[You slash Slave Guard for 5 Damage!]
[You slash Slave Guard for 7 Damage!]
[You have killed a Slave Guard! You gain 15 EXP!]
The fight was close and messy, dark and smoky, and I had to trust in my character’s build and my own martial reflexes to parry knives, turn away from fists and feet, slash at a hand groping for my eyes. The slavers fell back, their health flashing orange, and I reached down to help my bleeding companion back up to his feet. He was down in the red zone, fifteen percent health and dropping, but his face was grim with determination. I gave him the knife and fumbled with my cuff while he held the wary guards at bay.
“Give me the keys! I can fight!” A Lysidian woman called out to me from across the row. She looked fit and fierce, with a fall of black braids and dark gray skin. I nodded to her, dropped my cuff, and threw her the ring of keys just as more men clattered down into the hold. These [Elite Guards] were Level 3, and they had crossbows. Shit.
The other downed Guards had keys as well, and one of them had a [Mint Potion]. I ransacked their inventories, screwing up once in my excitement, and pulled the keys off them to hand to fellow prisoners. But we were too late: the injured [Slave Guards] were retreating, and before I could find cover, the crossbow-wielding [Elite Guards] began to fire into the agitated crowd.
It didn’t matter to me now that the people around me were NPCs. Some of them were just children, and they and the weaker adults could die with a single hit. I handed my Tuun companion the potion, which he threw back like a shot. We each seized a sword, and then pair of us roared our challenge and charged in like angry bulls.
I took a bolt to the leg, and stumbled down to one knee as pain tore through my leg. Fuck! That hurt! My HP dropped from 140 to 94 points, but I snarled and powered on through the pain toward the Guards until we were within striking range. The archers had to reload, and that was our chance. I focused on the weakened [Slave Guards] first: they’d been drinking potions, but those only healed 15 points and they were still in the yellow. The other Tuun went for the ranged attackers to distract them. We were now at ten mob and counting, all of them over our levels, and my health was going down with every hit.
I took down two of the weak Guards, earning another hit of EXP, but took a blow to the head that knocked me down to 86 HP and staggered dizzily to one side. I saw an [Elite Guard] train on me, but before he could fire the shot, the gray-skinned woman with the long black braids materialized out of the air behind him and plunged a stolen knife into his neck with a precise blow. Her Backstab was a one hit KO: he dropped the crossbow and crumpled to the rocking floor.
The Tuun Warrior took another bolt and sunk down to his knees, his health flashing in warning, but then whoops and cries echoed from behind us as more people - young, old, men and women - ran up to join in the fray. A few of them got taken down, but as the Tuun had said, there was more of us than there was of them, and the nine guards were soon overwhelmed by at least twenty angry ex-slaves, who beat them with fists, their cuffs, extinguished torches, anything that came to hand.
The guards had crappy starting gear, but I stripped them bare via my menu and managed to find myself a [Leather Helmet], a pair of boots, a [Rusty Spear] - a piercing weapon, good against armor - as well as another potion. I took that one myself. It went down with a cool, light minty flavor, and I felt instant relief as my HP jumped back to 101 points.
“Hey you, take the keys and free everyone!” I called to the injured Tuun Warrior as he dragged himself up to his feet. “I’ll lead the others upstairs and we’ll seize this hunk of junk!”
He grunted in agreement, pulling a crossbow bolt out of his upper arm. He was back into the red zone, sweating and bleeding profusely from several cuts and punctures. The man was keeping himself upright by force of will alone. “Go. What is your name?”
“Hector,” I said. “You?”
“Bobayer,” he replied. “Be blessed by Burna’s sickle. Beware the storm.”
“No worries, Bob.” I nodded, jaw set, and cast around to take stock of who we had. The rogue woman came up to me, hand outstretched. I shook it, and she clasped it, warrior to warrior, before turning to regard another tall, light-skinned man with a short red ponytail of hair, and Rutha, who was now free of most of her restraining leather gear. Other people were gathering with us, too. Stony-faced commoners, most of them.
