War Games

by Nikita Thorn

  “So the White Cranes trust you, right?” He tried a different method. “So maybe they will ask you to keep the treasure for them and sneak out of battle. And what if that happens to be exactly what Ichikeya wants, and they’ve got the Shadow Manor waiting right inside the West Gate?” That was exactly the same scenario of what he thought happened with the Fuoka Army key, but what worked once could work again.

  Koharu moved her mouth from side to side. “Okay, Seiki’s got a point. I change my vote back.”

  “What?” cried Mairin.

  “Okay, look here,” said Yamura. “We’re on an unlabeled quest, and nothing is more important than that. Don’t you remember how much XP that rat temple quest got us last time? If you want to fight the Rogami, the smartest thing to do is to level up so hard that the Rogami will think twice before messing with you. You know, lose a battle but win the freakin’ war.”

  “Oh, wisdom, Yamura.” Ippei raised an eyebrow.

  The ryoushi turned to give him a wary look. “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “Guys,” said Kentaro, interrupting them before Ippei could respond. “I might be wrong about the map. The cave should be right here, but, well, it’s apparently not.”

  In front of them was a solid rock face, again slightly overgrown with climbers, with nothing to suggest that it was anything but part of the mountain base. Frowning, Kentaro lowered his glowing staff to check again if the dirt path indeed led there.

  The houshi thoughtfully tapped the rock with his staff. “Maybe there was a rock slide long ago, which makes sense considering the other markers have changed.”

  “Maybe there’s a button or something,” Yamura said as he passed his hand over the rock surface. “Or a password.”

  “Open sesa—” Koharu gasped. “Oh, I see.” She shimmered into a transparent form of herself and disappeared through the rock. Seiki recognized the effect as the obake Fade ability.

  Before anyone had a chance to react, she was back out again, looking slightly spooked. “It’s dark in there,” she said sheepishly. “Pitch-black, actually, but I think it’s a cave.”

  “Ghosts aren’t normally afraid of the dark,” said Mairin in amusement.

  “So there was really a rockslide,” Kentaro said. “I guess the challenge is we have to figure out how to get in.”

  On the spot, Seiki understood what he was meant to do. Any wall an obake could Fade through could be broken with a bare-handed Focused Strike.

  “Stand aside for a sec,” he told his friends. They gave him a wide berth as he gathered energy and pushed it down toward his right palm.

  The familiar burst of energy exploded against the rock face. It shook a little, sending out a little dust, but held strong.

  “Keep hitting it,” said Mairin. “Maybe it has a health bar, like a clan territory wall.”

  Seiki paused as another idea occurred to him. “It’s a ronin quest, right?”

  Ippei grasped his meaning and the group cleared to one side, giving Seiki ample space in front of the cave. The path had been winding, but the bit directly in front of the cave was an unnaturally straight line. Taking that fact as a clue, Seiki positioned himself at the end of the stretch and mapped out a Slide, glad that he had had some practice with the timing of Blood Rush from the jumps earlier.

  It was a ronin challenge after all, and Seiki was very certain he would now be asked to learn how to integrate his newest ability into his existing toolkit.

  Focused Strike was his simplest move, especially in its weaponless version. Now as he attempted to use it with added damage from Slide for the first time, Seiki suddenly discovered another glimpse of what Blood Rush could do. Slide took significant energy and came with only two charges, and up to this point he could either choose to use it for burst damage, or to quickly get out of harm’s way. With Blood Rush, the extra energy available would actually allow him to extend Slide and make the most out of its two charges while continuing to use other combat moves. Then, perhaps, ronin combat would become a delicate play of positioning, spending and trading. That was, of course, if he could get good at keeping it all under control.

  “Starting from now,” Seiki said to himself.

  He burst forward, grabbed at Blood Rush to trade nearly all his remaining health for energy, and split it into two separate flows. The first one he spent on speeding up over the very short distance. At the same time, he pushed the other bout of energy down his right arm as he shot it out to meet the rock face hurtling toward him.

