farawaymuse

87 - Examinar

Her discussion with Jade was, while not especially useful, at least interesting. The twitchy, wary street rat answered her questions with what Sable assumed to be honesty, though also some reluctance. But the only way she could escape Sable was by being compliant—so she was.

Meeting Sable’s expectations, the young thief had a class, hence her gall to try to rob Sable in the first place. Since classes made a person instantly worthy of some reputation even in a place like Was...

86 - Contact

“Should I go and grab a guard, miss?” an onlooker asked.

Sable glanced at him, but didn’t have to think long about her response. She didn’t know how guards treated thieves in this world, or how crime was dealt with in general, but she was worried it wasn’t kindly, regardless of if this girl seemed to be a teenager or not. If punishment meant her being thrown in prison or even something more ghastly like being hanged, then Sable had no intention of letting that happen. She knew...

85 - Thief

After the quest board, Darian escorted her over to the bronze rank looking-for-group board. There wasn’t much to describe, truthfully, with the purpose being rather self-apparent, but Sable looked curiously through a few postings. By far the most common requests were for healers of any sort—whether paladin or priest or even someone with only minor healing abilities—but mages were a close second.

“Like I said, you won’t have any problem finding a group as a mage,” Darian said...

84 - Guild Intro

Dropping off her items was a relief; she’d packed fairly heavily for the multiple day trip.

She’d heard a few offhand mentions of spatial storage devices, but those were artifacts reserved for the extremely wealthy and powerful. Which she was, in a sense, or at least would soon become, but Skatikk, who she had raided for such supplies, certainly wasn’t. They’d had no such artifacts in their armory for her to pillage.

She might look into procuring one, though she wondered w...

83 - Rooms

Wastehaven was built like a true defensive outpost. The smaller Sunstone and even a city like Skatikk looked like a puny pile of rocks in comparison. Tall square towers loomed at strategic points along the enormous circumference, and a moat sprawled out all around it, at least thirty feet wide. Draw bridges and gates funneled people in through a few defensible entrances.

“Are there monsters that can pose that much threat?” Sable asked. “Where this is necessary?”

“Yes, bu...

82 - Classes

Sable looked herself, then Roman, over. The necromancer had rather wild hair after the long, swift flight across so many miles of terrain, which she was irritably trying to wrangle into order. Sable sympathized with her plight.

“Okay. We’re all good?” Sable asked.

“As we’ll ever be.”

Like before, Sable had stayed high in the air for the trip and sky-dived back down in human form to maximize the covertness of her arrival. They’d found a second feather-fall ring ...

81 - Vivi II

Exhausted and injured, Vivi looked down at the collapsed form of the blonde woman. She was barely conscious, holding a wound on her stomach where she’d been gored through by the monstrous boar’s tusks. If Vivi had been even a second later in intervening and taking the Gorebeast’s attention, she certainly would not have survived.

That the woman had lasted as long as she had against the full-power monster was an astounding indicator of her strength. She had nearly killed it, and yet...

80 - Vivi

Vivianara only cared about three things: trophies, prestige, and the thrill of the hunt.

And, admittedly, one more thing. Not dying.

That had been the reason she’d fled. Doing so had rankled her, but she’d had no other choice. Maybe if the man in golden armor hadn’t been so many times stronger than her, she would have stayed her ground and fought—however small the odds of her victory. But the gap had been too large. There had been no odds of victory.

Vivi ha...

79 - Zaverton

The sun had set by the time Sable made it to Roman’s hut. Sable knocked, taking care to not rattle the entire building. She was growing quickly accustomed to handling her newfound strength, though she slipped up here and there. Fortunately not at Sunstone. She wondered whether higher level adventurers mismanaging their strength was a common problem, or just a problem she had, since she’d come into her power much faster—and in a stranger way—than most.

Roman answered, her usual f...

78 - Local Hero

Sable watched the two conscious adventurers climb up the rubble pile and out through the tunnel she’d created. Ethan carried her staff for her, and also stayed behind to keep an eye on Sable as she carried Merry, probably to see if she needed help. Sable, of course, handled the task without problem. She didn’t have a physically-oriented class and the grace and might that came with one, but she was more than capable of climbing up a slippery pile of debris with her hands full—especially ...

