Heralds- The Proving Grounds, page 3
A hand appeared, held up in front of the bow.
The hell?
The arrow flew. Red came along with it as it struck the wooden shield.
Eighty percent. Give or take. She needed to remember to turn on numbers over displayed bars later. It had suddenly become super important.
Jen lowered the shield to see steel shining in quick arcs. Sam was swinging like a woman possessed.
The attacker dropped his bow and drew a short sword but he was already low on health by the time he lifted it.
Sam’s health was mostly full. She had only suffered a bit of damage from sticking her hand in front of an arrow. Just a scratch.
She delivered much more.
The guy managed to swing and strike Sam once before he decided to make a break for it.
She kept on his tail, never letting the swirling steel daggers stop.
He dropped dead a few paces from where their fight had begun.
Sam giggled as she knelt over the dead man and rifled through his pockets.
Jen raised her right hand, three fingers still clasping the sword’s hilt while the index finger and thumb where extended.
Blue light washed over Sam as her health bar returned to full.
“It looked like you could have avoided most of those hits. Was that about good sportsmanship or something?”
Sam laughed. “Hardly. I held my hand out so he would hit me with that arrow before I hit him. It marked him as the aggressor. He was already the aggressor against you, of course, but I wanted to make sure before I went to town on him.”
“Right.” Jen nodded. “I guess.”
Sam glanced back over her shoulder. “What color is my name?”
“Uh… blue?”
“Mhmm.” She nodded. “Because I was ‘defending myself’ as far as the game is concerned. He hit first. So I didn’t even get a warning for vivisecting him.”
“Wow. Ugh. Thanks for that mental image.”
Sam shook her head. “You PVE kids always disappoint me.” Her eyes went wide as she paused.
A red blade stood out from Sam’s chest.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
3
The unfamiliar voice broke into a short laugh as the red blade was withdrawn.
Sam let out a short yip and bolted away. Jen tried to heal her but couldn’t get a target lock on her as she ran for the underbrush once more.
They really needed to group up after this.
The second attacker stood over the body of the first. “You screwed up, Harry. You got careless. Oh well.” He shrugged. “No real loss.” His eyes turned to Jen. “Hello.”
She hefted her shield and banged her sword against the edge. She’d seen it in a movie somewhere. She hoped it looked intimidating. “Hi.”
“It’s too bad your friend got away. She sounded pretty bloodthirsty. World would be better off without her.”
“Says Stabby McStabface.”
She called up the help menu again. She needed all the help she could get.
Nothing of use. She could cast guard on a friendly player in her group or guild, but not on herself.
“Oh no, a paladin. Are you going to lecture me?” The man had his own pair of daggers. A rogue, then. And he’d used his back stab to great effect, nearly killing Sam.
Well, at least he couldn’t pull that again. Jen kept the shield high in front of her.
Rogues were a light armor class that had poor health. She could win this. The speed of his daggers would mean they didn’t hit as hard as the slow arrows had. The shield should hold up. And her armor class would be much better against repeating weak blows.
But he would do everything in his power to get behind her and make with the stabbing.
She narrowed her eyes. PVP really wasn’t her thing.
It was Sam’s thing, and she had run off.
Just perfect.
“You don’t look pleased, little paladin.”
Oh hell no.
Jen’s sword lunged straight ahead, right at his smug little face.
Nothing of note happened with the sword… and he parried the blow aside with a dagger.
Red flashed across her vision from the left.
She backpedaled a step, raising her shield as she adjusted her footing.
Ugh. He had goaded her, and she had fallen for it. Stabbing wasn’t a special for paladins, so it didn’t gain any benefits like horizontal or vertical slashes would, and moving forward so brashly had brought her in range of his daggers as he moved to her side.
Stupid.
One life to live. She had to be more careful.
This guy knew what he was doing. He and the other had been working together, but even without his backup he was playing Jen like a fiddle.
She had lost her backup, too. And she had never been good at PVP, which this guy had probably picked up on by now.
Hmm…
She lined up the same attack she had, readying her raised sword to stab ahead. For all he knew, she was too much of a newbie to understand correct attack directions for a class. She hadn’t let on that she knew the stab was a wasted strike, and he had moved to take advantage of it.
She lunged forward again, this time giving a short cry before she ever moved. She wanted his attention.
He stepped aside just as he had before, dagger shining…
Jen’s shield bashed him square in the nose. A bright blue trail followed behind it as it collided with his face and chest, driving him back a step.
Stabbing? Not a paladin thing. Shield bash? Paladin thing.
The rogue let out an irritated grunt as he repositioned himself a few feet away.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Jen glanced aside at him over her shield. “Still getting the hang of this. You okay?”
He glowered at her. “Guess I can stop being nice, now.”
“Certainly. Not that there’s much more you can do. You’re a level one rogue. You have stab, horizontal slash, stealth, and a stunning kick. Though at your level it’s not much of a stun, or much of a threat. Unless you somehow get behind me, you’re a minimal threat.”
He blinked at her twice before resuming his ready stance. “And as a paladin you’ve got horizontal, vertical, a weak heal, and shield bash.”