  Whether imagined or not, he felt as if he was approaching the dizzying speed of free fall. The solid rock surface rushed up toward him, and he knew he had to time his Focused Strike so that it activated as soon as he touched it. Pushing forward, his hand found solid mass, before energy—so much more than he had ever felt—exploded out at it. A deafening crack cut through the night, and the rock face shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Seiki realized he had not really thought what was going to happen afterward. With the unstoppable momentum, he fell through the crumbling mountain wall into the darkness behind.

  A pale female face emerged from the middle of the collapsing rocks, whitish, framed by black hair and followed by long fluttering yellow sleeves.

  Seiki froze. An involuntary cry escaped his throat at the sight, but it was too late to slow down, or to swerve, or to avoid crashing straight into the apparition. He landed forcefully on a very frightened obake girl who let out a shrill scream as rocky debris rained down around them.

  Seiki stared at her.

  Pinned under him was Kiku, the White Crane obake, who was staring back at him, deathly pale, her eyes wide in shock.

  Recognition slowly dawned on her face. “Seiki?”

  Still panting from the scare, Seiki gathered his wits. He had managed to stop his fall with an elbow, and because he had landed on top of her, he had borne the brunt of the damage from falling rocks. She must have Faded in time as well, as she remained for the most part unscathed.

  When Seiki felt a calming warmth around his body, he only then realized that Kentaro had helpfully put a Ward on him at the last second, saving him in time. And he quickly made a mental note to himself never to trade all his health at once again.

  With a long exhale, Seiki pushed himself off the girl. He felt Kentaro’s Heal filling his missing health.

  “Are you okay?” said Kentaro.

  Seiki, still recovering from the accidental fright, simply nodded and took a deep breath. He would need to get used to how to properly use Blood Rush without risking killing himself every time.

  Fluttering wings filled the air as a flock of birds appeared out of nowhere and swooped down in front of the obake girl. Kiku let out another yelp in surprise before understanding that they were all post pigeons.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Mairin from somewhere behind. “Those are all mine. I was trying to ask if you needed our help with the Rogami army.”

  Kiku absently picked up one of the birds, letting the rest fly off. She then looked at them in confusion, one by one. “Hi,” she finally said. “Uh, the army thing is a ruse. This here is the real deal, but it seems like we were wrong.” She knitted her brows. “How did you know about this anyway? Did Hiro tell you? I know he wrote to the Fuoka Army.”

  Despite having no understanding of what she was talking about, Seiki did not fail to notice that she had complete trust in them and did not seem for a second to doubt their intention, except for a curious glance at Koharu.

  “My friend Koharu,” said Mairin quickly. “And this is Kiku from the White Cranes.”

  The Social Guild obake, however, appeared distracted. “Now this is different,” she said as she looked past Seiki to the left. “Just a minute ago it was all dark. Seems like someone just turned on the light.”

  Seiki followed her gaze.

  His Focused Strike had broken them into a subterranean chamber. About twice the height of a full-grown man and enough for eigh
t to walk through abreast, the cave had smooth walls, as if someone had caked them with dried mud.

  Directly to his left, a tunnel, lit with burning torches along its length, led deep into the mountain.

  CHAPTER 19

  A puzzled look crossed Kiku’s face as she cast her eyes toward the tunnel and back at the group, and then down at the white candle in her hand—which must have just been extinguished by the collision and was still sending off a thin wisp of sweet-smelling smoke. Seiki then realized she could not see his version of the instance.

  Leaping to his feet, he quickly extended an invitation.

  Kiku of the White Crane Order [Level 23] has joined your group.

  The obake’s eyes widened as the dark cavern slowly transformed into a torch-lit cave for her. “Why?” She turned back toward Seiki for an explanation.

  “It’s Seiki’s instance,” said Mairin as she stepped lightly through the crumbled entrance. “He’s on an unlabeled quest, and we’re helping him out with it.”

