by Jamey Sultan
James moved on. First, he took the Dwarf’s armor, minus his chest piece, which had melted onto the Dwarf’s skin.
Incomplete Iron Plate Armor Set:
Rank: Unusual
*Requires Endurance of 75 to wear.
Crafted from heavy interlocking steel plates, this armor set provides strong resistance to piercing and slashing damage, and medium resistance to blunt damage. This set is incomplete and missing a breastplate.
That was interesting, James hadn’t seen stat requirements on anything else so far. Maybe they only showed up when he wasn’t able to equip something? His stats were pretty high for his level. Either way, he wasn’t going to use it. The armor went straight into his pouch; he’d sell it when they got to a city.
The Dwarf’s shield was next.
Heavy Iron Tower Shield
Rank: Common
A heavy slab of iron with a handle.
Other than his armor and shield, the Dwarf had a single ring and a heavy-looking mace.
Heavy Iron Mace
Rank: Common
For hitting.
Ring of the Packhorse
Rank: Uncommon
This ring has been enchanted to reduce Stamina drained by 10%.
The Heavy Iron Mace went into James’ bag, but the ring was different. He didn’t have Stamina, so he couldn’t use it, but Nidra had the lowest Endurance out of all of them, so he gave her the ring. She thanked him and they moved on once everyone had finished looting their respective corpses.
As they walked, James approached Karim. He was curious about the gun and wanted to check out the item information. Karim happily obliged and gave James the gun so that he could take a closer look.
Spitfire Rifle
Rank: Epic
Charges: 1/6
A Gnomish invention, this weapon can fire up to six times before it needs to be recharged. It will naturally absorb Fire Mana to recharge one shot per day. Charge time may vary based on the environment.
James got a new, interesting, message as he handled the weapon.
Would you like to recharge the Spitfire Rifle?
Cost: 500 Essence per shot.
It seemed his Essence was able to recharge the weapon even though it used Fire Mana. That supported James’ theory that Essence was just a pure form of Mana. Maybe Essence and unaspected Mana were the same thing. He shrugged to himself—these weren’t the type of question he could answer, but he’d love to learn more eventually.
He handed the weapon back to Karim. “This thing is amazing.”
Karim nodded. “I have no idea how he got it. It must’ve cost a fortune.”
The four of them continued walking in silence, each of them listening for enemies ahead.
Chapter 23
“Stop.” Karim raised his hand and brought the group to a stop. Up ahead, James could just barely make out a massive black shape blocking the passageway.
While James, Nidra, and Arik waited, Karim cautiously advanced in Stealth. His Stealth level was so high that James couldn’t make him out even when he’d watched the Dwarf disappear in front of him.
A second later, Karim waved them over.
James approached cautiously. He trusted Karim’s judgment, but he also wasn’t going to go running toward the shape in the darkness. When he reached Karim, his eyes widened.
A creature about the size of a gorilla, but lanky with longer limbs, lay in the center of the tunnel. The creature had metallic skin and long, sharp nails. The tunnel around the creature was splattered thick with blood and there were three Dwarven corpses laying around it.
“That’s…” James breathed.
“A Troll.” Karim nodded. “Not just a Troll, it’s an Iron Troll.”
James crept closer. Even in death, the Iron Troll elicited a primal terror that made him want to run. Even so, a grin crept along his face as he dropped to his knees next to the creature. It had been a while since he’d had a chance to study a monster’s anatomy.
“Hey guys, let’s take a bit of a break,” James said distractedly. “Nidra, can you make your light a bit brighter?”
Karim opened his mouth to say something, but Arik shook his head. “Just leave him. He gets like this sometimes.”
James ignored them and took a closer look at the creature’s skin. The skin itself wasn’t made of metal like he’d thought. Instead, the creature was covered in a thick layer of short metal hairs on top of its thick, leathery hide.
Jesus, James thought as he rolled the Iron Troll over. There wasn’t a single wound on its back, but on its chest, directly over his heart, was a thick, charred circle.
“Looks like Faeron’s party was here before they met up with us,” James commented, before he realized that nobody was listening to him. They were all chatting and eating around a second fireball. James shrugged and returned to his work.
He smeared his finger against a wet stain on the Troll’s fur. It came back glistening and covered with a viscous metallic black liquid. When James sniffed it, he coughed. It left a thick metallic taste in the back of his throat as if he’d been running in the cold.
Drawing his Orichalcum Dagger of Density, James tried to cut into the Troll’s skin. The knife skated across the hairs without so much as a scratch.
Frowning, James thought about how to work around the problem. The best solution would probably be to cut around the hairs, so he tried to part the thick hair and cut between follicles. It was difficult work, but he was eventually able to cut the entire skin off of the Troll.
Iron Troll Hide:
Rank: Rare
The skin of an Iron Troll. Can only be worked by an Adept or higher Rank Leatherworker.
