Arc 06: Room by room, hall by hall

Chapter 042: The rightful owner has returned

First thing I did was write to people back in Hold (to Menara, to be exact) and tell her to visit the city together with our enchanter. To buy basic enchanter equipment. I’d have sent the enchanter alone, but she had obviously been at least slightly mindbroken by repetitive rapes and was in no shape to be sent alone to the den of iniquity that Ambryxis was.

Then we went to visit Kovacs’ group again. After all, they wanted to meet and talk about the details of our future cooperation.

***

“So, let me sum this up.” Warforged orc, as I already managed to discover, seemed like a rather simple minded fellow. Not like I was against it. Despite his simplemindedness he also seemed quite smart. Interesting combination. “We are playing Spades. You want us in. Our job, to make typical adventurer work for your guild. The Ardent Flame. Right?”

Warforged were a rather interesting class. One ‘official’, at least in Imperium. And one of Transhumanists.

Classes were, at least to a point, written in lore. There were the so called Adventurer Training Guilds, at least in Imperium. They took in orphans and people that wanted to become adventurer and taught them their preferred set of skills. There was a training guild that produced Enigmatics. Thrallbinders (obviously only in Dragonspine Mountains), Warriors, and so on.

Transhumanists were the curious ones. There was a broad category of Adventurer Training Guilds that used magic to modify their recruits. To give them abilities normally unreachable to humans or other mortals. Imperium was more or less fine with stuff like that as long as it was consensual and wasn’t hereditary.

DFI went a bit overboard with at least few of the Transhumanist classes. There was one that used their own bodies to cultivate a variety of spores and mushrooms that could be sudden unleashed (causing a lot of different effects). One that allowed you to make various insects inhabit your body (and then vomit murderous insects in your opponents’ faces). One that infused you with the power of fire to the point that you were permanently on fire. And so on.

In short - a lot of power. But also important weaknesses.

Warforged, according to lore, were developed during the Apostasy. They were infused by lifeforce. A lot of it. Their entire body was pushed into a permanent overdrive… which would shorten their lifespan if it didn’t include their restorative powers. They were made into beings truly transhuman in a rather straightforward fashion. Normally you couldn’t raise your attributes above your level. Orc in front of me, however, had level eight… and his strength was 30. But he couldn’t use magic and his aura manipulation was severely disturbed and weakened.

“Yes. that’s more or less what we want to achieve. And how I see your part of it.” I answered. “No matter how good we might be, we can be in only a single place. We can’t murder wrongdoers and gather resources in the same time.”

“Unfortunately.” Leria decided to add.

“Spades, as I said.” Kovacs added. “Nothing less, nothing more.”

“Actually, if I understand it correctly, it should be still within the range of the Fifteenth Article.” The furry catgirl interjected. Curiously, the hobgoblin decided to remain silent. Kovacs had a talk with him?

Ah, yes. The Fifteenth Article. One of many troublesome parts of worldbuilding DFI faced when they were creating their universe. The thing about making a living world that could evolve and change on its own (even World’s Requiem could, to a point) was that sometimes you faced difficult and unforeseen things.

One such thing was the adventurer’s responsibility for the stuff they brought back from the wilds. This world was filled with wondrous objects. Artifacts, alchemical ingredients, metals, forgotten knowledge, this sort of thing. Adventurers were the people tasked with finding them, securing, and bringing back to the civilization. Now, what if someone was to misuse them?

Most things they brought back could qualify as a weapon. And what about a Doom Magic-aligned stuff? They just begged (sometimes literally) to get misused. But adventurers, even if they were tasked to bring back that particular thing, in most cases didn’t know that it was going to be misused.

While this looked like a mediocre thing, according to lore it almost made the local judiciary system (and the entire adventuring profession) suffer collective bluescreen. The number of cases against adventurers skyrocketed, and tons of judges were made perpetually busy while trying to figure whether this particular adventurer knew or didn’t, that the thing they brought back was an important part of someone’s TAKE OVER THE WORLD mad scheme.

In the end the Imperium (and most countries in its cultural sphere, including even the Dragonspine Mountains) decided that all adventurers in such a situations should be considered not guilty by default. This was commonly known as Fifteenth Article, due to it being mentioned in fifteenth article of the Imperial Adventurer’s Guild regulations.

