The Land: Founding (Chaos Seeds Book 1) (12 page)

Your relationship has improved with
Wood Sprites from friendly to
trusted
.

The relationship of the Mist Village
has improved with Wood Sprites from friendly to
trusted
.

 Hisako’s face shone like the
sun. Her anger at seeing the staff had been replaced by pure joy. “Thank you
for this precious gift. Rest with us, then start on you journey in the
morning.” Their rations had run out the night before, and so Richter welcomed a
good meal. The Hearth Mother turned and walked through the golden grass. 
As Richter, Sion and other sprites followed her, he thought hopeful thoughts
for the morrow.

The sky began to lighten with colors
of peach and amber.  Sion and Richter once again stood at the boundaries
of the meadow containing the Hearth Tree. “Once you return to your village,
make your way due west. After several weeks of travel you should reach the
boundary of the forest. There, you will find a road. The other travelers you
meet can direct you to the city of Law. Be careful! There are many dangers of
in the forest. We are on the Northern side and there shouldn’t be any organized
tribes between here and Yves, but sometimes the southern tribes send hunting
parties up. They are not as kind as we are.” Turning to Sion, Hisako placed a
cupped hand to his face. “Come back to us safely my son.”

 Closing his eyes, he bowed his
head, “Yes mother.”

 Led by two sprites, a pair of
ponies with saddle bags were brought to them. Checking the bags, they were full
of food stuffs and other useful tools including more Sprite Arrows of Nature.
It was a welcome sight because they had only been able to recover a few after
the fight with the goblins. Thanking Hisako a final time, they mounted the
ponies and moved off into the forest. Riding in silence for the first ten
minutes, Richter then looked to Sion asking, “So you’re a prince, huh?”

 “I don’t want to talk about
it,” Sion replied curtly without turning his head.

 Chuckling under his breath,
Richter replied, “Whatever you say your highness,” and rode on next to his
friend.

 It took three days to get back
to village. Each night they scouted for herbs, and Sion began to teach him the
rudiments of potion making. The tools that Sion used were too small to be of
practical use for Richter, but he did still obtain the skill by assisting Sion.
Unfortunately, knowledge was not enough to increase his skill level though, as
he did not advance further than level one with 0% towards the next level.

 The peace of the ride also let
him focus upon an area he had been ignoring, his point allocation. He did not
want everything randomly allocated and it had been almost a week since he had
reached level 4. Based upon the battles he had fought so far, he would not last
long in a stand up fight. Each kill he had made had been greatly aided by
either surprise or poison already weakening his enemies. The large damage that
just the edge of the bear’s strike had caused worried him. It was clear he
needed more health. At the same time though, the power of both his Imbue Arrow
and Focus skills meant his stamina and mana also needed to be higher. It served
his playing style better to be well rounded anyway. He examined each
characteristic carefully.

Strength – Improves damage with melee
weapons or thrown weapons. Each point increases carrying capacity by 10 kg.
Affects anything that requires brawn,
ie
climbing,
wrestling, intimidation. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

Agility – Improves accuracy with
ranged or thrown weapons.  Determines movement speed. Determines dodge.
Determines balance. Affects ability to move without being detected. Other
unknown effects to be discovered.

Dexterity – Determines attack speed. Improves
damage with ranged weapons. Improves reflexes. Improves accuracy of melee
weapons.
 
Other unknown effects to be
discovered.

Constitution – Determines Health.
Each point increases Health by 10 points. Affects resistance to poison,
illness, extreme temp, etc. Affects stamina regeneration. Other unknown effects
to be discovered.

Endurance – Determines stamina. Each
point increases Stamina by 10 points. Affects ability to perform physical
exertions at peak efficiency. Other unknown effects to be discovered.

Intelligence – Determines mana. Each
point increases Mana by 10 points. Affects resistance to mental attacks.
Affects effectiveness of certain skills. Reasoning improved. Other unknown
effects to be discovered.

Wisdom – Determines mana
regeneration. Affects magical resistance. Determines perception. Other unknown
effects to be discovered.

Charisma – Determines the likelihood
others will like you or want to interact with you. A higher score may open
certain quests that would otherwise be locked.  Other unknown effects to
be discovered.

Luck – It will affect you in a
million different ways… or not. But as the man said, “I’d rather be lucky than
dead.”

 Each description was helpful
save the last. Of course every game he had ever played had a crappy description
for luck.

 He had twenty four points to
invest. He could definitely see the bonus from being a Chaos seed coming in
handy. He would theoretically be 50% more powerful than other humans at an analogous
level. He decided to invest half of his points equally into Constitution,
Endurance and Intelligence, raising Health, Mana and Stamina by forty points
each.

 As his character seemed based
on range attacks and speed, at least for now, he decided to forgo strength.
Agility had already been increased. Though it pained him to put points in a
“soft” area like Charisma, it was clear he could not look at his current
situation as if he was playing a simple RPG. This was his life now. His
upcoming interaction with a whole city meant that interpersonal interactions
were going to be important. Also the advice of the hearth mother to make a
community was something he took seriously. The comedy of having a four foot
tall older woman dictating his life wasn’t anything new, his own mother was
five feet of feisty fury.

