Things were going smoothly for me as I wiped out another group of goblins using the same method as the first. I still took a bit of damage from the initial charge in, as I had no way to block two extra strikes while I killed my first target, then I missed another block during my two on one ordeal to leave me with 60% health at the end of that round of combat. I was getting slowly better at judging how these goblins attacked though, and towards the end of the fight I was becoming pretty good at predicting where the block had to be placed in order to stop taking needless damage.

Realm of Infinity seemed to like leaving a lot of things in the dark, which actually made it more interesting in my opinion. Not having exact numbers displayed for every little thing made it so that I had to immerse myself more and more into the game to understand what was going on. For example, I couldn’t see a numerical representation of my gear durability, so I had to pay attention to the wear and tear on the items to see how damaged they were becoming. On top of that, I had to try and spread out the incoming damage over my body in an attempt to keep one piece of armor from taking too much wear, lest the item breaks on me and leaves me in a bind.

A glimpse at my own info screens showed another 10% increase to my new skill, while Polearm Mastery added another 6% to its level. Between the mastery skill and my agi, I was beginning to feel like I could be more aggressive in my techniques while fighting these mobs, but that might be at the risk of taking a bit more damage. Would be worth a try in any case though.

The loot I got from the last pack was disappointing as I only got 16 coppers and nothing else. I was a little on the upset side when it came to the lack of drops while Aly and I continued on through the outer edge of the old town. I wanted to clear the outskirts for now, gaining as much experience as I could from the small packs of goblins before I ran up against harder foes.

My first complication in my plans came when I ran into the third group. Not just three, but four goblins crouched around each other at a crossroads, one of which carrying a crude bow which could complicate things. This was going to be the first ranged unit that I would be dealing with, and the uncertainty of the prospect made me pause to go over my options. According to the inspect pop-up, it was still a Goblin Sentry with 250 hp, so no new surprises in that department. The good thing that came of the group was that my inspect skill grew to level 2 from that!

Happy that something good came my way again, I went over a blitz attack idea in my mind and tweaked my own plans slightly. Swift Regeneration should make this possible, but I double checked that I had a health and energy potion ready to go in my quick access slots on my belt once more. Remembering where each was in the middle of a fight was going to be important so that I didn’t grab a wrong vial when I was distracted.

A quick instruction to Aly for her to be ready, as I was probably going to need True Haste for this fight, and I took a slow breath to prepare myself. This could work well, or go spectacularly bad depending on how well I could manage their attacks. I berated myself for the doubt in my mind. Such thoughts could undermine my decisions in the middle of the fight and that could lead to disaster.

I let all doubt drain from my thoughts, and charged around the corner towards the goblins. This tactic called for quick movement and dodging over block and counter attacks. A curse flew from my lips as the creatures spotted me almost instantly this time. The archer squealed in surprise and snapped off a shot with his bow at me, which flew wide thankfully. The downside was that I wasn’t able to take the archer out quickly as the sword wielding mobs jumped in front of the one with the bow. Oh well, time to get creative!

My spear was leveled, the extra damage dealt with a charging strike being too good to pass up in any situation, as I shifted my target to the right most sword sentry. As I got near to striking range, I took a few more steps to the right, putting more space between me and the other two melee sentries. Then I was upon the group, thrusting my spear forward to catch my target in the throat and dealing a crit on top of the charge damage! I didn’t kill the mob right off, but he was left dangerously low with only 10% HP in his health bar above his head.

There was no time to savor the strike, and I kept moving with a shove of my weapon to fling the wounded goblin into the next sword wielding sentry, knocking them both to the ground. That would buy me a few precious seconds as I changed my spear to a halberd which would suit my needs better in this situation.

Thanks to the longer reach of my weapon, I didn’t run the risk of a counter attack from the goblin farthest to my left and I ran straight at the archer, winding back for a powerful swing at the mob. While I was doing all of that, I saw an arrow nocked and drawn, the release coming before I would be able to strike or dodge. Well, looked like I was taking some damage… I knew I would, but I had hoped I could avoid it for more than a couple seconds.

Pain blossomed in my left thigh as I felt the arrow strike my armor, but the tip didn’t penetrate the thick leather. Hah! The Grotto armor kept its piercing resistance from the boss! Still, it shaved off a couple percent of my life and I felt like a bruise would be found if I checked. I hadn’t slowed my motion and as the archer got into range, I swung my halberd around with a yell to slash the blade at the mob’s knee. 20% of the archer’s health fell away, and a new symbol appeared by the health bar, flashing red. It looked like a broken bone and looking at where I hit the goblin, I saw I had indeed shattered its leg. My first sight of a severe injury!

