by Dakota Krout
Message from Tatum: Woo! Close one there! Thanks for the new altar!
The royal guard seemed puzzled, blinking at Joe a few times before moving on. He turned to Aten. “The rest are who they say they are. At least, their loyalty to your guild and the Kingdom are not in question. Welcome to the Grand Palace Ardania; the royal couple is awaiting you.”
~ Chapter Thirty ~
Joe had a strange cognitive dissonance as they walked into the palace. The palace and grounds were beautiful, just not in the way he had expected. The castle itself was obviously ancient but had never been repaired, or if it had been repaired, it was done so perfectly that the walls were utterly flawless. There were flowers and various beautification projects throughout the grounds, but it was obvious that their budget was nowhere near the one for war. The true beauty of the area came from the training grounds which completely surrounded the palace. Royal guardsmen hopefuls moved in shining armor, Scouts were firing volleys of arrows at stationary targets, and messengers were running back and forth between the various camps. This was the training ground of the Elite.
An elbow to the side caused Joe to drop his intent gaze from all the combatants. Tiona was now walking beside him, looking him up and down before whistling. “I like the new look! Skeleton just didn’t suit you.”
“Just wait until I am able to get my strength to ten as well!” Joe exclaimed excitedly. “I’ll start looking like my actual self again!”
“Oh? You weren’t this slim before?” Tiona inspected his body dispassionately. “You don’t look bad this way.”
“Thanks, but I am looking forward to having a bit more muscle. I feel like if I grew my hair out a bit and went to a bar right now, I’d start getting free drinks from the men.” Joe chuckled at Tiona’s eye roll.
“You’d need a heck of a lot more charisma if you wanted to pull that off. Your face looks a bit like a squashed potato. Also, grew your hair out? Really, baldy? You’d need hair in the first place in order to grow it out.” Tiona snickered as Joe pretended to be hurt.
“So rude! Confidence destroyed! Can’t… pay… guild dues…” Joe snorted at Tiona’s fake look of horror and turned to look at the large set of doors they were approaching. “I bet those open into the great hall. That's where royalty of old would accept petitioners and hold court. This should be interesting.”
The chatter died down as the group stepped into the palace proper. A feeling of reverence, fear, and power flowed over them. It felt a bit like being in a library as a sniper watched you through a scope, tracking your every move and waiting to pull the trigger. They were approaching the thrones, but it seemed there were overly large metal statues occupying them. The group looked around, waiting for the royals to arrive, but the guard who had escorted them was wide-eyed at their insolence. “Bow, you fools!” he hissed as he bowed toward the thrones.
“It is unnecessary. Many who come here unprepared do not know or understand our position.” A distinctly feminine voice came from the metal statue on the right. Joe wasn’t the only person to flinch when what appeared to be a statue turned her head to look at them. “Welcome, travelers. As a part of the Noble Guild The Wanderers, you have earned an audience this day. Before we give you the details of your quest, please know that you may not tell another person the reason for it. You may share details such as where you need to go or what you need to fight, but you cannot tell them why beyond that it is a quest. If you stay here for the explanation, I will take acquiescence as your answer and bind you to it.”
The guild members looked at each other, most shrugging or rolling their eyes. Requirements like this seemed to be in all of the quests given by higher-ranking individuals. It was frustrating, as trying to help someone else through a similar quest proved impossible. When no one left or had anything to say, the queen began again.
“It is good to have such stalwart heroes.” The Queen exhaled a metallic blast of air. A sigh? “Some background for all of you. A long time ago, our entire world had devolved to a state of war. Every race fought each other for the control of places of power. The battles escalated to a point where mutually assured destruction was imminent, and the inhabitants of the world were waiting to die. An… outside force took control, and each nation was placed under a spell, our populations collected together. We were frozen in a sleep-like state; we did not dream, we did not note the passage of time. We slept long enough that the outside influence was able to take control of all of our lives, and he separated us by changing the very world we stood upon. Then he raised us, this entire area, off of the continent far below.”
Joe’s mind turned to when he had been forced to jump into the hole in the world and how different that experience had been. He shuddered as he remembered the power of the monsters there. It may have been for the best that they were separate.
“Because of our foolishness–and our bloodthirst–when we were awoken several hundred years ago, we were given a task to complete. On this raised continent, there is only one other sentient race of people. Each of the races gets a single chance to prove that they should be the ones to survive, and the way we show this is by defeating the other group.” Her voice was grave and dark as she seemed to relive their history.
“If we win this horrible ‘game’, our continent will connect to another, where two other races are also battling for their right to live. We will be able to choose one of them to help. It will continue like this until we have saved all the races that we can, forging alliances and generating goodwill. For now though, we must ask you to do an awful, terrible thing. You must help us win this ‘game’. So. Your quest… is to break the Wolfman nation, slaughter their people, and capture their leader’s throne.”
Silence thundered through the area. Aten, oddly, was the first to break the silence. “Awesome!” As if his words were a trigger, a notification appeared in front of all of them.
