Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  Buffer: Buffs all have their duration increased by 50%, effect by 25%, and number of targets increased by 50%.

  Debuffer: Debuffs all have their range and duration increased by 50% while their effect is increased by 20% and their aggro is reduced by 50%.

  Scout: Movement Speed increased by 50%, Evasion increased by 25%.

  Crowd Control: Charm Magic effectiveness, number of targets, range, and duration increased by 100%, Damage reduced by 50%.

  Dave thought it was interesting that his party menu had eight different roles but only six total people could be in a party. It also seemed as though only one of each role could be assigned. He would have to think about it more, but it wasn’t really a problem for right now as even if he let Mira and Jackson join with them, the Nelson family party was only five members.

  Once the water in the bathtub had been reheated, Dave and Jackson took their turn bathing. While it might have been nice to get new water for their bath, without any wells dug in town, all the water had to be hauled from the river and this bathtub was large enough that the water was still tolerable to use as compared to making their hosts hire a wagon to haul another entire tub full of water the two miles from the river. Doing so by hand would have taken hours.

  The warm water did wonders for soaking away his aches and pains. It also provided him with the opportunity to look at the remaining notifications he had started to look at the night before. Most of them were all combat or XP notifications, so he quickly got rid of those but there was one notification that was worth noticing.

  Watcher’s Preparation: ongoing- As a result of reaching character tier 2, six of your prior life skills will have their base level doubled. Each tier gained will provide an increase to a decreasing number of these skills and only the skills enhanced at this or a prior tier gain will be eligible for future improvement. Choose wisely.

  Dave almost laughed. Now he had to remember what skills he was given when he first entered Eloria. It was only three days ago, but so much had happened, and they really hadn’t seemed to be of much benefit other than the Unarmed Combat skill and even that was a second-string skill at best. He thought about how in some games he had played, monk-classed characters could do tremendous damage with their bare hands or feet, but it didn’t seem to work like that here. His increased Strength and weapon skill all added damage as a percentage of the base damage of the weapon. While his longsword had a base damage of 10, his fist only had a base damage of 2. Also, he hadn’t found any skill that would increase the durability of his fists. Adding to his Constitution had added health points, and it had definitely made his body feel more durable, but nothing like the hardness of steel. Maybe with another hundred Constitution points, but not even close now.

  Even with that said, he still chose Unarmed Combat as the first of the six skills to enhance and immediately he gained 10 points in it since that had been the amount he was initially awarded when he first entered Eloria. With the 10 character points, he added to it the total skill, now increased to 30.

  Unarmed Combat (30) - +150% to attack, +30% to damage, automatic second attack when exclusively using unarmed combat. You have reached Apprentice Level (Tier 3) in this skill. You now have the trait: Feet are Hands- your flexibility and ability to kick is dramatically increased so you can kick as easily as you can throw a punch. Kicks do twice as much unarmed damage as punches.

  That seemed pretty good, but he wasn’t exactly going to test his flexibility now in the bathtub or for that matter outside of it in the buff, it would have to wait until he was done dressing.

  The other choices open to him were: Running, Sense Motive, Speak Languages, Diplomacy, Knowledge- Research, Knowledge- Law, Survival- Forest, Survival- Desert, Archery.

  So, nine skills but he could only improve five of them. As much as he hadn’t used Archery yet, he was pretty certain that he was going to increase it as the only other combat-related skill. Who knew when it might be of benefit in the future, even though he didn’t really see himself as the run around and shoot arrows type. The benefit to these skills was that he was able to elevate his total level in the skill beyond what would otherwise be possible based upon his character level. The other consideration was how many points had he gotten originally in the skill because it seemed to double that number. Theoretically, that would push his Research skill up to 50 but his Running skill would only go up to 6.

  Decisions, decisions. This was always one of the most fun parts of any MMO game. Building his character, making the choices that would customize his in-game persona. Of course, now it didn’t feel the same. It was life and death and hard to feel the same relaxed approach he would in a game.

  He started with a process of elimination. First, he eliminated Knowledge- Law. He just had a hard time seeing that a very useful skill. He was probably jaded a bit by his experience as a lawyer, but he also didn’t want to think of this world in the same terms he used to think back on earth. Eloria was about conflict, and from what he had seen so far, it was not the sort of conflict that got solved in a courtroom. Next, he eliminated the Survival skills. He decided that by increasing his Research skill, he would be able to learn the basics of surviving in any place that they had to travel to. Finally, he decided on eliminating Running as it only had 3 points in it so it would gain the least benefit from the boost. He had weighed the option of dropping Speak Languages as he could already speak seven languages, but then again he had no idea how many languages there are in this world and the ability to speak directly with creatures or even to know the language of an enemy when it wouldn’t be expected might be a great boon. Then, on second thought, he decided that given the amount of time he spent fighting in a forest so far and the probability that they were going to continue living near a forest meant that taking Forest Survival might be worth more than the Language skill given that he had no idea how many languages there were for him to learn or how soon he would need them.

