“And because they nerfed it.” Gerry said, cutting me off, “I mean, seriously? 10 XP per level? That sucks.”
“…Buuut they kinda had to, didn’t they? Otherwise people would’ve kept exploiting it.”
“I guess, but I mean… Did they have to downgrade everyone as if we’d only earned 10 when we’d initially done it? Remove it, sure, but don’t punish everyone because you forgot to fix it.”
“Isn’t that how it should work though? No-one’s at a higher advantage or disadvantage than anyone else.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure this is a conversation we should save for another time.”
“Why’s that?”
He pointed ahead of us, “Because we’re here.”
Armelia: Chapter 20
Bandit’s Camp: North Lukithir discovered.
Journal entry made.
Night fell and we back-tracked about a mile, leaving Shadow-Stal just inside the treeline off the road once we found the camp, and boy was camp an understatement. It consisted of a stone longhouse built in a clearing at the end of a long path into the forest, with an eight foot wide bonfire a few feet from the door. But that wasn’t the end of it, no, there were also twelve three-man tents pitched around the fire in a sort of U shape in the forest.
I wanted to play it smart, and I thought I was, but it took everything in Gerry’s power to stop me from tripping over and stepping on the almost innumerable traps the bandits had set. With an extreme amount of guidance though, he was able to get me to the edge of the camp and keep us just out of the fire’s light.
Grand Gerry the Good cast Life Detect.
“I count twenty men in front, none over level 6, and five in the longhouse, one of whom is our mark who I won’t be able to get a read on until we’re face-to-face. I’m guessing the other four are his personal guard, but even they’re only level 10.”
I checked and re-checked the amount out front before nodding, “Yep, I don’t think any of these guys have protection spells on. Can you see their HP?”
“All of the one’s outside have less than a hundred, and the other four are a cool 150.”
I loved this side of Gerry, he was so cool and composed, like a spy or something. Every word that came out of his mouth was dripping with logical and charming masculinity.
Only I wasn’t going to get kidnapped.
I hoped.
“So as long as I stay quiet and think before I take my shots I should be able to drop a dozen, yeah?”
He nodded, “Yeah, and I’ll be able to paralyse the rest. I think I should stay here, where I have a clear line of sight, and you skirt around the right.”
Without saying another word I did as he suggested, hugging the treeline until I was as close as I could get to the longhouse while still being comfortable that I wouldn’t be spotted.
I crouched down and nocked an arrow, my newfound strength and dexterity allowing me to pull the bowstring at least 25% further. I searched the bandana wearing bandit’s faces for my first target, making sure not to find anyone in the middle of a conversation or standing too close to the fire.
My patience was starting to wear thin until I finally found one, who was just propping himself up against the longhouse and drinking from a bottle of what I guessed was ale. I made sure no-one else was going to approach, and, halfway through a deep breath, I let the arrow loose.
Critical Hit!
2x Sneak Damage!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 6/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 140/2500.
I let my breath out and smiled as the bandit’s head kept his legs straight enough to stand, an arrow pierced directly through his eye socket, effectively pinning him to the wall. But then something horrifying happened, his bottle slipped from his hand and fell, making a clink as it hit the ground.
I cursed under my breath and drew another arrow, waiting for the entire rest of the camp to run over and find the body. My luck seemed to have changed though, as only one curious fool crossed from the fire to his fellow criminal, abandoning a conversation he’d been having.
I waited until he was close enough to tell that my first victim wasn’t standing of his own volition to release another arrow.
Critical Hit!
2x Sneak Damage!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 7/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 150/2500.
The arrow caught him right through the temple, and unlike his friend he didn’t have anything that could make an annoying clink, and instead stood there, dripping blood down the side of the longhouse, looking like he was talking to the other.
After that I dropped three more, all out to take a piss or otherwise isolating themselves from the group, and it was going really quite well.
Until the fourth prick moved that is.
He was standing there at the edge of camp doing up his pants after relieving himself on an innocent bush, and I was ready to put one right through his throat. However, for some Gods’ unknown reason, the second I let the arrow go he bent and the arrow collected some poor twit who standing by the fire between the eyes, sending him backwards in an almost comical display into the roaring flames.
Critical Hit!
2x Sneak Damage!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 10/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 190/2500.
Suddenly the camp was filled with bandits running every which way looking for whoever was putting their men down. I managed to sneak attack two more, including the one that moved, before the rest figured out roughly where I was.
I wasn’t going to let that scare me though. I found the closest two and put them down in quick succession as they charged.
Critical Hit!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 13/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 220/2500.
It wasn’t enough though, I was two seconds from becoming a bandit’s prize when all of a sudden a flaming log flew right past the front of me, collecting the three that were nearest me while dragon-like flames ripped through the forest, cremating the rest.
There was a good deal of time until Gerry had finished up with his manic display of fiery destruction, and when he had, he went to the effort of piling the bodies up on the bonfire.
