The Cursed Princedom (Realm of Arkon #2) Read online

  Master G'Hrash—a fitting name for the ugly bastard and a real mouthful, like having marbles stuck in your throat—had meanwhile concluded his manipulations, walked over to one of the cauldrons and tossed into it the contents of his vile vessel. Pausing for a moment, he then tossed the vessel itself. Sure, why not? I thought to myself. Plenty more where that came from. All right, jokes aside now—the boss wasn't going to be a pushover at 75,000 HP. More importantly, the freak was a necromancer, which completely nullified my regular strategy. Necromancers specialized in damage-over-time curses, and you couldn't kite much with massive amounts of health disappearing from your HP bar at every tick. Well, you could technically, but in my situation the finish line would certainly be the graveyard in Urcahnta. Having already completed the dubious achievement, I had no intention of repeating it.

  I felt cold fury starting to seethe inside me. I didn't give a rat's ass that the necromancer had poisoned the land surrounding the dungeon—dozens of square miles' worth of land, in fact. Nor did I care all that much for the poor locals suffering from his shenanigans. All that mattered was that this squishy douchebag was standing between me and the people I loved!

  I rushed the boss. When I got to within twenty yards, I Jumped right to him, and just as he began turning toward me, I smashed the vial with the Netherworld's Elder Demon's venom into his ghastly mug. The lich's body convulsed and his HP dropped to 7,000. With a guttural croak, the boss tried backing away, but I was just getting started. A piercing Ice Blade landed square in his jaw, sending yellowed teeth flying every which way and chopping another 10% off his health bar. Black billows formed around the lich's wrists as he threw up his arms, but I countered with a timely Silence, and continued pummeling away at the abominable creature with the same silent resolve. I could almost hear his bones shattering under my blows. The lich was desperately trying to fight me off with a dagger gripped in one hand, but melee combat wasn't his strong suit. A few more seconds, and the necromancer's remains crumpled to the floor slabs with a dry crackle.

  Attention! You've earned a unique achievement, First in Ghorazm Ruins. You and your allies have been granted a permanent 1% increase to your physical and magic damage.

  You have gained a level! Current level: 66.

  You have 3 stat points to allocate.

  I waved away the irritating spam in the chat log. The rage bubbling within me demanded an outlet, and I wasn't going to fight it. With a yelp, I knocked the two boiling cauldrons off the fire, stomped out the makeshift bonfires with my plate boots, and swept all the shelves clean of the alchemical junk, glass vials and all. The lich's skull took flight and smashed against the far wall from a powerful straight kick.

  "Stop!" I bawled to myself. And so I did, breathing heavily.

  Well, this was a party, I thought with a grunt, surveying the transformed space—a huge puddle of ooze spreading across the floor slabs from under a pile of blackened bones. The trail of gray filth no longer streamed toward the dungeon's exit. Walking over to the lich's corpse, I leaned over and touched it through my plate gauntlet, too disgusted to remove it.

  At last! There it was, the first decent item I could actually wear.

  Runic Ring of Power

  Accessory; ring.

  Durability: 520/520.

  Rare item.

  Minimum level: 80.

  +80 to strength.

  +40 to constitution.

  +1% to armor class.

  Weight: .01 lbs.

  It would be a while before I could equip it—level 80 wasn't anywhere in sight. I recalled with a seething hatred the gargoyle that had been the culprit behind my losing seventeen levels. Hopefully the legionnaires were annihilating the foul beast at this very moment—I only regretted not being there to see it!

  In the Realm of Arkon, a player could equip up to four rings, lest certain particularly enterprising characters try and decorate all their fingers and toes with them, and then move to create more "slots" with piercings. I'd already had a ring on me, but this one definitely was going to come in handy. Oh, and I'd completely forgotten about jewelry when I was in Nittal. I'd ordered armor but totally spaced out about rings and a charm. Upon my return, I'd need to drop by some shops and outfit myself as needed.

