Somerset
Page 21
Trope to the rescue. Not that he was going to complain in a case like this.
“It’s alright. We’re not going to hurt you,” Sam said, keeping his hands to himself. He figured that the woman probably didn’t want to be touched at the moment.
“T-Thank you for saving me,” she said, and Sam recognized the voice before she even turned over.
What the hell, trope? Really?
Aoife’s eyes went wide when they landed on Sam and she quickly scrambled back, trying to put as much distance between herself and him as possible.
“Calm down. If we didn’t kill you when you attacked us, why would we kill you now?” Sam asked, rolling his eyes.
He’d been doing that a lot since coming to Somerset.
“You may not have killed me, but you left me for dead!” she exclaimed, still sliding back along the ground until her back bumped up against a tree.
“Yes. But in my defense, you did attack me first, and one your goons tried to do to my friend what those lovely gentlemen over there were attempting to do to you,” Sam said, motioning to the dead guildies. “Speaking of which, you may want to pull your pants up.”
Aoife’s cheeks flushed a deep red and she quickly tugged her pants up to her waist. Her shirt in the front was still intact, so all she needed to do to secure it was tie the torn piece of fabric on her back together.
“If I may ask, how the hell did you get here? And, more importantly, how did two level 4’s get the jump on you?”
Aoife let out a snort and looked away from him, folding her arms over her chest.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” Sam said with a shrug, already getting to his feet. “Come on Gordon, we don’t wanna miss supper. Wonder what kind of stew it’ll be.”
“Wait! You can’t just leave me here!” Aoife cried out.
Right on cue. Trope, you predictable bastard.
“And why not?” Sam asked, completing the spiel, and turning back with a stern expression on his face. “I saved you from death, twice, and you don’t seem in the least bit grateful.”
Aoife’s face flushed again, but this time, Sam could tell that it was more in embarrassment than anger. She mumbled something under her breath which Sam couldn’t make out.
“What was that?” he asked, cupping a hand around his ear.
Someone should give me a fucking medal! I’m totally nailing it!
“I said I’m sorry!” she shouted, clenching her fists and rising to her feet.
“And?” Sam asked.
“And thank you for saving me!”
“Good. If you want, you can come with us to the city. Don’t know what you’ll do there, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Sam then turned and motioned to Gordon. The forest was noticeably darkening around them and he didn’t have Milly with him this time to get the guards to open the doors for him. A second after he started walking, he heard the telltale rustling of leaves that signaled Aoife was following along behind him.
SKILL RANK UP!
Congratulations! Your Mental Manipulation skill has advanced from Novice to Beginner!
Mental Manipulation: If you know what to say, you can turn anyone to your way of thinking Level: Beginner 11 (8%) Effect: +20% Chance to sway uncertain parties in your favor, +5% Chance to sway hostile parties in your favor
Of course, the Mental Manipulation skill would increase, Sam thought with a sigh. May as well just reserve a prison cell now.
Sam emerged back onto the road, looking both ways to see if anyone else was around. Strangely enough, the roads were completely empty, but maybe that was normal for this time of day.
“Hey, Gordon, is it normal for the roads to be this empty?” Sam asked as he began walking towards the city.
“Not this close to a major city,” Gordon replied, his new stick somehow in his jaws again.
“How do you do that?” Sam finally asked.
“Do what?”
“Make that stick appear and disappear at will?”
“Quite simple, really. Much as you have a bag to carry your items, I too have a sort of storage space in which I can keep my possessions.”
“Really? How much can it hold?” Sam asked, suddenly having a flash of inspiration.
He’d been looking for a place to hide his wallet for a while now.
“It is a skill, so the more I use it, the more it can hold. Currently, it can hold up to 50 items at once.”
Sam took a quick look over his shoulder but didn’t see Aoife. Listening carefully for a second, he could hear her crashing through the undergrowth and cursing under her breath. Quickly sticking his hand down his pants, Sam removed the Spatial Wallet. It contained all the wealth he’d accumulated since he’d gotten here, and with the sale of Bun Ni’s Legendary gear, it contained a sizeable fortune.
“Can I give this to you to hold on to?” he asked, showing the small leather bag.
“I suppose,” Gordon said.
“How do I give it to you?”
“Merely place it on the ground and I will take care of the rest.”
So, following the dog’s instructions, Sam placed the small bag on the ground. Gordon leaned down and grabbed the small bag between his front teeth. A moment later, it abruptly vanished.
“Damn, that’s cool!” Sam exclaimed, eliciting a toothy grin from the dog.
Suddenly getting an odd feeling, Sam dug into his pack and removed the softly glowing glass vial he’d gotten in the first dungeon. He’d tried inspecting it once he’d upgraded the skill to see if he could learn any more, but the vial stayed as stubborn as before, refusing to give up its properties beyond the basics.
“Would you mind holding onto this as well?”
Sam wasn’t sure why, but something told him that this vial was important and that he must keep it safe at all costs. Before Gordon could answer, he got the feeling once more and removed one of the Spell Scrolls from his pack as well.
