“Harder!” Jane said.
Sigrid looked at me, eyebrow quirked.
“Once more,” I said. “But this time don't hold back.”
Sigrid bared her teeth as she grinned.
“Are you on drugs?” Lianna said, stepping back.
“Trust me,” I said.
She scowled at me but stepped forward again and tensed up. “Okay.”
I nodded to Sigrid and she took another swipe at Lianna, this time using her full strength. The blade still didn’t touch Lianna, but even with the Holtzmann shield’s dampening effect the force of the blow rocked her, making her take several steps back and dropping her health by a significant amount. To Lianna’s credit she managed to remain on her feet.
“I felt that one,” Lianna said through gritted teeth, rubbing just above her hip where the sword landed. She lifted her shirt a smidge to expose a purple bruise already forming.
“Oof,” Jane said, wincing. “That was a pretty solid hit.” Then she smacked me. “Don’t just stand there, go over and heal her, idiot.”
“It’s okay. I took a bit of damage, but not that much considering,” Lianna said.
Although Lianna’s body may have been weak, her spirit lacked for nothing. What she’d called ‘a bit of damage’ had almost knocked her health into the red, and it must have hurt like hell, but she barely showed much sign of it outwardly. I quickly healed her back up to full the bruise faded away instantly.
“Not to brag or anything, but that should’ve sliced you in two,” Sigrid said. “I’ve chopped down entire trees with less force than what I just hit you with. Big trees.”
"True story," I said. "The elves were so peeved at her but all she could do was stand there and ogle them while they gave her a stern talking to."
Sigrid shrugged. "I gotta be me."
“That’s one hell of a shield,” Arthur said, peering at Lianna from different angles to get a better look at the faint force field around her.
“Where did you get this?” Lianna said. “It must’ve cost a fortune.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It didn’t cost him anything,” Sigrid said, her sword thwupping away. “He made it.”
“Wait, what?” Lianna said.
Lianna gaped at me and held up the shield ring. “You made this?”
I shrugged. “I got lucky with some abilities.”
Lianna held up her arm to show the brac— the Dick Tracy Communicator. “Does that mean you made these too?”
”Someone had to,” I said.
“If it was anyone else I’d say they were just being modest,” Sigrid said, ruffling my hair, “but this guy doesn’t actually understand how crazy this shit is.”
Actually, Sigrid was wrong. I was trying to be modest, and I was well aware that this shizznit was cray-cray. But like she said, I just hadda be me.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to this kind of thing,” Jane said in a commiserating tone.
“Now watch this,” I said, shrugging Sigrid off and moving toward Lianna. A knife that was at one moment strapped to my thigh was in was in my hand and sliding free of its sheath the next, and I thrust it at her belly. As expected, it bounced off her shield.
"Ha," Lianna said. "Didn't feel a thing."
"Yeah?" I said, and stabbed at her again. This time it wasn't a fast jab, instead my hand moved relatively slow and the blade went through the shimmering shield like it wasn’t there. I stopped when the tip touched her shirt.
“What the almighty fuck?” Lianna said, sucking in her tummy and staying completely still.
“Is that a special knife?” Arthur said.
“The slow blade penetrates the shield,” Wayne said with a knowing grin.
I looked at him and grinned back, pulling the knife away and slipping it back into its sheath. “Ya hya chouhada.”
”I have no idea what nerd thing you just said, “Jane said, “but I’m sure it’d just annoy me if I did.”
“Wayne knows, and he’s exactly right. The shield stops anything that moves fast and is larger than a fleck of dust, which describes most attacks. Anything moving slower than a certain threshold...” I casually reached out and my slow-moving hand passed right through the shield. I touched the moonstone on her ring and the shimmering vanished. “...passes through shield.”
“I am so jealous right now,” Jane said.
I turned to her. “I have noticed that while everyone else has picked up some sort of armor, you’re still going around with almost no protection.”
“I have my reasons,” Jane said.
I heaved a sigh. “Please don’t tell me it’s because you think you look better without armor.”
Jane folded her arms, closed her eyes, and quickly twisted her face away to one side, a gesture that made me suddenly think of Kiki. "Fine," she said. "I won’t tell you.”
“You know you can’t rely solely on your stupidly good looks and inhuman agility to avoid getting hurt.”
