The mountain rumbled, a low, distant growl. It stretched on, growing louder and closer, tickling Grant’s feet and shaking sheets of sleet and ice from the trees, kicking up clouds of dust and snow. Pebbles skittered on the dirt like drops of water in a hot pan, bouncing higher as each tremor grew more violent.
Hair-width fractures grew, deepened and split with terrible crunching sounds, boulders the size of carriages tumbled from the cliffs. The mountain itself rippled and swayed, threatening to eject him from its crown. Before he could think, he was running, memories of Bay’kol’s maw rushing back. An involuntary cry left his lips, and he sprinted as fast as his legs would take him, not giving a thought to any direction but away.
He sprang over a boulder, pumping his legs, leaped over a fallen tree, ducked under a falling branch. The sound grew closer, stronger. Angrier. Just like on his first night, when he was the pot-bellied baker with the knife tied to a stick with twine, he ran senselessly, to any place but where he was.
With a thunderous roar and a deafening crack, Bay’kol emerged from the rocky top of the mountain a mile away. Her crimson scales shook off the dust and debris from the path she had carved, and she extended her spine as she stretched upward, casting a shadow that seemed to reach the edge of the world. Her narrow green eyes were each the size of a cart, and they bore down on Grant when she reached her full height, fury radiating from her glare.
“Grant Leeman.”
“Oh fuck.”
She shot down in a flash and barreled toward him.
Grant activated Perfect Invisibility and turned, forcing his legs to churn faster, his feet barely touching the terrain before pushing off again. He checked his time on the Skill.
[Time remaining: 1 minute 37 seconds.]
“What is she doing up here?” he screamed, glancing over his shoulder. She had looked him straight in the eye and said his name, as if she knew he would be in that exact spot. How was she tracking him? Was it his smell? Could it be her Mark? His eyes found the lantern swinging wildly with each stride.
The lantern. It had to be.
Bay’kol screeched as her prey vanished, nearly knocking him off his feet. He shakily waved his arms for balance, ignoring his legs’ protests, and kept moving, gasping for breath. His ribs cramped and his head throbbed, and even with Demonic Regalia, his teeth chattered. Grant knew that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his pace forever, and even if he could, she was a hundred times faster.
No thought went into his path or course. Driven purely by reflex, survival instinct, and the swelling roar, he forced himself forward, pushing off the dirt and snow with every bit of force he could generate. He looked over his shoulder again to see her crash through a massive slab of stone no more than five hundred yards away, shattering it into thousands of pebbles the size of fingernails.
Grant could outrun her as much as a raindrop could a lightning strike. Every missed step cost him precious distance he kept from the wyrm, every obstacle dodged or hurdled over lost him more. I have to hide, he thought, looking for something to shield him from her onslaught.
He turned right toward the face of the cliffs, where a wide fallen tree lay, and dove under it, waiting as Bay’kol glided by, her body buffeting him with wind and snow. After allowing her to gain more distance, he clenched his teeth and reluctantly deactivated Perfect Invisibility.
Bay’kol slid to a stop and curled around.
“Grant Leeman. Return the lantern.”
Grant looked down at his hand, where he still held it. I shouldn’t have taken this.
The wyrm could track him to the end of the world for all he knew. He couldn’t fight her, and he couldn’t outrun her. He clambered to his feet and walked out from behind the tree, approaching the edge of the cliffs.
Bay’kol slithered forward slowly, still faster than a warhorse’s gallop. Trees that hadn’t been toppled by her first dash cracked and broke under her body. Her eyes locked on him, glaring with contempt.
“Stop right there!” he yelled, voice quavering pitifully as he held the lantern over the lip of the cliff. He shook its squeaking handle, threatening to throw it to the rocks over a mile below. “I’ll drop it!”
She hissed, but stopped her advance a field’s length away. Her tail tapped impatiently against the ground, more rocks tumbled down the southern side of the mountain.
