Heralds- The Proving Grounds, page 7
“Not our job.” Jen opened her menu.
“No.” The monk nodded. “With luck, our future endeavors will be less… distasteful.”
Sam narrowed her eyes at him, then swung them to Jen. “What are you guys talking about? We did awesome.”
Jen tapped the recall button.
The calming sounds of the beach were welcome.
It seemed strange that their “nemesis” had only been a few walls away, well within their power to simply teleport in, fight them, and be on their way. Event over. Everybody happy.
Well, except Brave New World Entertainment. They had set up an event to get attention for their game, despite it having been hyped for years. She didn’t know anyone who had somehow not heard of it. Plenty that had negative opinions who knew nothing about it, true, but none who were completely oblivious.
It might not have mattered. If Ironblood and his people had already been out leveling a trio of level ones would not have harassed them much. Or even slowed them down.
Yet what Sam had said kept nagging at Jen’s mind. If Ironblood and his people had been in there, which she didn’t know because she never actually saw him after all, why did they do nothing? Why just sit around? Why stay in one place for so long at all? What benefit could there possibly be?
It didn’t add up, and she couldn’t quiet those thoughts.
Hank was waiting outside when the trio made it to the collection of buildings. She wouldn’t really call it a town… maybe a compound.
“Excellent work.” He smiled and held up his arms. “Truly excellent. From what I can tell, no one suspected a thing, and Morblina is now safe.”
Kail bowed his head. “As ordered.”
Hank chuckled. “As requested. I don’t issue orders. You’re not required to do anything. This was just… a bad situation. Hopefully a rare one moving forward. You’ll use your own judgment for how best to proceed from here on out.”
Bulorn exited the main building, his hand high to keep the sun at bay. “Seems like I missed something.”
Sam shrugged. “Nothing we couldn’t handle… without you.”
The large man raised an eyebrow. “It must not have been important, then.”
Kail raised his hands as he stepped forward. “Now, now. We’re all friends here.”
Hank sighed, but he was still smiling. “Just like old times.” He shook his head. “Again, good work. But now your true task begins. Can’t have you falling behind the leveling curve. By the by,” he opened his menu, “I added an experience toggle a while ago. If you’re getting too far ahead and it might be suspicious, tap just below the far end of the experience bar shown on your character sheet. That will toggle experience gain off until you toggle it on again. We couldn’t make it just for the event, so it’s actually universal, but people are unlikely to find it. So, don’t spread that around, eh?”
Sam tilted her head. “Even if people did know about it, who would ever toggle experience gain off?”
Bulorn shrugged. “Takes all kinds. Some people will undoubtedly feel a given level range is the best for whatever reason.”
“Yeah, the cap.”
Kail shook his head. “Maybe people like hunting a certain animal for a given resource, or there are drops from a mob that you can only receive when it grants experience, so you turn off experience to ensure you can keep hunting them.”
Sam stared at Kail for a few moments. “You crazy. Cap or bust.”
The monk just smiled.
Bulorn nodded to the monk. “His point remains.”
“It remains crazy.”
Jen shook her head. “So the situation is handled? You don’t think anyone will go back to Morblina?”
Hank nodded. “It should be fine for now. I made sure to update Tobin Ironblood’s location on the fan sites to the new one. It should keep people chasing their tails long enough for them to get started. They’re… slacking a bit.”
Sam scoffed. “More than us? We’re still level one.”
Kail shrugged. “The world isn’t what it was last time you were level one. We need to be more cautious in how we advance.”
“Well, we don’t need to be.”
“Fair enough. But that’s where pausing your experience gain comes in. Others will fear for their lives, even if you need not. It will make them slower to advance.”
Bulorn nodded. “And advancing was never predictable in the first place. Some people catch breaks and find streams of appropriate mobs, others have to struggle the whole way up.”
Jen frowned. She hadn’t had an easy path in the beta. “And now any player you come across could be out to kill you.”
Sam shrugged. “Okay, I get it. I still say we should get to leveling. If we’re ahead of the curve no one will take swings at us anyway.”
The monk tilted his head. “There is a… certain sort of logic to that.”
“Right?”
Bulorn glanced around casually. “We seem to be down a few.”
Hank nodded. “They’ll catch up. With your experience gain turned on, the bonus from your fellows will accumulate even if you’re not present. The next time you gain experience it will check against that amount and potentially level you if you’ve stored up enough. Though due to some funny math, that only works one level at a time, even if there’s enough experience to give you more than one. You’d have to do something else to get experience for it to check again and level you again.”
Sam scoffed. “This is why I hate math.”
7
The lack of a coherent party meant there was really no reason for the Heralds to stick together. After all, if they split up it increased the chances of finding appropriate mobs to kill, from which they would all benefit.
Because splitting up always worked out.
Except for most of the time.
Unfortunately Jen was overruled. Somewhat fortunately, Sam stuck with her anyway.
The map had given quite a few viable locations. Most areas were low level due to what the overall player curve dictated.
