Elijah stepped through into the antechamber of the Dryad Glade. He could sense the tension in the air.
“Elijah!” Sasha gasped as she ran over to him, her hand running over the tears in his clothing. She was looking to see if he had any wounds, even though she could sense his health through her upgraded perception.
“I’m fine, Sasha. We’ve got a problem, guys. The Reapers are here already.” He dropped the bombshell on them. They had hoped they’d have more time, especially after learning about the destruction of Nethy, but Tom’s words left no room for questioning.
Sasha reached up and touched his cheek. There was quiet concern in her voice. “What about Mara? Is she going to be able to help us?”
Elijah shook his head. “No, she’s bolstering the defenses of her city. She knows Arturus is the leader of the Reapers. They got into a fight over Nethy.” Bile rose up in his throat as he remembered the destruction their fight had caused. The memory of the smell of the new inland sea that now took the place of the starting city filled his nostrils.
Sasha saw the look on his face, instantly registering that something was wrong. “Nethy?”
He slowly nodded his head. “It’s gone. The entire city,” he stammered. His voice was choking up now. “The whole city is a water-filled crater now.”
Gasps echoed around the room. The idea of an entire city destroyed by players, even at the power scale that Mara and Arturus operated at. Sasha buried her face in Elijah’s shoulder, and tears wet his shirt. He reached a hand up to stroke her hair, meaning it to be a comforting gesture. Instead, his ‘Reality Warp’ skill took its own prerogative and opened her debug menu.
[DEBUG VIEW: Sasha]
Sasha2847 {
Player_ID: 1254431112
Class: WHITE_MAGE
Respawn_Timer: 120s
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: PLAYER_LOOT_DEFAULT
Despawn_Trigger: TIMER
Faction_Tag: PLAYER_HERO
XP_Multiplier: (Default_6.0)
Stats [
Level: 18 (3316 / 3523 XP)
Health: 50 / 50
Mana: 150 / 150
Strength: 6 (Beginner)
Intelligence: 30 (Journeyman)
Dexterity: 7 (Beginner)
Constitution: 20 (Journeyman)
]
}
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Elijah smiled. This was the woman who had called him an idiot for not balancing the allocation of his stats, and here she was with two stats all the way down in Beginner while two others were up to Journeyman.
He couldn’t help but let a light chuckle escape his lips.
“You’re laughing at a time like this?” Sasha pulled her face away from his shoulder. Tears were sparkling in her eyes, even as her grip tightened on him further.
Elijah reached up to wipe a tear from her cheek, marvelling that the game could reproduce such intricate details. “Sorry, I’m not laughing about Nethy. My skill activated on its own when you hugged me. Weren’t you the one saying we need to balance our stats better?”
Hurt flashed over Sasha’s face. Elijah couldn’t tell if it was from his sudden change of topic, or from the invasion of her privacy. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “The difference, Elijah,” there was a slight hiss to her voice when she said his name. “Is that I know what I’m doing with my build.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
She chuckled and lightly smacked his cheek. “I told you before: my little secret.” She took a step back from him, rubbing the tears from her eyes.
“Alright, since we won’t have Mara’s help, what are we going to do? I don’t think the plan will work without it.” Nicholas grumbled, walking over to the two of them. As he got closer, Elijah could see that the man had changed physically just as much as his stats had. The thick bark that had covered his skin before had spread. He was still the impressive mountain of a man that Elijah knew, but his entire look had changed. The thick wooden armor, which looked like it grew from him instead of being worn, replaced his steel plate armor. He placed a hand on Sasha’s back and on Elijah’s shoulder.
Once more unbidden, ‘Reality Warp’ pulled open Nicholas’ debug menu.
[DEBUG VIEW: Nicholas]
Nicholas11578 {
Player_ID: 1295613964
Class: HEARTWOOD_SOVEREIGN
Respawn_Timer: 120s
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: PLAYER_LOOT_DEFAULT
Despawn_Trigger: TIMER
Faction_Tag: PLAYER_HERO
XP_Multiplier: (Default_6.0)
Stats [
Level: 18 (3275 / 3523 XP)
Health: 110/100
Mana: 25/25
Strength: 20 (Journeyman)
Intelligence: 6 (Beginner)
Dexterity: 13 (Apprentice)
Constitution: 22 (Journeyman)
]
}
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Elijah was beginning to understand that his skill sometimes had a mind of its own, but this was getting ridiculous. He didn’t need to see his friends’ stats to know how much trouble they were in. There was an entire army outside, possibly up to a hundred reapers. And that wasn’t even considering the possibility that Arturus had recovered enough from his fight with Mara to be present.
Elijah had managed to take Tom out of the equation for now, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be other equally terrifying high-level players in the army outside.
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Thinking about Tom, specifically the no holds barred fight, gave Elijah the inkling of an idea. It was risky and stupid, but in hindsight of all the other plans they’d concocted so far, it wasn’t the worst.
“We need a new plan. Something that doesn’t require the intervention of Mara to take on Arturus.,” he told them, gritting his teeth as the plan solidified in his head. “Benjamin, Bo, come over here, please.”
Bo shimmered into existence beside Sasha. He’d been eavesdropping on the conversation using ‘Stealth’. There wasn’t time to scold or chide him for it though. He needed to get all the information possible to make the plan work. He reached over and grabbed Bo’s arm.
[DEBUG VIEW: Bo]
Bo569 {
Player_ID: 1371112999
Class: ROGUE
Respawn_Timer: 120s
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: PLAYER_LOOT_DEFAULT
Despawn_Trigger: TIMER
Faction_Tag: PLAYER_HERO
XP_Multiplier: (Default_6.0)
Stats [
Level: 18 (3336 / 3523 XP)
Health: 50/50
Mana: 20/20
Strength: 15 (Apprentice)
Intelligence: 4 (Beginner)
Dexterity: 30 (Journeyman)
Constitution: 10 (Apprentice)
]
}
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He had to smile. Bo was pushing a lot more points into dexterity than he had told them he was.
