13: Souls, Anvils, and a Plan
There was no summoning circle in the gorge. In fact, there was nothing at all, save for a few grotesquely twisted farm animals that hadn’t made the demonic cut, as it were. So, that meant Demonic Acolytes were in the neighborhood. Always bad news, that was.
Making the decision to get some more Stamina training in, I trudged back into town manually as the sun was coming down and made a beeline right for home. I was pretty exhausted, and my plans involved nothing but drinking and eating. Maybe I should buy some strength buffing food some time, or learn to make it.
When I pushed the door open, Elena was causing heavenly smells to come from the kitchen, and I followed the scent right in there. She had an apron on and everything, oh god.
“You really know how to make a guy feel special,” I blurted, grinning at her.
She jumped when I spoke and turned to face me, scowling past a smile of welcome. “I certainly do not.”
“U-uh… what?” I asked, pausing in the doorway.
She just raised an eyebrow, hand landing on her hip like my mother when she’d sniffed out a lie. I really didn’t like the fact that I’d just compared her to my tiny, fiery, irish mother, so I coughed and took another step into the room.
“I only know how to make girls feel special,” Elena finally answered, stepping forward to cup my chin with a gentle, if firm grip. “Make sure you remember that, yeah?”
Laughing, I gave her a cocky eyebrow of my own and asked, “Oh, sorry. Am I causing problems for that sexuality of yours?”
She returned my laugh, squeezed my chin once, then let me go. “More like you’re causing problems for your own gender.”
“Technically, it doesn’t matter,” I replied in a fun but slightly more serious tone. “It’s not like I have a dick or a vag back in reality anyway.”
“Gender isn’t genitals,” she replied offhandedly, stirring a big chunky soup she was working on. Then she paused and glanced at me. “Hold on, what does that mean?”
“My condition,” I shrugged, pulling up the only chair in the room. “I got caught in a church terror attack. Lost my legs, genitals, and most of my right arm. So yeah, it’s not really a thing I need to worry about, for now.”
“For now?” she prompted, glancing to make eye contact for a moment as she threw some spices into the pot.
“I’ll be digitising eventually, but going straight into a synth body,” I explained, shrugging to let her know it wasn’t a big deal.
She seemed to consider my words for a long while before she asked her next question. “Why not just digitise now? Live in the net for a bit? I hear the process doesn’t even disrupt your continuity of consciousness or whatever they call it. You’re still you, or whatever. Not a copy.”
“My mom, mostly,” I said sheepishly. “After my dad… you know, died… well, I just don’t think she’d be okay with my meat sack being thrown into a recycler or something, you know? I want to have a replacement body ready so I can hug her again.”
Elena’s eyes softened as I spoke, and she smiled down at the food she was preparing. “That’s actually really sweet.”
“I do what I can,” I shrugged, happy that she thought so. I was a little scared of my body just up and dying, taking the digitisation opportunity along with it, but the sentient AI that was in charge of my pod assured me that wouldn’t happen. “I love my mom, and if this makes her feel a little less like she’s losing her son too, I’ll do it.”
My roommate made a noncommittal noise and ran her eyes over my body just once, as if to make a point. A point I heard loud and clear.
“Okay, okay, so right now we can say I’m her… uh, child,” I giggled nervously, dropping my eyes to the floor. I scuffed my foot on the ground for a moment, wondering what she would think if she saw me like this. We sometimes did phone calls together, but I usually left the game and went back to my private virtual space for that.
Elena teased me for the rest of the dinner prep, but she showed mercy once it was finished and ready to eat. We sat down at the table in the main room with the spiced vegetable stew and bread, and that was when I decided to check how my forum post was going.
My eyebrows flew up out the roof of the house when I saw that the discussion had reached almost sixty pages, and I dove in with a nervous flutter in my stomach. Nerves that quickly morphed into excitement when I saw what was being discussed.
“I’m not alone!” I exclaimed, gaping at the image of a cute girl with a pixie cut and some little tiny antlers jutting from her forehead. There was more too, and not all of them were girls like me. Every single male fae was… sort of creepy looking. They had almost snow white skin, and if it weren’t for the pointed ears, I’d have said they were vampires.
Then, about thirty pages deep, a non-creepy dude showed up to shyly post a picture of his little femboy character, and that sparked a huge round of speculation. All the vampire looking dudes were something called unseelie, or whatever. Like, they were all different like us regular fae, but instead of ascendant, they were unseelie. Or, were there normal fae different to both of the player subraces?
There was also speculation as to why we weren’t called seelie, if there was an unseelie group. Was there still a seelie group, were they the normal fae, and we were the third? None of us knew, but one thing was true across all of us. We’d all found unique evolving weapons that had granted us a new base class and race. Doug had been right, something was up in the game, and now everyone was starting to dig into what was happening.
