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CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve won the battle against the Rat King (level 400).
You’ve received experience!
You’ve received a new level!
You’ve received a new level!
You’ve received a new level!
Current level: 184
The location boss hadn’t played hard to get. Despite his high level and several nasty abilities like Reinforced Blow and Magic Shield, we’d made rather quick work of him.
We’d used the already-tested technique, with the attacking Scarabs pulling aggro to themselves while the others showered the monster with arrows. By the way, Amai hadn’t even gotten the chance to cast his magic, so quickly everything had happened. After the scarabs’ arrival, Amai kept himself to himself, casting occasional grim glances my way.
His clanmates were suitably impressed, too. But unlike their sulking leader, they stared at me with respectful admiration. Respectful indeed: I’d earned another 200 Reputation with the Northern Wolves.
Pike surprised me again: according to another system message, our relationship had improved from Neutral to Respect.
What was wrong with him? Even my relationship with Droy paled in comparison. I had a gut feeling that surprises wouldn’t end here.
Right. What next?
Congratulations! You’re the first player in Mirror World to defeat the Rat King!
Your reward has been upgraded!
Reward:
A Bone Chest Plate of the Rat King, 1
The Battle Claws of the Rat King, 1
A Large Magic Chest, 1
My hand shaking, I scratched the back of my head. The first “purple” items I’d won in battle! I mustn’t forget to take a screenshot of Rrhorgus’ face watching me pour all my latest loot onto his shop counter.
Let’s take a closer look. First, the Breast Plate.
Name: A Bone Chest Plate of the Rat King
Item class: Unique
Effect: +350 to Protection
Effect: +255 to Stamina
Effect: +255 to Health
Effect: +345 to Strength
Durability: 1250/1250
Restriction: level 150
Collect the full kit to receive a bonus!
Actually, my current level allowed me to wear it. Should I try it on? Why not?
I pulled the breast plate out of my backpack. Oh. This wasn’t my style to say the least. Besides, it looked more like a shield than a piece of armor. This item was meant for a tank.
The Claws proved to be the same. Excellent. Both would fetch me some good money.
What next?
The Magic Chest was “red”. Restriction: level 100, excellent. I could open it.
I held my breath and pressed Open.
Congratulations! You’ve opened the Large Magic Chest!
Reward:
Gold coins, 5,000
Dumbfounded, I watched the brief animation as the gold coins moved to the top of the panel, increasing my funds count. I won’t lie to you: it felt good. Actually, this was my first monetary loot. Now I could understand why other players were so desperate to be the first to lay their hands on virgin dungeons.
Congratulations! You’re received a Legendary Achievement: A Regicide! You’re a legend!
Reward: The Order of the Wind’s Fury
Not another reward. The message had already been made public in the common chat. I could imagine Tanor’s reaction. And not only his. They weren’t happy, that’s for sure. Some noob opening new dungeons and amassing all the perks? Something told me they weren’t going to celebrate my success.
Never mind. Let’s go back to my prizes. One more Legendary Achievement in my collection.
What is it about, actually?
Name: The Order of the Wind’s Fury
Description: +45% to the damage dealt with small arms and missiles, applicable to all of your group or raid members.
Excellent. As one of my neighbors used to say, just what the doctor ordered.
My backpack’s icon continued to flash. More surprises?
I drew my attention away from the menu in order to check the battlefield. My Calteans seemed to have forgotten their fatigue and had gotten busy investigating the grotto. They walked around it alone or in small groups, studying the ancient structures. Veneration was written all over their faces.
The honeycomb terraces were everywhere you turned. It felt like being inside a giant beehive.
Crym slumped on a rock next to me, groaning with exhaustion, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I turned to him. “I thought you said you had things like these?”
“We did! But this... this is-” he swept his hand around the cave by way of describing its majestic glory, then shrugged helplessly, “Well, you know what I mean.”
I nodded. I did indeed.
“My father spent his whole life working his farm,” Crym sighed. “He wanted me to follow in his steps, heh. He would have loved it here. Shame he didn’t live to see it.”
“Nocteans killed him?” I asked.
“Oh, no. He died in his bed surrounded by his family. It had been five years before the Horde came.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So am I,” he heaved a sigh. “Never mind. What was I saying? I was still a young boy then. I used to help him a lot in his mushroom nursery.”
Well, well, well. It was getting interesting. I pricked up my ears.
“I didn’t have to do anything special,” he admitted, oblivious of my interest. “Just fetching things and all that. But I still remember a few things. I’ve had a look around this place. One thing I can tell you is that the irrigation system isn’t damaged. Can you see those sluices over there?”
