This is a bit of a sticky situation. On the one hand, I’d much rather avoid having to avoid joining the company of men and women that very much want Evelyn Carnelian dead.
On the other, the Baron’s man’s tone brooks no argument. He’s made it pretty clear that it’s his way or the opposite direction.
Still, Acting compels me to try anyway. If I was an independent adventurer, out here fulfilling quests and looting corpses, I might say something like…
“I’m doing quite alright for myself, thank you,” I decide to say. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine alone.”
“I think you might have the wrong idea about this, young lady,” Noren says, clenching a fist in front of me. The ground beneath his feet flattens forcibly, his magic propelling the earth to reform a solid, unbroken structure. “I do not doubt your ability to fight, but these monsters…”
“Noren,” one of the other uniformed men says from behind him. “We need to get moving. The teams nearest the city center have gone silent.”
“Patience,” the man in front of me says. “If they no longer respond to us, then we are already too late. Another minute will not be of too much consequence.”
A memory falls into place. When I first met Sapphire on the train, she mentioned that “this backwater” hasn’t been touched by demonic influence in far too long. It’s not something I’ve paid much mind to during the time since, but I realize that the Crowned Islands have likely not faced an incursion like this in quite some time.
Something isn’t adding up here. There were demon-touched dragons in the fragments beneath Ravendale. Did nobody notice those?
Another question that will have to wait until after I get everything I can out of this city. For now, that realization spurs me into changing the type of person I’d like to imitate. Acting assists me in becoming the adventurer who’s bitten off more than she can chew and hasn’t realized it yet.
“Monsters,” I say, frowning. “Dark ones. They broke out of the undercity, I assume. Is there something different about them?”
Noren shakes his head grimly. “These tore a rift through worlds to reach ours. These monsters are demons.”
I gasp, silently congratulating myself on the believability of the sound. “But—I thought that those were—“
“They have never left,” Noren cuts in. “Don’t trust everything you hear from your precious little guilds.”
“Ya can’t fight alone, lass!” a woman shouts from behind him. She’s only fifteen feet away, so the volume’s entirely unnecessary. “Fight with us or run alone and die, there’s a choice for you!”
“If you choose to fight, we need you with us,” Noren says. “Every finger on our side of the scales counts.”
He punctuates his words by burying the corpses of the demons with his magic, forming holes under their corpses and filling over them with freshly-reassembled cobble immediately after.
I let out a sigh at the sight of that, though I’m able to pass it off as one of resignation and shock rather than irritation. It would’ve been nice if I was able to Devour those and advance to level 10.
XP: 878/900
And unless those demons were baby-sized pushovers (which they clearly weren’t), I definitely would’ve advanced, too.
Ugh. This is annoying. Noren’s tone makes it clear that he’s giving me a thinly-veiled threat. If I try to stick it out alone and continue killing everything on my own, I doubt they’ll just let me do so without trying to forcibly convert me first.
My persona demands it, too. An adventurer who’s beginning to realize the depth of the issue wouldn’t want to continue going alone against the potential destruction of the city.
Running away is a possibility too, but instinct tells me that that’s the wrong choice. The way that they phrase it makes me think that trying to run will be met with resistance.
“You are strong, young lady,” Noren continues. “It would be a shame if that strength was never permitted to grow because you made a poor decision.”
That settles it. I could try to run for it, but I don’t want to try my chances against a level 37 with too many unknown skills.
“I’ll join you, then,” I say, flashing him a smile with too many teeth. “You make a strong argument.”
Noren snorts. “An adventurer with some honor, eh?”
Discretely, he signals the other with one hand, and I see the tension leak out of the other ex-Baron soldiers.
Were they preparing to kill me if I ran?
“Let us continue, then,” Noren says.
He leads, and six of us follow. Including me and Noren, we have four men and three women. Not all of the party is entirely human, I realize. One of the women has short gray wings extending from her shoulderblades through slits in her armor, not even as wide as her arms. Part skyfolk, presumably.
“Be cautious,” Noren says, not turning to look at me as we trek through ruined streets. He repairs them as we walk, casually demonstrating his power by haphazardly reassembling the road, evening it out. “If you have yet to hear the news, the Baron is dead.”
Once again, I offer a suitably dramatic gasp. “Really?”
Acting advanced to level 10!
You are now 300% more likely to remain undetected when impersonating another individual.
Thank the gods for that. I need everything I can get right now.
