“You have impugned the honor of the grey goblins. I would be remiss if I allowed this to stand. I am the head shaman of this tribe; it is my duty to protect the honor.” Snik’s voice was full of rage and hatred, though Elijah couldn’t tell if it was directed more at him or at the green goblin that Elijah had gotten his ‘information’ from.
“Your honor was never impugned any more than you impugned the honor of the greens with your baseless accusation,” Elijah snarled. On his shoulder his bat was chirping loudly, switching back and forth between looking at him and looking at Snik. “I already showed once that I wasn’t willing to accept casual racism, even against your kind, when I unsummoned Bitter Root in the first vault chamber. Don’t make me regret that decision here.”
“I will not stand for—” Snik started, but Elijah cut him off with a slash of his blade. He swapped the Necrosis enchantment for a flame one to stress his point as the shadowy black surface of the weapon burst into flame. Heat radiated from the weapon, and he could feel a connection forming between the Elementalist Focus in his inventory and the weapon.
“I don’t expect you to stand for anything other than the point that led you in here in the first place,” Elijah shouted. “That point being: you want to discover what lies waiting down here.”
“You’re at a disadvantage, Snik. Killing me will leave you here alone, and I doubt you have the knowledge to get back out alone. If I kill you, I can summon my familiars and get out myself and then slaughter your entire tribe.”
The electricity in Snik’s hands crackled louder, and Elijah was certain he was about to attack. Several tense moments passed before the goblin lowered his hands, cancelling the spell. Elijah mimicked his reaction by allowing his sword to return to his shadow.
“I spoke in haste, Adventurer,” Snik assented, bowing his head deeply. “Shall we continue?”
Elijah nodded and turned his back to the goblin, though he instructed the one remaining scout on his shoulder to face backwards, keeping an eye on the shaman. The thin veneer of trust between them broke, and Elijah wasn’t about to leave himself open to an attack from behind. It would be easier just to kill Snik here and now, but he hoped the creature would still prove useful.
They continued walking further down the hallway; every few dozen meters the signs reappeared. They came to another door after a while, and above it, a much larger sign displayed the same untranslatable word or words. A smaller sign pointed further down the hall to the area labeled ‘storage’ or ‘depot’. Elijah figured it was safe and even reasonable to stop and look. After all, since they didn’t know what it said, it could be what they were looking for in order to get out of here.
The door didn’t open as they approached; whatever opening mechanism the last one used was apparently broken here. He tried to reach out to it with his code writing, but it fed back to him as a piece of scenery rather than an actual door. He’d have to open it the old-fashioned way. There was a slim gap between the door panels, not enough to see through but just barely enough to get his fingers into. It was a tight fit, but he could manage.
He pulled hard on the door. As it slid open, he could feel it catching on something on its track. As if the tracks themselves were rusty. He finally cracked it enough that he could peer inside. There were various mechanical implements lying on tables. It didn’t look like anything useful at first, but there was no telling in a place like this.
“Come here and help me get this door open,” he told Snik while moving to the side to make room for the goblin. He knew the goblin was a caster class and likely didn’t have many points in its strength stat, but hoped it would be enough that they could get it open working together.
The door hardly budged, and Elijah considered adjusting Snik’s stats to strengthen him, but he couldn’t risk making this enemy stronger than he already was. That was even assuming he could touch the creature without triggering him into a fit of aggression.
He couldn’t wait until ‘Reality Warp’ moved up to Journeyman-tier and he could start opening debug menus without touching his opponents.
With a struggle and a grunt from both of them, they finally pried the door open wide enough for both of them to slip inside. He considered the threat of the door suddenly closing on them to be minimal. It had been hard enough to open, not to mention there wasn’t any code attached that he could sense.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The room wasn’t large, but it was jam-packed with long tables. On each table were various hand-drawn schematics, all written in the same unknown script. Looking at a few, he could see various items of unknown use being described on them; some of these items were even present in the room.
The first item he picked up looked like a wand with a pistol grip attached. He turned it over in his hands, scrutinizing it before the item window showed up.
[Item]
Spell Pistol (Deteriorated)
Description: This once magical implement has long since lost its ability to use or store mana. Trying to push mana into it now would likely result in it disintegrating.
There was long since removed code attached to this item. It was a weird feeling to sense it. Pushing deeper into the code, he could catch snippets, like memories of the item hidden away behind its new description.
He pushed through the fragmented code, mentally searching for anything useful. One piece seemed to pop out at him, brighter than any of the other snippets.