  Besides the ring, the lich dropped two more rare quality items—leather druid boots and chainmail for some ranged class, both level 80 as well. Such a nice haul was probably the result of this being the server's first killing of the boss. The achievement granted me and everyone in my party or clan a one percent increase to physical and magic damage. Slaying Shaartakh had resulted in five percent, but the elder demon was level 473, whereas the sucker resting at my feet was a mere level 80. Were he at least above 100, I would have probably gotten two percent; three percent for level 200, and so on. Twenty gold coins switched owners as well. Hmm, where's his head? Then, upon remembering, I smacked myself on the forehead so hard the plate gauntlet gave a dull echo off the plate helm—I'd kicked it away myself just a few minutes ago. I searched and found the missing piece shortly after. After G'Hrash's skull was deposited into my inventory, the leather scroll that I'd looted from his corpse along with everything else, figuring it to be some kind of crafting recipe, flashed and rippled with a light blue spark. I sighed and reached for it.

  You've accessed the quest: Cleansing the Land.

  Quest type: normal.

  Deliver the scroll with the swamp poison recipe to Peotius the Mage in Urcahnta so that he could concoct an antidote to the spreading poison.

  Reward: experience, ten potions or elixirs from Peotius' stock.

  The lich's head needed to be in the inventory to get the quest, apparently, I thought, stashing the scroll in my bag. Then I went around gathering up all the alchemical reagents I myself had strewn around the grotto. Even if I wasn't going to level up the skill, I could sell it to Master Reus in Nittal. He would probably give me the best price for this junk, given my high reputation with him. The puddles on the floor had vanished, and I proceeded to quickly pick up all the tubes, boxes, packets and vials. I didn't have the slightest clue as to the origin of more than half of the reagents collected. With some, it was easy enough—"bone meal" couldn't be anything but bones crushed into powder form. But how about "leafmuncher slime" or "ecilote discharge?" The devs sure had their fun with the crafting system. For my part, I'd much rather toil away in a mine with a pickaxe, extracting ore from the bedrock, than to scrape slime off whatever the hell "leafmunchers" were, or follow ecilots around with a scoop, waiting for them to discharge the required reagent. I couldn't help but physically shudder at the mental image, and my resolve to avoid alchemy at all costs became unshakable. That settled it. As soon as I found myself in a starting city of any friendly race, I would head on over to the miners to learn their craft. Let alchemists gather all the slime and discharge their hearts desire—I'd rather just buy the fruits of their labors sealed in vials and be done with it.

  I threw three stat points into constitution—my damage output was already decent, and 30 extra HP never hurt anyone. Talent points, likewise with my class bonus to spirit and intellect, weren't going to kick in till level 83. This new and rather hardcore development had been introduced with the latest patch by RP-17 Sage, an AI that must have either become self-aware or totally lost its proverbial marbles. It was anybody's guess at to what its motives were to implement a 20% reduction in levels upon a character's death. Perhaps it was a response to the people pulled into the game world essentially being granted immortality, intended as a check on their unbridled development. At any rate, there was little I could do but make lemonade, albeit with virtual lemons—the lost spirit and intellect points were going to into strength and constitution instead. This was rather curious—my spirit and intellect were sitting at 72 points each, and the class bonus wouldn't kick in until level 83. In theory, were I to level down by dying repeatedly to 30—the lowest possible level—I should be able to get rid of the useless stats and recycle them into strength and
constitution. Of course, I wasn't planning on dying anymore—once was more than enough.

