Chương 74: Chapter 75: The other side of guilds

We head out of Elmspire, in the vague direction of the ocean, and start looking for something to do, something to fight. I still need to find another monster generator, and I'm hoping to get a rematch against bargheasts so I can finish that quest as well.

"You run like a wolf," Ash says to me as we're moving along the road that we decide to follow. Traveling on the road will let us go a lot farther a lot faster, and the only real dangers are likely to be bandits or something like that. Most beasts avoid the roads because there are too many people on them.

"Do I?" I ask.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," she says.

"There's just something about your stride, about the way you move, that makes me think of wolves."

"I do a lot of thinking about that now," I say.

"I've noticed that I look at you guys as pack rather than just an adventuring party."

"The wolf blood really gets into you, huh?"

"Do you have anything like that?" I ask.

"Has anything changed about your personality now that you have demon blood?"

"You mean like, am I craving babies or anything like that?" she laughs.

"Nothing like that. I do prefer meat to anything else, though."

"Me too," I say.

"Meat is better. I don't really need vegetables much anymore."

"I like fish," El says.

"But I've always liked fish. I don't think that's a bear blood thing."

"Your teeth are sharper," Ash says.

"Not as sharp as mine, but sharp enough that it makes sense you prefer meat."

"Anything else, though? Any demonic style personality traits?" She shrugs.

"I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, things are going to change for all of us, now that we're in a different world. Right? So I don't know how much of my personality is different because of my blood and how much of it is different just because the world is so different, you know?" In the distance, I spot a group of people ahead of us. They're moving together, but not as fast as we are. We're going to overtake them soon. And I can tell from the distance that they are players.

They're well armed and armored, but they aren't moving like a military unit, and from what I can see, they don't have matching armor. They're all in their late twenties as far as level is concerned, and there are ten of them. We'd definitely be outnumbered, and probably outgunned as far as spells and abilities are concerned. Not to say that we don't have a lot of that sort of thing, just that there are more of them.

They hear us coming and stop, turning towards us and spreading out, making is clear that they want and expect us to stop and talk to them.

"This area is territory of the Sylvan Lords," their leader, Miles, says.

"You guys can't hunt here."

"What?" I ask, though I heard them loud and clear.

"You guys are claiming this whole area?"

"It's all right," Ash says to me.

"We weren't planning on stopping to hunt any time soon."

"Well good," Miles says, his hand still on his sword. Looking at him, I see that he's a pathfinder. Strange that he doesn't have a bow out.

"Because we control this territory. You need to travel for a full day to get out of our territory."

"And what happens if we hunt in your territory anyway?" El asks.

"This is a grinding area," Miles says, as if he didn't hear her.

"It's all creatures below level twenty. You have no business here."

"What if we die and need to relevel?" I ask.

"Then you'll do it somewhere else," Miles says. He seems to be growing more confident as his friends hype him up with their agreement.

"This area is spoken for."

"You can't just claim an area of the forest," El says.

"This is wild land. Anyone can be here."

"If you try to hunt in our territory," Miles says, "then we'll kill you and make you have to relevel." I look around at the group. I'm pretty sure that Mab's Rage will kill all of them. It would kill me or Ash, and might mildly inconvenience El, with her billions of hit points. It will probably kill all of them. I start looking around to see if there's anyone in the group that would be able to survive the spell.

"And what if we decide to kill you instead," El says.

"And level up off the backs of your corpses?" I don't know how valuable, experience wise, other players are. All the monsters that we fight are worth one experience point per hit points. Will players be the same? Because that really isn't worth fighting each other, no matter what level they are. Most of them have less than 1500 hit points. I don't want to risk my life for five hundred experience points per enemy. That doesn't sound smart. But El already said what she said. And weapons are drawn.

Spells are going to start being cast any second now, and then it'll be too late to decide to do something else.

"Hold on!" I say, holding out my hands and looking from Miles to El and back again.

"Let's be civilized about this."

"She threatened us," Miles complains.

"You threatened us first," El points out.

"Look," I say.

"We're not part of your guild. But we're not part of a rival guild either. We probably aren't who you're going to have problems with, unless you decide you want them. Why don't we just each go our separate ways and pretend like this never happened?"

"You can't hunt in this area," Miles says again. Ash rolls her eyes.

"We weren't planning to," she says.

