"We're in luck. That ghoul seems to be a loner. I have almost never seen ghouls running solo."
"It depends on their origins."
"What do you mean?"
"Most ghouls are made by more powerful undead or necromancers, but some are human cannibals that rose from their graves after violent deaths. The human cannibal born ghouls are normally loners." Raven Goddess' calm statement brooks no question. Her breadth of knowledge in Primacy Online V always left me in awe, and I doubt that will change in the near future. The woman is nothing short of a walking database.
"That ghoul is getting ready to attack."
"I will keep it occupied. You keep killing the swarm!" Raven Goddess springs into the air and lightly runs across the heads of the zombies. By the time each one tries to grab her leg, she has already moved onto another one.
If I tried to duplicate her movements, I would just crush the zombies into rotting meat paste. I may not be a fat pig in this body, but I have even more mass than I do as a human.
Now that I do not need to worry about guarding Raven Goddess' back, I cut loose with huge sweeping strikes. I batter aside multiple zombies with each swing, and after making some space, my leap carries me more than four meters past our wall of dead zombies.
Splat! Splat!
Shit! I fucked up! As I land, a couple dozen zombies scramble all over each trying to reach me, and I stomp on the heads of the zombies I knocked down, turning them into brain pudding.
Feeling surprised by the force in my heel kicks, I quickly glance at my combat log.
Zombie: -165 Untyped Damage: 125% Skill Expression (+250% Damage): Critical Hit (Head) (+200% Damage)
Zombie: -145 Untyped Damage: 122% Skill Expression (+220% Damage): Critical Hit (Head) (+200% Damage)
What the hell? What Skill was I using with my kicks? I do not have any Unarmed or similar Skill on my character sheet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a blue illumination around Raven Goddess' short sword that indicates an Active Ability in use, and she cuts off one of the ghoul's arms.
"Raaaarrrrrrr!" After staring at its severed arm for a few seconds, the ghoul howls in pain and anger, and wildly attacks Raven Goddess.
The ghoul is ridiculously fast. It is faster than I am, but Raven Goddess avoids every bite and swipe of its claws, seemingly by a hairsbreadth. Being in a character sheathe, she is clearly faster and more agile than she is in her real body.
Even though these zombies are OP for their Level, they are still slow and mindless. They do nothing but shuffle around, claw, and bite in the exact same way over and over. I feel like I am fighting government bureaucrats. Well, not really. The zombies are more intelligent.
As long as I do not fall asleep, it is just a matter of time before I kill the entire swarm.
If Raven Goddess does not fuck up, she will kill that ghoul in a matter of minutes, probably less, but I keep moving at angles that let me keep watching her. Despite the ghoul's speed, she avoids or deflects every one of its attacks, and every one of her stabs sinks into its arms or torso.
In less than a minute, the ghoul stumbles, and with the blue glow around both her short sword and dagger, Raven Goddess spins like a top and severs the ghouls head.
"What terrible experience for the work. Killing zombie swarms is far more efficient." Raven Goddess frowns and starts clearing a path through the zombies.
We are both starting over, so we should be on equal footing, but I cannot match her battle performance. Seeing her in action, I do not know how I defeated her in Primacy Online V . Did it have to do with my Class? Primacy Online V was also called Primacy Online V: Knights of the Mists . I was a Shadow Knight, which was a Class that revealed its greatest strength in mounted combat, and the spear style I used was a versatile one that was effective both standing and mounted. It was also very compatible with Shadow Knight Abilities.
When I defeated Raven Goddess, it was a mounted battle. I am not sure what Raven Goddess' Class was, but I do not think it was a Class that excelled in mounted combat.
As we meet up and start clearing parallel tracks through the zombie swarm, Raven Goddess glances at me and smiles. "You look pensive."
"I'm just thinking about Skill Expression and its effects on past battles."
Continuing to smile, Raven Goddess does not say anything else, and we continue mowing down zombies. After about another half an hour, the last zombie in the area falls, and the stench of rotting meat and entrails is bad enough to gag a maggot.