“And this. Can you take it as well?”
“I am not your pack animal!” Gordon exclaimed indignantly.
“Come on, Gordon. Don’t be like that. I gave you that awesome stic, didn’t I? Would I do that for a pack animal?”
Gordon stared at the proffered items for a long moment, then he gingerly took them from Sam’s outstretched fingers and they abruptly vanished as well.
“Would you also…”
“No!” Gordon replied, then promptly walked away, padding swiftly down the road in the direction of the city.
Guess I went a little overboard there, Sam thought, rising back to his feet and dusting himself off. There was a loud cracking sound from his left and Aoife stumbled out of the trees, kicking branches and cursing away.
“Looks like you finally made it,” Sam said, eyeing the short woman with some amusement.
She’d broken off a branch at some point and was using it as a walking stick. When he spoke up, she glared at him.
“Think it’s funny, do you? Running on ahead with your freakishly long legs. That is no way to treat a lady!”
Sam just snorted and began heading down the road, forcing the dwarf woman to speed up to nearly a jog to keep up.
“Please. You might be a woman, but you’re no lady. No lady would be able to swing around that massive hunk of metal you call a weapon.”
“Called a weapon!” she retorted. “Thanks to you, the first group that found me just took it. They said it was payment for them helping me. They also took all my armor, so now I’m broke and don’t have a way to defend myself! You asked how those men got the jump on me. Well that’s how!”
Sam shrugged.
“Not my fault you chose a life of banditry. That’s on you.”
“I didn’t do it for myself,” she replied in a quieter voice.
“Of course you didn’t,” Sam replied with a sigh. “Let me guess. Dead mother. Little sibling, or siblings, to take care of. No one wanted to hire you, so you turn to a life of thuggery to provide for them. That sound about right?”
<
br /> “No, you pompous ass! What the hell kind of sob story is that? I did it for my older brother. I owe him some money and didn’t have a way to pay him back, so he offered me a deal. If I steal enough for him, he’ll forgive the debt. He was even offering a good position in his gang once I’d paid him off. Then you had to come along and fuck it all up for me! There’s no way I can go back to him now. Not after all those men under my command were killed.”
“Oh,” Sam said, taken completely off guard.
It seemed that he’d completely misjudged the woman. Figures the Overlord would lead me on like that, only to pull a complete 180.
“Oh? Is that all you’ve got to say?!” Aoife’s face was beet red, once again. She was panting heavily and glared up at him.
“Well, what do you want me to say?” Sam asked, feeling his patience with the woman running out. “Sorry for not letting you kill me? Sorry for leaving you alive after you did? Or should I apologize for not allowing Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Bumblefuck to have their merry way with you just now?”
Aoife’s face fell, her anger melting away, and bottom lip beginning to quiver.
Sam immediately felt horrible for what he’d just said, but he couldn’t exactly take it back. He awkwardly placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, as tears began streaming from her eyes.
“I may have gone a little too far with that last one,” he said, trying to comfort the very obviously distraught woman.
“No, you’re right!” she said, now in near hysterics.
Sam didn’t know what to say, so he continued patting the woman’s shoulder. Then she did something completely unexpected. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face into his stomach. He stiffened, having no idea how one was supposed to act in a situation like this. A strange woman who had tried to kill him was now hugging him and crying into his shirt.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
So he just stood there, waiting for her to finish, as he tried to figure out what to say to her once she had. It took her another good ten minutes to calm down, by which point, the front of Sam’s shirt was soaked through with tears.
“Are you okay?” he asked, eyeing the shorter woman while she sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.
Aoife didn’t speak, but she nodded, still sniffing and rubbing at her now red-rimmed eyes.
Sam cast around for something to say, when an idea struck him.
He had some old gear in his bag that he didn’t need. Maybe he could offer it to her as a sort of apology? He had taken all her stuff, after all, so he figured it was the least he could do.
“Hold on. I’ve got an idea,” Sam said, pulling his pack from his shoulder and bending down to root through it.
“I have some old gear that I don’t really need and I think you might be able to get some money for it.”
“That’s really very kind of you to offer, but there’s no need. I’ll be taking it all.”
Sam had turned his back to the distraught woman when he’d begun rooting through his bag. That was the only warning he got before pain exploded in the back of his head. He slumped forward, already feeling consciousness slipping away.
Through his quickly darkening vision, he saw Aoife pulling his pack onto her shoulder, then squat down near him. Gone were the tears that had been there just a moment before, replaced instead by a wicked grin.
“I’m sure you won’t be needing these either, and I thank you for being so cooperative.”
Sam felt a light tugging at his waist, and a moment later, Aoife straightened. He couldn’t make out what she’d taken, but he had a pretty good idea.
“Let me give you some advice about this area, since you’re clearly not from around here,” the woman said, turning her back on him. “Don’t trust anyone.”
Then she walked away, as Sam’s consciousness fled.
27
Sam swam in an endless sea of blackness, his mind assaulted on all sides by memories of home.
