I quickly access my dashboard to see the sundial at right around five in the morning. Funny that. I can change it to an actual clock – military time too! – but I’m old school, says the guy who has decided to live his life in an online world rather than the world up there.
I smirk at my own bullshit, as we all should do from time to time to remind ourselves just how trivial our lives and thoughts are.
“I didn’t realize I was out for that long,” I finally say.
“Well, you were,” says the scholarly giant, “and it won’t be long until we reach the public campsite. Do you want to walk, or would you like me to carry you?”
“I’ll ride Wolf.”
Chapter Eleven: A New Page in the Book of Time
“Let me help with something,” I say once we reach the campsite, which is situated on a small plateau about twenty yards from the makeshift road. The trees in this part of the Western Splits dip into the road, vines hanging from limb to limb.
Poor Lothar has had a hell of a time moving through the terrain, but he hasn’t complained any about it, nor has he said anything about carrying me or any vexations he may have experienced.
“Relax.” Sam yawns and stretches her arms over her head. “The day is young.”
“Really, Sam, let me help out. I can hunt, um, move things around.”
“Move things around?” Sam laughs as Lothar sits, using the plateau as a back rest. The big giant yawns loudly, and not a few moments later, he’s snoring.
Wolf moves next to me after I’ve sat, and rests his head on my lap. He looks at my injured arm and back to me.
“Don’t worry, boy,” I tell him as I read the side of the potion. “Cherry Apollos, huh? Heard of this brand?” I ask Sam.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Must be off world.” I take a little sip and nod. “Fuck, it’s pretty good.”
+96 HP!
Sam crouches next to me and examines my arm. As she lifts it, a frown forms on her face.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, “I’ll be okay. Just need to drink more potions. Maybe I’ll do some scavenging for an herb that can take care of this. At least until after we deal with Broken and Florin Talonas.” I shake my head. “This is stupid, you know. We’re riding south when the real problem is north.”
“You can’t fight a source code bomb,” she reminds me.
“Clearly, but there must be something I can do. The Obelisk wouldn’t have chosen me if that wasn’t the case. She wouldn’t give me this.”
I place my hand on my chest, over my scar.
Last Warrior.
“It says Last Warrior,” I tell her, “that’s what it says.”
“I know. And I wish she hadn’t given that to you. It’s gone to your head.”
I wave her concern away and start petting Wolf. He stares at me longingly with his blue-green eyes, my biggest fan.
“He’s a good dog,” I say, trying to change the conversation.
“A good dog with a stubborn owner.” Sam’s Book of Time materializes before her and she turns to one of the blank pages.
“Sam, I told you no.”
“And I told you it’s not your choice. I want to make a contribution to this book, and this is the contribution I’ll make. Now, rest, cuddle your puppy, close your eyes, and think about whatever it is you think about when your eyes are closed.”
“Lots of things,” I tell her. “I think about lots of things. Chicago, Unigaea, past experiences, plans – I’m human, all these things are part of me.”
“Good, do that, human.”
“Sam.”
“Oric.”
“Cyn.”
“Eric.”
I laugh. “Fine, do what you will.”
“I always do.”
With that, Sam turns away from me, her Book of Time open in her lap. She skims through a couple of pages, her eyes flickering across the text.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I scratch Wolf behind the ears with my good hand and he presses his head even further into my lap, as if he’s trying to melt into me. He’s warm, and his warmth and companionship remind me of just how amazing this NPC animal is.
You’re just an NPC, I think as I continue to pet him. His eyes closed, he snuggles up even closer.
But you’re so real.
And at that thought, I start to tear up. How can this be fake? I look from Wolf to my bitten up arm.
It’s all so goddamn real.
“Such a good dog,” I tell Wolf, suddenly coming to a conclusion I’m hardly able to internalize. In here, you’re real and I’m fake, I’m the NPC, I’m the alien being. You live here. If I log out, you’re here. If I die, you remain.
