Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon) (42 page)

"That one," Max pointed toward one of the caves. "I'll have to swing my sword around somehow, after all."

Inside, the cave looked more like a rapid transit tunnel. There was enough light from the glowing green vegetation on the walls and the ceiling to see what was happening some two hundred feet ahead.

"A little larger than a beaver, eh?!" said an outraged Luffy, observing the rats scurrying through the cave. "My grandpa had a sheepdog that was quite a bit smaller! And the stench!"

"You've never really seen beavers, have you?" Max grunted as he got a better grip of the sword. "Did you expect the aroma of lilacs?"

"Something less revolting would sure be nice..." muttered the mage. "Are you ready?"

"I am."

Luffy targeted the nearest level 10 rat, his hands flashed red for a moment, and a fiery arrow hit the mob in the side, taking off about a quarter of the rodent's HP. The wounded rat squealed loudly and started hopping towards the foe. Max took a step forward and activated Mighty Blow, plunging his sword into the rodent's neck. There was a gruesome crunch; the rat bled, squealed, then dashed past the warrior and sank its fangs into Luffy's thigh.

"Bastard!" the mag exhaled, wincing from the pain, and tried to push the mob aside, taking the staff with both hands.

A blow of the two-handed sword threw the rodent to the side. The rat turned around and attacked the warrior this time. A sharp pain shot through Max's leg—the sensation was very similar to that of his neighbor's Irish wolfhound biting him in his childhood.
Bearable,
was the only thought that flashed in his mind as he dealt his third blow. The second Fire Arrow ended the battle—the rat convulsed, and then was still.

"The smell has changed," Max winced from the spreading reek of burned wool, blood, and musk. "Although I can't say it has become more pleasant..."

"This rat bastard screwed up my second casting," Luffy approached the rodent's corpse, limping.

"You have higher damage—one blow wasn't enough to draw its aggro," said the warrior in an apologetic tone.

"Doesn't seem life-threatening," Luffy rolled up his trouser leg and demonstrated an enormous bruise on his thigh. "I dread to think what would happen if it went a little to the left," he shook his head.

"Don't stick your 'a little to the left' out much," Max chuckled, "especially when there are rats around. Although you shouldn't worry, anyway—you won't need it in Sunlit Forest anyway, and it's gonna grow back if anything happens. If it doesn't, we'll see a local healer about it..."

"I don't find your moronic jokes amusing," the mage made his way around the pool of blood spilled by the mob, went down on one knee, and touched a patch of the mob's skin where there were no wounds. He grimaced and rose, rubbing his hands.

"What's the matter?"

"Look, why don't you take it yourself?" Luffy nodded toward the corpse and moved aside.

"Wuss," snorted Max as he looted the corpse for a piece of rat meat, a twenty-inch tail and a gland—a slippery bluish piece of offal. "How are you planning to get your alchemy on? I heard some of the ingredients they use are even quainter."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," replied the mage in the same vein. "I won't be able to carry much at this point, at any rate—I need a special bag. So, shall I pull the next one?"

Some two hours later, Luffy inquired, "Are you sure you're not Korean? Maybe you have relatives there?"

"You leveled to twelve? So why don't you shut up—there's nowhere else we can level this fast."

Max was a gruesome sight—he was covered in blood and unidentified pieces of rodent anatomy from head to toe, much like a character in a horror B-movie. Once they leveled to eleven and learned Dash, things livened up a bit. The rats no longer reached the mage—the warrior would Dash to intercept them, and deal the second blow as soon as the stun wore off. There was just one mishap—inexplicably, three rats attacked the companions at once instead of coming at them one by one. This could have cost Max and Luffy their lives—fortunately, all three mobs attacked Max, and still the Scroll of Full Healing saved the day. The warrior used it once the pain became unbearable and the world before his eye flashed red, else they would have had to trot all the way back here from their bind point in Venlamin. The silver lining was that Max's Toughness skill increased by two percent.

"Are you planning to stay here until we waste all the critters? We've already taken care of over a hundred mobs—they'll start respawning pretty soon."

"There's next to nothing left," the warrior gestured forward, where one could vaguely discern a wall. "A dozen rats or so, and we can leave."

"Reckon this is the end of the cave?" Luffy snorted. "It feels like we should have walked right through that hill a long time ago."

"No matter. Let's snuff these and split. By the way, do you smell what I smell?"

"I won't be smelling much for quite a while after today," the mage sighed heavily. "But it stinks like there's a stiff somewhere down there."

"Exactly. So stop talking and set your sights on the next one."

About five minutes later they stood near the far wall of the cave and studied the swollen and semi-decomposed body of an elven warrior that lay in the shade of an overhanging piece of stone.

"The hell is this?" Max eyed the bloodied sword sceptically, put it in his inventory, and looked at the mage. "Can you make anything of it?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson," the other replied, trying to breathe through his mouth. "The guy must have entered the cave, walked it all the way through, and died. The rats aren't aggressive if you don't attack them, or he would have died much earlier.

"Brilliant," Max tried to perform an applause, and the rattle of his chainmail gloves echoed toward the entrance. "Won't you just tell me what the hell a level 40 elf was doing here, and how he might have died?"

"Hey, I'm no coroner! I used to be the director of a travel agency, if you must know, although you don't need to be an expert to get an idea of what happened here," he nodded at the three lacerations on the dead man's chest. "A bear must have attacked him, and then he probably expired of blood loss. This is weird, though."

"Exactly," Max shook his head. "What kind of a blow does it have to be for chainmail to get rent like that?"

"Any bear could do it IRL, let alone here. Don't just stand there—loot the corpse and let's get out of here, I suddenly feel like a drink."

