28 Days remain of contest A, Monday.

Back in Kesmai, I have about five or six hours to figure out what to do.

I equip my new level-three knife from the kobold; it looks wicked, but it has no special attack bonuses for me. It probably does for non-humans though. I count up my gold and head to the tailor and ask to have three masks made with the roll of cloth I picked up from the Kobolds sleeping area. The tailor gives me a sidelong glance and charges me five gold for all three. A timer starts and I need to wait three minutes for her to finish the masks. I take the interval to go through my settings again and look at my gear.

I can wear the ring I got from the Kobolds now, so I slip it on the little finger on my left hand. I can see the new skill from the ring in my floating display. It provides a little icon I can activate with a thought.

I have one point to distribute to my stats, so I throw it on dexterity. It can’t possibly hurt to have more of my primary stat.

The tailor finishes the masks, and I retrieve them and try mine on; I notice a reputation drop as I place it on—after taking it off the reputation returns to normal. It’s lucky I haven’t lost any reputation yet; if I had just put that mask on with any less, I would have gone below zero. Negative reputation would have caused the guards to attack. I think I will leave these off for now.

Remembering the conversation the player characters we overheard in the woods had, I am curious about the public dungeon instance. I go look at the entrance to the special instance dungeon right in the town square, near the arena. Informational windows pop up as I approach. Mostly they are about how each region’s starter area has a special instance and that whoever beats their region’s instance will gain control of one of the main world fortresses. Another pop-up talks about what a raid dungeon is and that lower-level characters should not attempt this one.

Those earlier players were completely wrong. I can enter this instance at any level, just not as a single player, and not with more than twenty-four players. It would be pretty funny having a mob of hundreds of level-one characters crash through a raid dungeon. To mob a dungeon like that in the old games they would have called it zerging. But it looks like party size is limited to six and raid size is set to twenty-four.

I check the training in the arena; it is almost all sword fighting, but I can also practice with target dummies. I go and look at the target dummies and start using my slash skill. I do this for a few minutes and level up my slash skill to three. This is going to be a slow slog. In another ten minutes my slash skill is at level four, but I can see that there is diminishing returns with dummy practice.

Thinking back to my tutoring by Mushito where I used throwing knives, throwing stars, and blow darts for distance attacks, I get an idea. Paying a visit to the weapons dealer—a skinny NPC who looks like he is about to sneeze all the time—I buy a pouch of throwing knives. I also pick up some rope and a new level-three knife for five gold. I look at leather armor and buy a cheap nice-fitting vest, leggings, and bracers for six gold, which provides me -2 damage from all physical attacks.

I return to the arena training dummy and pull out the pouch of throwing knives.

“Okay, stupid dummy, make me stronger,” I say, chucking the knife at it.

The throwing knife hit the dummy’s head sideways and ricochets right back at me—I duck, and it sticks in the wall behind me.

“Need some help there?” asks the NPC trainer.

“Can you show me how to use throwing knives please?”

The trainer comes over and takes a knife, throwing it into the dummy handily. Then the trainer guides me, a slight glow accompanies him, and after two tries I get it.

New Skill: Throwing knife

You can use throwing knives now.

Number of knives: 1

Damage modifier: 0 (+0 strength)

“Thank you,” I say as he walks off.

I start chucking knives into the dummy, one after the other. I spend the next thirty minutes getting the Throwing knife skill to level four. I see that I can still only throw one knife, but the damage has increased with my knives to 1-4(+3) for the base knife damage. The minimum I can do with a regular hit is four and the max is seven. I look at the damage data more closely and see there are full damage tables for glancing and bank-shot attacks. I doubt I will need those advanced throwing knife skill for a long time.

Satisfied with my training, I get onto the road and walk through the woods to the wizard’s house.

Mid-afternoon I arrive at the wizard’s house, and I decide to scout it out and get the lay of the land. I see the laboratory is not in use and the cave has no fresh kobold tracks. I choose to climb the outside of the house and check for any overlooked entrance. It is slow going as I make my way to the first terrace-like roof—I had mis-judged the climb. I try not to make a clatter, but I doubt it would be of any use, the giant mobile of lightning rods with bizarre symbols on the roof makes enough noise. I could probably ride a horse around on the roof and the sound would not be noticed.

