Arc 05: Red Mist

Chapter 034: Searching for Recruits

Curiously, the rest were completely chill with me becoming a Chosen One. Players seemed to be unaware of just how extraordinary it was. NPCs at that point were so used to impossible things happening on a daily basis that they no longer could feel shock.

According to lore it was quite rare for a single country to have more than a single Chosen One at once. Eldest prince of Northern Aevaria was supposedly a Chosen One of Tyrant, which was enough to make his ascension to the throne considered something obvious. It was believed he was already running everything from behind the stage.

Most people connected the latest surge of power in Northern Aevaria to him. Thankfully Ambryxis was far away so the northerners annexing nearby city-states didn’t include us.

When there was more than one somewhere at once, in most cases they ended up fighting each other. Great Game, ugh. Two at once, in a cave in the middle of nowhere? Cooperating? While being servants of a gods so different and normally hostile to each other? Madness.

We loaded everything we could into the Inventory. It wasn’t unlimited, of course. In the end we ran out of place midway. We ended up packing things that were the heaviest and hardest to pack in the more conventional way. Taking the rest into physically existing backpacks allowed us to take everything we wanted. Minus a few less important things.

Almost our entire ‘guild’ visited the city this time. Only Vila and our still traumatized enchanter remained to guard the Hold during our absence. Plus Midnight, of course.

Ytar got a leave to visit his old neighbourhood. Kytar came to replenish our food and wine storage. They left us right after we came to the city.

We had a little bit of fear due to how Syna looked. She wore the standard equipment of imperial special forces after all. But with all distinctions and imperial symbols ripped off, she could safely pass as a deserter. She claimed that it was ok and that she wore it already. It turned out she was right.

First stop were pawn shops. We sold half of Randal’s party equipment to several different pawn shops that dealt with supplying adventurers. The rest we ‘sold’ to Crimson Blades. Their guildmaster knew the origin of the stuff and he was more than happy to sell it for a nice profit after a while. After looking through the stuff to see that some of it fit some guild members.

Two thousand three hundred fifty ambries as a whole. Alchemical ingredients sold for another eight hundred. 15 kilograms of Golem Iron and the rest of the metals we dug were five hundred fifty ambries. I also sold all of my low quality potions for four hundred ambries. They were shit grade, but Crimson Blades gladly bought them at a discount.

Four thousand one hundred ambries. We had almost seven hundred left earlier. Almost five thousand ambries. Wow.

We had much to do in the meantime.

First thing we did was visiting local Shadow’s temple. To be honest, he/she, despite the unneeded ambiguity in gender, was one of more decent fellas in the Black Pantheon. For an added benefit, Shadow was a sibling of Malice. Head god of Pentagram. According to lore, their parents tried to abort the future God of Madness, but he survived despite their best attempts through meddlings of Discord, Goddess of Strife, Discord and Lies. Which ended as an another member of the Pentagram.

The whole point of that myth was to explain why Shadow (and Shimmer, third sibling) was even more hostile to Pentagram than the average. As a god of revolution he was bound to support any attempt to overthrow the current regime of Ambryxis. Though if we succeeded, she would immediately switch to helping those trying to overthrow us.

The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children. Famous last words of George Danton, French revolutionary, uttered while his former comrades led him to his final meeting with the guillotine.

Shadow’s lack of emotional commitment to the Doomplace and her hatred to Pentagram made his temple a perfect place to make sure that the Ardent Flame’s rings weren’t tainted with corrupting powers of the Pentagram.

We gave three of them to the resident priest after telling him that we found them in a place haunted by Pentagram’s daemons.. After few moments he gave them back, saying that there was no corruption on them. We paid twenty ambries for this, but at least we were sure that wearing them won’t change us into omnicidal maniacs.

Then we got them appraised. Of course, the enchanter told us to get rid of them, because of the enchantment that reinforced magic of Overtyrant’s magic. One especially strong on the ones made from mana crystals.

Curiously, they were so similar that after the enchanted appraised one, the rest began to answer to our appraisal as well. Huh.

Iron Ring of Ardent Flame

A simple iron band with a symbol of the Ardent Flame. Worn by common soldiers of the order, they signify their devotion to Overtyrant.

Rarity: Common

Material: Iron

Quality: Average

Condition: 15/15

Enchantment: Overtyrant’s Magic Fortification, Amplification, Sanity Resistance

Imperial Classification: Blessed Object

Overtyrant’s Magic hexes cast by wearer of the ring are 1% stronger and cost 1% less mana.

This ring can be used to store 5 units of Mana.

Damage to sanity of the wearer reduced by 1%.

Silver Ring of Ardent Flame

A simple silver band with a symbol of the Ardent Flame. Worn by veteran soldiers of the order, they signify their devotion to Overtyrant.