I looked where he pointed. “Do you mean all those mechanisms with levers and things?”
He nodded. “That’s right. They appear to be in working condition. All we need to do is clean the cells and the water canals, bring down some fresh soil, plant new mushrooms and start the irrigation machine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said with a confident smile. “If we plant one-quarter of this place, we’ll never have to worry about going hungry again!”
I sat up like a bloodhound that had sensed a trail. “What exactly do you need?”
“Heh! You’d be surprised. We have everything already. Every self-respecting Caltean woman has mushroom spores in her pantry. Bringing enough soil down here might be a problem but I’m pretty sure we can manage.”
“How many workers do you need to tend the nursery?” I asked with bated breath.
He waved my question away. “That’s nothing. Mushrooms are easy to grow. Once we get back, I want you to meet Peet the White Eye. He’s the expert.”
I remembered a skinny, emaciated man whom other Calteans called White Eye for his pale blue eye color. I’d already met him when I’d brought him some new agricultural tools.
“I actually know him already,” I told Crym.
He stared at me, uncomprehending, then slapped his forehead, “Of course! You know everybody now, don’t you? Every mangy dog in the camp wags its tail to you! Ha ha!”
I laughed, too.
He was joking, of course. But the really funny thing was that I indeed knew every dog in the camp, whether mangy or not. What would he say to that? And not just every dog but also every cat, pig and chicken. We even had a hedgehog. He was Lia’s new pet.
No point telling him that. I could use the occasion to pick his brains about other things. Like our allies.
He shrugged. “We told you everything we knew about them.”
“How about Pike?”
“Well...” Crym paused, thinking. “We call him Pike of Many Hands. He wields his sword like you can’t imagine. I’ve never seen another swordsman as good as him.”
“I know what you mean.”
I meant it: I still couldn’t forget Pike’s glowing sword tricks. “But as far as I can see, he’s not just a great swordsman but also a leader and a wise councilor.”
Crym grinned. “You’re dead right there. Had it not been for him, Amai would have died in the tunnel like the idiot he is. I swear to you by all the underground gods that it was Pike who must have talked Amai into taking his clan out onto the steppes before the Horde came.”
That was a surprise. “You think?”
“Absolutely.”
“Anybody else think so?”
“Lots of people.”
“But Laosh-” I began but Crym interrupted me.
“Laosh!” he sneered. “He can’t see anything beyond his own nose. Had it not been for you, the Red Owls would have long been dead, all of us.”
“Well, the clan owes its survival to lots of people and not just me-”
“Aha! You see? Your modesty is a sign of wisdom!”
“Your words are pleasing to my ear, my friend. But still you’re mistaken. Modesty’s got nothing to do with it. A clan is like a human body which can’t live without its organs. Its heart, liver or kidneys must work in synch like a single mechanism otherwise the body will die. But I agree with what you said about good leadership. A lot of things depend upon it.”
“Exactly,” Crym said, rising from his place. “Amai would have never plucked up enough courage to take his people onto the steppes.”
His last words concerning Pike and Amai were the missing piece of the puzzle I’d so desperately tried to put together for the last few days.
I looked around me, searching for Pike. There he was, standing behind Amai who was sitting on a rock. The old man stood cross-armed, cold and impassive like a block of ice, keeping his eyes peeled for any more blunders from his young leader.
I watched Crym’s broad back as he left. Then I returned to the business at hand and pressed the backpack’s flashing icon. I probably had some more stat points that required distribution. Or did I have 100% knowledge? I really needed to spend a few moments sorting that out.
When I saw the reason for the icon’s impatient blinking, I didn’t believe my eyes. I even rubbed them. My heart missed a beat, freezing in my chest like a scared rabbit. My lips stretched in an idiotic smile.
Finally.
The icon of the Twilight Castle map was finally active.
I’d thought it would never happen. I remembered that night in the Footworn Traveler’s Inn when I’d first opened Pierrot’s app which had scared me out of my mind. Then, all those maps, plans and schemes had felt like something way out of my reach. An impossible dream.
And now I was standing here, right in the middle of a giant mushroom field, a pace away from a new discovery.
I opened the map with bated breath. A bright red mark glowed at its center.
The Armory.
My back erupted in cold sweat. Was it really possible?
Those of the Calteans busy by the opposite wall began shouting. I looked up. Droy was running toward me. I rushed to meet him.
Only when I came closer did I see his happy grinning face.