I had little time to celebrate my achievement and quickly kept moving, circling around to slash at the still standing sword goblin. Again, the reach of my weapon over those of the mobs saved me any headaches as I caught the creature in the side before he got in range to hit me with his sword. The two goblins I had knocked over were just getting back to their feet, and I activated True Haste.

Bringing the halberd up and over my head like a huge axe, I chopped down on the one with the lowest health, putting the thing down for good. The world around me looked like it was moving through molasses, giving me time to read the movements of the goblins. A grunt escaped my lips as somehow the injured goblin behind me managed to fire an arrow at my back, bringing me down to 90% HP.

I made a mental note to save that one for last… It needed to suffer some more for this annoyance. The two sword wielding goblins were the greater threat anyway, as their damage was higher and they had full mobility. A quick glance showed my mana draining rapidly, giving me a limited amount of time to get the job done.

The polearm in my hands would probably have appeared to be a blur to the goblins stuck in regular time as I took full advantage of my higher agi and time rate, stabbing forward with my weapon as I shifted the head into a spear point again. I focused the goblin now to my right which I had already hit, getting five hits in quick succession and dropping it dead to the ground before my mana ran out, the world returning to full speed around me.

Another arrow hit me, this time right in the ass and I cursed loudly as 5% more of my HP was whittled away. I couldn’t spare a glance behind me, as the last of the sword goblins was swinging his sword at me with a savage yell. I was unfortunately at a bad angle to block or deflect the blow, and I took another 15% of my life in damage from the sword, which I countered with a strong thrust from my spear into its throat.

Trying something new, I left the tip of my weapon embedded in the goblin and twisted to my right. My strength must have been high enough, for the goblin was dragged off balance and fell while falling back off my spear. A few stabs of my weapon and another arrow hitting my back later, and the last of the sword wielders were dead.

As soon as it was alone, the archer started whimpering behind me, the sounds of crawling clearly heard as I turned to face it. The mob was trying to flee from me now that it was alone, but the broken leg was seriously hindering his attempt.

I let a wide smile cross my face and stalked forward, shifting my weapon into a two handed axe with double crescent blades adorning the top. The heft of the weapon was greater than my spears, but was easily manageable with my strength rating. This little bastard was going to suffer for pissing me off.

A grunt escaped my throat as I lifted the axe over my head and chopped down onto the archers remaining working leg. I must have gotten a serious bonus on the attack, because the blade passed cleanly through the leg just below the knee to the monsters pained shriek. A second icon appeared over the now 50% health bar, this one a picture of legs surrounded by a circle with a diagonal line through it. No walking allowed.

I paused in my assault at this revelation, letting the goblin whimper in pain and terror. I went over the damage dealt to this creature and made a few notes. First, the crippling blow restricted its movements with a small damage bonus added on. Second, it was possible to keep an enemy from fleeing by taking out its legs with well-placed blows. That would make future fights easier now that I knew it was possible.

The wounded goblin tried to make one last attempt at saving itself as it tried to lift its bow while laying on its back to try and shoot at me. I gave a hearty chuckle at the thing and swung the axe out to knock the bow from its grip. Hmmm… I wondered if I could maybe take advantage of a now incapacitated creature for a killing blow. The goblin had suffered enough pain and humiliation to satisfy me, petty though it was that I felt the need to do so to a string of ones and zeros.

Circling around to the side of the goblin, I positioned myself and raised the axe up once again. Taking careful aim, I grunted and swung down at the neck lined up before me and grinned when the head separated from the shoulders with a crunch and squelch. Fatal crit. Man I loved that aspect of the game. It had saved my life with the Grotto Guardian, and made quick work of the low level wolves when using a well-placed spear strike. It made sense too, in the grand scheme of things, to be able to kill with one blow if the situation was right.

As soon as I finished the last goblin, a window sprang open in front of me announcing a new level!

Congratulations!

You have gained a level!

Current level: 4

Faction Bonus:

+1 Str

+1 Polearm Mastery

+1 Advanced Herbalism

You have 5 stat points available to distribute.

Warning! If you die before assigning your points, they will be lost!