By the time we have finished, I am Level 2, and Raven Goddess is Level 4. Leveling up in Primacy Online is a grind like no other. Just killing monsters is horribly inefficient. Even the x6 zombies only grant 7XP each. If this were not an Extermination zone, it would be more like 1XP or 2XP for each zombie. Completing the simplest of quests grants 10-100 times as much experience as killing a single normal monster, but finding quests can be difficult. Once you leave the starter zones, most quests require special circumstance or NPC associations to trigger, and many of them are unique. Only a single player or group can complete each quest. Bounty quests are the main exception, but they are generally at the bottom end of the quest experience ladder.
After carefully surveying our surroundings, I see nothing that could pass for living or living dead, other than a few small nocturnal animals and bats. The village's fields cover a good three or four hectares below their plateau, and thick brush, with some random trees mixed in, borders the fields. Other than a path along the base of the small mountain, which could just be called a big stony hill, there is no easy way to leave the fields.
With no immediate danger in sight, I grin at Raven Goddess. "Time to loot the rotting corpses!"
Despite being a solid 110cm shorter than me, Raven Goddess manages to do an impressive job of looking down her nose at me. "I always know that any man that could take Shadow Knight to the edge of becoming a Lord had a warped personality, if not a damaged brain."
Lord is the Seventh Rank of Ascension. In the Primacy Online line of games, there are two basic ways to develop your sheathe's strength: Level and Rank. Increasing your Level is an automatic process. Well, after Level 10, you have to train for each new Level. On the other hand, Rank requires a quest to advance, but it is by far the more difficult and rewarding of the two to increase. The ideal method is to develop the two in concert, but nearly everyone lags behind in increasing their Rank.
To increase your Rank, you need to complete Storyline Quests that are Extreme Challenge or higher in Difficulty Ranking.
Not all quests have a Difficulty Ranking associated with them, but the dungeon and quest Difficulty Rankings are as follows: Casual, Standard, Hard, Elite, Challenge, Extreme Challenge, and Extermination (0-10). The
The Rank Challenge Quests become available starting at Level 20 and every 20 Levels thereafter. If you fail your Rank Challenge, your Level drops back to the minimum Level to challenge the previous Rank, and you have to grind back up to the minimum Level to repeat the Challenge. Not counting the Neophytes, which are considered Rank 0, there are 9 Ranks in total:
Rank 1: Initiate
Rank 2: Journeyman
Rank 3: Adept
Rank 4: Master
Rank 5: Grand Master
Rank 6: Supreme Master
Rank 7: Lord
Rank 8: King
Rank 9: Emperor
Because of the extreme difficulty in those quests, most players were not completing them until they were 20-80 Levels past the minimum quest Level. Level grinding was the tried and true way to increase in power.
To complete the Rank Challenge, you needed more than just a strong enough Sheathe. There is a requisite level of intuitive player comprehension that is required, as well. If you cannot make nearly instant decisions based on your Class and the rules of the Constructed Reality, there are many points in a Rank Challenge where you will fail by re
acting too slowly. Like Necromancers and a few other Classes, Shadow Knights require a…special…mindset.
"If you just watch me dig out the loot, I'll keep it all for myself."
"It is all yours. Have fun." Raven Goddess frowns.
While Raven Goddess stares at the boundaries of the village's fields, I examine corpses, rifle through their clothing, and dig through the few belt pouches I find. In Primacy Online , a monster or NPC will usually be wearing or using its best gear, assuming it can wear equipment, so you have to fight against whatever badass loot you get. However, everything has an inventory, and there is always a chance that what you kill will have something exceptional in its inventory that will drop.
The clothing on the zombies is little more than rotting rags, and none of it is Half-Giant sized. In the end, my take is grand total 101 copper coins, and fifteen pieces of really crude jewelry. There is the possibility something could be magic, but without at least a low-Level identify spell, there is no way to tell for certain. Without some kind of overt spell effects, magic items appear no different from normal ones when you are just looking at them.