“We need to get up there and take them out with anything we can find,” I said. “Loot what weapons you can. Let’s go give them Hell!”
“Oceans take these bastard slavers,” the red-head said. His identifier was ‘Escaped Convict’. “Were you the first to stand?”
“Me and Bob here.” I nodded toward Bobayer, who was unshackling an older woman from her chain gang. “I’m Hector.”
“Louis,” the man replied. His identifier changed accordingly.
“And I am Wikati,” the gray-skinned woman said. She sounded Jamaican to me. “We need to keep the captain and navigators alive, unless someone here knows how to fly a Skycutter.”
“Leave the Captain to me,” Rutha said crisply. “All we have to do is get to the bridge.”
“Alright! Let’s do this.” Spear in hand, I motioned to the stairs, and led my first party up into the pounding rain: my first entrance into the world which was to be my new home.
Chapter 8
We emerged out of the trapdoor into a bitterly cold, howling wind that threatened to blow us right off the skyship. The deck was bucking and rolling as the Arabella bounced with the turbulence of the storm. Sails arched overhead in a multilayered canopy that was keeping the worst of the rain off the deck, though it still lashed the wooden surface in waves. Out here, the sound of the ocean below us was thunderous.
“We should sneak past,” Rutha said. “If we have to fight, we’re not going to make it through all these sailors.”
She was right. I was still Level 1, a noob without armor and a shoddy [Rusty Spear] with a 10-45 damage range. The sailors and remaining guards were all level-appropriate and seemed to be manageable, but there was a lot of them and only four of us. “Good idea. By the time we get to the bridge, all the other prisoners will be released. We can mob the crew after that.”
Louis and Wikati nodded. It was the woman who spoke. “Let me scout ahead. I have training in stealth.”
“Go. We’ll be right behind you,” I said.
“Okay. When you move, stay low to the ground. Watch how I do it.” Wikati smiled thinly, then dropped into a half-crouch and stealing gracefully across the deck, moving into the shadows and staying there. I followed behind, trying to copy her posture and light cross-step.
We stuck to cover: masts, the boxes lashed down with nets. Sailors were yelling at one another as they struggled with ropes. The sails were horizontal, arching over us like sheets instead of standing up from the masts. Wikati stayed ahead as we got closer and closer to the back of the ship. As I crossed from one shadow to another, a prompt flashed up in the corner of my eye:
[You have learned a new Skill: Stealth]
Skill: Stealth
You have learned how to move through cover, concealing your presence from enemies... provided you don’t trip over your own feet.
- 5% concealment chance from enemies
- Move at half speed on normal and fast terrain, one quarter speed on difficult terrain.
Skill Type: Active (requires Focus)
Duration: Active until canceled.
The game rewarded my experimentation with a sudden burst of insight, and suddenly I knew exactly how to move, now and every other time in the future, if I wanted that five percent bonus. It was cool, but also creepy. It also made me want to try new things - a lot of new things. Was there a Parkour skill? I could do parkour!
Wikati fell to a crouch behind the forward mast, waving us back as I prepared to follow her. She shook her head and pointed toward the door leading to the bridge, which took up the forward part of the deck. The shape reminded me of a jetfighter co
ckpit. There was a solid wall with a heavy airlock door facing us, but the rest of the room was made of thick reinforced glass. Two men wearing intricate steel and crystal gauntlets held their hands above what looked like magical control panels, glowing spheres that spooled crawling feeds of sigils into the air. The mages worked with frantic concentration. The Captain - a tall, olive-complected man with a shaved head, a single forelock, and a huge mustache and thin goatee - alternated between barking orders at them and talking angrily into something he held in his hand.
Most of the guards were down at the other end of the ship trying to put down the slave mob, but two of them remained outside the entry to the bridge. They were enormous Cossack warriors, muscles straining against their shirtsleeves. These [Captain’s Guard] carried sabers nearly as long as I was tall, and they had small, burning red skull symbols smoldering next to their HP rings. They were a much higher level than me, dangerously so.