Jen and Sam took the opportunity to go to a place that read clean of other players. Quite distant to travel to on foot, but largely appropriate. The spot was level one to five, as all starter areas were, though the surrounding area jumped quite a bit, with one direction leading off to five to ten, while the others jumped significantly to ten to twenty areas.
Jen appeared in a straggly forest long past its prime. The trees were thin and there wasn’t one left alive that she could see. Most were little more than blackened twigs reaching toward the sky.
Sam popped up a moment later. “Hey, I can travel to you. It shows you on the map. Much more precise than the general area shtick.”
“Good to know, though I didn’t catch a lot of willingness to group up from our fellows.”
“Fuck ‘em.” Sam shrugged. “I got your back.”
A group invite popped up before Jen’s eyes. She accepted.
“Is that only because you literally know where I sleep, and therefore feel you can trust me via implied threats to my health?”
“Partly.” She shrugged. “But you’re okay, too.”
“Heh. Neat.”
Sam had picked this area. She said she recalled the layout, and that the progression path would make sense once Jen had a chance to see it.
She wasn’t exactly wrong.
The dead forest cleared away to show a well worn path that lead up into the hills where the ruins of an old town dotted the hillside. None of the buildings she could see would stop a strong gust of wind, let alone rain. Skeletal remnants of something long since past.
Given that, its inhabitants were not surprising.
Eyeless skulls turned to face them as soon as they arrived. The forest was lousy with them, but they were not exactly an organized mob. Only those within a few yards seemed to notice them, and they were taking their time getting close.
Most looked like they might fall apart simply due to the effort of moving.
In an odd way, it was sad. A world dead and forgotten, its old citizens clinging to the world yet not even strong enough to repel invaders. How long ago had all this happened?
The answer, of course, was only a few hours. The place had started like this when the server came up. All of the time and weather it seemed to have suffered was implied by artistry. It was not exactly a dressed set, it was more than an illusion that would fade if one turned their head just right… but it was a false front just the same.
The first meandering skeleton reached them a few moments later. Jen held up her shield to halt the blows from its arms, swung like pendulums… though it wasn’t exactly a great deal of impact. Her shield moved, but the arrows before had taken more of its durability.
She turned the skeleton’s arms aside with her shield and swung her sword. It clipped a bony shoulder and the skeleton fell back a step, letting loose a raspy cry that sounded more like a sigh than a battle cry. The second blow from her sword saw a pile of bones clattering to the hard packed dirt.
Dirt as dead as the inhabitants. Not so much as weeds grew in this place.
Light flashed around her and a gong sounded in her damned ears.
Level 2.
She had leveled two characters a bit in the beta. She still wasn’t used to the noise. “Huh. That was easy.”
Sam nodded. “Must be the others piling up experience. We still need to earn some to kick over, but it seems like we already have enough otherwise. Least, that’s what I got out of Hank’s spiel.” She swung her daggers in wide arcs, one in front of the others so each blow was essentially two hits. A skeleton fell to dust before her.
Sam had her own light show play out as she hit level 2.
Jen opened her menu. “Wonder if we can see how much is waiting…”
Sam darted before Jen’s vision, her blades flashing.
The sound of bones striking the ground was becoming familiar. The lights that sounded a level increase played over Sam again.
Well, at least two levels stacked up.
“Don’t get distracted. They don’t look menacing, but there’s a lot of them. More than you realize. And they’re all quiet… calculating.”
Jen closed her menu and raised an eyebrow. “Calculating? They can barely move.”
Sam shook her head. “This place is hazardous. I suggested it because it’s brimming with mobs and they are harder than people think. These out here? Quiet. Slow. But they pretty much never stop and there’s always more. Want to take a break? Too bad. Hop up and get a drink? You come back to a corpse. There are always more, and there is no place here they can’t reach. No place safe.”
Now that Jen looked around… there were quite a few more skeletal shapes than she had initially noticed. And more that were moving toward them than she would have expected. Sam was right. None of the ruins or fallen trees where high enough these things couldn’t simply walk there, given time. The place had looked down and out… but Sam would have her believe it was a front.
Of course, Sam could just be messing with her.
Jen swung at the next pathetic skeleton that approached. It fell in two swings as well. Light played over her as the gong sounded.
When the light cleared, there were two more skeletons reaching for her.
She backed up a step, but stopped short when she bumped into something.
Empty eye sockets greeted her when she turned her head.
She swung like mad, cleaving the air in front of her with her sword and bashing the skeleton behind with her shield. They fell away without much more effort, but more were already moving.
“Son of a bitch… I don’t like it here.”
Sam shrugged as she rammed the pommel of a dagger against the side of a skull, sending it flying off the spine it had rested upon. “That’s the point. I brought us here for a lesson. Be mindful. Eyes open.”
Jen swung her head back and forth, keeping her shield between her and the closest skeleton. “I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Sam moved in closer, putting her own back to Jen’s. “Calm down. You’re immortal, remember?”
