Trojan: An Epic LitRPG Adventure (Afterlife Online Book 3) Page 5

  The gangster froze. Gladius narrowed his eyes and watched him hard.

  "Nooner said that?" Chadwick's voice was less sure than before. "Who'd believe a disreputable fellow like that?"

  "No one. But a lot more people are bound to believe the word of an honest banker."

  "Honest banker? That'll be the day." The gangster scowled. "Drummond thinks to sell me out, does he? I'll—"

  "Do nothing," I snapped, stepping into him and making him back away. "Drummond's a Black Hat now. I'd hate to hear of anything even remotely resembling torture against one of my own."

  The city watchmen's ears perked at the mention of the violent crime.

  "Good sirs, good sirs," he pleaded. "There's no need for an incident. The faction leader's right. We can work this out amongst ourselves. There's no transportation taxes today."

  I glowered.

  "Take three days," he hurried. "I admit to no crime or debt, of course. One can't believe everything one hears. Take my generosity as a sign of goodwill." Chadwick nodded for his men to leave and hurried to make sure he wasn't last.

  Gladius sheathed his flaming sword after they had gone. "What was that about?"

  I scratched my head. "Some kind of gangster feud. I didn't know they were claiming so much control of the city."

  "They haven't been a large problem. I've seen them running various businesses together, but no one's reported them for violations. I thought it was honest labor until now."

  "Well the Nooner/Chadwick partnership has seen better days. Maybe the squabbling is bringing their competitive sides out. Their criminal enterprise is catching daylight as they fight over the scraps."

  Gladius frowned. "Sounds like trouble. Your fancy bit of diplomacy only bought you three days until this happens again."

  Three days was a good number. It ensured Drummond's protection until he could transfer funds to the vault. "I'll figure something out before then. I just need to get a handle on what I'm dealing with."

  The watch commander nodded. "Same here. We'll keep an eye out." I thanked him. "While we're on the subject, I have been receiving complaints about the... err... activities of the pirates at the Wicked Crow."

  I blanched.

  "Best be goin' t' work!" announced Errol. His crew hurriedly moved to right and reload the toppled wagon.

  "I hate to say it," muttered Gladius, "but it's only a matter of time before we need to arrest one of them."

  I nodded sympathetically. "Thanks for being so understanding about the matter. Our guildhall's having a grand opening in four nights. A tavern on Black Hat turf should limit the trouble the guys get into around town."

  No surprise to anyone, it turns out that pirates really like to party. Between the brothel and the public house, I was gonna overload them with opportunity—out of sight of anybody who might get offended.

  "Thanks again," I said as the commander headed off. The city watch fanned out and resumed their patrols, some posting around the Foot.

  Lash and I walked with the pirates as they once again drove the oxen down the road. The men were all members of the Black Hat navy. It wasn't a real navy, of course, but we had a frigate outside the north river gate, a barge, and two skiffs docked at Dragonperch. Seemed a good start to me.

  Errol looked me over thoughtfully. "Ye know peace today don't mean peace on the morrow."

  I conceded a nod. "The gangsters are gonna be a problem."

  Errol guided the first ox over the tower drawbridge. Our next difficulty came into play as he realized there wasn't enough clearance along the narrow river line to skirt the wagons around the tower.

  "This be interestin'."

  I massaged my temples while Lash barely stifled a laugh. While the tower had wide entrances on the water and land, the long wagon and lumber wouldn't fit around the stone stairway. "You're gonna need to unload the lumber and take it on foot around the outside of the tower. We can start phasing out renting oxen and wagons. We have two skiffs. Load the supplies in them and sail under the bridges all the way here and avoid the drawbridge bottleneck entirely. Our lumberyard's on the water. You should unload directly there."

  "The skiffs ain't hold a third o' what these wagons haul. We'll be transportin' all day."

  "It can't be helped. The sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can stop dealing with Chadwick."

  "But me barge," he protested. "What will we do with it?"

  I shrugged. "Shoot fireworks off it for all I care. It was a bad investment. Maybe we can repurpose its lumber for another project."