“The demonic invasion claimed him,” Noren continues. “Tell me, young lady, what do you know of demons?”
“Not much,” I reply, my skill assisting me in sounding properly shaken. “Just what I learned in school.”
That earns me a derisive snort.
“Demons come in all forms, including the almost human,” says the level 37 mage. "A red-eyed demon-woman with the power of a giant and the limbs of a spider ended our good Baron’s life, and it has killed again since.”
Gasping is getting repetitive, so I just try for a shocked tone instead. “You’re telling me she could be near us right now?”
“In all likelihood,” Noren says. “Come join me here, young lady. I need a strong fighter to lead the vanguard with me.”
At level 37? That sets off a mental alarm. There’s no way he doesn’t know that someone like me is a lower level, especially since he started attacking demons when I was actively avoiding them to recharge my skills.
I briefly Appraise the others around me. Level 15, level 12, level 14, level 16, level 11. Every last one of them has a higher level than me.
The way that nobody else seems to be reacting to this tells me that this is a normal occurrence—or, at the very least, not out of expectations.
Fact: there are adventurers in this city fighting against the demons and occasionally other humans. I have three bodies to my name that prove that.
Conjecture: the late Baron’s men were prepared to kill me if I ran. Their practiced posture makes me think that they’ve done this coercion act before.
Fact: there are no living adventurers with the late Baron’s men.
I need to be careful. Then again, don’t I always?
“My name is Noren,” says Noren, which I already know. “I have been proud to serve Ravendale for thirty-six years.”
If he started his service level 1, then that’s a level per year or so, isn’t it? That seems… rather low, given the fact that I’m already almost at level 10. Maybe he has a second class that Appraise isn’t picking up? That skill has proven surprisingly hard to level despite only being Bronze-tier, sitting at only level 2 after however many times I’ve used it.
Maybe the people in the Crowned Islands truly are just that slow.
That doesn’t mean he’s weak, though. I have to remind myself that I definitely can’t take this man on right now. At level 37, I’m sure he has some sort of defense against even ambush.
“The Baron must have been weaker than you,” I say, Acting compelling me to speak. A cocky adventurer would act like this, and I do have questions. “After thirty-six years, why have you not chosen to take his position?”
Noren laughs heartily at that, throwing his head back. “Oh, you poor adventurers. You lot think the whole world runs on power alone, don’t you?”
I tilt my head. “Does it not?”
He snorts. “Tell me, young lady, will you take those knives and cut an economic crisis apart? When the fields are barren and the people are begging for food, will you smash your way through that battle? I was born for the trenches, not for the throne.”
“I was born for both,” I reply. It’s a nonsensical reply, but I think it fits with the personality I’m attempting to imitate.
“We will see about that soon enough, miss,” the old mage says. “Soon enough.”
As it turns out, “soon enough” means “about fifteen minutes,” since that’s how long it takes us to navigate through the broken streets and reach the river. During those fifteen minutes, we encounter nine separate demons. Noren kills all of them without breaking a sweat before any of the rest of us can even act, collapsing empty buildings or burying them alive or lacerating them with a storm of rock.
I’m a little disappointed to not get the opportunity to kill, but I’m sure the rest of the late Baron’s forces appreciate it.
The river, however, is a different beast.
Seven steps of footsteps come to a halt as we process what we’re up against.
Ravendale’s main river is a solid two hundred feet wide and is presently teeming with demonic life. Monsters that resemble sharks, snakes, spiders, and many more abound within the slowly-darkening river, but that’s not what draws my eye first.
No, what I notice first is the fact that half of the river is on fire. Not just fire, either.
Wraithfire.
Black flame covers the opposite riverbank, consuming broken buildings and water alike, the smoke it shoots up obscuring much of what lies beyond. Ash falls from the sky, polluting the river, though it doesn’t quite manage to reach us.
“Our destination lies beyond,” Noren says, gesturing at the wall of demonic fire. “We must ford the river to reach the monster lying at the heart of the city and end its tyranny once and for all.”
“Right,” I say.
This is around where I think I would have stopped if I was alone. With no way to travel above the water and no skill that enables me to swim more proficiently. I’d be a sitting duck if I was in there alone.
I’ll still be a sitting duck if they make me swim across. My suspicions are deepening now, and I curse myself for getting stuck in this situation. Maybe once we get into actual combat, I’ll be able to isolate one of the weaker members of this party in the chaos and eat them. That could be a ticket out.