Since Raven Goddess has not even bothered to search her ghoul, I do it. Before Raven Goddess sliced them apart, the ghoul's clothes were in much better shape than the ones on the zombies, but now, they are nothing but tattered rags. At the small of its back, the ghoul had a rag doll stuffed inside the length of rope, which it used for a belt.
I toss the rag doll to Raven Goddess. "I can't see any QCP threads connected to this, and the only identify type ability I have is the default Identify Monster ability. What do you make of it?"
While frowning, Raven Goddess inspects the rag doll. "I do not have any form of generic Identify or Identify Magic Item, either, but this should be a quest item or a quest trigger to a unique quest. The lack of Shackles makes no sense."
"That was my guess too."
I follow Raven Goddess back up to the plateau. Even in the shapeless starter clothing, her climbing the ladder in front of me is a fine sight to see.
As I reach the top Raven Goddess holds out her hand. "Give me 100 copper."
As I stare at Raven Goddess, I frown and narrow my eyes. "Why?"
"There is a 50 copper fee for staring at my ass and a 50 copper fee for teaching you my tricks to maintain your QCP Vision."
"You're the Speaker of a city-state, and you're still this much of a bloodsucker." I shake my head in mock sadness.
"The real world is the real world, and the game world is the game world. Here, I am just a poor Neophyte Fighter, and a girl needs to eat."
After taking the copper from me, Raven Goddess smiles mockingly and sits on a shelf of bare stone. "Sit. You need to empty your mind of everything except the memory of the Shackles of the Domination and imagine that there is a lens in your eyes that can see them. Just keep doing it until you can form the lens at will."
After Raven Goddess does not say anything else for a good twenty seconds, I frown. "That's it?"
Raven responds to my frown with a smile. "That is it. You can naturally see the Shackles. It is just how your consciousness works. Once you master a trigger for your vision, you will be able to see them at will. You already know how to steal experience, correct?"
I nod. "Yeah, I have a half-dozen tricks for stealing XP, but I need to see the…Shackles…to do it."
"Good. Master my mnemonic trick so you can see them at will before we turn in the quest. It should be worth 1,000 experience, and a free extra 1,000 experience, or more, is too good to pass up."
* * * * *
As I lay on the hard stone, the weak mid-morning sunlight feels like it burns right through my eyes, and I rub them with the heels of my hands. Throbbing pain hammers my temples in time to the beating of my heart.
"That took you an awfully long time to do. Are you sure that you are really the number one cheater ever in Primacy Online , Crom Cruach?" When I glance at Raven Goddess, she is lying on her side with her head resting in her palm and her elbow resting on the stone. Her grin is the perfect picture of mockery, but she has a joyful glint in her eyes.
Raven Goddess earned the Immortal Ice Queen moniker for her frigid, wintry demeanor inside the game and out, not for sealing herself in a cryo-capsule. The only time I ever saw her act like a living woman was when we were alone, after I defeated her in battle. She normally kept everything that could even be remotely considered a human emotion locked away and cut a swathe of conquest through the game. I do not know if she has always been this way, but it is a sad way for such a beautiful woman to live her life.
"Spend your attribute points, and we can go turn our quest in."
I open my character sheet and click on my Archetype and Race. There are too many "???" entries on my character sheet, but all I need is the Character Point to Attribute Point conversions.
Fighter
» HP Bonus: 10 / Level
» Strength: 2 / Level
» Agility: 1 / Level
» Toughness: 2 / Level
» PA 2 / Level
» PDB 2 / Level
» Free Character Points: 5 / Level
Half-Giant
» Strength: 2 Attribute Points for 1 Character Point
» Agility: 1 Attribute Point for 2 Character Points
» Stamina: 2 Attribute Points for 1 Character Point
» Reason: 1 Attribute Point for 1 Character Point
» Perception: 1 Attribute Point for 1 Character Point
» Willpower: 1 Attribute Point for 1 Character Point
» Racial Abilities: Night Vision, ???
