Hack, Slash & Burn 2: A LitRPG Fantasy, page 16
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Calder smiled at the Proximity Scanner alerting him of Darktouched in the area. He looked at the mini-map, and sure enough, they were headed straight for the settlement. The portal had done exactly as he had hoped it would. He returned to the notification about claiming the settlement.
Perhaps Yesna was right in this case. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to hold this place, but he struggled to see what the harm in claiming it would be. If they lost it, they could always just leave.
You have defeated the previous inhabitants of this Settlement.
Do you wish to claim this settlement for the Light?
Calder thought, Yes.
A bright light blossomed around them, encompassing the entirety of the settlement for a moment. It was a similar light to what surrounded them whenever they gained another level, except… more.
Congratulations, you have claimed this Settlement for the Light!
This World has been claimed by Darkness, placing your Settlement in the minority. Because of this, Lighttouched will now gain twice as much Proficiency when in a ten-mile radius of this settlement.
As the Main Defender of a Lesser Outpost in hostile territory, you have been granted a +10% modifier to all of your attributes while in this World.
Calder blinked. This had not been what he was expecting. To be honest, he hadn’t thought claiming the settlement would do anything but let them seize the advantage of the Minor Enchanted Stone surrounding it, which he had been happy enough to do.
He read it again to be sure.
He smiled. Twice as much Proficiency, and he would gain 10% to all his attributes while here? He knew 10% might not seem like a lot, but he was sure that would make quite the difference in a fight.
Which reminded him, he still had 10 attribute points he needed to assign. Considering how adding to strength had affected his usage of Berserk, reducing the Killstreak he needed from 10 to 9, and that he still needed to strengthen his Magic to better use Dream Step, he did as he had before, adding half to each.
Strength increased from 106 → 111!
Magic increased from 91 → 96!
“What are you smiling about?” Yesna glanced at him, looking up from her Proximity Scanner.
He told her about having claimed the Settlement, and what it meant for them, hoping it would sway her.
Her expression was still stern, but she nodded. “I suppose that is one advantage of your foolishness.”
Calder shook his head at the woman, still smiling.
That +10% modifier made him wonder. He hadn’t received anything like that back in Berring. Was that because their world wasn’t currently claimed by the Light or the Dark? He hoped that was the case, otherwise the Darktouched commander back in Dranador might also have a similar benefit, and Calder imagined it would be far higher than 10% if this place was only considered a “Lesser Outpost.”
It also made him wonder… what would happen if he claimed another settlement? A larger town? A city? Would those modifiers keep coming? Would they add up? If he had ten settlements like this one, would all his stats be doubled?
He was thinking too far ahead, and he had to remind himself that the modifier would only work in this world, not his own world—which was the one he needed to defend.
The dings kept coming, to the point where Calder silenced the Proximity Scanner once more. The blinking red dots were coming from all directions. That was a benefit of opening a portal in a Dark World. The enemies had a sixth sense for them, and were attracted to them. He had used it to his benefit in the past.
Unless they closed it, that portal would remain open for an hour. Though only twenty beings could pass through it, the number that could be attracted to it was only limited to those enemies in the area.
Perhaps this would be a good time to have some ranged fighters. But they had faced a couple hundred orcs by themselves. He wouldn’t need the aid of ranged fighters, the boost he received from the wall would be enough—hell, he probably didn’t even need that.
He scanned the wall once more.
Minor Enchanted Stone
+250 Physical Defence
+250 Elemental Defence
Defenders within one mile of this wall receive:
+80% boost to Stamina
+10% boost to Agility
+10% boost to Strength
+10% boost to Magic
+35% boost to Perception
Including the +10% modifier he received to all of his attributes, his Agility alone would have been boosted by almost 30 points, and that was before he used Berserk and Charge. The +80%—no, +90%—boost he got to Stamina would certainly help too.
The enemies were still a little far away, so Calder walked up the stairs to the top of the battlements. Yesna sighed, but her usually soft footsteps stomped up the stairs behind him.
When he made it to the top, he leant over the battlements. He glanced at his Proximity Scanner, then looked up to the top of the hill they had observed the settlement from earlier. He still couldn’t see the enemies on their way—from any angle. “If this works, Yesna, we wouldn’t have to venture far to find a fight. We could rotate our people through this place, each of them becoming defenders. They could create a portal, and take down all the enemies that come.”
It wasn’t the same as his plan before, to have them take on harder and harder challenges. That was still something he wanted to do, but he didn’t want to command the others into doing something that could cause their deaths.
They would have to volunteer.
Chapter 17
From the top of the battlements, Calder scanned the incoming enemies. They were coming from all sides.
It wasn’t just orcs, either.
All manner of Darktouched headed toward them. In fact, the first enemies they saw were the Rockhide Bulls they had faced previously. There were even a few Dark Wolves in the mix, though they were much weaker.
The orcs that came were rather low level, ranging from level 15 to level 30. Calder had hoped that stronger enemies would be attracted to the portal, but he supposed they had already killed the strongest enemies in the area by taking the settlement.