There was a sudden uproar from behind us. Looking back, I saw the other prisoners pour out of the hold. The Captain’s face contorted and he began to yell at his crew, gesturing angrily to the deck. Wikati stole back to us under the cover of chaos.
“If we work together, we can take them out. Wikati, do you have like…” it felt strange to ask her this question. “Rogue attack skills? Backstab, anything like that?”
She grinned, flashing dainty fangs. I hadn’t seen those in character creation. “If you can distract them, I can sneak behind one and stick him in the kidney, if that is what you mean?”
“I can do that,” Louis replied, quietly reloading his crossbow as we talked.
“Sounds good. If we focus on one at a time, we can halve the threat and then focus our attentions on the other guy.” I nodded. “Can you do magic, Rutha?”
“Not without spellgloves,” she replied. “About the best I could do is push the mana around in the ship engines, but the engines are struggling as it is. I don’t dare try and interfere with the navigators.”
How the hell did magic actually work here? Time to test out the game glossary. I focused for a moment, and thought the words ‘Mana Definition’:
Mana (also called Seid, Sanghar)
Every culture in Archemi has myths about mana, the physical form of raw magic. Mana is naturally distributed through reality as the ‘fluid’ which binds matter into cohesive forms, but can be extracted from powerful sites of magic known as spirit wells or star wells. It is a physical substance. Highly volatile and dangerous to most living organisms in its pure form, mana must be handled carefully.
Pressurized liquid or gaseous mana is required by mages to perform magic, who use specially crafted gloves, gauntlets, wands and other focusing devices to shape spells. Artificers use mana to make a range of magical artifacts: skyships, horseless carriages, weapons, home furnishings, and more. Mana extraction depletes the land or creature from which it is taken, resulting in premature aging or death.
Mages had their work cut out for them, then. I’d never played a game where they faced a resource limit beyond an innate supply of magical energy. “Any idea where they might be keeping your spellgloves?”
“They’re expensive artifacts,” Rutha replied. “If they survived my capture, then they’re likely in whatever they use for a treasury on board this ship.”
I guess that was where I came from, though I had no memory of the place and no idea where it was. “Right. What makes you think you can handle the Captain?”
“Because they have enough available mana in there that I can and will boil his brain in his skull once I get into that room,” she replied firmly.
Oh. Woah. I blinked several times. “Righty-oh. Ready, Wikati?”
She nodded, brandishing her knife. Louis went to a crouch, bracing the crossbow against his shoulder, and sighted down. “Alright. I’ll count to fifteen and fire. Right or left?”
Left,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Wikati and I dropped to a crouch and scuttled toward the rear mast like a pair of crabs. The door guards were hopped up, grinding their teeth as they strove to make out what was happening at the other end of the Arabella, but it was clear they weren’t allowed to leave their post. I was going to have to kill these men. When I thought about it, I felt... well, like an ass, really. The fighting down in the hold had been so fast and so desperate that I hadn’t had any time to see or think about what I was doing. I couldn’t remember seeing any guts or gore, just blood. This was different - it was premeditated. I’d hoped to get used to this full-immersion VR thing by killing some monsters. Instead, I was about to jump a couple of guys following orders and doing their jobs, without any idea why, exactly, we were all being taken to the Caul to begin with. Matir had said we were POWs, but a guy had to have a face - not a hole - for me to take him at face value. For all I knew, I’d just teamed up with three war criminals while rapists and looters ran around on the ship.
Ten seconds had passed already. I shifted nervously, and tried to think calm thoughts. Battlefield thoughts. They’re enemy mob. You’re supposed to kill them, Hector.
Still, even battlefield training and experience only took me so far. Killing someone with a rifle from a distance was very different to jamming your spear into their lung.
“Go!” Wikati dashed forward just as the crossbow clicked.
A bolt whipped over my shoulder. I couldn’t fault Louis’s aim: the bolt took the Cossack in the gut, knocking him down a good seventy points with his flanking bonus. Wikati was on him like a shot, but the man roared and swung with the hilt of his sword, striking her so hard that he knocked her over and she tumbled. So much for Backstab.
