Resisting the temptation to see what was going on, I focused on my cooking, following the lentil stew recipe, but when I heard a yelp and a loud crash from the common room it was too much to resist.
I took the pot off the heat, hoping I could finish the recipe later, and closed the cooking interface before rushing out to the common room.
It was utter chaos. One of the tables was flipped over onto its side and the blonde Karillian was laying on the ground with a bloody nose.
Gersha was sitting against the bar, her hands clenched to her stomach. Dark green blood was leaking through her fingers and her breathing was coming in short pain filled gasps.
Several of the other girls were running around, gathering bandages while Maeve knelt near Gersha, yelling instructions for the girls.
Lei’ti was huddled in the corner, weeping, the kohl makeup leaving dark trails down her face. “He stabbed her! I can’t believe he stabbed her!”
Whoever had done this was long gone, so I focused on Gersha, bringing up her info.
*** Gersha – Krek Warrior – Level 4 ***
*** HP: 5%, SP: 0% ***
*** Bleeding, Exhausted. ***
“Shit,” I cursed, rushing over to the wounded cook.
Maeve looked at me, tears in her eyes as she tried to help the krek put pressure on the wound.
I pushed her hands aside and looked her in the eyes. “She will be fine,” I said and began casting Soothing Touch, letting the energy flow through me and into the cook.
My senses shifted as I directed the flow of healing energy towards what I sensed was the most critical damage, the added ranks of First Aid providing the needed insight. I could sense where the blade had pierced something vital in her abdomen, an organ akin to a human kidney, and just as prone to bleeding.
I directed the healing energy towards the damaged tissues, feeling my stamina begin to drain from the effort. The spell repaired the damaged organ and attached blood vessels, and then finally knitted new muscle and skin.
*** Congratulations! You have become more skilled at First Aid and have reached First Aid rank 4! ***
Gersha’s breathing became more regular, and her eyes free from pain as she sunk into unconsciousness.
I sat back, almost ready to collapse myself, but seeing Sofya still lying unconscious few feet away, I had to act.
I crawled over to her and used the less intensive version of the spell to heal her damaged nose and then closed my eyes and sat back to relax.
After a few breaths I noticed that the clamor of the previous few minutes had been replaced with a dead silence. I opened my eyes and everyone was staring at me.
“Uhmmm, what?” I said.
Maeve quickly rounded up the girls and sent them off to their own rooms to recover. Some of the others carrying Sofya and Gersha away.
I’d caught my breath and regained most of my mana by the time Maeve returned.
I looked up and asked, “Was anyone else injured?”
“Gods lad,” she began quietly, giving me a very intense and serious look. “I’m going to say this but once, so ye listen closely.”
I nodded and she continued, “Most o’ me girls are Saa like yerself. And ‘ere ye are, coming into the Goose, acting the bashful gentleman and they think nothin’ of it."
"They laugh, they tease, and then 'ere ye are the next day, channeling the gods’ own powers on our bloodstained floor.”
I gave her a confused look. “She was dying, what else would I do?”
She gave me a tolerant smile. “Lad, ye have ta think fer a moment. This, 'owever nice I may pretty it up, is a brothel. We’re not exactly the top crust o’ Saa society ‘ere. We don’t be seeing many priests in this part o’ the city, let alone in the Goose, and when we do, ‘tis not a good thing for most o’ us.”
I sighed and cupped my face in my hands, so tired of the damned religious crap in this country.
“Now." She said with a small smile, "I can see yer not o’ their ilk, and the girls’ll see it too after the shock wears off."
She chuckled. "Hell, I’m pretty sure Lei’ti may have wet ‘erself when she realized just who she’s been tryin’ ta lure in ta her bed.”
I laughed a little and rose to my feet. I was tired. Mentally, emotionally, and physically.
“I think I’m going to grab my things and head up to rest,” I said. “Goodnight, Maeve,” and headed towards the kitchen.
“Goodnight, lad,” she said and squeezed my shoulder. “Give us a bit and I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
I gathered all of my cooking supplies, dumping the ruined pot of stew. I cleaned my pot and the rest of my tools and then headed up to my room. I laid on my side of the bed and closed my eyes, breathing slowly for a minute before initiating the logout process.
*** Congratulations! You have completed another session of Sosaku Online! ***
*** Session Duration: 17:36:11. ***
I waved to the arcade owners as I left, confirmed my start time at 9AM the next day and headed out to breathe some fresh air and order myself a robo-cab to bring me home.
This whole Saa priest thing was really getting to me. Everywhere I turned there was some bullshit that I had to deal with because of the pre-programmed societal baggage that I had no clue about before starting the game.
There was no warning, nothing in character creation to prepare a player for what they were getting into. The whole situation was pretty shitty, especially since you only got one character.
