by Albion, Rex
Metal plates were fastened under cloth or leather to form a flexible and quite effective form of armour. It wasn’t nearly as expensive to construct as a full plate cuirass was and had the advantage of being quite a fashionable look if done well. It was tough as hell and flexible to boot.
The cultist’s sword didn’t meet any such resistance when it slashed across Vandal’s ribs and he screamed in pain, stumbling backward.
Cultist hits you for 4 damage!
Then Vandal felt another rush of energy and knew that Roxy had cast her healing spell on him. It wasn’t going to prevent these guys butchering him though, so he took a gamble and sidestepped to get closer to the one who’d just sliced his ribs. With his bloody left hand, he grabbed one of the chairs and flung it wildly toward the armoured guy, who stumbled back predictably, batting the improvised weapon away with his sword.
Vandal took advantage of that moment, and kept moving, hoping that the chair would buy him time. The other man tried to back off, but Vandal was too quick, and he lashed out at the man’s sword arm.
Hack: 8 damage!: Hack applies Numbing!
The force of Vandal’s enhanced blow left the cultist’s sword arm limp and his weapon dropped from his fingers. Roxy’s next Zap brought him to his knees and Vandal swiftly performed his finishing move before the armoured man could make a move.
Whirling Decapitation! You spin around and lop the head from your opponent!
It was satisfying, to see another head roll like that, but it left him open to the armoured man, who closed and got in a good lunge of his own. Vandal was lucky not to lose a kidney, but his health bar dropped, and he staggered back, flailing wildly with his sword to fend the man off.
Roxy’s next lightning attack struck the cultist’s sword arm, and he yelped in surprise, his sword dropping from numb fingers. Vandal was in agony, and he could picture the guy getting his sword back just as he stepped forward. He was already reaching for it.
The second chair he threw worked much better, probably because the cultist was desperately trying to pick up his sword with his off hand, rather than worrying about fending off a flying piece of furniture. A chair leg in the face was his reward, and he fell on his backside, grunting in pain.
Vandal liked that outcome, since it gave him back a little more health from Roxy’s heal over time. He grabbed the lip of the table and flipped it on its side, then switched to a chair leg, holding it in front of him like a shield, while he strode forward.
The cultist retrieved his sword in the nick of time, but Vandal’s table proved an effective enough barrier that Roxy’s Zap hit the cultist again, this time in the chest. While he was staggered from that, Vandal launched a thrust with his sword and scored another hit, then bashed at him with the table again.
Being assaulted with a table clearly upset the man, who Vandal was starting to realise was probably a commander of some kind, not a mere foot soldier. Foolishly, he reached out with his right hand, his sword still in his left hand, and tried to wrest the table out of Vandal’s grip.
Vandal’s grimace of pain turned into a grin as he pulled the table back toward him, the officer didn’t let go quickly enough, and was pulled forward, overextending his arm. Which Vandal gleefully chopped through at the wrist.
The look of horror on his face was wiped off the next instant by another spark of ozone and a flash that burned a hole in his forehead. The cultist collapsed and Vandal wobbled on his feet, staggered two paces, and fell onto one of the cots. It was quite stylish.
As his head swam and his eyes blurred, he heard Roxy’s voice cry out. She was so far away; he couldn’t really hear her.
You killed two Cultists (lvl 1). 20 XP
Your finishing moves killed two Cultists (lvl 1). 22 XP
You killed one Sergeant Cultist (lvl 2). 20 XP
Quest Completion: Thinning the Herd. You found the barracks the cultists use and killed five of them, including a Sergeant. Now they can’t arrive in the nick of time to reinforce their friends. Good job! 200 XP
Roxy’s healing spell filled his body as she recast it, “Stay with me, Vandal. Don’t go to sleep. I’m here.” Vandal just wanted to sleep, but she kept nagging him.
A few moments later, his vision started to return, and Roxy healed him again as the second spell wore off. His eyes came back into focus, and he smiled up at her happily.