  Following behind her, Ippei let out a shallow breath, perhaps at her unreserved honesty about the whole thing.

  Kiku shook dust off her yellow flower kimono as Seiki helped her to her feet. “What do you mean an unlabeled quest?”

  Seiki quickly explained, leaving out most of the details except that he had reasons to believe that he was supposed to follow a map here to find a specific NPC, which would somehow contribute to his class quest line.

  Since Kiku was above Level 20, Seiki had somehow expected her to know something about the existence of unlabeled quests, or to have some insightful speculation about what it could be. But the obake girl simply shook her head. “All I know is that you can sometimes get extra rewards for RP-ing with NPCs after the quest has ended. Like there’s this one girl near the East Gate who initially gives you a quest to find her a wild apple, but after completing the quest, you can keep giving her wild apples. And if you give her enough of them, she eventually invites you back to her house and teaches you a special Cooking recipe.”

  “What recipe?” Kentaro perked up.

  “Some complicated dessert that has to do with wild apples,” Kiku said. “One of our clan mates got it. Delicious, but no buff.”

  The rest of the group slowly made their way through the opening, glancing warily at the cave. Yamura had his bow ready in his hand as he stared suspiciously down the tunnel, muttering something about demon bats.

  Seiki followed his gaze. The tunnel curved left after about twenty feet. Up until the bend, the walls at the beginning were a combination of dried mud and protruding rocks, with crude, rusty metal bands fixed at uneven intervals along their length. Most of them held burning torches. Despite his friend’s concern about evil winged creatures, no movement could be heard coming from within.

  Behind Seiki, a slow shadow crept upward as the broken cave entrance started to repair itself, and a moment of uneasy silence fell as the group stopped to listen. Seiki found himself holding his breath and he prepared to draw his sword should something come rushing down the underground corridor, now that they were shut in.

  The cave, however, remained peaceful, and all they could hear were the gentle crackles of the orange flames that lined both sides of the tunnel.

  Koharu walked up to the wall where the opening had been and pushed it with both hands. “Fade doesn’t work anymore. Should we be worried about this?”

  “That’s strange for a dungeon,” said Ippei. “But then we don’t even know if it’s a dungeon or some kind of… a story instance with scripted cut-scenes.”

  “Looks like a dungeon to me,” said Yamura.

  “Dungeons don’t trap you in like this,” said Kiku.

  “Maybe you’ll phase back out if you leave the group?” said Seiki.

  Mairin laughed. “As if anyone’s gonna want to do that now that we’re here on some weird quest thing, and especially when Kiku’s safe.” She turned to her friend. “I thought you were on a treasure hunt or something with the clan.”

  Kiku pursed her lips. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. And I went round and round these tunnels for ages. So Hiro told you, right?”

  From her casual attitude about the subject, it was clear she thought they knew more than they did.

  “You’re talking about the treasure?” Mairin asked.

  “Okay, wait,” said Ippei. “Let’s start by getting ourselves on the same page. So you’ve got a puzzle poem, and you happen to be looking for the treasure right here in this cave.” He sounded a little suspicious.

  The obake nodded. “Yeah. Hime-sama and the rest are out there, leading the Rogami off our trail, and I’m supposed to be making sense of this.” She produced a piece of folded paper from her pocket and held it out to Ippei, smiling as he seemed surprised by her complete trust.

  “You’re on our permanent guest list, remember,” she reminded him.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be,” said Ippei, before reading through the piece of paper and passing it on to the rest of the group.

  Seiki had seen puzzle poems before, the first one being a personal treasure poem that eventually rewarded him Fubuki. The second one was allegedly the mysterious piece of paper meant to be indirectly delivered to Renshiro and his outlaws. The third one had been Mitsue’s, when she was looking for Shousei’s treasure in his second to last ability quest.

  This one looked pretty much the same. The texture of the cream-colored parchment was much finer than the normal post paper, with five lines of text written neatly in the middle.

