by M Helbig
Restrictions: Level 8 Required
Slot: Feet
Rarity: Uncommon
AC: 8
Stat Bonus: +4 INT +4 WIS
Weight: 4 Pebbles
Description: Putting these on, you feel smarter already . . . like how you could’ve paid four fewer gold if you’d haggled a little more.
Item: Camo Belt
Restrictions: Level 6 Required
Slot: Waist
Rarity: Common
AC: 6
Stat Bonus: +2 STA +3 END
Special Abilities: +5 Sneak +5 Camouflage
Weight: 3 Pebbles
Description: You almost missed this when you were looking through the vendor’s wares. Hopefully, the mobs will have the same problem finding you when you put it on.
Buying the new items wasn’t a completely selfish endeavor as it helped loosen the vendor’s tongue to gather some information about our prey. The hylves were evidently beastly, savage things that usually attacked in packs. Not smart enough to use tools or weapons, they attacked with their mouths and clawless hands. They also had terrible eyesight. While the dwarf did describe them as aggressive and foul smelling, the rest of the information led me to believe they wouldn’t be too hard to defeat as long as we didn’t engage too many at once. I was about to ask about the stone statues the barkeep had also mentioned when the rest of the party started moving away.
After Alizia tried all the cart vendor’s samples anyway, gagged harder on each one, left in disgust, and then ran back to buy several of them, we headed to the gate. By luck, we encountered a rune-covered, seven-foot-tall stone obelisk on the way. A few days after the fall of Highwall, we’d encountered a similar object in the ruins of an old city, and I’d discovered by accidentally touching it that these stones allowed us to change our bind point. Everyone in the group touched the oddly warm stone and said the magic words, “Of course I want to set my bind point here, you stupid, stupid prompt.” After Alizia’s fifth wrong turn, I directed us to the town’s wall and we found the exit by following it.
The area to the west of Grimrag was a flat plain. I’d worried we’d have a constant, frantic battle with the harpies we’d seen on our way in, but with no trees in sight, it looked like we were safe. Georgius had easily dispatched the harpies before, yet I’d no idea how challenging they’d be for our group without him. I kicked myself for not reading the info on them from Inspect, as we’d certainly have to take them on when we needed to leave this hidden valley.
The plains were full of ankle-high grass, making it very easy to see any would-be attackers for miles. Most of the things we encountered were non-aggressive beasts like antelopes, aardvarks, buffaloes, and giraffes. Occasionally, we’d see a warthog or young lion, but given our level disparity, we easily dispatched them. They were so easy that neither Yary nor I even had to worry about healing.
As we got about fifteen minutes from the hylf village, and the ground became hillier and more barren, we had an unusually hairy fight with a pack of lions. The three lions were nothing special, but Alizia tripped over Yary, missing a Shout, and the lions came for me. With them raking and clawing me, I couldn’t get a Regrowth off. Yary managed to save me at the last minute with a heal, and Alizia got the lions off shortly after.
With the lions dead, I managed to top off my HPs with a few Regrowths. “I thought Bruisers didn’t get spells until they picked a sub-class at twenty-five.”
“They don’t,” Yary said. “But I’m a Light Mage.”
I must’ve re-read her character sheet ten times before Olaf finally opened his mouth. “Inspect says you are a Bruiser, miss.”
Yary shook her head. “Nope. See.” She tapped her bracer and a familiar white light washed over me, healing me for 0.
I flipped on Inspect again, this time figuring it out. “It’s the bracers that cast the spell.”
“Oh,” Yary said. “So, I don’t get any more spells?”
Item: Bracers of Mending
Restrictions: Bruiser class only, Level 12 required
Slot: Arms
Rarity: Extraordinary
AC: 8
Stat Bonus: +4 DEX +4 AGI +6 INT +7 WIS
Special Abilities: Healing Light (Cast Healing Light: 150-300 pt. heal. Cooldown: 30 seconds)
Weight: 7 Pebbles
Description: Once the prized bracers of the legendary Bruiser Llegwyn “Cauliflower” Flowynder. It’s not known if the bracers are what made him famous or the other way around. Either way, having these puts you in good company.