For the time being, I’m going to have to play along.
“How exactly are we planning on getting across?” I ask. Half a mile upriver, I see the ruins of something that might’ve been a bridge.
“You will traverse my creation,” Noren says, raising a hand. Beneath us, earth begins to tremble.
I focus on his wording. You. Combined with the other minor slip-ups they’ve had and the signs I’ve spotted, I can finally draw a conclusion.
“If you’re going to use me as bait, you could at least be straightforward about it,” I tell him dryly. This time, what Acting says is the best choice for my persona also reflects my actual thoughts.
Noren tenses ever so slightly, pausing in his earth manipulation. Half a shattered building hangs in the air as he turns to me. “Are you telling me that you want to run, adventurer? Forgive an old man for his suggestion, but that would be a bad idea.”
At the end of his sentence, the others raise their weapons. All five of them carry ranged weapons, I notice. Three wield heavy-looking compound bows while the other two unsling long blowguns from their shoulders.
That likely means they’re worse in close quarters combat. If not for Noren’s presence, Relentless may have been enough to even the odds and allow me victory.
As it is, though, I can’t take them all on at once. Though Relentless is strong, I don’t think it’s quadruple-my-level strong.
“Relax,” I say with a levity I don’t feel, spreading my hands. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I am, however, considering the best way to kill them. One of the men is only level 11. Appraise tells me that this man—Lionel Collins—is a basic Warrior. He has a sheathed sword strapped to his belt, but his primary weapon right now is a blowgun. When the situation inevitably devolves, I should be able to dodge his shot with a Bloodstep and kill him quickly with knives, teeth, and blood.
Before we get to that stage, however, I do need to cross the river.
“The bridge is sufficient for now,” Noren says. “You may begin crossing.”
His “bridge” is a shoddy construction, fifty feet of wood and steel and brick forced into the vague shape of a road by his magic. It barely remains intact even with Noren holding it together, and water soaks the top of it as movements in the river send small waves tumbling over it.
“This is a deathtrap,” I say, flashing him a lopsided smile, and I step forward. “See you on the other side.”
My first steps are wobbly. The river flows fast enough to make the entire structure shake, and its structural integrity isn’t very high when the only thing holding it together is Noren’s skill. I correct myself after a near-slip and continue onwards. Around me, I see more cobblestone and building parts flying forth, slowly assembling more of the makeshift bridge in front of me.
The first demon attacks when I’m less than twenty feet into the bridge. With my enhanced Mind (Speed), I’m able to turn and start taking in the monster as soon as I hear it breach the water’s surface.
It looks like an oversized tuna, if a tuna’s scales were all dark as night and its jaw was thrice the size.
Knifefighting helps me predict its movement, and I hit the “ground” to dodge its phantom image. Half a second later, the fish-demon soars over my prone body, and I stab upwards at it. Its speed throws me off, though, so though I draw blood, it’s not enough to kill it. The fish flops into the water next to me and continues swimming, content to bleed into the river and swim off.
“Keep going!” Noren bellows.
“Or he’ll make ya regret it!” the same woman from earlier adds.
“Thanks for the help!” I yell back, still sticking to the adventurer persona.
This really is a bit awkward. At least Noren is still building the bridge.
By the time I’ve gotten a hundred feet in, I’ve gotten used to the rickety platforms I need to walk across, adjusted my stance so that the slick surface doesn’t trip me up, and utilized Knifefighting to avoid taking any major injuries from seven separate demons. A couple of them are similarly fish-shaped, but the others are wildly different. One is just a spiky sphere with no clear organs—that one, I just dodge, not wanting to try my hand at it.
I’m nearly halfway through the bridge when Noren finally steps onto it. I look back once or twice to see that the rest of the Baron’s group seem to be reluctant to step on.
What even was the point of having me go out front? A few small ones have attacked me and suffered for it—hells, I might’ve killed one or two, though if they died, they died elsewhere—but there’s no shortage of them in the water. Dark shapes swim through the river, most of them choosing to just go under the makeshift bridge.
There’s still a whole lot of demons in there. I haven’t even attracted a tiny fraction of them out, and Demonic Heritage certainly isn’t helping that. I know that fewer of the demons have attacked me because I smell like one of them or whatever, but even if I was a regular human being, surely they weren’t expecting me to draw the attention of all the monsters in the river.
I near the end of the bridge, getting close enough to the other riverbank to see the gaps in the wraithfire where we’re presumably making our entrance. Grey ash rains down on me, and the pillars of thick black smoke might as well touch the sky.
