Chapter One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Five |
Finding horses was easier said than done, especially since they hadn’t collected any money for the stage yet. But because everyone except Seo-Yoon was adamant about wanting to use normal transportation, they eventually found a simple quest to escort a shipment of metal to the village of Silt in return for 1,000 Silvers.
< < Quest Unlocked > >
< Guard the Metal Shipment >
< Protect the carriage carrying a shipment of metal to the village of Silt >
It was inefficient, but Adam was aware of most of the deadlines for the stage, so he knew they had time to take it slower for the first two days, though they would be best served to take out the Red Scarves today.
The others were predictably still uneasy about what had gone down earlier with the legendary relic, and Chien kept looking at Adam with suspicion in his melody. While it wasn’t ideal, Adam knew it could easily have been a lot worse, and he figured that the problem would blow over if given time, so long as he didn’t do anything profoundly stupid to make them regret trusting him.
Adam and Diwa were up front with the driver of the carriage, Natalia and Heiner sat on the sides of the large vehicle, and Chien and Seo-Yoon sat on the back. The carriage was more like a safebox on wheels than a means of transportation, and given its heavy cargo, four horses were required to pull it along the road that moved up and down the green hills.
After they were just a few kilometres out from Old Town, Adam sensed incoming melodies of humans from the distance. They were filled with greed and a desire for violence.
“Horst,” Adam said, and the archer climbed onto the roof of the vehicle.
“To the southeast,” Adam told him, pointing him in the direction of the melodies.
While Adam could’ve fought them himself, he understood that his power concerned the others. Not to mention, anyone who’d made it this far was not a pushover and could be relied on. It was a lesson he’d been slow to learn, but most people wanted to be considered useful, and handling everything himself was more likely to create resentment than admiration.
Heiner didn’t need to be told much more, and with a flap of his wings, he took off in the direction that Adam had pointed. Since he’d used the orb of insight, he would likely know what weapons the Red Scarves used, removing the chance for nasty surprises.
The driver tracked Heiner as he disappeared into the horizon, but he didn’t say a word, though his melody was tense and his grip on the reins was white-knuckled.
“How would they know a shipment is coming already?” Diwa wondered.
“Maybe there’s a spy in Old Town,” Natalia replied from the side of the carriage.
I should’ve considered that possibility, Adam thought. He’d been laser-focused on what everyone in his group was feeling though, so he hadn’t paid that much attention to the surrounding populace.
A few minutes later, the distant melodies started to wink out after brief moments of surprise and pain.
They kept rolling along the road for about ten more minutes, before encountering Heiner on the wayside, waiting to get picked up. He was wisely conserving his stamina, since it was much slower to recover when exhausted fully.
“I managed to pick up about a hundred Silvers,” Heiner said as he climbed back on the carriage. Aside from a light sheen of perspiration, there was nothing to indicate that he’d been in a fight, although his sack of coins was drenched in blood.
For the next forty minutes, the ride was peaceful, but no one except Adam was resting, no matter how much he assured them there wasn’t a single living person besides them in a ten-kilometre radius. There was the possibility of forlorn assassins, but both Adam and Seo-Yoon wore the aspirant’s cowl, so any signs of tainted mana would be immediately spotted, since the rolling hills didn’t provide much cover for ambushes.
A sizeable cluster of melodies were coming up on them from the north, in the direction they were heading. To the east was the towering Oath Spire mountain, which was a wall of stone, rock, and clumps of grassy soil that blocked out most of the eastern horizon.
“We should be close now,” the driver announced.
In the sky, the sun was racing towards the horizon.
Eight or nine melodies broke from the cluster up ahead and started moving towards them. They were undoubtedly part of the bandit gang that’d tried to ambush them earlier.
Unless it’s some kind of scripted event, the Red Scarves must have a way of tracking shipments. It can’t have been a coincidence that we’re attacked just after leaving Old Town and just before arriving to our destination.
Defeating Red Rian’s gang would remove the threat I think, but it may also be possible to make shipments safe by finding whoever is leaking their routes ahead of time.
