Your Eminence,
We have completed the survey of islands 11 through 15, and we have still found no sign of the tomb.
There is a great deal of undead activity, but there is nothing that is worth using the Sceptre of the Lost Necromancer on. We have also cleansed seven dens of Fomhoraigh worshipers and one den of Tuatha worshipers.
At this time, we are moving on to island 16, and the expedition is in need of resupply.
Faithfully yours,
Deacon Claudius
I cannot help but frown myself. I am no more a fan of the Church than Raven Goddess. "I don't like the idea of helping the Church, and what is the Sceptre of the Lost Necromancer supposed to be?"
"Something that should not be on this continent. It is a Rank 2 Lesser Artifact from Primacy Online III . I had thought it to be destroyed, but I may have been wrong."
I click on No and decline the quest, but I still put the letter in my storage. You never know when something might suddenly become useful.
I take a look at the tome and pleasant surprise fills me.
Enhanced Agility: Rank 0
» Enhanced Agility gives the user a permanent increase to their agility.
» Agility +10
"You should be using an Agility based build. You don't want this?"
Raven Goddess shakes her head. "It will be more useful for you."
I shrug. "I won't decline, then. Agility is my weak point as a Half-Giant."
As I place my hand on the tome and absorb it, I get an unpleasant feeling of insects crawling all over my body, this time, and a dizzy spell hits me. For about thirty seconds, my equilibrium is totally off, and I have trouble standing up straight. Once the ability finishes integrating with me, I feel lighter, and my hand seems to be more dexterous.
"Very nice."
I flex my arm that the Elite Ghoul clawed up. It has stopped bleeding, but a single rake of that ghoul's claws took off 28HP. With my total HP and the base regeneration rate of 2% per hour, that will take seven hours to heal. In real life a wound like this would not heal in seven days, let alone seven hours. The advantages of living in a Constructed Reality.
"Do you know why that ghoul called me Child of the Gods?"
Raven Goddess does not answer for a bit while she stares at the corpse of the Elite Ghoul, and I take the chance to clean out the loot from the other ghouls.
"There is a legend that the Half-Giants are descended from the bastard by blows of human women raped by the Fomhoraigh. There are not many that claim to know the truth, and all who do claim different things to be truth. With the size and physical might of the Half-Giant race, it is not surprising for them to be called the Children of the Gods."
Looking around the barn, I find thirty odd pieces of bone with very faint QCP Shackles and pick them up.
Ding!
I check my quest journal.
Follow the Dolly (Unique) (Storyline Quest: 1 of ??) (Difficulty: ??)
» Find Sine's remains: Complete
» Lay Sine to rest
» Avenge Sine
» Reward: ??
» Quest can be shared by up to 10 people (2/10)
"These are Sine's remains. Let's bury her."
Without saying anything, Raven Goddess nods, and we use broken boards from the barn to dig a small hole at the south end of the clearing.
Raven Goddess bows her head. "Mother Danu, give your blessing to this lost child. Let her find peace in the lands of the dead."
After Raven Goddess silently nods, I fill in the small hole and tamp down the dirt.
Ding!
Follow the Dolly (Unique) (Storyline Quest: 1 of ??) (Difficulty: ??)
» Find Sine's remains: Complete
» Lay Sine to rest: Complete
» Avenge Sine
» Reward: ??
» Quest can be shared by up to 10 people (2/10)
"We killed the ghouls and her father, but there were other humans there when she was butchered. I think we should look in the village. That collection of Common Humans probably needs to die at the very least."
As Raven Goddess stares in the direction of the village, her visage shows nothing but cold malice. "Yes. Let us finish this."
Leaving the unburied ghouls in the barn, we head back toward the village.
Crackle-boom!
With exception of the stop motion brightness of the lightning flashes, the stormy night has cloaked the scrublands in darkness. The continuous pattering of raindrops on leafy mold and bare branches drowns out all but the louder sounds. If not for my Night Vision , I would be stumbling around in the night.
