Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  Speaking of awkward, it appeared that Jackson was losing a tug a war match with the largest horned drey hound he had ever seen. The dog had the handle of the mace in its mouth and Jackson was holding onto the shaft with both hands on either side of the mouth trying to pull it away from him. Dave did also notice that the hound was bleeding profusely out of one side of its face, and it appeared to have lost an eye.

  As for Mira, she seemed to have attracted the majority of attention. She had clearly charmed one hound which was fighting a losing battle against three others. At least seven of the beasts were tangled up in webs that she must have conjured, and a couple others were bleeding from wounds that appeared to have been caused by her ice blades, but now she was faced with another hound that was right on her. Emily’s ability to melee fight was nothing special but Mira’s was non-existent.

  Seeing each of them in fights that they were about to lose was more than he could bear. Something inside of him snapped. There was absolutely no reason that he couldn’t walk. There was nothing physically wrong with him. It was only residual fear that was holding him back. Fear of failure. Fear of not measuring up to what his family needed. It was time to be a better man. Time to acknowledge that he might not succeed, but that he had to give it his all.

  With that acknowledgment, a notification flashed in front of his eyes.

  New Trait Gained: Where the Mind Leads the Body Will Follow- you have learned the simple truth that it is often the mind that holds us back rather than any true physical limitation.

  Benefits: +10 to base initiative, +5 to Luck and Agility.

  Dave slid off the side of the horse, ordering Sara to activate her protective amulet and pulling his sword at the same time. Mindless of the fact that he didn’t have any armor on, he lunged forward at the large alpha. The beast was so caught up with Jackson that it didn’t see Dave’s attack coming, which is saying quite a lot because as he had slid down and crossed the distance, had cast his Minor Enlarge spell, and was now a towering nine-feet tall. His thrust caught the alpha unsuspecting, and while it wasn’t a critical blow, it still struck a vulnerable spot on the beast’s side and landed for (68) damage. More importantly though, it allowed Jackson to pull his mace free and land a quick blow to the other side of the alpha’s head. Now almost completely blinded, the alpha made a lunge that even Jackson was able to dodge before he was able to land another blow, this time a critical blow to the back of its head. Adding in another thrust from Dave and the alpha was well below half life. The blood feud bonus damage was definitely adding up.

  Leaping toward Mira, Dave’s massive frame took the hound attacking her with a sharp kick under its body. The hound probably weighed one hundred and twenty pounds but to his enhanced strength, it was nothing. Lifted up in the air by the kick, the hound was caught completely off guard by the hacking slash brought down on the back of its neck by an overhead blow from Dave who had just cast Sure Strike, resulting in a critical blow and a beheaded drey hound. Without breaking stride, Dave ordered Mira to use her fire spell as quickly as possible on the entangled hounds, reminding her that the webs were highly flammable per the spell description.

  He continued on toward Emily who was even then struggling to concentrate as she cast a last-ditch healing spell to keep herself alive. His huge strides ate up the distance between them, but he still wasn’t sure it was enough. In the few seconds he was running, he realized that he had assets he wasn’t spending and that it was silly to keep holding back points hoping to become a wizard down the road when the man he wanted to be was this man—the man rushing in to save his family—and he needed to use all of his stat and character points to be the man he wanted to be even if that man couldn’t always do what he set out to do.

  Even running, he was able to sink his remaining two stat points into Strength to attempt to maximize his damage. Then he placed character points into skills he had previously considered but had not wanted to spend points on for fear of ending up as an exclusively melee character.

  Ten points into Sneak Attack: Adds 150% additional dmg/pt. to any attack that comes as a surprise.

  Ten points into Offensive Stance: Activated Stance, cooldown: 3 minutes. May be active maximum of 1 tick/level. When active, defense is decreased by 50% but atk is increased by 5%/level and dmg is increased by 10%/level. Stamina: 1/tick.

  Ten points into Flanking: Declared action. Must be attacking the same target with at least one ally. Allows you a 30% +2%/level chance of sneak attacking target. Even if sneak attack fails, gain +5% atk/level and 10% dmg/level for 1st atk of the tick. Teamwork: 1 pt./tick

  Ten points into Unarmed Combat: Adds 5% chance to hit target/level, increases base dmg by 1%/level bringing the total score to 20. Tier 2 Bonus gained: Ability to automatically add a second attack when focused on unarmed attacks.

  This only left him four remaining character points but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had already spent 3 ticks out of his 13 ticks of being enlarged. As he took the last steps toward Emily, he triggered his Taunt ability and suddenly all of the drey hounds within the sound of his voice were entirely focused on him other than the charmed hound. The normal power of his Taunt was greatly magnified by the blood feud he had with the drey hounds.

  “Emily, I need you to stand next to me and tell me which target you are aiming for so that I can use my Flanking skill.”

