22

All Paths Lead North

The light of their surroundings inverted. The air, filling with darkness. The flowing shadows of trees becoming rivers of light along the ground. Kat leapt, still grasping Rian’s hand. Together, they floated through the darkness as if gravity had left them.

You have gained a buff: Shadow-Walk (Time remaining: 10 seconds)

What? Rian tried to say, but there was no sound. A buff icon had appeared on his HUD, and the timer was already half up, at five seconds remaining. Kat’s HP and MP were also visible in the upper left of his HUD, now that they were in a party together.

He and Kat began to fall in a graceful, descending arc towards another branch of light along the now-invisible ground. As they landed on the branch with almost no impact against his feet, the timer on the buff reset to ten seconds.

What worried him was that, from his perspective now, something wasn’t matching up. When Kat had used this skill before, she’d crossed over the lake so quickly that it seemed impossible. Here, everything that wasn’t shrouded in darkness seemed frozen.

Is the game really affecting my sense of time?

Once or twice, Kat misjudged the distance between branches and they landed in darkness. The timer continued to tick down, and Kat kicked off, dashing over the ground toward the nearest branch. They landed just in time, maintaining the buff.

It was a kind of mini-game for fast-traveling. Physics was different here and, perhaps, so was his perception of time. He felt lighter, and even the slightest movement was faster than before. The branches of light blurred by as they leapt past. When he looked out at where the forests had been, there was only the faint outline of trees.

A dozen yellow eyes opened below them.

Mid-leap, Rian nudged Kat’s shoulder to get her attention, but she didn’t seem to see what they were heading towards. They landed on another branch of light, and the glowing eyes brightened as they approached from every side. Glancing over, Kat tensed. She kicked off again, harder this time, still pulling Rian along.

One of the creatures stepped out onto the inverted shadows, directly in their path. It was a meina, but it was much larger than the ones Rian had seen, and the entirety of the creature’s body was like a flowing shadow—pitch black, its edges wavering like a slow burning flame, its eyes two miniature suns in the dark.

Kat had already committed to the jump, and now this thing was standing where they were going to land. Rian sensed her reluctance as her posture changed; she gripped his hand tighter, then looked at him and nodded. Before either of them even touched the ground, the shadow creature leapt and knocked Rian sideways, mid-air.

Losing his grip on Kat’s hand, he fell through the ground.

He hadn’t been able to see the floor in this strange world of inverted light, but the light-shadows of the trees had given him some idea of where the plane of the ground was. Tumbling through darkness now, he’d apparently passed through it. He flailed as his fall slowed, and everything spun around to right itself. As if gravity had reversed, he was weightless for a moment before falling again—this time upwards, toward the ground.

The light of everything inverted again and, completely disoriented, Rian landed on his feet. Everything was back to normal. They were standing on the footpath through the forest again, and—

Kat shouted, “Watch out!”

Rian turned around, and the shadow-drenched meina was still there. It was at least twice the size of normal. When it opened its jaw to growl at him, its mouth was lined with pointed teeth.

He quickly backed away as it approached.

Shadow Meina (Level 11)

HP: 144/144

Difficulty: C (Uncommon)

“???”

Just as it reared up to leap at him, another dark shape cut across its path—Visha, fur bristling as she made a stuttering, clicking noise that Rian assumed was a kind of growl. Locking eyes with the creature, Visha retreated, pulling the shadow meina’s gaze away from Rian.

Kat dashed out from the cover of a tree, landed behind the meina and plunged her dagger into its spine. Red damage numbers—a critical hit—exploded into the air. The shadow meina writhed, crying out as half its HP bar vanished. Kat withdrew, shouting, “That’s your cue, buddy!”

Oh, right. Rian gripped his fists, feeling the Bronze Knuckles dig into his palms. I should probably stop standing here and gawking.

He leaned into a dash and took off, his heart skipping as he careened toward the nightmarish creature in front of him. Grimacing, he swung, planting his fist into its jaw, chunking off half its remaining health. The shadow-meina recoiled, its fluid body contorting into horrific shapes. It swiped out at Rian with claws suddenly elongating like scythes.

Rian stepped back, spun on his heel, and kicked the son of a bitch in its face.

