by M Helbig
I wasn’t aware players could give quests, but that was good to know. I’d need to figure out how I did that and what I could and couldn’t offer, but I filed that away for later. My quest to free Ulinnia popped up with an update.
Quest: You Think You Have Joint Pain?
Description: In a fit of betrayal worthy of legend within a role-playing game, the Followers of Gerinashu forced Chiselbeard the Great to freeze their master’s consort Ulinnia for all of time in penance for her role in his fall.
Seems a bit much, doesn’t it? While you’re just standing there, would you mind freeing her?
Completion Objective: Release Ulinnia from her frozen state
Reward: 70,000 EXP, +2,000 Faction with the Town of Grimrag, -4,000 Faction with Followers of Gerinashu, Immune to all damage from Ulinnia the All Powerful
“Neato!” Alizia said in group chat. “Did you see the new reward? The fun I’m going to have with that.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. “I’d have thought you of all people would’ve learned from movies what happens when you taunt something immortal and powerful.”
“Good point. With all those years she’s had behind her, she’s probably gotten really good at ‘I’m not touching you.’ She’ll probably shoot the ground nearby and cause a McDonald’s to fall on me or something.”
“May I free her now?” Olaf asked in group chat.
“Yes,” I said.
Olaf began furiously chipping away at each joint going from her head down. Even with his high Dexterity and relentless pace, it took almost an hour. Throughout, Ulinnia asked us numerous questions about the present world. She seemed especially interested in hearing about Earth when Alizia accidentally mentioned it in her lengthy discourse on culottes. Ulinnia was saddened to hear what’d happened on our home world during the Desolation and found it oddly similar to what had happened in this world’s past after Gerinashu’s defeat. As Olaf finished off her last ankle, my eyes caught movement. For the first time in over an hour, I looked through the doorway. Most of the constructs were gone, but I could still see a few of the less mobile shapes rolling and lumbering away.
The room went eerily quiet as Olaf’s constantly tapping hammer fell silent. Ulinnia experimentally flexed her ankle and then her toes. A broad smile crossed her perfectly chiseled face. On Alizia, that look would have sent slight shivers down my spine, but paired with Ulinnia’s flaming eyes, the shivers went much deeper. I silently added that to my list of reasons I was glad you couldn’t go to the bathroom in S&S.
You have completed your quest: You Think You Have Joint Pains?
You have gained 70,000 Experience Points! 77,611 /150,000 to next level.
You have received +2,000 Faction with the Town of Grimrag! Total: 225 Town of Grimrag (Friendly).
You have received -4,000 Faction with Followers of Gerinashu! Total: -5,010 Followers of Gerinashu (Loathed).
Ulinnia rose and the ground trembled. I hadn’t realized she was tall enough to see over the ten-foot walls or accounted for the fact that she’d been kneeling in statue form. The fire in her eyes expanded to merge into one, completely obscuring her brow and the front of her hair. None of us said a word, yet everyone summoned their weapons.
“Horus, you might want to back up,” Alizia said as Ulinnia’s hand began to glow.
I moved toward the sound of her voice while continuing to keep my eyes firmly on the deadly stone giant. “I think you might be right about her killing us indirectly. All she has to do is blow out the middle of the wall, and the top will crush us all.”
“That too, but if you’d still been standing there you would’ve seen up her toga. Last thing we need is the team brain distracted by images of giant panties.”
Ulinnia kicked the wall before her, and it exploded outward. Alizia stuck her shield in front of me to keep a stray brick from turning my head into mush.
Stomping forward, Ulinnia fired a blast from her hand and then another. I couldn’t see where they landed through the wall to my right, but small bits of rubble shot into the sky shortly after. I finally heard a scream. My suspicion was confirmed when the top half of a mouth landed at my feet.
Alizia picked up the mouth and held it below her nose like a mustache. “Only two hundred more of these and I can build my own Olaf.”
