Chương 195: AF Chapter 194 – A History of Briggs

The Mick leisurely stood up on his Disk, drew Bunita in both hands, and as we swept by, he casually took the blue-skinned, horn-helmed, yellow-armored Dark Magus' head off with an easy swing, his Claymore sweeping through two burning arms without the slightest resistance as he did so. Even funnier, Kopf, sitting two Disks behind him, snapped out his big hand and grabbed the head in midair, smooth as any outfielder ever.

He brought it down and snuffed the vivic fires against his leg plates while prying off the skull's helmet, before very impersonally tossing said skull into his Masspack. The onlooking Stoneholders revised their opinions of us accordingly, looking at the Burning and flailing undead dropping away into white dust and powder, along with most of their gear, with rather awestruck expressions.

Briggs was up in front running next to Kris, taking it all in with cool green eyes.

"Those are some nice numbers," he muttered to her.

"She's maybe a third as effective against Shades, and a sixth against most creatures, overall, and that's if they don't bother to buff against Elemental damage types. But, yes, against undead, those are some very nice numbers," Kris agreed with him, grinning.

"You know how we're templates of the original Sama and Briggs, somewhere?"

"Yeah, damn weird to realize that just after you've been born. Makes for an interesting childhood and all."

"Tell me about it! Especially when I had an older sister, too!" Kris agreed, skipping off a boulder, drawing all the Disks behind her after her in a flying stream of motion that cleared almost two hundred feet down a long slope before her Waveskating Step hit the ground again. Briggs just stayed anchored to the ground with his Crushfoot, and she ended up right next to him as he continued loping on.

"Well, she's a Shard of the soul of the guy that Sauron wanted to sue for name infringement."

"Sauron? The Lord of the Rings Sauron? Sue for… the Ringlord?" He frowned for a moment.

"Aelryinth?" he recalled after a moment.

"I only recall meeting him a couple times in the game…"

"Same! Specifically, he took a ride with me to Coralost that was fairly exciting as such things went." She hooked a black nail over her shoulder.

"Apparently he got himself Death Cursed by a Death Giant Titan Demilich, was sent hurtling through the planes, and cut off parts of his soul to take parts of the Curse with it, getting it down to manageable levels.

"Ryin is one of the Shards of his soul."

"Well, shit." He considered that thoughtfully.

"Okay, wait. She's part of the original Aelryinth? The actual player?" he had to ask.

"Yes, from actual Terra, Earth. Well, it's called Terra-Luna now. Some catastrophic shit happened to it, and it's not in the ole home dimension anymore. It's in orbit around a big Jupiter-sized red world they call Jotun, basically a moon to it… and that's with having moons of its own, and planetary rings, according to her.

"Also, she knows the original Sama and Briggs, who aren't Hags and Hagspawn like we are, and don't have a clue what is going on out here with the Hag Curse."

"Well, damn." He flexed his massive hands.

"So, he's just a basic Ancient? No massive array of Racial freebies?"

"Correct. Apparently the first Rantha heads up the biggest Forsaken Legion on the planet, and the first Briggs is considered the Warlord of Humanity." He beamed.

"Damn right!" he said, proud of his forebear.

"And thanks for all the gaming knowledge and advancement schema and all that stuff, too!" he added thoughtfully.

"Do your Regression yet?" she asked him in a low voice.

"No. Was waiting for my Hag, figured we'd do it together. Quick way to make sure we were meant for one another, right?" he answered gruffly.

"Yeah, I was thinking the same."

"Still, pretty shocking that Aelryinth, of all people, ran into us out here? Mithar is a plotter and all, sure, but him?" Kris snickered just enough to make him wary.

"Yeah, well, we were idiots. We were all in macro club, but who hit macro club first?"

"Well, uh… he did…" he trailed off.

"Fuck, I made Rank D as a goddamn Forsaken on account of being Sustained. He never even got to the Ten Leaderboards-!"

"They didn't give us in-game time rankings or I'm pretty sure he would have beat everybody, because he did," Kris nodded sagely. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"He beat everybody? Even Argos?!" Briggs asked warily.

"They don't report Rankings until you hit Ten, and he never reported to an Admin with his Ten rank before he quit the game, according to Ryin there." Her voice dropped even lower.

"Rank M, Fuzzy."

"Rank… M?" he repeated faintly, and had to grit his jaw not to turn around and look at the young Gharu'n woman being towed along by Kris and now given very respectful looks by the Stoneholders he was hauling around.

"Oh, she's not. She got sliced off his soul, and has had to rebuild her Levels from basically nil since she landed here. But that's half a year, she had nine Levels at Nine to work with, and has been earning Karma every day.

"So, yeah. Someone used to being Deep. Knows all the magic. Restricted by the magic of the island, but yeah, very dangerous."

