“Hey, they all have a choice to go against me if they want,” Van replied. “But they have chosen to vote in my favor because they trust me.”
“I trust you, too!” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t vote against you.”
“Of course not, that’s why we have the voting process,” Van replied. “But I’m not some kind of master manipulator, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sang supports me because we’ve been adventuring together for a long time and she’s aware of my decision-making process. Kylian trusts me because he’s got a good gut. Kenwar… well, I’ll be honest, Kenwar isn’t particularly on good terms with me, but he follows whatever Sang does.”
“I just don’t have any idea what’s going on and…” Bidane paused. “And I know there is something more than what you’re telling me. I don’t like being out of the loop.”
Van sighed. If she was smart enough to pick up on their urgency, she wouldn’t believe anymore of his lies. “Look, I can’t tell you what is happening, because frankly, it’s a tall glass to swallow. Only Sang, Kenwar, and I know what we’re really up to here.”
“I don’t like working without some idea of what’s going on,” Bidane replied as she crossed her arms.
“Yeah, I get ya, but trust me, it’s really important.”
“What could be so important in this game that it would require secrecy from your friends?” she asked.
“You’ve got me there,” Van said. “It’s kind of hard to understand from the outside, but if you could please, please trust me, I promise that at some point you’ll understand.”
“I don’t like it,” Bidane said. “I think I might just bail on this team. No offense, but if I don’t have the whole story, what’s the point? I have a right to know what you’re up to.”
“I would completely understand your decision, Bidane. But you’re not thinking about the big picture. Yes, you might not like the fact that there’s some kind of undercurrent, and yeah, you’re probably worried about what our endgame is. But think about it like this: we’re on the fast track to success. We’re winning plenty of fights, getting tons of cash, and we’re about to seriously be propped up for our activities here. We are the literal gravy train right now; do you want to hop off of it? And do what? Post ‘LFG’ on your name tag and wait around for adventure?”
“I’m not saying that I’m unhappy with the amount of experience we’re getting. That war bonus is going to be stacking up very quickly…” Bidane said. “I’m just… I’m just getting fatigued from all of the hushed words and whispered half-truths.”
“I promise that, at some point, you’ll know what’s up,” Van said. “But right now, for the good of the team, you’ve got to be on the outer circle of this. If you can stomach that and trust me, we’ll keep getting along just fine. We can keep moving and we’ll get plenty of treasure and experience points.”
“Fine,” Bidane said. “But you better make good on your promise. As soon as you’re able to, I want to know the whole damn story.”
Van extended his hand. “I promise that you’ll hear the entire thing.”
They shook, and turned their attention out to the battle that was slowly coming into view. It was clear that the Melvanian fighters were easily repelling the last of the major invasion. Without any back-up arriving, the ranks of Kyrissians were unable to determine what to do, and had opted to continue fighting instead of retreating. It wasn’t the worst decision, because if they were to break ranks and retreat, the Melvanian horseback fighters would easily chase them down and slaughter those who were running.
As the battle began to wind down, though, Van could see that the Melvanian flag was being hoisted above the tower. The words Battle Over floated above the tower. There was a loud cheer from all of the soldiers as the combat indicator immediately disengaged. Hundreds of players who’d been on the losing side ran off, no longer able to fight back. An experience summary appeared in front of Van.
Van had participated in wars before, but he was still shocked at the sheer amount of experience he had earned right here. It was more than enough for him to move up to the next level. The best part was that this battle hadn’t even been a major one. It had just been a small fight to protect a strategic point. A few more days of this kind of fighting, and they’d easily be able to stroll into Bloodrock without a problem.
He pulled up his character sheet to see what kind of options he would have now.
There were some really good options for a bard here, but since he was going to be engaged in a large amount of battles that would require mass inspiration, he chose to improve his Rallying Speech power. This would add 10% damage resistance to all of the players who heard the speech, and for a full hour, meaning that they would be able to ignore 1 point of damage for every 10 taken. It didn’t seem like much, but over the course of an hour-long battle, those points would really add up.
As everyone worked on leveling up, Van glanced over at Jet. It had never occurred to him until now that the dragon might have stats, as well. He pulled up the dragon’s character sheet.
Much to his surprise, there were a large amount of undistributed skill points. Apparently, the dragon was leveling every time that Sang was, but neither of them had known about it. He grabbed Sang and pulled her aside.
“What’s up?” Sang asked. “I cannot figure out if I want to add another arrow to my Multi-shot ability, or if I want to buy that one power that lets me immediately go into Stealth after killing a target.”
“Always take the Stealth skill one,” Van said. “It’s the perfect tactical skill. But I wanted to bring your attention to Jet.”
“What about him?” Sang asked as she looked at Jet. He was lying on the ground, snoozing happily. For a dragon, he wasn’t a particularly active creature. He mostly just laid around and sleep, even during fights. Most players ignored him because they assumed that he was just a non-combat NPC.
“We can level him up!” Van said. “He’s got stats and everything!”
“Why didn’t we think to check before?” Sang asked.
“Too much going on,” Van replied as he patted Jet on the head. The dragon burbled back at them.
“Isn’t language a skill?” Sang asked. “If we upgrade its language, it should be able to speak more clearly to us!”
“That’s perfect!” Van replied. Despite all of the travel and physical growth of the dragon, it hadn’t learned much English except for their names and the occasional swear word. Sometimes it would speak gibberish at them, which Van assumed could be the alien language, but he just wasn’t sure.
“Here, let me level him up really quick, and let’s see what we can buff him with,” Sang said. She raised her hands and began to fiddle with the character screen. Van couldn’t see what she was working on due to the fact that Jet was her companion, but he trusted her enough with the game to not worry about her choices. She had come a long way from putting points into maps with every single level.
After a few minutes, Sang looked at Van with satisfaction in her eyes. “I think that I did a really good job—check it out.”
Van grimaced as he looked at some of her choices. He opened his mouth to say something, but realized that she looked immensely proud of her decision to give a dragon the lock-picking ability. He shrugged, and merely said, “Looks great.”
“Looks great to me, too,” Jet said. He stretched his wings out a little and puffed out some fire. “I was getting tired of being incapable of speaking your language.”