I grinned, seeing that Aly had leveled up to 3 as well and learned the Temporal Step skill. What gave me a bit of disappointment was the fact that Advanced Herbalism was almost about to level anyway, and the skill was now set as level 2 with 0% towards the next level. Bit of a waste, but oh well.

Quickly looting the corpses for 60 more copper, I leaned against a wall nearby to assign my stat points and check out Aly’s talents again. Looking at my stats, my Int needed a lot of work. 250 mana just wasn’t enough to be too useful with the demands of my skills. With a sigh, I made the decision to dump all of the points there for this level to bring up on par with the bulk of my other stats. With the exception of my Will stat, I was starting to look pretty beefy now. Given a few more levels and hopefully my targeted stats will start to pull away from the rest and give me the edge I needed to really shine with my build type.

The fight had gone well, and it gave me hope that I would be able to use speed and reach to my advantage more often instead of just relying on a block and counter routine. My armor made it all the easier as I should be able to ignore archers with the piercing resistance. Of course, it might explain why I was taking so much damage from the swords at the same time when I thought back to the slashing damage I did to the boss being quite effective. A drawback to every positive feature, I guessed.

Moving on to Aly’s talent tree, I frowned. The third tier skills were still grayed out and when I tried to focus on them a message came up saying she needed to be level 5 in order to learn these skills. Bah… I wasn’t horribly interested in the Time Heals All Wounds skill as it didn’t seem that powerful, but I sure wasn’t going to waste the exp points. Selecting the last of the tier two skills, I closed out the menus and stretched my arms while looking about me. Time to do some more hunting!

“Uhm… Calamity?” I looked around, finding Aly floating above me just over the top of the broken building I had just been leaning against. Her voice carried a note of worry, which instantly put me on edge and made me grip my weapon harder.

“Yeah, what it is Aly? See something?” The ruins around me were fairly open and I hadn’t needed to ask my Fairy to fly up to scout for me yet, but if she was spotting something that made her nervous then maybe I had better keep her up there from now on.

“Yeah, kind of. There is a patrol roaming around a few streets over, and they look to be coming this way next. From the direction of their travel, I would venture to say that they have visited the last couple sites where you took out the previous goblins.” She bit her lower lip and looked down at me with those exotic electric blue eyes of hers. “There are only two of them, but they are mounted on strange lizard things and are wearing armor…”

Shit… I wasn’t ready to deal with enemies like that just yet. If they were still far enough away, it was time I beat feet and made my escape. Maybe I could even use them to find the next pack of goblins after they pass me by. “Got it, thanks Aly. Let’s move and not be here when the pair show up.”

My Fairy flew down to join me and I sprinted away from the site of the recent carnage. I didn’t run too far, finding a building within eyesight of the crossroads to climb up on in order to see what I could. I settled down on my belly, my eyes just above the rim of the building so I could hopefully see without being seen myself.

I didn’t have to wait long until the mounted warriors made it to the area I had just fled. Just as Aly described, the goblins were larger than the sentries and covered in shoddy chainmail that still seemed like it might cause me problems. The mounts themselves looked like chameleons, only much, much bigger. Easily seven feet long from nose to tail, the lizards appeared quite dangerous in their own right without even counting in the long spears of decent quality the riders wielded.

Goblin Outrider

Level: 9

HP: 600

The scouts of the Goblin race, Outriders use their lizard mounts to travel quickly ahead of a marching Goblin army. They also serve as the sergeants of the Goblin ranks, keeping the lesser Sentries and Guards in line when encamped.

Forest Lizard

Level: 8

HP: 500

Commonly found throughout the world, these beasts are normally very passive and tend to avoid fighting. When bred in captivity, races have been able to turn them into a perfect combat mount. Fast and agile, these creatures have sharp claws on their toes with which to climb surfaces or fight.

Damn, that looked like it might be hard to deal with on my own… At least for the time being. Once I got a few more levels under my belt, I had the feeling that I could take them without much difficulty. The Outriders inspected the area of battle and spoke to each other in their guttural language quickly before spurring their mounts forward again.

Hoping they were heading to the next sentry post, I scrambled off of the building I hid on and paralleled their path, doing my best to keep them in sight. I was thankful that the color of my armor did a good job of allowing me to blend into the surroundings of buildings, rubble, and foliage that was growing all over the place. So long as I stuck to the shadows, I was pretty hard to spot from any distance.