Rarity: Common

Material: Silver

Quality: Average

Condition: 15/15

Enchantment: Overtyrant’s Magic Fortification, Amplification, Sanity Resistance

Imperial Classification: Blessed Object

Overtyrant’s Magic hexes cast by wearer of the ring are 5% stronger and cost 5% less mana.

This ring can be used to store 25 units of Mana.

Damage to sanity of the wearer reduced by 5%.

Crystal Ring of Ardent Flame

A simple mana crystal band with a symbol of the Ardent Flame. Worn by magicians of the order, they signify their devotion to Overtyrant.

Rarity: Rare

Material: Unaligned Mana Crystal

Quality: Average

Condition: 15/15

Enchantment: Overtyrant’s Magic Fortification, Amplification, Sanity Resistance

Imperial Classification: Blessed Object

Overtyrant’s Magic hexes cast by wearer of the ring are 25% stronger and cost 25% less mana.

This ring can be used to store 100 units of Mana.

Damage to sanity of the wearer reduced by 15%.

Golden Ring of Ardent Flame

A simple gold band with a symbol of the Ardent Flame. Worn by knight-brothers of the order, they signify their devotion to Overtyrant.

Rarity: Uncommon

Material: Iron

Quality: Average

Condition: 15/15

Enchantment: Overtyrant’s Magic Fortification, Strengthening, Amplification, Sanity Resistance

Imperial Classification: Blessed Object

Overtyrant’s Magic hexes cast by wearer of the ring are 5% stronger and cost 5% less mana.

All physical stats increased by one point.

This ring can be used to store 15 units of Mana.

Damage to sanity of the wearer reduced by 15%

Gift of Yhrezerach

A platinum band, granted by one of Overtyrant’s faithful servants to first Grandmaster of the Order of Ardent Flame. It served as inspiration for creation of the other rings.

Rarity: Artifact I

Material: Platinum

Quality: Average

Condition: N/A

Enchantment: Indestructible I, Overtyrant’s Magic Fortification I, Sanity Resistance I, Purifying, Cast: Aura of Yhrezerach.

Imperial Classification: Aetherforged

Cannot be damaged by normal means.

Overtyrant’s Magic hexes cast by wearer of the ring are 50% stronger and cost 25% less mana.

Damage to sanity of the wearer reduced by 25%

Wearing it slows down progress of Pentagram’s Corruption by 15%.

Active Effects:

Aura of Yhrezerach

Causes Fear debuff in nearby Pentagram aligned daemons and beasts. Weaker daemons might be banished back into Beyond. Strength of effect depends on caster.

I almost choked when I appraised the last ring.

Jesus Christ, it’s a FUCKING ARTIFACT. Ok, it’s only the lowest grade, but they were overpowered as a category. We were a level 10-15 group and we had just scored a fucking artifact. My God, Vasyr would piss his pants if he knew. Then he would shit them as well if he learned we had two Chosen Ones.

Of course, this one was useful only exclusively against creatures of Pentagram. And besides, even having the most overpowered item in the world wouldn’t save you against certain creatures. Especially when you lacked skills to use alongside your Artifact of Doom.

I immediately handed the artifact ring to Leria. It was obviously her Gift. Getting Blessings was one part of Revelation, there was always a Gift to go with it. They could be artifacts, powerful daemons to be contracted as familiars and so on. Made me wonder what Deviation had in store for me.

Together with Vaera, I took a Crystal Ring. The rest of our combat team got Golden Rings. Non-combatants got Iron Rings. Why not use them as a symbol of our group, I mean we are literally reanimating the Ardent Flame, right?

After that part was done, we went to a smithy. We bought Leria a longsword. Proper one. The fact that she was using a shortsword… well, as a servant of Overtyrant (and a Chosen One) a defensive set of short sword +shield simply didn’t fit her.

Then it was the worst part of the whole trip to the city.

Of course, DFI wouldn’t stand making something like smithing SIMPLE. Just as alchemy grew extremely difficult later on (just as smelting, leatherworking and pretty much every crafting discipline) so did smithing. And it did so quite early.

Normal games limited smithing equipment to forge, anvil and hammer. Sometimes also a whetstone and a bucket of water to cool and harden the newly forged metal. But none of DFI’s games were normal.

A single hammer? Nah. Around twenty different ones. Small ones to hammer details, medium ones to general metal shaping, a fucking sledgehammer used by two people in turns to pound heavy plates into shape.

Then tongs. A lot of them. The requirements were so precise that it was common for smiths to make new tongs for every work. But it was still a good idea to have few general ones around.