As fighting with his ranged attacked would have been… tedious, Calder vaulted over the wall, landing heavily on the ground outside of the settlement. He could have used Dream Step, but he was planning to incorporate that into his fighting strategy, as its cooldown had once again been lowered by five seconds, putting it at fifty seconds now.
The enemies were too low-level to put up much of a fight, and as they were no longer boosted by the Minor Enchanted Stone and he was… nothing about this felt fair or difficult.
He slaughtered every enemy that came, gaining Killstreak after Killstreak and a measly amount of Proficiency even with the doubling of it they gained from being within ten miles of the settlement.
During the entire hour while the portal remained active, neither Calder nor Yesna received a single level up. Though when he had seen the enemies’ levels, he hadn’t known what he was expecting.
When the fight was done, he looted the enemies himself, leaving Yesna up in the guard tower. The suns were beginning to fall below the horizon. After he finished looting the enemies, he Dream Stepped to her side and watched the twin sunset of this alien world.
“I understand why you did this, Cal. I do.” Yesna sighed, leaning against the ledge. “This place could offer our lower-level Touched a lot of Proficiency. And if there truly are more high-level enemies the farther we go… I know how much stronger that could make us, I just worry it’s not enough.”
Calder inclined his head. “I worry that too. Seeing Dranador… I hadn’t imagined it had gotten so bad.”
“We need to bring some others here. Have a permanent roster. And we need to know what’s happening in Kashan.”
Calder blinked. He hadn’t expected her to say something like that. “I agree. A single Squad should be enough to defend this place. They can Portal out if it gets overrun.” He didn’t expect that to happen, however, unless another battalion like the one that had assaulted the Nexus were to come.
Yesna nodded. “We should return to the village. Enough time has passed. The Squads will have finished their training for the day. Kohl and Peter will have returned from observing Kashan. Perhaps Luceen, too. Maybe we’ll even have good news. I know you wanted to train until we exhausted ourselves, but right now we’re too cut off from information. Without a Spirit Construct and an easy way to communicate over distances, we have no way of knowing what is happening with the others.
Though Yesna had been sure to use the word should, it still felt as though she were giving him orders. She had been an elder of the village for many years, so he supposed it was only her right. Still, now that he was Berring’s leader, he couldn’t help but feel rankled by her tone. He let out a breath.
She was right, though.
If they had Graham back, they would be able to communicate with whichever Touched was anywhere on their world as long as the portal remained open. A Spirit Construct was a tool he sorely missed having.
“You return.” Calder glanced at his Proximity Scanner—it was blank of enemies. “Send a Squad. I’ll remain here until they arrive.”
Yesna frowned at him, but didn’t argue.
She stepped down the guard tower’s circular stairs, Calder following after her. When she reached the bottom, she took a Portal Stone from her pouch of holding, then glanced at him. “You’re going to leave the portal open, aren’t you?”
Calder nodded. “Got to do something while I wait.”
The Mystic shook her head and tossed the stone to the ground. A portal sprang into life and she stepped through without another word.
Calder once again unmuted his Proximity Scanner, looking at the mini-map. Still blank. They had probably exhausted most of the enemies in the area by now. As he waited for it to ding, he decided it was about time he explored their new settlement.
His earlier assessment about the settlement had been wrong. It wasn’t as large as Berring, and as far as he could tell, there were no farms nearby, which made him wonder what kind of agriculture—if any—the orcs might have developed.
The buildings he encountered were quite tall, the doorways large. He supposed they had to be, considering who lived in them.
Orcs weren’t short.
Walking through the settlement felt… strange. These orcs were the enemy. Evil Darktouched whose souls were corrupted. But the settlement looked so… normal. The houses weren’t just tall, but long, and they seemed to house many orcs at a time. They were filled with mats lying on cold, hard stone. There were fireplaces, but only single ones at the end of each house.
Though they didn’t feel like houses. If anything, they reminded him most of army barracks. Still, at the end of each mat were small chests. Chests that held personal belongings of the orcs that slept on those mats.
Calder was starting to relate to these beasts. He remembered having a chest just like that when he was first training in the army. He had kept things inside of it. A ring he had been given by his father, one he had sadly lost. Letters from his uncle, talking of how Berring fared in his absence. He had slept in a barracks similar to this one too—though his had smelled far better. Not that it had smelled good, of course…
He pushed away those thoughts and knelt by one of the chests, undoing the latch and opening it up. Perhaps there was something inside that he could loot, though the thought left a sour taste in his mouth.
Calder grimaced when he saw the contents. The first thing he spotted was a necklace made from teeth. He remembered seeing such a thing on the first orc he had ever seen.
Any feelings of relating to these bastards disappeared completely at the sight of that. The rest of the contents were similar. Suffice to say, there was nothing of value.
Calder shut the lid and walked out of the building.