He walked up to me, the flames behind him making him look like an action hero who’d just blown up the bad guys, “You’ll be wanting these I take it?” he said as he handed me a handful of arrows.
Received 5 Steel Arrows: Damage: 7.
Equipped 5 Steel Arrows.
Quiver: 7 Steel Arrows.
“Cheers. We made a bloody mess didn’t we? Wanna check ‘em for loot?”
Gerry shook his head as he looked back over our handiwork, “Nothing worth taking, except for your arrows, just a bunch of clothes that are worth nothing and some crappy weapons.”
I gestured toward the longhouse, “My bet would be that they keep it all in there with the Grand Poobah.”
“Chest at the end of the room?” Gerry asked with a smile.
I nodded and started walking toward the longhouse, “Exactly, so what do we do?”
“Get the Grand Poobah.”
Armelia: Chapter 21
In a flurry of motion Gerry blew the doors open with an explosion of air that sent them exploding inward, peppering Mathias and his armoured guards with chunks of wood. I didn’t wait for them to recover though, rolling in through the door, catching an arrow from my quiver, and sending it through the eye of one of the guards, sending him reeling in pain, but despite the Critical Hit! he was still up and moving.
“Put down Mathias so he doesn’t get caught in the crossfire!” I shouted as I put another arrow through the guard’s other eye, silencing his irritating roars.
Critical Hit!
+1 Archery Skill.
Progress: 14/100.
+10 XP.
Progress: 230/2500.
As I tur
ned my bow to the next in my line of sight I saw Mathias get paralysed and bound by a translucent blue vine before being pulled up to the ceiling and left to dangle. I fired another arrow, catching the guard in the shoulder and pissing him off.
I loosed another, but my wrist had become tired and the arrow missed its mark, embedding in the far wall, “Gerry! Mind finishing them of-woah!” I got out before a beam of fire shot from Gerry’s mouth and cooked the other three guards.
He hit them with a few more blasts after the charred bodies stopped writhing just to be sure, and let out a burp when he was done. “There we go,” he said with a proud smile, “all finished. Ha! And what do you know? Chest at the end of the room. Man I love it when I’m right.”
We both strode our way across the longhouse proudly, and threw open the chest together.
“What… the… fuck.” we both uttered upon discovering the contents.
Chest contents:
Burned Parchment.
“Well that’s not fair, is it?” I said as I looked at Gerry’s distraught face.
“Not fair? That’s a right piece of bullshit is what that is. I’m sick of these bloody things having nothing good in them.”
I nudged him with my elbow and gave him a reassuring smile, “Hey, at least we got him alive, that’s got to count for something. 500 gold each isn’t so bad when you think about it.”
A weak smile returned mine and a weaker nod followed, “I suppose,” he said despondently before perking up a little, “and it certainly was a good deal of fun, wasn’t it?”
“There you go, got to see the brighter side of things, else you’ll be in for an absolutely dreadful time of it.”
End of Conflict Report:
Grand Gerry the Good: 10x Level 6 Bandits, 3x Level 10 Bandit Guard.
Armelia Fireheart: 10x Level 6 Bandits, 1x Level 10 Bandit Guard.
Total experience awarded:
Grand Gerry the Good: Max Level Reached.
No Experience Points awarded.
Armelia Fireheart: +575 XP.
Progress: 805/2500.
Gerry got the bound Mathias off the roof and put him over his shoulder before leading the way out the door while I called over Shadow-Stal.
“I guess I got my wish, huh?” I said proudly as we started riding toward Lukithir, Gerry dragging along a barely walking Matthias by a mystical rope.
“How do you mean?” he asked between gleeful tugs on the rope.
“I got my hunt, I know we still went up against those bears, but I got a real hunt, and a decent battle where you weren’t just carrying me the whole time.”
“It was pretty great being an OP dragon-lord type mage for once,” he said almost sinisterly, “I felt like I was completely unstoppable.”
“Probably would’ve been if you were on your own, oh, and hey,” I said, turning back to face him, “thanks for letting me fight. I know you could’ve cleaned up house in less than a minute, it meant a lot to me that you waited until I made the first move.”
He shrugged nonchalantly, but was clearly at least a little flattered, “It was the least I could do. We’ve had a few days of pretty intense gameplay on account of my level, it was good to be able to just have fun and not worry about death every two seconds.”
“You were worried about dying? I wasn’t.”
“Course you weren’t,” he said almost snidely, “you spent most of the Skeleton King battle relying on me to pull your arse out of the fire.”
I scoffed as if I were offended, “Ha, sure thing, let’s remember who dealt the killing blow.”
Gerry returned my scoff with a bit more emphasis, further increasing the facetiousness of the argument, “And let’s remember who awoke the army without her allies there.”
“Oh yeah? Well let’s… Yeah, you’ve got me there. Still though, that was pretty fun too. It’s been a good weekend.”
“Hasn’t it just? I’d honestly love if we could just do this all the time.”
“Me too. But alas, we have jobs, and an involuntary need to sleep. So what say you we drop this twat off, collect our reward, and call it a night?”