  "Aye aye, buzzkill."

  1140 Sanctum

  I watched the pirates maneuver the wood materials around the tower shoreline. It wasn't strenuous work, but it was obvious they thought it menial. First Trafford wished he could focus on the army, now Errol likely felt the same about the navy.

  Part of being a good leader is giving people what they need. Now that the faction was level 2, shifting gears to something more exciting was probably called for. The new vault and faction bonuses would attract more capable talent to build from. There had to be more noncombatants like Drummond who didn't mind less adventurous jobs. The joys of construction were wasted on pirates.

  "You coming in, Lash?" I asked.

  Her heavy white helmet shook. "Nah, I've got something I need to do. I'll have my team keep an eye out for sketchy peeps. You'll be safe in Dragonperch and I'll be back before you leave."

  I nodded, stepped into the tower, and was immediately greeted by Bandit. She was an eight-foot-tall mountain bongo, and that didn't count the stout horns forming a V on her head. Her chestnut coat was broken by vertical stripes on her hindquarters, socks over each hoof, and the raccoon mask that had inspired her name. She shoved her muzzle into my hand like she was a good doggo looking for a treat.

  "You're bigger than those oxen, girl. Maybe I should hook you up to a wagon."

  The bongo reared her head and snorted.

  "Okay, okay, I get it. You don't like having a normal job either."

  I rubbed her chin in apology. Bandit was accustomed to heavy combat—we'd saved each other's skins a few times. I'd never want that to change.

  We started up the winding stone steps that formed the backbone of Dragonperch. Sixteen floors, not counting the basement and rooftop. Half of them were still locked despite the tower not being dormant anymore. Ahead of me, Bandit passed gas. I retreated down the steps and waved away the foul air.

  "Ugh. Kyle's been slipping you people food again."

  Bandit happily marched forward as if nothing had happened.

  "Oh yeah? Well, she who neglected it, ejected it."

  After climbing past the kitchen we made it to the den, which was the main living area. I was surprised to find both Kyle and Izzy here. While the pixie reading a paperback novel was more or less expected, it was odd to find Kyle in the middle of a crafting project instead of watching TV.

  "What took you so long?" he asked excitedly.

  "Trouble with gangsters, disgruntled employees. You know, the usual. I guess I did get a little hung up out there."

  "Tell me about it. I hurried back so I wouldn't miss the upgrade."

  "What upgrade?"

  He held a socketed gray pearl in his hand.

  "Uh, hello," interrupted Izzy. "Cute gal trying to finish a chapter here."

  I chuckled. "How is the latest yeti-lesbian romance?"

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Hold up. Before we get into the intricacies of paranormal romance and sparkly monsters, you each owe me 600 silver for the vault."

  She huffed in resignation and slammed the book closed. "Business before pleasure then." They both paid up in silver plates. "Might as well go see what this new socket does."

  We all turned to the steps and groaned.

  Don't get me wrong, mysterious towers with ancient secrets were badass and all, but the war room was on the sixteenth floor. That was a lot of steps to climb. As I started the ascent, I wondered if there was some w
ay to upgrade this place with an aftermarket elevator.

  "So I thought," started Kyle, "that all jewelry making was the same. You craft a fitting onto a socket and that's it." It was obvious Kyle had been waiting to tell me about his latest breakthrough. I only half listened because I wasn't as into crafting as he was. "It turns out, getting deeper into the skill tree allows me to create different fittings, even multiple ones. Add-ons really."

  Izzy yawned. "What are you going on about and why aren't we discussing this assassination attempt I've been told of?"

  Kyle and I both said, "We had it under control."

  The pixie's expression belied belief. "Dune said Lash is babysitting you."

  I sighed. "So he's the big mouth. Lash is just being cautious."

  "What are we doing to track this assassin down?"

  "Nothing yet. Poe wasn't from Stronghold, I know that much."