I drop my head onto his, ignoring the pain of my arm, smelling his fur, feeling his warmth.
Sam presses her palm into the blank pages of her Book of Time, her eyes closed, a faint halo of pink light forming at the back of her head. Ink takes shape on the pages of the book, swirling from blotch to defined character.
Her hourglass necklace begins to glow, light radiating off it as her hands tremble, as the ink dries.
Suddenly spooked, Wolf stands and barks, his tail beating in agitation.
“Sam … ” I start to say.
She gasps, I hear the glass of her hourglass necklace crack, and I watch in pitiful silence as a grey streak appears in her hair.
Her head collapses forward and she starts to shake.
“Sam!” I shout, barely able to contain myself. I lunge for her, oblivious to my injured hand. I catch her as she falls, and pull her into me.
“Oric,” she whispers.
“Just rest,” I tell her, hating myself, hating her avatar, hating the goddamn mechanics of Unigaea, a world that lets you die, a heartless cruel place not unlike the world up there.
The place I call home.
“Just rest,” I say again. “I don’t need to heal for now.”
(^_^)
I awake, my mangled hand over Sam’s body. We’ve been asleep for hours, hours which have passed like seconds.
My HP is two hundred points lower than it was just a short while ago. There’s sweat on my forehead, I feel a fever coming on, and I can tell by looking at my purple and blue arm that things will get worse before they get better. The infection is spreading.
Sam.
Even though it pains me, I pull her in closer.
“Oric, it’s fine,” she says softly. “Don’t feel … ”
“Don’t feel what?”
She turns to me and sits up. “Don’t feel whatever it is you’re feeling. Don’t project, don’t feel guilty. Let’s get you healed up. I hate to say this, as cliché as it sounds, but I was put in this online world for a reason.”
I stare into her eyes for a moment, a smile forming on my face. Wolf interrupts our moment with a short little bark. He’s on his feet now, watching as Lothar gets something out of his meditations box. It is late afternoon and the sun has begun its descent.
“You two done snuggling over there?” Lothar asks. “I miss snuggling. Gadsaa was a good snuggler.”
“Snuggling?” I shake my head at the giant. “We were cuddling, pal, big difference.”
He snorts. “I believe those words share similar meanings.”
“Time to heal up,” Sam says as her book pixelates into her lap.
“Do you need to read the recipe or something?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes at me. “No, just admiring my handiwork. It feels good to contribute to something. As for my necklace, the damage is done. Now, shut up and take your medicine. Maybe next time you’ll remember to wear your gauntlets.”
“I took them off at your request!”
Sam points her wand at me.
“Sure you can’t just cast Youth on me or something, make me more handsome instead? Or is it handsomer?”
“What part of ‘shut up’ do you not understand, Oric?
Keep up the bullshit, and I’ll cast Future Encumbrance on you. Now, Speed Heal!” Sam closes her eyes and a pink light zips from her wand to my chest.
We both look at my arm and see the wound start to stitch up, fresh flesh boiling over the lacerations in my skin. I’m still scarred when it’s done, and the new skin is fresh pink, as if I’ve had a skin graft, but as I turn my arm before me, it is abundantly clear that I no longer need to visit a hospital.
“Thanks,” I tell her as I stretch my fingers before me. Everything is back to the way it was just a few hours ago. I feel stronger now, better than ever. I pull up my stats:
Oric Rune
Class: Level 15 Player Killer
Subclass: Level 4 Herbalist
INFAMY: 55 Players killed
HP: 1533/1945
HP recovery rate: 3% per minute
ATK: 218 +90
DEF: 196 +97
Attributes
STRENGTH: 14
WILL: 13
DEXTERITY: 13
MIND: 11
SPEED: 14
“That was amazing,” Lothar says, his oval glasses on the bridge of his nose as he gazes down at us. “Chronomancy is so cool!”
