Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon) (36 page)

Sure enough, the only quest from the list I could really handle right now was the one I received from Leeque, but, as the ancient wisdom goes, "there's always a catch!" The envoy of the God of Deceit and Trickery had entrusted me with stealing some thingamajig from the God of Tortuous Death. The quest reeked of trouble—even if I managed to accomplish everything, I couldn't be sure of receiving a just reward. I tried to avoid thinking about the possibility of failure—the sight of a dismembered body on that table was still fresh before my eyes.

"Master Krian! Master Krian, I knew you would come!" Rioh must have learned of my arrival somehow—he was waiting for me at the square.

The women standing near the well stopped chatting and turned in my direction with visible curiosity.

"If you keep shouting about it like that, the whole village will soon know it, too," I smiled. The young demon's unfeigned joy was nice to see.

"Duh, let them! Come to our place, master mage, it's right nearby."

"Actually, I was planning to check out the local fiends," I tried to extricate myself.

"Oh, come on, master mage! We've been waiting! Mom has a present for you—her way of saying thanks for me and pop, as it were. Fiends can wait! Come along, will you?"

"Oh, all right. Let's go," I waved my hand resignedly.

I only managed to end my visit in about an hour and a half. Harn's wife—a stout demoness by the name of Sinta—had put so much food on the table that it would suffice to feed a company of soldiers. I ended up receiving a set of clothes as a present, and Harn also advised me to visit the local sorcerer, who, he said, would have an interesting assignment for me.

Well, the visit wasn't a waste of time, after all,
I thought as I walked towards the residence of Peotius, the local luminary. Books that I'd read often portrayed protagonists slaying dozens of bad guys as little more than killing machines. Without fear and beyond reproach... And also devoid of emotion. What some authors tended to forget completely was that unless a person was a total sociopath, they absolutely had to possess the need for others to treat them as actual human beings. I knew nothing of how I'd change here over the course of time, but I would hate to lose this need for human warmth and turn into a humanoid beast.

The local sorcerer's house was located on the northern edge of the village—you could see the punishers' outpost on the road to the Ghorazm Ruins from his gate. With the thought that I shouldn't forget to take the quest to eliminate the nearby fiends from the captain, I entered the yard.

I crossed a clean and well-tended garden with a pavilion amid the trees and knocked on the door. I didn't have to wait long—in about five minutes the door was opened by a rather quaint character: he looked no older than thirty, was bold, with slightly elongated pointy ears and large green eyes. The sorcerer had the level of 210. He was of medium height, a little shorter than me. I must have interrupted him during some experiment, since he was wearing a leather apron all covered in stains and a mask resembling a respirator. A waft of different smells rolled over me from the open door, with the aroma of ammonia prevailing.

"Come in," the sorcerer stepped to the side, letting me in as soon as I'd introduced myself. He showed me into a small but well-lit room. "I'll finish in a moment—give me five minutes," he asked.

The village sorcerer wasn't merely a healer and an alchemist—he was clearly interested in herbalism, as I surmised from the numerous plant catalogs on his shelves and a well-tended garden in the yard.

The sorcerer wasn't away for too long—he returned to the room without the apron or the mask, wiping his hands meticulously with a piece of rag.

"I have an exam in ten days, so I have to prepare," he said. "How do you like our village?"

"A lovely place," I replied. "Harn told me you might have something for me."

I had no wish to linger, having wasted enough time already.

"Sure," he nodded. "You see, Krian, whatever happened in the ruins has had an odd effect on the local fauna. There is some sort of a disease—it doesn't affect beings of our level of sentience, but instantly transforms animals weighing around 50-60 pounds into aggressive walking corpses." The sorcerer put the rag aside, locked his fingers together on the table, and continued. "Domesticated animals remain unaffected by the disease, and this is something I cannot understand."

"So where do I come in?"

"I need tissue samples from several representatives of the local fauna for my research. I shall give you a few Medium Invisibility Potions in return."

You've accessed the quest: Samples for Research.

Quest type: normal.

