Book 3, chapter 24

24. The Battles for North Shire Pt. 3

“So what’s it like, being you, anyway?” Jess asked.  “I’ve asked the other Natives, and they all give the same answer.  But the admin says you’re different, so I thought I’d ask.”

“What’s it like to be you?” I asked.  “To live on earth?  To not live under time dilation?  And I understand you have physical pain.  Something which I’m told I cannot experience, as the state of my health or any status conditions I’m inflicted with do not adequately translate the experience.  I’m told it’s terrible.”

She turned away and focused on the road.  “Yeah, see, exactly what I mean.  The other Natives would have never answered like that.”

There were eight of us.  Not the perfect number, but six of the team were regular allies that Jess was used to working with, while the other two were known to her in their PVP circle.  If they had noticed that I had granted them all [Mark of Karma], they remained silent on the matter.

“Did you all get the blessing?” I asked suddenly, feeling the coldness in my left hand.  “Tarisha said --”

“She said that anyone taking part in the battle should get a blessing.  Yeah.  I swung by a temple of Starweaver as soon as I read that post,” she explained.  “Everyone here has a blessing, right?”

A series of grunts answered her, and I keyed in on one detail.  “Starweaver?  You’re not an elf.”

“Starweaver doesn’t really care, does she?  The elves like her more than Thedum.  It’s not the other way around, is it?  Where Thedum doesn’t help them because he doesn’t like them?” Jess inquired.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” I admitted.  “So you prefer to play human, but you venerate Starweaver?”

“No, her temple was just the closest one I could find on short notice.  I only logged in about an hour before shit went down.  If I had to pick between any of the gods in this game, I’d probably pick Mossheart.  But the human race is the best balanced for my play style.  I really don’t want to have to check on a freaking tree every week, that’s idiotic,” Jess said.  “I like nature.  I like trees.  Best thing about trees is that they pretty much do their own thing and you don’t have to worry about them.  Ever.  Except when you go for a hike and admire them.”

I nodded.  And then we were attacked.

A series of spells and arrows struck at one of our healers, while the other was shifted into the shape of a snake by [Polymorph].  A mage on our own team quickly managed to dispel that effect and began [Counterspelling] the mage who had stepped forward from the ambush.

That mage was … geared interestingly.  Unlike the usual mages I’d seen, he was wearing heavy armor which prioritized his Vitality stat over his intelligence.  And he wasn’t casting damage spells.

He was a crowd control specialist, I realized.  Something which only a person dedicated to low level PVP would consider, he might just be a force multiplier if we allowed him to run rampant.

Fortunately, I had no shortage of crowd control myself.

The group was too spread out for my usual flashbang combo of [Dazzling Lights] and [Concussive Sound] to hit everyone, but I did [Swiftcast] [Befuddle] on the armored mage.  He seemed to be expecting it, because it was swiftly dispelled by someone else on their team.  He then proceeded to chant the cantrip for [Concussive Sound] at us, only for one of our mages to get a [Counterspell] off in time.  It only forced him to start the spell over.

“I’ll take care of him,” I promised, sprinting forward to the armored mage.

“Wait!  Don’t separate from the group,” Jess called, but I wasn’t listening.

With my new interface, I had known that we were losing.  The incoming damage was unsustainable to the healers, and our enemies had cover.  We couldn’t move while the armored mage was alive.  The simplest solution to the problem was to remove the armored mage.

He saw me coming, and with a smirk [Swiftcast] a [Slow] at me, but I caught it on my [Arcane Weapon].  It was at that point that my disguise failed, and the enemy realized whom my party was escorting.

“It’s Hail!” the armored mage shouted.  “Get him!  For Teh Lulz!”

“For Teh Lulz!” came the echoing shout from the other bandits.  A war cry, and I realized it was one that I had branded myself.  In a video I had made while full of grief over the death of my grandfather, I had made a vow.  This was the result.  I was at first uncertain how to see this turn of events, but then I chose.  These Travelers were giving me a target for my grief and rage, and I would oblige them.

I cast [Mark of Karmic Balance] on all of them, even as I swatted down the crowd control mage’s spells and ripped through the healing effects that his team tried to put on him with my [Arcane Weapon].  At the last moment, I switched to [Holy Weapon].  Because I knew something about that ability now which I hadn’t known before.

Holy Weapon (Max)

Apply Holy aura to weapon, modified by spell power. Low mana cost. Applies [Brand of Sin] when used in PVP

If this mage wanted to make himself my enemy, then I would oblige him twice over.