77 - Found

The miniature avalanche of rock-chunks and other earth debris splayed outward in a steep incline. A good portion of the cliff above the once-cave-entrance had sunk inward too. The structural damage seemed fairly comprehensive.

“I’m not sure there’s gonna be a cave left at all, after whatever they did,” Sable said. It might have been filled in entirely with debris.

Which, she realized a second later, had maybe been too callous of an analysis. Quintin looked troubled and did...

76 - Trivial

“It’s worse than I thought,” Quintin said gruffly. “Level ten. We might not have a choice but to wait for backup from the city.”

Sable tilted her head. That had been why Quintin had dragged her away? “No, that won’t be a problem. I can handle it.”

“You can?” Quintin didn’t quite sound dubious, but rather concerned. “I won’t pretend to know much about adventurers, miss, but don’t mages struggle with solo hunting? There’s no shame in admitting this is t...

75 - Rescue Quest

Relief bloomed on Miss Draper’s face, and she visibly swayed on her feet—Sable almost reached out to steady her. The exaggerated reaction doubled Sable’s guilt—the selfish exasperation she’d felt at this distracting event having landed in her lap. She knew these sorts of distressing events were happening all over the world, and Sable couldn’t concern herself with all of them, and that her plans for world conquest would be causing a much larger amount of strife, but none of that lo...

74 - Bookstore

Landon, who ran one of the few book stores in town, was a tall, thin man with large spectacles he needed to constantly readjust. Sable had more than a half-foot on him; brown eyes needed to look up to meet hers, as nearly everyone did. His clothing was finer than most of what she’d seen on the streets, both cleaner and better maintained—less wrinkles, newer, and better fitting. He was broad-shouldered despite his lankiness.

“Good morning,” Sable greeted him, having arrived to th...

73 - Guild Outpost

Sunstone’s guild outpost was a tiny thing. This far north, in a land so sparse with latent magic, getting classes in general was an uncommon feat, much less career adventurers. Still, any respectable civilization, even towns much smaller than Sunstone, had a place to host them when they passed through. To Sable’s knowledge, that was doubly necessary for the inevitable situations like surges of monster activity, or a particularly strong monster showing up. Even if a town didn’t have loca...

72 - Sunstone

Sable headed for the road, stepping through the unruly terrain of the wild plains with some annoyance. Her thick robes and traveling boots helped, but trekking through wilderness was still an unwieldy task.

She checked herself over as she went. She looked more or less like an adventurer, so while she might draw attention, she shouldn’t draw suspicion. Word of her would almost certainly never leave the town besides idle chatter. Roman had seemed sure of that. Still, her milky white ski...

71 - Human Lands

Sable dropped the defeated corpse of the [Frostfang Titan] off with Skatikk, which produced quite the clamor. Even by Sable’s estimation, the beast was gigantic, so to goblin civilians, the mass of fur was quite nearly a mountain.

Like with the hivemother, she gave instructions to have the beast’s body harvested. The pelt would look quite nice adorning her new home’s wall. Perhaps that was a waste from a practical perspective—it might make good armor—but at the same time, she ...

70 - Titan Fight

The rest of the delve was useful in the way Sable hoped it would be—she familiarized herself with her strengths and weaknesses as a humanoid.

Getting to watch Aylin and Granite cut their way through their opponents, occasionally struggling but mostly holding up fine, was also enjoyable. The experience excited her for her first real dungeon delve, where she would fight against opponents who actually posed threat to her. She wasn’t sure when that would happen, though.

S...

69 - Seed of Hunger

[Starvine Stalker - Lv. 6]

In the brief moment before the cat-like predator was on her, Sable paused and reconsidered whether she wanted to get into a brawl. Thorns as long as her finger protruded from each of the thick green vines approximating muscles, resulting in a porcupine look. Two flowers, one blue and one red, made makeshift eyes on the plant-beast, and there was a surprising amount of emotion in its alien features. She could tell exactly how badly it wanted her dead.

It ...

68 - Familiarizing

The entrance to the Enchanted Overgrove was an enormous gnarled tree stump. The tier one dungeon was located to the south-east of Bonecracker territory, and one of the more established dungeon locations in the Red Plains; it had been around for years, which was a long time for dungeons, where some of the complexes lasted only weeks before disappearing.

The surface of the giant tree stump opened into a circular staircase down. Sable briefly wondered how it had first appeared. Had the stu...