I’m about eighty feet from the opposite shore when my question receives an answer.
Just as I turn aside another fish-demon’s leaping strike, the entire rickety “bridge” shakes, and I barely manage to catch myself. I turn to look at the others, intent on asking Noren what he’s doing, and I notice that they’re backing up.
The bridge starts to break apart on the second impact, and it’s not until a few seconds after that do I realize that I’m under attack.
A dark shape crests out of the water in the eighty feet between me and the shore, sixty feet wide and nearly twice as long. Twisted limbs extend out of it at irregular intervals, mockeries of fins that end in barbed tentacles that trail the water. I have no idea how it stayed hidden all this time.
It doesn’t even raise half of its body out of the water before it expels water out of four separate orifices, brackish river water geysering out in all directions. A spout of it hits me, drenching me from head to toe and nearly knocking me into the river.
After the water comes air, so forceful that the whistle of it sounds like a train crashing.
I feel my Disguise Self slip away under the whale-demon’s roar.
I can barely hear the group behind me muttering amongst themselves over the deafening whistle, but when Noren shouts, I can hear it clear as day.
“DEMONS ON THE BRIDGE!”
Behind me is a level 37 mage and his five companions, all of who have a good reason to want me dead.
Ahead of me is a whale-sized demon that can blow my skills away.
I sigh.
I really should’ve taken a different approach to this.
Now, though, I have to play the cards I’ve dealt myself before the whale can act again. Before Noren can tear this bridge up and slice me to pieces with it.
I activate Bloodstep, sending myself up and diagonally away from the bridge. When the world shifts back from the red altered state, I’m twenty feet up and twenty feet closer to the shore.
I have enough time to see the river from above before I hit it. There are a lot of demons in there, swimming without a care in the world. The water is teeming with so many of them that there’s more space occupied by demons than there is free.
Despite the advanced level of the skill, it hasn’t taken me that far, so I only have a brief moment to prepare myself for a landing before I start falling.
I hit the water less than fifteen feet from the whale.
Objective: Survive
Survive the next 5 minutes.
Reward: 100 XP
XP: 878/900
The whale’s first attack lands a moment later.
This is a bit of a sticky situation. On the one hand, I’d much rather avoid having to avoid joining the company of men and women that very much want Evelyn Carnelian dead.
On the other, the Baron’s man’s tone brooks no argument. He’s made it pretty clear that it’s his way or the opposite direction.
Still, Acting compels me to try anyway. If I was an independent adventurer, out here fulfilling quests and looting corpses, I might say something like…
“I’m doing quite alright for myself, thank you,” I decide to say. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine alone.”
“I think you might have the wrong idea about this, young lady,” Noren says, clenching a fist in front of me. The ground beneath his feet flattens forcibly, his magic propelling the earth to reform a solid, unbroken structure. “I do not doubt your ability to fight, but these monsters…”
“Noren,” one of the other uniformed men says from behind him. “We need to get moving. The teams nearest the city center have gone silent.”
“Patience,” the man in front of me says. “If they no longer respond to us, then we are already too late. Another minute will not be of too much consequence.”
A memory falls into place. When I first met Sapphire on the train, she mentioned that “this backwater” hasn’t been touched by demonic influence in far too long. It’s not something I’ve paid much mind to during the time since, but I realize that the Crowned Islands have likely not faced an incursion like this in quite some time.
Something isn’t adding up here. There were demon-touched dragons in the fragments beneath Ravendale. Did nobody notice those?
Another question that will have to wait until after I get everything I can out of this city. For now, that realization spurs me into changing the type of person I’d like to imitate. Acting assists me in becoming the adventurer who’s bitten off more than she can chew and hasn’t realized it yet.
“Monsters,” I say, frowning. “Dark ones. They broke out of the undercity, I assume. Is there something different about them?”
Noren shakes his head grimly. “These tore a rift through worlds to reach ours. These monsters are demons.”
I gasp, silently congratulating myself on the believability of the sound. “But—I thought that those were—“
“They have never left,” Noren cuts in. “Don’t trust everything you hear from your precious little guilds.”
“Ya can’t fight alone, lass!” a woman shouts from behind him. She’s only fifteen feet away, so the volume’s entirely unnecessary. “Fight with us or run alone and die, there’s a choice for you!”
“If you choose to fight, we need you with us,” Noren says. “Every finger on our side of the scales counts.”
