Chương 12: Bde Maka Ska

I get one level of Bow in the twenty minutes that we spend waiting for Ashley to heal up. It's not much, but it's enough that I know the arrow will go basically where I want it to. Still not confident enough to shoot into melee and know that I'm not going to hit a friend, but enough that I think I can at least shoot at a monster before engaging it in close range combat. I retrieve the arrows from the target, and wonder if I should bring the Styrofoam target with us. I could strap it to my back.

It's not very heavy, but it would be good to be able to practice more without worrying about breaking any arrows. The arrows have strong shafts, but fiberglass will still break if the arrow hits something too solid, and the metal shafts will bend if I hit something hard enough.

"You look like that thing from the Labyrinth," Gigi says with a laugh as I strap the target on my back.

"Remember? The one who had like a whole house on her back?" I laugh at the image, remembering the movie from my childhood.

"Yeah, I remember that," I say.

"It's awkward, but it's not heavy. And it'll make it easier for us all to learn the bow when we get to the park, assuming anyone else wants to."

"I definitely want to," Gigi says.

"It would be good to have a ranged option when it comes to combat. I'd need some time to switch over to sword and board, but I still want the potential choice."

"It's a good idea to be proficient with a lot of weapons," I say.

"Need it for the knight class, too," she says.

"Really?" That's interesting. I wonder how many classes cross over with their skills. Makes sense that a martial class would need to throw in bow as part of the skills. Gigi nods.

"So I guess we'll appreciate you looking like a turtle with a giant target on your back when we get a chance to practice with the bows." We get to the park about half an hour later, where there are more lynxith waiting for us. The way I figure it, that means this is not the park we want. Whatever park we're supposed to go to is probably going to have some kind of safety zone, something that tells us we're in the right place.

But the fact that there are lynxith there, prowling around the shore of the lake, makes me think that this isn't the right place. I wonder if we'll have to walk all the way to Minnehaha falls or if one of the closer parks is going to work.

"I don't think this is where we want to go," I say, looking at the pack of lynxiths that are prowling around the beach. There are eight of them, too far away to attack yet but close enough that we can see them and count them. Assuming they aren't higher level than the others we've seen, they shouldn't be all that difficult to fight, even if they do outnumber us. El throws her javelin at the lynxiths, and I draw an arrow and send it flying into the group of them.

She misses, but my attack makes contact, dealing 31 damage. Just past the halfway mark with one of the hunting arrows. The other seven of them take defensive postures and get ready to charge at us, leaving just enough time for me to fire again. This one does 33 damage to another of the lynxiths, and I the one that I first hit stagger a bit before it can charge forward. The crowd charges at us, and I step back and fire a third time, once again hitting for more than half the creature's life total.

As they start running, the first one that I hit falls down dead, and it looks like the second one is not far behind. I was right about the hunting arrows; they cause bleed. And the lynxith can't survive the bleed effect when the initial attack takes half their hit points or more. I fire off a flame ball, which does practically nothing, and then switch over to the throwing knives. Vinny is shooting with his ice spikes, and it seems like the spikes are bigger than they used to be. He must have leveled up the spell.

You have defeated lynxith x8. You gain (480/5) 96 experience. Just in case, we explore the park, looking for something large and obvious that isn't supposed to be there. There's the set of chairs that seem to be built for varying levels of giant, but those are always there. There's the boathouse, but that's supposed to be there, and there's the lake. There are probably other monsters in the water, but I feel like this is also an opportunity. There are two main things that I still want to know about this new world.

One of them is whether or not there is falling damage. I'm assuming at this point that there is; most things seem to be mapped pretty directly onto the real world I'm used to as far as physics is concerned. The other is how the water works. In some games, water is lethal if there's enough of it that you could conceivably drown. In some games, there are monsters in the water that toss you back to shore if you go too deep. And in some games, you can go into the water. Sometimes you can swim, sometimes you can't.

Sometimes you can breathe underwater, sometimes you have to hold your breath. But we won't know how the water works until we try it, until we play in it. No one else wants to go into the water, though. It's not exactly cold out, but it's not warm either. I'm comfortable walking around in all this leather, and that means that being wet is probably going to lead to being very cold and uncomfortable.