Quest alert: Shatter a people. The Queen of Ardania has offered your guild a quest! All you need to do is gain entrance to the most highly guarded area in Wolfman territory, kill their leaders, fighters, noncombatants, and capture the throne! Completing this quest will break the Wolfman nation, leading to their eventual eradication or subservience to humans. Reward: Exp: 50,000. 100,000 gold to the guild treasury and up to 10,000 gold for each participant in the final battle (Based on contribution). Maximum reputation with the city of Ardania. Failure: The human nation is shattered, leading to the eventual eradication or subservience of all humans to Wolfmen.
“Frick on a stick. This is an endgame level quest, y’all.” Aten’s face was practically glowing as he read over the quest notification. “Then we get to connect to other races? Can you imagine the secret classes and stuff we will find in an area humans haven’t touched in hundreds of years?” He wiped a drop of drool from his mouth as he said this.
“So we are going to have to topple a nation?” one of the officers questioned.
“No, we are going to topple a race,” someone else called. “Er, shatter a race.”
Aten looked toward the Queen once again. “What is the timeline for this quest? How long do we have?”
“As long as you need.” Her next words made a few people go quiet. “All four Noble Guilds will have this quest, and as long as it is completed before they are able to destroy us, you can take all the time you need. Our battles have been raging for hundreds of years, what is a few more? There is something important to take note of though. Last night, it seems that one of their summoning spells backfired. Our scouts are reporting heavy casualties amongst their civilian population and light casualties amongst their fighters. We don’t know what happened, but somehow, a blow was struck against them that they weren’t expecting.”
Tiona looked at Joe sharply, but he pretended not to notice. After all, there was no way he was going to be able to repeat that ritual without losing a part of his humanity. He had originally wanted to change it to be less human-sacrificey, but… after recreating the ritual diagram on paper, he had found
that it was a Master tier ritual called ‘Abyss on Earth’ that required five mages to initiate. Altering the required components was impossible with his current abilities; all he had done yesterday was give it a different target and refresh the lines the mana ran along. The massive cost also explained why the Shaman had been so easy to defeat; they had been running on fumes and what their mana regeneration would allow. Not only could he not change it, but he didn’t actually know all the required components and items needed to actually empower the ritual. He wouldn’t be performing a ritual on that scale for quite a while.
“As Guild Leader of The Wanderers, I officially accept this quest, Your Majesty,” Aten announced with a deep bow.
The Queen nodded; she had expected no other outcome from the meeting today. “Just know that your silence on this matter will be magically enforced. We don’t need riots about ‘the end of the world’ and we certainly don’t need people running off and becoming race traitors because they pity the Wolves. I thank you all in advance, and wish you the best of luck. I have given authorization for Aten to have information on a series of classes and specializations that we know of; feel free to use them. Go now and become strong.”
Their audience over, the guild officers left the building chattering excitedly. Not only had they gained an amazing quest, they now had access to more classes and specializations! This would be a huge benefit to their recruitment efforts and help secure their position as a powerful and prolific guild. Several people started talking with Aten as soon as they were out of the gates, and he quickly acquired a harried look as he worked to access and disseminate the information given to him.
Joe grinned and started walking toward the guild. Tiona caught up to him quickly since her walking speed was easily double his. “Not sticking around to learn about a new class?”
“Nah, I’m pretty happy with mine.” Joe flashed a smile at her, but his mind was on other things. He really needed to get a workspace for himself; it turned out that only novice rituals were able to be performed with simple infusions of mana into their symbols. Starting at the beginner ranks, rituals needed chants, specialized equipment or tools, and more than anything–large amounts of protected space. Not just so that the ritual was large enough to easily find errors, but also because if a ritual failed there tended to be devastating effects. He had read a note in his book where a miner had cut through a ritual’s symbolic links as it was powering up… and the release of power had obliterated a city.
“Joe!” Tiona tapped him on the arm. “Are you mad at me? You don’t need to say anything if you don’t want to. I just want you to know that it isn’t because of you.”
“Wha?” Joe’s eyes locked onto her, and he realized that he had missed something important while lost in his thoughts. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I was off in my own little world.”
“Wow. We are literally living in a fantasy world, and you still want to abstract it one step further.” She smiled, but the expression was strained. “I said that I am disbanding the party. I’m getting close to level ten, and I really need to take as much time as possible to grind my skills before I specialize. Thanks to the new classes and specializations we have access to, I was able to find a really awesome class I want to specialize in. I need to become an apprentice to one of the royal guard trainers to get it though. If I get accepted, I won’t be back for at least a month.”
“Wha?” This time, Joe’s half-formed word was due to incredulousness, not lack of attention. “Have you told the others?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s what I’m off to do now. I really wanted to thank you though; without all of you guys fighting with me I wouldn’t have made enough gold to take the time away from quests to train.”
He wanted to say something, but what could he? She had been the first real person to help him in the game, and now that she was leaving, he felt a bit sour inside. Not angry, just a mix of sadness and overprotective friendship. “If that’s what you want to do, I’m glad you are going to do it,” Joe stated firmly while shaking her hand. She thanked him, and they returned to the guild in silence.