“You’re quite familiar with that last one already.” She glanced down at her shield. “Does blood stain in here?”
A soft whistle caught her ear. It sounded a bit like a bird… but she hadn’t seen any flitting about, nor could she recall hearing any as background noise so far.
Hmm.
She kept her shield high as she adjusted her sword to strike. Horizontal should do nicely. Vertical was just as easy to read, but much easier to avoid with nothing more than a sidestep. At least horizontal meant if the rogue avoided the blow it would still force him back and keep him out of striking range.
Ideally.
Then again, his class was designed to get around defenses.
She back up a step. There were some bushes behind her, but she kept her eyes on the rogue ahead of her. He moved when she did, and she kept the shield facing him.
He leapt forward without a word, both daggers high.
She tried to shove the shield forward when he collided with it, but it was no good. She could swing the shield offensively but not with so much weight already against it. She barely kept it between them as she lost her balance and stumbled. The rogue passed her by as she struggled to regain her footing a few steps to the side.
She had the shield up between them again a moment later.
The rogue stood and stretched his neck as he twirled a dagger. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
“I don’t have anything to prove to you.”
“No?” He turned to face her in a ready stance. “You need to prove that you want to win. That you want to live.”
Sam’s daggers sailed forward as she burst forth from the bushes, the steel catching bits of sunlight that filtered through the canopy. The sound of the shifting bushes caught the rogue’s attention, but his back was to them, and he was only a few feet away.
Jen smirked as the pair of daggers struck the rogue in the spine.
The man fell forward, scraping in the dirt to try and get away. It was already too late. Sam followed him, her red steel daggers already moving.
Jen casually targeted Sam and tossed blue healing light at her as the daggers continued to fall into the fleeing attacker.
Sam gave a sigh as she stood up from the still corpse. “Too close.”
“Yeah.” Jen nodded. “This town is getting too rough for me.”
“No, I mean… I was at one hit point. One. Uno.”
“Wow.” Jen blinked. “Lucky.”
Sam shook her head. “I’m not so sure… you see-”
The stuttering frames happened again, though this time when they cleared Jen was staring out at the ocean. Waves lapped at the shore. A few palm trees shaded the sand in places. Sea birds gave distant calls.
The harsh change in lighting caused Jen to try and shield her eyes, which didn’t work out so well when her hand struck the VR helmet. She made a more measured gesture raising her shield up high instead. It took her eyes a moment to adjust.
“Uh…”
“The shit?”
She turned to find Sam standing beside her.
Sam’s head whipped around. “I don’t… wait, what?”
The sound of footsteps in the sand caused both of them to turn. Their weapons were readied before they came to a stop. Sam fell in behind Jen, looking out past her and her shield.
Well, at least she had picked up a bit of caution.
A tiny bald man with a long beard stood before them. He wore a smile. “No need for that. I apologize for any confusion, but you are in no danger here.”
Jen glanced back at Sam. The rogue made no move to lower her guard.
“Honestly…” The little man shrugged. “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to. You were both marked a few minutes ago.”
Jen lowered her shield slightly. “Okay, I’m lost.”
Sam nodded a few times. “Guy got the drop on me. I was at one hit point… I should have gone lower. I should be dead.”
The little man smiled. “But you’re not. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
Sam put her daggers away. “I didn’t get to loot that guy. Or the first one, really. You a GM or something? Send me back. I want my loot.”
The little man chuckled. “I’m afraid not. You wouldn’t want to go back there. It’s turned into quite the messy free for all that’s spilled into the woods. Besides, they really didn’t have anything of value.” He shrugged. “I would have moved you out of there sooner, but one can’t be teleported if they are presently in combat. Something to keep in mind.”
Jen hadn’t put away her sword, and she kept her shield up. “And so, what, you wanted to save us?”
“Something like that. I have a job for you.”
“A job?”
He nodded a few times. “You heard the announcement, yes? About the early access event?”
Jen shrugged her sword arm shoulder. “Yeah?”
The little man pointed to himself. “That was me. You see, we wanted to start things off with a bang, something people would talk about for years. And so we came up with this little event. The game is about conquering, building, and then reconquering, so we are providing some incentive to kick it into high gear from the outset. But we can’t have just one group doing it, that would make things unbalanced.”
Sam stepped out from behind Jen. “That Tobin guy. You called him out in the event spiel. He a dev, or have some sort of backing with you guys?”
“For the sake of making the event entertaining for everyone, yes he will have some official assistance. And now so do you.”
Jen lowered her shield. “We’re the other side?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The little man nodded. “The dev team broke into two groups and each was given reign to choose player champions for this event. Filling out team two was left to me, and I picked you. Well, the pair of you and the other four.” He turned and pointed at a small collection of buildings. They were on an island. Beyond the beach there was not a spec of land in any direction as far as Jen could see. “I can’t personally intervene unless another developer does, of course. Until then, it will be up to the six of you.”
Jen looked aside at Sam who shrugged back at her. It wasn’t like a normal player could have brought them here, and Sam was convinced he had already saved her once.
