Current Wealth: 197 gold 27 silver 14 copper
Solitaire lost his fight, obviously. It wasn’t that he was a bad fighter, just that he’d been fighting Arthur fucking Nigthne. Winning would’ve been basically impossible for all the same reasons losing would have been if his opponent had been a toddler. He did surprisingly well, though. Which obviously was evidence of some trickery on his part.
Well, there were benefits to creating the world you were stuck in. Having intimate knowledge of a few key players was one of them.
On the one hand, Corvan was more or less out of magic healing juice, so we had to fork over the cost of fixing ourselves up personally. That stung a bit, particularly when I heard how much lead and other materials Solitaire had gone out of his way to buy the day before. On the other hand, we had Arthur fucking Nightne on our team now. That was a big boon, because he actually gave us a real shot at that prize money. I didn’t think he moved as well as the King, or swung as strongly, but he surely had a chance, at least, of winning. I hoped so at least.
Oh well, there were other benefits to each round anyway. Even if seeing them this time around stung a bit.
[Appraisal]
- Class: Revolutionary
- Level: 14
- Condition: Fine
- Modifiers: +4 Speed, +6 Toughness, +3 Alertness, +5 Strength
- Statistics: Strength 12, Speed 11, Dexterity 8, Stamina 6, Toughness 11, Alertness 11, Charisma 3, Intelligence 10
- Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, shortsword, shortspear, knivesx3
- Class abilities: Detect Element II
- Current Experience Points: 448/480
- Unspent Skillpoints: 0
[Appraisal]
- Class: Dragonknight
- Level: 16
- Condition: Fine
- Modifiers: +4 Strength, +5 Speed, +5 Toughness, +6 Alertness
- Statistics: Strength 13, Speed 13, Dexterity 8, Stamina 9, Toughness 13, Alertness 14, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5
- Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, rapier
- Class abilities: Beloved II
- Current Experience Points: 246/520
- Unspent Skillpoints: 0
Two levels, a thousand experience. Solitaire and I’d missed out on both opportunities by losing. There was a notable question of why Solitaire had seemingly gained three hundred points, but that didn’t detract from my own lack of any. That lack stung more than any of the cuts I’d gotten had, so I did what I always did with the bitter taste of disappointment.
I washed it out of my mouth with something else.
Alora the Red Blade, was her name, and it was a comfort to at least have gotten my ass kicked by a girl with a cool name. That cool name had a more practical effect, as well, because it made the act of tracking her down far quicker and easier. I found her at a tavern, strolling in with Magnus watching my back, and heading to her seat in the corner of the room. I’d not even finished sitting down before she spoke.
“Fuck off.”
As openings went, not the most promising. I’d worked with worse though.
“I just wanted to offer you my congratulations.” I smiled. It bounced off her entirely.
“You want me to join you, like that idiot did, and like Arthur Nightne has.” She replied, aiming her words like a dagger and sending them just as precisely through my verbal armour as her actual blade had been sent through my physical armour.
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Well, I’d seen an Intelligence stat of seven on her. It was hardly unexpected that she’d see through the bullshit, given the obvious hints. Next time we’d have to try recruiting the clever ones first.
“Alright, fine, you’ve seen through me.” I answered, deciding that my one remaining card was playing things straight. It was amazing how often that worked where all else failed. “I want to recruit you. You’re fast, skilled, tough and strong-”
“Not interested, you’re trying to build an army, and that fight your Vit got into in round one was clearly some sort of demonstration against you. Whoever got Aja the Pithound under their thumb is fucking powerful, and I don’t want to tangle with that.”
I hesitated, before deciding to proceed.
“...And you’re smart, above all else.” I finished. “I really do believe you’d be a great asset for my family, and I know we’d be a great one for you.”
The woman looked at me in…Well, in very much the same way I’d always been taught to look at people. Fascinating.
“The question is whether I’d live long enough to benefit from that. And I really don’t think I would.”
It was a completely fair point, and it also served to frame exactly where I needed to target her uncertainties to move this conversation in my favour.
“You’ll no doubt have heard that not a one of us has been targeted since then, and we’ve not done anything to draw the ire of the people responsible. We’re stronger now, too, not least for Arthur fucking Nightne’s presence. And if you signed on, you’d be looking at some new gear. Gear made by the same techniques and people responsible for the chainmail you felt your weapons bouncing off yesterday.”
That one had her considering, a tiny little crack in the iron wall of her stoicism.
“Which, again, is useless if I can’t use it. Who’s to say you openly recruiting won’t spur on another little attack?”
I smiled.
“I’m to say that, particularly because we’ll be offering you shelter in my wife’s mansion. A noble mansion. That mansion, as it happens, will be protected by the most powerful magics my brother and our magus can muster. You have heard of my brother, right? Solitaire?”
She swallowed.
“The one who…Destroyed those rotters.”
“Yes.” I smiled again. “And the one who made my staff. How about we step outside, and I can show you?”
I’d brought a sheet of iron for just such a demonstration. Maybe fifteen centimetres in either direction, and about one centimetre thick. Arrows would’ve bounced off it with barely even a dent left to show they’d impacted at all. My gun was more than enough though. My first shot took a corner right off, the second was centred better and gutted the plate. We had to prop it up again after both- the bullets sent it spinning through the air as they tore through.
Alora swallowed again, seeing the display. We were standing a good fifty paces back from it, and I let my smugness show as I hoisted the gun back over my shoulder.
“On a good day, I can fire this more than sixty times a minute.” I told her. “And put a round- rather, a shot- through someone’s chest from almost ten times the distance you just saw. It won’t go through steel as well as iron, obviously, but if it hits a man in normal plate armour it’ll still smash through the breastplate, his torso, the backplate and any naked people who happen to be standing behind him for good measure. We can make more, by the way.”
“How many more?” She asked. “How quickly?”
“More.” I shrugged. “You don’t find out until you sign up, but I can tell you you’ll get one if you want it. Armour, too.”
“What good is armour anymore?” She scoffed. “With these things around.”
I eyed her.
“Our armour will stop a glancing hit from one of these while remaining light enough for an untrained man, and even if the projectile penetrates it’ll be slowed enough that a particularly tough person might still escape with just scratches and bruising. Our armour, at least, is very good. As you might have noticed, with how long you struggled fighting someone you could’ve beaten three of normally.”
She was thinking now, and that was always the prelude to my victories. Get a person thinking and you were most of the way done with getting them to think what you wanted. I waited for the question, or questions, I knew were coming. I wasn’t waiting long.
“What are your plans, exactly?” She asked me. “What do you want?”
That was a big question. What did I want? Elswick? Not really, no. Peace? I was certainly going about it the wrong way for that, I was a few good deals away from living in luxury forever, and the deck was almost as stacked in my favour now as it had been the moment I shot out of my dad’s dick.
Did I want justice, then? Yes. Basic decency and rights for the people of Redacle? Yes. Did I want to right the world’s wrongs and straighten it all out like some damned hero? Yes I did. But how did I intend to do all that?
In the end, I could hardly have told her I wanted to conquer the entire world, so I just shrugged.
“What everyone wants, in the end. Power, influence, and to do the right thing. If you’ve heard of our exploits in Rinchester then you know how much my family’s already grown in a few weeks so far. Why don’t you stick around and see what we can do in a few more?”
She was thinking again, but she barely even needed to bother. I could tell by the deliberate pause and the intense furrowing of brows that I had her.
That was the thing with clever people, their default state was thinking. And their default thoughts, most of the time at least, were rational. It was hard not to get a rational person to fall on the side with guns.