“I’ve been stabbed, darted, sliced, bludgeoned, gassed, burned, and several other extremely unpleasant things have been done to my person. And every time, it’s the same response from her! ‘Oops. Guess that’s a fail.’ And then she giggles like she just had her first crush tickle her happy place.”
“Disgusting, Alex. Sally doesn’t have a happy place,” the Master Rogue said from across his usual table at the Pit.
“I’m talking about her…”
“Oh, I know what you are talking about. And she doesn’t have one. I think she had it surgically removed. Anyone who had a single place that could give them some small amount of joy could never reach her levels of sadism. Ergo, she has no happy place.”
“And I still have so much more to go, don’t I?”
Waseem nodded in my direction while giving me one of his patented smiles. I couldn’t rightly tell him that I was wrong about him being the world’s most horrible person, although he knew I had figured out Sally had him beat by a mile.
“Good news is, once you master the disabling of traps, it will be only a day or two before you are done with Sally. She will show you the last two steps to get you past those buildings in the rich areas of town, and then I will show you where to start mastering that portion.”
At least the last five days had seen me make some real improvements. I had finished the Baron’s trap and had moved on to the Journeyman’s creation. The Journeyman’s was far more complex, and I was improving my skill with each successful manipulation of the trap. I didn’t even need to completely disarm it, just get through part of the process. One time, when I successfully took the entire trap apart with no errors, I earned three Skill Points. I was sitting at 85 in the skill, and I was just about to move from the Journeyman’s to Sally’s Master Trap.
One more day would see us hitting our Level 32, and we were confident this would be the time for our next quest from Sir Arthur.
November 30th, 2043
Our confidence was shit. And our feelings toward Sir Arthur were bordering on homicidal intent.
At this point we knew that getting to our next level was going to take us around five days. At least that would be the time if we stayed to our current pace and found suitable mobs in the swamp.
We were running out of room in that desolate place as well. Oh, there were still plenty of places that we could get experience. We just weren’t of a high enough level for most of them. We had been balancing our skills and gear against the levels of the mobs for over a week, and we had found the perfect risk vs. gain ratio.
And I would love to regale you with all of the amazing things we were doing out in the swamp. But that would be me lying.
Not that it was dull and boring. I mean, it was, but that is to be expected when all you are doing is focusing on leveling your character. And if there was any excitement to speak of, I would be sure to put it down here.
Unfortunately, this also meant that I was no closer to learning the truth behind the code in the game. We had mapped out that swamp almost as well as the Witch had, and none of the mobs we came across were unbeatable. However, I mentioned earlier there were some we didn’t even bother to take on because of the obvious level difference. It’s possible the code could be embodied in one of these mobs, but I doubted it would be a generic mob.
What wasn’t dull and boring was my progress with Sally.
Ok, I’m lying again. It is kind of dull and boring, but in this case, I have been making progress.
After learning that Sir Arthur did not have our next quest, I made my way to Sally’s place again. As was the case on several occasions, Sally wasn’t there when I arrived. This worried me at first, but after several times of placing the totem as Sally instructed and seeing the door open soon after, I stopped worrying.
Thomash answered the door. He smiled at me with a sympathetic gaze that had become quite familiar. I had seen it every time I pulled myself off of the floor following one of the countless pitfalls from the traps I was working on.
“That’s the look that should be on my face, not yours.”
“Indeed, Mr. Alex. I hope you don’t have much use of me this day.”
“Thomash, I can guarantee you that I want to see you less than you want to see me.”
“Knowing what you’ve been through, Mr. Alex, I take absolutely no offense to that whatsoever.”
We laughed at Thomash’s joke as I entered the room with the various traps and Thomash retired to his room just off the main hall. I have no idea how he knew when I needed to be healed, but I never had to wait long when I did.
As I sat down in front of the Journeyman’s Trap, I was reminded yet again of how far Resurgence had come as a medium for online gaming. So many aspects of leveling Skills required hands-on interaction. And I am not talking about my specialty Rogue Skills, either. Climbing, Detecting Traps, and Disabling Traps were Skills that any character could learn, and for a character to get a working knowledge of these Skills, a person actually had to climb or take apart a trap like I was doing now.
Honestly, I preferred climbing the side of a tower or sneaking through a dungeon to fiddling with these contraptions, but that’s because I am someone who likes to move around. It doesn’t take much to imagine a fair number of players who would love working on these Traps, and then reverse engineering them and making their own. It would definitely be a money maker.
Settling into the chair, I focused on the Journeyman’s Trap I would start with today. As my Skill had progressed, I had begun to see patterns of how to take the Traps apart so as not to have them go off. In some cases, I could even save some of the materials. I wanted to test a theory I had, so I took apart the Carpenter’s Trap again, despite it being terribly beneath my Skill level. The test wasn’t to see if I could do it, or how fast, but to see if I could save all the materials after taking it apart.
I was happy to find that my Skill was in direct proportion to how successful I would be at saving the materials, as I saved every bit of the Carpenter’s Trap. In the more complex traps, I imagine the materials themselves would be worth a pretty penny.