Class Requirement: Spell Slinger
He tried to focus on it, but something told him that this was a unique class. There was no reason he should know that; there weren’t any kind of visible flags, but he did. The name and weapon in his hand implied that the class could store spells in a weapon, or a magazine, and send them out from the weapon itself. It could be very useful, especially with his range-limited Reality Warp.
If he could find a class tome for this class, that would benefit him hugely, though he should give it to Benjamin. He knew the mage was working towards something of his own, but it was only fair to make the offer, assuming he ever found a class tome.
Snik was moving around the room, his hands hovering over the objects and schematics but not touching them. His voice was quiet but constant; Elijah could tell that he was praying with a voice of heavy deference. This wasn’t some kind of armory or workshop to the goblin; this was a holy place, a secret temple to some long since forgotten god.
He watched the goblin closely, not trusting it to call out if it found anything useful or to pocket something. He didn’t really trust himself that he wouldn’t do the same either, so why should he trust this goblin that he’d just met.
When the prayer was finally beginning to die down, Elijah approached the shaman. “You seem to know what this all does. More oral tradition from your people?”
Snik nodded his head, finishing the prayer by raising his hands to the sky. When he was done, he finally fixed his eyes on Elijah’s own. “Yes. The adventurers who came before you. One was a thief, a sneaky bastard who would rather move about in the shadows and steal from the tribe instead of fight. He changed after entering this part of the caves.”
Snik pointed to the Spell Pistol in Elijah’s hand. “When he came out, he was wielding a weapon similar to that one, and it could cast concentrated spells at incredible distances.”
By Snik’s description, it sounded like another player, or specifically a party, had already found this area and unlocked this unique class. It made sense; Lordship of Sorcery had been out for a decade by the time he’d first logged in. There were bound to be several hundred storylines even in this area that had already been picked clean. He should just be happy that he could experience it at all. He was growing fond of the unique aesthetic of this location and the interesting mystery about the place.
The shaman started moving around the room again, his voice dropping back into prayer. Elijah took the chance to look closely at the schematics on the tables. The weapons and tools were useless now, but perhaps they could provide something useful. He still couldn’t read the actual text written on the papers, but he tugged at their code instead. He didn’t get anything concrete this time; the code was jumbled and illegible to him, but he got the sense that these were learnable crafting recipes.
Crafting wasn’t something he’d had the chance to really experiment with in this game, not outside the time he’d spent enchanting his party’s gear all the way back in Nethy, but he knew that the game had a very robust crafting system. It was possible to make quite a nice pile of gold from crafting alone, even though it had its own limitations. Celestial-tier gear was impossible to craft. Kyle, the Celestial Grave Sovereign, had been trying for several years to do so, but so far hadn’t managed to craft anything that strong. On top of that, you had to train up individual crafting skills, which was expensive and took up a lot of time.
These item recipes were being offered to him, which made him think it might be possible to make a version that didn’t require a specific unique class to wield, even if it weren’t as powerful. Could he risk the time spent learning a new skill like crafting? Or would it slow his grind down? He supposed that if he learned to make the items he needed at higher levels than he could provide himself with his own upgrades instead of waiting to find somewhere to buy them or loot them from a dungeon.
”Come adventurer. These are holy relics of my people; it is best to leave them where they lie. They will be of no use in our quest to escape.” Snik turned back towards the door and began wedging himself back through it.
Elijah grunted his agreement, grabbing one of the schematics and placing it in his inventory. He’d look at it later when he was away from the shaman. There was little point in annoying the goblin further and breaking the tenuous alliance again.
He squeezed himself out through the door, Snik offering him a hand to steady himself. “Alright. That served little purpose other than being a time sink, so do we continue towards the ‘storage’ signs, or head back the other way?”
Snik considered the options, looking both ways down the hall. “We have already come so far in this direction, perhaps it would be best if we continue. I am starting to believe that my translation of the text may have been incorrect.”
Elijah cocked his eyebrow at him. “What do you think it means now?”
His blood ran cold when Snik finally answered him. “I believe it may actually read ‘Containment’.”
Dragon Keeper: And the Eternal Quest for Rent Money
by Wyatt_Wriots
? ? ?
“
Stuck out of place.
Stuck out of time.
You really f’d yourself now, Ike.
Alone.
Forgotten.
Dragons-eye. Just beneath its silver surface, an ancient being slept—now awakened by a portal leading to another world.
? What to Expect ?
- [+] Weak → Strong → VERY STRONG!
- [+] Portal-hopping to different worlds.
- [+] Powers, powers, and more powers.
- [+] A S*** talking Dragon.