章 22: CHAPTER 22
The map showed me that the cow just happened to be moving toward the very same swamp. The blinking quest area on the map was moving quickly toward the east in its direction.
"I'd better hurry," I decided. "That monster can't eat the cow, or the quest would be over. I assume."
After sprinting down the path for a few kilometers, I pulled out my map again and realized I needed to cut into the forest; the swamp was perpendicular to my location. A hundred meters in, I decided to make sure there weren't any goblins around.
"Hey, tasty food is here!" I shouted loudly. "Juicy, crunchy food here!"
Nothing. I couldn't hear anyone crashing through the bushes, drooling as they ran.
"Good thing," I said, and kept going without worrying too much about stealth.
A kilometer and a half or so later, I noticed the landscape changing. Tall pines were replaced by birches and firs. The grass under my feet was thicker—the swamp was obviously nearby.
"Good job by the designers!" I was impressed. "Just like in real life."
I opened my map again to see that the cow was nearby. And so was the monster.
"He's going to eat it!" I quickened my pace.
A couple minutes later, I heard a scared moo, or at least a moo that was as scared as moos can be, and some cracking. Someone was breaking through the birches. Of course, it was the cow, and we broke into a small clearing at the same time from opposite sides. It jumped toward me once I caught its eye, amusingly flaunting its hooves.
"Mo-o-0," it said again. But in that "mo-o-o," I thought I heard something like "mo-o-onsters everywhere, almost ate me!"
And there was a reason for that. Just behind the cow, the monster itself rushed into the clearing. It was a disgusting beast, and the programmers were obviously suffering from a hangover or were just in a bad mood when they thought it up.
It was Level 20, and it had six legs, a scorpion tail, a
chitin body, two pincers, compound eyes, and mandibles to round out the picture. Some mix of a fly, a crayfish, a spider, and a scorpion. Above its head were blue letters:
"Burrig quest monster"
Ooh, a beast from the quest. With its own name! The
monsters in Elysium were both diverse and
straight-forward. Bots were divided into:
Usual—your different types of goblins, harpies, wolves, specters, robbers, and other types of evil spirits, undead, and even humanoid races. They made up 95 percent of the bot enemies players dealt with.
Quest—opponents created especially for quests.
There were both named and unnamed quest monsters, though the named ones gave you a much better chance of finding a good item than their unnamed friends. On the other hand, they were also much more dangerous.
Leaders—a rare type of named monster endowed with remarkable physical or even magical power.
They always gave you good things, though killing them was a nightmare. And you couldn't just go looking for them since they only appeared randomly at locations with the right level.
Dungeon masters-formidable foes. Generally speaking, they were the last monsters you dealt with in dungeons, and they were the fastest, most devious, and most dangerous ones in there. The players called them bosses.
Epic—the strongest enemies the game had to offer. Clans sent raids after them, and figuring out who exactly killed who was always tricky. Nobody had been able to kill the Kraken yet. On the plus side, the reward you got for killing them was substantial, on par with the difficulty.
Well, the most dangerous enemy in Elysium, just like in real life, was Man. Don't forget about PKers. They were hard to kill, and the reward varied…
The cow ran past me mooing, and a message popped up:
You finished a quest: Find the Cow.
To get your reward, tell the shepherd where the cow is.
How simple. Yeah, I can just turn around and march straight over there.
Burrig saw me, hissed, and waved its spiked tail around menacingly.
"Man, I should have been an archer," I hissed back as I circled to my left around Burrig. It bulged out its
eyes and circled with me, amiably clacking its pincers all the while.
We had almost done a complete circle around each other when Burrig was the first to crack. It lunged. I instinctively ducked, and its pincers clacked shut above my head. In front of me, I saw my opponent's right chitin side was open. Covering the left part of my torso with my shield, I swung upward to land my first blow, after which I jumped to my right and smacked it again near its tail.
I was lucky again, as one of the two hits was critical. Burrig's health meter went from green to yellow, meaning that I'd taken out 30-40 percent of its health.