There had been a few different carriages looking for mercenaries to protect them, as well as delivery services looking for messengers, but it wasn’t inconceivable that one or more of the Red Scarves were inside Old Town, spying on the shipments and passing on the word to their gang, while pretending to offer quests.
“More incoming,” Adam said. “On the road up ahead.”
The driver brought his horses to a stop at the crest of a hill, and the others got off the carriage. Natalia and Chien moved to the front of the group, and they both charged the moment they saw the horse riders on the opposite hill.
The Red Scarves almost looked like ordinary people, but they were armed with swords, knives, and simple crossbows, and their melodies promised violence. They were split across four horses, with a crossbowman on the back and a rider at the front.
Heiner lined up a throw with a javelin and Adam prepared to fire one of his gauntlet fingers the moment the bandits came within his reach. Meanwhile, Seo-Yoon and Diwa watched from near the carriage, ready to defend if any of them got through.
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But such a concern was unwarranted.
Natalia moved like a banshee on the wind, her running gait animalistic and lethal. With a crazy leap that stuck low to the ground, she flew over a fired bolt and carved through the two men atop the first horse, leaving the animal unscathed.
Heiner’s spear drove through the neck of a different rider, sending his body over the side of the saddle and causing the horse to suddenly rear up, which dropped the crossbowman down onto the road, where a follow-up javelin quickly found its way to his chest and pinned him to the dirt,
Natalia repeated her trick to eliminate another pair of riders, and then the last horse came within reach of Adam’s magic. He fired a finger, sending it through the necks of both men atop the horse, before triggering Blood Crystal to instantly kill them.
The moment his afflictions took hold, Adam felt like the blood in his body was turned to treacle, before solidifying into burning ice that poked through his veins and flesh like shards of glass.
He let out a breathless gasp.
What the hell is that?
Despite his gift from the Flayed Lady that blunted him to most pain, what he felt was pure and undiluted, causing him to drop to a knee and making his ears ring.
Shit.
I think this might be the effect of the mantle.
It’s making me feel what they felt when I afflicted them.
With all the riders dead, the horses panicked and tried to flee, but Heiner, Natalia, and Chien were quick to catch them and bring them back to the carriage.
“Are you okay?” Heiner asked Adam.
“I’m okay,” he replied, standing back up. “The legendary relic seems to have quite a sinister side-effect.”
“Really?” he asked.
Based on their melodies, the others were listening in as well.
“I felt every affliction I delivered,” Adam told them.
While it didn’t make their apparent desire for the relic go away, it did curb it slightly.
“I heard that the legendary relic from the Floating Sea can attack you,” Natalia said. “It turns your weapon into a sentient thing, but it also has a mind of its own sometimes.”
“So, the legendary relics are traps,” Chien concluded. “I am not surprised.”
“The one from Moonport makes you relive the memories of anyone whose heart you eat,” Adam added.
Diwa frowned at the description, while Chien shook his head in apparent disapproval.
The truth might help them realise that all power has a price.
Hopefully it will make them think differently about the relics they pick up.
As the others figured out who would be riding the horses, Adam turned to his cube. “Keep a tally of how much my stats are affected by the mantle of atrophy.”
[Understood. Currently, you have gained 6% to Affliction and lost 12% from Antivenom. This puts you at 229% Affliction bonus and 10% Antivenom resistance.]
Each attack triggers my Bleed and Venom upgrades, and it seems the crystallisation counts as an affliction too.
It’ll stack up fast, ruining the protection I got from my Antivenom upgrades…
But that being said, I now see why this relic is so absurdly strong. I might be able to take out most of Red Rian’s camp with a single activation, since I can spread the crystallisation. Although, the backlash of pain might make me blackout.
Losing consciousness was one of the things Adam feared most. Even if Heiner no longer possessed the power to exploit such a vulnerability, it was just about the only way that Adam thought he might get killed. At least in this stage.
The carriage continued on after Adam dragged the corpses away from the middle of the road, and once it had passed by, he pulled their organic material into his raiment, removing almost all traces of the bandits’ existence, except for their weapons and clothes.
Before the others could get too far away, he flew after the carriage, landing atop its roof.