It was all so sudden that he’d hardly thought about what he was doing, but it worked: he struck the creature on the side opposite from which it was swiping at him, which had kept him from getting nicked by its claws.

As the kick emptied the creature’s HP, it went sprawling amid a trail of heavy smoke, as if its body had lost its form. The smoke dissipated until nothing was left behind.

You have gained experience! (+33)

LEVEL UP! (Lv. 9→10)

You have gained +10 Max HP! (226→236)

You have gained +10 Max MP! (189→199)

Available attribute points +2

When he turned, Kat had already stepped up to him. “Grats, dude.” She held up her hand, and Rian high-fived her. “That worked out better than I thought. You’re at level for advancement now.” She hesitated. “You…know which class you’re going for?”

Looking over his stat page and the new points he had to spend, Rian scratched his chin. “Monk, I’m fairly sure.”

Her eyes lit up. “Awesome! Monks are great in PVP.”

“I’m just a little hung up on where to spend my stats for it. Monks are generally spiritual, right? Do they have any use of Spirit over Strength, or anything like that?”

Kat shook her head. As she started walking, she gestured for him to follow. “It’s not something you really have to worry about yet. Strength is fine. DEX, too.”

He put one point into each and savored the resulting miniature body-high.

They made their way down the footpath. The forest had thinned, with fewer trees crowding the view of the winding hills. Fellings and meina—and another creature Rian hadn’t seen before, like a living rock with limbs—went scurrying and slithering about the forest floor, but none approached. Visha trotted alongside, eyes fixed on the passing creatures.

A few adventurers wielding spears and axes went noisily about, slaying whatever was nearby. Once or twice, Rian glanced over and saw Corvis gracefully navigating the area, skewering meina and fellings at random with his giant needle when no one else was looking; he collected the gold they dropped and continued onward, parallel to Rian and Kat.

Kat explained the path to Monk as they went. First, he’d have to advance to Fighter at Elmguard; then, when he reached level thirty, he’d have the option to choose his subclass. There was no point in allocating stats for his future subclass, since things like Spirit wouldn’t help him much as a Fighter in the meantime. Overall, it was pretty simple. As for most classes at this stage of the game, Strength and Dexterity were their main stats.

Up ahead, the beginnings of a town appeared through the sparse trees. Clay buildings stood and sprawled further until they were clear of the forest entirely. None of the buildings were two-story like in Thile Harbor, but they spread so far that he could barely see the distant forests beyond. All throughout the town curved brick roads atop dusty earth worn thin by years of footfalls. Hundreds of adventurers and players in colorful armor and clothing were making their way through, stopping by merchant stalls and fountains with marble statues. Music drifted along the air—the tapping of conga drums and tambourines, the whimsical melodies of flutes. It was intoxicating, energetic, as if to usher Rian forward into the festivities that awaited.

You have discovered a new area! (Total explored: 4.34%)

You have gained experience! (+40)

ELMGUARD

Kat led him in. It wasn’t particularly crowded for how many people he’d seen, given the breadth of the area, but there were definitely more people here than in Thile Harbor.

At a glass table by rows of gardens, two overly buff players smothered in high-end gear were sitting and playing cards. Their clunky armor overshadowed the table, their massive gauntlets making the cards seem like tiny pieces of paper in their hands. They seemed as big as a human could physically be; their Strength stats were undoubtedly maxed.

“This isn’t an endgame area, right?” Rian said, walking past them.

“Not really,” Kat said. “The overworld layers blend together inside towns. Outside, you generally end up on a certain layer depending on your level, and it’s mostly just the mobs that change. The game changes a little bit, too.”

That made sense. A high level player wandering through a low level area would have nothing to do unless the creatures they faced became equally powerful.

“We’re stuck on the first layer,” Kat said, “until level twenty. Then you hop up one layer at a time every ten levels after that. You’re free to travel to the lower layers, but you can’t jump up a layer unless someone higher brings you along. Keeps you from running into insane mobs at low level—though there are some places where you can unwittingly jump up a few layers.”

Rian sucked his teeth. “So that would explain how I ran into a Pyceian Runeknight.”

