Chapter 20 Now it’s a party

[Achievement unlocked: Now it’s a Party – Form a party with at least one other avatar. Experience will be shared equally between party members (this can be toggled in the menu).]

So the default was that experience would be shared equally. That this could be toggled, that was news to me. It explained how Adrian had managed to get so strong without a single spear thrust. Regardless this was my ticket to getting Miggy to level five. Not like there was another Adrian to stab, no matter how satisfying that would’ve been.

The plan was simple. Find a side quest. Complete said side quest. Use the menu to slide scale so that Miggy received ninety percent of the experience, which was the maximum it could be moved from one avatar to another. I was confident. I wasn’t going to let Miggy’s dour mood dampen that.

After all, things were looking up. No more Adrian meant no more looking over our shoulders for him or his merry men.

Didn’t mean there wasn’t danger. In this place you were always on a razor’s edge from death. Mobs stalked us, wolves and sabretooths, and also something far more dangerous. In the quieter moments, I heard that familiar growl. Sometimes it felt like it was coming from within my own mind.

One inevitable downside to merging parties with Miggy, meant that it also merged both our main quests and instances. I had been more than aware of the time that was ticking against us. That every moment meant that mobs got stronger. So far I’d managed to far outpace the environment. After all, in a month and a half, I had managed to grow far more powerful than any avatar in the starter zone.

Joining Miggy had pushed my clock up significantly. Now I understood why the kid was just so damn good at running. It was the only way to survive. Mob density grew, and so did their aggression. Where once I may have faced a few scattered wolves, now they travelled in packs of no less than a dozen. Vandals too, where once they had sometimes ignored me, now they attacked on sight, seeming to track us from hundreds of feet away.

Getting to the main quest zone was more important than ever. Miggy was evasive in ways I could never be. We’d won several fights, but they’d cut far too close. If we stayed any longer, the system would punish us. Permanently.

[Quest log: Lighting the Way – A Vanya tribe of humans undergoes a great tradition as part of their, like, coming of age thing. When boys reach adulthood, they must carry a torch to their neighbouring village. You do it too, and you know, try to act like you enjoy it.]

[Reward – 4500xp, Tribal Torch x1]

It wasn’t hard to see which quests had been written by my avatar and which had been written by Miggy’s. Clearly his character portrait was as jaded as him, but this one seemed simple enough. Plus, it was close by, and didn’t involve any combat. Where Miggy was concerned, that was an absolute necessity.

We used the mini-map heading to the location. I was upbeat, Miggy seemed as downcast as his quest log, but remained tight-lipped, even as we approached the village. However, instead of heading all the way to the gates of the tribal village, and beginning the quest, Miggy instead drew my head down, and perched us both in the underbrush.

We disappeared, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Intrigued, I examined Miggy. As we were both in the same party, the system assumed we gave each other permission to do so and did not require physical touch. I was grateful for this last point.

[Stalking Shadow – Perk – You have learned to become truly invisible. When stalking in underbrush and not moving, you cannot be detected even against a successful perception check on enemies up to level ten. Unlocked by successfully passing two hundred stealth checks.]

Two. Hundred. I was agape. Miggy simply shrugged. Different strokes, I figured. I still didn’t understand why we were hiding. After all, this was a non-combat quest, so it wasn’t like there was any point scoping it out. Miggy simply stayed where he was, so silent and stoic, for a moment it felt like I couldn’t see him. I was going to make a joke, but then I saw it. Determination in his eyes. This wasn’t the first time he’d done this. I turned to stare out at the village, as Miggy began to count down beneath his breath.

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‘One, two, three…’

A war-band appeared. Not a gaggle of survivors, not a bunch of avatars in primitive armour forming a tribe. A true war-band, two dozen strong, men and women, armoured in bone and something that looked like fur but as though it had been beaten and dried in the sun. Hide. Shit. That was the tier above bone. These guys out-levelled me.

They were humans, but I found, much to my surprise, that I was able to examine them.

[Human Barbarian – Level six – Skybreaker tribe – The savage native of these lands. Though they lack the raw strength and martial prowess of their close cousins, the vandals, their tenacity and adaptability have ensured their numbers have grown into the dominant force in the savage lands.]

So these weren’t avatars. They were…mobs. Human mobs, of the Skybreaker tribe. What had the vandal chieftain called the avatars? Sky people? Sweat beaded on my forehead.

‘Skybreaker tribe?’ I muttered low, to Miggy. ‘What are they doing here?’

‘Ensuring no one makes it out of the starter zone,’ he said, dully. ‘That no one ever reaches level five.’ He glanced at me. ‘Present company excluded of course.’

The Skybreaker war-band comprised barbarian, hunter, and shaman classes just like the avatars. They had a fourth class I noted that when I examined was named the shieldbreaker. As their name suggested, these hulking brutes carried enormous shields that covered their entire bodies, shieldbreakers themselves standing at least a foot taller than the others.