You have gained 3 Skill Ranks in Harvest.
You are now Skill Rank 5.
James admired his work before he rolled the hide and placed it into his pouch. He was pretty sure he’d gained so many Ranks in Harvest because of a combination of how difficult the skin had been to harvest, and the care he’d put into making sure he got the entire pelt off in one piece.
Once he’d taken off the Iron Troll’s skin, things got easier. His dagger sliced through muscle easily. He worked carefully, trying not to damage any blood vessels until he found a larger one. He then got a series of glass vials from his pouch and set them up on the ground. He nicked the blood vessel and drained the Troll’s blood, working hard to avoid spilling any.
Iron Troll Blood (x15):
Rank: Rare
The blood of an Iron Troll is able to carry much more oxygen than Human blood. It is notoriously difficult to work with due to its chemical stability, but highly coveted for its uses in both potions and poisons.
James took a breath and realized that he was a bit lightheaded from working with the acrid-smelling blood. He also noticed that his companions had moved quite a bit away from him down the tunnel. That was alright, he knew some people weren’t able to handle gore as well as he could.
James spent the next few hours harvesting what he could from the Iron Troll. Surprisingly, certain parts of the Troll’s body became items while others didn’t. James wasn’t sure what qualified something to become an item, but by the end of the harvest he had a stack of interesting items.
Iron Troll Meat (x25):
Rank: Rare
I… I wouldn’t eat this.
Iron Troll Heart:
Rank: Rare
The heart of an Iron Troll used to be considered a delicacy among Dwarven royalty.
Iron Troll Claws (x9):
Rank: Rare
Each claw is tipped with a paralyzing poison.
Finally, James looked up from the gruesome mess. His companions had long since finished their meal. Nidra and Arik were chatting, pointedly looking away from him, while Karim just stared at him with a horrified expression. He grinned at the Dwarf and swiped away a notification letting him know he’d raised his Anatomy Skill to Rank 12.
James washed away most of the dried blood and viscera with a few buckets of wate
r from his pouch and then dropped his new items in, whistling cheerily.
When James rejoined his companions, Arik wrinkled his nose, but no one said anything about his smell, so he assumed he must’ve done an okay job washing up.
“That was… something else,” Karim said.
Chapter 24
A few hours later, they stopped to rest. Karim wanted to make sure they put some distance between themselves and the pile of blood and guts they’d left behind.
“Hey Nidra,” James said as they rested around one of her fireballs. “If stuff doesn’t go bad in my pouch, does that mean things won’t ferment either?”
Nidra nodded. “Yeah, why?”
He grinned and brought out a bottle of Bleufruit Cider along with four glasses. “I’ve had this stored in my pouch for a few months now, but I guess it’s not going to ferment in there and I don’t see us settling down soon, so how about we celebrate our escape from the city?”
Without waiting for an answer, he poured each of them a glass of cider. When everybody had their drink, he held up his glass for a toast. “To getting the fuck out of here.”
“To getting the fuck out of here,” they echoed.
***
That night, James took first watch. He wanted to spend a little time researching potions he could make with the Iron Troll ingredients. He hadn’t found much.
The only potion recipe he found was for one that would allow him to hold his breath for ten minutes. The potion itself was complicated and involved using the Essence of the Iron Troll’s blood to increase the amount of oxygen each of his red blood cells could hold.
As for poisons, most of his ingredient books only listed Common and Uncommon ranked ingredients. He had a few rarer books with guides to more potent ingredients, but none of them listed Iron Troll body parts. He shrugged; maybe he’d find an alchemist to help him out.
James put away A Complete Guide to Poisonous Ingredients in the Crimson Mountains and glanced at the candle next to him. It wasn’t there for light, but as a timer. He had a Glowstone to read by instead. The candle was about halfway melted, which meant he had about two hours left on his watch, then he could go to sleep.
They’d split the watch into two four-hour shifts every night with alternating groups. Tonight, Nidra and James split the watch while tomorrow Arik and Karim would. Karim insisted that a full night’s sleep every other night was better than six hours of interrupted sleep every night.
Honestly though, the watch was more of a formality. Karim had loaded the tunnel around them with traps. They’d hear an intruder way before they got close to the camp.
Since he had two hours left, James pulled out another book to read. This one was by far his most valuable book and he wanted to make sure to read it cover to cover.
Conceptual Alchemy Volume I; An Introduction to the History of System Mechanics Research:
Rank: Epic
This guide is the first book in a compilation of all available research on system mechanics in the art of Alchemy. It was written and compiled by the Gnomish Scientist D. Krout in an effort to understand and explain the intricacies and rules of potion and poison creation through the System.
James opened the book and removed the scrap of paper he was using as a bookmark.