Dylan didn’t take the news quite as stoically. “What the heck, Tiona? We were just starting to get a good battle rhythm! We were finally working together like a team, getting stronger, and making serious money! You are just going to toss that aside?”
“If we beat this quest, we can earn up to ten thousand gold each,” Tiona spoke carefully, doing her best to explain her thoughts. “I want us to be a team in the future, but I need to get to level ten and get my new class while I still can.”
Dylan looked away, crossed his arms and said nothing else. Guess and Chad both shrugged and didn’t say anything beyond ‘good luck’. Tiona nodded at them all and walked away, returning to the castle. Joe looked around at the morose faces and tried to decide what to do next. “I mean, we could all party together still. Let’s just find a fifth and-”
Chad interrupted him. “Can’t do it. To get contribution points for the guild we are going to need a party leader who is a higher level than us. Also, I hate to say it… but it isn’t likely another party leader will want you on their team. As great as it is to have a healer, Tiona had to split her officer’s commission to account for your salary. No one else is going to want to work for free or half price.”
Joe wanted to argue but stopped himself. As much as he wanted to continue adventuring with these three, not having a party might be exactly what he needed to gain the time to study, practice, and perfect his class. He had been running himself ragged since he joined the game so that he could keep up with the higher level players on his team. Maybe it really was time for him to go solo for a while. It looked like they had a few in-game months before they could really make progress on the royal quest anyway. They finished their meeting and slowly dispersed, saying their goodbyes morosely. The three others went to find a new party while Joe went into town to find a place to make into his workshop.
~ Chapter Thirty-one ~
In preparation for lengthy research and development of his skills, Joe had told Aten that he was taking a few weeks to train. The guild leader had actually looked relieved that Joe wasn’t demanding to take over as party leader for his group and wasn’t fighting to keep them together. Apparently, under Tiona’s leadership the members of the party had become well respected, and several guild officers were already vying for them to join their party. Basically, he had saved Aten the trouble of telling him ‘no’. Joe rolled his eyes as he forced himself back to the present; he had rented a building and needed to get to work.
It wasn’t perfect, but for now it was his. Joe looked around the dusty warehouse, already planning out what he would need to do to protect the place. The owner of Odds and Ends had offered him a lease on the large building when he had mentioned he was looking for a large open space. He was lucky to get such a good deal, even if the structure was in a seedy part of the city. Apparently, she used the building to store goods that weren’t ready for her store yet. Now that she was planning on leaving the business, the warehouse was simply sitting empty and unused. The building supposedly had a few basic protection enchantments, but he had been warned that anyone could smash through them if they really tried. He was going to need to fix that issue.
His first task was not to put powerful magical protections on the building; no, that would simply bring attention to him. People would wonder what treasures he was hiding, and their insatiable curiosity and greed would make them brave any barriers in their way. No, making this place undesirable was the way to go. If being near this place was annoying and frustrating, perhaps embarrassing, people would avoid it at any cost. Pulling out his book of dark rituals, Joe began to write down the various effects and area of effect he was after. As it happened, he found that he had been making an incorrect assumption about the magic he was using. Since most of the runes and diagrams were circular, he had thought that they would all have a circular area of effect.
In fact, he coul
d change the affected area simply by changing a few variables in the circle itself. His eyebrow twitched in anger when he found that he didn’t need to make a gigantic ritual circle around the guild house to stave off monsters, he only needed to adjust the parameters so that the effect was pushed out to the range he wanted. Joe growled at the memory of his previous mistakes, vowing to get better at this in the future. What he wanted right now was a rectangular area of effect that covered the entire warehouse and about ten feet out on each side. That way it wouldn’t affect people that walked by or those that simply lived or worked in the nearby buildings.
Reading through his grimoire, he softly sang to himself to help pass the time. “Montage! Doing a ritual creation montage, yeah.” Time didn’t pass any faster, but after twenty minutes, he stopped mumbling his song and became fully invested in his studies. When his words trailed off, the crackling of turning pages sounded like a whip snapping in the silence of the building. His quills scratching notes onto some paper could be heard once every short while. He muttered “Montage!” softly every half hour or so. Eventually, he decided that he should work on the actual creation of a ritual instead of just making notes.
“Hmm. Effects I want in this ritual… exclusion, yes. Don’t want it to affect me or guests. Passive scanning so it isn’t active and wasting mana if there are no targets. The goal of the whole ritual, nausea, yup. Maybe include the feeling of really needing to poo? Maybe actually make them poo if they hang around too long? I can’t imagine many people wanting to stick around if they are feeling like that.” Joe looked at a few other possibilities, selecting only one more. “Exponential increase? Yeah… the closer they get to the ritual circle, the worse the effects are.” Exponential increase actually reduced the overall cost of the ritual, because it meant that unless you were right at the epicenter the effect was lessened severely. Adding limiting factors was a good way to turn a powerful ritual into something usable, but making it specific like that carried its own risks.