Burrig roared, turned toward me, and tried to sting me with its tail. Either I was just faster, or I'd damaged something. One way or another, the strike missed its target. Its tail buried itself in the ground, and Burrig was left posed awkwardly. I took the chance to jump in and slam my mace against its head. Green slime flew, and a nasty sound told me I'd taken out its eye.
I should have jumped back, but for some reason, I
hesitated. Burrig shook its head, spraying slime from its eye everywhere, and clamped its left mandible down on my arm.
You were poisoned!
The poison will sap 0.7 health per second for five minutes!
Oh, come on! I had to hurry—I had a lot of health, I
wasn't that weak, to begin with, and I'd spent a lot of
points on stamina, but poison wasn't something to be taken lightly.
I moved to Burrig's left. Its eye was gone, so I was in its blind spot, and it was weakening; its health was already in the red section.
"Let's do this!" I jumped forward and landed what I
thought was a heavy blow to its back leg. It gave way, and Burrig crumpled onto its left side. I landed another strike to its head. The monster's legs flailed upward, and it died.
You unlocked Bestiary, Level 1.
To get it, destroy ten more named monsters.
Reward:
Fearless, a passive attribute, Level 1: +1% resistance to mental effects
+1 to stamina
+1 to agility
To see similar messages, go to the Action section of the attribute window.
You unlocked Level 21!
Points ready to be distributed: 5
Oh, nice. I levelled-up too!
You completed a quest: Kill the Swamp Beast.
To get your reward, go show Burrig's head to the old
man.
Oh, right, I needed the head. I leaned over my fallen foe and found that not much was left of it, just the head and a pincer—the left one, for some reason.
Burrig's pincer. Can be used by a craftsman to create an item or in other ways.
That's it. And here I thought I'd get something rare—nope, just the pincer. Oh, but wait! It had a lair.
I hurried to the edge of the swamp. It was visible through the birches, especially where there were gaps made first by the cow and then by the monster. On the way, I had an apple—the poison was still active, and it was still damaging me, if slowly. And who knew? Maybe the beast could respawn.
The lair was easy to see. It really was on the very edge of the swamp, and it looked like a deep, although narrow, hole in the earth. I quickly jumped in and found myself in a small cave littered with rotten leaves. I poked around in the leaves with my mace and found something that first caught on my weapon and then glistened in the semi-darkness.
You unlocked Sharp Eye, Level 1.
To get it, find 49 more tombs, treasure troves, hiding places, and stashes around Elysium.
Reward:
Riches, a passive attribute, Level 1: +3% to the coins you get from beaten enemies
+1 to stamina
+1 to agility
To see similar messages, go to the Action section of the attribute window.
Well, this has been a productive five minutes. But what was hiding from me?
You found Burrig's lair and discovered:
67 gold
Rough Work Shoulder Guard
Talisman
Okay, so the gold is good, but what's that about a shoulder guard?
Rough Work Shoulder Guard
Protection: 60
+3 to strength
+7% to protection from cold
Durability: 110/120
Minimum level to use: 20
"I'll sell that," I decided. "Mine is much better. But what about the talisman?"
That's when it hit me that I was doing all that in a small lair belonging to what was a pretty tough beast that could respawn at any moment. With that in mind, I quickly crawled out and put half a kilometre between it and me. I looked around and, just to make sure, called out, "Food here, good food!" There was no reaction, so I pulled out the talisman. It was round, with a hole in the center. In the middle of the hole, was something that looked like a tear.
Tearful Goddess Knight Talisman
This talisman belonged to Olaf von Dal, a Knight of the Tearful Goddess Order. Produce it in any of the order's missions (found in all Elysium cities) and confirm that he was killed to get a reward.
You have a new quest offer: Remembering the Fallen.
Task: Let the brothers in the knight's order know that he is dead.
Reward:
100 gold
500 experience
+5 friendship with the Tearful Goddess Order
[Accept?]
Well, that works. Easy money, easy experience. Especially since I was planning to head to Fladridge after the village anyway, and the order has missions in every city. Lucky. But I wondered—who was the Tearful Goddess? I thought things were much simpler with the pantheon of gods in Elysium—there wasn't one. I'd have to check that out on the forums.