Sure enough, the pair of mounted goblins came upon another pack of four sentries, this pack containing two with swords and two with bows. Perfect! This set up will let me take out the pair with swords and then turn on the archers who I could pretty much ignore at the start.

One thing made it harder though… The Outriders must have been smarter than what I had encountered so far, as it seemed they put the pack of sentries on alert to someone killing off their brethren. The mounted goblins soon left to move on with their patrol, but the sentries remained wary, staring out in different directions with a small space in the middle of the group.

Hmmm… That looked like just enough space for me to stand in and get the jump on the critters. I grinned and checked that Aly was ready for some action and found her floating beside me with a grim smile on her tiny lips. All set.

A small chunk of mana fed through the Bond activated Temporal Step, and that left me five seconds to sprint down the road and duck behind another building, much closer to the group. I had to wait for another 30 seconds to use the skill again, the 5 second duration counting towards the entire cooldown period.

Once the cooldown was complete, I waited for another few seconds to allow my mana to completely refill before triggering the skill one more time. I made it to the middle of the sentries with a second to spare, and changed the shape of my weapon to the two handed axe once more. I readied my body for the world to return to normal.

As soon as the skill ended, I wound up and spun a complete circle with the axe outstretched to damage all four goblins in a row! Surprise added a good chunk of damage to the mix, letting me take out 25% of every goblins health from the ambush. The four mobs cried out in pain and leapt away from me, giving me plenty of room to shift my weapon into a spear again and stabbing one of the sword goblins in the throat for more extra damage.

Knocking my target to the ground with a jerk of my arms, I turned towards the other standing sword goblin and slashed at it with the point of my spear, dealing a normal hit to the mob. Two arrows impacted my back, knocking me down 10% HP in total as the prone goblin slowly got back to its feet.

True Haste engaged, giving me enough time of sped up perception to finish off one goblin, and bring the other to 10% health while I took another volley of arrows to my exposed back. A final block of a sword and slash of my spear dropped the second sword goblin, leaving me with just the two archers.

Knowing what was coming, as I had roughly estimated the time between arrows, I dived into a sideways roll with a half second to spare as two arrows flew through where I had just been standing. I got to my feet and once more shifted to a large axe weapon. A smile curled my lips as it was now just me and defenseless archers. These ranged sentries were really annoying me with their pelting arrows, and I had found space for their kind in the darkest corners of my heart.

My hatred of them must have shown, for the pair almost immediately dropped their weapons in order to turn and flee with strangled cries of panic. Those cries changed to ones of pain as I leapt forward and slashed at one, then the other, taking out a leg on each to cripple them.

“No, no, no… You aren’t going anywhere.” Using the axe, I alternated between the two goblins as I hacked them apart with petty glee, the sight of their blood flying all over not disturbing me in the slightest as their screams of pain slowly faded away just like their lives.

“You know… I think you find way too much enjoyment in that.” Aly had an almost disgusted look on her features as she floated down from her position on high. “Can’t say that is healthy for you Calamity.”

I shrugged my shoulders at the little Fairy, unashamed of my violent behavior. “Maybe, but I can’t stand annoying things and tend to take my aggression out on the ones I find. Don’t worry, you are quite safe from my temper Aly.” I looted the corpses for total of 48 copper, the bodies fading away once their spoils were claimed.

A box appeared, showing that Aly had learned her last second tier skill just from this pack alone and I chuckled. The skill was mostly useless to me anyway, but I was glad I had still gotten 500 exp from one pack of enemies to cover the cost of the skill. Aly seemed to follow the same experience requirements to level up as I did, so she still needed 850 exp to make level 4, and then however many as were needed for level 5. The only downside I was seeing was that she only got the same amount of exp that I did, meaning I couldn’t expect her to get experience from a mob in relation to her own level while I got less for my own pool.

The exp was flowing in nicely, in any event. Getting to level 10 shouldn’t be too hard in a location like this, but I also noticed that it was nearing 11 AM and I would soon be getting a warning to log out. My health had returned to normal by now, but my energy and mana bars were still at 75% and 50% respectively so I would need to rest a bit more before moving on.

At least, that was the plan. The two mounted Outriders who rounded the corner a short way away had other ideas. Their enraged shouts filled the air and the lizards they rode launched themselves forward quickly at me.

“Oh fuck! Damn patrols!” Panicking a little bit, I glanced around and saw a good chance. Temporal Step froze time around me and I used every second of it to sprint up the road and dive into a mostly whole building, Aly flying along behind me and ducking in as well just before the skill ended.