“I am the firstborn daughter of the Noxious Wyrm, you fool,” she rumbled. Her breath blew hot on his face, musky and rotten. “The lantern you hold is a greater artifact than you could even fathom. You have assaulted my home, slaughtered my most loyal followers, pillaged my treasures. You act beyond your station.”
Bay’kol paused, perfectly still, and then let out a sigh. “Yet I will give you an opportunity. If you return the lantern to me untarnished, I will allow you to leave with your life. I will even give you one full day to flee as far as possible before you are hunted down like the wounded doe you are.”
Grant sucked in a long breath and blew it out. The lantern shook in his grip. “And how do I know you’ll keep your promise?”
A sound rose from her belly like a throaty groan. Is that laughter?
“You do not,” she said haughtily. “I am Bay’kol. I am the ender of the Thorne Dynasty, which ruled these lands for thousands of years. I defeated the three armies of Northern Celand. I have fought Demonic legions and monstrosities beyond your pale imagination. I was born from a prime egg of the Noxious Wyrm herself. You are nothing to me.” Her voice sank to a whisper, or as close to one as a giant wyrm’s could. “But the Artifact you hold is not.”
She inched closer to Grant, and he held the lantern out further, making her pause. She was only eighty yards away now. Three seconds for her, at most.
“You can choose between certain death and likely death. That is far more mercy than I have shown any other foe. You cannot run, and you cannot hide. You bear my Curse, which makes you mine.”
Wind lashed, rustling the leaves and swaying the sedge around his boots. The two stared at each other. Grant had spent a week among her cultists, assimilating himself into their rituals, religion, and culture. During his every waking moment, he had been bombarded by their reverence for their Queen. He had experienced being her enemy in dreams twice now, and each ended in an agonizing death. He knew more about her than he ever wished to, and with this knowledge came a horrifying realization.
As certain as it was that the sunlight shone on them that morning, she was lying.
Her cult was in ruins. She had suffered an assault on her followers, her fortress, her offspring, her influence, and worst of all, her pride. Many of the prisoners still rampaged through her halls. Her arrogance would never allow someone to slight her so and simply walk away, even for a single day.
He held the lantern to his face. Its haunting orange light swirled within its glass.
It dangled loosely from its handle as her sharp, greedy eyes watched.
Goddess help me. Grant readied himself.
“I have a third option, you know.”
“And what might that be?” she asked, flicking her tongue restlessly.
Grant adjusted his stance, pushing his right foot into the soft dirt. “You are Bay’kol, the mighty ruler of this region, born from the egg of the Noxious Wyrm.” She rose up slightly, preparing to burst forward. “You have defeated however many armies, slain however many soldiers, and drowned however many sailors.” Her coils rippled as she tightened her body.
He checked his time on Perfect Invisibility. Eleven seconds left. “You have fought Demonic legions and monstrosities beyond what I could even begin to imagine.”
The wyrm blew a long gust of wind from her snout, pushing Grant’s feet inches closer to the edge. “I have. Get on with it.”
“But I wonder just one thing,” Grant said, tapping his chin. Her head inched forward.
“How can you catch without hands?”
Grant turned Invisible, and with all the might he could muster, flung the lantern over the lip of the cliffs. The moment it left his fingertips, it became visible to her, hanging in the air for a moment before plummeting to the rocky depths below.
Grant’s body was already surging in the opposite direction.
Bay’kol screeched and tore toward it. Grant dove under a pile of snow behind a boulder, pushing himself as deep down as he could, clasping his hands over the back of his head and pushing his face into the dirt. He screamed over the noise of the boulder being obliterated by one of her horns, and the side of her torso missed crushing him into a smear by inches. Her tail disappeared over the cliffs seconds later.
He scrambled back to his feet and darted south, where he reached the edge and jumped, screaming as he aimed for a lower ledge. The time on Perfect Invisibility ran out just as he leaped.
Behind him, an enormous explosion roared, as if a forest fire had been doused with thousands of barrels of oil. He had an entire mountain between himself and the sound, but the shockwave propelled him forward, knocking the wind out of his lungs and stunning him senseless. Bay’kol shrieked in frustration and agony as the sound of a rockslide followed, and thousands of voices screamed with her, drowning out the ringing in his ears.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
[World Notification!]
