[SD:FS] More Se'llium - Chapter 12
Added 2025-04-21 23:23:35 +0000 UTCSe’llium scowled across the carriage at the head of his guard detail. Not that it would change anything. His father has spared no expense to
Se’llium scowled across the carriage at the head of his guard detail. Not that it would change anything. His father has spared no expense to hire a C rank mercenary. And part of that was they were of noble upbringing and so Se’llium had no leverage to force their way.
All he was allowed to do over the last while was gnash his teeth and now he watched as his carriage separated from the trade caravan. “I will get my revenge! You have not heard the last of me!”
Across from him, the C rank mercenary shakes their head. “It will be up to your father. Rare is it that the Creators’ direct servants get involved. He might have something to say and remedial lessons to go over. They don’t police our thoughts, but actions, even just the spoken word? They’ll go off that every time.”
Se’llium, not for the first time, ignores the mercenary’s words. To him, it wasn’t like one of the Creators themselves had come down, so there wasn’t anything to worry about. Besides, his face is more important! Such insults could be seen as directly impacting his family honor! That would not stand!
-----
The purposefully nameless mercenary, you don’t want prideful nobles like this young master to know who you are, watches as his most recent charge falls into a destructive mental spiral. This wasn’t the first time he had seen such a thing. It wouldn’t be the last.
The mercenary has made a name for himself in certain circles. That of a man who could make sure a prideful heir got from point A to point B. This time, however, would require danger pay.
Though the man also admitted, he wasn’t likely to get his due. It is always a risk on these kinds of jobs and why the upfront charge is so large. After all, while sometimes the young masters are simply spoiled kids, they might also be a chip off the old block.
Which was the feeling he got this time around. So yeah, some fool running his small parcel of land into the ground isn’t going to be willing to pay the extra fees or even the rest of the bill. At least the trip is almost over. His group can handle any problems of payment. The less he has to deal with these fools, the better.
-----
Silverwhiskers keeps an eye on those four new travellers. They were amusing enough and had some potential. Shame they didn’t want to stick around, but that is to be expected.
Though when they finally got a ship, he made a special note of which ship. It would probably be fun to meet up with them later.
-----
Around a campfire sits a bunch of people. Their clothes aren’t the cleanest, but their weapons are all well taken care of. Of note, every single one of those weapons was some form of blade.
One of them is laughing, “I can’t believe we managed to join this gang so easily!”
Another raises their blade, “It’s been exciting! Though that first caravan? Damn! That was tough. I was expecting them to not let us in after all.”
The first nods, “You aren’t joking. That was hard core. I thought the early stuff is supposed to be intro stuff.”
A third guy shrugs, “Nah man, we were fighting fellow newbs. System can’t balance things like that. Doesn’t have any reference for how strong any of us are.”
The first scoffs, “We were all newbs. Shouldn’t have been that tough. They had to be cheating or some nonsense.”
The second shakes their head, “I said it was tough. Not that they were cheating. We’re bandits, if there was cheating involved, it should have been on our side! If we let them cheat us? That would be on us for not cheating harder!”
A grizzled old man walks over to their fire, “Yapping about the past? Great fun that, but we’re about to move out. Pack it up!”
The three look at each other and the rest of the people at the campfire. No one says a word, but there is a reason they had been talking about the past and not what is to come. They felt trapped.
Like they aren’t, not really. At any moment, they can choose to reroll their character and start anew, but that would waste the time already invested in joining Blade Gang. Besides, they are at the lowest rank right now, so of course they were forced to do all the menial labor!
If they can just stick it out long enough? Well, then they’d be the ones ordering around the new batch of newbs! They’d be sitting back and relaxing between raids.
-----
As he walked away, the old bandit couldn’t help but laugh to himself. He’d seen it enough and knew exactly what they were thinking. The fools thought that when the next group of newbies came along, they’d get out of their current position.
Yeah, that isn’t going to happen, especially since they were travellers. Those are a gold piece a dozen. Sure, further away from starter towns you’d need to be careful if you wanted to keep them. But here? Nah, each new wave would have more idiots trapped in the dream of being a dashing rogue or just free from being under the law.
Nevermind that every group would have their own rules. It isn’t like breaking the law is so easy to get away with. Only the higher ups can enter towns freely and none of them are travellers. You just inherently can’t trust them, after all.
Oh, sure, they’d be able to work their way up. The man smirked. Work their way up to being better mooks. For now, though, it was a simple matter of keeping them hooked.
It’s like fishing. Though thinking of that made the old guy frown. He had been the son of a fisherman. Right until his dad didn’t return.
He’d told more than a few people about this and it always got sympathy and comments about the sea always being hungry or the dangers of being out in the water. What he failed to mention was that his dad hadn’t been out fishing. The idiot went out and ran off with some air head.
The guy hadn’t even bothered to try and get revenge or some such. Oh sure, once he had the pull, he went and found “dear old dad”. The idiot was half starved and his fling seemed to have left long ago. Why he travelled inland would forever be a mystery.