  Those who come seeking

  With a rightful aim shall find

  That a true path lies

  Between the timid ink brush

  And the brutal iron blade.

  Not knowing what to make of it, Seiki handed it to Mairin, who read it aloud to the group.

  “Talk about cryptic,” said Kentaro thoughtfully, tapping his chin. “Actually, I’d say it’s almost philosophic… something about the principle of leadership.”

  Yamura frowned. “Seriously. You got that from the poem?”

  “At first, we thought it would become clearer once we got down here, like maybe a painting on the wall or something to give us a clue. Hiro guessed it’s an ancient tomb, but it turned out that the cave just goes in a big circle and leads you back out.” Kiku paused. “But now…” An excited spark lit up in her eyes as she trailed off.

  “With a rightful aim.” Mairin gasped in delight. “So… it means only those on a quest to come here in the first place can find the treasure. And since Seiki’s on a quest, so now…”

  “Whoa, wait a minute.” Yamura nearly sputtered. “You’re telling me that if we go in and do this quest, we’re going to find a unique weapon somewhere?”

  Seiki looked at the group. “Uh, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.” As enticing as it sounded, he knew his friend’s excitement was a little premature. Most treasure hunts failed, as players had only a limited amount of time to find the hidden location after they had cleared the instance—provided that they were in the correct instance in the first place. The fact that Kiku could now see his instance was simply because she was in his group, like the rest of his friends, and did not confirm that they were in the intended instance.

  “Seiki’s right,” said Ippei. “And even if we manage to find the treasure, there’s a very low chance it’s going to be a unique. Usually, you get something like a very good named blade or an enhance scroll.” He paused for a moment, before glancing at the White Crane obake. “Or sometimes a… very fancy Pottery scroll.”

  Kiku scowled. “That was a very valuable Level 30 scroll,” she said seriously. “It was a named Trade Skill scroll. Where have you even heard of such things? And the Rogami went through all that trouble to try to take it, mind you.”

  Ippei laughed. “Except they didn’t. They were so crushed by the disappointment from seeing that it was for Pottery, of all things, that they had to go through an elaborate sch
eme to plant a rare-summoning scroll to exact vengeance on your whole clan.”

  Seiki knew his friend was most likely misrepresenting the situation on purpose just to annoy the obake girl. The mention of the Rogami clan and treasures, however, reminded him of something he had learned from the Fuoka Army earlier that night. “Zengoro is looking for a particular named blade.”

  Mairin raised an eyebrow. “Why do you know that?”

  “Now that doesn’t surprise me,” said Kiku.

  Seiki tried to remember exactly what he had heard. “The Fuoka Army said something about him looking for a named sword to match his named dagger,” he said. “Paired weapons. They’re supposed to be very good.”

  “Yeah,” said Yamura seriously, as someone who had witnessed what Gin’s matching bow and quiver could do.

  “What’s that?” asked Kentaro.

  “It’s like a set,” said Ippei. “Usually a primary and secondary weapon. Sometimes, you get a charm to go with it too. Like an armor set, you see, if you collect all of them it usually gives you a bonus, maybe an extra effect or enhance.” He paused for a moment. “Although I’ve never heard of named weapons that come in a set before.”

  Seiki and Yamura exchanged glances. Gin’s two pieces were most likely named, which meant that they must have been even rarer than they had thought. And that was perhaps why Zengoro had been so dedicated to finding the matching named sword for his dagger.

  “I see,” said Seiki. “That’s the reason he’s trying to pull every Sheathed Blade he can find. You know, he’s only promoting members who can get him Sheathed Blades, and maybe that’s why Rieko was trying so hard to get mine.” He realized he was sounding like an expert on the Rogami Clan’s inner workings, which must have been what his friends thought as well, as they all stared at him in confusion.

  “So…” Mairin said after a short silence. “Basically, this Zengoro guy’s trying to get a pair?” She managed to sound perfectly serious.