"Huh. So, all the original players of the Power of Ten got, what? Turned into their game characters?"

"If they lived long enough, yeah. Didn't stop them from having to kill off ninety-five percent of the planet what died and came back as undead." He shot her another glance, and she just looked grim.

"Well, fuck. The undead here got just no goddamn chance, do they?" he murmured wryly.

"We're just here as a distraction..."

"She expects the leaders to Buff up before she gets to them and so not be so easy to kill. She could still do it, but it's easier to Heal us up while we butcher them and she can stop them from getting away."

"Oswald didn't say much about her having an ego, so that's good to hear. Bondmage too, huh?" he asked thoughtfully.

"She knows three Words of Creation, fuzzball. No, she's not an arrogant, elitist jerk. Gold as they come. She'd be Heavenbound if she dared call for a Pact here, and that hair of hers is a sign of Sylune's Favor.

"She's not interested in being a Warlord or a Monarch. That said, she gets very irked with people doing poor jobs of leadership. She's got the memories of a Rank M Monarch who might be the most powerful Monarch and leader of old Terra, and while she might not want to be like him, she's not going to put up with fools."

"I don't think either of us qualify as fools," he growled knowingly, having much the some appreciation for slackers and those who wanted to profit off of others.

"Bondmage for a reason!" Kris chuckled as they crossed a small stream. Her Waveskating Step skimmed across the surface like it was a fluid ice rink, while his Crushfoot hammered down a twenty-foot circle underneath each of his steps, bouncing him back up like water bouncing a boat back to the surface as he kept moving.

"Yeah, that was good thinking, although I don't remember your template being much for Allegiance stuff. Pretty much always an Independent, weren't you?" he asked her.

"Yeah, but then my dad is a Briggs, and mom is a Rantha, who have absolutely no tolerance for fools. Medieval societies with warrior cultures are replete with them. Mom can play stateswoman just fine when it's in her interests to do so, but she mostly leaves that to dad. I'm an Imperial Princess, and I can and do play the part pretty damn well."

"Hah! That Emperor Briggs I heard of was a brother! Good to know my instincts were on point! Sorry, I'm going to be marrying up, Princess. My dad was a farmer and bit of a goat rancher, my mom's primary job besides running the house was weaving. Cut a lot of bananas down in my time, too." She burst out laughing under her breath.

"Like I give a shit. Mom was born to an Aluvian hill clan, Dad to some lowland farmers. We're Imperials because we put to the sword anyone who thought they had the right to give us orders, and the rest elected us to the throne because we were just so awesomely good at doing the job right… and didn't have any family obligations and agendas carried along with us."

"Ah, yes. Bad blood dredged up again and again over the generations, until it's just hate with no foundation that it's already been there. Had some of that at home, too." Kris glanced at him, her eyes softening.

"After all the shit that Dad didn't allow in Celdon, the Viamontians couldn't leave well enough alone and some nobles decided that picking on our family was the way to get their revenge. Things got rapidly worse from there. Sources tend to generate conflict regardless of what they want…" she trailed off, having an idea what was coming.

"Cattle ranchers, rival clans for generations. Came while I was away making a delivery, swept through the entire community, killed almost all of the men, raped and enslaved any of the women they didn't kill themselves.

"Lost three brothers and two sisters, and most of my extended family. I saved two of my sisters when I finally caught up with the bastards a week later, and my aunt. Sold off like four hundred cattle from the clans who didn't need them anymore to set us up, and headed for the capital city. Found them some good husbands with some distant cousins there to help them out, and made my name as a local champion for the king for settling disputes.

"Eventually the king grew afraid of me and the support I was gathering without even really trying to, and given that he wasn't that bad a man, I agreed to leave rather than be forced to usurp him regardless of what either of us wanted. I'd heard news of an Empire over the sea newly conquered by a great warrior named Briggs, wondered if there was another of me, and decided to go see.

"I never made it there. A storm with one whole lot of dimensional energy in it came up and capsized the vessel I was on. I basically floated for three days before seeing this island come up in the distance, swam ashore, and found myself on Dereth. Boy, did these people have a lot of problems they could use some help with, after I wandered around for a good month, having to butcher just about everything I ran into. Bit of a fun time, really."

"Finding Stonehold was all that easy?" Kris was surprised.

"Oh, not at all. I actually never found it, Elder Oswald tracked me down by the trail of carnage I was leaving, wondering who in the heck could be so stupid and so successful at the same time. I'd been having such a good time here with how nice the fighting was and how little I had to think I didn't have any long-term plans. He told me how to get to Stonehold, I just had to climb a mountain to get there… that one right there, actually."

He pointed off to the left, and she glanced off at one of the unnaturally steep mounts that jutted up out of the stone and formed a nigh-impassable shield wall from the south. That is, unless you could drive your fingers into the stone and make your own holds without too much effort…