“Neato!” Alizia said. “I knew there was a reason we let you join, not-new-Deccy. I mean, besides the fact that you’re awesome, don’t ramble on and on about boring crap if nobody cares, have a cool braid in your hair, have connections to important people—”
“We get the point, Alizia,” Olaf said. “She is a fine addition to the group.”
“I don’t,” I deadpanned. “Please tell us more.”
“—aren’t in love with any books, Horus has a crush on you, and you’re someone I can finally talk girly stuff with.”
Yary’s eyebrows rose, and I shook my head in response. Thankfully, Olaf decided to avoid the awkwardness and change the subject.
“Horus, what has your family said to you since you arrived in this game? I would imagine your mother and sister were very excited to hear that you live on in here.”
I almost walked straight into a boulder.
Since I’d discovered my killer in the real world was also in the game almost as soon as I entered, I’d been so focused on finding him that I hadn’t had the time to think through everything else that went with my death, like how it would’ve affected my family.
God, they must be a mess. Dad died at the same time too. Heck, it hasn’t even occurred to me that I can send a message out to them. Mom must be worried sick . . . No, she probably won’t even know my mind lives on in here. How can she? Dad made sure the account I used to get in wasn’t known to Pyrite . . . unless he left some sort of automated message behind to send to her on the event of the account being used . . . but even if he had, the account was supposed to be for him, so she’d think his mind is still around and not mine.
Yary said something, probably a question about my backstory, but I was in too much of a daze to hear it. Someone answered her.
Sometime later, Olaf moved in front of me and spoke softly. “Was their response that bad?”
“I haven’t sent anything to them.” I failed to hold back the tears. “I forgot you could do that. They’ll think I’m a terrible person for not telling them right away. What do I even say?”
“Nonsense. They will be thrilled that you are still alive. Nothing else will matter. If you need help composing the message, I will be happy to help you.”
I smiled sadly and sat down on a nearby log. I happened to catch Alizia and Yary out of the corner of my eye, and my first thought was what they must think of me crying like a toddler, but Alizia, being the amazing friend she was, had turned Yary around to guide her away.
Olaf sat down next to me. “I think the best thing for you to do is keep it simple, at least at the beginning, and explain that you are alive inside this game. Be sure to go into more detail at the end, though, as there is a one-week delay for messages going out, so you won’t be able to answer them very quickly. Pyrite put the delay in so people could not use the external messaging system to gain information about what is happening in the other areas of the game and make money quicker.”
Olaf and I spent the next hour deciding what I’d say. I’m not going to go over it precisely, as most of it was very personal, but I went over the details of my and Dad’s deaths, how I had lived on and he hadn’t, and that I was happy with my new friends but missed them all very much. A massive weight I hadn’t realized was on me evaporated as soon as I hit send. I wiped the last of the tears and stood up with a huge smile on my face.
Thankfully, the rest of our group was easy to find as Alizia’s squeals of j
oy could probably be heard back at the dwarven town almost three hours away. We found them to the northwest, on the side of the second hill. No sounds of animals around us. At first, I took that to be due to Alizia’s noise drowning them out, but a quick flip through my Tracking interface showed the only entities in the area to be our group and some things called jackalopes.
Yary spotted us and notified Alizia of our presence. Alizia squealed even more loudly and turned around. “Olaf, Horus, I don’t want to be a Bard anymore. I wanna be a Tamer. These things are the cutest things I’ve ever seen, and I want to tame them so I can have a pack trailing after me. We’ll be the most adorable thing ever, and I will be their focal point!”
“What is she talking about?” Olaf asked.
Yary pulled Alizia back to reveal a shoe-sized rabbit with purple fur and antlers. The “jackalope” eyed Olaf and me with unusually intelligent doe eyes while continuing to munch on a patch of grass wedged in between two rocks.