So in that particular case, even if we went on a true murder spree and were discovered, Kovacs’ group should be considered not guilty, as long as they didn’t participate in any murder themselves. It’s not their fault we used the metals they brought us to forge swords that we then used to eviscerate high ranking officials of the state, right?

“That depends.” Hobgoblin finally decided to open his mouth… but decided to criticize her more calmly. “If they consider us a part of a revolutionary group, we will be executed regardless of our allegiance and as being merely a supplier.”

Sigh. To be honest I wasn’t really proficient with local law system. Culture was one thing, details of laws… Ugh. Lawyers. We got lawyers as a part of the group. Everything’s their fault.

The talk once again degenerated into an argument between them. They kept arguing about details of local laws. Lawyers. No wonder they hated each other.

“I guess it mostly depends on whether we will live alongside you or just permanently work for you.” Kovacs leaned towards me. “But that’s just my opinion. As a simple soldier I obviously lack knowledge to debate law with a prodigy member of a major law office.”

Uh oh. A lawyer. Pushed into a body of a hobgoblin. Forced to cooperate with a computer program in the form of a person, that seemed to disagree with him on every part and obviously had a lot of knowledge about local law. No wonder they hated each other.

“I consider this a miracle you managed to keep the group together.” I answered.

“Well, as an US Army sergeant I have a lot of experience with running kindergarten.” He smiled wryly. “Thankfully, the rest decided to help you already. Full time. It’s only our resident lawyer and an orc that aren’t fully sure and wanted to hear about details once again.”

“And the orc? Who is he in real life?”

“He? Actually an inmate, in a jail somewhere in Mexico or Central America. I think. He doesn’t like to talk too much about his real world experience.” Seeing my face he added. “He is someone that doesn’t fit the place even more than me. He might not be the brightest person around, I admit that much. But he got in jail for lynching some local paedophile that avoided jail by having friends in high places.”

I could see him watching us from the other side of the table.

Weird. What was DFI pulling by sending people like that here? He obviously didn’t fit. Then again, neither did I. Maybe having the Doomplace ruined was the company plan all along? Or maybe it wanted to make sure that no matter what, the new crusaders were going to have some trump cards? Even if the whole Imprisoned in a videogame scenario messed them up more than it did with Fallen?

“So… why does he want to talk?”

“Probably to make sure you are honest with your crusade.” Kovacs answered. “But I still haven’t figured him out completely.”

Well, I had enough enigma-people in my own group. I wasn’t going to try and learn a sidestory of my every companion and ally. Who had enough time for that?! Let’s leave Kovacs partymembers to Kovacs. Basic knowledge was fine, but let’s not delve too deep.

Seriously, why did US Army sergeant got an obviously hungarian name?! DFI you bunch of crazies. I know that there is a genuine Hungarian-like state somewhere in Imperium (most of its vassal states were at least influenced by real world cultures), but still.

Ugh.

***

It did take as a while, but in the end the Kovacs group was onboard. For full cooperation. Becoming Ardent Flame members even. We wasted too much time on that.

Six new fighters. One new non-combatant.

Istvan Kovacs, a hungarian-named US Army sergeant. Player, obviously. An incubus (curiously they weren’t an overly sexual species in DFI universe, at least compared to creatures like night elves) Hexer. Specialist in debuffing that could also defend himself with black magic. Looked pretty much like a human, only with curly horns on his head.

Synvek Valorian. A high elf Blade. Player. They originated in honour guard formations of high elven states. Medium armor, two-handed weaponry (swords in 90% of cases) and aura manipulation. Judging from what Kovacs said, he was a typical slightly-perverted-nerd-that-saw-too-much case. Relatable.

Velatai Khar-Vilati. An NPC beastman furry catgirl. Sold to slavery after her family company went bankrupt. Knowledgeable about the law and accounting. Rather disillusioned with Dragonspine Mountains. Daggerer - which meant a dagger expert with aura manipulation. Like Simea but without Lust Magic.