He punctuates his words by burying the corpses of the demons with his magic, forming holes under their corpses and filling over them with freshly-reassembled cobble immediately after.
I let out a sigh at the sight of that, though I’m able to pass it off as one of resignation and shock rather than irritation. It would’ve been nice if I was able to Devour those and advance to level 10.
XP: 878/900
And unless those demons were baby-sized pushovers (which they clearly weren’t), I definitely would’ve advanced, too.
Ugh. This is annoying. Noren’s tone makes it clear that he’s giving me a thinly-veiled threat. If I try to stick it out alone and continue killing everything on my own, I doubt they’ll just let me do so without trying to forcibly convert me first.
My persona demands it, too. An adventurer who’s beginning to realize the depth of the issue wouldn’t want to continue going alone against the potential destruction of the city.
Running away is a possibility too, but instinct tells me that that’s the wrong choice. The way that they phrase it makes me think that trying to run will be met with resistance.
“You are strong, young lady,” Noren continues. “It would be a shame if that strength was never permitted to grow because you made a poor decision.”
That settles it. I could try to run for it, but I don’t want to try my chances against a level 37 with too many unknown skills.
“I’ll join you, then,” I say, flashing him a smile with too many teeth. “You make a strong argument.”
Noren snorts. “An adventurer with some honor, eh?”
Discretely, he signals the other with one hand, and I see the tension leak out of the other ex-Baron soldiers.
Were they preparing to kill me if I ran?
“Let us continue, then,” Noren says.
He leads, and six of us follow. Including me and Noren, we have four men and three women. Not all of the party is entirely human, I realize. One of the women has short gray wings extending from her shoulderblades through slits in her armor, not even as wide as her arms. Part skyfolk, presumably.
“Be cautious,” Noren says, not turning to look at me as we trek through ruined streets. He repairs them as we walk, casually demonstrating his power by haphazardly reassembling the road, evening it out. “If you have yet to hear the news, the Baron is dead.”
Once again, I offer a suitably dramatic gasp. “Really?”
Acting advanced to level 10!
You are now 300% more likely to remain undetected when impersonating another individual.
Thank the gods for that. I need everything I can get right now.
“The demonic invasion claimed him,” Noren continues. “Tell me, young lady, what do you know of demons?”
“Not much,” I reply, my skill assisting me in sounding properly shaken. “Just what I learned in school.”
That earns me a derisive snort.
“Demons come in all forms, including the almost human,” says the level 37 mage. "A red-eyed demon-woman with the power of a giant and the limbs of a spider ended our good Baron’s life, and it has killed again since.”
Gasping is getting repetitive, so I just try for a shocked tone instead. “You’re telling me she could be near us right now?”
“In all likelihood,” Noren says. “Come join me here, young lady. I need a strong fighter to lead the vanguard with me.”
At level 37? That sets off a mental alarm. There’s no way he doesn’t know that someone like me is a lower level, especially since he started attacking demons when I was actively avoiding them to recharge my skills.
I briefly Appraise the others around me. Level 15, level 12, level 14, level 16, level 11. Every last one of them has a higher level than me.
The way that nobody else seems to be reacting to this tells me that this is a normal occurrence—or, at the very least, not out of expectations.
Fact: there are adventurers in this city fighting against the demons and occasionally other humans. I have three bodies to my name that prove that.
Conjecture: the late Baron’s men were prepared to kill me if I ran. Their practiced posture makes me think that they’ve done this coercion act before.
Fact: there are no living adventurers with the late Baron’s men.
I need to be careful. Then again, don’t I always?
“My name is Noren,” says Noren, which I already know. “I have been proud to serve Ravendale for thirty-six years.”
If he started his service level 1, then that’s a level per year or so, isn’t it? That seems… rather low, given the fact that I’m already almost at level 10. Maybe he has a second class that Appraise isn’t picking up? That skill has proven surprisingly hard to level despite only being Bronze-tier, sitting at only level 2 after however many times I’ve used it.
Maybe the people in the Crowned Islands truly are just that slow.
That doesn’t mean he’s weak, though. I have to remind myself that I definitely can’t take this man on right now. At level 37, I’m sure he has some sort of defense against even ambush.
“The Baron must have been weaker than you,” I say, Acting compelling me to speak. A cocky adventurer would act like this, and I do have questions. “After thirty-six years, why have you not chosen to take his position?”