"Why are you refined types always so squeamish?"

There was a clinking sound, the corpse's money was shared equally between the friends, and each became two silver coins richer.

You've accessed the quest: The Guardsman's Medallion.

Quest type: rare, chain.

Take the medallion of Guardsman Kiluren to Garrison Commander Istadior in Armilan and tell him about the fate that befell one of his soldiers.

Reward: experience, increased reputation with the dark elves, 2 gold.

Max fumbled with the small round disk made of hard brown wood for a while, lost in thought, and then gave it to Luffy.

"There's nothing else—just the money, and this."

"Do you realize what we found? Of course, I read a piece about some dude finding a scalable epic item in noobland, but I think it's a huge pile of BS. But we really did get lucky! You can't even imagine! The reward for completing a rare quest chain is a rare item!" Luffy attempted to read the symbols on the wooden disk, but failed. He handed the medallion back to Max with a dismissive gesture, turned around and started toward the exit.

"Hey! What about the corpse? Aren't we supposed to bury it?"

"Do you have any idea about how the elves bury their dead?" Luffy turned around and stared at the warrior in surprise. "What if they want to inspect the body themselves? We'll report like the quest tells us to, and let this Ibrahim send his own gravedigger detail."

"It's Istadior..."

"He could be Sir Isaac Newton for all I care."

"Just admit it—you simply don't want to have anything to do with a semi-decomposed corpse!"

"Well, do you?"

"No."

"So stop acting like Zorro," the mage snapped. "Let's get going—we need to report to the quest givers in Venlamin, and then walk for another five miles until we reach Armilan."

There were a lot more people in Armilan by the time they got back, around four in the afternoon. The atmosphere in the village was festive in the best possible sense. Max had never seen so many smiling faces before.

"Listen," Luffy gazed after a group of five girls with hair of different colors, and pointed at the enormous line before the mentor's marlorien. "When the game was just taking off, there must have been around fifty times more people here. How did the devs handle overcrowding that time?"

"Write the tech support and ask them," Max grunted. "How should I know? Maybe there are several noob zones such as this one, or some other workaround. Mind how you twist your neck—you might break it. A day or two more, and all of them will move on to all sorts of locations, and every quest giver will have a line in front just as long as this one. If it weren't for this medallion, I'd have sought the exit already—level 13 should be sufficient."

The guards at the entrance to the garrison territory absolutely refused to let them through at first. They had to wait for the elf in charge of the guards for about ten minutes. He examined the medallion, nodded, took the companions to the biggest marlorien, told them they'd be invited, and set off about his own business. They sat down on the grass near the entrance. Luffy got a bottle out of his inventory, took a few swigs, and then passed it on to Max.

"We might want to grab a crate of this wine with us just in case they don't have it on the mainland," he said as he crunched into an apple.

"Grab one by all means—who's stopping you?" Max passed the bottle back, took a cigarette out of his inventory, and lit up with a blissful face.

"What I'm trying to say is that you're the one who'll have to carry it—I won't be able to lift that much. Oh! What the..." the guy froze with his mouth open wide, pointing at something behind Max's back.

A short tree growing nearby suddenly straightened out with a crack and started to move toward them, its lower limbs creaking. Passing no more than five yards from them, it stopped, glanced at them with its enormous unblinking eyes, and moved on, apparently having found nothing of interest.

"I'll be damned," muttered the outraged mage, "that thing could leave me stuttering for the rest of my life. Fancy meeting a block of wood with eyes in the forest at night... You'll have to change your pants and find yourself a shrink right away..."

"I guess you shouldn't worry about the pants," Max laughed, "but a shrink probably wouldn't hurt. An elf afraid of a Guardian Tree! Really!"

"I've been blessed with a companion of great courage and intelligence, I get it," Luffy shook his head and took another sip from the bottle.

"You should have read the guides and the forum posts—I spent the whole night in front of my computer before coming here."

"Well, I didn't have that much time for guides. I had a brief look at what you need to do when creating a mage. I didn't plan to play much when I ordered those capsules. I had something else in mind, and see how it played out..."

They were escorted to Istadior about fifteen minutes later. He turned out to be a tall level 240 elf wearing a silvery suit of armor. The garrison commander's hair was woven into a thick and intricate braid; his paleness and the circles around his eyes suggested he must have skipped a few nights' sleep.

"Hand over whatever you have there," the elf took off his armored glove and threw it onto the table, where he'd already put the helm from the same suit. He took the medallion and examined it closely. "Where did you find it?"

"In the Wood Rat lair, about half a mile north of Venlamin." Max explained in detail how they found the body of the guardsman and which cave they had visited.

"Did he have any letters on him?"

"No, just the medallion," the warrior decided not to mention the four silver coins.

"Sata! What rotten timing." Istadior sighed heavily. "Here, take this," he placed four gold coins on the table, "and thank you."

Quest: The Guardsman's Medallion.

You received 2 gold.

"Is there any way we can help?" Max uttered the standard formula for such situations.

The elf thought for a moment, and then raised his eyes at the warrior, apparently having reached a positive decision.

"A week ago, twenty guards went to Yltarin—an outpost in the far north, near the edge of Maeglyn Woods. Three days ago, we lost contact with them—the messenger falcon never arrived. And today you brought me the medallion of one of them." The elf rubbed his eyes, bloodshot from the lack of sleep, took a cup of some pungent tea and took a few sips. "I'm critically short of people—did you see what's going on in Armilan? I need you to deliver a letter to Yltarin and return with a reply by tomorrow evening," Istadior sat down at his desk, wrote a few lines on a parchment scroll, sealed it with his personal seal and handed it to Max.