quickly level up a dozen secondary skills to the first or second rank. We were accompanied by experienced fighters in several large ‘sites’ - dynamic instances that arise in the ‘wild’ lands. To me, as a complete noob, it brought more than twenty points of free attributes and almost two thousand skill points scattered along the fighting branches.

  By the end of the second week, I was dancing with the sword with ease, fighting off two enemies at a time, while simultaneously dodging axes being thrown by a third. Balian failed to catch me for the first time with a catching net he threw at me and seemed to remember my name. However, I wasn’t doi
ng as well at archery and horse fighting—I just lacked the necessary skill points. Seventeen recruits remained at Liberty. Three more were expelled for various reasons. All survivors were assigned the rank of New Clan Recruits.

  My schoolmates also developed their skills. The best fighters at Liberty were Niko and Lannister. Nobody could compare with Svenny when it came to mounted battles, and Valkyrie shot more confidently than anyone else. Flame and I were in the middle somewhere. The dwarf had to work hard, but he coped. Because of his short stature, he was an inconvenient adversary (we were taught to use the character’s dimensions as an advantage), and he could also throw axes like a pro.

  Besides combat skills and physical practice, we took time to learn tactical skills. We learned how to deal with the opponents' pets and familiars, how to behave properly when in bird-man’s aim, how to disable a mage, and much, much more. However, magic wasn’t taught at all, and neither did they touch on non-combat skills. Liberty’s main goal was to bring us up to the general level of clan combat training, to give us the basics that any of the Watchers were expected to be capable of.

  Overall, in the course of training and talking with various Liberty recruits and trainers, as well as reading forums in the mornings and evenings (by the way, we were given limited access to the web-portal of the Watchers), I began to get a clear picture of clan politics and the general balance of power in this world.

  Dorsa, the largest continent in the game, resembled Eurasia in its old form—before the contours were affected by the waters of global warming. Situated in the north-west, in the semicircle of a huge mountain range, Kondor, the Watcher’s castle stood on a high peak. Our future clan controlled all the ‘wild’ lands of the north, while the west of the continent was held by ‘Enemy’ and ‘Brothers’. Two more clans belonging to the northern alliance also had their own castles: ‘Heroes’ in the south-west, and the ‘Variags’ on the northern islands. These were the warring clans, the backbone of the alliance. In addition, the ‘NORTH’ included two dozen more peaceful clans that settled in the ‘wild’ lands under our protection. These clans crafted and farmed—paying a good whack each month to the alliance for the right to stay.

  It became clear, that almost the entire northwestern part of Dorsa, including Eyre and the other NPC kingdoms, was firmly held by our alliance, the only exception being the south, where the great Wild Steppe stretched across the entire southern area of the continent. This was the refuge of many clans, large and small, an impetuous PvP zone, and a source of constant danger.

  Going East, things got more interesting. In the middle of the continent, at the crossroads of its trading routes, on the shore of the Long Sea stood Golden Fairs, the trading capital of Dorsa, the very city in which I could no longer show up. To the north of the city, the lands belonged to the House of Darkness, a huge NPC kingdom. There were many more clans and clan castles, including tons of NPC territories and cities. One clear heavyweight was the multi-player ‘Phoenix’, the ‘red ones’, whose traders’ toes I’d stepped on at Golden Fairs. According to the statistics, there were a few other powerful clans, including Project Hell, Eres, and Golden Order. I did not have time to check out the other continents, but I heard that one of them featured the game’s strongest alliance, held by the Japanese and another by the Germans and the Polish.

  What gave the clans power and control over the ‘wild’ lands? Thinking about it, I concluded that the answer was ‘pretty much everything’. The clans controlled important mines of various resources like mineral deposits and forests, etc. that were essential for crafts. The areas inhabited by mobs were good for grinding. They also controlled farms as static dungeons on self-owned territory, and rare underground random respawning locations. The fighting clans with their own castles would populate their territories with smaller clans of crafters and farmers, ‘crabs’. In return for using the land and having access to natural resources, they paid a tax in gold and a percentage from the resources. In turn, they were protected from PCs and PvP raiders.

  Of course, you could farm in NPC kingdoms as well, and be protected by the guards, but the game was designed in such a way that the most valuable resources and the most dangerous mobs, as well as the best dungeons were located in the ‘wild’ lands, which had been conquered by the clans. Here, the players were allowed to build houses, workshops, towers, and castles. The most interesting aspects of player life took place in the ‘wild’ lands, where, at any moment, you could be attacked and killed with impunity by another player. Loners did not last long there, which was why players tended to get together, forming various clans and alliances in order to settle in the territory safely and use its resources. As I understood it, the Watchers were not currently warring with anyone. From the little I gleaned from AlexOrder’s sparse tales, I figured out that most PvP consisted of hunting the local PCs and occasional trips into the desert. Sometimes, some hostile clans, like the Japanese from Farsids, or desert men would raid the clan’s guard towers. Afterwards, they would put together a full raid and a big fight would follow. But that was a rare occurrence, and I could not really see why they were recruiting and training new members.