Kat chuckled. “Yeah. The Pyceian Runeknight. That’s the only one on the entire overworld.”

“I’m not sure if that makes me lucky or cursed.”

“It’s a blessing, really. You got away with an Ezre’s Thought, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He’d almost forgotten. That item, a crafting material of sorts, was still in his inventory.

“Good,” she said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Hold onto it. You can do some really cool shit with it, later.”

As they walked through Elmguard, Kat pointed at the forests to the west. “Out there is one of the three shrines to the gods,” she said. “Goam’s Shrine. They’re one of the places where the memories of the gods are strongest, and, well…difficulty ramps up pretty hard as you get closer to them. Every once in a while you get parties coming into these towns to prepare for an attempt to reach the local shrine.”

“Wait, you said three shrines?” Rian bit his lip in contemplation. “I’m guessing Yindra doesn’t have one?”

“Sort of,” Kat said. “You’ll hear it pretty often that Yindra’s never been found before, but really—” She glanced aside, then stopped walking and grabbed Rian’s arm. He almost flinched; she was grabbing his left arm, the one with the Mark on it. “Most of the endgame players know,” she whispered, leaning in closer, “that Yindra is more than likely still alive. She’s probably up north, hiding somewhere.”

Rian couldn’t help but let the shock play out on his face, and Kat nodded. Thankfully, it seemed she merely thought this information was amusing to him. He didn’t understand why she was whispering, though.

“If you’ve ever seen a map of Miracia,” Kat said, whispering still, “it’s kinda obvious, frankly. You’d have to be blind to not make the connection. There’s four gods and four major areas on the continent: Elmguard for Goam to the west, Aetheria for Ezre to the east. And Thile Harbor and the Temple of Altir in the south.”

“What about the middle?”

Kat nodded sideways. “That’s the mid-game area—this big city called Nostdal. Kind of a neutral area.”

He vaguely remembered seeing a huge, white-walled city during the tutorial. He wondered if that was it.

“So if everyone suspects she’s up north,” he said, “why hasn’t anyone found her yet?”

Smiling, Kat took a deep breath and exhaled. “Because no one can figure out how the fuck to get up there,” she said. She pointed above her head, at her floating level text. “The cap’s at 50, right now. And the mobs there are level 100. Sometimes higher.”

“What the hell? So even a full endgame party can’t do it?”

“Nope. Most people assume it’s gated content—for a later patch, when they’ll raise the level cap. There’ve been a few expeditions in the meantime, but not one of them has seen the northern edge of the continent. Even taking boats and ships will run you into absurdly over-leveled creatures. It’s never gone well.”

Rian scratched the back of his head as he mulled it over. That was all certainly harrowing, but also a bit beyond his scope of things, for now. Using the Y-Locator item was almost guaranteed to lead him north, then. But if the northern side of the continent was impassible, what was the point? He was almost tempted to open his inventory to take another look at the item, but hesitated. Giving away that he had this item, even to Kat, probably wasn’t a good idea.

Floating in plain view, Corvis cleared his throat.

When Kat started walking again, Rian saw what they were headed towards: a large domed hut, standing at a crossroads. The hut’s canvas was covered with painted patterns in red, burgundy, and mahogany, intertwining and forming lateral rings across the dome. It was, by the look of it, the center of the entire town.

As they approached, again there was a diminishing of sound, as there had been at Jensen’s farm. When Rian glanced over his shoulder, Elmguard itself was empty of people aside from them.

The way into the hut was a doorway without a door; instead, there were beaded strings hanging down, covering the entrance. A dim blue light shone through the beads from the other side.

Rian gently swept the strings aside and stepped through.

Dozens of ornate crimson rugs, laid out in rings extending to the hut’s edge, covered the bare earthen floor. At the center of the hut was a massive crystal shard, emerging out of the ground, and gathered around it were two men and a woman. One of the men was bald and in loose white clothes. He sat cross-legged upon one of the many rugs with his eyes shut and his back straight. Across from him, the other man was armored, hunched and sitting as he cleaned a broadsword with an oily rag. Standing between them was the woman, dressed almost exactly as the bowman Lahir, wearing a green, feathered hat.

She turned to face him expectantly and said, “You’re finally here, Cobalt.”