 Hating every moment of the
decision, he invested six points in Charisma. Choosing yes on the final ‘are
you sure’ prompt, he felt like he had just sacrificed six children! He also
invested four points in luck, because… hey, what self-respecting southerner
couldn’t win a hand of Texas
Holdem
. At that thought,
he made a mental note to invent Texas
Holdem
. He was
sure he could make a fortune cleaning out the medieval rubes that seemed to
live around here. He put his final two points in dexterity to get a bit more
attack damage out his archery.

 In addition to the points from
his leveling, his exertions during his quest to cleanse the forest had given
him +2 Endurance, +1 Strength, +3 Dexterity. Looking at his character, he
decided that despite his low level he liked how he was rounding out.

 The last thing he had to decide
was where to put the proficiencies. He had a total of 100% to increase any
skill, in groupings of 25%. His strongest asset was now Imbue Arrow making it
an easy decision. He placed all 100% into the skill and was shown the prompt.

Congratulations! You have reached
skill level 2 in Imbue Arrow. +5% damage. +5% speed of mana flow.

 One curious thing was that both
his Focus and Imbue Arrow skills was offset on his status page. He had seen the
same thing, when examining Sion’s status. Now that he was thinking about it,
Richter remembered that both had been called ‘subskills.’ Asking the sprite
about it, the explanation was fairly simple. Subskills were dependent on
another main skill. As such increasing the subskill would increase the main skill
slightly, but the subskill could never be of a higher level than the main
skill. Richter nodded understanding, and they rode on.

 Midday on the third day after
leaving the Hearth Tree, they arrived back at the Mist Village. The trip was
much faster now that they knew exactly where they were going. As they came upon
the ruins he was now the Master of, Richter chuckled silently thinking, could
my life BE any more manga? He was pleasantly surprised however, upon his first
sight of the village. A trench lined the outside of the ruined wall, six feet
wide and six feet deep. The dirt from the trench had been lined up and packed
on top of the stone remnants creating a four foot earthen wall. Hard packed
dirt led across trench in one area, leading to a break in the crumpled wall.
Outside of the trench there were stacks of chopped down trees with the branches
cut off and piled to the side. Three piles of stone were also present,
delineated by size, presumably the loose rocks from inside the wall. All of the
bodies had of course been removed, but even the stone had been scrubbed clean
of some of the black blood stains. Only a trace of the previous foul odor
remained. What was before him now was a plateau of grass pockmarked with
freshly turned earth where the trees had been cut down and then the stumps
removed. True to his instruction,
Futen
appeared
several feet away, and glided to a stop in front of him.

 “Welcome back, my Lord.”

 Richter smiled, “You’ve done
well
Futen
. How is our village?”

 “We have had some exciting
developments in the last week, my Lord,” the remnant said. The content of his
message contrasted sharply with his emotionless tone. “Though we cannot erect
external buildings as I stated, we have collected raw resources as you can see.
I have also explored the floor where you claimed Mastery of the village. I have
found several useful rooms. If you will come with me sir.”

 
Futen
began gliding away at the speed of a normal walk. Climbing the hill to the cave
entrance, Richter and Sion followed it inside. Grey lights cast a gentle glow
over the tunnel. Periodically placed along the top of the hallway, globes of
slowing mist could be seen.

 “Where did these come from,”
Richter asked.

 “They are one of the
improvements open to you my lord. The mana requirement for the mist lights is
negligible. Once cast, and they last for a year at a time, so I took the
liberty.”

 The tunnel opened into the
chamber of their grand fight. The ceiling arched above their heads, this time
illuminated by mist globes clearly showing vaulted ceilings. The blood had been
cleaned from the floors along with much of the grime. A massive mosaic could
now be seen in the floor. Four separate spirals that met in the middle. Each
spiral was a different color. One spiral was gold and the opposing spiral
black. The other two were blue or clear respectively. The center of the mosaic
was a dark gray diamond. Opposite from where they entered the room, a staircase
could be seen leading downward. The other entrances were also well lit.

 “On this floor is a meeting
hall, larder, storage room, armory, barracks and treasury, and several other
empty rooms. The stairway leads to the first floor of the catacombs.”

 Richter had been walking around
the mosaic examining it. He nodded along as
Futen
spoke, but looked up sharply at the last. Treasury did you say? Realizing he
had not asked aloud, most likely because his mouth had started watering, he
tried again.

 “Treasury did you say?”

 “Yes my lord, I was going to
show you that…”

 “Let’s go now,” Richter said
cutting the remnant off.

 The remnant changed direction,
gliding to a hallway on the left. At the end the hallway was a solid door. It
appeared to be made of a bluish silver metal, with a clear circle of glass set
at head height.