“Won’t they know who did this to them?” Zack asked. “Won’t they get angry at us?”
He looked at AliceX, but the Elven girl merely rolled her eyes again, and didn’t say anything.
“It’s not considered an attack,” SquigglyFingers explained. “You simply drop off an item; it deals no damage. Who cares where it lands? It’s a good exploit. It’s just there are two of them, and they need to be blind during exactly the same time. Just enough time to let me pick that lock.”
“Where’s the second bucket?” Zack looked around.
The next moment, an old wooden bucket appeared in the Thief’s hands.
“There it is,” SquigglyFingers said. “I nicked it from the broom closet back at the tavern. Or did you think I was too shy to change in front of you?”
Zack and AliceX grabbed a bucket each, and all three took their positions.
“Ready?” SquigglyFingers said. “On my command. One. Two. Three. NOW!”
Feeling extremely stupid and somewhat criminal, Zack dunked his bucket over the Dragonwatch’s peaky golden helmet. The cold oval of a saurian face was gone, covered by the silly wooden thing. Zack quickly stepped back, afraid to somehow trigger the guard and send him into a fit of blind flailing frenzy.
“Hey!” his Dragonwatchman said.
“Hey, what’s going on?” another one echoed.
Both guards started moving at the same time, walking around in circles, then bumped into each other and walked back, looking helpless and lost. The buckets on their heads shook a little but held. SquigglyFingers was already busy, crouched next to the massive doors, probing the lock with his little tools of steel.
“Oh no,” Zack heard AliceX’s voice behind him.
He turned around, still unable to see what she was looking at. And then Zack saw. And they indeed had a problem, a big one.
A long shadow was approaching through an archway nearby, the peaked shadow of a city guard. It wasn’t Dragonwatch. It was quite a common guardsman, but still prone to raising hell on spotting someone who picked a lock or stole an item before his eyes.
“Five seconds,” SquigglyFingers said.
“Stop!” AliceX shouted, setting off towards her brother.
Zack stood in her path.
“No!” he said. “No, keep it up, we can do it. Wait.”
He dashed for the incoming guard, slipped behind the NPC’s back and patted him on the shoulder.
“Hey man,” Zack said. “So, what’s your story?”
“What are you doing?” AliceX mouthed, regarding them with her eyes wide open. Two Dragonwatchmen were still circling behind her back, bumping into each other and trying to shake off their new headgear.
“Hello, traveler,” the guardsman spoke up, turning his back on the scene in order to face Zack. “It’s not often we see your kind around this place.”
“M-my kind?” Zack was struggling for questions. What does one ask an NPC? “What do you mean, my kind?”
“Oh, you know,” the guardsman said. “Adventurers, just like you. Can you believe I also used to be one? And then…”
“You took an arrow to the knee,” Zack finished for him.
“It happens more often than you think,” the NPC replied. “These bandits, their archers, they go for your kneecaps quite often. They don’t want to kill you, see. They want to cripple you. Send a message. Two of my friends on the city watch also had it.”
“I’m done!” SquigglyFingers shouted.
“Oh, okay,” Zack said to the guardsman. “Goodbye then?”
“Goodbye, traveler!” the answer was. The next moment, the two elite fellows from the Dragonwatch finally managed to drop their buckets, one after another, and took their places by the door, their golden mugs staring at the trio with an air of silent superiority.
“Phew,” Zack said. “It was close.”
“It was,” AliceX replied. “I hate this story so much I was ready to put an arrow through his other knee myself, I swear.”
“I never thought these chats with city guard may have a use,” SquigglyFingers admitted. “Well done, man.”
He stepped up to the big reinforced doors and threw them open in a dramatic gesture.
“Welcome, dear members of the Mages’ Guild!” the Thief proclaimed.
AliceX and Zack followed him inside. As they were passing the two elite guards, who were standing at ease as usual, one of them turned his golden face towards Zack. “We’re watching you, scum,” he said.
Zack only smirked at him as he crossed the doorstep.