Roxy leaned in and kissed him, and it was the most welcome kiss he’d ever had. It was just the right side of being hot, and she broke it off before it turned into something they couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter to his cock though, that was already straining to be free at the most inappropriate time. Damn she was sexy.
“Feeling better?” she asked, gently stroking his cheek.
“Yeah,” Vandal said, looking down at the blood soaking him and the cot beneath him. There were splashes of scarlet all over the floor. “I’m glad we don’t have to clean this place up.”
Roxy laughed. “You’re fine.”
Chapter Eight
Roxy brandished the sword that had belonged to the sergeant of this group of cultists. They were wearing similar clothes to each other, and carrying similar gear, but it wasn’t like a true uniform. They could have been anybody he’d seen in the town. This sword, while short, was clearly a better-quality weapon than the other cultists had carried. Because she was barely up to Vandal’s chest, it looked much larger in her hands.
The man’s armour was useless, however. It was far too small to fit over Vandal’s barbarically powerful chest and far too big for the goblin shaman. Roxy had tried it on, but it was like wearing a tent weighted down with steel plates. New Albion wasn’t like lots of games where the kit magically transformed from a minotaur’s mail shirt to the measurements of a gnome just by picking it up. They’d have to put a bit more work into it than that. The best they could do was sell it in town, but that would have to wait.
It was a pity, because even though they’d completed the side quest, Vandal had a feeling that some armour would be really helpful for dealing with the main temple. They’d killed what, five cultists who could have been in there? Worse they could have turned up as reinforcements as the quest said. Would it be enough, he wondered?
“You said, there’s a big temple full of them,” Roxy said, as if she were reading his mind.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“So, we need a plan then? Or do we just charge in and take as many out as we can before we die heroically and respawn at the graveyard?”
“A plan sounds good. I’m not sure I have one, but I really wish I did.”
“We should look around, see if anything in here can help,” Roxy said, starting a search.
“Fair enough, but let's be quick before anything changes. Who knows when they will take a break from their creepy cult worshipping?”
Vandal gathered up the weapons he could find, laying them out on a relatively lean cot. It was probably as appealing a bed as a sleazy motel on a remote highway but at least it wasn’t covered in sticky blood.
“Come and see this,” Roxy called from the storeroom.
The prize she’d found was a small barrel, maybe ten gallons worth. Possibly less. With his massive barbarian frame, Vandal was able to lift it at least. “Right, so I can move it but what’s it for?”
“We could roll it into the temple, and then I can Zap it,” Roxy said.
“Huh?”
“It’s oil, and not the cooking kind,” Roxy said. “It might go boom!”
“That should give them a shock,” Vandal said, putting it on its side and giving it a gentle push with his foot. It rolled forward slowly.
“We get as close as we can, roll that out, and set it off when they realise we’ve started attacking the nearest people,” Roxy said.
“We’ve got plenty of knives, but no usable armour,” Vandal said.
“I didn’t find anything else in here I’m afraid. Unless you want to go camping.”
“Afterward, sure. Hopefully we can
loot stuff from here when we’re done with the quest. Maybe sell some of it in Tinshire. I can’t carry all this at once.”
“A pity we don’t start with bags of holding, but it’s not that type of game. On the plus side, no inventory management though.” said, Roxy. “I hope the loot doesn’t disappear.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
The sound of religious chanting had been a big help in making their approach. They’d switched to rolling the heavy barrel when it had become clear that Vandal’s stamina bar would deplete rapidly if he carried it. Now the barrel was just around the corner from the cavernous temple.
Vandal had crept forward, and found the corridor opened up on the right-hand side of the rear wall of the temple. He could hear the waterfall nearby, off to the left of the corridor’s mouth.
There were two cultists, dodging their religious observations by playing cards behind one of the large marble columns, where the priests presumably couldn’t see them. The marble was carved with relief figures of humans, but Vandal didn’t have time to inspect the detail of the work.