(^_^)
Food comes thanks to the Obelisk; we chow down on rabbits and a wild hog larger than Wolf. I do the cooking – it is, after all, one of my trade skills – and Lothar and Sam do all the talking. For the most part, Wolf does all the lip licking until the food is ready, and that’s after giving him all the parts that people won’t eat.
“I just wish I could come with you all,” Lothar says as he picks something out of his teeth. There is a stain on the front of his robes, the fatty oil from a sliver of meat. I point it out to him and he shrugs. “I always get left behind.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” I tell him, “and I don’t want to be accused of any sort of discrimination against giants, heightism, or whatever the hell you call it. But you’re going to get in the way. Trust me there.”
“I can be helpful.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t, but what we are trying to do here is a sneak attack. It’s the only way. The Arcane Mage–”
“Broken.”
“Fuck that name. The Arcane Mage is at level 80. The only way we’ll kill him is by doing so in a clandestine way, likely involving Sam’s magic.”
Sam nods. “He’s right, Lothar. I just don’t know what I’ll be able to cast on him.”
“We could try the Metastasize Wound angle,” I suggest. “I try to peg him with an arrow, you follow up.”
She shakes her head. “I think that ship has sailed.”
“You two, three, need me,” Lothar says again. “I can provide some support. I can knock stuff over. Their tents, their catapults, trebuchets. Whatever else they may have.”
Wolf comes up to me, a hungry look in his eyes. “You’ve already eaten,” I remind him. “Lothar, I know you could help with that stuff, but remember, we’re not trying to support the Obelisk in her war with Florin Talonas, we’re trying to get the First Artifact, and to do so, we need to kill Broken and take the scepter from his dead body. In and out.”
Sam rubs her temples and wipes her hands across her face. “Memory Rot. I should try to hit him with that. He’ll forget all his spells and you can swoop in and kill him.”
“Not a bad idea, Sam, but doesn’t that come with some caveat?”
“Shit, you’re right. I need to be a higher level than the enemy, otherwise my chances of the spell working decrease.” Sam sits cross-legged and opens her Book of Time. She flips to a page defined by a series of ink scribbles. “There’s also Chrono Stasis, same thing we did with the necromancer.”
“But if you cast that, I have to be close enough to kill the guy.”
“That you do.”
“Which may be hard, especially if this goes down how I think it’s going to go down.”
“What do you mean?” Lothar asks me.
“I’ve been in more wars than I’d care to admit. The chaos is all-consuming. You can find a rhythm to it all, a pattern even, but it’s still entirely unpredictable, which is why I don’t want to bank on getting in a shot on the mage.”
“There’s Arcane Tide.” Sam stops on a page with script written vertically.
“Why is it vertical?” I ask. “I mean, the writing.”
“Another mage wrote it. I don’t know why they wrote it vertically, and I really don’t know much about the others, aside from what’s written at the front of the book.”
“Why Arcane Tide?” asks Lothar.
We’re still on the plateau at the edge of a small forest. Wolf rests in front of the giant, who stands on the ground below. The plateau is at Lothar’s knee level, and as he peers down at us, he slowly lowers his big finger and pets Wolf with it.
“Broken may have had some trauma in his current avatar, or a past avatar. It’s a longshot, but it may work.”
“Try your Obelisk’s Gaze spell,” suggests Lothar. “See if you can sense anything.”
“Good call, Lothar.” Sam’s eyes close and a pink teardrop appears on her forehead. She lifts her wand to the bright flash of magic on her forehead, slows her breath, and with a flick of her wrist, she takes the shimmering tear of magic from her forehead.
Resembling a Japanese teardrop cake, the magic floats before her now, casting a small amount of light onto her face.
Sam gazes at the floating teardrop for a moment, a curious look painted across her face.
“What’s it say?” I ask.
“It doesn’t say anything,” Lothar corrects me. “What do you see, Sam?”