Noren laughs heartily at that, throwing his head back. “Oh, you poor adventurers. You lot think the whole world runs on power alone, don’t you?”
I tilt my head. “Does it not?”
He snorts. “Tell me, young lady, will you take those knives and cut an economic crisis apart? When the fields are barren and the people are begging for food, will you smash your way through that battle? I was born for the trenches, not for the throne.”
“I was born for both,” I reply. It’s a nonsensical reply, but I think it fits with the personality I’m attempting to imitate.
“We will see about that soon enough, miss,” the old mage says. “Soon enough.”
As it turns out, “soon enough” means “about fifteen minutes,” since that’s how long it takes us to navigate through the broken streets and reach the river. During those fifteen minutes, we encounter nine separate demons. Noren kills all of them without breaking a sweat before any of the rest of us can even act, collapsing empty buildings or burying them alive or lacerating them with a storm of rock.
I’m a little disappointed to not get the opportunity to kill, but I’m sure the rest of the late Baron’s forces appreciate it.
The river, however, is a different beast.
Seven steps of footsteps come to a halt as we process what we’re up against.
Ravendale’s main river is a solid two hundred feet wide and is presently teeming with demonic life. Monsters that resemble sharks, snakes, spiders, and many more abound within the slowly-darkening river, but that’s not what draws my eye first.
No, what I notice first is the fact that half of the river is on fire. Not just fire, either.
Wraithfire.
Black flame covers the opposite riverbank, consuming broken buildings and water alike, the smoke it shoots up obscuring much of what lies beyond. Ash falls from the sky, polluting the river, though it doesn’t quite manage to reach us.
“Our destination lies beyond,” Noren says, gesturing at the wall of demonic fire. “We must ford the river to reach the monster lying at the heart of the city and end its tyranny once and for all.”
“Right,” I say.
This is around where I think I would have stopped if I was alone. With no way to travel above the water and no skill that enables me to swim more proficiently. I’d be a sitting duck if I was in there alone.
I’ll still be a sitting duck if they make me swim across. My suspicions are deepening now, and I curse myself for getting stuck in this situation. Maybe once we get into actual combat, I’ll be able to isolate one of the weaker members of this party in the chaos and eat them. That could be a ticket out.
For the time being, I’m going to have to play along.
“How exactly are we planning on getting across?” I ask. Half a mile upriver, I see the ruins of something that might’ve been a bridge.
“You will traverse my creation,” Noren says, raising a hand. Beneath us, earth begins to tremble.
I focus on his wording. You. Combined with the other minor slip-ups they’ve had and the signs I’ve spotted, I can finally draw a conclusion.
“If you’re going to use me as bait, you could at least be straightforward about it,” I tell him dryly. This time, what Acting says is the best choice for my persona also reflects my actual thoughts.
Noren tenses ever so slightly, pausing in his earth manipulation. Half a shattered building hangs in the air as he turns to me. “Are you telling me that you want to run, adventurer? Forgive an old man for his suggestion, but that would be a bad idea.”
At the end of his sentence, the others raise their weapons. All five of them carry ranged weapons, I notice. Three wield heavy-looking compound bows while the other two unsling long blowguns from their shoulders.
That likely means they’re worse in close quarters combat. If not for Noren’s presence, Relentless may have been enough to even the odds and allow me victory.
As it is, though, I can’t take them all on at once. Though Relentless is strong, I don’t think it’s quadruple-my-level strong.
“Relax,” I say with a levity I don’t feel, spreading my hands. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I am, however, considering the best way to kill them. One of the men is only level 11. Appraise tells me that this man—Lionel Collins—is a basic Warrior. He has a sheathed sword strapped to his belt, but his primary weapon right now is a blowgun. When the situation inevitably devolves, I should be able to dodge his shot with a Bloodstep and kill him quickly with knives, teeth, and blood.
Before we get to that stage, however, I do need to cross the river.
“The bridge is sufficient for now,” Noren says. “You may begin crossing.”
His “bridge” is a shoddy construction, fifty feet of wood and steel and brick forced into the vague shape of a road by his magic. It barely remains intact even with Noren holding it together, and water soaks the top of it as movements in the river send small waves tumbling over it.
“This is a deathtrap,” I say, flashing him a lopsided smile, and I step forward. “See you on the other side.”
My first steps are wobbly. The river flows fast enough to make the entire structure shake, and its structural integrity isn’t very high when the only thing holding it together is Noren’s skill. I correct myself after a near-slip and continue onwards. Around me, I see more cobblestone and building parts flying forth, slowly assembling more of the makeshift bridge in front of me.