Chapter 2: Ingredient Handling
As long as the System has existed, sentients have struggled to improve themselves, spurred ever onward by the challenge of improving the numerical proof of their worth. It was only a few hundred years ago that someone started to delve into the why and how of the System.
It all started with a simple request for healing potions.
A simple request that changed Gnomish history forever.
In the year 139, the Gnomish government was much like any other. Power passed by blood from father to son with no regard for qualifications or leadership ability.
After the untimely death of Aarak the Blue, his son Tyrus, who would be later known as Tyrus the Bloody, started his campaign of expansion by requesting a thousand Health Potions from the Royal Alchemist.
Kyr Elis, the Royal Alchemist at the time, was a Master who’d been practicing Alchemy all his life. He sent his apprentices out to gather the ingredients and got to work. But when he finished, he realized that the potions ranged in strength from Ordinary to Masterful.
Kyr grew frustrated at the lack of consistency in what he felt was a straightforward process. He’d done the same thing for every batch of potions, so why were they all different? His conclusion was that something must have happened to the ingredients before they got to him to change their efficacy, so he set out to find out what it was.
His first thought was that the ingredients might have been stored improperly, but they were all stored in the apprentices’ rings. Then, it hit him. Although he was preparing the final potion, his apprentices prepared the ingredients.
Struck with this revelation, Kyr had his apprentices all prepare ingredients. He then made a separate batch of potions from each of their ingredients. Sure enough, there was a difference. In general, when apprentices with lower Alchemy skills prepared the ingredients, there was a higher chance for the resulting potion to be a lower quality.
But there was more. In a moment of brilliance, Kyr wanted to make sure his conclusion was correct, so he tried again. He made another batch of a thousand potions by himself. Instead of creating a thousand perfect Masterful Health Potions like he’d thought, these potions ranged almost as much as his first batch. Kyr concluded that there must be more factors affecting the quality of his ingredients.
In another experiment, he compared the completed potion rank to the Harvest Skill Rank of the apprentices gathering his materials. Again, there was a correlation between a lower Rank in Harvest and a lower ranked final product.
Many experiments later, Kyr came up with what is now known as the first rule of Alchemy:
Every step of the process, from the moment the ingredient comes into being until the moment the potion is created, affects the final product.
James yawned. He looked at the candle to see that he still had a little bit of time left before he had to wake Nidra for her turn on watch, but he was too tired to absorb any more history. Instead, he put the book away and leaned against the tunnel wall.
A smile crept across his face; it was strange to feel so relaxed in these dangerous tunnels, but he couldn’t help it, it was the first time since Riverwood that he wasn’t being chased or in immediate danger. It was nice to just… exist.
A short while later, James woke Nidra for her watch and settled in his bedroll to sleep.
***
The next day, James was the last one awake. He joined the rest of his companions for another breakfast of jerky and fruit. It was nice that they could eat fruit because his pouch kept everything fresh, but he was craving a nice warm meal. He couldn’t wait until they got out of the caves and could cook some meat without the smell spreading through miles of tunnel.
Once James was up, the group wasted no time and soon they were heading down the tunnels once again.
“I don’t suppose anyone knows what time it is?” James asked.
Nidra shrugged. “No idea.”
Arik nodded. “We Dwarves do direction, not time.”
James grinned. “Fair enough. Well, unless Karim disagrees, I don’t think anyone followed us. I think it’s safe to say that we either lost any Dwarves that might’ve been chasing us, or they don’t care enough to chase us all the way here.” He gave Kareem a concerned look. “Although… when he was pretending to be a servant, Danforth said they might send something called the Ironguard after us?”
Karim chuckled. “The palace was a bit busy when we left. If things calm down, Remaksta might send the Ironguard after us, but it seems like he’s got enough to deal with in the city.”
James nodded, relieved.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Nidra said, “but I feel like I can breathe for the first time in weeks.”
A
rik nodded, then sighed. “It was nice to be home, though. I missed my dad.”
James patted his friend on the back. “I’m sorry, man. We’re here for you and we’re going to help you find Sebi.”
Arik smiled and nodded, wiping away a tear.
***
“Can you guys feel that?” James asked. There was a deep thrumming in the air and he could feel the hair on his body standing up, as if he were close to static electricity.
You have gained 1 Skill Rank in Sixth Sense.
You are now Skill Rank 4.
“What?” Karim asked cautiously.
James gestured. “Energy around us, like the air is charged with electricity.”
Karim shook his head. “I don’t feel anything, but you have much higher magical stats than I do. For now, we’ll proceed with caution. Let me know if anything changes.”
A few minutes later, Nidra let the group know she’d started to feel it too. She described it in much the same way James had, as a sort of pounding of the air around her.
As the group closed in on the source of the energy, purple motes of light flowed around them. They weren’t dangerous, but when James touched one it gave him a tiny shock.
The motes grew denser until the tunnel was illuminated with a violet glow.