With Ulinnia now a hundred feet away, I ventured to the new doorway she’d made with the far wall and peered out. The only constructs nearby were in pieces, none of which were moving. I was about to flip on Tracking when a bright purple light drew my attention.
Olaf stood inside the hollowed remnants of the pedestal and held the source of the light: a chipped, bowl-shaped helmet made of stone.
Item: Helmet of Fred
Restrictions: Level 9 required
Slot: Head
Rarity: Extraordinary
AC: 1,000
Stat Bonus: +10 STA +20 END -50 AGI -50 DEX
Special Abilities: Status: Blind on wearer, -30 Non-Mounted Movement Speed, -100 Mounted Movement Speed, -100 Fire Resist, +50 Earth Resist, +30 Wind Resist, + 30 Water Resist
Weight: 200 Pebbles
Description: Fred the Chiseled was built to be an engine of destruction and nothing else. As the champion of the Followers of Gerinashu, he accomplished his goal time and time again while rampaging across three continents in the service of his master’s need for conquest.
However, he eventually met his match in the fields of Pygraine. The Pygrainians knew they were not the equals of the Sculptors of Grimrag in building constructs for combat, so they built their giant construct with a different purpose in mind. When Fred caught sight of Jyona of Pygraine, it was love at first sight. As Fred removed his helmet to give his new love a kiss, the Pygrainians opened fire and shattered poor Fred’s soft head underneath. The only part of him that remained was this slightly singed helmet.
“Ooh, shiny!” Yary said.
“Pass,” Alizia said. “As I learned in one heck of a painful lesson in seventh grade, all the glitter and sparkles in the world can’t fix the truly ugly. That thing looks like a salad bowl made of dirty concrete.”
“Might be situationally useful for a tough boss fight where you don’t have to move much or see,” I said.
“If you’re wearing that thing, you probably don’t wanna be able to see.” Alizia covered her eyes and pretended to weep.
“Where’d you find it?” I asked. “I thought you checked everywhere.”
“I did,” Olaf said. “It appeared when we got the quest completion message.”
“If it appeared at a time like that, I’m betting it’s something important,” I said. “I’ll take it for now. We can always sell it later.”
The explosive sounds of Ulinnia’s blast abruptly stopped. They’d become so regular that I’d nearly filtered them out as background noise. The sudden quiet drew everyone’s attention outside. I almost panicked when I couldn’t find her, but Yary’s finger shot out next to me and I followed it to a pile of golden ringlets periodically bobbing above the hills.
“Jeez, those constructs sure can run fast,” Alizia said. “Good thing for her she has such long, bony legs to keep up.”
“I don’t think they make constructs out of bone,” Yary said. “Probably some kind of metal.”
“Not what I meant, but fine.” Alizia gave Yary a fake pout. “She has such ‘long, metally legs.’”
“I doubt she is chasing the constructs anymore,” Olaf said. “If she were still blasting them, we’d hear it.”
“Then what’s she doing?” Alizia asked.
I quickly pulled up my map as a sudden realization hit me. I pointed directly to where I guessed she was heading and sure enough she was directly between me and it. “She’s heading straight for Grimrag!”
Angry Giant Things Stomp Into Cities All the Time and Don’t Destroy Them, Right?
“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” Olaf immediately activated Sprint and headed in the direction of Ulinnia. The rest of us raced after hi
m. Considering Ulinnia’s much larger legs, we had no chance of catching her.
“What’s the big deal?” Alizia asked. “If she runs through there and knocks the door off, it’s a good thing for us, right? They won’t let us in anyway on account of that huge faction hit Lagereyes put on us.”
“When we completed that quest to free Ulinnia, it put us barely above the level to go back in,” I said.
“Ahh, well, that’s still not enough to get that key we need,” Alizia said. “She might even knock the key loose from that new mayor guy so we can take it.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But we can’t know that for sure. She’s just as likely to destroy it, whether accidentally or intentionally.”