Syntar Glarakh. A Player hobgoblin. 180cm, slightly greenish skin, less… pretty face. Blood Knight, which means heavy armors and a Blood Magic to improve his own resilience into a rather superhuman level. Some sort of prodigious lawyer, with no clue as to why he ended up here.

Dûsh Ghormort. An orc Warforged. Player. Tall, muscular, with lower jaw moved slightly forward. Skin in a colour somewhere between green and brown. A lot of fangs. His body was covered with a very short brown bristles. An inmate awaiting execution for lynching a paedophile, another person that didn’t fit. No idea how he got into the Infinity.

Skavr Varythir. A Player metal drakon Metalist. Drakons were the resident dragon-like humanoids. But his level of dragonification was rather low, so he looked like a human with silver and slightly mirror-like eyes. He was going to change a lot, eventually. His magic allowed him to temporarily conjure and manipulate metals.

Senata Avhiray. NPC dark elf necromancer. Which meant undead and Life/Death Magic as self-defense measure. As I expected she was a slave completely voluntarily and was absolutely content belonging to Kovacs. Dark elves were weird. I don’t think there was any sex involved. Curiously, she was one of the flattest women I ever saw but seemed to have no problems with that.

In short, a well balanced group of decent level of skills. But I was totally going to forget their names in a while. Maybe besides Kovacs. I had a horrible memory in that manner. Two years after finishing high school I couldn’t remember the names of 90% of my classmates.

The Kovacs group decided to move over to the Hold after a longer debate. My mention that we have a working toilet was an important factor in their decision making. I guess that carrying your chamber pot outside and dumping it into sewers (low rent apartments in all their glory) got painful after a while.

We also invested a significant part of reward into improving their equipment and having them learn some additional spells, hexes and techniques. Together with almost 5000 ambries we had to spent on basic enchantment stuff (less thingies but much more expensive than in case of smithing) a big part of the reward disappeared almost instantly.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

I was slowly facing the fact that sooner or later we had to start amassing wealth in a different way. Most of proper guilds in World’s Requiem were also significant players in local economies. Investing money from their raids into farms, mines, merchant houses… slave trade and brothels.

AND I HAD NO FUCKING CLUE HOW TO DO BUSINESS. With some unfortunate exceptions. I was almost sure of my eventual success as an owner of a brothel or a slave trading establishment, but there was no fucking way I was going to enter that swamp again.

***

“I must say that you really have a cozy little base.” Kovacs commented several hours later, when we all grouped in the mess hall. Kytar and that human girl the Kovacs group left behind decided to cooperate and create a welcoming feast for our suddenly enlarged group.

“Yes, getting it required us to kill a lot of transdimensional murder bunnies, but it was totally worth it.” I was totally honest there. I liked this place. Felt like home already. It was also our greatest - even if often forgotten - trump card.

“Transdimensional murder bunnies?!” Vaera stared at me with his eyes wide. “Why did you never mention this?! Tell me more about this.”

I guess it’s the time to describe our experiences in the game. Which went both ways. Judging from the stares I got from Kovacs group they wanted to hear it as well.

Actually you know what? Fuck this.

“Well, it’s a rather short and boring story full of unexpected plot twists and explosions.” I answered. “Leria can tell you details if you ask her. For now, we have a job to do. We have rats in the cellar that we need your help with. Pentagram-aligned rats. That I consider a nice beginning of our cooperation. Think of it as a welcome mission of the Ardent Flame.”

“Pentagram-aligned rats, you say.” Kovacs smiled wryly. “I think it’s going to be an interesting mission.”

***

This time we helped Kytar unearth the corridor, so it was much faster than normally. Or, to be exact, Warforged orc, Leria, Lena and a hobgoblin Blood Knight helped. Our first target was the collapsed corridor before the acid moat.

Armed in pickaxes they began their relentless assault… and, quite soon, they managed to open the way.

Behind it was a morgue.

Well, the builders of the Hold certainly didn’t plan it to be a morgue. My working theory was that Ardent Flame put the wounded there, during their last desperate defence against the things coming from the depths.

Most of the wounded would probably recuperate… but then the Aberrant struck. One of the people that were there must have been a mage or a powerful sorcerer. Seeing what came upon them he unleashed his power and collapsed the corridor.