“Want to watch a movie or something?” Elena asked as we finished eating. We’d been talking about my forum post and my race over dinner, and now I was sort of exhausted.
“Will you be mad at me if I fall asleep?” I asked, fighting a yawn.
She chuckled and shook her head. “Nah, roomie, it’s fine. Plus, we have some grinding to do tomorrow.”
I cackled quietly and wiggled my eyebrows. “Fun grinding or fun grinding?”
“Either works for me,” she winked.
****
Elena and I went on another demonic corruption quest the next day, which got me the points I needed to hit level six, and then level seven the day after.
Two levels meant two ability points, so I put one into Pinprick Strike to remove the damage debuff and see how the ability was meant to be activated. The second, I kept in reserve for now—None of my abilities felt like they needed a boost, and some abilities could cost more than one point to purchase. Best to be ready if something cool came along. The attribute points—all four of them from the two levels—went into Strength, bringing my total up to seven Strength, which was enough to start smithing.
So, that’s what I did. Mornings were spent down at the smithing hub, learning from NPCs using the money I got from questing with Elena and sometimes Doug during the afternoon. It was fun, honestly, and I was starting to really enjoy this new life I’d fallen into. Even Doug was chill when we let him into our place to hang out after a quest one day.
Getting to Apprentice rank Smithing meant I needed to become ‘Proficient’ in five basic recipes, or ‘Patterns’. So, over a week, I learned how to make simple tongs, a simple hammer, a simple anvil, a shiv, and most importantly, a cylindrical rod. If anyone asked me why that last one had a whole Pattern to itself, I wouldn't have been able to tell them. All I knew was that it counted for my rank-up, so I learned it.
It took a week to get all that done, and by then I'd realised I had a new problem. Spirit forging wasn't done at a typical forge, but rather at special sites within strange magical groves.
It required a special anvil, called a Spectreheart Field Anvil. It was crafted using a drop from a boss. A level sixty world boss that required at least twenty five at-level people to take down.
The night I figured that out, after having achieved Apprentice Smithing, I sat with my head in my hands on the sofa, detailing my problems to Elena. Her arm was around me in a casual, platonic, but very protective embrace. Which, side note, what the fuck was my life now?
“What do I do?” I asked, pouting up at her.
“I assume you can’t get a raid together?” she asked, patting my head with a wry smile.
“Everyone I know from my old character probably either doesn’t care enough to help or just outright hates me,” I whined, grabbing her hand from the top of my head and placing it very firmly in her lap.
“You can’t rustle up a group to do it from randoms?” she suggested, going back to patting my head. I scowled up at her, and she laughed, “I guess not. You’d probably scare them all away with that funny face you’re making.”
“Very amusing,” I grumbled, capturing her hand once again and putting it between my legs instead. I felt a little surge of triumph when her cheeks heated a little and she carefully extracted the hand and placed it down on her own leg. Elena might talk like a slut, and we might have gotten tipsy a few more times to chase the big O through the sheets, but she was actually surprisingly bashful while sober.
She blew out a long breath that caused her bangs to dance, then shrugged. “I guess you could always souls it.”
“Souls it?” I asked, confused. I guess it was spirit forging, but what was she—
“You know, the genre of games with the disgustingly hard enemies and really methodical combat? Learn all the boss’ moves, get better and better at dodging them and predicting its next attack,” she explained, opening a holo-window. I watched her navigate through youtube, then open a montage for some game I’d never heard of.
I watched, rapt, as the player was killed over and over again, even going so far as to include a death counter in the corner of the screen. On death number, like, eighty or so, he almost killed the boss, but died to a mechanic at the very end. The next time, though, he got it, and then so did I.
If I went at the boss with the right kit, I might actually be able to do it, even with my level being just seven currently. I might need a few more levels, but… I could practice, and I had options. Especially considering an upgrade I had seen to my Imbue Parry ability, which would feed into my Imbue Strike ability. I pulled up the UI again and had another look.
Fae feedback.Blocking an attack with Imbue Parry and immediately striking with a riposte or riposte ability will give you a 5% stacking damage buff to your Imbue Strike ability for thirty seconds. Gaining an additional stack of this buff will refresh the timer.
If I could maintain that buff, while dodging every single attack the boss made, I could kill it. I’d need buff food for my endurance levels and some more trickery spells, along with possibly the next level of my wings. Yeah, I could definitely pull this off, assuming it didn’t break my will first. It would be like that one Doctor Who episode where he punches through the diamond. This would be so very much fun. Not.