Heiner had opted to not take one of the horses, since, like Adam, he was able to fly.
It was curious how easily the others were able to control their mounts, but just like when he’d arrived in the Floating Sea the first time, it was clear the Trials gifted its players with a basic understanding of a world’s mechanisms, such as its transport animals and vehicles.
I suppose to anyone watching, it would be frustrating if all of the players struggled to do something as simple as ride a horse or steer an airship. The real entertainment is in watching us fight to the death, not to see us bumble about aimlessly.
A few minutes later, a large murky lake came within view, and nestled around its northwestern edge was a dingy-looking village. The houses and streets were lifted several metres off the lake shore’s silty soil using tall wooden stilts. The wood that had been used to build the village was falling apart before their eyes, rotten boards and smashed houses half-swallowed in the silt below showing just how precarious the living conditions were. Fishermen called the village of Silt their home, and the design of the stilt buildings and streets were meant to enable their profession, since long piers and winches allowed for them to fish directly from the village or easily get their small rowboats out on the water.
< < Settlement Discovered > >
< Silt >
“This place looks like a death trap,” Natalia remarked from atop her horse.
“The fishermen of Silt are proud and strong, but builders they are not, and you would not find me wandering out along their piers,” the driver said. “Still, they go through hooks and machinery in a hurry, so they often pay well for shipments of metal.”
The most important buildings of Silt were situated on solid land beyond the porous silty lake shore, and the driver brought his carriage to the biggest of them, which had a stable and several people trading goods and parcels.
“This is as far as I will go for now,” the driver told them. He pulled out a sack of clinking coins and handed it to Chien. “I appreciate you folk taking care of those bandits on my behalf. If I were you, I would ask the village chief about Red Rian and his gang. He’s sure to be the one whose highwaymen are harassing the roads and deliveries.”
< < Quest Complete > >
< Guard the Metal Shipment >
< Protected the carriage >
Heiner and Adam got off the carriage as people from within the large building came out to receive the metal shipment and talk to the driver. When they saw Adam’s group and heard of how they’d defeated the bandits along the way, they brought out a tall sun-tanned man in his forties, who appeared to be the village chief.
Like the driver had promised, he told them about Red Rian and how his gang had been terrorising the people who traversed the roads, targeting the small villages and hamlets in particular, and taking many hostages. Once he was done with his explanation, he asked them to take down the bandit lord. He couldn’t promise a big reward himself, but if they brought Red Rian’s infamous weapons to either Gothershall or Old Town, then they would receive 10,000 Silvers as a bounty.
< < Quest Unlocked > >
< Red Rian must die! >
< Take down Red Rian and his gang of outlaws >
The promise of easy money was enough to get everyone interested. Until now, they’d just assumed killing Red Rian would be a way to gain more points at the end of the stage, but seeing how useful money were in these long stages, their motivation skyrocketed.
“We should do it before it gets dark,” Diwa said.
“Being outside of settlements at night in this stage is dangerous,” Heiner replied.
“If we can clear out Red Rian’s camp, it’ll become a settlement,” Adam told them.
“The orb of insight didn’t show me that,” Heiner muttered.
“Well, what are we waiting for then?” Natalia asked. “We’ve got horses, so we should get going right away.”
“There’s a quest and objective tied to Silt,” Heiner said. “It might be better to do that today and then take down Red Rian tomorrow, when night isn’t looming over us.”
“Let us vote on it,” Chien said and the others agreed.
Unsurprisingly, only Heiner wanted to stay in Silt.
As the other four took off on their horses, heading towards the Oath Spire mountain, behind which the bandit camp was situated, Adam kept up with Heiner, even though he could easily fly the distance and back before he’d make it there with his grafted wings.
While they flew above the hills, Adam focused on Heiner’s melody and the tiny bit of blood he’d injected into him at the start of the stage.
“You need to tell me what’s going on with the demon relic,” Adam said unprompted, now that the others were too far away to hear.
Heiner almost lost his balance but managed to catch himself. “You noticed…”
“It was kind of obvious,” Adam replied. “So, what’s wrong with it?”
“The demon inside speaks to me,” Heiner said.