Gleam of Darkness
Page 6
And yet, what if the Iron Faced, as Una had called them, hadn’t just been destroying the food supply of their enemy, like I had first thought? What if their target had been a particular village and its inhabitants, with their own secrets and mysteries?
Hey, Bon! Thanks to you, I managed to make my way around the village. And you helped me with the basement, as well. Tell me, why did we get attacked?
Sadly, I received no answer. Either my synchronization with the body didn’t work that way, or its level was too low. Or maybe my avatar hadn’t been trusted with military secrets of this level.
Giving up on my futile attempts to find out the truth, I opened the interfaces. I made sure that all the stats had really increased by 2, agility by 7, and spent the available stat point on my intellect, then moved on to the skill menu.
In the everyday skills column, a new skill had recently been added:
Acrobatics 1
This one was, without a doubt, an essential skill in life. Obviously, I had unlocked it as a result of my tree climbing. At the bottom, I saw a notification informing me that there were two more unallocated points waiting for me to use them. But I wasn’t in the mood to raise Acrobatics to level 3. Let’s leave that for a better time.
I looked briefly at the second column and then focused on the third, where I finally had an opportunity to choose from: Leadership, Charisma, Eloquence, Purposefulness, Willpower, Resourcefulness, Equanimity, Insularity and Gloominess.
I read the descriptions of all the skills. Some of them were partially incompatible and some were openly contrary to each other; for example: Insularity and Leadership.
The first one would speed up the experience gain and growth of stats. It also made it possible to receive a random daily buff, but only if you were alone. The second one would increase the chance that other people would follow you, and, in theory, you could assemble a loyal squad using those people, eventually.
At level 10, I had been given one personality point, and I couldn’t decide on where to put it. Exhaling heavily, I turned my gaze toward the first column. No unallocated points had been added here, but while scrolling through the list, toward the end, I saw a new skill:
Blind Eye
Level 1
Active skill
Energy cost: 10
Recharge time: 3 minutes
Others stop paying attention to you for 10 seconds. The effect disappears if you make any noise or attack an enemy.
Requirements: “Gloominess 1”
Cost: 1 skill point
Given the fact that I would need to avoid shining a light on my abilities and after seeing the reaction of people trying to heal me — I would need this skill. Hell, in this strange game, you would think that anyone would like to be able to just vanish into thin air. Also, I could use it in combat… But if I learned it, I would become some sort of a hybrid between a dark sorcerer and a warrior with the pitchfork. Although… what’s the difference?
So, let’s take another look at Gloominess:
“Gloominess”
Personality trait
You are so unpleasant that people try not to look at you more than once, they try to avoid talking to you, and in general, they try to stay far away from you. For “Gloomy” people, it’s hard to find friends, but easier to keep secrets. The higher your skill level is, the more powerful your “Gloominess” becomes. The more powerful your “Gloominess” is, the more opportunities you have. To harmonize your personal traits with the world itself, dark clothing and a deep hood are recommended.
Well, it seems that I’ve just decided on my first personality trait in this game.
Before sunset, I managed to “calm” four more wolves. And though I could see quite well in the dark, my body demanded rest. I ate the burdock roots and a handful of recently discovered strawberries for dessert, washed it all down with water from the river, and then wandered around a bit in order to find the thickest tree. Sleeping on branches was a questionable pleasure, but I was able to nap almost until dawn, which filled up my “Sleep” bar.
After an early breakfast, I managed to reach level 11 in just one hour, and got one skill point for it, which I immediately spent on Blind Eye. However, in the next battle, I realized that my new acquisition was useless against the wolves due to their animal sense of smell. I wonder what other restrictions there are with this skill. I hope that I didn’t just waste my point and screwed up my character…
Calming myself down with the thought that Gloominess and Blind Eye had been chosen for their usefulness against people anyway, I continued to circle around the wolf, throwing the black smoke at my furry enemy. Finally, the effect of Calmness activated, and I froze as I was reading the system message that followed after the usual notification about getting experience:
You have received the achievement: “A Quarter of the Way Toward the Light”.
You have never committed a murder and have already defeated 25 opponents. Your virtue has started you on the path of Light. Walk this path and you will gain strength.
Attention: the presence of Light inside you is in conflict with your Darkness. You’re pissing your own self off by 25%.
“And what do I do now?” I asked myself while climbing up the nearest tree.
After studying all the available information, I found absolutely nothing new. The “What do I do” question was continuously rattling around inside my skull. It just so happened that, during my time in the game, I had never used the finishing blow. The Little Spider had kept me in place with its web, the first wolf had been finished off by Una, and I was dealing with the rest peacefully. It seemed to me that winning a fight twenty-five times without killing anyone was a very rare achievement. Only I hadn’t gotten any buffs or debuffs from it. Admittedly, I wasn’t so sure about that second part since the last line of the message looked very suspicious. However, I felt normal, there wasn’t any irritation.