On the inside, the Mages’ Guild was silent and dusty, and smelled of old books to Zack – this smell, like many others, was incredibly realistic and at the same time otherworldly: not just a smell of any books but a very specific fragrance of ancient tomes and scrolls of papyrus brought here from all places in Aetheria and places beyond, if there were any.
Daylight fell through high ornate windows of the Guild in thick white pillars, motes of dust dancing inside them. But the place had just enough dark corners, wooden racks, and hung tapestries for the three of them to stick to and move around without disturbing the NPC acolytes and mages. It was unlikely these NPCs were any wiser than the guard outside, but SquigglyFingers didn’t want to risk running into a human player roaming amongst them – the outcome would have been unpredictable, and their amulet-retrieval operation could easily be compromised if a PC Mage was to decide they were intruders up to no good, and raise the alarm.
“The Hall of Disciples is this way,” SquigglyFingers said, leading them down a long winding corridor streaked with golden tapestries and ominous marble statues of various Paladin Mages who had supposedly founded the place.
“How do you know?” Zack asked.
“Man, think like a level designer,” the Thief replied in a hushed voice. “This is a stealth-oriented map, right? And we’re looking for the treasure. Where would it be, the coolest loot container in the area? Somewhere at the outskirts maybe? Next to the entrance? Nah. Somewhere deep. Down a hall framed with some expensive-looking stuff, for example, to show you some treasure is up ahead.”
“Nice,” Zack said. “You’ve got your stuff figured out, man. Respect.”
“I do,” the Thief admitted. “You know, man, this is why I love stealth gameplay. People who play as warriors or mages or anything explicit, they don’t notice stuff. Now a Thief, or an Assassin or something – these classes cannot afford such a luxury, hacking their way through the level and tanking up everything the game throws at them. A Thief has to look for small details all the time, analyze things, figure them out, you know?”
“Same as a Ranger,” AliceX noted.
“Same as an Alchemist,” Zack said.
At the end of the ominous corridor, they ran into another pair of massive doors reinforced with mithril.
“Let me check…” SquigglyFingers moved forward and crouched next to it. He probed the lock, then exclaimed, “Level NINETY-NINE!? Are you kidding me!? What the…”
“Is that a problem?” Zack asked carefully.
“No!” The Thief straightened and tossed his lockpicks on the tiled floor. “This is NOT a problem. This is the end. No way can I unlock it. It won’t let me even try. It just tells me my skill cap is below the requirements. So it’s over. Rejoice, ladies.”
“Oh well,” AliceX said. “We came this far. It would be a shame to leave empty-handed.”
“And what do you suggest, my dear sister? Steal their silverware!?” SquigglyFingers paced around, fuming and muttering to himself.
“Wait,” Zack said. They both looked at him. “There must be another way in.”
“The hell do you know?” the Thief said.
“Hold on! Why?” AliceX looked at Zack, her Elven eyebrows raised.
“Okay, think like a level designer!” he said. “Right? What’s the point of cutting everyone off with a door only some top-level Thief may open? What if someone, like
us, would already get inside, but fails to pick this lock? There must be alternative routes, maybe for other classes, even. We have to look around. Analyze things.”
“Fine.” SquigglyFingers quickly caught the drift. “Wait for me here.”
With him gone, Zack and AliceX started roaming around the corridor, poking into its various dark corners, nooks, and crannies. Zack examined the tapestries. To his surprise, their images told a story of sorts, and the story was about some ancient battle between Good and Evil, as such stories go. He saw Paladin Mages fighting demonic forces of old, and discovering an infernal portal for the first time, the one quite reminiscent of the arch inside the now-ruined Shrine of Marduk. The portal seemed to be outside back then, and guarded quite well. To his amazement, one of a queasy kind, Zack saw Marduk himself. The Eater of Worlds looked pretty much the same in the ancient times, his huge infernal warhammer already in his hands, dealing blows back and forth, killing brave Paladins in great numbers. Then, Zack saw, a trio of strange-looking Mages came forth, taller than the rest of the Human army – almost demigods in appearance.