“It’s hazy at best, but I believe Arcane Tide will work. It will at the very least take Broken down. I see him floating in a pyramid of magic. This will ground him. But we will still need to kill him.”
“And how will we do that?”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “The same way we’ve done it in the past.”
“You two are cryptic!”
I nod, totally appreciating Sam’s gaze. “So there will be some chance involved after all, huh?”
“On the kill, yes, but I can ground him.”
“And I can kill him.”
Wolf barks, emphasizing my last statement.
“And you’re certain he’ll be floating?” asks Lothar.
Sam laughs. “What kind of douchey OP mage isn’t floating?”
Chapter Twelve: An Orc Pisses Himself and Thus Begins a Preemptive Strike
No distractions this time around, and thankfully, no fucking necromancers. Our trip from the campsite towards the battle is relatively conflict free, aside from a point where Lothar stepped on a giant thorn bush. And how do I know exactly where the battle is set to take place?
The map on my dashboard. Cheating, I know, but purity of play doesn’t always trump the practicality of necessity.
Most battles aren’t announced through notices, unless you’ve opted in to be notified of actions taking place in and around a certain area, akin to a GoogleFace alert. However, a battle between what seems like the north and the south, but in actuality is the game’s flaming zombie of an AI versus a zealous asshole of an RPC – that’s the kind of battle that people come out for.
It’s approaching night now and the sky still has its crimson tinge, evidence that something much bigger is taking place up north. We’ve moved down the sloping hills that surround the Western Splits, through streams, across meadows, over a hill and through the woods. The forest is still thick, but the trees have thinned out to some degree.
We’re over a mile away from the battle, but I can already see the afflicted on the horizon, a great fire blazing in the distance. I can’t make them out individually, but several thousand burning men and women lined up can be seen for miles around from the right vantage point.
Lothar confirms this with his monocular. He also confirms there are Meticans gathered as well as other groups.
“That should do it.” I finish making my last
magnolia pinecone IED, and hand it to Sam to examine. She’s checked out each cone, just to be sure that I’ve made them correctly.
Which is an insult, because I am the sole inventor of the pinecone IED, and if there’s one thing I’d like to be remembered for, it’s that!
“This one looks good.” She tosses it back to me.
“Where should I be?” Lothar asks. “That’s one thing we haven’t covered.”
The giant sits on his meditations box, a curious look on his face. Talk about a burden – he carries that damn box, which is about the size of a compact car, everywhere he goes. I recall my meditations box from a previous avatar, back when I was a scholar in Solidus. It mostly stayed in my quarters.
“Like I said before, Lothar, you should be as far away from the battle as possible.”
“Don’t be rude to him,” Sam says.
“Nothing rude about it. The battle will be grueling and violent, even if we’re trying to do what we need to do tonight, before it starts. If he doesn’t need to be part, it’s better to be far away.” The wind carries the sound of screeching griffins to us. “Case in point. There will be aerial attacks as well.”
“How do you know the battle will start tomorrow?” Lothar asks.
“A hunch. Any military leader in Unigaea would try to avoid a night battle with the pyro afflicted.”
“The Obelisk may move on them,” Sam says as she gets off Wolf’s back. She stretches her arms over her head, and rolls her neck on her shoulders.
“Getting sleepy, Sam?”
“Hardly.”
“And to answer your question, I’d bet your counterfeit lira the Obelisk makes her play tonight. Now, let’s talk about your teleportation magic.”
“You mean Time Skip?”
“Yes.”
Sam bites her lip as she thinks. “I can only move half a mile or so into the future, which is odd, as it isn’t exactly the future, but the future of my potential trajectory. I can move shorter distances as well, but I believe that’s the furthest I can travel.”
“What’s stopping you from teleporting, recharging, and teleporting again?”
Sam looks at me like she wants to punch me.
“What?”
“Very good question, Oric!” Lothar looks at Sam and shrugs. “I’m not being facetious, you know.”
The Last Warrior of Unigaea Box Set: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure Page 48