P-03. Trial By Magic, page 28
part #3 of PrimeVerse Series
As I got closer I felt a sense of nervousness, not fear exactly, but like the feeling you get when your boss calls you into their office, and you have no idea why, but you do know the last few weeks have not been as productive as they could’ve been.
I gave him a character scan, and sure enough he was a player. When I approached to talk, he whipped his half-masked face in my direction and a clay pot appeared in his hands from his inventory.
Kai immediately smacked the pot out of the gromlins hand, and it shattered on the ground. The gromlin said something in its grunty language as an energy I recognized exploded from the fractured pot. Chaos energy splattered against the gromlin and Kai, coating the gromlin and leaving black splashes all over Kai. I stumbled as the Chaos energy formed what must have been micro-singularity points, collapsing in on themselves and sucking everything they were touching in with them.
The gromlin screamed as its flesh was sucked into the micro-portals, and with a splorch, all that was left of it were the parts untouched by the energy. Kai also screamed as the holes sucked chunks of his flesh out, leaving him a bleeding, moaning mess on the ground.
“Madison!” I shouted and she came running over.
“What happened!?” Worry was written all over her face.
“Chaos energy. Heal him!” I shouted, as if it could make her move faster.
She began casting Heal, and the wounded flesh started to weave back together. She ended up having to use her Self Sacrifice ability to heal his injuries.
Kai stood up, a frown on his face as he took in his tattered clothing.
“We need someone who can work with leather,” he said and helped Madison to her feet. “Thank you for healing me, that was... unpleasant.”
“No kidding,” I said, “it looked like you had gone through a cheese grater.”
Graham appeared just as a cheer erupted from our group. The last enemy was down and nobody from our side got hurt. Well, permanently anyway. We had defended our town from an attack, and we’d done a kick ass job of it.
Graham absconded from cheering and began shouting orders to secure the perimeter and check for any other hostiles in the area. When we couldn't find any, we gathered back together.
“Well, looks like security just took a large leap up the priority list,” Graham said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I did not expect that.”
“We should’ve expected it, though, with Cora already coming in here, we should’ve known we’re already in her sights.”
“We whooped them, man!” Steve shouted. “That chick ain't got nothing on us!” A cheer broke out again and it was hard not to join in.
“That was way easier than I thought,” Madison said. Graham simply grunted, his arms across his chest as he watched the villagers looting the bodies, which faded away as they emptied.
Kai approached, shaking his hands as if to get dirt off them. “That was too easy,” he said. Kinda funny coming from the guy who looked like swiss cheese half an hour ago. I was proud of myself for saying it in my head.
“I agree,” Graham said, “something feels off.”
“They were most likely testing our defenses,” Kai said, “gathering intelligence, learning what they could about us. I fear we might have given away too much.”
“So those mask guys were players, huh?” I asked. “They must’ve been a lower level or something, they really weren't very tough.”
“Even those wolves seemed weaker than I thought they’d be. Is it because we've leveled so much?” Madison asked.
“Either that, or they only sent weaker units,” Kai said.
“Well, I’m increasing the watch,” Graham said, “and I think we need to start more groups going out to grind levels, preferably out to touch that Earth Crystal. The ability to easily build blocks could be invaluable.”
“Are you thinking it's time for a wall?” I asked.
“Yes, but do you remember the wall we had at my old village?”
“Hah, that was hardly a wall, more like a ramshackle barrier.”
“Exactly, we just threw it together as needed to help fend off the random creatures in the area. We weren't worried about much else. But here, we have a lot more to worry about.”
Kai was nodding along. “I will continue training people, the greater our skill the better. I have found a few who have a natural talent for martial arts, perhaps we can send them out with the grinding groups to train also.”
I sighed. “Grinding would be a lot more effective if we could have somebody setting up quests.” Ever since Arnold was taken, the quests for the village had greyed out, becoming unusable.
“Speaking of which,” Graham said, “is Ryan taking longer than he should? Have you heard from him?”
Madison had formed a group with him so we could communicate, but we found out the hard way that the new chat window only worked at so great of a distance. Once he effectively left the zone into the forest, he fell off. We could still see his health bar in the party window, but that was it.
“I don't know, but I’m definitely getting a little nervous. Maybe we should send out a team?”
Graham shook his head, “I know Ryan, if he doesn't want to be found, he won't be. We can give him some more time before we do that.”
I knew it had to be eating him up inside, that his closest friend from the village was on her way here, alone, and likely in danger. It showed his character that he could hand over his trust to Ryan to bring her back. I nodded at him and grabbed Madison's hand.
“Well, I suppose we should try to enjoy the rest of the night. Sounds like we’re going to be really busy after this.”
Chapter 35
The worst thing about having an imminent attack from a hostile enemy was the sheer amount of meetings we had to have. Life on Earth wasn't glorious- or even fun - but at least I didn’t always have to attend meetings. I liked it that way.
We started the day with a meeting and, lucky me, since I had my infinite notebook, I got to be the scribe. At least I gained a couple points in Archive, and soon we had a detailed breakdown of the skills, levels, spells known, and just about every other facet of information Graham could wring out of everyone.