The trap in front of me had several areas that glowed Green, some Blue, and some White. The Green areas were where I would focus first. When I first started seeing Green in the traps, I didn’t notice the subtle difference in the intensity of the Green color. This led to quite a few accidents on my part. As it turned out, the intensity of the Green was the second part to knowing what order to manipulate the varying parts of the trap. As I successfully moved from one area to the next, the Blue and White sections would also become Green as well and would also vary in color intensity. If I succeeded through the entire trap, I would eventually see each part turn Green. The whole system was truly ingenious on AltCon’s part.
I kept looking over the trap on the table. It was more complex than the previous Journeyman’s Trap I worked on but still nothing like the Master Traps that Sally set up on the end of the same table.
Looking down at those, all I saw was Red—a very deep and dark Red. I held no illusions that those would ever truly turn Green for me, mostly because Sally told me they wouldn’t. She was a sadistic, vile beast in the guise of a cute little old woman, yes, but not a liar.
I fell into my working trance, the same as I got into when I first worked on Lifting back at the Pit with those ice cubes. I found that I focused better in these states, but time flew by far too quickly. I had to be careful, or I would find myself getting kicked out of the game for being on too long.
In my Zen-like state, I took apart the Trap in front of me. I only somewhat noticed the Skill increases as I progressed through the contraption. Slowly, as I tinkered away, I removed the pieces and set them beside me. I only became aware of just how much time had passed when I realized I was sweating on my brow from the concentration and Thomash had come out to wipe my forehead.
I wanted to thank him, but I was on the last part of the trap. The heart of the machine where the implement of pain was conc
ealed. I never knew what was in the trap, but I knew it wouldn’t feel good if I messed up this last part.
I saw what looked to be the right method for dislodging the triggering mechanism from the tension spring, but stopped before making the final pull with my tweezers.
I looked away for the briefest second, closed my eyes, and then looked back. When I reopened my eyes, I focused again on the machinery and saw the same way forward as before. Feeling confident with my decision, I took a deep breath and grasped with the tweezers. Two seconds later I had the Journeyman’s Trap entirely taken apart before me.
I looked at the notifications on my screen and was shocked to see that an hour and a half had passed, that the trap had 27 distinct different parts, and that I had saved 90 percent of the materials used to make it. Finally, I saw that my skill had increased 8 times during the endeavor.
After looking at the notifications, I realized for the first time that it wasn’t just Tomash and I in the hall. Several of Sally’s workers, and Sally herself, stood around the table. Sally’s employees all had smiles on their faces, happy that I was so successful. Sally also had a smile on her face. That made me worry.
“Superb work, Alex. You did a fine job on this. Took far too long for any type of field work, but we aren’t in the field so I’m not going to complain.”
“Thank you?” I replied, having an obvious mistrust for my teacher.
Sally noticed. “Oh don’t be like that. Look how much you’ve learned in such a short time. You have to admit, my methods are effective.”
“Sure. I have intimate knowledge now concerning the distinct difference between a first-degree and second-degree burn, as well as the various stages of frostbite. I can go on and on about the things I’ve learned.”
“I am sure you could complain for hours, but you will be happy to know that I think you have succeeded through the Journeyman level. Take a look at this next one, and tell me what you think.”
Sally was right. When I looked at this Journeyman trap, it was all green. Those eight increases in my Skill were the difference I needed to master this section of my training.
You might think that would make me happy. It didn’t. That meant that all the remaining traps were Master level, which meant they were made by Sally herself. And that meant there was a good chance I could actually die from one of these.
Sally saw the look on my face and started laughing. “Don’t be foolish boy! I know what you are thinking, and even I wouldn’t be so evil as to place something that could actually kill you in my traps!”
“So nothing will pop out if I don’t disarm it appropriately?” I asked rather confusedly.
“Oh no, you’ll definitely get your little bottom kicked. It just won’t kill you.”
I hung my head, almost touching the table as Sally went over and grabbed the Master Traps and set them before me.
“Go ahead and give one of these a try, and then you should probably give it a rest for the day and head on home.”
I didn’t respond to Sally. Instead, I started looking around the surface of the trap. I was trying to gauge the dimensions so I ran my hand over the top and down the side, only lightly grazing the surface. I don’t even know where the paralytic came from, but the next thing I knew, I was face down on the floor, unable to move but able to feel all the pain in my body.
“Bye, dear! Safe travels home, and I’ll see you tomorrow! Well, after Tomash heals you, of course. You sure do keep him gainfully employed.”
The paralysis was the only thing keeping me from screaming all the four-letter words my mother told me I was never supposed to say to a woman. But I was thinking all of them very loudly.
December 5th, 2043
You could hear my group’s collective sigh of relief throughout the entirety of Yerkich Square. It had been far too long since we had heard anything more than a “come back later when you’re older” message when trying to get a quest.
Sure, we could have done plenty of low-reward quests while we were getting experience for our characters, but we couldn’t find any that were tied directly to the swamp area. Since that is where we had the advantage of Dan’s memorized map, we stuck to what we knew.