“We’ve found another door!” he shouted from a distance. “The underground gods seem to like you, Keeper!”
* * *
THE ROCK WALLS OF THE Armory exuded warmth and calm. The room was dry and even felt cozy in the torchlight. Then again, it could be my Ennan nature: I always felt safe and cozy these days whenever I was down a rock hole.
The torches cast their orange light on the Calteans’ long faces and dropped jaws. Some of them looked quite funny. Their eyes glowed with the anticipation of more loot. Like impatient youngsters, they waited for me to give them the signal to strip the place bare.
The door into the Armory looked identical to the grotto’s front door back on the surface overhead.
I’d already made some calculations. A loaded cart pulled by two buffaloes could easily go through the tunnel. The room itself was big enough for such a cart to turn round. And I was probably seeing only a small part of it within the torchlight’s reach.
When we’d just opened the door, the familiar smell of steel, wood and oil had hit my nostrils. The room was lined with shelves stacked high with all sorts of boxes and crates.
I could see large barrels, iron-bound wooden chests and bolts of fabric and leather. A wide table by the door was crowded with all kinds of precious boxes.
“So what do you think, Keeper?” Droy whispered impatiently into my ear. “You need to make up your mind. Everybody’s waiting.”
I forced my gaze away from the scene and rubbed my eyes again.
Then I smiled to everyone. “Should we share the spoils?”
A shattering “Yaaaaah!” flooded over me.
* * *
SEEING AS BOTH THE grotto and the Armory were now the Red Owls’ rightful property, we decided to leave our loot here.
Now Droy and I watched the Wolves file out of the grotto, ant-like, loaded with Amai’s share.
“I still think that a quarter of the loot is too much for them,” Droy grumbled.
“That’s all right.”
“These so-called warriors didn’t deserve one-tenth of it. We did all the work.”
“They lost thirteen dead, you know.”
“That’s another thing,” he complained. “Why did you have to give anything to the families of the dead? What’s it called now... a cop... conp...”
“Compensation,” I offered.
“Exactly. That’s what I meant, dammit. It’s the clan’s leader’s duty to make provision for them.”
I locked his gaze with mine. “You’re right, my friend. A clan leader is obliged to take care of his warriors and their families.”
Frowning, he gave me a long look. Gradually his face cleared as he began to realize what I’d meant. “Do you mean to say that the Wolves-”
“Why not? I can’t see what’s stopping it.”
My confidence in our future merger had been born the moment I’d received the little green medal certifying my reputation with the Northern Wolves.
Let them help themselves to as much loot as they can carry. Sooner or later they were going to join our ranks, anyway. And as for the loot, most of the items we’d found in the Armory were “blue”, anyway. All the materials, all the leather, wood, metals and stones were marked as Rare and came with Craftsmanship restrictions. Neither the Red Owls nor the Wolves could use any of it yet. By the time the Wolves would be able to craft something out of the steel they were now so excitedly carrying toward the grotto exit, we’d have already become a united clan.
In fact, I could have offered Amai to have left their share in the grotto. In our safekeeping, so to say. That would have saved them a lot of time. Still, on second thoughts I’d decided against it. They might have thought we were trying to rob them of their share. Until the last moment, they’d believed we weren’t going to give them anything.
Interestingly, once I’d failed to live up to those expectations by sharing the loot with them, my relationship with Pike had grown to Trust. Not bad.
Strangely enough, everybody had ignored all the precious chests and boxes sitting on the table. It was as if NPCs simply couldn’t see them. Apparently, this was what the system considered my personal share.
And they were actually quite interesting. A few of the boxes contained all kinds of Reputation stones. Three of the chests were absolutely packed with all sorts of potions and elixirs. Plus five more chests which contained three thousand gold each.
I must have been dreaming.
Let me be completely honest with you. As I watched the Calteans fuss around collecting the loot, all sorts of funny thoughts entered my head. Like, that I could appropriate everything without having to share it with anyone. I’d even made a quick estimation of what it might fetch me at auction. The answer was, a lot.
Still, my other self — the one which was normally kind, honest and level-headed — had ultimately gained the upper hand. According to its reasoning, it was nowhere near enough to pay off my loan. So I wouldn’t be gaining that much, really.
But I’d be losing quite a lot. I’d lose the Calteans’ trust — and without them, I’d never be able to keep the Ennan city.
But that wasn’t all. Everything I’d just mentioned, all the materials, Reputation stones and even gold, paled into insignificance compared to what we’d discovered in the far corner of the Armory.
We’d found several dismantled Ennan war machines.
And their blueprints.