The final tapestry showed how one of them held up his hands and brought forth an orb of shining light, which other Paladin Mages fed with torrents of energy until the central Mage, whoever he was, literally exploded and went up in a pillar of white light, which hit Marduk and entrapped him, and gave birth to the magical dome above Pandemonia, now gone thanks to Zack. He wondered if someone would make a tapestry of him one day, in the process of reaching for the Legendary Aetherium Shard with his greedy fingers. Zack had to admit this kind of fame wasn’t very pleasant. He’d totally look like a minor villain, a silly thief driven by profits with no regard for their possible consequences. And here he was, preparing to steal something again…
“Hey,” she called him all of a sudden, from behind a tapestry with the orb-summoning Paladin Mage. “Come here. Look at this.”
“What’s there?” Zack asked.
“I think it’s an alchemy lab.”
The room was tiny and looked poor when compared to the hall outside – the walls of bare stonework, the daylight seeping in from a small barred window high above. The only thing this broom closet held was a wooden table, and a big intricate glass apparatus on top of it.
“Woooow,” Zack said, his musings on morality forgotten right away. “I wish we could take this thing with us too.”
The device looked magnificent. It was equipped with a glass mortar and pestle, and all kinds of copper dishes and burners for mixing and heating alchemic substances, and of course glass retorts and pipes of all possible shapes and uses, all bound together to work as a single system. It probably made little sense scientifically – Zack used to study chemistry very hard and had a concept of what lab equipment looks like and what it does – and still it seemed like something magical, something capable of creating potions and powders impossible to obtain otherwise.
A ponderous-looking tome was resting next to the device on a mahogany pedestal. Zack examined it before checking the table and the device for any substances to be looted.
Items Collected:
Recipe: Firebomb
Items Collected:
Sulfur X8
Saltpeter X7
Craft Firebomb
Alchemy Lvl 4 Recipe
Items Required:
Sulfur X3
Saltpeter X3
Think ‘Craft Now’ to Confirm
“A Firebomb!” Zack said, and it was crafted immediately, and appeared in his hand, heavy, bulky, and metallic. He went on and crafted one more.
Tip of the Day: Firebombs can be used to clear a passage or break through a locked door
of any level. Area-of-Effect. Fire Damage.
“I knew it,” Zack said, turning to AliceX, his face beaming. “I’m sure it just spawned here, just for me. Let’s go smash these doors open.”
Item Equipped:
Firebomb (2/2)
He carried his newly crafted Firebomb all the way to the doors of The Hall of Disciples, the Elven Ranger following him with interest. Zack shunned away from the door, as far as it seemed comfortable to him, and weighed the bomb in his hand, trying to mentally shield his ears from the loud explosion that he knew would follow.
“Hey!” Zack heard the Thief’s voice behind his back. “Hey, man. What the hell are you doing? STOP!”
SquigglyFingers ran past him and blocked the doorway.
“Stop,” he repeated. “I have the key.”
The Thief did have it. It opened the lock with a barely audible click, and they stepped into the Hall of Disciples one after another.
“Where did you get it?” Zack asked.
“Pickpocketed it from one of the Disciples,” SquigglyFingers said. “An NPC, level thirty. Not that hard a mark for my Pickpocket skill. They must have planted it on purpose, as an alternative way.”
The Hall of Disciples was big and circular; a hexagonal ballroom of sorts, half of its walls with tall tinted-glass windows in them, half draped with more golden tapestries hiding more wooden doors, leading to NPC barracks and other sections of the Guild. A round iron grate, some kind of an ancient drainage thing, could be seen in the middle of the hall floor, and right behind it, like an altar surrounded by colored light seeping through tinted glass, stood a gorgeous display case carved out of redwood; the Amulet of Shades, a big silver scarab, shimmering behind its glass like a small rainbow.
“There it is!” Zack jumped towards the display case.
“STOP, man.” SquigglyFingers pushed him aside. “Are you this dumb?”
“What?” Zack turned around, taken aback.
“It’s trapped of course. You think they’d leave it lying in the open like that?”