“They are rather cute,” Olaf said. “But should we not be moving on? We only have twenty-eight hours and thirteen minutes to complete that bonus objective, and these jackalopes are not part of that quest.”
Alizia squeaked as she bent down next to the jackalope. “Nah, we’ll be fine. I’ll just cut off a quarter of my usual shenanigans to make up. Besides, if we can take a bunch of these cuties with us, I’ll bet we can make way more money selling them than the cost of even my most expensive drinking binges. They’re so friendly and calm, we don’t even need to be Tamers to catch ’em.”
“Can you put living things in the dimension where the stuff in our backpacks goes?” I asked.
The jackalope’s wide eyes focused on Alizia’s huge hands as they neared it, but it didn’t move except to take another big mouthful of grass.
“Of course you can,” Alizia said. “Why, one time when Olaf was getting really uppity, I grabbed him by that long mustache of his and—no, wait. He kicked me in the shins and scurried away before I could.”
Olaf mocked kicking her in the shins. “I do not scurry, you big buffoon.”
Alizia’s hands closed around the jackalope. “Scurrying’s the only thing those little peg legs you walk on are capable of, gnomestache. However, I did manage to put a goblin I caught napping in there once . . . Did I ever pull her back out? I should probably—yowch!” She jumped back, bowling Olaf over while shaking her hand in pain.
The jackalope spun in midair, landing deftly on his feet. He stared at Alizia and opened his freakishly huge, blood-drenched mouth to reveal a second row of tiny, dagger-like teeth behind his flat incisors. As if on cue, six other jackalopes bounced up to form a circle and surround us.
I tossed a Regrowth on Alizia. “I don’t think these are going to make you quite as rich as you hoped.”
Alizia shook her no-longer-bleeding hand reflexively. “Well, there are a lot of sickos out there who might pay to have more twisted nightmares. Or we could make some pajama bottoms out of them. It’d probably only take about twenty of them to get enough fur.” She summoned her scepter and shield.
Olaf stared intently at the lead jackalope. “I think we should avoid this fight and focus on our true goal. These are not easy foes.”
“Nah. This is personal. I need to teach these cuties some manners . . . by killing them!” Alizia banged her scepter against her club and advanced.
Yary tapped her bracer to cast a heal on Alizia. “And I’ll help!”
“She was already at full, Yary.” I was about to fire my first arrow at one of the jackalopes when it dawned on me why Olaf had been staring so long at the lead one. I used Inspect on it too.
Hill Jackalope
Level: 11
Resists
Type: Regular
Light: 30
Race: Jackalope
Dark: 30
Faction: none
Earth: 30
HP: 230/230
Water: 30
MP: 0
Fire: 30
AP: 50/50
Wind: 30
AC: 25
Special Attributes: Life Leach
Weaknesses: none
“Alizia, no!” I said too late.
Alizia’s scepter had already connected with the bloody muzzle of the jackalope. Her blow landed with a satisfying crunch for 22! but just as quickly the jackalope counterattacked, its Life Leach bringing it back to full. Yary tapped her bracer frantically to do the same for Alizia, yet the cooldown was still quite a while away.
Olaf grabbed Alizia with his free hand. “We should retreat.”
Alizia shook him off. “No, this is personal. I had a traumatic experience with a cute thing that bit me once, and I need to settle this. Therapy with blunt objects. Write that one down, not-new-Deccy. Maybe I’ll sew the motto into their pelts.” She banged her scepter into her shield menacingly and advanced on the same jackalope.
Doubt crept into the jackalope’s eyes initially, and it even edged backward, at least until it noticed its six friends. As Alizia got within a step of it, the pack leapt as one. Alizia’s strike sailed well wide of her suddenly leaping target, so wide that she inadvertently twisted to accidentally bring her shield into the path of her attacker. Regrettably, it wasn’t alone. Two more caught her from each side, their razor-sharp teeth easily tearing through her leather armor. As she yelped in pain, the one in front bounced under her shield and bit her in the ankle.