Regular anvil. Ball anvil. Small anvil for stuff like rivets. Grinding wheels, improved by magic since it was supposedly rather tiresome to use (no idea what it was used for, really). Whetstones, of course several of various grits to ensure that things were REALLY sharp.

Main heating forge for working, heat treat forge for more special works. Heavily modified so that it could use magic and various magical metals to heat things to temperatures normally achievable only by modern gas powered forges on Earth.

Punches and stuff like that. Of various size. To be used on stuff like making holes in axeheads for the handle to go through. Fullers. A magical object to cleanse smoke from air, since we planned to set up a smithy in a cave.

And those were just a things for universal and standard crafting. If you wanted things to look nice you also had to use stuff like engraving tools, enamels, etc.

I had no idea how most of these things looked. We took Menara with us to city precisely for that. After some haggling she managed to buy a complete set of equipment for BASIC LEVEL smithing for three thousands ambries. Which was a really low price.

Managing to forge something decent in a DFI game meant being able to forge something in real life as well. They did it mostly to avoid the market being flooded by tons of high level objects forged by players. Kept most of the market ran by the NPCs, while allowing players to influence it heavily but not overrun it completely.

I was totally going to get us a good alchemist before this trade gets complicated as well. Me making potions was a temporary thing.

Then we went to meet the trainers of the guild. Time to learn few more tricks.

***

“Well, it should be this place.” Leria waved her hand towards an apartment block. “Linnead Street 23, apartment number 17.” Holy number of Overtyrant, huh. Makes me wonder if that’s a way of him telling us something.

We got few strange looks from people in the Guild when we said that we wanted to pursue the case of Kovacs’ group disappearance. People there already decided that it was a lost cause. That something murdered them in the sewers, or that they simply fled the city. They didn’t know that Players couldn’t simply be murdered. And if they really went through a moral shift, there was no way they would leave someone back.

The guild attendants had to accept us accepting the quest. Despite not really expecting it to be resolved. Most of them probably preferred the group safely disappeared. Regardless, they directed us to the apartment used by the group as their base of operations, where the sole member left behind resided.

“Alright, let’s see if she is home.” I said.

***

Good part being a caster was that nobody expected me to knock on doors. We had Leria do this.

“W… who is it?!” Well, she hit them rather enthusiastically, and this wasn’t the best neighbourhood in the city, so caution seemed a good idea.

“Adventurers. We came for the job.” Leria answered. After a short while we heard the door unlocking.

“R...really?” The fact that showed up in the break between the door and the frame belonged to a young female elf.

Rila Velvanel

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Level: 3

Class: Cook

Active Effects: N/A

Known Spells and Techniques:

N/A

Obviously a non-combatant. The N/A in the Known Spells and Techniques part was a sure sign of it. Kytar had it precisely the same, at least before we taught him a rudimentary level of Aura Armour.

“Yes, can we come in?” It’s nice to not be the one person to speak to people for once. Leria did it for me, since she already stood close to door.

***

The inside of the flat looked precisely how I remembered low grade adventurer flats from WR. Several bedrolls in one common bedroom. Small kitchen. Bathroom in the corridor before the flat, common for the whole floor. One room that was filled with damaged equipment, loot that waited to be sold, and a large table with chairs so that members of the group had a place to drink their cares away.

Typical way of living for new adventurers. Not exactly comfortable, but sooner or later they either died or earned enough money to retire, or get better lodging if they were ambitious.

The girl was visibly shaken. I could see on her face that she cried a lot recently.

“It was supposed to be a simple mission in the sewers.” We finally managed to calm her down enough to start talking business. “There were some disappearances there, and the city wanted someone to find the cause. Istvan said that it was most likely some stray daemon and that it was going to be an easy job, but…”

Well, it was a logical assumption. But it seems that it wasn’t the case.

“But something went wrong.” I interjected. “According to the quest description you submitted in the guild there is a way to localize the group, what exactly is…” She took something out of her pocket and put it on the table.

It looked like a plate with a compass on the left side, the depth gauge on the right, and… there was something that looked like another compass, surrounding both smaller gauges.

“So, compass shows the direction to them, gauge shows how deep they are… and the third one?” I asked.

“It allows to follow the exact route taken by the tracked person.” I whizzed with admiration.

“That’s awfully convenient. Where did you take it from?” It sounded like something very useful. Something most adventurers would likely use.

“It’s a prototype. A sorcerer we know created it and gave us a mission to test it in the field.” So, it was a quest. Interesting.

“I see.” I took a closer look at the trinket. “Weird. One hundred seventeen meters beneath the ground?!” Just how big are these sewers?

“It didn’t move for a while now.” She misunderstood my surprise.

“No, I didn’t mean that. How big are those sewers?” Now that I think about it, I had no idea about it. I just went with the flow. I mean, just how dangerous the goddamn sewers could be?!