The guy didn’t kill him, mind you. His father seemed to be doing that well enough on his own. Though he did keep an eye on the man in case turned around his life. Couldn’t have that happening!
-----
A certain green rank uncanny valley monkey with four legs scampers through their domain. It didn’t think, at least not in a way that would qualify it as more than just a beast. However, that was more than enough to notice some things.
Those herds of moving dead trees, hairless apes and whatever nonsense tags along are becoming a problem. The last few times the monkey’s family had attacked them, they had always been repelled. It was almost enough to make the green rank consider not personally getting involved.
Except for one detail. Back as a white rank, it had been part of a successful raid. The monkey had looted some odd plants which smelled such that it couldn’t help but stuff them in its mouth as they ran. And it was those very herbs that allowed it to become a green ranked beast.
Now, it isn’t the sharpest, but it had a good sense of smell and a modicum of pattern recognition. So when those herds make their way through their section of the forest? Especially if they smell of herbs? Well, the uncanny monkey had been in the green rank for a while now and isn’t gaining any.
Even now, it was stalking a smaller group of those beings. These aren’t with those dead trees that move and so not normally a target. Except they smelled of powerful plants. The only problem being that they also smell strong.
In the end, the uncanny monkey turns around. They smell delicious, but there seems to be hidden strength. Instead, the green rank monkey makes for directly away from the six.
-----
The being currently going by Akesi Waso Pali Suli keeps one of their eyes on a certain noble brat, but for the most part ignores him. They’d seen enough people like them to know it is only a matter of time. So while AWPS, a shortening that amused them given their preferred role in fps games, wasn’t willing to put an entire mind on monitoring, she needed to pay some attention.
Right now, though? They are much more interested in Gem. Not for what they had done, but for the fact they are a Chaoskin, locked in from the start. A pure locked alignment of any type is rare enough.
One locked to Chaos? That takes something special to accomplish. Oh sure, on a population scale it happens all the time! But this instance? Well, it is one that she saw herself in the flesh!
Besides, what a fun name! Gem Paroxysm? While Gem isn’t the most chaos aligned of names, Paroxysm fits them to a T.
Then AWPS dug a bit deeper and after querying the person who had handled their onboarding had to laugh. Gem, as in short for Gemini! And even Gemini wasn’t for any particular reason!
That makes the name fit so much better. What a little goblin! AWPS wasn’t going to be allowed to keep a close eye on them, let alone keep a mind on them. Privacy rules and what not, but they’d certainly keep an eye out for how things go for them!
Though that leaves them without much to do–
{
Situation Detected
New player using immortality to hit on waitresses. Pattern recognized, but they stay inside the rules. Prepare to be teleported.
}
AWPS settles in and dashes through the full report. It wasn’t the biggest threat, but someone had to handle it and AWPS is the person for the job! Then they are floating invisibly, taking in the situation for a few moments before they’d turn visible.
3 2 1
Rainbows and sparkles go off. “Well, hello there! I’ve got to ask, are you too young to even understand what no means?”
The offending player scoffs, “They’re only an NPC. Not reacting like a person so I just have to keep asking until the program errors.”
Akesi Waso Pali Suli looks down on the man with an eyebrow raised. “That’s the plan? I don’t even need to make a decision! Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not collect 200!”
There is a red card in their hand which Se’llium would find familiar. Except, this time they it wasn’t a simple bonk. As the red card comes down on them, it doesn’t stop.
Instead, the offending player seems to go right through the card, except they don’t come out the other side. The fae dragon nods, “And that’s taken care of! Anyway, this has been Akesi Waso Pali Suli and I’m signing out!” And with that, they go invisible again, before being teleported out.
Mostly because while they can make an admin invisible such that no one besides the system can detect them. They can’t just teleport around willy-nilly. An odd design restriction, but there it is. Besides, the invisibility also prevents others from realizing they used a regular form of teleportation.
-----
At some point after splitting off from Merchant Silverwhiskers, but before anything happens, Gem checks their status to see how they’ve developed over the trip.
{
Name: Gem Paroxysm
Species: ChaosKin (Chaos)
Level: 7
Stats
Body: B
Mana: S+
Stamina: C+
Resistances
Air: S
Skills
Sense Mana lv4
Lesser Mana Control lv4
Wind Blade lv8
Assay lv3
Equipment
GP: 311
Backpack 1D
Armored jacket 1D
Armored cargo shorts 1D
Ring of the Frog [3/3] 1D+
Lazy Turtle Buckler [2/2 a day] 5D+
Scroll of Rest 5E
}
And of course they complained about only Wind Blade keeping up with them. Which June shot down right away by pointing out that Wind Blade was about the only thing they actively practiced instead of just letting work. Besides, they managed to go from C Stamina the last they checked to C+. Most people would be happy with that and no levels in anything.