Jen nodded a few times. “I’m immortal. Right.”
The long dead creatures coming at her could probably claim that, too. After all, after she cut them down they would just respawn. Better than players at the moment.
Striking down the next one coming in caused her to level again, but with what she knew was out there, she was cursing the momentary blindness at this point and kept her shield high.
If there was any loot, she didn’t know about it. There wasn’t time to stop and pick it up.
“I assume we get a breather at some point? Maybe pick through the bones for loose change? Spend some skill points?”
Sam leveled again, though she seemed to be better at remembering where things where during the moment of blinding light. “Maybe… usually takes awhile to thin them that much.”
“Ugh. At some point we need to leave though, right? They won’t grant enough experience to be worthwhile?”
“Considering most of what we are leveling from seems to be surplus, the tiny bits of experience we get here might last awhile.”
“Okay. Let me rephrase that.” Jen bashed a skeleton with her shield sending bones flying away which struck another decrepit skeleton. “I don’t like this. I’m not sure how much longer I can handle this… barrage before I’m going to hit my recall button.”
Sam shook her head. “Soldier on. This is a good lesson.”
“What lesson is that?”
“Eyes open. Don’t get distracted. Spacial awareness.”
Jen gritted her teeth and barely raised her shield in time to stop another skeleton. They truly did seem endless… not so thick as to be an inevitable threat, but Jen couldn’t fathom how anyone without the ability to teleport out was supposed to make progress here. Or ever hope to leave.
She blinked a few times after bashing a skeleton’s skull in with the pommel of her sword.
Individuals weren’t supposed to be here. This was group content. And they were two manning it.
Huh.
Maybe they were better off than she thought.
She gave a cry as she swung at the encroaching dead things. Her gear was not going to improve at this rate, true, but the level of the skeletons approaching wasn’t going up either, so leveling was only making her stronger against them.
Light played over Jen once more as the gong of progress sounded anew. She hit level four, which Sam had already been for at least a few moments.
They could do this. They had it.
The bony jerks had nothing on them.
Her previous targets dispatched, Jen turned, her sword already cleaving the air.
It made a wooshing sound as it crossed the open space, impacting nothing at all.
She blinked a few times.
There were no more skeletons close by. A few were shambling their way, but they were a few yards out yet. It would take them a moment.
“The hell?” She lowered her sword and glanced back at Sam. “You promised me a flood of skeletons.”
“Did I?” Sam tapped a finger against her chin. “Oh, right, I did. Yeah, I lied.” She shrugged. “We’ve pretty much decimated this area.”
Jen raised an eyebrow. “Say what?”
Sam casually kicked a decrepit skeleton in the ribcage with enough force that its limbs were left behind and clattered to the ground. “What was the lesson?”
“Uh… spacial awareness?”
“Right. And yet you didn’t notice them thin out.”
“I… did not.” Jen bashed her shield against the closest skeleton. It lurched back a step and she finished it off with a flick of her sword. “I guess that’s my fault.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong.” Sam winked. “You went a little stab happy, and I’m super proud, but you did kind of miss the lesson, yeah.” She shrugged. “Oh well, more up the hill, and they only get worse from here.” She pointed up at the old ruins.
A quick glance showed no more skeletons approaching. Those that were left were too far away to notice them.
“And you just… hang out here?”
“Like everywhere marked for leveling content in the game, this place’s level range can change. And by can change, I mean does change. As people rarely drop by, due to the difficulty, it keeps pace with the average player level and servers as an awesome place to grind some experience if you fall behind.”
“If you don’t get killed.”
Sam shrugged. “Most days, that’s not a huge problem because you just get back up. Why I was doubly sure no one would be here. This place is unforgiving.”
“I’m sure some green newbies will happen by.”
“They might have already. There’s not usually this many skeletons.”
Jen blinked at the other woman. “You’re messing with me, right?”
“Am I?” Sam started for the hill, her hand swiping to open her menu.
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s not?”
“Stop it.” Jen glowered at Sam.
“Stop what?”
“I hate you.”
Sam just laughed.
Jen opened her menu as well. No time like the present. She had put in some research into what made a good paladin, but most of the standing opinions were based around building the paladin as a tank. She didn’t need to do that, and the survivability angle was covered by her inability to die. At least to normal circumstances. The other side could kill her, but right now they owed her a favor… if there was any justice in the world.
Her reading had only come across paladins as offensive combatants in regards to pure PVP builds. She wasn’t against the idea… chances were good that she would fight players sooner or later, especially with the screwy rule set. The first time or two being jumped might actually be fun as she fumbled through, unable to die. Maybe she’d luck out and get some super serious PVP types and really screw up their day.
Good times.
She realized she had the common paladin problem as she stared at her character sheet. Damn near every stat was beneficial and required to some extent. Tank builds favored stamina, where secondary healer builds favored wisdom for casting. PVP builds seemed to favor strength with a touch of wisdom, as that doubled as defense against hostile spells.