[Campaigner Grant Leeman of Evenon has destroyed the Phylactery of the Tomb Fiend!]
[The Tomb Fiend is now vulnerable.]
[…]
[You have received 200,000 Points.]
“What the—”
***
Roland
Roland stood guard as a princeling shopped for cufflinks in a shop in the capital. For a senior mercenary, he always felt protection duty was the worst assignment to get. He had been selected to stand guard outside command tents countless times as his outfit captains discussed terms with their employers. It was either too hot or cold, depending on the season, your feet ached, and worst of all, the boredom never got better.
But he was wrong. The worst job was protection duty for a princeling shopping for cufflinks. The boy oohed and aahed at all the ways he could waste the gold in his pockets on different gold on his sleeves, and Roland stifled a yawn.
[World Notification!]
What’s this?
[Campaigner Grant Leeman of Evenon has destroyed the Phylactery of the Tomb Fiend!]
[The Tomb Fiend is now vulnerable.]
“Grant Leeman?” the princeling demanded, his voice incredulous and thick with self-importance. “Who is this bumpkin, and how did he destroy an artifact of the Tomb Fiend’s? I have not heard of a Grant Leeman, and I know everyone of importance in Athemore!
“And what is so funny?” he screeched, stomping a foot into the ground at Roland, who had broken all decorum with his howling laughter.
“That boy could find trouble in an empty room,” was all Roland could say.
***
Ayers
“Why does everyone assume she’s my lover?” Ayers yelled at the closed door, collecting his pants from the ground and thrusting a leg in. People in the street stopped and stared at the half-dressed man shouting in a foreign language and splashing mud everywhere.
“She’s! My! Sister!”
The door opened a crack, and a slight hand threw his locket out at his feet. It slammed shut again.
He received a World Notification—the first he had seen.
He stared in shocked disbelief. “Grant did what?”
***
Abigail
“Eat an additional meal every day for the next week,” Abigail said for the second time that morning. By the time she’d pulled her blanket up to her neck last night, she had said it twelve times, and based on the line down the road this morning, she would be saying it many more today. News of a Healer’s arrival had spread beyond this town and well into others. “Healing draws not only from the power of the Goddess and the Healer’s Mana pool, but from your energy reserves as well.”
The man sitting next to her translated the message. Few in the town had taken the Languages Skill. She believed he would convey her words as they were intended, but she could never be sure.
With teary eyes and an ear-to-ear smile, the woman said something that Abigail recognized as “Thank you” in the local language.
Abigail just stared at her. Her translator once encouraged her to smile at patients more, but after her first attempt resulted in the patient recoiling away, he stopped suggesting she do so. She didn’t really see the point either way. Tomorrow, she would be leaving this town for the capital, where she would be assigned new Healing duties in the name of the Goddess.
[World Notification!]
She read the message to get it to go away, then blinked.
“Who’s Grant Leeman?”
***
Lira
Lira wore the face of an old man with deep creases down his cheeks, dark rings around his eyes, and a heavy frown. “Now, now, now,” she said, tapping her cane, voice shaky and breathy. “I would have you know that Duke Cennay and I have had a long and prosperous relationship.” Her shoulders hunched forward, and she craned her neck slightly, flicking her eyes up to meet those of the guardsman who towered over her.
“I understand sir,” he said, “but I haven’t been notified of any visitors today…”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she continued, her cane clacking against the stone ground. “I’m an old man, you see, and it’s not as if I have all the time in the world for you to go and correct whoever forgot to add me to whatever ledger, so if you’re going to leave me waiting in the hot sun, get on with it.”
The man paused and looked at his comrade, who shrugged.
“Go, go, go,” she continued with a harrumph.
Almost there, Lira thought.
[World Notification!]
Lira read the Notification, heart pounding. She read it again, and her lips curled up into a smile.