Gerry groaned, “But I don’t want to, I want to stay up with you.”
I smiled cheekily, “Well maybe you can, if we go to bed.”
“But if we go to bed we’re just going to… oooh!”
“Oooh indeed my slow friend, and I was just saying how you were learning.”
We shared a laugh and continued the back and forth banter for a while until we reached the tavern, where we did try but found it impossible to hear each other over the roaring crowd that surrounded us.
With a big and deliberately cruel tug, Gerry pulled a very exhausted Mathias to the tavern counter and handed me the rope.
I smashed my fist on the hard bench until a blue-skinned elf attendant arrived, “I’ve got a bounty here that I’m looking to collect on. Mathias Reilot.”
The elf, a creepy looking creature in a tight purple and red uniform, smiled disturbingly at my bounty, “Very good, here’s your gold,” he said, dumping two sacks of 500 on the counter before grabbing the rope out of my hands, “and I’ll take that.”
I scooped up my share and stuffed it in my knapsack, “Sorry buddy, wouldn’t wish that guy on my worst enemy… Well, maybe I would.”
+500 gold.
12,995 gold.
Gerry grabbed his own bag and juggled it between his hands for a second, then made it disappear, “Job well done.”
“Job well done. Should we step outside before logging out?”
Gerry’s cute smile appeared and he nodded, “You know what? That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
Kylia: Chapter 20
Gerald and I shared a smile as we left the room and I suggested we have some tea before we went to bed, which he agreed to. We stood there a while, in the kitchen, sipping at our respective cups, and not saying much of anything. We were just happy to be in each other’s presence.
I’d never really had that before. I always needed something to be happening at any given time, it wasn’t enough to just have the person close. In fact, just two days prior, if anyone had said they thought I’d be in a relationship like that I’d have called them an idiot and sent them on their merry way.
But at that time, I couldn’t think of anything better than to simply stand and drink tea. However, the cups did eventually drain and that left us in a… predicament.
“Tonight was fun,” I said as I put both of our cups in the sink, “think we could make it anymore fu-uh-uhn…” was all I could get out as Gerald came up from behind me, started kissing my neck, and slid his hand down the front of my pants.
I like to think I’m a respectable person, and not the type who gets bent over a sink and proceeds to get her rocks off, but damn is it fun. As I said before, it was primal, and intense. I wanted to sound off another achievement when I was finished, something like ‘Successfully Have Sex in Every Room!’, but Gerald wasn’t quite done, and decided to take our little rumpus to the bedroom.
It was a night of that really, me getting carried around, pinned to walls, rolled over on beds, put on top of and beneath Gerald, separately of course. The actions were separate, just to be clear, not me. I don’t know why that seemed like an important piece of clarification, but it is.
By the end of it all I had this uncontrollable quiver in my legs, and the rest of my body come to think of it. Tell you what though, I had absolutely zero trouble getting to sleep that night.
Daemion: Chapter 5
Searching for match…
Player disconnected.
Opening chatroom.
…
…
Left chatroom.
Player has joined.
Searching for match…
Kylia: Chapter 21
The following morning passed by in a bit of a haze, I remember running around a lot looking for a fresh bra, then there was some vague parts where we got breakfast at the bakery, but in seemingly
a few seconds after I woke up I was sitting at my desk contemplating whether or not I really wanted to open my email.
I gave an exhausted sigh, took a sip from my morning coffee, and clicked on it, almost instantly groaning when I saw the email’s contents. Basically I had to design a new logo for the council that would go into use come the New Year. I had until the end of November to create ten designs, as well as several other deadlines in between to make sure they like my ideas.
Sometimes I really liked my job, I swear, but that day had started like a manual being driven by a first time driver. Hell, it was only once I’d finished my rather disgusting coffee that I came to the realisation that I much would’ve preferred to stay at home with Gerald all day.
Shortly after that the caffeine started to work and I remembered I worked with him and could look over to his desk at any point. And that’s how most of the day went, I’d draw the same circle again, trying to visualise a logo that didn’t involve references to living in a police state, throwing it away, and sharing glimpses with Gerald.
It was equal parts cute and annoying. Cute because we kept looking at each other at the same time, and annoying because though we were less than ten feet apart it may as well have been a mile.
After a few minutes had passed by in my mind, as well as a dozen sketches of the same circle at different sizes, Phillip showed up at my desk, “Kylia,” he said emotionlessly, causing me to believe I’d lost my job, “would you like to go on break?”
“Pardon?” I asked, giving him a bewildered look.
“Would you like to go to lunch? Everyone else has come back and you haven’t asked yet.”
I looked down at my computer’s clock and jumped, “How is it 3.30?”
“Because time is ever moving?” he said with a weak laugh, “Point is you finish at half five and I can’t have it that you haven’t had your break. You too Gerald, nothing’s going on here so you may as well stretch your legs as well.”
Legends of Tarthirious: The Complete Collection Page 13