  So he triggered the rest of his choices and then looked at the results.

  Sense Motive: (10) +50% chance to detect motives

  Diplomacy: (30) +150% on all diplomacy related matters. You have reached Initiate (Tier 2) and Apprentice (Tier 3) Levels. You will now be recognized by all guilds, merchant houses, and royal courts of Tier 3 or less as an official negotiator. You may be appointed by any of the above type of organizations as an ambassador.

  THIS PORTION SUBJECT TO CHANGE:

  Speak Languages: (14) Learned- Centaur, Spiderkin, Celestial, Fiendish, Sub-Language: Moon Elf, Sub-Language: Sun Elf, Old Imperial. You have reached Initiate (Tier 2) level. You now have a 50% chance to be able to read lips in any of your known languages.

  Archery: (10) +50% to attack, +10% to damage

  Knowledge: Research- (50) +250% information obtained and speed of research. You have now reached Initiate (Tier 2), Apprentice (Tier 3), Journeyman (Tier 4) levels. You are now able to find secret or hidden information that others might not find. You are capable of researching magical forms and constructs as well as wondrous technologies.

  With no more pending notifications, all that remained was to allocate his 66 character points. He quickly dropped 10 points into Shaping Magic

  Shaping Magic: 20 You have reached Initiate (Tier 2) You may now learn Tier 2 Shaping Magic spells. Spells are not automatically learned after the initial acquisition of a magical school. Possible sources of spells include: other casters of the same school, magical books and research, or spell scrolls.

  Well, that was a major bummer. He had really been expecting to get some cool new Tier 2 spells. What was worse, when he looked at his Minor Enlarge spell, he noted that it was only improved by level increases up to 10. He assumed that this meant that Tier 1 spells could only go that high in power increases, which was a definite set back from his expectations, but he had to remind himself that he had only been in Eloria for three days.

  Next, he dropped 10 points each into Weapon Specialization: Long Blades and Offensive Stance. Each would serve to p
ush up his melee damage by quite a bit, and as of yet, hitting targets wasn’t the problem. This left him with 36 character points remaining but despite what he had told everyone else about using up their points in order to be best equipped, he was confident that with his increased stats and the improvements to Weapon Specialization that he would be hitting the Tier 1 creatures of the Merkwood like a Mack truck.

  Bishop Tengur of the Church of Redemption in Konig, Albia was the highest tier member of the clergy on this continent. Yet, he had been unable to get an answer from his goddess as to what the beam of light that had been reported as falling from the heavens three days ago meant. All of the sons and daughters of redemption in Albia, which could be counted upon the fingers of a single hand, had questioned him about what it meant. They had all felt the appearance of a new son or daughter of Redemption. It was an unusual enough occurrence that they were all very sensitive to it. Despite asking around, despite casting auguries and pleading with the goddess, the Bishop still had no answers. He had even gone so far as to check with the Bishop of the Church of Redemption in Xi’An, the sun elf capital. It was a testament to the urgency that he felt to find this individual that he would reach out to his sun elf counterpart. There was no love lost between the human kingdoms and the sun elves, and while that was not supposed to boil over into church politics, people were still people, whether they be human or elves.

  It wasn’t that any one follower of Shanelle was irreplaceable, but a Son or Daughter of Redemption was no mere follower. For every thousand underpriest, nun, monk, paladin, or lay member of the church, there might only be one individual actually chosen by their goddess. The fact that this happened somewhere to the north in what must have been a wilderness area was also not lost upon the bishop. It meant that this person likely had no strings attached to them, and if they could be brought over to supporting him, his path of climbing in the church hierarchy would be easier. Such an ascension was the only way to escape the exile that all but a handful didn’t even realize they were living in.

  These were the thoughts in his head as he sat kneeling before the holy altar in his private study. It was intended to be a place of prayer, but all too often the bishop found his thoughts racing off to more practical matters. He was a devout man and believed in the message of redemption and second chances that his goddess stood for, but he also was a busy man responsible for the day-to-day operation of not only this main temple but also many smaller church houses, their charity outreaches, and most importantly, the evangelistic mission. Even now he had an envoy from the king down in one of his meeting rooms inquiring for the third time about how soon he could send some priests to the western war front to aid with healing or perhaps some paladins to aid with the fighting.

  He was taken out of his thoughts by a not so subtle knock at his door. “Who would do that? Everyone knew to leave him be when he was praying in his chambers.” Well, apparently everyone but the novice who opened the door, his face red and his voice coming between panting breaths indicating he had clearly run here at top speed.

  “Your Excellency…” more panting, “please forgive the intrusion…” hands straightening out his robes as he struggled to gain his composure, “but there is a celestial messenger at the front gate.”

  Bishop Tengur had been preparing a scathing rebuke to the young novice, irrespective of what he had to say, but this message caught him so by surprise that the sarcastic comment died upon his lips, never having been birthed. “What is the message?” The bishop’s question came out in a rush.

  “He will only speak to you, Your Excellency.''