It made me miss having a smartphone and social media that literally learned and listened to everything you said and did. At least that was passive, I had to physically write everything down and invented an on-the-fly shorthand for it. I knew this because I actually learned a skill for it called Shorthand. Audeo kicked it to 10 and I instantly knew a better way to take notes. It was a relief.
I had known Graham was in some facet of law enforcement before uploading, but he must’ve been higher up, because the way he could dive into the logistics of our strengths and weaknesses was impressive.
The average level of the players in the village was 6, which wasn’t too bad. It's hard to know with nothing to compare it to. Everyone had learned magic and martial arts, but hardly anyone had gotten any spells beyond the starter spells. Madison had yet to figure out how to teach a school of magic so that some of the spiffier spells could be learned.
She spread around a couple of the basic spells she knew, but the problem was the bottleneck of her Spell Transference skill. It required her entire Mana bar to use, so she had to regenerate before she could use it again. Needless to say, it was time consuming. That in itself wouldn’t be too bad, but the XP cost per spell was slowly eating away at her experience and we didn't want her to drop past level 10 and lose access to any skills. A few times I’d caught myself about to make fun of her that now she had a way to lose levels too, but stopped. Hers was much more controllable than mine, so it probably would have backfired.
The plan was for me to go out and grind up some XP and more cores so I could enchant as much of our gear as possible. Tim was also sent out to grind so he could get to level 10 ASAP. We figured his level 10 boost would be invaluable for the growth of our village, even if it meant resource gathering would slow down until he got it.
Kai would stay and continue training people in their Martial Arts skill. They gained a point a day in the skill when they trained with him, making it an effective way to advance, and hand-to-hand combat proved valuable against the gromlins.
In a real stroke of genius, Graham decided giving the kids the Create Minor Item spell could be useful in an upcoming wall battle where spears would be thrown. Once again, the kids didn’t seem to play by the same rules as the rest of us in that they didn’t have to have the Creation school of magic unlocked first.
I was going to take Madison out to grind the XP she had lost before Graham reminded us she was in the group with Ryan and he needed her close by so she could relay anything as soon as she heard. Being the only person able to form a party with group chat, Madison was going to be indispensable for communication. Everyone else had an average System skill of 10 since nobody could slot it into a higher tier skill category. We could form parties at least, but only Madison’s would have a chat. So she became the de facto telephone company, stuck in town.
We had the expedition group formed and were about to head out into the hills to get to the Earth Crystal and grind on bears. I was saying goodbye to Madison when she jumped up and screeched in my ear. “He’s back in the zone!” She jumped up and down, waving at Graham. He came over with a straight face, but his eyes lit up ever so slightly when she repeated herself.
“He’s back, Graham! He’s back in the zone!” She invited Graham into the group.
Graham > Ryan! You made it! Do you have Therese?
Madison > Hi Ryan! I’m glad you're back, we were getting worried.
Ryan > Hey guys, it sucked losing communication with you. Glad to have it back. I have Therese. She was at about the midpoint in the forest, I had to take out a few of those stupid boarcupines, and I got some more flunky cores for Hudson.
Hudson > Thanks, buddy!
Graham > Is Therese okay?
Ryan > Yeah, she is still Therese, it's funny she doesn't seem AS cursed as the other gromlin/villagers.
Madison > What do you mean?
Ryan > Well she talks mostly normal and stuff. You’ll have to see. She still looks like a gromlin though. We’re just coming out of the woods, Therese was asking for you, Graham. You guys should come meet us!
Graham looked like he was about to jump up right that instant and run by himself all the way there. “We’ve already got this group formed,” I said, “let’s go meet her!”
We brought Madison along and left to intercept them, everyone with a little extra pep in their step. It didn’t take long to make it out of the valley and we spotted them as they were coming down the plains.
A gromlin that vaguely resembled Therese ran as fast as her little spindly legs would let her, nearly jumping into the arms of Graham, who dropped on his knees to greet her. They embraced, and I swear I saw a glint of wetness in Graham’s eyes. Woah. There must have been more going on between the two of them than I thought. We gave them some privacy and greeted Ryan.
“How was the trip?”
Ryan clasped my hand. “Hey boss. The trip there was easy; they gained some levels, some gear, some cores. It was good fun, really. These two,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the two Hunters who had accompanied him and were now socializing with the rest of the group, “did a great job. Seth is champ with that spear- smart, too. Comes up with interesting tactics to use while fighting. And Jamila seems like she can learn anything. She has the potential to be a great scout if she could get the class somehow.”
“Well, maybe if she keeps going out with you, she could pull a ranger prestige class,” I said.
“Scout, but yeah. Those primitive classes are annoying. I mean, the skills are so weak compared to the stuff I have.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, seems like they were meant as some kind of punishment or something for not doing your best in the tutorial.”
“Makes me wonder what I would’ve gotten. Anyway, we got to the spot where she was supposed to be and couldn’t find her. We looked for nearly half a day before discovering her tracks.”