“Sir?” the guardsman asked, ducking down to see the old man’s face. “Can you hear me? Are you in need of a Healer?”
“He’s alive,” she whispered.
The guards gave each other a nervous look.
Lira turned around and started striding away, back high and steps sure.
“Sir! Are you well?” the guard shouted behind her.
The Quest could wait.
Grant was alive.
***
Raella
Raella Genus sat at the table and listened to her brother rant for what must have been the twentieth time about the woman. The commoner girl who had tricked and stolen from him. She chewed on the tip of her tongue and endured it, as she always did. Her brother was who he was, for better or worse, and it was largely her fault, anyway. She never should have told him that the guardsman he sent to scout the north of the town was likely the woman in disguise, and that his missing Item that had shown up on the Auction Hall must have been taken by her.
Thievery was a dishonorable act, but to be fooled by a contemptible commoner was inexcusable. A stain on the Genus name.
“And another thing!” he roared. Servants scurried past their table faster than the others.
She took deep nose breaths, tuning his irritating voice out. Her eyes shifted to the side to see a royal guardsman staring at her again. The man quickly averted his gaze, but she would have her brother have words with him about that later. It was the second time she had caught him in the act.
After their arrival, they quickly secured transport to Ospen, the capital city. The fools on this continent did not yet have portals, which she could hardly believe, but the giant carriage they provided was almost suitable for a Prince and a Princess.
‘Almost suitable’ was not ‘suitable,’ though, but little could be expected of them. The journey was also spoiled by her brother narrating every development in the bidding war to buy his own Item back.
[World Notification!]
“Oh?” she whispered. Belal had been so absorbed in his tantrum that he had not even noticed. She read the Notification and clenched her cutlery.
Grant Leeman. The boy from Dori, Hori, or whatever backwater latrine town whose name ended in “ri.” The boy who had confessed to using the Identify trick to raise his base Wisdom to 18, just as high as Raella’s. The boy who’d blathered and blubbered like a drunk to that vile man, Captain Rickel or Wickel or whatever commoner name ended in “el,” explained the whole thing to that Priestess, to that Inquisitor, exposed a Genus family secret like it was common knowledge available in any library, forcing the Inquisitor to wipe three memories of the incident, then his own. The boy who had entered the Portal with 487 Points and a bounty on his head.
He had destroyed the Phylactery of the Tomb Fiend, one of the Four Commanders of this world.
“Brother,” she whispered. His voice drowned hers out.
“Brother!” she snapped, this time urgency thick on her voice. His mouth shut and his eyes bulged out further than they normally did, making him appear even more frog-like.
“What?” he grumbled. His jowls shook with his head. “What is it, Sister?”
“Look at your World Notification.”
His eyes grew distant as he read it, mumbling and pointing at the air in front of his face. Belal was a terribly slow reader.
“What of it? I do not know the name.”
“I see,” she said, stopping herself before she spilled the whole truth. “Carry on.”
Unperturbed, he picked up where he left off. Raella mouthed the name. “Grant Leeman.”
What had he done to accomplish in a week what would normally take years? Anything that directly involved World Bosses had hundreds of Quests leading up to it like a trail of breadcrumbs. Had the Tomb Fiend been enough of a fool to leave his Phylactery where some contemptible commoner could stumble upon it?
She set aside her questions regarding how he’d accomplished it. There was a far more important one at hand.
Raella licked her lips. How many Points did he get for it?
***
Meira
Meira counted 746. 746 Gods witnessed the destruction of the Tomb Fiend’s Phylactery.
She sighed in relief, raising her hands to her chest. That would mean 448 would have to raise formal objection—to call foul on Grant’s discovery of the Phylactery, to claim there had been cosmic interference.
To demand a rollback.
Such means were usually reserved for situations involving direct intervention, such as the God-incited Orcish Rebellion in the Fourth Campaign. Her eyes panned over the landscape at the Gods, who reacted with bewilderment and awe. The God of Quests was turning a deep shade of red, his clay-like hair growing into towering spikes, while the Goddess of Thievery tried poorly to stifle her laughter. One vote for yea and nay each.