  She frowned at the implication. Despite game lore detailing nine great cities of Haven, only three existed in the beta. Stronghold was the core city and the center of the world. Oakengard was a mysterious walled fortress in the mountains. No player had ever seen the interior, but recent interactions with the crusaders and catechists had filled in some details. Shorehome was the last city, a pirate town full of criminals where humans coexisted with goblins. As the only other player town, if Poe wasn't from Stronghold... I would've taken the assassin for one of them except they were allied with the goblins and he'd used a slur against them.

  We made it to the top floor. The war room. A huge oak table dominated the space. A mirror the shape of a horizontally elongated hexagon flashed on to display a command screen with a profile schematic of the tower and a few menu options.

  Sanctum Master Panel

  Status

  Map

  Defense

  Sanctums were pretty damn cool. When we'd discovered the place it was basically just a pimped up home. A status symbol with quirks. Now we knew sanctums were much more. They were necessary for founding a headquarters. They could be upgraded. And while I suspected players would discover new sanctums in the wild, even if not as notorious and arcane as ours, so far it hadn't happened.

  There are four known sanctums in Haven, with Dragonperch being the only one owned by players. The wildkins reside in the Black Keep, a rotting pyramid beyond the southern cliffs. The crusaders are believed to run another somewhere in Oakengard. As those two groups are legitimate factions, both their sanctums constitute headquarters as well. The last known sanctum, in Shorehome, is the exception. Underkeep is run by the city's largest criminal gang, the Brothers in Black, with Papa Brugo at their head. That band of rogues wasn't a proper faction any more than the gangsters taking orders from Nooner and Chadwick were.

  "Okay," said Kyle, "let me break it down for you before we start. Dragonperch has sockets that we can slot related pearls into—only after they're fitted by a master jeweler, of course."

  Izzy's eyelids fluttered. "Of course."

  "Anyway, I've discovered a way to add an additional pearl to an already fitted socket."

  "What?" interjected the pixie. "That's not in any of the documentation."

  "There is no documentation," said Kyle. "Only stuffy texts for stuffy people." Izzy scoffed and Kyle continued, unaware of his jab. "In essence, not only can we unlock preset functionality, but we can modify it. Give it some of our own flavor!"

  My face lit up. "Does that mean we get to use our pearls that don't otherwise fit?"

  "That's exactly what it means. Not to say every combination will be super useful, but we can play around with things."

  Haven was impressing me more and more. Every time it felt like we had a handle on its mechanics, something changed to open new doors. I was in awe of the developers. When I'd first been awoken in my noob home, Saint Peter had told me the world was meant to be discovered organically, not read about.

  That said, any discovery we made had me wondering: was this new functionality a designed feature, or was it one of the many subtle game evolutions inspired by Haven's adaptive learning? Player-spawned genetic algorithms could totally account for Kyle's new mod system.

  I accessed the interface.

  Socket Manager

  Feather:

  Wind:

  Water: River

  Earth: Dirt

  Unused: Shale

  We currently had slots for feather, wind, water, and earth. As far as I knew, new sockets could appear with headquarters upgrades, but we hadn't been so lucky yet.

  Sockets were slotted with pearls, and pearls were pretty rare. They only dropped for players who already owned a sanctum, so it wasn't like we could trade with other players or NPCs. They weren't sold in shops. Pearls were only found in drops. Even then, common enemies didn't have them. That would be too easy. Not a single pearl had ever been found within a day's march of Stronghold, so it was safe to say the mobs needed to be somewhat dangerous and rare to drop one.

  In the month since we'd kicked the catechists from the city, we'd only increased our socket inventory by two. I found a river pearl and Izzy snagged a shale pearl. Hers only fit into the earth socket, which created a small stone wall on demand. It wasn't especially useful, and the dirt pearl in the same place unlocked access to the catacombs below the tower, so we chose to keep that one. That essentially made the shale pearl useless.

  A similar problem occurred with the bone pearl Kyle had looted from the wildkins some time ago. It didn't fit anywhere. In a show of peace, I'd ended up returning that one to the Wild King. It wasn't like it mattered anyway. The non-fitting pearls were useless.