"We're trying to get to where things are closer to level thirty. We want real experience." They can't tell what level we are. They can tell we're a higher level than they are, but that's all they know. They don't know how many hit points we have, and they don't know that we probably have more combined hit points than they do. All they can see is that there are three of us, we're higher level than they are, and we just said that we're heading to things that are closer to level thirty.

I really hope that's enough to dissuade them from attacking us.

"You insulted us," Miles says. This gets some encouragement from the other nine. I start marking their classes and their hit points total, trying to decide if any of them are more of a threat. I clock two sorcerers, three knights, two duelists, and two warlocks. I'm not sure what the difference is between the casting classes, but I know those four are probably the ones to take out first. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"What, just because we don't respect your little club?" El asks. She pulls out her axes, clearly ready for a fight.

"You want to throw down about it?" I frown at her. She's not making this any easier on me.

"Look," I say, my attention on Miles.

"You guys can be all insulted to your honor or whatever if you want to. Or you can dismiss us as scrubs who don't even have a guild of their own, and we can call it a day. Let bygones be bygones."

"Or what?" I sigh.

"Or we can kill all of you, and you can come back out to level in your area of the forest tomorrow, when we're already gone."

"You really think you can take the ten of us on, just the three of you?"

"I can take the ten of you on by myself," I say. Then I gesture at El.

"But I don't want to ruin her fun." They all draw weapons. I guess this is as much my fault as anyone's. I should've just let it go. Should've let the insult slide right off my back. But no, I had to go and tell the truth.

"Fine," Miles says.

"How about this: you guys can go, but it'll cost you ten gold. Each."

"Now you're trying to rob us?" I ask.

"Technically, I think they're trying to extort us," Ash says. She looks at Miles.

"So we can hunt in this area if we give you ten gold?" He nods.

"Each." She looks back at me.

"Yeah. That's extortion. They're trying to make us pay for something that no one really owns. And a pretty ridiculous amount." I've got the money. That's not the issue. The issue is that this guild has gone from trying to claim an area of the forest to threatening us to trying to make us pay for the privilege of just living in this world. I hate when someone tries to make me pay just for the privilege of living. I had enough of that with landlords in our old world.

"We're higher level than you are," I say.

"Be reasonable. We have more hit points than you do. If this goes to a fight, we're going to win. You don't want that."

"We outnumber you more than three to one," Miles says.

"Which is just going to make it more embarrassing when we kill you," I say. Then I sigh.

"But sure, let's say that you guys manage to beat us. Somehow, through a stroke of luck, you manage to take us all out over the next minute and a half. We're not going down quietly, and we won't be going down alone. Are you willing to risk having to relevel just to make a point? A point to three players who, again, are not members of a rival guild." I get a level of negotiation, but I don't think it's going to help.

"You insulted us!" he says.

"And now you're doing it again. You may be higher level, but you can't defeat us. Now the price is twenty gold, or we kill you and loot it off your corpses." I could point out that death doesn't work that way. That we may not leave anything behind to loot. But I'm not sure if that's true. I've never been there when someone else died. I've just died myself. But it doesn't matter. We're not going to be able to talk our way out of this, I don't think.

"I think I want your money," El says.

"Fifty gold each." Even less likely for us to talk our way out of this. I look at Ash. She nods. I cast Mab's Rage and draw my sword. Right now, Mab's Rage does 50 points of damage per second to everyone within range. Right now, all ten of them are within range. As soon as the spell starts, the four casters back up, and keep backing up until they're out of the spell range. It still takes them four or five seconds, so I'm not mad about that. I do wish I'd drawn my bow, though. I could've shot them.

Miles charges forward, as do the three knights and the two duelists. El leaps forward to intercept the duelists, her axes clanging against their shields and forcing them back a step. I wonder if they feel a rush of panic when they see how strong she is. Two of the knights try to flank Ash, but she moves to keep them both in sight, slamming her mace against one of their shields and knocking the guy back so hard he stumbles onto his butt. I laugh at that, but I can't let myself be distracted.

Miles may be a pathfinder, but he's level 29, and so is the third knight who comes to try to kill me. I decide to focus on Miles for attack, just avoiding the attacks of the knight. He's slower than me anyway, even before my buffs and his debuff from Mab's Rage. I see that Miles isn't taking 50 points of damage per second. He's only taking 32. Maybe that's his magic resistance at work. I don't know. I step out of the way as he stabs at me with a familiar looking sword, and I slash at him with my sword.