I held as still as I could, not wanting to make a sound and alert the scouts of my location. I could hear them and their shuffling mounts, confusion evident in their voices even if I couldn’t understand the words. A sharp yell sounded from one of the goblins, followed by the noise of the lizards creeping closer to my location. Shit, they must have found my tracks or something…

They were almost at the doorway I dived through when a new sound echoed over the ruins. The deep bass bellow of a horn sounded from another portion of the city, a long single note tone that rolled through the air and made my chest vibrate slightly. Right outside on the street, another horn answered the first with three short bursts, the sounds fading away to allow me to notice the noise of the lizards racing away from my location towards the first sound.

Phew… Saved by the horn. I chuckled at that thought and relaxed where I sat. Maybe now was the best time to log out and take care of things quickly, then I could log back in and get back to the party at hand. Opening the menu, I selected ‘log out’ and accepted the 60 second timer that required me to remain out of combat for before actually exiting the game since I wasn’t in a safe zone.

The countdown struck zero, and I went through the whole process of traveling through the ready room and waking up in the bulky machine in my apartment. After a quick stop in the bathroom, I grabbed the AR display from my desk and headed down to the kitchen to get some food and do some internet surfing. I had a few things I wanted to check out, and if there wasn’t anyone else about then I could do so without worry.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one who decided to take a break then, but it was one of the gamers I wasn’t familiar with, so I left him alone and sat down with a cold cut sandwich to munch on. As I chowed down on my lunch, I pulled up a screen and went to my own stream page on the DT site.

Of course, the window showing my game view was black, an ‘offline’ message scrolling over where the game world should be. The comments section was abuzz with activity though, and I scrolled through them all in amazement. Before Alex had approached me with this job I hadn’t heard about this game at all, but it appeared as if there had been advertising galore prior to the release and the company streamers were a big part of that.

Among the lists of abusive language berating me for how I acted, there was quite a lot of people who were fascinated by both my playstyle and Aly too. Some of the comments raged that they should have been allowed to see the Glade of Trials since not many people had been able to get into the same area as I was in.

Even as I watched, more comments came in calling me a coward for fleeing the mounted Outriders while some other people defended my actions. It all reminded me of when I was one of the top players back in the day and received a decent amount of attention from both players and media, and the memories made me smile.

Curious, I switched to Archie’s feed and was pleased to see him wandering through a wide open plain with a Fairy floating along with him. Looked like he got his partner like he hoped, and as I scrolled through the comments I noticed that he did indeed get the Unique Fairy the system told me came up. Good for him.

Kayla’s feed showed her wandering through a forest calmly, her Celestial Fairy flitting around her. The Fairy’s mouth moved, but I didn’t have any sound on so I missed what was said. I scrolled through her comments and saw the bulk of the posts were the common stuff when on a female gamers page. All of the ‘you’re hot’, ‘are you single?’, ‘give me your number’ posts would be deleted when Kayla checked most likely as the woman was truly put off by seeing such things all of the time.

My meal done, I cleaned up my mess and grabbed my AR display to head back to my room and back into Realm of Infinity. Things weren’t going to kill themselves after all, and I tended to enjoy being the one to gain the exp over someone or something else.

Setting myself up into the cap and machine was becoming second nature to me by now and I was quickly ready to go, pressing the button on the device to draw me into its depths. Skipping through the white room and into the doorway for the game, I welcomed the vertigo that announced my arrival into the virtual world.

Opening my eyes, I immediately clapped my hands over my ears as loud horns were sounding all through the ruins in every direction. What the hell? I stood and glanced out the door way to check the area, but saw nothing. “Aly, fly up into the air and try to make out what is going on?”

The little Fairy nodded at me and did as I asked, rising into the sky above the buildings to scope out the surrounding town quickly. I saw her raise a hand to shield her eyes from the bright mid-day sun before she darted back down to me to report.

“I can’t make out the reason, but I can see a ton of goblins massing on the Eastern side of the ruins. The horns are the Outriders calling for reinforcements. If I had to guess, I would say another person or group of people got caught and are about to be destroyed. Probably allowed one of the goblins to run off.”

I cursed softly. That was going to make my task all the harder… Or would it? All of the mobs were now collecting in one location, and I had the skillset that could let me pick off stragglers without any problems! A laugh replaced the curse on my lips as I grinned at the coming game of cat and mouse.