  I was happy that they were though. Getting into the clan and having access to the trading resources was exactly what I needed. A paid account and access to the top dungeons, together with a percentage from clan trade was enough to solve my financial issues completely. Moreover, I had a few interesting ideas on how to make extra money. One idea, in particular, kept going around my mind, but in order to implement it, I had to gain trust, get to know the clan’s top people better, and think the details through very carefully. The other thing that preoccupied my mind was the blue, star metal sword I had found earlier. I was not interested in paying the huge amount required to identify its properties, besides, I did not have the money, even if I had wanted to. Having brainstormed a bit with Alex, we came up with an idea.

  According to Sphere quest law, every fifteenth quest a player completed resulted in receiving a so-called ‘historian’. This was a rare quest, generally very well rewarded, especially in terms of reputation with the main faction, in my case, with the people of Eyre. This kind of quest could only be issued by a special NPC, a member of the faction authorities, and it was usually issued by the NPC closest to the player at the time they completed the fifteenth quest. By sheer luck, one of the special NPCs turned out to be the mage I had gotten to know. AlexOrder was sure that if I managed to get a quest from him, I could get the sword identified as a reward. Since I already had a ‘‘hook' in the mage, there was hope. In order to be assigned by him to a historic quest, all I had to do was be in the vicinity of his tower in the castle when completing my fifteenth quest, but this alone was tricky and would require some effort. In the end, I had to work for the city guards and complete a few quests for them. The last one, number 15, took me to the city catacombs, where I had to dive into the cold, muddy water looking for a state guisarme one of the guards had mislaid. I was really pissed by the time I had completed the task. However, I managed to obtain a historic quest reward. That same evening, I was handed a yellow envelope at Karn’s tavern. In curly, child-like handwriting, Weldy wrote:

  Dear HotCat,

  Please come by the shop at your earliest convenience. My uncle left something for you.

  Weldy Nealite

  P.S. This poor girl misses seeing her flowers

  * * *

  A beautiful bouquet of mysterious white and pink flowers moved to a glass vase, filling the little shop with a summery scent. Weldy looked at me, a cunning smile playing on her lips.

  “You’ve forgotten about this poor girl, Lord HotCat,” she complained. “Haven’t come to see me in more than a week.”

  “I’m so sorry, Weldy,” I said, trying to look genuinely repentant. “I just had no time. Trying to get into this clan, you know. I spend all day and night training.”

  “No need to apologize. I still miss you, though,” Weldy sighed, dramatically, “even if I am just
a brainless NPC…”

  “Stop it, you promised!”

  “Oh yes… This is for you from my uncle, Lord HotCat.”

  She placed a metal plate resembling a wardrobe token on top of the counter. On it was a depiction of the symbol of Eyre. A leather strap was woven through two holes. It was clearly supposed to be worn as a necklace.

  You have received a new artifact: steel token ‘Pass-to-Eyres’.

  Enables you to enter the castle.

  Slot — Neck, amulet.

  “Is that it? He didn’t leave a message for me or say anything?” I asked.

  “No. But he seemed a bit strange, as if he was angry, or a little out of sorts. Be careful, Lord HotCat. I have use for you alive,” she said and giggled.

  CHAPTER 11 RICHI CLEVER

  With the token around my neck, I was able to get into the castle without obstacle. I walked through the gate, looking around with curiosity, and had to step away immediately to let an NPC procession pass. The procession consisted of a dozen and a half-mounted riders setting out into the city. At the head, a lean, wiry man with a pale, drooping mustache rode a huge stallion. He wore an impressive breastplate and a golden cloak, artfully decorated in embroidery designs. On his high, wrinkled forehead, adorned with emeralds, shone the toothed rim of the golden crown of Eyre.

  Laon ‘Vaulter’ Elion, Heir of Eyre, read the small caption above him. Wow! It looks like I was fortunate enough to see the local ruler. Interestingly enough, his entourage did not only feature NPCs. Among them, I spotted two real players, who wore identical clothing, just like the other NPC guards: chain mail, uniform green cloaks and triangular shields bearing the Eyre coat of arms. I had read about it before. Having earned a good reputation, you could get into the personal guard of the ruler of the NPC kingdoms. I wondered whether these guys were on a quest, or just traveling with him? Is this their daily routine?