Once the mole-rat was dead, I closed my eyes for a moment, just focusing on breathing. It had been closer than I wanted to admit to myself, I was down to half health, the dodging had taken almost sixty percent of my stamina and I was completely out of mana. Without Roknar, I would be dead, no matter how perfect I played, dead to an enemy merely three levels above me. Granted, on my level that meant 2.5 times my level, yet I wasn’t pleased.

New General Ability acquired - One-handed Sword

Your General Ability - One-handed Sword is now at level Novice I (0.00%)

You know that you should stick them with the pointy end. Or slice them with the sharp end. Sometimes, even bludgeon them with the flat of the blade or the pommel. Swords are a wonderfully versatile weapon.

New Skill acquired - Dodge

Dodge this!

Active: You take a quick step back, evading incoming attacks.

Cost: 20 Stamina

Passive: You gain a chance to evade incoming attacks, based on your agility and defense.

For a moment, I was flabbergasted, a General Ability? I would have to look that up, but later.

While I looked at the boxes the mole-rat despawned, leaving behind a sack of loot. When I opened it, I had to laugh at the fact that the mole-rat had not only declawed itself but also stripped off some of its fur. What a friendly customer it was. After shaking my head, I placed the items into my inventory, hoping to find a vendor at some point, to get some coin in exchange. But for now, I had a hidden passage to explore, hopefully without running into any more mole-rats, if I crawled into one, I was… dead. No question about it.

I looked at the tunnel, realising that I could crawl through it, but not easily. For a moment, my eyes fell on Roknar who noticed my gaze and blanched.

“I won’t crawl into that thing, who knows what’s on the other side.” he refused emphatically, despite the fact that his size was much better suited for crawling. At least his height was, I wasn’t quite sure who was wider in the shoulders.

For a second, I regretted playing the game by direct control, instead of using the equivalent of keyboard-control. Going down on all fours and crawling through the hole dug by the molerat was rather unpleasant, not just because my character’s frame was relatively large, causing me to rub against the walls but because the mole-rat had lacked a basic sense of sanitation, judging by the smears on the ground and the walls.

Focusing on the price that I hoped waited at the end of the tunnel, I pressed on, towards the literal light at the end of the tunnel. I also ignored the question how the hell my sword managed to keep itself from getting stuck, hoping that it would continue to do so, if I just didn’t question it.

Luckily, the tunnel wasn’t very long, only about two meters, making it bearable, yet, when I exited it, I breathed a sigh of relief. Looking around, I had to smirk, it seemed I was in an old, dusty cellar, a set of stone stairs leading upwards in one corner towards a door. Under the thick coating of dust, the room was rather cluttered with all kinds of things, most of which looked like trash that even a vendor would decline, without any monetary value. Still, I kept looking, moving as silent as I could, hoping to avoid possible occupants upstairs hearing me. It took me about a minute to find what I had been certain would be inside, one of the closed closets had an accessible inventory, allowing me to open it without making too much noise. Part of me wanted to try if I could just smash the other closets but maybe not when in a hostile city, trying to hide.

When the closet opened and its inventory-window appeared, I got a wide smile, inside was an armour stand and, placed diagonally so it would fit, a spear or lance. The inventory-screen told me that those were three items, one a Light Legionnaires Chest-Armour, one a Light Legionnaires Leg-Armour and lastly a Winged Lance. Either I was incredibly lucky or the closet was set to have loot for the person opening it inside. Not that I cared, I now had a medium chest armour, leg-armour and a spear that was treated as a polearm. A few mental clicks place the new stuff on my character, causing it to appear around me, luckily with the straps already in place.

The chest-armour was mostly leather with metal scales affixed onto it, I wasn’t quite sure if it was anything that would work in real life, but it looked quite good, almost like fish-scales. What I wasn’t too happy about was that the eagle-symbol of the Human empire was emblazoned on the chest but for now, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Maybe I could deface the symbol or something like that, giving the whole armour a more pillaged look, like it was something I had ripped off the carcass of a slain enemy.

The leg-armour was something that made me wonder if the look was dependant on the sex of your avatar, as in females get a skirt, males get pants, but I couldn’t test it easily. What I got was a wide leather-kilt with riveted metal-strips, making it look quite sturdy yet light. It wouldn’t do much against attacks from below or directed at my shins but it didn’t reduce my range of movement, so I was happy with it.

The two items gave me some insight into the workings of the Irminsul-Equipment System, because they actually reduced my defense by a small amount, while giving me a quite generous boost to my armour-rating. A little poking around showed that the armour would actually increase the chance to get hit, as it had weight and was thought to slow me down, but reduced the damage I would take when getting hit. After a moment of thought, I was willing to make a bet that there would be some sort of armour-training skill that would reduce that penalty and that the penalty was depending on the weight and class of the armour. So, a full suit of plate-mail that wasn’t made for you and you weren’t trained in, would reduce your defense by a horrendous amount, maybe even reducing the armour-value it had, while I was hardly hindered.

And lastly the Winged Lance, about two meters of solid wooden shaft tipped with gleaming metal, I could certainly work with that. The damage was higher than my Iron Sword by quite a bit and the skill was actually one for my class, so I was looking forward to commit violence with it. It was a little strange that, when equipping it, I also got a leather-strap running across my chest, going from my belt to one shoulder and down my back, to my belt again, but when I thought about putting away the spear, I realised that the standard method was to carry large weapons on your back when they weren’t in use. Sure, I could, and would, use my spear as a walking stick most of the time, but when I wanted both hands free, that was a nice touch. Not realistic in any way, but I was just fine with that.

When I reached around, to feel the receptacle for my spear, there were two small leather-loops and when I added the spear, awkwardly feeling around, two hooks appeared on it, instantly hooking through the loops, making it hang on my back. Again, I chuckled before trying to ready it, and lo and behold, as soon as I had a hand on it, the hooks seemed to just disappear, letting me have my weapon in an instant. Now, if only the ancient romans would have had magically disappearing weapon-harnesses. It was quite likely that the effect would be similar with two-handed swords, just that they got a full back-sheath, people expected those by now.

Out of curiosity, I tried to crawl back out and had to laugh when this time, the spear actually got stuck. At least they had considered this, instead of simply having it clip through the wall, without being considered part of my character-model. For the short crawl, the solution was simple, as soon as I actually wanted to leave, I’d just shove the spear out first, picking it up as soon as I was out. But first, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed any loot or an opportunity to follow the first maxim: Pillage, then burn.

I had pillaged, maybe I would get a chance to upgrade my Arsonist-title.