“And most items can’t be got from killing the quest NPC,” Yary said. “I heard they exist in some sort of special dimension that even the NPCs themselves can’t pull them from unless the quest requirements are completed.”
“A fact you should well know, Alizia,” Olaf said as his Sprint finally faded. “Remember Zach the Potion Master?”
Alizia stopped behind Olaf and grinned. “You win some, you lose some. In that case, poor Zachary lost his life to a large rock propelled by a mysterious yet stunningly beautiful source, and I lost out on three free potions.”
“As well as any chance of ever completing a quest with dryads again, a waste of a whole day, and enough experience to advance a whole level,” Olaf said.
As we exited the hills onto the flat plane that led to Grimrag, we could finally see all of Ulinnia again as well as the town. The good news was that I was fairly confident she didn’t want to rampage through and over Grimrag. The bad news was that we now knew where the constructs had gone—oh, and also that another huge monster was right in front of the gate battling the inhabitants.
“At least Ulinnia and the new guy are wearing different colors,” Alizia said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to tell them apart.”
Yary squinted really hard. “And that he’s a skeleton, has a badly hunched back, is ten feet taller, doesn’t have blond or any hair to speak of, shoots blue stuff instead of red stuff, and has the name ‘Gerinashu’ embroidered on his robes.”
Olaf clapped his hands. “He is fighting the guards! If we help them defeat him, that will assuredly give us enough faction to get the key.”
I almost said, “As long as we survive,” but didn’t when I saw the excitement in my friend’s eyes. Ever since Clewd offhandedly mentioned “Repsak,” the name of Olaf’s son’s character, and then disappeared to the far-off dungeon of the Golden Hole, Olaf hadn’t been the same. He was still mostly positive and friendly, but everything seemed forced. You could almost see the stress weighing him down. Even if we were probably going to die, I was willing to take the risk. I’d no doubt that Alizia would as well.
“We’re not close enough to use Inspect,” I said as we moved as fast as we could toward the town, “but still that thing is way out of our weight class.”
Alizia giggled. “Laffy and I learned on our first outing together that size isn’t everything, at least when it comes to mobs and difficulty. It does for a few out of combat things, if you know what I mean.”
“Obviously, we do,” I said.
“We do?” Yary asked.
Alizia winked at her, and Yary began laughing hysterically. I was incredibly grateful Alizia had kept that to a private message.
“You’re right, the word ‘ladder’ is funny sounding,” Alizia said.
Alizia had to pick Yary off the ground as she doubled over in laughter. I was thankful my Action Points had recovered enough that I could Sprint away before I could hear the rest of what came out of Alizia’s mouth. Judging by the way she was pointing, I knew it was about me and not flattering. I managed to stay just out of hearing range the rest of the way, though Alizia began to talk in group chat (which was not restricted by distance) halfway and fill me in on everything I’d missed.
As such, I did not come up with a plan by the time we arrived. My theory that Alizia was an NPC sent by the game to guide us to failure grew likelier by the moment. She was definitely distracting Yary so much that I doubted I could’ve gotten her to do anything.
We crouched behind a huge, flaming piece of the gate and surveyed the scene. The guards and townsfolk were squared off against the constructs in front of the burning wall near where the gate had been, though they were badly outnumbered. Ulinnia was battling the gigantic skeleton in the tattered beige robe. The few times she did manage to land the occasional thunderous blow, all the skeleton had to do was hit one of the constructs with a blue blast and the damage seemed to immediately heal. I used Inspect on both of them to be sure.
Ulinnia
Level: 27
Resists
Type: Raid Boss
Light: ???
Race: Construct
Dark: ???
Faction: none
Earth: ???
HP: 41,761/42,000
Water: ???
MP: 9,812/10,000
Fire: ???
AP: 0
Wind: ???
AC: ???
Special Attributes: ???
Weaknesses: ???
Gerinashu the Beige
Level: 29
Resists
Type: Raid Boss
Light: ???
Race: Undead
Dark: ???
Faction: Followers of Gerinashu
Earth: ???