  Seeing her raise her dagger toward the hound on the left of her, Dave was able to utilize the Flanking skill to Sneak Attack and landed his sword thrust for (123) damage, which was more than enough to kill the hound in one blow. What followed was another brutal battle as the numerous hounds threw themselves at him one after another. He was only able to maintain his Flanking skill for three ticks before all of his teamwork points were consumed, but in that time, he had finished off four hounds and kicked away another half dozen that were all trying their hardest to get back at him. It ultimately was a good thing that his teamwork ran out though because it required Emily to be attacking too, and while the hounds might be falling one per sword strike, Dave was still taking a staggering amount of damage for each that he managed to kill. With their added 25% damage against him, each bite or horn thrust was wiping another 30 or more health from his total, and after half a dozen of those attacks, he was under one-third of his life remaining.

  He was gratified to see that Mira had timed her spells perfectly so that her Flame Fan lit up the seven webbed hounds. She was dealing considerable damage with the initial flames because her targets were trapped and unable to move out of the way of the flame, but even more damage as the web strands ignited and started burning deep sear lines into the skin and muscles all over their bodies. The yelping sounds were almost heartbreaking in their plaintive tone, and the smell of burning flesh was sickeningly sweet. The end result was that none of the seven hounds were dead, but all were reduced to between 25-35% of their full health.

  Once freed from the webbing, the blood feud forced the hounds forward, mostly hobbling on seared muscles to try and attack Dave. This was where the beauty of Mira’s timing really showed, for as soon as the hounds got close to Dave, she launched another web attack. This time she trapped all of the remaining hounds including her charmed hound, which had been in the mix attacking its packmates. The webbing broke the charm, but they didn’t care as even the alpha had come running when Dave’s Taunt went off, and now all ten of the remaining hounds were held in the webbing. Most of them so scarred by the first set of burnt webs as to not even be able to put up much of a fight against this set of webs.

  Mira announced that she had to wait for the cooldown on her Flame Fan spell but that then she could likely finish most of them, but Dave told her no. He called Jackson over and then asked Emily to go and cover Sara’s eyes. Emily wanted to argue with him but knew that they were under a time limit as there were only seconds left on Dave’s enlarge spell and she didn’t know if he had enough mana to recast it.

  “Jackson, I would never condone this under no
rmal circumstances. You are my son and by earth standards still a child. But we are no longer on earth, and so I will treat you by the standards of Eloria. I will let you kill as many of the trapped hounds as you can so that you can get the death blow XP bonus, but if any of them try to escape then I will finish them. I am going to activate my offensive stance skill also, but I can only maintain that for 24 seconds. So again, if you take too long, I will have to finish them.”

  Jackson looked at his father, almost stunned for a moment. Then he looked back at his mother, and as much as she understood what Dave was doing, she couldn’t condone it. He was only thirteen, so she looked away from him.

  “Now, Jackson. I don’t know when you will get another chance like this.”

  It was then that Jackson aimed his mace and started smashing as quickly as possible. First on the head of the alpha and as soon as it stopped, moving onto the head of the next trapped hound. In the end, he was only able to kill five of them and Dave had to finish the rest. The experience was traumatic for Jackson. He sobbed and cried as a piece of his childhood died with each splatter of blood that hit his leather-wrapped clothing. He cried in shame and cried in fear and cried for a loss that he didn’t understand, but he never stopped until his time ran out. What Jackson didn’t understand was that as traumatic as this was for him, it was equally so for his parents, who had to not only see that sparkle of innocence die in their son’s eyes but had to know that they had made it happen. Eloria was conflict. So they had been told, but the most bitter of conflicts was that within their own souls.

  They were all inundated with notifications as soon as the last of the horned drey hounds fell. The XP gains were substantial for all of them, including 41 XP for Jackson, which while not enough to push him into being a leveled character, it was enough to give him 2 character points. Mira got a whopping 599 XP, which led her all the way from level 6 to level 9. Emily ended up with 393 XP, another example Dave thought of the undervaluing of healing and buffing in Eloria, but he didn’t make the rules. He could only grin at the 1006 XP he gained. His racial choice of human with the 50% XP bonus was seeming better all the time. He had won the race to level 10 and actually shot past it. Yet it was the final notification which was the most shocking.

  Blood Feud Update: You have won the feud with the Horned Drey Hounds of the Merkwood. By killing their highest-ranked alpha and a significant number of the remaining hounds, those that have not been killed have migrated. Should you ever encounter any of those remnant hounds, expect them to have a deep and undying hatred for you.

  Reward: 10% of the XP value of all remaining hounds in Merkwood at the end of the feud. (Note these hounds have all moved out of the Merkwood since the end of the feud. It is highly probable that they will evolve to a higher form.)

  20 x lvl 3 hounds

  12 x lvl 4 hounds

  5 x lvl 5 hounds

  2 x lvl 6 hounds

  Total XP award: 193 XP

  One quick observation was that it seemed to have been worth the extra XP grind to get to level 10 because instead of getting 2 stat points, he got 6 stat points for increasing to level 10, and since he made it all the way to level 13, he got an additional 3 per level for a total of 15 stat points gained.