  Until now.

  The feather and wind sockets remained empty, and there was nothing we could do with them for now. The river pearl was fitted into the water socket. It wasn't very powerful. With it we could modify the flow of water into the city from the southern gate as it rushed to the northern sea. The dirt pearl in the earth socket was handy, but that was about it. I was beginning to wonder if these were noob sockets and nothing more.

  "So you can fit the shale pearl over any socketed pearl?"

  "That's what I'm hoping," answered Kyle. "Unlike base sockets, the modifier notches don't seem to limit experimental connections."

  "Music to my ears," I said. "Go for it."

  He nodded and fitted the shale pearl to the river pearl.

  Water: River -> Shale

  It connected. The blue lines on the schematic representing the flow of the river flared. The map filled with color and transitioned to an isometric view.

  "This is the defense mode," noted Izzy.

  It was. In addition to highlighting the wards protecting the outer wall of the tower, an equation appeared: HQ Level + 2. Four target highlights appeared in the river.

  "What are those?" I asked. "Some kind of artillery?"

  I held my breath. The last thing I wanted to do was rain destruction from above.

  "They're placement markers," noted Izzy. "They'd be big red Xs or something if they were dangerous."

  "I think she's right," said Kyle. "These look similar to the shale wall placement."

  I nodded slowly. "Just to be safe..." I slid a fingertip over the targets and dragged them. "I can place these anywhere I want. In the river, anyway." Which made sense, seeing as how we were slotting over the river pearl.

  I moved to the open-air window overlooking the Albula River to make sure it was clear. Errol and his men were still working on unloading the second wagon, but no one else was about. I returned to the screen and dragged the targets alongside our drawbridge. I clicked the markers into place and hurried back to the window.

  Four stone pillars rose from the water—a pair to the north of the drawbridge and a pair to the south. Kyle and Izzy crowded me as Errol's men recoiled and drew their weapons. We laughed, but Izzy's curiosity took over.

  "Those pillars are inscribed with runes of some sort. More ancient magic."

  Errol sheathed his sword and peered warily at the new structures. "They're t
urrets," I realized.

  She pressed her lips together. "You just might be right."

  "This is so cool!" beamed Kyle. "Let's try the earth socket."

  We returned to the master panel. Kyle switched the shale pearl over.

  Earth: Dirt -> Shale

  Again the display shifted to the defense map. I was initially worried the pillars would confine themselves to the catacombs. Instead, the markers centered on Oldtown. They didn't appear over previously used locations and I couldn't drag them outside Black Hat territory. I went for a quick-and-dirty placement along the roads separating us from the undeveloped ruins. The turrets emerged from the dirt.

  "We'll keep it this way," I decided. "Defending the land is more important than defending the river."

  Izzy smirked. "Not worried about mermaid assassins?"

  "Sounds like a good way to go out to me. Besides, it's not Poe I'm defending against. Organized crime is on the rise in Stronghold. Chadwick is hassling residents in the Foot. Nooner had the gall to shake down Drummond down the block. We need visible markers, preferably markers with teeth, to stake our territory."

  Kyle chortled. "I'd love to see them try something with these babies deployed."

  Izzy canted her head. "That's assuming these turrets even do anything." She considered the new information. "You think the gangsters could've hired Poe?"

  "It's a very real possibility. He did claim to be an independent contractor." I cursed. "Now I'm pissed I gave away that bone pearl."

  Bandit snorted in sympathy. Izzy shook her head. "Don't sweat it. Getting rid of the catechists and lasting peace with the wildkins was well worth it. The players and NPCs in the city wouldn't like you as much if you prioritized personal gain over their fate." She arched to her tiptoes and kissed me. "I don't think I would either."

  She headed to the window on the other side to study the new defense pillars. Kyle jutted his lips out and nodded to me slyly. I rolled my eyes. Izzy and I were past that initial stage where we were unsure of each other, but we were taking things slow. She didn't have a trusting personality. It was a lot of work just for her to open up. For my part, I didn't want to push anything.