With his strength enhanced by Roxy’s Imbue spell, Vandal was hoping to take these two out quietly enough that he could run back and help her roll the barrel into the room. Every few seconds the crowd would respond to something the priest was saying, in whatever arcane language they were using. They weren’t in harmony and didn’t have good timing, so it created a good deal of noise.
He could hear them gossiping as they played the simple card game, dropping cards on a blanket they sat on. It didn’t look like they were paying attention to the service the priest was giving, like naughty schoolboys at the back of class. Vandal half expected them to be called to the front and have the cards confiscated until after church.
“Fucking splitters! Illuminated Brothers of the Obsidian Stygian Darkness? It’s pathetic. That’s three words that mean the same thing and how can you be illuminated and Stygian at the same time anyway?” one of them whispered.
“Doesn’t sound good to me, Urgot. Too much of a mouthful. Fuck them and their heretic priests.”
“I heard most of them got roasted by a… what was it?” Urgot said, fishing for the right word.
“Dragon?”
“Dragon? No, Rouard. Not a dragon. A judge. Yeah, a judge roasted them and gave them two years hard labour for embezzlement of church funds and tax evasion. One of them got five years for corrupting the innocent with acts of depravity.”
“Well, I can’t judge them for that. That’s what we do, isn’t it, Urgot?”
“No, Rouard. We just make blood sacrifices to our Dark Lord,” Urgot said.
“Right, but after we defile them. That’s pretty dark and depraved. At least, I think it is? It feels dark and depraved, right?”
“It is a bit.”
“It’s the best bit. The defiling. I wouldn’t mind if the rituals were just defiling,” Rouard said.
“Well, you’re a gentleman, aren’t you? But The Defiler demands blood sacrifices are defiled, and then, you know, ritually sacrificed. There’s plenty of other defiling we get to do day to day, but sacrifice days are special. Anyway, they weren’t depraved like we are.”
“Less depraved?”
“No, much worse.”
“How much worse?”
“They were defiling stray dogs, I heard.”
“Please tell me that’s a euphemism.”
“Not from what Brother Argyle told me.”
“Urgh, that’s vile. Who’d defile a puppy?”
“The fucking Illuminated bastards, that’s who. It’s just sick. Plenty of women in that city for them to defile.”
“Or men.”
“Yeah, I mean, women, that's fine. Men, not my cup of tea but each to their own. But animals? That’s just sick. What’s an animal ever done to deserve defiling? No self-respecting god is going to ask his worshippers to do something deviant like that, right?”
“No way. Hey, goblins aren’t animals, are they?” Rouard asked.
“Err. No? I think. If the high priest says we can defile it, they can’t be. He’d never tell us to defile dogs so goblins must be like green humans.”
“Good. I was worried there for a moment, Urgot.”
Urgot didn’t answer his friend. Vandal had got behind him, clamped his left hand over his mouth, and dragged the blade of his sword across the cultist’s bile spewing throat.
Vandal was on Rouard before he knew what hit him, clamping his left hand over the judgemental cultist’s mouth, and catching a glimpse of his shocked expression, before he ripped the sword across his throat. He’d got similar surprise attack notifications against both of them.
Stealth Attack Success: Surprise Attack: 10 damage!
The man crumpled with a moist gurgle and didn’t really have time to register that he was doomed, before he expired. Considering they’d been debating the morality of defiling humans versus pets, Vandal didn’t feel guilty. He was fine with the concept that petty crime came in shades of grey. But from his perspective, these guys were absolutely not in a position to claim moral superiority over other cultists.
New Finishing Move: You have unlocked a new finishing move, Cutthroat! 50 XP!
