4.12

“It's quite simple, trolls already live under bridges and rob anyone who passes, thus they have the job experience to be excellent tax collectors.” - High Prince Aksum's proposal on acquiring Government Officials who won’t get lynched.

The path to the caves followed a rough rocky outcrop situated on a large plateau bordering the beach. Greenie sniffled a bit at the heavy salt smell, letting out a cute sneeze.

“Sunny,” it complained, shading its eyes. Yellow nudged the bracken polypores under my skin to grow into a roof over their similarly made balcony. Were they always able to do that? Either it was another thing that was too minor for my menu to see or my choices were paying off.

I originally picked Symbiosis because of all the other Paths, it was the option that helped deal with the sun, but in hindsight, I might’ve picked one of the best options. The multitude was always better than the individual, and one day I simply won’t be able to progress in level. But I don’t have to be the strong, so long as I had an army of familiars and summons to back me up, my level became pretty meaningless.

In comparison to Noam though, I was a tad overpowered.

Currently, I was a hard to kill status effect machine, with specs in information gathering and area control. I could very effectively hold an area so long as I had prep time, the problem was if I got disrupted early on and my lack of close-range combat. Noam was a bard that happened to have a melee weapon but he could easily wreck me at close range. A person who was actually fully specced in melee combat should be able to take me out quickly or at least keep me CC’d enough that I won’t be able to do anything.

Just from a game balance perspective, this had to be true. Eventually, I’ll have to transition to a more supportive build that relied on summons and familiars, which had fewer weak points compared to my current build, or at least that type of build’s strengths covered some of its weak points.

Noam though seemed mainly like a DPS focused skirmisher for quick but large encounters. Biting Words and Vicious Mockery gave him a degree of utility because he could effectively ‘taunt’ people into focusing on him, so he could fill as an off-tank. And despite the fact he had two useless abilities, his build was far more well rounded than mine.

Noam said something, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry, what was that?”

He stopped as he glanced back at me, there was a good amount of distance between us now. Perhaps due to our wildly differing Agility?

“I said!” he yelled over a crashing wave, “Do you think there are beaches like this back home!?”

“What do you mean!?” I yelled back. Greenie and Yellow’s vision jerked as I ran to catch up to him.

“Like this clean, or just the general feeling you know?” he yelled back.

“Probably not!” When I got close to him, I replied, “Any beach in our world is probably fucked by now.”

Noam didn’t look at me, simply staring out into the ocean. “You sure about that?”

I shrugged, “There might be, but what point is there in finding one?” I gestured to the sea, “There’s one right there.”

“I guess,” he quietly replied, voice so low I almost missed it.

I raised an eyebrow, before slapping him on the back, “Quiet brooding doesn’t fit you."

He scratched the back of his head, “Yeah…”

I gave him a moment, before starting back on the path. “C’mon.”

Noam’s boots scraped against the rough gravel as he caught up.

“What do you mean quiet brooding doesn’t fit me?” Noam asked from behind me.

“Well, generally they’re for quiet badasses with tragic backstories,” I answered. Bending down to dodge his roundhouse.

“Screw you,” he playfully replied, “I have an awesome tragic backstory!”

“Really?” I challenged. “What?”

He held his chin in a thoughtful gesture, “Entire village got massacred by someone and I’m out looking for vengeance?”

“Overdone,” I critiqued. “Everyone knows that story so it’s not special. Add a twist or two.”

“Ah,” he smiled, “but what if the twist is that I have no tragic backstory?”

“Then you’re just a gag character with a weird bit.”

“Gag characters can be serious!” he defended.

“But not always.”

Our destination was in sight now, a collection of squat, white huts, created from some kind of uniform stone.

“Ok, hear this,” Noam gestured to his head. “What’s a calm badass? Cowboys, so how bout I start wearing a cowboy hat.”

I made sure to stare at his extremely prominent horns, “Sure.” My hand caught his incoming punch.

“It can be one that has holes in it,” he argued as we neared the camp, “for my horns to go through.”

“I mean,” I started. “Calm badasses generally don’t talk aloud about how to make themselves badass.”

Noam raised a finger, about to argue before shutting up, just when we stepped into the camp.

Arranged before us were dozens of small huts, built of some kind of clean white material. What was strange was their exact uniformity. Every hut looked exactly the same to an almost creepy degree. Like someone had just copy-pasted one 3D asset.

We drew some attention, but they all quickly returned to their previous task, either maintaining weapons or chatting to another. Some eyes lingered, with a start, I realised they were lingering on me.