Aw geez! Do I change my method, despite it working well for me, or continue using it, relying on this ghostly power of Light? Having a diverse set of skills, when properly used, hasn’t hurt anyone yet…
Indeed, what’s wrong with me? There’s no reason to panic. I’ll always have time to kill someone. In the meantime, I shouldn’t rush things. First of all, I’ve got to see what benefits my achievement can bring me.
Over the course of the day, I didn’t see any benefits, but disadvantages did make themselves apparent. Sometimes, while casting Tranquility of Darkness, I would feel some kind of unnatural abomination coming from the spell. In the end, 20 MP were spent, but the black smoke didn’t come out of my fingers. Luckily, this occurred infrequently and quickly passed.
The next morning, I reached level 13. After two days of constant battles, my stats had grown. Everything had improved; even my vitality had gained a few points from constantly climbing trees. My intelligence had been affected by reading, increasing as well. Now the stats looked like this:
Vitality: 18
Endurance: 17
Strength: 23
Agility: 19
Intelligence: 18
Also, I changed my name. I mean, I left the name “Bon” as is, but I replaced the simple word “villager” with one of my personality traits, the epithet Gloomy, making me the “Gloomy Bon”… Sounds good to me, but if I do get tired of it, I can just think of something new after letting the ring recharge.
It was the fourth day since I had entered the game, and the third day of my solo grinding in the woods. Beating the wolves was giving me less experience than before, and I had to “calm” more and more wolves each time to reach the next level. Even the predators had become sparser. I was starting to wonder how much longer I should be here. Maybe I should look for another place where I could gain experience? Or even visit the town or a village. There were other villages in the district, besides the village Bon had come from.
However, thinking ahead came to my aid. After beating the next wolf, I climbed a tree again in order to restore my status bars.
I thought about it and decided to climb a little higher. The branches started to crunch under my feet and I almost felt like I was doing something nonsensical. I had wanted to get higher up so I could take a good look at the surrounding area and search for new mobs, but I wouldn’t be able to make it to the very top.
Still, I was now high enough to have better visibility. No, I didn’t find any other animals, but I saw a tree with black leaves in the distance. I felt that checking it out was a good enough reason to go hiking.
I climbed back down and set off toward this mysterious tree at a brisk pace. And the closer I got, the darker the forest became. Sounds subsided, the singing of the birds stayed behind me, with only silence in front of me.
There was no trace of any wolves in this part of the forest; no one was in my way. And soon enough, I understood why that was. Stopping near an old pine tree, I couldn’t decide on whether I should go any further, because death began there.
Chapter 7
Decay
The forest seemed to be split in half. I stopped at the border, where its living, green part ended. Right in front of me, I saw blackened tree trunks and leaves and rotted grass under the dome of dark green vapors.
I nearly threw up. It was a good thing that I hadn’t been eating much lately, and my stomach was empty.
“Eww…” I muttered quietly, burying my nose into my dirty, ragged shirt. The scent was revolting. I wondered what had happened to make the whole forest rot. After all, this gloomy sight extended as far as the eye could see.
“Flop!” I heard a nasty sound. As I turned my head, I saw a small geyser, about six inches in diameter, on the decayed ground, out of which a bubbling and swirling, thick, caustic, green liquid was coming out.
This time I did throw up.
I coughed and walked away, far away from this vile place. After I was at a distance of about a hundred yards or so, I cleared my throat and started thinking. Due to my curiosity, I had look around… Now what? Do I muster up my courage and wade deeper into the decaying forest? Usually, in games, you could find something valuable and rare in those kinds of places. If you wanted to find useful things, you had no right to pass by such locations.
On the other hand, there were areas where you could only go if you were in a group. Who knows, maybe this decayed forest was like one of those areas? Still, it made more sense to get more information before jumping in headfirst.
Damn it, it’s interesting!
Looking around, I noticed a tree which I could easily climb, and I immediately did so. I climbed up a few feet and peered intently into the dark part of the forest. I noticed a few moving figures but, unfortunately, couldn’t make out the details. However, I didn’t see any caves, or clusters of mobs, nor any huge monsters. So, to get a more complete picture of the area, I needed to get closer…
…or try to explore the nearby populated areas. It would be strange if people didn’t know anything about this anomaly.
I was about to climb down, when I caught a glimpse of dark grey outlines of the low buildings to my right. I began to peer at them, as much as the thickets of trees allowed me to, that is. I saw what looked like a house, about five hundred yards away, parallel to the line that bisected the forest. The building was located in the “living part” of the forest, but it was still quite close to the “dead” one.
I decided to explore the structure, so I climbed down and cheerfully walked toward the house. A few minutes later, I arrived at the meadow that was overgrown by high grass, appearing right in front of my target — a small, two-story wooden structure, with a flat roof and small, glassless windows, part of which were lined with boards from the inside. There was no fence or any other structures around.
Bending down and looking around, I went toward the porch. It was pretty quiet and very unlikely that anyone lived there. The grass around it wasn’t flattened. Everything suggested that the house was abandoned. But that was no reason to let my guard down.