Poison Gas Trap Lvl 10 detected!
Lightning Trap Lvl 20 detected!
Inferno Trap Lvl 30 detected!
“Step aside,” the Thief commanded. “I’ve got enough skill for all of them. And more.”
SquigglyFingers bent over the display case, his gloves shimmering purple with magic. PUFF! A whiff of dark smoke, and one of the traps was gone.
SquigglyFingers uses Disarm Trap! Poison Gas Trap Lvl 10 disarmed
Lightning Trap Lvl 20 disarmed
Inferno Trap Lvl 30 disarmed
PUFF! PUFF! Then another trap was gone, and another one. Slowly and carefully, the Thief opened the case, took out the Amulet of Shades, turned around and held it up for all three of them to see.
“Wow,” AliceX said. “It does look epic.”
“It’s legendary, not epic,” SquigglyFingers said.
“What does it do?” Zack asked.
SquigglyFingers gave them a crooked smile. Poof! – and the Amulet was gone from his hands. It reappeared around his neck where it looked like it always belonged, holding the Thief’s cape together and shimmering with potent magic, a little silver beetle full of electricity.
“You are on your own, kids,” SquigglyFingers told them.
The Thief raised his hand in a mock salute macro, and then, with a loud magical WHAMM, dissolved into the shadows and disappeared from sight.
Tip of the Day: Hide carefully! When activated, the Amulet of Shades will reveal your last known location and alert hostile creatures nearby.
Next thing they knew, all doors around the two of them burst open at once, and a crowd of NPC mages and fighters burst onto the hall, their swords ready for combat, their hands sizzling with lightning and poison and fire. Zack and AliceX regarded them, nothing but an iron grate in the floor between the two of them and a bunch of enraged high-level Disciples and Dragonwatch.
Chapter 10: Area of Effect
AliceX was a professional Ranger and most likely a seasoned FPS gamer – she moved graciously and wisely, her arrow snuffing one poorly-armed fireball-toting disciple, then another.
Zack quickly realized she was going for glass cannons and took her time to score a crit, normally aiming for an eye o
r a throat. Aetheria’s critical hit system was a matter of lots of public bragging from its developers. The surfaces of the creatures were broken down to the smallest zones like main blood arteries and the solar plexus and the eyes. Every critical blow was special. The game arranged different effects to them. Zack was at first relieved when he realized the pain from burning was tolerable despite the smell of your cooking flesh, but then he started to gasp for air.
Guild Disciple Lvl 27 was CRITICALLY hit by AliceX, lost 72 hit points, and was killed!
Guild Disciple Lvl 25 was CRITICALLY hit by AliceX, lost 78 hit points, and was killed!
Zack was hit by Guild Disciple Lvl 29 and lost 20 hit points
Zack lost 7 hit points to Fire Damage!
Zack lost 5 hit points to Fire Damage!
Zack lost 8 hit points to Fire Damage!
“Firebomb, you MORON!” AliceX shouted into his ear, darting around him like a gracious whirlwind. The NPCs were mostly targeting her now. Zack wasn’t dangerous to them.
Until he was.
Item Equipped:
Firebomb (1/2)
“FIRE IN THE HOLE,” he screamed, tossing a heavy iron Firebomb towards the center of the Hall of Disciples, where the heavy drainage grating could be seen, decorative maybe, destructible though? There was only one way to find out.
KABOOM! Zack hoped the bomb would work at least somewhat like a grenade, giving him time to fall as far back as possible. But in fact, he and AliceX barely made it to a safe distance. Two more NPCs, one Mage and one Guardsman, not elite yet somewhat armored, were thrown apart by the explosion, AI-controlled no more, just a couple ragdolls, from his Area Damage and little else.
City Guard Lvl 25 was CRITICALLY hit by Zack, lost 54 hit points, and was killed!
Guild Disciple Lvl 29 was hit by Zack and lost 54 hit points
Guild Disciple Lvl 30 was hit by Zack, lost 81 hit points, and was killed!
The Alchemist of Aetheria: A LitRPG Adventure Page 16