Accordingly, the response from Sir Arthur was more welcomed than it had ever previously been, though the details of the quest were less than desirable. It was going to take us deep into enemy territory.
“Brave travelers, you have returned! And at just the right moment, I might add,” Sir Arthur had begun.
“Fuck this guy, we’ve been back here twelve friggin’ times to get this quest. ‘Brave travelers, you have returned’ my ass.”
Wayne whispered for Dan to shut his pie hole while Sir Arthur continued with his quest dialogue.
“As you know, the Captain you detained had kept a detailed journal on the individuals who were working with him to conspire against his Grace. Our investigators thought they had found a great boon when you delivered that manuscript!”
“I hear a ‘But’ coming here,” Jason said behind me.
“Alas! they were not as lucky as they first believed. The journal looked to be written in a complex code. That was not the case, however. It took several days before our interrogators believed the Captain was telling the truth, that what looked like code were names he ascribed to unknown individuals he met. It seemed they all wore masks to hide their identities.”
Sir Arthur then hung his head low and shook it back and forth.
“We lost the initiative, I am afraid. Once the interrogators believed the Captain, it still took several days to uncover who the culprits could be. What was to be a small and quiet investigation grew quite large when all manner of questions had to be asked to determine the identities of these fiends. In that time, word spread throughout the aristocracy, and before we could move on them, the House of Frost had left Kich’s Keep.
“Great Ice Mages, every one of them, they represented a fairly large number of his Grace’s magical armament on the battlefield. Losing them in the city and in the war will have a dire effect on morale. The rampage of Overlord Riff has already brought the mood to an all-time low, as our forces are repelled singlehandedly by this brute. With this news, we could see mass desertions. The King knows this and has deemed that the Head of House Frost must pay for his family’s crimes. No less than his head on a spike will do to return the morale of the companies.
“Here is where your King calls on your aid. After fleeing their Manor, our investigators found numerous documents pointing toward a new location. What appears to be a fortified keep, located in a far-off Barony behind the enemy lines and thought to have been sacked by Loust’s army, has been the recipient of numerous shipments over the past several months. We believe the Frosts have fled to this location. As it is behind the lines, our Army can’t advance as a single unit. A small contingent, however, could sneak behind the lines and infiltrate the keep. Will you deliver the head of House Frost to his Grace?”
There was no question on whether we would accept the quest. As always, the only question was one of timing. We talked it over briefly and decided this wasn’t likely to be a timed quest. Accepting now meant we could still do it down the road, if we wanted to hit up the next monastery first, for example.
“We will deliver the head of House Frost to his Grace,” I answered.
And with that, we were surrounded by that warm and welcoming golden glow. It cemented that we had received our next story-line quest. As had become customary, we checked the quest log to see if this was a timed event or if it required multiple parties. In this case, there was no set time limit, and it required only one team. Another welcome addition to the quest log was a link to a location on our maps. The others had seen the same thing apparently, because I heard Jason swear quite loudly about something being “a fucking long way off.”
I opened my own map and nodded in Jason’s direction. He was very right about the distance. It was far past where we had traveled, and there were days’ worth of black covering
the map between our farthest point and the keep. It likely wasn’t a timed event, as there was no telling just how long it was going to take us to get there.
Personally, the unknown monastery was looking better and better to me. The Globi Desert was to the south of the swamp, and we knew how to get through that in no time. We could be on the desert sands the next day. We had no idea where to go after that, however.
According to Constantine’s words, his brother Aaron was to find the Jalusi Tribe of nomads in the Globi Desert. Nothing more was given. We could honestly spend longer searching the vast desert than walking through enemy lines and on to the keep.
It was time for us to have a discussion on where to go next, but that was going to have to wait until the next day. We had sloshed through the swamp most of the day to get our latest level, and everyone wanted to log off.
Well, everyone but me. I was heading to the ritzy area of the Keep. The last five days had seen me finish with Sally, and it was time to max out my Scaling. Walking through the streets of the Keep, I looked back on my last days with Sally, and not with a huge amount of fondness.
*
I went through more pain in the span of those last three days with Sally than I did the entire time before. Sally’s traps were on a level that I couldn’t comprehend, even when I finally mastered the Skill of Disable Traps. With a Level of 100 in the Skill, the last trap Sally put in front of me was almost entirely Red with a few spots of Yellow. Still, an impossible trap to disarm.
But even all of my failures added to my Skill, and when I reached 100, I smiled the smile of victors. Waseem had said that only one or two days would remain until I would be done with Sally, and I was looking forward to that more than getting out of the swamps.
Sally could tell that I had reached the pinnacle of the Skill and congratulated me for my efforts. I looked at her with suspicion, as I had learned to do anytime she addressed me or put something in front of me. This time she just laughed at me and said the agony was over and that the remainder of my time with her would be tedious in nature rather than tortuous. Internally, I grew depressed, but I wasn’t about to let Sally see that. I couldn’t think of anything that would be more tedious than what I just went through.
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 42