Huh, I guess I did look a bit weird.

“Excuse me,” I asked one of the people staring, “We’re here for the Ivory Tower quest, where can we find the Administrative Guild representative?”

The man’s face took on an indescribable expression, “You both plateless?”

“Yeah,” Noam replied.

“You’ll find the MAG rep in there,” he gestured backwards, towards a hut with a symbol etched on it, “logo of Sword and Charter, you can’t miss it.”

I nodded, noting a necklace that had a bronze plate threaded in it. On it was a logo that of a tower, along with some lines of writing.

“Curious, eh?” the mercenary chuckled. “Feel free to take a look,” he said as he pulled out his plate.

His name was etched in it, ‘Randiam of Greyvault.’ Along with more information underneath.

‘Camp 6

Mage (Battle) 5

Skirmisher 2’

“What do the classes mean?” I asked. Well, they were somewhat self-explanatory, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“MAG keeps us mercs classified in nice little bits so everyone knows what we each could do,” he thumbed the first line, “Battlemage means I can hurt and heal things. Name’s a bit redundant though since every mage in this business battles.” He gestured to a sword hanging by his belt, “Skirmisher is a general catch-all for people that specialise in mundane weapons, though you’d be hardpressed to find a weapon that hasn’t been enchanted in one way or another.”

Finally, he swept his arm wide. “And camp means I can make stuff like this,” he said, gesturing to the numerous squat stone houses around us.

“You made this camp?” Yellow asked.

The mage glanced at the wisp in confusion. “It asked if you made this camp Mr Randiam,” I clarified.

“Yes, I did. Smart little bugger isn’t he?” he replied in a contemplative tone. “Also in charge of feeding all these IDIOTS!” he raised his voice for the last bit, clearly talking to the people around us.

“Yeah, yeah we get it,” another person, whose plate showed her as another of the Ivory Tower, tiredly said, “You’re an important asset to the guild and we can’t be here without you.”

“Utility is good,” I said. “Can’t fight if you’re hungry.”

Utility tended to outpace both damage and durability at higher levels. Though I might be biased about that. Since people tended to like flashy damage more, I often found myself the lone utility caster in any party. Which ironically made every damage based player I’ve met seem utterly normal, as they were one amongst a thousand. Whereas anyone who mained a healer or tank class was practically seen as an endangered species to be scooped up.

Good thing was I’ve never had to suffer through long matchmaking queues when I played with Matt.

“Damn straight,” he agreed, nodding his head.

“Anything you can tell us about the guy inside?” I asked, going to what I wanted from the beginning.

“The cultist?” I nodded. “Don’t know where that one popped up, he’s a one of the Damned- sorry about that,” he said to Noam, almost as a side note, “so half of us expect devils to start spewing out.”

“Should we expect to fight devils?” I asked, they were supposedly a tier below demons, but still considered nasty to fight.

“Nah,” he replied. “If fiends start dropping we’ll notice and start storming the caves in force.”

“What should we expect to fight then?”

“Chimeras,” he replied, “Bout as varied as fiends but his ones aren’t nearly as strong. The shit ones don’t live long, slap dashed together so some don’t have all the important bits to survive.”

Frankenstein-like then, and missing vital organs as do most living weapons.

“If you’re a fighter,” he nodded to Noam, “you’re gonna have a hard time, you don’t know where their vital organs are or if they even have any. Though generally they still have heads you can cut off.”

Noam nodded.

“And you,” he looked at me, “can’t tell what you can do. But you look like a mage so keep blasting them till they go down.”

“I see,” I replied. I briefly contemplated telling him what I can do. He seemed experienced and could probably help me figure something out. Probably not worth it. The information he gave was rudimentary, basic weaknesses and nothing much to look out for. If chimeras were as varied as he was implying, then I was better off figuring a game plan on how to deal with them on a case by case basis.

Now, to ask the question I’ve been wondering since I saw the quest, “Is there a reason why you don’t just go root this cultist out?” I originally thought they didn’t have the manpower, but seeing the actual camp there were at least a hundred people here. Assuming half were utility or non-combatants, there were still fifty people who should be able to put up a fight.

“Ah, so you noticed,” he smiled, “truth is rather simple, most of Ivory Tower are mages.”

Mages? How did that affect things?

“What’s the problem with that?” Yellow asked.

I asked the same thing, to which the Randiam furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, “You don’t have mana problems?”