I decide to spend my Character Points in a ratio of 2 Strength, 2 Agility, and 1 Stamina for the time being.
"Are you done?"
"Yeah, let's go."
Raven Goddess lithely rises to her feet and heads for the village. Following a few steps behind her, I enjoy the view, but she slows down, forcing me to slow my own step or walk beside her.
With my QCP Vision running, I do not see any QCP's gold-tinged black Shackles until we are about a hundred feet, give or take, from the village. The Shackles are visible when there is something like a quest objective or quest giver in the area, and a hundred feet is not a bad range to see them. It is almost three times the range I had in Knights of the Mist .
Once we are in the village, Raven Goddess stops and looks around. "How close to do you need to be to see the Shackles?"
"About a hundred feet."
Snapping her head around, Raven Goddess stares at me in wide-eyed shock.
"What?"
Raven Goddess' shock turns to something else, part sadness and part something that I cannot identify. "It is best if you enter a cryo-capsule as soon as possible. There are still nearly ten days in the real world before War Mode is activated, but if you do not enter a cryo-capsule as soon as possible, you may cause a rapid acceleration in the advance of your Thompson's Syndrome."
I shrug. "I need to take care of a couple things in the real world, first."
With a sad, tired demeanor, Raven Goddess just nods and walks toward the village head. "Do not accept your quest rewards immediately. There is a way to manipulate what you receive in addition to stealing extra experience."
Oh really? I think Raven Goddess might be the one that is really the number one cheater in Primacy Online . I am starting to feel like a piker compared to her. No, skip that. There is no starting about it. When it comes to cheating, compared to this woman, I am absolutely a half-assed piker.
"Village head!"
As the village head turns to us, for just a fraction of a second, I would swear there is a glint of pure malice in his eyes, but it is gone before I can be certain. "Lady. Lord. Have you finished clearing out the walking dead?"
"We have destroyed over 500 zombies and a ghoul."
The village head's eyes open so wide that the whites are visible all around the irises, and his fear can be clearly seen within them. "You killed a ghoul?"
"Yes."
; The village head visibly struggles to rein in his emotions and does not say anything more for a good thirty seconds. With his fear hidden, he puts on an oily smile that would make any politician green with envy. "Excellent! Excellent! You have saved our village!"
Ding!
You have completed: Save the Village from the Walking Dead .
Do you wish to accept your reward, now? (Yes/No)
Just like with the quest offering dialogues, the quest reward dialogues cannot be hidden.
"Look at the village head, do you see the black tinged blue QCP Shackles?"
There are two threads of blackish blue energy. One connects Raven Goddess to the village head, and the other connects me to him.
"Yes."
"If you are perceptive enough, you should be able to see multiple strands within each Shackle. Each of those threads is a selection for a possible reward. If you can touch each strand individually, you will bring up a menu with possible rewards and can choose the one you want from the available options, but you have to go from thinnest to thickest. Only the thickest thread has a guaranteed reward."
With a look of complete bafflement, the village head looks at us like we are a pair of complete lunatics. I could just imagine what the reaction would be if two people started going on like we are in the real world. If they were lucky, they would be locked up in an asylum.
Following her own instructions, Raven Goddess touches her thread and grabs something on a menu that is only visible to her. After doing it a second time, she smiles at the village head.
"It was my pleasure."
"These are tokens of appreciation from the village." The village head has a decidedly unhappy expression as he hands two tomes, one Skill and one Ability, to Raven Goddess.
Looking at the thread, try as I might, I cannot see any individual strands, and after a couple minutes, I give up and touch the thread.
"I couldn't see any individual strands."
Raven Goddess smirks. "There was only one thread in your loot Shackle."
"You can be a real pain in my ass."
"I am entitled a great deal of recompense after putting up with the most obnoxious man in any world and not killing you out of frustration." Raven Goddess' acting skills are frightening. If I did not know her, I would be taken in by her air of wounded innocence, but I have seen her play con-artists like fiddles.
The Cheater's Return Page 6