Oh, and I needed to distribute my attribute points after levelling-up twice. After adding everything to strength and stamina (in for a penny, in for a pound), with the exception of one point each for agility and intellect, I looked to see what I had.
Basic attributes:
Strength: 91 (60+31)
Intellect: 4
Agility: 17 (10+7)
Stamina: 75 (45+30)
Wisdom: 3
After all that, I took stock of the situation: the cow was found, the monster was dead. All I had left to do was find the boar legs, though I also wanted to stop by the graveyard. I opened my map and saw that the graveyard was nearby, while the boars looked to be about three kilometers away.
"I'll go check out the graves," I decided. "And there was a grove of trees, too. On the way back, I'll take care of the boars.
The graveyard was exactly what you might expect.
There wasn't anything pulled from a Romero film—a haze over the graves, crows landing on the grave-stones, arms reaching out of piles of earth. Everything was serene and noble; birds were singing, ivy spread between the graves, and gravestones sank into the ground. The whole thing was fairly small, and behind it, through a hole in the wall, the picturesque ruins of the castle could be seen.
Before I walked out into the graveyard, I made sure my health was at the maximum level, and the poison had worn off. I then pulled out my mace and stealthily crept around. Nothing happened. No skeletons came crawling out of the ground, no thunder rolled through the sky, and no demonic laughter rang out. The sun kept shining, the birds kept singing. I spent half an hour exploring, only to find, to my disap-pointment, that I had wasted my time.
Well, maybe there's something over in the ruins? I thought, climbing through the hole in the wall and wandering between the enormous boulders embedded in the long grass. Before the explosion, the area must have been the castle wall.
I cursed the old man after yet another half hour. "Unclean places, undead...miracles, the devil walking around. Nothing but some stones and grass!"
With that, I left the ruins through what looked to be the old entrance to the castle's inner courtyard. Beyond them stretched a plain, and on the horizon was a small wood—probably the one the old man mentioned.
"It's weird that they built castles here. And where's the moat? Where's the drawbridge?" I noted with
surprise.
"No wonder the siege was so short."
But what about the woods? I couldn't decide if I wanted to go check them out or not…
I was leaning toward giving up on the whole thing, seeing as how I didn't have a quest in the woods and no longer believed anything the old man said. Not only were there no skeletons, but there weren't even any bones. Although maybe the skeletons came out at night? Maybe that was when they caught passersby and tore them to pieces. Whatever.
I had almost made up my mind. "Yea-a-ah, screw it. I'll go get the boars, finish my quests, and head for Fladridge."
But just then, something glinting in the left-hand side of the are caught my eye. I brushed aside the grass with my foot and bent over.
You found a hiding place and discovered:
144 gold
Lucky Earring
Deadly Archer Bracelet
Well, hello there! The day is saved! The items turned out to be pretty good, and both violet. I didn't need the archer bracelet in the least, though I was very excited about the earring:
Lucky Earring
+6 to stamina
+5 to intellect
+5% to critical strike chance
+7% to your chances of getting items from dead enemies
+5% gold looted from dead enemies
Durability: 160/160
Minimum level for use: 25
I didn't even care that I couldn't wear it yet—I was a patient person, and I could wait. However, I really needed to get to the city. If I died, there was no way I would find another earring like that one. It was time to follow Billie's advice and rent a room since I hadn't had time to do so earlier. First, I was rolled up in the carpet, then I was fighting skeletons, then something else... And there wasn't a hotel in the village.
I was about to head back into the forest when a small
little something sitting inside me—something we all.
have—started needling away, "Maybe it's worth checking it out? There were some great items here, so maybe you'll find even better ones there? Or something else valuable?"
I responded to my inner voice reasonably, "But why?
There used to be a castle here, but what was ever there? People lived here and would have needed to hide things, but who lived there?"
"You'll regret it if you don't go. It's right there… You'll be back before nightfall!"
"Right, and then I'll have to hunt boar in the dark!"
"Oh, come on. What do you have to lose?"
I realised that arguing with myself was pointless and started toward the wood.
~ ~ ~
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