The idea was probably that their buddies from the upper level of the Hold would come and save them after they banished the Aberrant. Due to a horrible misunderstanding nobody came. The rest of the Ardent Flame thought they were dead and collapsed another the tunnel before the stairway, to avoid risking the Aberrant’s destruction of what remained of the order.

Twenty-seven skeletons lying on a long rotten mattresses. One sat with his back on the wall at the end of the room. He (or she, it was hard to guess) wore a tattered robes. There was a staff lying beside the skeleton, its wooden part mostly gone.

So the one who collapsed the corridor. Tough luck, mate.

***

The first room we reclaimed had rather grim things inside it. Regardless, it was a success. Almost immediately I came to understand it would be a wonderful place for our guild’s vault. After all, we had to store alchemical ingredients, enchantment items and smithing resources somewhere.

Firstly we had to clean it up. Of course, pushing forward before doing it was a viable strategy, but I could see a silent request in the eyes of Leria and Syna.

We moved the bodies outside the Hold and buried them. We even had a khardic priest around, so we could as well use him.

The funeral was rather brief. Only our resident khardics participated. Overtyrant had some degree of tolerance to other religions - as long as they weren’t ok with something he considered evil - but non-believers participating in any sort of ritual dedicated to him were a nope.

You are a believer of another religion? Sure. Just be loyal to it to the end, rather than pretending you can combine it with rituals dedicated to a completely different god. Not to mention that it was rather disrespectful to participate in stuff like that when you didn’t even worship him, right? I could respect that.

After they returned, we moved over to uncovering the tunnel to what I presumed to be a control room of the bridge above the moat. Our non-combatants in the same time moved over to cleaning our new vault.

***

Quite soon Menara returned from the city. With our enchanter and a complete set of enchantment items. We stopped working on unearthing the corridors for a while and helped them install.

To be honest it was mostly similar to a jeweler workshop. An important part of enchanting was grinding mana crystals into a shape that allowed it to be set in a target item. The rest was a good table with a magical thingies to immobilize the object you worked on.

It was all a matter of precision. You make a slight mistake and the wrong person gets burned by your fire-enchanted sword. And you had to enchant a spell AFTER putting the mana crystal (or its other variants, like aether shards, soulstones, abyss crystals, reactor cores and so on) in the object. It was hard to attune the spell properly without it.

The room to the north from the stairway on the second level was going to become the guild workshop. The smithy was there, and now we installed the enchanter workshop. There was still enough space for a small metalworks, probably.

We needed to invest in a sound suppression enchantment for the whole room. Enchanting stuff required concentration, and it might have been troublesome if Menara kept hammering stuff in the background. Last thing we want is our enchanter to blow herself up or something.

“By the way.” Menara said when we finished. “I’ve finished it.”

It took me a second to understand what she meant.

“You mean the thing I ordered before we went to Ambyxis to visit the sewers?” She nodded. “What are you waiting for? Bring it!”

She saluted me and disappeared in a small storage room when we encountered the Aberrant. After a short while she emerged with a longsword in her hands.

Golem Sword

A simple long sword forged from a metal that used to serve as a part of an ore golem. This increases magic conductivity above the level of mundane counterparts.

Smith Experience: Low

Smith Execution: Above Average

Rarity: Common

Material: Golem Steel

Quality: Average

Condition: 45/45

Special: MC +15%

“I visited the city and got the golem iron smelted into golem steel.” She added. “Required me to invest a bit of money, but no one sane goes around with iron items.” She didn’t have to describe it in detail. Simple iron was too brittle.

She even used the engraving tools to add little symbols of Ardent Flame to the blade. Near the hilt, on both sides.

“It’s perfect. Leria, your new sword.”

She smiled widely. Yes, yes, a new tool to obliterate evil with.

Improved mana conductivity was pretty neat. It meant that an aura user - like Leria - could push more of their aura into an object. In that case every aura-enforced strike (like Mighty Blow) was going to be 15% stronger than if she used simple steel sword. This also included magic, so if I cast a Hex of Devastation on her sword, it was going to be 15% more destructive.

“Next will be the daggers for Simea and a spear for Lena.” Menara continued. “But I don’t have much to say in terms of the latter’s wooden parts, so…” I nodded. Another thing to worry about. “I could also make something for our new members, but especially the two handed sword for the Blade and an axe for the Warforged are going to deplete our storage quite badly.”