Behind me, Raven Goddess stumbles over a raised root. "Slow your pace, Longshanks. I have no intention of jogging to keep up with you. It is undignified."
The walking pace of a Half-Giant is half again that of a human, especially a human just a bit over average height.
As I glance over my shoulder at the disgruntled Raven Goddess, I do not hide my wryly amused smile, but I do slow down. Even though she has no Night Vision , she has already refused my offers to guide her and uses the momentary light of the lightning bolts to keep track of my location.
"If you want, you can hold my hand. I do have Night Vision you know."
"I am not a child or an invalid." Sometimes, Raven Goddess can be very predictable about what bait she takes.
I chuckle to myself and keep walking. We are already close to the village's plateau, and even with the slow pace, it takes less than ten minutes to reach the clearing for their fields.
"This field is not large enough to feed the entire village, and from the plateau, I did not see any signs of other fields in this area. There is no proper road leading to that dock on the shore. Where do they get their food from?" Raven Goddess' voice has a pensive tone.
"How much farmland do you need to feed a village this size?"
Raven Goddess does not answer immediately, but rather, she looks from the village's plateau to the road leading to the east. "Assuming they grow some vegetables in their little valley, they should need twice the amount of land, and that assumes that they subsidize their diet with hunting or fishing. We have not seen any signs of livestock, and there are no signs of another valley or plateau to the east, where they could be kept."
The village's plateau is shaped like a wedge that has been cut out of the side of the small mountain, and the village is built in the middle third of the plateau.
The road leading to the east is well worn but not often travelled. Considering the depth to which the path has been worn and the heavy growth of weeds and crabgrass, it has most likely been sporadically used for a period of decades or centuries.
"Maybe, we should ask the village head a few questions."
Raven Goddess smiles coldly. "I think we need to ask more than a few questions. There is a secret in this village."
The rope ladders have all been pulled up for the night, and even though it is only an eight meter high cliff, that is well beyond the height I can jump. The nearly vertical stone beneath the plateau is wet and slick from the rain, and there are no really good places to climb it. I do see few areas where I should be able to reach the plateau. The only thing I can do is try.
This sheathe did not come with climbing abilities, but I learned how to climb mountains using Skills acquired in Primacy Online V . While Abilities and Talents cannot be taken from the game, any Skills you actually learn are yours, and you can use them on Earth if you train your body. When playing the game, I picked up quite a number of Skills that were absolutely useless to me on Earth, but I think I will have a use for them again.
If it was not raining, the climb would be a piece of cake, but because of the rain-slicked stone, I nearly fall three times in the short 8m climb.
As I pull myself onto the plateau, I take a look around. There are no guards to see me. Despite the undead wandering around, the villagers seem to think that their plateau gives them an absolute defense. Even with the late hour, the flickering light
of fires leaks through the cracks around the edges of ill-fitting shutters and doors in some of the cabins and huts.
I throw down a rope ladder, and Raven Goddess climbs up.
"Do you remember that old woman on the side of the village when we turned in our quest?"
"Yes."
"Do you know which hut she lives in?"
While thinking for a moment, Raven Goddess squints her eyes. "Yes. Follow me."
Raven Goddess leads me to a hut that, except for the dim glow of banked embers in the firepit, is dark. The sounds of a single person snoring can be heard from within.
After listening at the shuttered window and door, Raven Goddess looks at me. "There is only a single person inside."
Moving to the door, Raven Goddess uses her dagger to flip the crude latch and opens the door. I follow her inside and close the warped door behind me. The roof of the hut is so low that I am squatting and still have to hunch over. I would even have to crouch if I was in my Earth body.
Covering the woman's mouth, Raven Goddess wakes her up. "Be silent and you will come to no harm. We only have questions that need answers. Nod your head, if you understand."