“Got that wall-running thing figured out yet?” he asked the rogue. Bo grinned, turning to look at the far wall.
“Check it out.” He chuckled, vanishing back into stealth. When he reappeared, he was running at full speed just a few feet from the wall. He jumped into the air and began running along the stone surface as if gravity were pulling him down to it. He did a flip and landed once more on the ground before vanishing into the cover of stealth. Sasha giggled and clapped her hands together; proud of the rogue’s accomplishment.
Bo reappeared, standing beside Nicholas and Elijah as Benjamin finally made it over to them.
“Dude, that was awesome.” Benjamin shouted, grabbing hold of Bo’s arm and shaking him. “Man, I wish I’d picked a rogue class now too. I wanna be able to run on the walls.”
Nicholas and Bo laughed while Sasha rolled her eyes. Elijah had to bite back a harsh remark. Running on walls was cool, but wasn’t altering the very fabric of the game cool? Wasn’t his ability to summon bat swarms and teleport across the map worthy of this kind of praise?
He realized he was being selfish again. Of course it was cool, but his classes were unique. Benjamin didn’t have the option that he did to acquire them. With Bo’s rogue class, he could see a different path he could have taken.
He was suddenly conscious of the fact that Benjamin had a chance at the skills that Elijah used, even if the Mage didn’t know it. Elijah had considered saving the tome that had unlocked his Dragontooth King class; he should have done so. If he had, then one of his friends could have gotten the Celestial tier class. They could have become just as strong as Elijah was slowly becoming. He remembered that he had considered doing so when he’d found the tome, but he’d been selfish.
He hated that he’d done that, taken that chance from his friend, but he had to move past that. They had a mission to take care of, and the past was in the past. Saving everyone in the game took priority over his feelings that he’d betrayed his friends. He tapped Benjamin’s shoulder, letting his skill activate by itself.
[DEBUG VIEW: Benjamin]
Benjamin17419 {
Player_ID: 1384572139
Class: MAGE
Respawn_Timer: 120s
Collision_State: TRUE
Loot_Table: PLAYER_LOOT_DEFAULT
Despawn_Trigger: TIMER
Faction_Tag: PLAYER_HERO
XP_Multiplier: (Default_6.0)
Stats [
Level: 17 (3033 / 3115 XP)
Health: 90/90
Mana: 140/140
Strength: 2 (Beginner)
Intelligence: 28 (Journeyman)
Dexterity: 11 (Apprentice)
Constitution: 18 (Apprentice)
]
}
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“Huh?” Elijah muttered, looking over the mage’s stats. He hadn’t really paid any attention to the man’s health pool; that was Sasha’s job after all. It was definitely interesting that he had the third-highest constitution stat out of the entire group. Most people thought of mages as glass cannons.
Benjamin looked at him. “What?”
Elijah told him his thoughts, and Benjamin laughed. “Well, what do you expect? A higher constitution means that Mana Drain doesn’t make me feel so sick. Most mages just spam points into their intelligence so they don’t drain themselves completely, then they get sicker than ever because their constitution is so much lower than their intelligence.”
That was interesting. Intelligence allowed casters to cast more spells, dexterity gave them the ability to cast faster, and now he learned that constitution eased the symptoms of being drained. It was a curious interplay among the three skills. Considering that going from level one to level one-hundred would reward a player with just enough points to raise three skills from one to one-hundred, if you ignored your fourth stat completely, that made Elijah curious to know if every class had three stats that had the same interplay.
What three skills would be the most important ones for his own class? His Reality Warp skills didn’t require mana to use, so would that mean that the other stats would be his best bet? Of course, that didn’t include his bugged ‘Summon Familiar’ skill, or the upgraded ‘Bitter Dominion’ version.
Did multi-classing throw the idea of three main stats off? He didn’t know enough about the other classes to know if they had the same interplay. Sasha seemed certain that her choice to only level up her intelligence and constitution was the best thing for a White Mage, and he couldn’t see a way that Nicholas’ new Heartwood Sovereign could function without all four stats.
Elijah shook his head. There was no time to worry about all this. He had a plan in his brain, and now he needed to put it into place.
“Alright guys. I have an addendum to our original plan. Is everything else ready to go?” he asked.
Nicholas nodded. “Everything except for us. Without the gear from Mara and her support, I’m not sure how we’ll follow through with it though.”
Elijah grinned, holding his hands out to the side. “I can take care of that.” To his left, his three familiars sprung forth in a flash of blue mana; to his right, three bats formed from the shadow, circling him once before landing on his shoulder.
“I wasn’t idle after Mara turned me down,” he told them. His grin spanned from ear to ear. “I went back to the Abandoned Fort.”
Bo perked up immediately. “You did what? That whole place is full of glitches, are you stupid?”
“Because we don’t know anything about glitches, Bo.” Elijah saw Sasha’s eyes flicker up and to the left, the same place in Elijah’s own vision was covered by the menu indicating the glitch that had trapped them here still floated.
“It was a risk,” Elijah confirmed, breaking the tension before it could turn into a disagreement. “But it was one that I had to take. It was the only way we were going to survive what was coming.”
Benjamin was about to respond when he turned his head towards the stairway. “They’re here,” he whispered.
Just then, Elijah felt what Benjamin had sensed. The leading edge of a mana siphon effect.
“Okay, here’s the plan. No arguments, just do it.”