“They should work with what they have for now.” I answered. “Focus on our group. We will bother with the rest after we get smelting industry running and get some store of metals.” She nodded.

***

This collapse was much easier to unearth.

Made me wonder why the Aberrant failed to uncover it. He had centuries to do it. Maybe it would mean becoming a sidekick of the mysterious power that brought doom to the Ardent Flame? Or maybe he failed to comprehend the ideas of pickaxes and digging? Most of Pentagram’s daemons were tainted with our world so we at least have a common frame of reference, however twisted their worldview was. Aberrants? Hell if I know how that thing thought.

As expected, behind it was a small room with a single lever. No idea why they didn’t destroy it completely. Maybe they dreamt that the Ardent Flame would retake the place one day? If yes, then it will happen, just in a different way than they thought.

After we pulled it, the bridge lowered. Despite the centuries that passed, the enchantments still held. I’d say it was miraculous, but it probably wasn’t the case. The makers of the place most likely connected all enchanted mechanisms into one massive system, which included a local version of an energy generator that supplied it with energy. Sure, the crystals weren’t indestructible and they were bound to fail eventually, but the enchantments, with their power replenished, still held.

“So, the plan is simple.” I said to the whole group.” We have two parties. No need to mess up our cooperation by trying to fuse them, so instead we go separately. Our new friends need some combat training, so they are a vanguard. We keep right behind them. We intervene if they get overwhelmed by numbers. If they get tired, we switch. If they run into a powerful creature, we switch. The first battle is on you even if you get wiped out, I want to see how good you are. Questions?”

Kovacs raised his hand.

“What can we expect there?”

“Devoured. Former members of the Ardent Flame. Like zombies, but can move better. Vulnerable to headshots. Now that I think you seem to lack rangers, so I’ll have Syna help you with a covering fire, if there will be enough space. We also found an Aberrant, but if that’s the case then… well, I think you know the lore enough to know what to do?”

“Lie down and die screaming?” Kovacs chuckled. “Yes, yes, I know. Try to describe it. I still can’t believe they are a real thing now.”

Know your pain. I have the same feeling about pretty much everything since we become a part of this game.

“Yes, more or less. There is also a possibility of Pentagram daemons.” Which would be very helpful. Many of them were directly attuned to a certain god of the Pentagram, which would give us a clue what sort of being was responsible for a fall of Ardent Flame. We could then tailor our equipment to better match up the future enemies. It was a standard practice in WR.

It would be a major pain on the other hand. Pentagram daemons were strong. They preferred quality over quantity and that could hurt. Watchers were merely a lowest tier of their daemons.

“Kytar, I leave the place to you.” I turned towards our part miner part cook. “After we depart, raise the drawbridge.”

“Shouldn’t I leave it lowered in case you were retreating in a hurry?” He asked me.

“Theoretically it could be a good idea, but if something really nasty showed up you’d be dead before you managed to lower it. Let’s not risk losing the Hold. Besides, not being able to retreat should certainly help our morale.”

Sometimes I'm an asshole.

***

What awaited us on the other side of the door was a cave.

A rather big one and obviously natural. Ardent Flame must have discovered it and then built their facilities inside it. Which only further supported my decision to resettle the place after re-conquering it.

We followed Kovacs group to discover that the combat already started. Two Devoured Knights, ten Devoured Warriors and…

Eldritch Knight

Category: Eldritch/Pentagram

Type: Daemon/Servile

Threat Grade: Silver IV

A heavily armed warrior of Pentagram. Created with its physical might in mind, its danger to sanity however is still present.

It was a knight (obviously). Towering. Fearsome. Two meters of evil-tainted steel. Warrior clad in full plate armour that was distorted into a form that wouldn’t be made created by any sane blacksmith. What was beneath it obviously wasn’t very normal in shape either, as the armour seemed to be… bulged here and there. The knight carried a metal kite shield with a big pentagram symbol on it, with a longsword in the other hand.

There was a black liquid dripping from the gaps in the armour. The stench was terrible.

Let’s see how Kovacs and his group fights.