“Big.” It was Leria that answered me. “He might be our leader but he is new in Ambryxis.” She said to Rila before turning to me. “The city was destroyed several times in ancient times. Rather than dismantling what remained, they rebuilt it atop the remains. Sewers are the newest addition. Most of them are simply a normal maze of corridors dedicated to dispatching all the waste from the city to the river behind it.” Not really ecological, but locals were yet to learn about ecology. As long as it won’t make mutants roam the countryside or won’t piss the farmers by poisoning their land, everything goes. “But there are also many corridors and halls added without Masked Council’s knowledge. Plus several places where you can go deeper, throughout the ruins of the cities that predated Ambryxis.”

Wonderful. “So the sewers are practically a weak magical anomaly.” Sigh. “Well, at least we might get some loot.” I shrugged. Ambryxis wouldn’t let anything really dangerous to fester in the abdomen of his city. Dungeons were one thing. There were three of them (one of the reasons why the city was so important, you rarely had a single one of them), and Ambryxis would have destroyed them if their Dungeon Lords as much as looked funny at him. Unlike them, anomalies were much harder to kill or control.

“That’s true.” Leria said. “But we should probably buy gas masks before we go there. Smell is one thing, but if some idiot from the city pours too much raw aether or residual waste after its refining process into the sewers… it can get ugly.”

“If some idiot pours post-refining waste there, we will need specialized and completely hermetic suit to survive.” I reminded her. “You know, without getting additional limbs or starting to glow. But yeah, the stench and possible toxic waste is a good reason to get ourselves gas masks.”

Locals had something similar to gas masks already. It was a quite obvious implement in the world where magical spells generating poisonous gasses (plus natural poisonous gasses) were a thing. Lowest tier was pretty much a flat mask, similar to one from the theatre, covering only nose and mouth, with an enchantment that cleansed air of harmful stuff. Middle tier looked like average gas mask from Earth, with replaceable filters. It worked similarly, but also covered your entire head. Highest tier included a bottle of compressed air on your back and allowed you to breathe clean air wherever you were.

Syna’s gasmask was type two. The rest of us would have to buy them, though. Well, they weren’t THAT expensive.

“Excuse me, but…” Our host interrupted my thoughts. “Can I know why you decided to take this quest, I mean… the rest mostly laughed at me when they heard about the pay and…”

“Keep your money.” It’s not like one hundred ambries made a difference. “We aren’t here for it. Are you aware of who Players are?” She nodded. So Kovacs explained that thing to NPCs of his group. “Yeah, so we have some of them as well, myself included. And we are pretty curious what could prevent one of us from simply commiting suicide and resurrecting. Besides…” No real need to hide it. “...We are also aware of your group’s… troubles with the other adventurers. We are totally fine with that and, in fact, we would like to start… cooperation of sort.”

***

“So, what do you think?” Leria asked us after we left the apartment.

“Seems honest.” I answered after hiding the localization device into my pouch. “And she obviously invested some feelings in their group. Everything I heard about them seems to support Vasyr’s information.”

I wasn’t going to believe his words unconditionally. It was obvious that he was playing his own game. I will not discover that we were made redundant by suddenly getting backstabbed.

But yeah, it seemed like once again he was on point.

Syna wrote something. She had a small blackboard attached to her left wrist that she normally used to communicate with other people. She showed it to me.

SHE WAS A SLAVE. Huh.

“How do you know?” I asked. She answered with gestures.

Ah. It looks like the skin around her neck was slightly lighter than the rest. That’s what you get for wearing collar all the time while being outside. Ambryxis wasn’t a very sunny place, but after some time the difference become visible.

“So we now know why she got so invested in the group.” If her rare story of being freed was widely known… well, not getting enslaved again until now was a success. Especially with those stupid local outlooks on slaves as a whole.

“I guess I’ll write to Ytar to keep her company while we are away.” The best idea would be to take her back to Hold, but I wasn’t going to risk divulging its location until we weren’t sure about target’s loyalty. “He lived around here for a while, so he should be able to scare away potentially troublesome people. At worst he will have her move over to Grandma’s residence. For now, let’s go buy the equipment.” Which included both decent potions and masks.

NEW QUEST!

Type: Adventure

Name: The Red Mist

Difficulty: Silver V

You were hired to find out reasons for the disappearance of a group of adventurers in the sewers beneath Ambryxis.

With the device you were given finding them should be a child’s play.

I seriously think that the quest system is bugged. I mean, obviously, the New Quest! windows seem to open at random. Shouldn’t this happen when we took the mission in the gu…

Only after a short while I understood the information that was hidden in the description. One that made my blood freeze.