When Raven Goddess looks in my direction, I take out the rag doll and throw it on the woman's cot. As tears roll down her cheeks, the old woman hugs herself and rocks back forth.
"Was Sine your daughter?"
The old woman nods her head and keeps rocking.
"I know how she died. I want to know who did it and why."
After staring at me wide-eyed for nearly a minute, the woman looks around fearfully, but there is nothing to see besides the dimly lit walls of her hut.
"There's no one lurking around. The rain has everyone huddled up in their huts."
The woman looks at me and shakes her head. "I can't tell you. They'll know. They'll kill me. The elders will know."
Raven Goddess grabs the woman's head, with one hand on either side of it, and forces the old woman to look at her. "Do you know about the ghouls by the old dock?"
The old woman looks like her eyes are about to pop out of her skull, and her face is a mask of stark terror.
"We killed them. Crom killed their leader himself. Do you think there is a man in this village that is his equal? Are there ten men that are his equal?"
With Raven Goddess holding her, the old woman cannot turn her head, but she turns her fear filled eyes to look at me.
"The ghouls are dead. Who among the village was involved? Why did they eat Sine? Tell me."
The woman breaks down sobbing. "My baby. They took my baby. They took my baby."
Raven Goddess holds the old woman and rubs her back, and the old woman clings to Raven Goddess' shirt while she cries.
"Tell me who they are, and they will die."
The old woman turns her head to look at me. "You promise. They'll pay. You'll kill them all."
"I promise."
"Everyone! The whole village!"
I meet Raven Goddess' eyes, and her frown matches my own. I was expecting only part of the village to be involved, and the rest to be cowed victims. Could the entire village be cannibals?
"There were not that many people present when Sine died."
The old woman glares at me with more than a hint of madness in her eyes. "If you don't eat the flesh of man, you become the food of man."
"Did you eat the flesh of man?"
The old woman starts sobbing again. "I didn't eat my baby. I didn't eat my baby. She ate the flesh of man, but they took her anyway!"
"How long has this been going on? How long have you been eating the flesh of man?"
"Ten winters. Ten winter. It was the bad winter. The world froze. We were starving. HE came. HE saved us. HE will come, again!" The old woman's voice comes out as an angry hissing.
"Who came?"
"The Tomb Lord. HE rose from the ground. HE made us eat our dead! HE gave the elders magic. HE said he would return!"
"Where did the Tomb Lord rise from the ground?"
The old woman points to the back of the plateau valley.
"He rose from the ground here? In this village?"
"The mountain. The hole in the mountain."
Raven Goddess frowns for a moment before a grim expression settles on her face. She expertly strikes the woman on the side of the neck, rendering her unconscious.
"A tomb? Could this village have been built right next to a tomb?" My tone is pensive.
Raven Goddess sighs. "These are called the Dead Islands for a reason. There are tens of thousands of tombs and barrows, and the graves number in the hundreds of millions.
"If this woman did not speak falsehood due to her lack of sanity, she and all the other villagers are cannibals. Everyone must be slain."
"Let's start with the big man and his buddies." I get out of the hut, so I can stand up straight again.
"He is one of the village elders. They live in those huts." Raven Goddess points out the cabins scattered around the village.
The elders live in cabins made in the chink and daub log cabin style, instead of huts built in the wattle and daub style of the rest of the village. The general lack of real trees makes their dwellings a luxury for this shithole village.
I pick up a rock bigger than Raven Goddess' head and bounce it on my hand a few times. "Let's do it."
At the first cabin, Raven Goddess opens the door latch with her dagger and steps aside.
Looking inside, I see the big man asleep in bed, with a rather plain looking woman sleeping at his side. The sad thing for these villagers is that she is about the best looking one in the village. Of course, the big man is no prize himself. This is the kind of place where you rate attractiveness by the least ugly, instead of the most beautiful.