  Well, that couldn’t be a good thing, but then again, the presence of a celestial messenger almost certainly meant a message from the home church back on the continent of Angranna. Well, there was nothing for it but to hurry down the seven flights of stairs from his private chambers down to the main floor and then out to the gate. At least the trip down would give him time to collect his thoughts.

  Draznei’kai shadow stepped to the last village they had attacked. It had become a mixture of charnel house and a latrine. The death knight was inured to suffering and gore, none of which bothered him in the least. It wasn’t that he particularly cared for either, but only that he was very good at causing them. Yet looking at the mess left behind by the goblins reminded him of how truly vile and wasteful creatures they were. He couldn’t wait until he could exterminate this entire band, but for now, the plan called for him to keep them alive so that all the evidence would demonstrate the logging villages had been slaughtered by goblins.

  Once he had ensured himself of the trail and direction of the goblins when they had left town, he pulled out a black bridle, with silver bits studded with rune carved onyx. A simple command word and a thin channel of mana activated the runes and the bridle summoned forth from a shadowy plane full of fiends a mount appropriate to the death knight. Known as a Nightmare, the steed was fully six feet high at the shoulder, its coat a charcoal gray while its shape was muted or fuzzy to the naked eye. Its mane was a writhing smoky wisp as was its breath, exhaled in the form of a noxious gray cloud. As soon as it was summoned, its glowing red eyes looked around and settled upon the death knight, testing him to make sure he still had the will to control the beast and all the while its hooves tore great gouges in the ground beneath it. The bridle could summon the Nightmare for eight hours each day and only when the moon was present, but during those eight hours, it could travel more than any normal horse could in two full days.

  Traveling at that rapid pace, Draznei’kai found the goblins within hours trudging along the riverbank of the Seinna under the light of Eloria’s moon, what the goblins worshipped as the Night Eye. They were only ten miles from the second village and lost in immediate disarray when they realized who he was and that he had found them acting in disobedience to his orders. Most of the goblins had the good grace to be terrified at having defied his will, but the smug look of defiance upon the shaman’s face was almost enough to make the death knight squish the little creature, plan or no plan.

  As it was, he led them to a staging area a mere five miles away from the next target village and then instructed them upon pain of death to stay hidden while he meditated and regained some of the mana that he had intended to have before going into this battle. The plan didn’t call for them to attack this village for at least three days and maybe as long as four days. Of course, some of that was dependent upon how well his wyverns performed at the task they had been sent out on. Then there was still the matter of the missing scout. Draznei’kai couldn’t have cared less about the scout’s wellbeing, but it did worry him that if a scout had been captured that perhaps this village or the next would have some forewarning of the attack. Either way, there was nothing to do about it other than to send his remaining two scouts out to check on the village which would be their next target all while he meditated in preparation for the coming battle. The shaman was warned that if anyone disturbed his meditation for the next three days that the price for such a transgression would fall upon his ugly head no matter who the offender was. The truth was that three days of meditating in this low mana zone would not be as effective as even one day in Chenhou Forest, or even in portions of the Merkwood, but it was the best that could muster now as he dared not leave the fools unwatched again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “The greatest gifts of life are not found in safety or security, even though we all strive for those things. This is the great truth of Eloria. Life is struggle, life is violent, life is conflict and to shun such is to shun true life.” —General Arkimedi 14th Imperial Division

  The wind blowing in his face was a blessing to Max as it kept him awake through the struggle to maintain his Forced March skill. Exhaustion was setting into him, even with the extra points he had sunk into Endurance, Max still needed sleep and they had been flying for over thirty-six hours now. He was easily able to go for three or four days without sleep, but this was not just thirty-six hours, it was a day and
a half of constant mental focus. Imagine, if you will, thinking about the color red in your mind for hour after hour without allowing any other thought to break through. Not maroon, not pink, not a light red, or too dark of a red, just that one shade of fire engine red. Not a red ball, red apple, or pretty red hair from that waitress at the last inn you stayed at. Just red. Nothing more, nothing less. Then imagine that every time your focus falters, your ability starts to lose its effect and your team’s mounts all start to slow and tire from the unnaturally extended travel. Since it is your ability which is giving the mounts the ability to continue flying along at full speed hour after hour, whenever your ability flags, they all start to slowly drift toward the ground. Add to that the highs and lows of exhaustion countered by a rush akin to drinking a gallon of triple espresso each time you have to drink another mana potion. Imagine that and you have some idea of what Max experienced trying to maintain his skill for an extended period of time. Worse than that though was Hasert, who not only has to maintain his concentration but who also knows that if he fails to do so, the mounts won’t just slow and drift toward the ground but will disappear entirely, leaving their rider in midair with nothing to support them. It was for that reason that whenever possible, they flew only as far above the ground as they needed to, but now they were nearing the target and, in fact, were only about fifty miles away, so they didn’t want to be seen until they revealed themselves and, therefore, were high up in the air where they would appear as birds in the eyes of untrained serfs.