Climbing farther up above the second level, I spy what I am looking for, a small window, open to the access hatch for where the lightning rods are.

I try to will myself to be lighter and skinnier as I approach the window. I easily slide in it, and than am on a catwalk which has ropes and various other support structures for the underside of lightning rods. The rods extend into the inside of the structure and hang over the mostly open interior of the house. I use hide-in-shadows and enter the darkness, I am immersed in shadow and feel like liquid as I begin to explore. The wizard also has dug down, making the interior open to the basement, which gives the inside a large open-air feel. Around the inside are a series of large mezzanine walkways on the first floor, which is encrusted with bookshelves and gadgets. This gives a full three floors of open space from the basement floor to the catwalk where I am hidden. I can see the wizard far below, scribbling into a book.

Looking around the top of the building at the base of the lightning rods, I see that the mass of rods is moveable. The brass supports which keep it from falling have pins. These things look easy enough. I check closer and I see that as the contraption sits right now, I could pull the pins out and it would not fall. But if anyone tried to maneuver the gizmo it would come crashing down. I decide to have a backup plan and pull the pins and set them aside in case I need to put them back for any reason. Better safe than sorry.

I move down a flight of stairs and see that the wizard has not moved, I slink farther and farther down the stairs and I slink down the ladders slowly, until I am within range. I pull out several throwing knives then give them a little kiss for luck.

lucky bitches, hit home.

I breathe slowly and count three, two, one. I active the shadow-clone ring and raise my arm to throw my knife. The knife flies straight and strikes true on the wizard.

You hit Zumlon the dark wizard for 6 (+3 surprise) damage.

He jumps up faster that I would have guessed and begins casting a spell. I pull back to throw another knife which I release right as his spell detonates in my face and the shadow clone explodes like black glass.

Zumlon the dark wizard hits shadow clone for 1 (+14) damage.

Shadow clone is destroyed.

Zumlon the dark wizard hits you for 3 (+3 electrical) splash damage.

You hit Zumlon the dark wizard for 6 (+3 surprise) damage.

Zumlon is casting again, and now he has me in his sights and not the clone. I pray my dexterity is good enough. I tumble down the steps and land behind a cabinet on my side. Dragging myself behind the cabinet, I am just able to avoid a spray of color that misses my leg.

“You dare attack me in my own house, cretin?” the wizard manages to hiss. “I’m going to use you for fertilizer.”

I don’t want to listen to his evil NPC monologue. I look around and then glancing up, find what I need: one of the ropes for the giant mobile. I take a throwing knife, I aim, and then throw. The knife hits the rope, snapping it. A giant “CREAAAAAK” sound tears at the roof, but the mobile does not fall.

What the?

The wizard cackles and I see him wave to one of the rods pointing my way. It rotates and blasts the cabinet I am behind with electricity, and smoke immediately fills the air .

He is using the roof as a weapon against me.

I use the smoke to dive across to another cabinet. Moving as fast as I can, I dive again forward under a table and then behind another cabinet. Now I am fully flanking him as he points the ceiling mobile to where I was, frying the cabinet I had been behind to cinders. He is yelling about how he will grind me up all the while channeling a stream of raw power at where I was. Now behind him and to his left, I have a chance to attack. Slipping into the shadows, which is more like slipping into the smoke, I dive forward with a double attack plus backstab damage.

You hit Zumlon the dark wizard for 4 (+3 flanking) damage.

You critically hit Zumlon the dark wizard for 6 (+6 flanking) damage.

You incapacitate Zumlon the dark wizard.

The wizard screams and in a last attack whips his hand around with a twitch making the roof tear and creak. The metal mobile in the roof is bending and coming down. I dive out of the way just as most of the roof comes down in a thundering crush of dust and ropes and jagged metal.

I pick myself up and dust off, looking around the damage. The entire rooftop mobile had come down on the wizard in a giant ball of spikes. I walk to the center and see the wizard is still trying to tell me something through blood-covered lips. I don’t care, this needs to end.

I slit his throat.