17 will be posted in a second, just a table issue on importing to Patreon. I have about an hour and half to work on the Soldier Seraphim chapter tonight.
Chapter 16: Powering Up
I was having an internal dilemma. The loss of the townsfolk was weighing heavy on me. It shouldn’t have been, as they were just digital code. My guilt also went beyond the loss to the town’s prosperity. This might be my reality for the rest of my life, which has made these NPCs feel real to me. I also still wasn’t convinced the admin had told me the truth and I still had a body in the real world to return to.
According to Simba, I would gain access to the world’s internet once the game went live after the testing period. I would have to think about this more, but I already knew I was treating the people in my village as real people whether they were NPCs or not.
I went to check on my horses, and damn, there were a lot of them! Curraen was there talking with his daughters, discussing saddles. I joined them briefly before asking for the best horse to be saddled with my new saddle. “I am ready to ride. Can you get my new saddle on the best one?” I asked Trista, the older of the two sisters.
She beamed a smile. “Lord Tallis, I knew just the horse for you!” She raced into the pen, unafraid of the large horses crowding around her and pulled one from the heard. He was a big one, about 20% larger than the others and just a tad smaller than Galana’s mount she had taken on the trade caravan. The elven sisters had no difficulty saddling him, showing their expertise.
Curraen talked while his daughters worked. “They are both doing well, thank you. Sanso taught them nature magic and the soothe beast spell.” That explained why they were doing so good with the orc battle chargers.
Trista brought the big black warhorse over and handed me the reins. “It is too crowded Lord Tallis. They need more room to run. We ride them all every day, but it is harder with the new horses,” she complained respectfully.
I wanted to retort that they were just mounts in a game. Then I realized if I was going to treat the NPCs as real people, I should consider the mounts as real animals as well. “I will have Sanso build them some stone stables soon,” I conceded, causing the girl to give me an unexpected energetic hug in front of her father. I flushed unnecessarily.
I patted the horse, who snorted at me like I wasn’t worthy of him. I swung into the saddle half-expecting to be bucked off, but he stood fast. “Let’s run!” I said, and the horse took off at a run, and it was exhilarating. I must have been going around 40 miles per hour, and it was a fairly smooth ride! When prompted, I accepted the riding skill.
Riding (P) 1 Tier 1 unlocked, +1 Agi, +2% riding speed and defense while mounted
I went straight to the tower, finding it had already been cleaned up. Now only two guards were on watch. I tethered my mount and spent an hour repairing the door. My slab made a nice paved entryway. I wondered if my people had retrieved the orcs I had crushed underneath it? I climbed the tower, acknowledging the guards, and looked over the ineffectual earthen wall.
Out on the plains, you could see dots for the encounters. They would not be clear until you approached close enough, though. I went to my mount and headed out onto the plains, running down encounters one by one. After three successful kills, I decided my mount needed a name, he was a great steed, and we were starting to bond, gaining confidence in each other. “I am going to call you Titan,” I said aloud. His powerful neck bobbed in agreement. I analyzed Titan.
Titan, Black Mountain Steed, Level 16, Health 1619 Traits: Surefootedness I, Vigor II
I checked on the traits quickly. Surefootedness gave the mount a 10% better footing on difficult terrain, while vigor gave him a 20% slower drain on stamina. Both were very typical traits for a mount, and they could be tiered up to level five. Every five levels you got another point to assign to your mount’s traits.
I switched to my axe, and we continued across the plains. The saddle properties were making everything so easy. I didn’t even realize when we reached the buffalo. I took one down before turning south into the unexplored region of my map. Buffalo began to disappear, and the terrain held shorter grass and more sandy soil. From nearby, the earth exploded in a spray of sand, and a giant scorpion emerged. Fortunately, we were moving fast, and missed its attack. I tried to analyze it but got nothing useful.
?? Giant Scorpion, Level ??, Health ??
Since we were much faster, I was able to cast hail of stones and move out of range. We repeated the hit-and-run tactic a dozen times before the beast fell. The influx of experience was welcome.