"I feel like we should walk around the lake," Gigi says.

"Maybe there will be more monsters to fight, but also there might be something special out there, something we didn't expect."

"I thought we were in agreement that this is the wrong park?" Ashley says.

"Maybe it's not the park we're supposed to be in at the end of the tutorial, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything here. What if there's a treasure chest or something?" That's a good point. And how big can the park be? It would probably only take about an hour to walk around the lake, but we do run into a few more groups of lynxiths along the way.

We come first across a group of three, who don't survive long enough to do any real damage and who mostly stand out because they leave me just two points shy of level four. The next group we come across, the group that guarantees a level after the battle, is twelve lynxith deep. That's two each, with two more still waiting in the wings to surround us. I don't know if this is a fight we can even survive.

I know I can kill them with my bow if I hit them with the hunting arrows, and I know that I can kill one with my sword in a single hit, but I don't know if it's a good idea for us to fight that many of them all at once. Maybe it would be better to try to sneak around them. Maybe it would be better to just turn back and avoid the fight. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. But the others feel more confident than I do, and they charge forward.

Vinny casts his ice spike spell, and I'm forced to shoot with my bow, the bleed making sure that three of the cats won't survive long enough to be a problem. Then I draw my sword and head in to combat, ready to work with Gigi and Ashley to make sure that I can flank enemies, killing them with a single strike when I do. I get hit three times in rapid succession as I take down one of the lynxith. The hits do 5 damage a piece.

The first two slashes get absorbed by my Shell spell, which will hopefully level up again soon, but two points get through to my actual hit points from the final slash, leaving long marks of burning pain down my arm. I watch as El chops down on a lynxith and kills it, just as another lynxith bites down on her leg. She lets out a snarl of pain and turns her axe towards this one, chopping at the back of its neck and killing it in a single strike. The truth is, a lynxith isn't that dangerous to any of us anymore.

Even at our low level, we can take them on pretty easily, because of our equipment and the skills we developed in the first tutorial period. We all get hit at least once in this battle, but when it ends, no one seems to be down more than half a dozen hit points. Not that it matters, because we refresh our hit points when we level up. With the three stat points I get this time, I decide to put them all into Vigor, wanting more hit points going forward, and trying to overcome the deficit just a little bit more.

I also see that my bow has increased to level 3, and overall my sheet doesn't look that bad, considering. Caleb Strong, level 4 human rogue. XP 142/500. HP: 56 MP: 40 Stamina: 60 Defense: 39 Magic Resist: 6% Strength: 11 Agility: 20 Vigor: 14 Manipulation: 5 Presence: 10 Willpower: 15 Charisma: 6 Awareness: 6. Skills: Animal Harvesting 5, Alertness 3, Bow 2, Dodge 5, Pick Lock 3, Meditation 3, Scrounge 4, Sneak 8, Spellcraft 3, Sword 6, Throwing 5, Tracking 3. Secondary skills: Armorer 3, Scrapping 2, Smithing 4.

Talents: Darkvision. Everyone else is leveling up too, which answers my earlier question about the girls and their quest progress. We're all level four now, and seem to be working with the same XP totals. But that isn't going to last very long; the lynxith were guarding something.

"Someone else want to give it a go to pick the lock?" I ask.

"Because picking locks gets XP."

"Can you teach me to do it?" Gigi asks, stepping forward.

"I have no idea what I'm doing."

"I can try," I say.

"But I warn you, most of what I know about lock picking comes from video games and television, with a bit of TikTok thrown in for good measure." She goes over to the lock, and I hand her a set of lock picks. She very quickly breaks half the picks in the kit, despite me telling her to be careful and to feel for the pins in the lock. I tell her that it's very delicate, and she says she understands, but after she breaks the rest of the picks, she sits back in frustration.

"You do it," she says.

"I already got a level of pick lock, though. So it wasn't a total waste. But I don't want to keep going. This thing is hard. I'll do it next time we get to an easy lock." I can understand that. This chest looks like a real treasure chest, though it's made of copper rather than wood. The lock is big, and requires more pressure to move the tumblers. But too much pressure will cause the pick to break, as we saw when Gigi tried it. And as we see with the first pick I try to use.