HP: 46,930/47,000
Water: ???
MP: ???
Fire: ???
AP: 0
Wind: ???
AC: ???
Special Attributes: Sacrifice Follower, Flames of the Underworld, Breath of the Dead
Weaknesses: ???
“So, plan?” Alizia asked.
“We must save the townsfolk,” Olaf said. “If that monster defeats Ulinnia, he will surely kill them all. But how?”
Alizia patted Olaf on the head. “Adorable as always, Laffy. But again, they’re not real people like you and Horus and not-new-Yary over there; they’re only a bunch of ones and zeroes designed to look and act like you. If ole Gone-a-Spew up there squishes ’em, Mr. Machine Overlord will eventually generate some new ones for future squishings.”
Olaf’s eyes met my own. He’d also noticed Alizia’s omission of her name on the list of real people.
“As Galileo once said, ‘If you max your faction when no one’s left, how can you get their goodies?’” Yary stared at Alizia expectantly.
“Also a good point,” Alizia said. “You’ve convinced me. We must save these poor, downtrodden villagers!” She pointed at a pack of dwarves in a patchwork of mismatched armor right as Gerinashu landed a blow in their midst, vaporizing most and leaving the rest as charred corpses.
“We must save these poor, downtrodden villagers, but safely behind the last bits of that protective wall over there!” Alizia pointed toward the village.
Olaf and Yary looked to me for guidance.
I let out a long sigh. “Somehow she’s right. If the mayor dies, we might not be able to complete the quest even if we do manage to help defeat Gerinashu and get our faction up. It’s possible that we can just complete it with his replacement, but in order for that to happen, at least a few of the dwarfs need to survive and become mayor. Tracking shows Tinkerbeard inside the town. Worst case scenario, we can at least save some of the other civilians instead.”
“That doesn’t sound like the ‘worst’ thing to me,” Olaf said. “It is our duty as heroes.”
“A figure of speech,” I said. “We’ll try to save as many as we can.”
“That’s why Superman always saved civilians,” Yary said. “They’re worth lots of experience.”
Alizia hopped on top of the huge piece of gate in front of us and surveyed the scene. “Aha. All we have to do is run through that gauntlet of death, destruction, and dismemberment to get in and then run back out without getting dead, destroyed, or dismembered. Hopefully a civ
ilian or three makes it with us too.”
As none of the constructs were moving away from the battle to target Alizia, and as Gerinashu had his back to us, I hopped up on the remnants of the giant wooden gate next to her. While the entrance was wide open due to the gate’s forced relocation, the battle between the town’s defenders and the constructs was raging fiercely in between us and the town. Every time a way through the melee opened up, someone fell, stumbled, or dodged into the space a few seconds after. Five minutes of looking later, the crowd began to thin out on the edge near the left gatepost, but as we moved toward it, a stray blast from Ulinnia sprayed dwarves and constructs to block the path. Mercifully, a new space opened in the location of the blast and we barely made it through.
“Which way was it?” Alizia asked. “There’s a bar in here that’s completely undefended, and I want to see how many bottles I can fit into the 362 Carrying Capacity my bag has left.”
“Probably 362 of them,” Yary said. “But you can use my extra space if you want.”
“Our priority is to find the civilians and lead them out,” Olaf said.
“Actually, Alizia has a point,” I said.
“She does?” Olaf and Alizia asked.
“We head to the tavern.” I pointed to the large building in the center of the town. “That way.”
As Alizia squealed and ran toward it with Yary at her hip. I sent Olaf a message. “These are dwarves, remember? If they’re not fighting, then they’re probably drinking. My Tracking arrow happens to agree.”
Olaf grinned slyly and responded, “Well thought. Have you noticed that you are no longer hesitating when you make decisions?”
Before I could think through the truth of that, Alizia slammed open the door to the tavern. Olaf and I instinctively turned on Sprint to catch up. Leader or not, there was no way either of us was going to let her loose in a place with alcohol unsupervised.