Ah. So that was it. “You’re worried that if you go in en-mass, your forces will exhaust their mana before you can meet the cultist?”

“Indeed,” he nodded, “that’s why you’re here, to clean out the chimeras before we go in and deal the finisher.”

Looking to the long term and outsourcing the labour. “I see. And you’re not afraid the cultist will run before you do?”

“If he does we’ll notice, we have people covering every cave exit with wards to detect planar magic.”

“And you can pay for everyone that comes?” The quest was pretty generous compared to all the other stuff available. Most only gave payment after the task had been completed.

Randiam smiled cryptically, “It pays for itself.”

Pays for itself? Were there quests that I wasn’t aware of? ‘Pays for itself’ implies that hiring outsiders was a net neutral or positive.

“What do you mean by that?”

“The chimeras,” he began, “are slapdash creations made from whatever is available. Though some incorporate some rather rare parts.”

“Material harvesting,” I realised.

He smiled, “This is a small gamble on our part, we’ve confirmed some rather exotic pieces that can still be sold for a good price even if they were mangled a bit.”

He added as almost an afterthought, “Of course if you take this quest on our behalf, you surrender the rights to any corpses you’ll be making.”

“And if we came, killed the chimeras and took the loot without taking your quest?”

His smile didn’t waver, but in a moment, his eyes turned cold. “That would be highway robbery, because the people doing the quest for the cultist is the Ivory Tower.”

Ah, so it was looked down upon then, or perhaps illegal.

“Got it then,” I said, turning to leave, “thanks for the info.”

Noam followed after me, his steps sounded a bit more hurried than usual. Once we were a far enough distance, he grabbed my shoulder, “Shit did you feel that,” he whispered.

I raised an eyebrow, “Feel what?”

“Scary,” Greenie said. I saw from its view that Yellow was nodding in agreement beside it.

“Right I know?” Noam agreed, “That old man was scary. It felt like someone had shoved an icicle up my ass when you asked that.”

“Descriptive.”

He signed loudly, “Man, I was trying to keep up this quiet and calm badass look as well. He definitely saw me flinch when he did that.”

Wait, what?

“So what do you think Maz?” Randiam directed to the woman who had tiredly replied to him earlier.

“Six out of ten, information gathering was decent, but they didn’t ask in-depth,” she replied. The MAG Vice-Guild Master wore a rather basic disguise, hiding inside his guild.

Randiam chuckled, “Eight out of ten, I figured it was trying to keep its own abilities hidden.”

Maz moved to his side, “It?”

“Him, her?” he shrugged, “Does it matter, all myconids look the same anyways.”

“That one was pretty distinct.”

“Hmm.”

There was a brief flicker of light, followed by the smell of smoke, “Are the wards all ok?”

“Of course!” Randiam replied, vaguely offended, “I set them myself.”

The light of her smoke briefly reflected on his plate, piecing the bronze illusion and revealing a silver glint.

“Hey, keep off,” he brushed off the small mote of mana, “Illusions are hard to maintain.”

Maz chuckled.

“You said they were Travellers,” he said after repairing his illusion. The one with a capital. The type that didn’t truly die. Randiam heard of them as a child, stories of people and things constantly coming back regardless of what killed them.

“Yep,” the drow agreed.

“They automatically succeed this exam don’t they?” he said, “They don’t die so even if they were killed, they come back and get a plate.”

“Indeed.”

“Then why bother? They’re already pretty lucky to immediately stumble here for their first quest.”

“Because we would know what they’re capable of.”

The idea was simple enough. Know the enemy, though Randiam would rather not fight a Traveler. Unlike Revenants who tended to be driven by a singular and all-encompassing desire for something, or Fae who were stuck to the stories they gave them, Travelers were practically normal people, they didn’t have convenient behaviours that could be predicted and exploited.

Few Travellers became truly dangerous or did heinous things, but the danger of something that won’t die, something you can’t easily remove from the world, one day just up and deciding they wanted to burn a town down? Then another and another?

Someone needed to deal with things like those, and though Randiam did it for a paycheck, he was still one of those people that dealt with monsters.

“What of the others?” he asked, there were normal people in this test as well. Twelve others.

“Complaining to the rep about the stringent rules.”

He felt a nudge on his shoulder, seeing an unlit cigar between Maz’s fingers. “No thanks,” he replied.

The drow shrugged, before she blew out another line of smoke, “They seem like an interesting lot as well.”

“I hope as many survive as possible.”