The door was unlocked. I gently pulled the handle and swore quietly, grimacing. Right at the doorstep, I was greeted by a huge stain that had been made by dried blood. This dry, crimson strip stretched deep into the house. My imagination immediately conjured up an image of something huge and scary dragging a human corpse by the leg.
I shook my head, chasing away that delusion, went inside, closed the door, and latched it. I looked around and with the help of Eyes in the Dark, I was able to notice dried up, bloody patches on the floor. Looks like the poor thing tried to run away, and that’s why the door was open. But they didn’t make it. Damn it! Maybe it would be better to get out before it’s too late, huh?
It was the rational thing to do. But there was one problem — if you constantly ran away from potential danger, you would never gain strength.
You didn’t get good gear, experience and other bonuses for doing nothing. And without all of those, I wasn’t worth a damn. If it turned out, for example, that you could only get out of the game by beating it… Well, okay, I’ve already thought about too many crazy things. It’s better to remember my credo and move forward. The main thing was not to lose my mind. Cowardice and prudence were two different things, after all. Besides, I had Tranquility of Darkness — if one or two strikes didn’t help, then either Tranquility or Horror would certainly do the trick.
I sincerely hoped that there weren’t any hostile creatures left in the house. The blood on the floor wasn’t fresh, that much I was sure of.
Overcoming my fear, I slowly moved on. The entrance hall seamlessly transitioned into the living room which reminded me of the ransacked houses in Bon’s village. However, judging by the enormous claw marks on the cabinets and walls, this mess wasn’t made by humans.
“Oh…” I gasped softly, seeing the mutilated body by the far wall. I could determine the sex of the victim only because of the hem of a long dress. Some time ago it had clearly been blue; the original color was now only dimly visible through all the blood.
“Who is this?” I mentally asked the system while staring at the dead woman. No response was received and I quickly turned away.
Trying not to pay attention to the torn apart hostess, I continued to inspect the living room. Some broken jars, a spot of dried liquid on the floor, a wolf’s head, and a wild boar on the wall. It seemed like a hunter, or even multiple hunters, had lived here, which meant that there had to be at least one other male corpse around.
And I was right. The mutilated corpse of the head of the family was lying in the corridor, clutching a crossbow covered in dried blood.
Simple Hunter’s Crossbow
Common item
Damage: 20-25
Requirements: 10 agility; 10 strength
I nearly threw up once again as I opened the man’s stiff fingers, trying to get his weapon. I spent a few minutes on this, but completed the task, at the same time removing the quiver with five bolts from the corpse’s belt. Each of them gave an additional +1 to damage.
It took me another ten minutes to figure out how to use my new weapon. Since I had knowledge from many games, I had a general idea about how crossbows worked and how to shoot from them. But now I had to reload it with my own hands, without any assistance from the system. I wonder if hitting the target will also depend on my personality traits.
Whatever the case, I managed to do this as well. I fired a test shot at the wall, took out the bolt, loaded it again, and then moved on. I pushed against a small door and immediately opened it.
“Ohhhh!” I almost groaned with satisfaction, realizing that I had stumbled upon the storeroom. Tired of burdock roots, my stomach immediately rumbled, but as soon as I remembered what I had seen that day, my appetite instantly evaporated. However, I still stocked up my inventory with cheese, frozen meat, biscuits, and five identical bottles of homemade wine.
I went around the corner, saw a ladder, and went up the stairs to the second floor, where I found two untouched rooms. Looks like the clawed monster had settled for the first floor. Well, that
was good — more goods for me.
My joy was not in vain! After about twenty minutes of searching, my inventory was filled with twenty more crossbow bolts, a bow and quiver full of arrows, a knife, an axe, a map of the area, as well as ten gold, seventy-six silver and forty-three bronze coins. Unlike the coins that I had inherited from my father, named Gold Coins of the Duchy of Oruel, these were called Coins of Longoria. They didn’t stack with the existing coins and created one more type of money in the currency grid in my inventory.
My inventory had grown to have seventeen slots. At first, it had had just eleven. I was trying to figure out what its size depended on. It turned out that it was the rounded down average of my intelligence and endurance. I didn’t know if I was right, but it seemed quite logical. The inventory was, in fact, inter-dimensional magic; therefore, it had to rely on intelligence. But, at the same time, it was also a bag. And how far you could drag your luggage depended on your endurance.
I looked around the master bedroom and decided not to leave any goods in the abandoned house. There’s still plenty left to take, so I better fill up the inventory to its capacity. I will sell it to merchants later. And if, down the line, I need the slots, I can always throw away the least valuable junk.
With this in mind, I swapped my rags for a pair of new trousers, a shirt, a jacket, and boots. Common things didn’t add to my stats, only raised my armor by an amusing amount. And yet, unlike my ring, they didn’t get resized. I was glad to see that they almost fit me — I was pretty close in size and shape to the dead owner of the house.
I got dressed, materialized the quiver full of bolts and fastened it to my belt. With the power of thought, I sent it back to the inventory. Immediately, I called it again, and the quiver appeared as I had expected it to, on the belt, and not in my hands. It was convenient; I didn’t need to carry it by myself. There was only one problem with it — it took up a whole slot.