Being a great teammate, Olaf tried to use Alizia’s unintentional distraction to catch one of her attackers in its side on the way down. Unfortunately, that left him wide open for the two behind him to put new holes in his pants and the skin beneath. In his screaming, windmilling dance, he bowled right into Alizia. With their height disparity, his arms connected with Alizia’s legs, taking them right out from under her. As she fell to the ground, her flailing calves caught him in the side, and both ended up on their backs.
The whole thing was so unbelievable and distracting that I hadn’t even managed to decide what to do in the fight, let alone summon my weapon or start casting a spell. Fortunately, two jackalopes hit me to remind me what else was going on. I skidded backward to avoid their next leaps. Yary tapped her bracers repeatedly, managing to keep Alizia alive with one heal, but mostly keeping her distracted while the cooldown ticked away. The only good thing was that their assault had pushed the group together, but as I surveyed the situation again, I began to think that was their whole plan.
Alizia stumbled up, appearing to purposely kick Olaf with her long, flailing legs as she rose. “What’s your brilliant strategy to save us all this time, Horus?”
I tapped my temple in the hopes I’d knock a plan loose but my mind remained blank. “Umm . . .”
“Ah, the old number ‘umm.’ One of my favorites. Not as good as your ‘hmm’ or ‘huh,’ but still a goodie.”
“What type of numbers are those?” Yary asked. “Dutch?”
Olaf bounced up. “Alizia, do not be so hard on Horus. I believe some of his best plans come from instinct and adapting to the moment. Right about now is usually the time when he comes up with something.”
My eyes immediately shot toward a spot about fifty feet behind the first jackalope, and my hand pointed to it. “Look over there!”
The rest of the group’s eyes shot to the same empty spot. Alizia laughed mirthlessly. “OK, plan ‘ummm’ sucks and will forever be retired into the plan hall of shame. What else ye got? And if any of them involve using ‘You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses’ or ‘Pick a finger,’ just throw ’em out.”
I stared hard at the spot, feeling like my mouth had betrayed me. I wasn’t sure where those words had come from, as I didn’t remember choosing to say them. Was it panic or desperation at trying to do something, anything, to save my group? Whatever the case, nothing was there, and to add insult to injury, even if I had unwittingly been trying to fool the jackalopes, it was highly improbable they could even understand me. Though considering the way the lead one was rolling its e
yes at me, maybe they could?
Right as the jackalopes twitched in anticipation of another leap, the ground shook behind them. True, it wasn’t coming from the exact spot I’d pointed at, but it was close. My subconscious must have sensed something after all. As I mentally patted myself on the back, the ground stopped shaking as the source of the tremor emerged from the other side of the hill.
Alizia’s hoot of joy caught in her throat as a jackalope taller than even her seven-foot frame hopped into view. The rest of the jackalopes scampered away.
“I vote we don’t let Horus make any more plans,” Alizia said. “Not-new-Deccy agrees.”
“I do?” Yary asked as she frantically tapped her bracers, healing Alizia on the second tap.
“At least our deaths will be quick,” Olaf said.
This jackalope did not possess the same ever-moving, intelligent eyes of her smaller kin. As a matter of fact, her eyes weren’t even the same color. They were a burning red with the promise of only one thing: a very painful death. Her thunderous, single-minded hops belabored the same message. I knew it was pointless and would only demoralize me more, but curiosity got the better of me and I used Inspect.
Hippity, Hoppity Murder’s on Its Way
Level: 27
Resists
Type: Pet
Light: 30
Race: Jackalope
Dark: 30
Faction: Elven Preservation Society
Earth: 30
HP: 780/780
Water: 30
MP: 0
Fire: 30
AP: 250/250
Wind: 30
AC: 76
Special Attributes: Life Leach, Frightening Stare, Improved Smell
Weaknesses: none
Yary’s jaw dropped. “I’m going to need bigger bracers.”
“How much do you think those weirdos you mentioned would pay for nightmares like that, Alizia?” I asked.