67 - Dungeoneering Two

Arriving at the tier zero [The Dark Cellar] dungeon, Sable sent out a tentative, [Aylin?]

The response took a moment. [Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?]

[Come back up. We’re going to a tier one dungeon. I’ll be joining you.]

[You … are? Uh, right. Sure. We’re on the way.]

[How’d it go?]

[Got another level. So did Granite. Didn’t spend long down here, so that’s pretty good.]

[Especially for him, with his experience debuff.]

[Fifty percent i...

66 - Thrall Tests

Despite being the clear practical decision, fleeing from what would have been an exciting fight irritated Sable more than she thought it would. Several times, she considered turning around. Her better senses pushed away the ridiculous idea.

There were other practical reasons to flee. As much as wanting to be on full health and higher mana for the encounter, Sable needed to test something that she’d been putting off. A beast like the [Frostfang Titan] would make a great thrall, but she...

65 - Scouting For a Home

The Endless Peaks approached rapidly as Sable flew for them, and as she closed mile after mile she found her awe growing in pace with the towering mountain range. They loomed over the forest at all times, but Sable had somehow forgotten just how gigantic they were. She ascended and ascended and her efforts barely made a dent. How many miles up were these things? Had they been formed naturally? She couldn’t imagine they had. Some sort of magic had to have gone into their creation.

It w...

64 - More Testing

The forest zoomed by in a blur. Like with might, grace was her weakest stat, but two hundred was still an appreciable amount. Leaves and branches crunched underfoot as she sprinted across the forest, jumping over logs and weaving between trees and foliage with supernatural grace. It was an exhilarating experience, reminding her of her first time flying.

Then her foot snagged on something, and she went tumbling across the forest floor in a pile of limbs.

Fortunately, her constituti...

63 - Strength Testing

There was more Sable could talk to Roman about, but that would always be true. While informing herself on the world was important, so was keeping momentum.

She left the dark-haired necromancer behind and flew for Lake Plateglass. Looking down at the sprawling landscape from so high in the air was something that still invoked some wonder in her. Especially with how fast it flew by. The yellow, reds, and oranges of the Red Plains shifted quickly to the more vibrant greens where the weaker...

62 - Subserviency Offer

Discussions continued in that vein for a while longer. Sable had a lot to learn about the world, and Roman was the only person who could answer her questions.

Over the following two hours, Sable cultivated a shaky picture of the world at large. The names of the thirteen human kingdoms were hard to memorize, but she learned the ones that mattered: the High Kingdoms, as well as the ones near her. As she’d suspected, the continent was an enormous place, and she shouldn’t have to worry ...

61 - Masquerade Plans

"There’s not much to say about them,” Roman replied. “They’re pretty much normal adventurers, but focus more on hunting down powerful surface beasts than dungeons.”

“Why?” Sable asked. “Aren’t dungeons better in every way? You get more experience, and there’s loot.” It was one of the reasons Sable had wanted her human form, beyond the obvious. Faster levels and even gear to equip, or hoard, sounded enticing. Though with her reduced stats, she wasn’t sure whether ...

60 - Greater Threats

“Recent events have made me realize I need to focus more on big picture planning than immediate goals,” Sable said.

For this discussion, she intended to go with full disclosure, explaining her aims and needs and hoping Roman could provide meaningful guidance. During magic lessons, Sable had kept an arm’s length away from Roman, both of them keeping their secrets. Sable couldn’t afford to keep doing that. The risk that came with divulging her true goals and thoughts to Roman was ...

59 - Second Introductions

Conquering the Red Plains was still important, but Sable had decided against doggedly pursuing that goal by throwing her weight around in a personal matter. Half the reason was because she thought it might lead to more situations like Verindale—the goblins’ stalwart last stand, she meant, not the eldritch abomination part—and half of it was because she’d become more concerned with other goals. She no longer thought accruing as much territory and wealth as soon as possible was her most...

58 - Adjusting Plans

Banr had known dragons were some of the fiercest creatures in all of lore, but seeing one rip apart a literal aspect of an Old God was a sobering experience nonetheless. Any lingering doubts over whether Chieftain Kirak had been cowardly for so quickly bending to Lady Sable’s demands was erased after witnessing the dragon’s fight against the insane cultist. The firepower casually thrown around in that fight had been enough to level this city, had it not been focused on each other. Hells, ...