The first demon attacks when I’m less than twenty feet into the bridge. With my enhanced Mind (Speed), I’m able to turn and start taking in the monster as soon as I hear it breach the water’s surface.
It looks like an oversized tuna, if a tuna’s scales were all dark as night and its jaw was thrice the size.
Knifefighting helps me predict its movement, and I hit the “ground” to dodge its phantom image. Half a second later, the fish-demon soars over my prone body, and I stab upwards at it. Its speed throws me off, though, so though I draw blood, it’s not enough to kill it. The fish flops into the water next to me and continues swimming, content to bleed into the river and swim off.
“Keep going!” Noren bellows.
“Or he’ll make ya regret it!” the same woman from earlier adds.
“Thanks for the help!” I yell back, still sticking to the adventurer persona.
This really is a bit awkward. At least Noren is still building the bridge.
By the time I’ve gotten a hundred feet in, I’ve gotten used to the rickety platforms I need to walk across, adjusted my stance so that the slick surface doesn’t trip me up, and utilized Knifefighting to avoid taking any major injuries from seven separate demons. A couple of them are similarly fish-shaped, but the others are wildly different. One is just a spiky sphere with no clear organs—that one, I just dodge, not wanting to try my hand at it.
I’m nearly halfway through the bridge when Noren finally steps onto it. I look back once or twice to see that the rest of the Baron’s group seem to be reluctant to step on.
What even was the point of having me go out front? A few small ones have attacked me and suffered for it—hells, I might’ve killed one or two, though if they died, they died elsewhere—but there’s no shortage of them in the water. Dark shapes swim through the river, most of them choosing to just go under the makeshift bridge.
There’s still a whole lot of demons in there. I haven’t even attracted a tiny fraction of them out, and Demonic Heritage certainly isn’t helping that. I know that fewer of the demons have attacked me because I smell like one of them or whatever, but even if I was a regular human being, surely they weren’t expecting me to draw the attention of all the monsters in the river.
I near the end of the bridge, getting close enough to the other riverbank to see the gaps in the wraithfire where we’re presumably making our entrance. Grey ash rains down on me, and the pillars of thick black smoke might as well touch the sky.
I’m about eighty feet from the opposite shore when my question receives an answer.
Just as I turn aside another fish-demon’s leaping strike, the entire rickety “bridge” shakes, and I barely manage to catch myself. I turn to look at the others, intent on asking Noren what he’s doing, and I notice that they’re backing up.
The bridge starts to break apart on the second impact, and it’s not until a few seconds after that do I realize that I’m under attack.
A dark shape crests out of the water in the eighty feet between me and the shore, sixty feet wide and nearly twice as long. Twisted limbs extend out of it at irregular intervals, mockeries of fins that end in barbed tentacles that trail the water. I have no idea how it stayed hidden all this time.
It doesn’t even raise half of its body out of the water before it expels water out of four separate orifices, brackish river water geysering out in all directions. A spout of it hits me, drenching me from head to toe and nearly knocking me into the river.
After the water comes air, so forceful that the whistle of it sounds like a train crashing.
I feel my Disguise Self slip away under the whale-demon’s roar.
I can barely hear the group behind me muttering amongst themselves over the deafening whistle, but when Noren shouts, I can hear it clear as day.
“DEMONS ON THE BRIDGE!”
Behind me is a level 37 mage and his five companions, all of who have a good reason to want me dead.
Ahead of me is a whale-sized demon that can blow my skills away.
I sigh.
I really should’ve taken a different approach to this.
Now, though, I have to play the cards I’ve dealt myself before the whale can act again. Before Noren can tear this bridge up and slice me to pieces with it.
I activate Bloodstep, sending myself up and diagonally away from the bridge. When the world shifts back from the red altered state, I’m twenty feet up and twenty feet closer to the shore.
I have enough time to see the river from above before I hit it. There are a lot of demons in there, swimming without a care in the world. The water is teeming with so many of them that there’s more space occupied by demons than there is free.
Despite the advanced level of the skill, it hasn’t taken me that far, so I only have a brief moment to prepare myself for a landing before I start falling.
I hit the water less than fifteen feet from the whale.
Objective: Survive
Survive the next 5 minutes.
Reward: 100 XP
XP: 878/900
The whale’s first attack lands a moment later.