I gathered the stinger, as that was the only thing that looked valuable. Maybe an alchemist could make poison from it. It was getting late in the day, but I had a few hours of daylight left. We rode further south and pulled more scorpions. I managed to pull five of them together in a group and turned them to mush with repeated hail of stones as Titan circled them, keeping us out of range. This was almost too easy!
Our second group had four scorpions. Our third had six. Our fourth had three, and when they fell, I leveled! The sun was setting, and we were 100 miles from the village. We took off at the best speed and returned two hours after dark. There were five guards in the tower, and I waved as I returned home. Trista took Titan’s reins from me. “You ran him hard. You shouldn’t work him so hard.” I apologized, but I could have sworn the horse rolled his eyes at the girls. I was probably mistaken as it was dark.
At home, I found Jaesmin at the table. She jumped up and ran to hug me. She was worried, but she knew that I would resurrect if I died. Still, it felt good to have someone worrying about you. I sat at the table and told her of my day, and she reciprocated with what happened in town while I was away.
Galana had pushed the trade expedition to leave quickly and would make all possible haste to return quickly. They left mid-afternoon. Sanso was close to finishing the tower by the river with Jaesmin’s help. I pulled out my stable plans and handed them to Jaesmin. Her next project was to build three separate stables. I would come to supervise as she and Sanso did not have high enough skill to get the full benefit of the plans. When Jaesmin exhausted her updates, I opened my map and looked at where I had traveled. The scorpion area was called the Valley of the Azul.
I then opened my character sheet. My masonry and carpentry skills were 24 and 21, respectively, so I was good to build the inn. Well, I just needed two points in Masonry: Foundations so that was where my skill points went. Next, I put four points into intelligence and two into magic.
Then, it was time to read my backlog of notifications. The axe and the two-handed axe both climbed 3 points to 10 and 12, respectively. Analyze was up a single point, and I had not been using it as much recently. I needed to go back to analyzing everything.
The next skill to show an increase was drafting, up 5 points to 29. Earth magic was up 8 points, as well as stone magic, 18 and 20! Damn, I hadn’t thought about it much. But I had been using stone magic a lot in both. Building and fighting. I marveled at the earth magic skills for a bit before seeing leadership was up two points. Masonry was up to 25 with foundations 23, and structures lagging at 15.
Nature magic and plant each gained one point. Ranged was up to 23! Gaining a ridiculous 10 points. Looking at the logs, I saw it was mostly due to killing those scorpions. Hail of Stones counted as a ranged targeted attack. How was riding land up to 20? I just learned the skill yesterday. It was actually at 14, but the saddle gave me +6 to the skill, but it was still incredible leveling.
Other skills saw percentage increases on their advancement bars toward the next level, but none advanced. The game seemed a bit broken. On my mount, I got battle experience for the scorpions for four different skills: riding, earth magic, stone magic, and ranged. I should take advantage of this before they fix this semi-cheat. With my incredible mount and its superior speed, I was killing creatures at a much higher level than I should be able to.
During the evening, I quickly redrafted the stables to make them all stone since we had no wood. Next, I worked on the library. I was just excited to go kill scorpions tomorrow and using the drafting to calm myself. The detailed work on the library was coming along. I had great Roman arches all over the building. Large spaces everywhere. The building itself was almost a half mile round. At its zenith was a large room for a stellar observatory. The observatory was nearly five hundred feet up. The sun rose, I retrieved Titan from the stables. I helped Sanso and Jaesmin finish the first stable. Sanso then taught me a new spell, boulder crush.
Boulder Crush Earth: Stone Tier 8, Magic Cost: 200, Effect: Summon a large boulder that is hurled at your target, Damage: 250, Casting Time: 3 seconds
With my earth and ranged bonuses, this spell did 500 damage to a single target! I could almost one-hit myself! I paid Sanso for the spell, ran to the already-saddled Titan, and we were off.