Might as well be friendly with someone that can blink you to the bottom of the ocean on a whim.
“Okay.” Jen nodded. “We’re game.”
“Excellent.” He started toward the buildings and waved for them to follow. “Come along. No time to waste.”
Jen put her weapons away and followed. Sam moved off to her right, but kept her eyes locked on the little man.
The four buildings at the center of the island weren’t very big, each looked to only be a single enclosed room. There was an open paved area between them with a few benches. Everything looked brand new.
There were four people waiting near the buildings. One was standing and pacing about while the others had found places to sit.
The little man gave a nod to them. “There we are. The last two, as promised.”
“Hey.” Jen raised her hand in a little wave as they stopped at the center.
Sam eyed the others.
The standing man grunted. His outfit marked him as a warrior. “Fine. Can we have some answers now?”
A much skinnier man with dark skin wearing loose robes was seated nearby. His bald head shone in the sun as he nodded. “This one would agree.”
The large man rolled his eyes. “Don’t do that. Don’t talk like that.”
“Like what?”
“Crazy.”
A woman with blond hair dressed in dark clothes and rusted armor let out a relieved breath. Her outfit looked a lot like the blackguard one had in the creation screen, though her features weren’t pale or withered at all. “I’m just glad I’m not the only woman here. Ratio was looking bad for a minute there.”
The little man shrugged. “I feel I was an equal opportunity advocate. Three men, three women. Two ‘good’ classes two ‘evil’ classes, and two ‘neutral’ classes. Seems fair. And that’s the point, making this event fair. That seems like as decent a segue as any.”
He stepped into the center of the collected players, hopped up on an empty planter, and raised his voice.
“You’ve all been brought here for a reason. Good, evil, neutral, male, female, etc. More importantly, you all share beta experience. That will be quite beneficial given your mission.”
The large man scoffed. “What, are we founding a nation?” His eyes fell on Sam. “We don’t exactly look like builders or politicians.”
The little man smiled. “Fortunate then that, no, your mission is not construction. It’s destruction. The other developer backed team is working to build an empire, but the flavor of the event has them painted as hostile invaders. You,” he pointed and swept his hand around the collected circle, “are going to work to stop them and end the event so normal play can begin.”
Sam tilted her head. “Wait, you want us to end the event?”
“Yes, but not right now. In fact, it needs to run for a few days. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? In the meantime, you should be building up support and preparing for when it’s time to go to work.”
The monk tilted his head. “By… raising an army?”
“No, too obvious. They went for the obvious route, but I think you’ll be better off not trying to strong arm the world into serving you. Instead… just nudging them the right way. They already know there’s a shared enemy in the conquering force. You just need to convince them that working together is in their best interest. Part of the delay in ending things. Everyone having lost a few scuffles should help them to see that.”
The large man shook his head. “All of this… subtlety really doesn’t sound like me. And I rather like the open PVP rules. Why wold I want to end them?”
Sam nodded from beside Jen. “Ditto.”
The bearded man shrugged. “Your cause against the PVP rules is your strongest rallying cry. You are free to take advantage of the adjusted rules until the event ends, of course. It will make your work easier. But if you still don’t wish to take part when my pitch is done, so be it. I’ll drop you off where you were, unflag you, and find someone to take your place. But I think you’ll find it’s beneficial to hear me out first.”
The blond woman narrowed her eyes at the little man. “What do you mean by ‘flagged?’ “
He turned to face her. “You’re marked, all of you. By me. You don’t know or understand it yet, but you’re now more than the average player.” Each of those around the circle glanced at the others. “I brought you here, but you’ll teleport yourselves away. Just one of the abilities on offer.” He glanced aside at Sam. “A few of you have already seen danger from your fellow players and lived to talk about it.
“In this time when people die and stay dead due to account lockouts, the lot of you are immune. In fact, you can’t drop below one hit point unless you attack each other, and even then you’ll just respawn. Nothing major most days, but right now? It makes you powerful. You can take risks. You can recover from mistakes. The resources you use for your class won’t ever bottom out either, so your abilities will always be available.”
Jen glanced aside at Sam, who was looking at her hands. “I’m immortal…?”
The monk frowned. “That hardly seems fair to the other side.”
The little man turned to him. “No worries, my good man. As I said, you’ll not be openly opposing them, but working to unite other players and acting as examples. You’re only getting these abilities for the sake of furthering the event, and this is a temporary arrangement. If you prefer to leave, you may do so. But if you stay on you’ll be major players in an event the likes of which this world will never see again.”
The large man rubbed at his chin. “Hmm.”
Sam’s face had split into a wide grin. “I’m immortal.”
The little man turned to face her. “Indeed, but that’s a secret. The other side of this event has champions equal in strength that can still hurt you. They exist for the same reasons you do, and have the same abilities. It may take Tobin Ironblood himself, but they can defeat you, so my advice is to avoid them. You’re stronger than the average player, but I wouldn’t recommend needlessly showing off what you can do. I’d like to win the office pool, if it’s alright with you.” He winked.