Bring Peotius the sorcerer ten blighted tissue samples taken from each of the following species: boars, wolves, and bears.

Reward: experience, 2 Medium Invisibility Potions.

I accepted the quest and quickly said my goodbyes. I went out, visited the local graveyard, which was the spitting image of the one in Lamorna, set a bind point, and only then proceeded to the punisher camp for my quest.

A wide canopy held by six supports, about a dozen wooden cots, a pot on a tripod, a few tables and benches, and three odd-looking constructions made of medium-sized logs and resembling anti-tank obstacles. One had to be very generous to call this an outpost—it looked more like a cookhouse.

Captain Neyl, woken up by one of the legionaries, washed his face in a small roadside pond, and approached me, yawning all the while.

"So you plan to take a stroll to the ruins, eh?" asked the captain in a hoarse low voice after giving me the once-over. He looked around fifty—a shaved head with a long topknot and a droopy mustache gave the captain an uncanny resemblance to the cossacks from the books I'd read in my childhood, with the exception of gray horns on either side of his cranium.

"Yes, and I'd like to find out what I'm likely to expect. I have also heard that Master Ritter has put a bounty on the local fiends."

"The first impression you get is that there's nothing of substance there—on the surface, at least. We didn't check out the swamp, but we did go all the way to the ruins," Neyl shrugged. "Blighted land begins right across those trees," he pointed to a small copse some nine hundred feet away. "You mostly encounter pigs on your way to the ruins. No idea where so many have come from—we've never had anything like those numbers before," the captain shrugged again. "You can find wolves and bears if you go farther into the woods. You mostly find regular fiends right next to the ruins. As for the reward..."

You've accessed the quest: Rid the Territory of Blighted Pigs.

Quest type: normal, recurring.

Bring 20 tails of blighted boars to Captain Neyl.

Reward: experience, 1 gold.

I received identical quests involving wolf and bear tails—I had to bring fifteen and ten of each, respectively. There were also two undead quests—the captain paid a gold coin for ten skulls or five severed zombie arms.

"Another thing," Neyl frowned and looked aside. "Things aren't all that cheery over there," he sighed. "When the whole thing started, the locals tried to clean up the territory by themselves. But then the hunters started to disappear—the village lost seven of them back then. Me and my boys have made a few sorties to the ruins, but we didn't encounter anything substantial along the way." Neyl looked toward the copse. "You take good care when you get there. If you see anything, call me and the boys, and we'll help. There's not much hope for the locals," he waved dismissively. "They had a few reckless guys, but those disappeared a week ago. There was one hell of a thunderstorm that night, and you could hear some strange roaring coming from that direction."

"I see," I nodded. "Thanks for the warning, Neyl. Tell me, is it true that the fiends try to make their way into the village every night?"

"Nah, the mayor likes to put on a scare," the captain chuckled. "We eliminate anything we see up to the very copse. Should something wander in at night, a single slash of the sword takes care of it."

Beyond the copse pointed out to me by Neyl there were fields on either side of the road, where the locals used to grow their crops. Now these fields were but enormous rectangles of wilted vegetation, with numerous pigs of a revolting bluish color roaming them in groups of three. Each was about four feet tall. Patches of skin hung from their sides, and you could see ribs where the flesh had rotted through. It made for a revolting sight. The beasts were around level 70-75, so I had no worries whatsoever. I said to myself,
Let's get started.
I took the shield from my back into my left hand, clenched the handle of the sword with my right, stepped off the path and cautiously set toward the group I'd chosen.

Earth Shackles bound the two beasts the furthest from me. The third pig, or, rather, boar, going by the tusks on its lower jaw, snorted loudly and started to hop in my direction. Some ten yards off the creature accelerated all of a sudden, covering the remaining distance in the blink of an eye and plunging its tusks into the small of my back with an upward motion. The pain made me clench my teeth, and I barely managed to stay on my feet. I slashed at the boar's neck with Ice Blade—not the best strike I could have managed, but it took a quarter of the beast's HP. I used my shield to block the next attack, and then lashed out at the squealer with Tongue of Flame. I landed a critical blow—the boar wheezed and slowly fell to the side. A stench of burning rotten flesh filled the air.