  I surveyed the space contemplatively, making sure I'd collected everything. Now what if... I walked over to the skulls by the wall and picked up one. Externally, the skull was identical to those I needed to hand in for my quest. Oh, what the hell—I tossed all the skulls from the pile into my bag, then returned to the previous grotto and did the same. Some I even had to break out of the hardened lime. It was nice to have a virtually bottomless bag, limited only by my carrying capacity. The lifeless heads folded neatly into stacks of fifty, and didn't take up much space at all. Some sticklers might call it cheating, but I didn't give a rat's ass about such conventions. At two pounds each, five hundred thirty six skulls weighed one thousand sixty two pounds total, while my strength, boosted by the potion of possibilities, currently allowed me to carry two thousand forty four pounds—two pounds for every point of strength. Therefore, even accounting for all the junk collected from the dead skeletons and the weight of my own gear, I could still stash roughly five hundred pounds of pure weight into my bag. Captain Neyl should be ecstatic to see such an epic pile unloaded at his feet. But let's shelf my heroic return to Urcahnta for later, though I allowed myself a chuckle at the mental image of my entering the village riding a white steed, a marching band celebrating my triumphant return, grateful villagers throwing bouquets of flowers at the horse's feet, and pretty village girls shooting enamored come-hither looks my way. Then again, if memory served me right, the only girls in the village were the elder's two daughters—hook-nosed and thin as rakes. I smiled, maybe for the first time today. All right, enough with the comic relief. This wasn't what I came here for. Sure, saving the villagers from an undead blight was a noble endeavor, but I had my own ulterior motives that currently lay beyond the gray haze of a portal door in the laboratory of a twice-croaked alchemist.

  No additional skeleton packs were spawning, so I walked up to the portal and produced the vial given to me by the mysterious messenger of Hart, the God of Thieves. The powder in the vessel resembled your typical manganese—the ubiquitous remedy from the days of the Soviet empire that, according to grandmother's stories, was sold on every corner in glass jars just like this one. Similar though it seemed, I wasn't going to handle the substance with bare hands—indeed, better safe than sorry. After loosening the cork, I tossed the powder from the vial into the oval-shaped window in a single motion.

  ERROR@#$*&^

  I hadn't seen a system message since the time when a certain scumbag was creating my character. But then nothing really happened, aside from the portal window growing noticeably darker. It worked! I grunted, then took a swig from the flask to bolster my resolve—it was the local moonshine, around 80 proof—and stepped through the dark gray rippling screen.

  "Motherf..." I couldn't help but blurt out when I saw my new surroundings. Now, sure, I half-expected to see something similar, but it's one thing to expect and another thing to behold it firsthand. I was standing on a stone platform about six feet off the ground, with a small rock formation rising over my shoulder. To the fore, as far as the eye could see stretched a dreary, drab plain, carved from the right side by a colossal rift, its far end shrouded by smoky gray clouds. The ground—featureless save for sparse scatterings of sickly saplings and underbrush—was fully blanketed with billowing murky-white mist, all the way to a dark mountain ridge abutting the horizon. The full moon overhead illuminated the occasional animal carcass, mostly of the larger variety. On the ground directly below the ledge I was standing on rested the remains of three humanoids, half-shrouded in mist. There might have been more, but I only registered three heads. Gnawed shinbones, broken skulls, and ribs scattered all over the place painted a vivid picture—the cause of death probably wasn't the flu.

  A road meandered through this desolation some two hundred yards away, ending at the ruined gate of what must have been a massive citadel. The once mighty stronghold could hardly even be called ruins anymore—more like a huge heap of rubble enclosed by crumbling stone walls.

  Tall figures clothed in dark cassocks were moving along either side of the road in somber silence—some solitary and some in small groups. Each head covered with a hood, each shoulder bearing a scythe that glinted in the moonlight. They would halt periodically, as if to pick some things off the ground, and then would continue their journey. Sometimes their path would cross the road leading to the citadel. "Reaping, level 378"—I read the legend above one of the figures, and cussed once more. "Gray Frontier, Weeping Valley, Jort Stronghold Outskirts, zone level 370-390"—the chat log declared.

  I spun around and let out a sigh of relief—the portal wasn't going anywhere. If it does disappear, there's no way I'm getting out of here, I thought to myself, zeroing in on my purpose here. Leeque didn't lie—the vault was visible even from here. But upon examining where it was located, I cussed for the third time in the last five minutes. The dark cubic space, its edges glowing softly, hovered right over the rift at the edge of which once stood the citadel. A trail ran from it to the lip of the rift—lacking a railing but emitting a faint blue light, it looked like a thin thread from where I was standing. It was hard to imagine how I would traverse it, but that was a problem for another time. I would need to get there first, and I wasn't going to make it on my own.