Fortunately for Meira, most of the Arbiters were surprisingly rational, and the Heralds had little reach in such matters. Yes, Grant Leeman literally stumbling into the room hidden by Illusion Magic of the Rare rank would raise many eyebrows, but find few signatures. A simple shimmer and a moment of Human curiosity from the boy was all they had for evidence, after all. She’d made sure of such.
Meira turned, smiling, and froze. A God was floating, not looking at Grant Leeman, but staring directly at her from hundreds of miles away. She tilted her head to the side and stared back. There was nothing of note in front or behind her.
Yet his gaze lingered.
“Impossible,” she whispered, tugging absently at her fingers. No mortal or God could see her when she didn’t reveal herself. Eventually, he gave a nearly imperceptible nod before looking back toward the planet.
Meira shivered, an unfamiliar sensation snaking its way through her stomach. She would have to be more cautious from now on.
You can only change a man’s fate so many times, after all.
***
Dan
Dan sat in the white room, row after row of options sitting in front of his eyes. The Store had a tremendous number of Blacksmithing Items, Skills, Spells, and Classes. Some of their names he did not recognize. Since his trip to the capital and journey through the Portal had been kept secret from his father, he could not consult with him on how to progress his Rare Class any further.
Beyond all the other options, there were also Auctions further muddying the waters. Dan groaned as he opened the menu for the third time.
Most of the Items were blatantly overpriced garbage. None of the Skills suited him either, and there were no Classes or Spells up for sale yet. However, just before he closed the Auction Hall to return to the Store, a new Item popped up. 200,000 Points? He snorted. For an Orb? Let’s see what we have here.
It was called the Orb of Advancement. He read the description and discarded all other options, Purchasing it instantly before someone else noticed it. His remaining Points dropped to a measly 2,461, but he didn’t care.
Dan whooped with excitement, and his hands shook as he held the Orb. “Thank you mysterious stranger!”
He stood up and paced around, pumping his hands.
If the difference between an Uncommon Class and a Rare Class was like the difference between a drop of water and a full cup, the difference between a Rare Class and an Epic Class was like a cup of water to a lake. Epic Classes were where specializations began for Crafting Classes, and even his father, after his years on the other side of the Portal, never progressed his past Rare.
He could have probably re-auctioned the Orb off for more Points. Maybe 250,000, but nobody would be able to afford what it was truly worth so early in the Campaign. Dan crushed it in his hand, advancing his Rare Blacksmithing to Epic Blacksmithing, and gawked at the dozens of specializations available.
[Rune Forger]
[Ethereal Weaponsmith]
[Artisan of Dragonsteel]
[Artificer]
[Legacy of Yakha]
He gasped at Legacy of Yakha. His grandfather had told him stories of Yakha. She was a Blacksmith of legend from the First Campaign, whose armor and weapons enhanced the physical abilities of whoever wielded them. It was rumored that she could craft an axe capable of splitting a dragon in half with a handful of iron scraps, and Dan believed that the myth wasn’t that far from the truth.
He pored over each one. Decisiveness had never been a weak point of Dan’s, but the options that sat before him all shared one major issue: they were all incomprehensibly powerful. An Artificer could assemble mechanical weapons that even a Dwarf would blow himself up trying to operate. As the name suggested, the Ethereal Weaponsmith could conjure weapons from nothing and manipulate them from a distance. It was a combat-oriented Blacksmithing class where the crafter’s Mana and imagination were the only limitations.
And then there was Legacy of Yakha. The stories his grandfather told him before bed every day almost made him select it on the spot.
[World Notification!]
His attention was broken by a sudden Notification. “What’s a World Notification?” he asked the empty room, directing his focus to the words.
His mouth opened as he read the Notification again and again. Hairs stood on his arms and a chill washed over him. He sat down, resting his head on his palms, trying to stop the spin of the room, realizing there was no mistake.
“Grant? You absolute f—”