I have to arrange the tumblers in the lock just right, with enough pressure to break a pick if I don't move it just right. More of them break. I'm glad I found so many sets of lock picks at that surplus store, because I'm going to need them. My pick locks goes up to four when I get the first tumbler into place, and goes up to five by the time I get the chest to actually open. You have opened a copper chest! You gain 750 experience! You find 5 gold pieces, 50 silver.

Lockpick (crafting recipe), battle axe (crafting recipe), throwing knife (crafting recipe). Mace of harmony, knight's shield, spellbook: firebolt, spellbook: healing, chain mail gloves. This time I put one point each into strength, agility, and vigor. That puts my agility, and my defense, back to what it was at pre-death levels, makes my hit points 75, and makes it so that my sword still does decent damage with my strength. Now we need to decide how we split everything up.

The money is easy, nicely divisible by five. I don't need the lockpick crafting recipe, so Gigi takes that. I do claim the throwing knife crafting recipe. The knight's shield goes to Ashley, her kite shield going to Gigi, leaving a solid wooden shield for us to practice with so I can learn levels of shield and qualify for the squire class. The healing spell goes to Vinny, and El takes the chain mail gloves.

Then I call dibs on the battle axe crafting recipe, promising to make one for El when I get the chance, and the firebolt spell goes to Vinny, our resident mage. This I think puts him up to four spells, which makes him almost qualified for spellslinger. The mace of harmony goes to Ashley, which actually seems to be better than her sword, letting her swap out weapons. This means that Gigi gets first dibs on the next treasure chest, and means I have more crafting recipes, but no actual treasure.

It hardly seems fair, in the short term. But I know that in the long term, it's going to work out. I'll be able to make more throwing knives, which in turn will be more secondary skills and more fighting prowess. It'll all balance out in the end, I'm sure. I got the XP, after all. We finish our way around Bde maka ska and make a beeline for the next park, heading down Lake back towards Lyndale, heading left towards the sculpture garden. I really hope that park turns out to be the right one, and I think it may.

It's a big park, centrally located, and easily recognizable. It's easy to find and really easy to identify, all of which might mean that it's the place we were meant to go before the end of the last tutorial period. It's going to take us a few hours to get there, and we stop to forage for food at a supermarket on Lyndale along the way. It's there that we come across another giant. Not the kind of giants we fought last night, but rather the kind of giant that we fought in the pizza parlor.

I hit him with three arrows, doing a total of 92 damage before we even get close enough to identify him. He starts moving towards us as soon as I hit him with the first arrow. By the time he's too close for me to shoot anymore, El has thrown her javelin, which hits him in the shoulder for what looks like a pretty intense hit. Minor giant. Uncommon Advanced monster, level 8. HP: 218/400. I throw a knife, El throws an axe, while Gigi and Ashley step forward with their shields while Vinny shoots it with the ice spike.

It sweeps its huge hands back and forth, pushing the two girls around but not seeming to do any actual damage to them. I throw another knife, dealing another 25 damage, then move to circle the giant, throwing another dagger and another until I get behind him and can sneak up on him with my sword. He sees me coming, but the banging on the shields doesn't let him really stop me from stabbing him with Bleeding Strike, dealing 69 damage and bringing him under a hundred.

He dies before the bleed can finish off, after Ashley smashes his knee out from under him and then swings her mace across his face, ending the giant right there. The food is starting to go bad, but we find enough beef jerky and dry cereal to not have to worry about that. Searching through the building also gives me another level of scrounge, which I think has been a long time coming, because we didn't find anything all that spectacular.

I think if we weren't planning on going to the park, we probably would've stayed at the supermarket for a while. It's big, it's relatively easy to defend, and there's food in here. But we want to get to the sculpture garden, to see if it's the right place for us. Once we know it's the right park, we'll be able to find a place to stay nearby. So we continue on, walking down Lyndale, over a hill and down to a huge crossroad where multiple highways connect.

And in the middle of this huge crossroad, there's a swarm of giant mantises. And by swarm, I mean there are about two dozen of them.