Vandal nodded in satisfaction. It was a shame that you didn’t get a new finishing move the first time you tried a technique, but perhaps there was some random element at play. Either way, for as long as he played, he’d benefit from it and he was sure if he gave it a little thought, he could actively think of ones that the developers would have included. Of course, as Roxy had mentioned, he could always log out and look up the ones other people had found, but he would rather avoid that, if he could. It would be more fun to sit in a tavern, and talk about such things over a drink, he reckoned.
He took a moment to quietly prop the first body up against the column, and the second with it, then move the cloth they’d laid on the ground for their game out of the way too. None of the other cultists had noticed them. He didn’t want the rolling barrel of oil stopping early because it hit a woollen blanket. That would put an anti-climactic stop to their plan, which wasn’t likely to be a spectacular success in the first place.
That he made it back to Roxy without raising an alarm surprised him a bit, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. This was a challenging quest, but it was their first major one and they still hadn’t levelled up yet. Roxy was waiting for him, and she used her Imbue on herself too before they rolled the barrel to the doorway together.
She tapped him on the arm and whispered, “What if I Zap one of them way over there, while you roll the barrel in behind them as fast as you can while they look at him screaming?”
Vandal grinned. That was a great idea to have at the last minute and if they were looking away, he could guide the barrel much further before he let it go, getting it into the most lethal position for the enemy. He gave her a thumbs up and she nodded. Vandal put his hands on the ends of the barrel, and began pushing it forward, with a series of circular motions.
That one summer post-college when he’d been determined to prove that he didn’t need a nepotistic summer job at a lumber mill to prove himself, and had found his own work in a local bar, he’d learned some things. Firstly, that demonstrating his independence from the Cabot lumber and mining fortune wasn’t as easy as he’d thought it would be. His expensive clothing brands and hand me down Tesla set him apart.
Secondly, he’d learned that moving beer kegs around the cellar was about technique more than raw strength and for centuries people had been rolling barrels, not relying on people with Vandal’s unearned physique to move them. He’d sweated a lot, and run barrels over his toes several times, but the skill came in handy now in a way that he could never have predicted.
A heartbeat later, Roxy’s spell discharged with a crack of energy and produced a scream of pain on the opposite side of the cavern, as a cultist toppled forward from his kneeling position.
He had picked up a good bit of spe
ed already, rolling the barrel forward, focused on the spot he’d chosen. When he let go, it was trundling toward the middle of the group of kneeling worshippers. Vandal didn’t pause to watch it, he simply let go and ran to the side, using Slash against the back of the unfortunate cultist at the rear right hand side of the temple.
There was another loud crack of lightning, and nothing happened. Vandal’s victim cried out in pain, and heads began to turn back toward him, as he slashed another one. It didn’t matter to him if they were dead in one blow or not, until they got up. He wanted to wound as many as possible, and Slash was cheap, and would keep hurting them for a few rounds too, making them easy to finish off. Vandal figured the more he could injure before they fought back, the better. Then they could mop them up with finishing moves.
By his guess, there were at least twenty in the room, and the barrel hadn’t done anything, which was disappointing. If Roxy had a flame spell, that might have worked better. This was not going to plan but two more cultists were already dead, and three injured now, and none had even stood up yet.
“Intruder!” someone shouted, from near the altar.
Another crack of lightning sounded, and then something did happen. Something big. The cavern filled with orange light, and a deafening explosion almost burst Vandal’s ear drums as Roxy’s second Zap detonated the barrel of oil.
Vandal’s vision was overpowered with the fiery glow, even though he wasn’t facing it directly, but he felt like he’d gone deaf from the sound, and he was thrown to the floor by the shockwave. It stung and he lost a couple of hit points, but he had been right on the edge of the effect and was just a bit dazed by it. He shook his head, and immediately regretted it as he discovered a serious instant headache.
Staggering to his feet unsteadily, his vision was clearing a bit he thought at first, but then realised everything was still filtered with bright orange. Blinking helped a bit, and he could smell smoke. It wasn’t just that the flash of the explosion was still affecting his vision, but the smoke and the patches of burning oil were a problem too.