In silence, I duck-walk to their cot. As soon as I punch the woman in the temple, I grab the big man by the throat and start bashing his face in with my rock. It takes eight hits to kill him, and blood, teeth, and bone fragments fly everywhere.
Silently appearing next to me, Raven Goddess slits the woman's throat. "You should not show mercy because of gender. Women can be more dangerous than men."
I shrug. "It wasn't mercy. If I bashed her face in first, the blood splatters would have woken up the big guy. I want to take these elders out one at a time."
Raven Goddess smiles. If I had not spent decades in Primacy Online V , that kind sunny smile on a woman that just killed someone in cold blood might seem unnatural, but this is a world where killing is the way of life for a player. The better players tend to divorce themselves from the blood and gore of the game. They kill while laughing and joking, but for Raven Goddess, it is a bit odd to smile while killing.
It takes over half an hour to make our way through the elders, but none of them have the chance to raise an alarm.
"I want to take the village head alive."
"I concur." Raven Goddess leads the way to the village head's cabin.
"When I first arrived, whose was that hut you came out of with the village head?"
Raven Goddess glances in the direction of the ramshackle hut she was in last night. "I suppose you could call her the village wise woman. She appeared to be crazy, but maybe, there was more to it."
As I push open the door of the village head's cabin, I get a bad feeling and jump back from the partly open door. A stream of four silvery-grey darts fly through the space I was just occupying.
"Beware! Enemies! The village is under attack!" For being a weak looking old man, the village head has quite the set of lungs on him.
I lean back into the hut and throw my rock sidearm.
"Ooff!"
Thud!
The rock hits the village head right in the gut, and the force of twenty plus kilogram rock thrown by me is enough to take him off his feet and slam him into the wall. Gasping for air, he slides to the floor, but as I duck into the cabin and waddle toward the village head, he is already trying to get back to his feet.
Diving at the village head, I hit him in t
he side of his head, with an overhand right, and fall to the floor on top of him. He has zero skill in ground fighting, and I quickly roll him over and restrain him with an armbar.
"Let's talk about the Tomb Lord from the mountain tomb, you old cannibal fuck."
The village head's struggles cease, and all the resistance seems to leave his body. "What do you want to know?"
I use Identify Monster on the village head.
Invalid Target
Rising to a squat, I duck-walk toward the door and drag the village head across the dirt floor of his cabin. Outside, I stand up, and with both his arms in hammer locks, I haul the village head into the air by his wrists.
"Aaaaarrrrr!"
"Shut up!"
When I give him a good shake, the village head manages to restrain his screams to whimpers.
Most of the huts in the village have the light from their hearths streaming from opened doors and windows, but no one is out and about. They are all cowering in the supposed safety of their shoddy huts.
I let out a nasty laugh. "Tell me your bargain with the Tomb Lord. I doubt you were an Arcane Caster before he came."
For maybe fifteen seconds, the village head does not say anything, and I shake him harder than I did to shut him up. "I'll talk! I'll talk! Just stop! Please!"
"How many times did Sine beg you to stop? How many times did the other children beg?" I shake the village head some more, and when he screams, I slam him against his cabin.
"How did you become an Arcane Caster?"
"I'm not. The Tomb Lord gave me an Ability tome and a few spells."
"Why?"
"We're supposed to kill strangers and feed them to the walking dead in the tomb."
Raven Goddess stands in front of village head and stares him in the eye. "Why did you not kill Crom and I?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I couldn't. I can't. I had to give you the quest. If you didn't attack us, I couldn't do anything to you."
Raven Goddess looks over the head of the village head at me and frowns slightly. "That is the Shackles of the Domination at work. He is helpless in the face of the Quantum Control Program's actions."
"Is the QCP sentient?"
Raven Goddess' frown deepens. "Not exactly. As far as I know, the Quantum Control Program is what would be called an expert system in Earth computer terminology and is not self-aware, but as for the alien artifact that the Church used to create the game, that may be self-aware.
The Cheater's Return Page 10