  Even more exciting was the tier notification.

  Congratulations!

  Ding!

  You have gained enough XP to reach levels 10, 11, 12, and 13. This now marks you as a Tier 2 character.

  Tier 2 Bonus: +20% to any one stat of your choice. You have 24 hours to choose or your lowest stat other than Luck will automatically be chosen.

  As much as he wanted to start spending his stat and character points, Dave knew they needed to check on the three men whose cries had brought them over to fight the pack, but when they got to the tree where the men had been, there were no men and only a very clear trail of blood leading away from the forest and toward the river.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I see that a home cannot be given but must be made.” —Journal entry found in the private holdings of Emily Nelson, Daughter of Redemption.

  “What the heck were those things?” Tristan was a young man, lured to the opportunity presented by Eris’ Rise, namely to be a free man. Now he was free, but a free man who was bleeding and limping along on an improvised crutch half supported by Malcolm, another of the young loggers and the only one of their trio to not have a serious injury.

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think those were elves.” At twenty-four, Malcolm was a bit older than Tristan but not much, yet he liked to play off his worldliness and experience to the other young loggers of Eris’ Rise. He had spent three months as the footman to a minor cousin of Duke Holstein, but he always made it seem as if he was a seasoned traveler having seen and done things the other youngsters couldn’t lay claim to. “Specifically, I think they were Moon Elves.”

  Many seconds passed between each statement as both Tristan and the third member of their trio, Wilbur, were both seriously wounded, limping along half supported by Malcolm on either side and steadily losing blood. Malcolm was strong and conditioned for long days of work despite the lack of recent logging activity, but he wasn’t accustomed to fighting for his life or running from a battle afterward.

  When the young elf had ridden upon on a horse, waving a mace around in the air, he had thought that they were dead for sure. Everyone knew that elves could command the creatures of the forest and in his mind, he was sure that the elf was there to finish off what his pets had started. Imagine his shock when instead of attacking the beleaguered men, the elf had actually hurled some sort of weapon or maybe it was magic at one of the hounds and then led the rest of the hounds off. It was even more shocking when they finally worked up the courage to leave what they had expected to be their final resting spot against the large oak tree to start hobbling together toward the zone line. Malcolm wasn’t angry with the others for leaving them. He knew they were only doing what was best for the town. He might be angry with Aloysia for talking him into this crazy scheme, but he understood that Jarvis had to protect all the men. Still though, it said something about Malcolm that he never once considered leaving Tristan and Wilbur behind and making a run for it once the hounds were distracted.

  As they started to make their run/limp for it, he was even more surprised to see two other elves join the first and both of them were women. Bedtime stories told about the elves always said that men and women fought side by side and that much of the tales spun for him by his grandpappy seemed to be true. He almost fell over when he saw one of the girl elves shooting balls of webs off of her hands like she was some sort of spider. He had to think that was magic. He knew the mayor was a mage of some kind back when he was in the military, and it wasn’t like magic was unheard of, but it just wasn’t something that serfs, or now free men, had much access to.

  What made him most uneasy about all of it though was the question that Wilbur asked, “But weren’t they trying to save us?”

  Upon finding that the men that they had just fought so hard to save were no longer at the tree but appeared from the blood-stained trail to be headed toward the river, the family all sorta collapsed and started discussing what had happened. Dave filled them in on his new trait and how it had helped him overcome his paralyzation.

  They all started talking about their experience, and both Emily and Dave were struck by the fact that the kids, at least Mira and Jackson, were no longer quivering in fear after a battle or close encounter. Instead, they both beamed with a newfound confidence. Emily especially was bothered by this but knew it was an issue for another day. She was more insistent that they follow the men, telling Dave that the rest of the information about breaking into tier 2 would have to wait until later.

  So while Dave was anxious to explore the specifics of what he could do now at level 13, he wasn’t going to push it. They instead decided to mount up. It really shouldn’t be hard to catch up to the men. They couldn’t have had more than a few minutes head start o
n them, and they were on foot as well as wounded. The next question came up when they discovered they were one horse short. Mira responded to Dave’s unspoken question by explaining that she had not lost control of one of the conjured horses, but rather she had been running out of mana in the middle of the fight, and so she had tried to reabsorb one of the horses.

  This prompted a whole conversation about how she knew she could do that, but the simple answer was that she really didn’t know if she could. Which of course lead to parental admonishing to be careful with magic since they didn’t know very much about how it worked. Then after the lectures, Jackson asked the more important question. “So, did it work?”

  Mira explained that it had in fact worked, but that she had had to struggle to make it work. Instead of getting back the 100 mana that she had spent to conjure the horse, she only got back 40 mana. Yet it was still enough for her to cast that last web spell. She went on to explain that she had gotten a notification after the struggle to reabsorb the mana.