He took a breath of fresh air once he was outside of that barracks, and glanced at his Proximity Scanner once more, wanting a distraction. These beasts are nothing like us. His thoughts turned to General Katan and the emperor. To bloodthirsty men who did terrible things. Maybe they are like us. The bad parts of us.
Calder grimaced.
He pushed on, exploring more of the settlement. Most of the buildings were like the first. He supposed there would need to be a lot of those to hold so many orcs. One of the buildings was interesting, though. It looked like a temple, or a church. There were benches lining either side of the large building, all pointing toward the front where an alter sat.
And what devilish god do these people worship? It was a foolish question, for he knew the answer to it.
They worshipped the Darkness, and this was a temple in its honour. It hadn’t changed simply because he had claimed the settlement—nothing inside the settlement had changed at all. His forehead creased, wondering if there were similar temples in other worlds. Temples of Light.
Considering he was an Avatar of Light, he supposed he should know.
Should I turn this to a Temple of Light? He wasn’t much for worship. Not for a long time. But when he had prayed to the Light, it had answered him. Calder, and every single person inside of his village, would be dead if not for that.
Still, for some reason, thinking of worshiping something he didn’t even understand made a shudder run up his spine.
No. Now wasn’t the time to think of temples and religions. Now was the time to continue to prepare for battle.
He pushed on, exploring the rest of the orc settlement. Though, he supposed it wasn’t an orc settlement anymore. For as long as he could keep it, this outpost belonged to him.
Do we even have enough people to keep this place? Calder gritted his teeth. The same thoughts kept running through his mind now that he had nothing to fight. He desperately wanted to know what was happening in Kashan. If they had been taken by the Darktouched, he knew that city would be the first they would need to lay siege to. Was that why I came out here, looking for a challenge? Not only because I wanted to gain more levels, but because I wanted to distract myself from what was really going on? Like all his other worries and fears, Calder shoved these ones down. Though that was becoming more and more difficult.
The next building he entered looked, well, like a tavern. It had a long wooden bar on one side, with barrels stacked behind it. There were many tables and benches. Tables and benches that were massive in comparison to the ones he had in the Broken Mug.
Mugs of ale and plates of foul-smelling food were littered on the tops of the tables, left abandoned when Calder had Dream Stepped into town, no doubt. The orcs must have been in the middle of eating lunch.
Though the place smelled worse than the barracks, it was yet another thing that made the orcs feel similar to humans. He supposed taverns all over the universe looked much the same. He sniffed one of the abandoned mugs of ale and gagged. We’ll have to clean this place out if we want it serviceable.
Calder exited the tavern and went to the final building in the settlement. When he stepped inside, his eyebrows shot up.
It was an armoury.
He inspected the weapons one by one, hoping he might find something interesting. Though he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Unfortunately, any high-level weapons they got from orcs simply didn’t work for humans. High-level orcs were far larger than humans, and that was reflected in their weaponry. He had learnt that the first time he had looted the corpse of an Orc Dominator. The armour it had worn had been too large for any human, and its great sword had been so unwieldly and huge it looked ridiculous simply being held by Calder.
Though they couldn’t wield those weapons, what they could do was sell them for a decent price back in the Great Marketplace. They had made a tidy profit after the Battle of Berring, and though they hadn’t faced near as many monsters today as they had then, he was sure it would make quite a difference to their little treasury.
He was about to loot everything in the place when a ding finally sounded on his Proximity Scanner. Calder smiled.
Finally, a distraction.
He could leave the looting of the armoury to whichever Squad Yesna sent to replace him.
For now, he had some orcs to kill.
Chapter 18
The orcs fell to his blade far too easily. When the portal Yesna had left open closed, the enemies stopped coming, and Calder returned to the outpost with the spoils of the fight, feeling no closer to level 56.
Though he had gained something for his efforts. He had been straining his use of Dream Step during the fights, trying to get as much as he could out of the spell since the cooldown had reduced to fifty seconds—which was still far too long, in his opinion.
In doing so, he had gained +2 to his Magic attribute, just as he had sometimes gained Agility when he trained his speed by sprinting. Luceen and Yesna had told him this might be possible, though he hadn’t expected it to happen to him as he wasn’t predominantly a magic user.
It made him wonder if there was anything they could do to speed up that process. If he could gain stats through other means than simply gaining levels or upgrading his equipment, then he had been sorely neglecting a potential aspect of his training.
Gaining that +2 to his Magic attribute brought up his base to 98, not including the 10% while in this world as the Main Defender of the outpost, or what he gained while being in the vicinity of the Minor Enchanted Stone.
No wonder facing these enemies felt like child’s play.
When he returned to the settlement, using a portal to get to the top of the battlements, he noticed another portal was open in the middle of the town. He was about to activate Charge when one of his own people stepped through. Jonah, and the rest of his Squad.
Jonah had been the final villager in the town of Berring to become Touched, as he was the youngest over the age of eighteen. The young man had decided to become a Ranger. He carried his bow with confidence.