To distract myself I popped open my stream channel and took a look at my subscriptions. Another increase, although not as much as prior nights.
The novelty was wearing off as more and more content became available. I started reading through the comments on my previous posting and saw that people had eaten up the cooking video, and the requests for more crafting videos kept rolling in. I know people, I know, but there are only so many hours in a day.
I had a lot of footage to get through. It had been a crazy session with the Sun-gate, Arven’s Folly, the ambush on the northern road, and Sehkem itself. There was so much to cut and edit.
I probably should have set a later start time for the next day, but I found that I didn’t really seem to need much sleep anymore since my body pretty much spent the day in the pod.
The robo-cab pulled up to my door and I made my way to my room for another type of grind.
I broke the footage up into several videos, the first revolving around the Sun-gate itself, giving the viewers a summary of the Sun- and Moon-gate system of travel and showing our trip through the gate.
I left out the particulars of the ‘discussion’ with the Ministers that controlled the gate, but did include a warning for travelers that racial benefits and detriments to reputation might impact their travel experience.
The second video was a short clip of the time I spent in Arven’s Folly, and a portion of the trek afterwards up until a few minutes before the ambush.
That video I focused on the world aesthetic, showing the countryside around the city and along the north coast.
Next was the battle. I added some fighting music in the background and cut together the fight against the ghouls, showing them in all their undead glory… and how we cut them down.
I knew Amenhotep would likely garner some comments and hype, so I left him in.
The footage was pretty raw until we got to the prep stages for our own counter ambush, which I cut into a montage.
The battle vs the raiders was the last piece, and I showed that in its entirety.
I put together a brief video showing our arrival in Sehkem but left the Plucky Goose out completely.
Call me a softie but I didn’t want to bring any metagame attention to the NPCs there. I knew they were just bits of code, but there were some sickos out there and even code deserved some respect.
I made one last video focusing on my bug hunt, and then posted the videos to my channel before heading to bed.
...
Chapter 25
> On the way to the arcade the next day I settled in to review the comments from my latest videos.
The current hot ticket item was the caravan battle, and as expected people were losing their shit over Amenhotep.
The theories were all over the place and I saw a bunch of new names in the thread discussing what he could possibly be. I decided to let the mystery ferment a bit before giving any answers and see if the hype continued.
Only one other post really caught my eye, and not in a good way.
In essence it boiled down to a summation me being a complete newb. According to the poster, you were supposed to keep as many skills as possible at the same level as your overall character in order to be as effective as possible, and my hoarding of my skill points was why the bugs had almost “turned me into a newb sandwich.”
Searching the various forums and websites that had sprung up around the game, I discovered that in this instance, the troll was actually correct.
I had been doing myself a major disservice, so I decided to correct the problem going forward.
The rest of the ride I spend reexamining the events of the previous day in my head and prepping myself for my planned trip into the sewers of Sehkem.
When I arrived at the arcade, I headed straight to my pod and logged in.
*** Connecting in 5...4…3…2…1... ***
*** Connection Established. ***
*** Attention, your version of Sosaku Online is out of date. Installing patch v1.0.2. ***
*** Patching …….0% ***
*** Would you like to view the patch notes while the installation completes? (Y/N) ***
Curious, I clicked yes and started to read. Most were general bug fixes, clipping issues in the world being patched, broken NPC dialog or skill descriptions, etc., but there were a couple that brought a feeling of relief:
14) Racial and Social animosities and role play prejudices have been modified to be less oppressive to some race and class combinations in order improve the overall player experience. When people wanted realism, they didn’t want that much realism.
…
28) The impact of reputation status on prices at faction specific shops has been modified. Previously the mark-up was extreme for characters not Trusted or better with various in game factions.
29) The algorithms that trigger recall of knowledge related to character skills has been updated to include broader criteria, allowing for the accessibility of relevant information at appropriate times.
*** Patching Complete! ***
*** Loading… ***
*** Reinitializing Neural – Avatar Interface………..…..Complete! ***
*** Decompressing Character Skill Database....…..…..Complete! ***
*** Welcome back to Sosaku Online, Kheph Sa’tep. Game time is currently 09:26:55. ***
*** Message Alert: The player “Kjara” has sent you a message while you were offline, would you like to view it? (Y/N) ***
I mentally clicked on yes and read through the message.
***
FROM: Kjara
Hey Kheph! Sorry about last night! I had a family thing that I couldn’t be late for… which I was. I’m not going to be on for a bit, another family thing which my lateness last night has now made mandatory. Wanted to let you know so you don’t wait for me. Go find your undead! I’ll message you when I’m able to slip free. Stay safe!