It does 137 damage to him. I think that's the least amount of damage I've done with a sword in a long time. I let his next cut through, just to see how much damage it does. 36. So I'm doing more damage and I have a higher defense than he does. That makes sense. My agility is 120 right now. I stagger forward when the knight behind me gets a slash at my back, dealing 42 damage to my Shell. I snarl and go back to attacking Miles.

We dance around, and then I get hit for 26 damage from a flying bolt that seems to flow around our movement to make sure it hits me. That must be Magic Dart. Good to see that the spellcasters aren't using AoE spells, though I imagine that's coming next. I mean, these guys have to be in a party, right? Do spells still hit the people in your party, or is there friendly fire? I try to think back to all the times that Vincent cast spells that covered large areas, to see if his spells hit us still.

He always used them on enemies that we weren't directly engaged with. Maybe that's because he didn't want to hit us. Maybe that's something that makes Mab's Rage even better, that it specifically doesn't hit those you're partied with. The Magic Darts keep coming, slamming into me every second or so. That's going to tank my hit points, even as low as the damage is. I keep fighting with Miles, dealing another 124 damage to him as I get hit with four more magic darts.

I grimace, but I don't think they're going to be able to take me down with this spell. Though I do wonder if they're hitting me exclusively or if they're also targeting El and Ash. I don't have to wonder long. After about forty five seconds, Mab's Rage and my attacks kill Miles. And I don't even have to turn on the knight to wipe him out; he dies around the same time. I look up to see that El and Ash are already engaging with the mages, and that two of the four of them are already dead.

Just out of spite, I shoot an Ice Spike at one of the mages. It's all I have time to do before El chops him down. Soon, we're looking at the ten corpses, and I'm wondering what's going to happen. Do they bodies disappear? Do they leave behind loot? How much experience are they worth? The bodies do disappear pretty rapidly, decaying away to dust over the course of about a minute. That's actually reassuring. That means that when I die, no one eats my body.

And if they do, they don't get any sustenance from it, which I kind of like in a twisted and petty way. Unfortunately, their equipment all decays with them, leaving absolutely nothing behind on most of them. Some of them do leave behind a single item of equipment, but it seems to be random.

"Did I leave behind anything when I died with the bargheasts?" I ask El. She shakes her head. So yeah, probably random. There's a shield left behind, a ring that gives a bonus to sneak, and a two handed sword. Sword of the Relic. Rare weapon 9/20. Two handed. Base damage: 180-192. Ring of the assassin. Uncommon. +4 to sneak. Knight's Shield. Uncommon shield 7/10. +14 defense. Ash takes the shield, though it isn't as good as the one she has. El takes the sword, though she just puts it into her spatial bag.

And I take the ring, because of the three of us, I'm the one most likely to be sneaky. You have defeated 10 members of the Sylvan Lords. You receive (30, 000/3) 10, 000 experience. I sigh.

"Definitely not worth it," I say.

"What do you mean?" El asks.

"We got experience for killing them."

"More than I thought we'd get," Ash agrees.

"Plus we got loot."

"Yeah," I say, "but I don't like killing people. Those ten are going to remember us. We've probably just made enemies with the Sylvan Lords, too. They might come after us. And in numbers."

"They didn't get through my Shell," El says.

"Nor mine," Ash agrees. I didn't know Ash had Shell. Makes sense that she'd get it, though I didn't see it for sale in the shop. I wonder how long she's had it. And I wonder just how rare Shell actually is. It's labeled as a common spell, but I know that's just because it only has five levels. It can't be upgraded. Does that make it a legendary spell? Is there something higher than legendary? I think there is. I think there's still at least mythic, and maybe one more after that.

"Yeah, but remember what that guy said about the Ebony Knights? There are two hundred of them. You have to assume that's at least the average size for a guild. We can take on ten. Can we take on a hundred?"

"With your spell, probably," El says. She laughs.

"What? It's true. I barely did anything. We've had longer fights against much lower level enemies."

"I just don't like that we've made enemies."

"Nothing to be done about it now," Ash says.

"If they come after us, then they come after us."

"Yeah. Don't worry about it." El says. Then she looks around.

"Now let's go hunt in their territory just because we fucking can."