  Hopping off from the stone platform to the ground, I cleared a small patch by simply kicking the old bones to the side. I felt zero reverence for the remains of the humanoids, and zero curiosity as to who or what had devoured them or what race they belonged to. My own immediate problems overshadowed just about everything else.

  Leeque's scroll bore a basic pentagram, and though I was no longer in the physical body that made a living as an illustrator, my drawing skill seemed to transfer into the game. It therefore took me only a few minutes to depict the required image on the ground. Without a size guide to orient by, I instinctively drew the pentagram so as to be outside of it the moment I commenced with the final summoning phase. It was better to play it safe with all this magic business—you never know when something might explode prematurely, or maybe the wrong creature might appear instead of the one being summoned. Have fun explaining then that you're just an innocent bystander, and that the actual summoner "went that way."

  I put the rock given to me by the demon into the center of the drawing. Then, following Leeque's instructions, I poured the powder from the box on top and quickly retracted my hand. Nothing happened for the first several moments, but then I felt the earth move under my feet. The lines of the drawing flared with a blinding white light and disappeared. A lightning bolt struck the ground a hundred feet away, followed by another, and another... As the lightning kept striking, the earth kept shaking, and I struggled to stay on my feet. The smell of ozone was overwhelming. Shielding my eyes from the dazzling light, I waited for the creature Leeque had referred to as his kinsman to appear.

  Suddenly everything died down, and eight massive figures stepped out of the billowing dust raised by the lightning bolts. They were clad in suits of golden armor, the kind worn by warriors in Ancient Greece, and were led by a long-haired, six-foot-six behemoth of a man with the mug of an actor who played the role of Conan the Barbarian back in the XX century. Only, in contrast to the moronic filmmakers who had Conan running around the world with a naked torso, this one was covered head to toe in plate, and looked far more formidable than his Hollywood prototype with his black-as-tar hair tied with a leather band, an enormous two-handed mallet crackling with electrical energy, and a golden Corinthian helm in his hand.

  His companions were nearly as imposing as their commander: one male orc and one female, a pair of dwarves that looked to be twins, a tall dark-skinned elven female and two humans, a man and a woman. All were melee fighters, all armed to the teeth and clad in a mix of plate and chainmail. The names and levels of the new arrivals were hidden, but I had an inkling that the Reapings, who had been gathering hell knows what while blocking the way to the
vault of the Twice Cursed God, would surely feign innocence and pretend to be harmless mushroomers at the mere sight of this group.

  Keeping total silence, the black-haired giant looked left, then right, eventually stopping the wrathful gaze of his deep blue eyes on my humble person.

  Attention! You have garnered the attention of a higher being. Ingvar the Warrior God is unfriendly to you.

  Crap! the thought flashed in my head. The next moment Ingvar appeared next to me in one fluid motion, his helm and mallet gone from his grasp. The earth jerked from under my feet as the deity grabbed me by the belt with one hand and squeezed my neck with the other. My health bar dropped by one third—so strong was his grip on my neck that I struggled to breathe.

  "I trust you understand, thiefling, that your death will not be easy?" he roared into my face, then swirled his head as if considering where to throw me.

  What in the seven hells was this?! Why was it that every scuzzy freak I came across would first act from the position of strength?! Rage washed over me. Sure, I knew that my chances against this bastard were no higher than of an ant against a forest fire—indeed, the deity could break my neck with the subtlest movement of his fingers. And I really, really didn't want to go through the whole resurrection process, level losses and all. And yet, I just couldn't help myself. Grabbing the hand that was choking me, I swung my torso backwards and kicked Ingvar square in the chest with both feet. My belt broke under the pressure, sending vials flying all around; a moment later I landed as well—rather painfully—on my posterior.

  I leaped back to my feet, my sword leaving its sheath with a smoosh.