His mother coming home one day and telling him that his father would not be coming back. His mother beating him senseless when he’d failed a big test. His mother sitting alone in the kitchen of their tiny apartment and crying over a bottle of liqueur.
Something cold splashed Sam in the face and he sat up, sputtering and coughing as he gasped for air.
“Finally awake, are we? Good, I was wondering how long you’d be out. Someone must really have done a number on you!”
Sam groaned, feeling as though his head had been trampled by a herd of angry bunnies that had all picked up baseball bats and proceeded to beat his head in with them.
Okay, that may have been over-exaggerating again, but it still hurts like hell!
“Come on. We don’t have all day. Wake up!”
This time, the voice was accompanied by a hard slap to the side of his face, which caused a small damage notification to flash in front of him.
Guild official hits you for -3 damage (Blunt).
“What the fuck?” Sam yelled, his eyes finally coming into focus.
The first thing he saw was the face of the angry gnome from the guild.
That was not a pretty sight to wake up to. What the fuck am I doing here? Sam thought, as his eyes scanned his surroundings.
He was sitting in a dark room made completely of stone, the only light coming from a flickering torch set into a bracket on the far wall. A door stood in the same wall, built of heavy wood and bands of iron, with only a small, barred window to look through. Sam tried moving his hands, but found that they were firmly shackled behind his back. Looking down, he could see that he was seated in a metal chair, his ankles similarly shackled to the chair legs.
Sam let out a long sigh, completely ignoring the angry gnome staring just feet away.
He was in a dungeon. Of fucking course.
“Don’t you sigh at me!” the gnome screeched, voice cracking with the strain.
He brought his hand around and slapped him again, knocking off another -3 HP, which Sam regenerated in just a few seconds.
“So, how did you get your grubby hands on me?” he asked, trying to figure out what he’d been doing before the blackout.
“You killed two of our members! Did you think that we wouldn’t find out?” The gnome screeched again.
Sam winced at the volume of his voice. It really was starting to get on his nerves.
His memory started to flood back in suddenly.
“That damn dwarf!” Sam yelled, making the gnome let out an undignified squeak and fall back on his ass.
“That bitch totally played me! I got robbed! Shit!” Sam yelled, already pulling up his status and seeing that she had also taken all his attribute boosting items, in addition to his bag.
CHARACTER STATUS (ABBREVIATED)
Name: Sam Race: Human Level: 9
XP: 484/5,200
AP: 1
Class: None HP: 120/120 (Regen 1.2 Per Second) MP: 300/300 (Regen 2.5 Per Second) STA: 90/90 (Regen 0.9 Per Second)
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 5 (6)
Constitution: 12
Agility: 6
Endurance: 8 (9)
Intelligence: 30
Wisdom: 25
Charisma: 19
Luck: 10
“Gahhh! Whyyyy?” Sam yelled, lamenting all his lost items.
Because of that damned dwarf, he’d lost a ton of points in both Luck and Intelligence.
It also hadn’t escaped his notice that his HP had returned to normal, which meant that it was already past midnight.
A moment later, a hard slap rocked his face to the side.
“How dare you mock me?” The gnome screeched once again, then proceeded to pummel his face with his tiny fists, knocking off small chunks of Sam’s HP until he’d run out of breath.
“You done yet?” Sam asked, flexing his jaw a few times and wincing.
He’d felt much worse, but it still didn’t feel too good to have his face pummeled like that.
“You won’t be so mouthy once Bless is done with you. She’ll flay the skin from your bones, and cook your organs while they’re still inside your body.”
Sam wasn’t particularly worried, though the thought of having his organs cooked wasn’t a very pleasant one.
“What the hell are you hoping to gain from torturing me? I didn’t think you guildies were this corrupt.”
“We don’t want anything from you!” the gnome cackled, “We just want to make you pay for the men you killed. And as for the guild, let’s just say that the Shtut headquarters are under new management.”
With that, he left, cackling in typical villainous fashion and locking the heavy door behind him. Sam wasn’t paying attention to him. His eyes were locked on the screen that had popped up before his eyes.
HIDDEN QUEST UPDATE
Gnomes, and thugs, and corruption, oh my: You have heard some disturbing information about the guild from a merchant in town, and upon entering the guild hall, were immediately assaulted by the people in charge.
Now you have discovered that the guild has been taken over by an unknown entity Difficulty: Very Hard Rewards: 12,500 XP, 1 Epic Item Set, 1 Spell Scroll, 15 Electrum Coins Time Remaining: D 5 : H 17 : M 54
SKILL RANK UP!
Congratulations! Your Mind Over Body skill has advanced from Intermediate to Advanced!
Mind Over Body: You are stronger than your base urges Level: Advanced 31 (2%) Effect: 100% Resistance against psychic based attacks, +40% chance to become aware of psychic based skills, +25% chance to completely ignore mental based skills, +10% chance to spot deceptive actions
Sam had a pretty good idea of why his skill had ranked up once again.