“Tarn takhrar!” I called it out before I even realized what I was saying, charging in with the spear. I hadn’t really ever used a spear before, but I’d fought with a bayonet once or twice and it was enough to get me through. We clashed, and the first thing I noticed was that this guard was monstrously strong. The second thing was the yellowish tinge to my Vitality meter. I was operating on two thirds of my hitpoints against a guy with full health, who was at least a couple of levels above my class rating. I got in three jabs, whittling him down, but he blocked the fourth and planted a heavy boot into my gut before I could defend. It sent me staggering into the back of the other man, who whirled on me and slammed his fist right across the side of my head.
Everything whirled and turned white for a second. I was dimly aware of Wikati’s battle cry as she made to assist, and sensed motion to my left. I brought the spear around, turning the next blow that would have taken me from 10% to zero, one hit. Head throbbing, I dropped and rolled away from the sudden rain of blows that came from above, and I was suddenly very glad that Tuun didn’t experience vertigo. I’d be puking my guts out if I did. This VR pain stuff could go die in a fire.
A deep male voice roared from somewhere close by, and I stumbled up to my knee to see Bob charge in past me, face dark with bloodlust. He’d made a club out of a thick plank of wood, and he laid into the less-injured guard with his full, renewed strength. He was back to full health, and he parried the guard’s baton and headbutted him, shoving him away so that I could get to my feet on the lurching deck of the ship and rejoin the fray. I was more than happy to let Bob tank while I circled around, struggling to see through the red haze of blood and concussion. This wasn’t something I’d ever had to deal with before - fighting an NPC while managing real pain, real exhaustion, actual freezing cold wind, the jerks and jolts of turbulence on a really real airship. But this was life or death, so I made it around while he focused on Bob, triggered Doubletap, and ran the [Captain’s Guard] with my spear from behind.
The [Rusty Spear] went through his body with a sick soft feeling, like stabbing a carving knife into raw beef. He got out one gurgling cry, and then dropped to his knees, clawing at the polearm that was trapped in his guts. As my Adrenaline burned down, I twisted and jerked the weapon up into his body as he screamed in pain.
[You land a critical hit on Captain’s Guard!]
[You do 17 Piercing damage!]
[You do 17 Doubletap damage!]
A critical hit! I should have been happy at the massive damage combo - instead, I felt disgust as I hung on tight, holding the thrashing man in place as Wikati leaped on him from the front and stabbed him in the neck and shoulders. I felt him slump around the head of the spear as the life drained out of him.
[You have killed Captain’s Guard!]
[You gain 35 XP!]
Almost at Level 2 already. Kind of a sick way to think of it. I pulled the spear from the Guard’s body and kicked him to convulse and bleed out on the deck. The other guard was a sitting duck for the five of us, alone in a semi-circle of blades. He fell back from us, hands raised. His face was a bloody mask. “Please, I yield! Mercy!”
“Slaver dog!” Bob snapped back. “Where was your mercy for us?”
Wikati was breathing hard, but she was staring at the Cossack with hard, predatory eyes. “My thoughts exactly. Who did you plan to sell me to? Some slumlord who’d keep me locked up in his brothel? A lord wanting an exotic fuckdoll? A legion? Hard labor?”
“I don’t know!” He was looking between us, eyes wide and white, as Rutha and Louis joined us from the shadows of the mast. There was a riot going on down on the rest of the ship. “I am a mercenary, hired on at Taltos! I have a family-”
“Leave off.” I stepped forward, his friend’s saber loose in my hand. “He’s surrendered.”
“He’s honorless scum!” Bob snarled at me in Tuun.
“He’s a mercenary. He doesn’t believe in honor, just coin,” I said. “Different gods for different men. He surrendered. He knows we’re his masters now. There’s no honor in putting him down.”
I got an auto-prompt. You have learned a new skill: Negotiation.
Both Wikati and Bob turned on me to argue, but Rutha stepped forward, hand raised. “This is pointless. The man was doing his job and following orders, however loathsome they might be. Slavery is not illegal in Vlachia.”
Dragon Seed: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (The Archemi Online Chronicles Book 1) Page 7