A few seconds later, the two remaining pigs were released from the hold of my Earth Shackles, and they started to trot toward me confidently. Having learned of their ability the hard way, I hid behind the carcass of my first victim, preventing the attackers from dashing in my direction, and greeted the first beast with the well-familiar Ice Blade—right in the snout. I blocked the counterattack with my shield, used Tongue of Flame, another parry with the shield, and the second pig slowed down for a moment as it had to trot around its fallen comrade. I hit it with an Ice Blade and then jumped aside to replenish my energy a bit.

  I covered myself with the shield against the advancing piggies, blocked the dash of the one that had full HP, and finished off the wounded one. Then I killed the last one with four blows, parrying its counterattacks, took a deep breath and held it, waiting for the pain to abate.

  I decided against using a vial with a healing potion—it was best to be frugal with those. They only worked once a minute, anyway, so I'd only use them as a last resort. I recovered my HP in about 15 seconds. With Raey's earring, my HP regeneration out of combat was a little over two percent per tick. Just standing next to these carcasses reeking of putrefaction was already revolting, but I had to approach and touch each of them with my hand to collect the loot. I didn't find anything special on the carcasses—each contained a tail and a tissue sample. The boar also had a pair of tusks, but I doubted those cost more than a few coppers.

The result was far from encouraging—I got less than one percent of experience, and the pack of pigs cost me nearly a third of my HP, but that was with me nearly going all out, and with my Toughness being a whopping 33%. It took me about thirty seconds to kill all three pigs, but I felt no immediate desire to challenge the next pack—it's hard to force yourself into such a masochistic activity.

I found one thing rather weird—this time I felt pain throughout the battle, but my fights with skhiarta's brood and the giant wolf were different. You didn't need too many smarts to see why—the previous times my system was pumping out enormous loads of adrenaline and I truly hated my adversaries. As for the pigs, I merely saw them as regular quest mobs containing tails, tissue samples and other crap of the same sort.

No, that wouldn't do. They were no mere mobs! These beasts were in the way of my revenge! I cast Shackles on two pigs, binding them with the spell. Then I leaped at the boar before it could dash at me and struck out with Ice Blade. These beasts stood between me and the bastard who had fractured my bones in his basement! Two more flourishes, and the boar fell on the black loamy soil, and I rushed toward the remaining two without waiting for the spell to wear off.

"You left me here to die, Cheney!"

I hit one of the immobilized mobs a few times before the spell effects wore off and the pigs turned toward me to attack.

"And I kept dying the whole damned day!"

Fury took hold of me completely.

"How dare you stand in my way!"

A few more blows, and the last pig fell to my feet with a death rattle, my blade in its eye. I distractedly collected the loot and waited for the HP bar to refill, examining the carcass at my feet. The pig snout with an ugly hole in its eye socket suddenly assumed the familiar features of my Enemy.

"Yes, you bastard," I spat out the words, nearly gagging on my hatred, "the same is gonna happen to you!"

I cleaned my blade of bits of grayish flesh, raised my eyes from the corpse and looked out on the field.

"But I have survived—yes I have—and I'm coming to get you!"

With a bestial roar, I pounced on the next pack...

It took all my willpower to stop at dusk. I was standing near the wood adjacent to the field, covered in gray goo from head to foot. There were pig carcasses everywhere, emitting a horrendous stench of death. Some had already disappeared, leaving gray blotches of an irregular shape on the ground, but the ones I could see were enough to conclude it had been a productive day. It took nearly six hours of ceaseless farming, but the fields on both sides of the road were completely undead-free. I had 144 tails in my bag and lots of assorted yucky stuff such as fangs and stomach fragments—today's trophies.
Time to head for the village.
The piggies would start to revive before too long—the process was known as "respawning" and it began about six hours after a mob's death. Incidentally, could this be why RP-17 had extended the time it took players to resurrect from two minutes to the same six hours?
We're all mobs here.
I chuckled and set forth toward the village.