Therese was walking up to us now, her moment with Graham over. “Hudson,” she said, offering her hand to me.
“Mayor,” I said and shook it. “How’re you doing?”
She barked out a short, nasty laugh. “I’m not well, as you can see.” When she spoke, her words were slow and drawn out as if each one was its own sentence. “This curse…” she said something in the gromlin language and shook her head with a growl, “is insulting. The woman must pay for what she’s done.”
“I agree,” I said. “We all do.”
“There’s something we need to tell you, though,” Ryan interjected. “We saw them, some of her forces. Therese wanted to see if we could rescue anyone else. That’s part of what took us so long. We doubled back through the forest towards the Chaos node but had to abort mission when we got close. There were so many. I don’t know how, but there had to be hundreds of gromlins running around.”
“Not gromlins,” Therese said, shoving the words out of her mouth like they didn’t fit. “Horde. Like… feral spawn. Viator gromlins make them, it’s a racial ability. They are dumb, hard to control. Mindless.”
Ryan nodded as she finished. “Right, they mostly just fought with each other, but sometimes they would just kinda lock up and bunches of them would move as a group and get stuff done. They were doing some projects like we did, you know, gathering resources and stuff.”
We listened silently, waiting for him to get to the good news. It didn’t come.
“But that wasn’t the worst part,” he continued. “There was this huge dude, like a freaking giant or something. He could just rip trees right out of the ground. We saw him get pissed at some gromlin and he pounded it flat as a pancake in a single hit.”
“That’s… not good,” I said, at a loss for words. “Maybe it's not as bad as you think? A bunch of them attacked us the other night. They came in on monster wolves and we whooped them easily.”
“I don’t know, boss. I saw that huge guy carrying a glob- while it was attacking him- and he threw it into a pit, then tossed these masked gromlins in to fight it. I think they were being power leveled. I think we should be worried.”
“The ones with masks are players,” Graham said, “some kind of spellcasting class. I bet you’re right about the power leveling.”
“It’s a good thing we got started on your defensive plan.” I looked at Therese. “Do you think you can help us? Our leader was taken by Cora, and now we can’t complete any quests or level up the village or anything.”
She shrugged. “I will try.”
“Alright then, let’s get you back to the village and see if it’ll work. We already have everything we need to upgrade to Advanced Village.”
The news of Cora’s sizable army seemed to dampen morale, and our trek back was mostly quiet. Therese stayed close to Graham the whole way, and they walked in a companionable silence like they had practiced it before. When we got to the village, it was to a cheer of children as Piper led them out to us like a parade.
Therese ran to them, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re all okay?” she asked, to a chorus of nods and squeaky voices talking all at once. This was a sweet homecoming for Therese, regardless of what form she was in. The other villagers eyed the commotion, but waited until she was done with the littles. When the kids had been shooed away, we introduced her to the village.
The response to a gromlin coming into the village was considerably different from the last time. There were no scowls or looks of hostility, just genuine curiosity. I’m sure the fact that we had just won a fight rather handily had our confidence up, and that was a part of it, but I’d like to think the village had just finally started coming to terms with the fact that not everything in this new world was going to be the same.
We fed Therese and Ryan and the Hunters, then brought Therese to Arnold’s Chief Hut, to see if she could help with the upgrading issues we were having. She went in and came out only moments later.
“I know how these things work. Like town hall in the old village. Cannot access the menu. I am not leader.”
Within seconds, we all had a system prompt.
Your village has no leader!
An attempt to use the leader menu has been made by a person with a leader class by the name Therese McKase. Do you wish to allow this person to have access to your leader menu? YES/NO
A vote will commence over a 24-hour period or until all votes are cast.
Quest Received: Town Quest - Get out the vote!
Vote in the election.
Reward: 5 XP
So that’s how succession worked. I wondered if it was related to Therese's class. Maybe her being a mayor made it a democratic form of succession. I don't know if that made sense or what, but it was neat to see some town mechanics like this. I selected the YES option.
Everyone seemed to stop what they were doing to read, surprised by the system message. There was more than a single look of confusion. Graham took this moment to speak up to everyone who could hear him. “Sorry about that, we didn’t know it would happen! We aren't trying to take over or anything, we’re just trying to figure out how to upgrade the village. Please, finish up your work, and we’ll gather for a meeting tonight when everyone else is back.”
Great. Another meeting.
Chapter 36
While we were waiting for the rest of the villagers to come back, it was our turn to give Therese a tour. Madison happily jabbered away with her almost as much as Anya the oracle had when we first got to her town. It wasn’t a long tour, but Madison saved the enclave until the end.
“And now, the pièce de résistance, the one, the only, the Mage’s Enclave!” She waved her hands at it like a game show hostess. To be entirely honest, from the outside it wasn’t spectacular. It was a little odd looking, like half a tennis ball buried in the dirt, half shiny, half dull. Therese nodded at Madison. “Looks... nice.”
I guess this was enough of a response, as Madison beamed back at her, grabbed her hand and pulled her in. Graham and I followed, unable to hide the infectious enthusiasm Madison spread.