-Kjara
***
I deflated a bit. I had been looking forward to seeing her again but alas, today I’d be flying solo. I brought up the private messaging interface and replied:
***
Hey Kjara, no worries! Message me when you’re free and we’ll meet up. I’ve got some trogs to slay, and maybe some crafts to work on. Wouldn’t want to dive into a den of the undead without my favorite warrior. Who would I hide behind? Quick heads up, there was a scuffle at the Goose last night and I had to do some healing, so if the ladies act weird it’s probably because of that. Later! – Kheph
***
The first thing I needed to do was spend some of my saved skill points and bring my main skills as close to my level as possible… while still keeping at least 1 in reserve in case of new opportunities. Paranoia is a hell of a drug, but it was a drug that could save your life.
My spear and shield skill had recently improved and their current progress was low, so I added two points in spear and one in shield without feeling to guilty about wasting progress.
That left a single combat point in my paranoia fund and brought me to level parity with my spear skill, and two below with my shield, but as a Priest I should be able to justify not having my melee skills maxed.
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Spear skill to 6! ***
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Spear skill to 7! ***
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Shield skill to 5! ***
***Congratulations! You have reached level 5 in the Shield Skill. Successful blocks with your shield now have a chance to grant a bonus to critical strike chance on your next attack! ***
Immediately I felt more confident that I could handle myself in a fight as my understanding of both weapon forms expanded, and when I had reached fifth rank in shield an additional ability had be granted.
That was strange, I thought. I didn't remember seeing any benefits pop up when I had reached rank five in my other skills.
If there was an upgrade, I must have received it when I had my notifications turned off, so I opened up my logs and did a quick search and yup, there it was.
***Congratulations! You have reached level 5 in the Spear Skill. Critical hits scored with the Spear now have an increased chance of generating a bleeding wound. ***
Now that would be useful in a drawn-out fight, I thought and smiled.
I scanned through my general skills where I had a whopping six free points. This was the pool where I wanted to be the most cautious since there were literally hundreds of potential skills that I might want at some point.
It was a strange sort of torture, and regardless of forum pressure, I couldn’t bring myself to spend any of them yet.
The only skills I wanted to add ranks to were crafting skills, but the lower ranks of cooking had been pretty easy to increase so I didn’t want to waste the points when a little elbow grease could accomplish the same thing.
Literacy and survival skills were pretty situational, and if the situation arose where they were not up to snuff, I could always raise them on the fly. So I left all six points in the paranoia bank.
That left Divine Skills. I had five points available in that pool, which so far had been shared between skills and spells. Sunstrike and Soothing Touch were my bread and butter skills and were already halfway to the next rank, so putting points in there would be a complete waste.
My three new spells were all rank one, so leveling them up wouldn’t be hard through use. Flamestrike however had just leveled and was in the perfect spot for some boosting.
I added two points into Flamestrike and then decided to put one into combat casting as well, bringing that up to level five to see if anything special would unlock.
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Flamestrike spell to 3! ***
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Flamestrike spell to 4! ***
*** You spend 1 skill point and raise your Combat Caster skill to 5! ***
***Congratulations! You have reached level 5 in the Combat Caster. Critical strikes landed with your melee weapons now have a small chance to trigger an instant cast of any 1 non-channeled, single target spell. ***
I felt my jaw drop. That was quite a boon and there was some good synergy there with my other rank five skills as well.
Blocking could trigger the chance of an increased crit, and my crits then had a chance to trigger bleed, or a free spell. I couldn’t wait to try it out and see how it all worked in practice.
After following through on my intent to spend my skill points… at least partially, I s
tarted to prep everything I would need for my trog hunt.
My armor was still badly damaged from beetle kisses so I took it off and started making repairs. The larger tears were easier to repair than last time, but as I finished putting it back together I realized just how shabby it was getting. I was in sore need of a replacement.
Another item to add to my to do list for once I was finished with the trogs.
I didn’t want to buy brand new armor only to get it immediately coated in sewer muck. Plus, once I had time I could probably level my Armorer skill up enough to make myself something worthwhile.
Maintenance complete, I grabbed my spear and shield, donned my armor, and headed downstairs to the common room.
The blood on the floor was cleaned up, and all other evidence of the previous evening’s events had been removed.
The common room was empty except for Maeve and Sonya, who were currently involved in a conversation at the bar. Not wanting to cause any more of a fuss, I waited for them both to be distracted and then slipped out.
According to my map, the shop with the entrance to the sewers wasn’t too far from the visitors’ district. I was able to make it there in no time at all.
Trying to be a better gamer, I prepared myself for the quest to come by eating my trail cake and beef skewer and buffing my weapons with Jackal’s Tooth.
Thus prepared, I entered the shop.
The storefront had been stripped and the only one there was a young Karillian woman sitting on the counter. Her brown hair was tied back in a severe ponytail, and her expression was all business.
“Come to deal with the trogs?” she asked.
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