I skipped the encounters with lions on the plains, passing them at amazing speeds to reach the scorpion area in two hours. When we arrived, we started pulling scorpions. We pulled seven in our first swing. Easy kills. The second group was a little tricky. While I was leading the group, trying to find a few more, we got ambushed. I was stabbed in the thigh for 210 damage and had a poison status.
You are poisoned. You take 10 damage every second for 30 seconds. Note: this effect is stackable
Crap, over 500 damage with one hit! A second strike and I would be dead. Titan seemed concerned as I swayed in the saddle. I would have to be more careful. I regrouped, circling back to the area that we already cleared. I finished off the group and started another pull. My day continued as such. It was repetitive but rewarding. We narrowly avoided two more surprise attacks and were once encircled by a large group.
After a few hours, I leveled up. I counted the fresh poison stingers in my bag, 67. I couldn’t believe I had that many kills already. I had enough daylight to double the number. I ate some jerky while my magic pool regened and took to assigning my skills and points. I was level 13…6 points into magic to increase my pool. My two skill points went into earth magic. This was because I was losing stone magic experience because they were two levels apart. I returned to Titan, who was also interested in getting back to killing. The sun was close to disappearing when I leveled again. I smiled and urged Titan home. He broke into a sprint, eager to show me his speed and maybe to agitate his elven handlers.
I rushed past the tower and home. I unsaddled Titan and put him in the new stable. One of the elf girls was sleeping in the loft and came down to feed him. I practically danced on my way home, but calling it a dance was an affront to real dancers. I assigned pints for level 14, adding six points to magic and two skill points to earth magic. Checking my skills, drafting was up one point, earth magic up to 26, and stone magic also at 26! Ranged was up to level 27, and finally, riding land was up to 19, 25 once the saddle was added in. I also completed the quest to protect the orc refugees as the timer hit zero.
I was so excited at dinner that I didn’t even realize what I was eating and just talked about my day of killing scorpions to Jaesmin. Jaesmin was softer-spoken than usual but told me about her day. Sanso and her were close to finishing the second stable. Also, some lumber had arrived from Barrista. Barrista was the town 15 miles south of us. Apparently, Elice had traded for a steady supply of lumber from Barrista on her way south in exchange for hides. Good idea!
Now I could start building the first floor of the inn. My night was spent drafting the library even though Jaesmin said I should get some sleep.
In the morning, I was helped Sanso and Jaesmin finish the stonework on the inn. Then, I was off to the plains to hunt scorpions again. That was pretty much my week: work on the stables or inn, hunt for 14 hours, come home, and draft the library overnight. I had been very efficient and made huge gains in stats. My level was now at 19. The scorpions I finally learned were level 25 on average, and I was getting a lot less experience now as our levels got closer. All stat points went to magic, and all skill points went to earth magic so I wouldn’t lose experience from stone magic as it lagged behind. My 21 skills now looked like this:
Analyze (P) 14Artistry: Carving (P) 11Artistry: Drafting 37Axe (P) 11Axe: Two Handed (S) 13Cooking (P) 6Earth Magic (P) 40Earth: Stone Magic (S) 40Laborer 11Leadership (P) 14Masonry (P) 27Masonry: Foundations (S) 24Masonry: Structures (S) 17Nature Magic (P) 9Nature Magic: Plant (S) 8Ranged Combat (P) 35Reading Common 3Riding (P) 40Woodcraft (P) 23Woodcraft: Carpentry (S) 25Woodcraft: Furniture (S) 10
The best part of leveling so many varied skills was that my stat points were inflating with them. Reading didn’t count against my 23 skills, but that meant I only had two more slots before I started to receive a penalty for all skill experience. I would have to be careful what skills I added. Maybe I could use a skill to enhance one of my poorer stats.
I received the alert I had been waiting for that the auction was closing in one hour. I opened the auction to check. There were 77 bids in total, but no one outbid me on any of my selections. That was a relief. The inn was close to completion, but unfortunately my village quality had not increased in time to add more auction bids.
The auction finished, and I checked on my bids…
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