I did not do all of this in isolation.  The six members of the other team tried to kill me, and they tried to heal their friend through my damage.  Unfortunately for them [Arcane Weapon] makes most healing magic unsustainable if I focus on the target they’re healing, and my own allies were able to shield me through the worst of their attacks, while drawing most of the other party’s attention on themselves.  A few missiles did get by me to strike the armored mage as well, so it wasn’t entirely my kill.

But the armored mage was the linchpin in the enemies strategy, and once he was defeated our own mages were free to begin [Counterspelling] the enemy healers and traditional mages.  Our healers topped us off, and we nuked the party down within moments.  I did my part from ranged, casting [Empowered Chain Lightning] into the group until they split up enough that the spell wouldn’t jump, then spamming [Arcane Missiles] to harass them with mosquito bites for being spread out.  I didn’t approach, as I knew from watching other skilled pvp groups that I’d get eaten alive without two or three melee backing me up, but a two man team from our side [Charged] and [Leaped] into their group.

With the support of our healers and our ranged, it was short work from there.

“Okay, yeah.  So how does that work.  They can’t heal a target while you’re focused on it?” Jess inquired as we regrouped after surviving the ambush.  We’d had the numbers, but the enemy had had the element of surprise, so it was a little amazing that we hadn’t lost anyone from our team.

“I’m not certain I should explain my abilities to a pvp specialist unless they sign an NDA and enter into a formal alliance with me,” I informed her.

“Shit, now I’m almost curious enough to do it,” she muttered.  “You have some sort of on-strike dispel, that much is obvious.  And enough horsepower to eat through mage-tank build in fifteen seconds, effectively making you a hard counter to them as long as they don’t get you CC’d.  What was that white flash at the end?”

“A final eff you.  For Teh Lulz,” I explained.

“Oh.  You know about that?” she asked.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out.  Some sort of battle cry for those who oppose me?” I asked.

“Not originally,” she explained.  “Now it’s a guild name, and it’s kinda growing with you.  Not as fast.  But as much as some people want to be on your side, there are enough that don’t.  Yeah, you should probably know about them.  Your friend Tarisha probably knows about them already, so you should check with her.”

“I’ll be certain to bring it up the next time we speak,” I promised.

“Good.  Now listen.  Don’t go fucking off like that again on your own, or next time we won’t back you up,” Jess scolded.  “You may be scaled to compete with Gideon or whatever, but Gideon was only good at PVE.  He never PVPed, except to claim worldbosses from griefers.  If you want, after this is over, maybe I’ll put some work into teaching you how to not embarrass yourself.  Or at least we’ll see if you can learn.  I don’t really know enough about you to say what you can and can’t do in this game.”

“I’ve been doing fine so far,” I protested.  “We would have lost in that ambush without me.”

“No, we would have been driven back because they had cover.  Then we would have petered around for a while until both sides made a withdrawal,” Jess predicted.  “I admit that your purple sword ability changed the balance.  But the first rule about group pvp is that you don’t trust the noob to pvp to do his job.  What you shouldhave done was covered us from incoming projectiles with that ability while spamming those missiles you have against random targets to cover our retreat.”

I looked at her askance.  “But we won.”

“Yeah.  But it won’t work again, because now everyone knows we have a spellblade in our group,” she said.  “And there’s only one spellblade in this entire game who’s worth talking about.  Come on, let’s get moving.  We need to get to the Temple of Thedum and fortify it before the bandits and Teh Lulz figure out where we’re going.”

I decided I was too old to pout.  And then I pouted anyway, as we summoned our mounts and kicked them into a gallop.  I actually had to keep Shadow at a cantor, as he was faster than the mounts of my allies, but we traveled as fast as we could through the open land of North Shire towards Ebbyvale, passing by villages which were encircled with gray.  I knew that I would not be able to pass those boundaries, but Native Bandits would be able to enter them to surrender to my forces within, and Travelers of both factions could use them as exits from the region-wide battleground.

We were attacked three more times on our journey, but never in numbers enough to actually threaten our party.  It was simple harassment, although once it backfired as a group of four rogues thought to stun-lock our healer, only to realize too late that we had a second one.  Not only did the first healer survive, but we ripped through them before they could employ their escape abilities, earning our group another handful of kills.

Despite my own party’s success in killing the enemy, House Jeoran was losing Morale.  While it had started at ten thousand for both sides, it was down to six thousand for House Jeoran.  That didn’t mean we were losing, exactly, as we had also captured fifty percent of the fugitive bandits.  We would win when the bandit capture rate hit 90%, while the enemy would have to drive our Morale all the way to zero for us to lose.

We came into view of Ebbyvale, only to realize that since Jess had last been in contact with the strategy Travelers who were overseeing our side of this battle, the town had become the site of an epic, two hundred man war.