She glanced back at me through the narrow slit of one eye. “Maybe I’m just waiting for someone to give me a special shield.”
“You really don’t deserve this,” I said, “but...” Another ring appeared in my hand, identical to Lianna’s, only this one had a diamond in it instead of a moonstone, and instead of being restricted to Life the user needed Light affinity — Jane’s original affinity.
I could have restricted it to any of them and it would’ve been fine, like me she had them all, but she’d started with Light and that felt right, plus it was still rare enough to be an effective lock against unauthorized use.
“For me?” Jane said, uncrossing her arms and putting her hands over her heart in an exaggerated swoon. Both eyes were opened wide and her long eyelashes fluttered as her face lit up with that million dollar smile.
“Against my better judgement, yes.”
She looked at it lying on my open palm, then the smile vanished and she crossed her arms again.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“What’s wrong now?” I said.
“Aren’t you supposed to get down on one knee?” she said.
I gave her my best deadpan look. “But I haven’t discussed the dowry with your father yet.”
For one split second I saw shock in her eyes, but then she snorted and grabbed the ring, clutching it in a tight fist. “Idiot,” she said.
I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. “I had you going for a moment there, I saw it in your face.”
“Like hell you did,” Jane said, slipping the ring on and admiring it. "That's a big rock."
"It's about two and a half carats," Lianna said, then turned to Sigrid. “Are they always like this?”
“No, he used to get a lot more flustered when she teased him,” Sigrid said. "This kind of banter is new." Then she poked me. “Hey, do I get one too?”
We all stared at her with open incredulity.
“You really should take off the super awesome armor you already got before you say things like that,” I said.
“I was kidding,” Sigrid said, holding her hands up defensively as her armor thwapped away into storage. “Not really,” she added, muttering under her breath.
Me: Don't worry, I was already planning to make you one.
Sigrid: Yay!
Byron and Nina joined us. “What’s going on?” Byron said.
“Santa Claus has come to town,” Jane said, still admiring the new bauble on her finger from different angles.
“Aw, we didn't miss it all, did we?” Nina said.
“Yeah, got anything else in the loot bag?” Byron said, his fingers clenching and unclenching eagerly.
“Funny you should ask,” I said. “I’ve got something both of you can use, as can anybody with the crossbow skill who might enjoy a bit of flair in their ranged attacks.”
“I do like flair,” Nina said.
I took a small, ordinary hand crossbow from my inventory. “Crossbows are great, but they’re slow and awkward to reload and little ones like this don’t pack that much of a punch.”
“So true,” Nina said. “I never want to use mine because it’s such a pain in the ass to load.”
"That's why I used a longbow," Kay said.
"And you use it well," Morgan said, exchanging smiles with her old friend.
I cocked the crossbow and put a bolt on it, then fired it casually from the hip at one of the targets used for practice in the courtyard. The bolt thunked into the thin wood of the dummy.
“So, um, that’s it?” Byron said. “Isn’t that just a normal crossbow?”
“This one is, yes,” I said, then crushed it in my hand before dropping the splinters onto the cobblestones.
“Show off,” Sigrid said, but she was grinning. We had a game of testing how strong we’d become by crushing things. A little crossbow was nothing, we’d both turned solid rocks into gravel with our bare hands.
A new weapon appeared from my inventory. It looked almost the same as the crossbow I’d just demolished, only this one lacked the bow part. It looked a lot like a long-barreled wooden pistol.
“Um, I think your crossbow’s missing something,” Jane said.
“Is it?” I said, and aimed it at the target. I squeezed the trigger and there was a thunking sound.
“Dude, did you just miss?” Jane said. “There’s no crossbow arrow-thingy—”
“Bolt,” Sigrid said.
“Whatever, in the target,” Jane continued.
“Look closer,” Sam said. “That hole wasn’t there before.”
“You mean the bolty thingy went right through?”
Sam jogged over to the target and stuck his fingertip in the small hole.
“What just happened?” Byron said.
“You try,” I said, and handed him the weapon.
Byron frowned at it in his hand. "How do I load it?"
"Don't worry, it's already loaded," I said.
"Well, okay," he said, and took aim as Sam darted away. Byron's finger squeezed and there was another thunk.
“What the hell?” he said, holding the weapon up and staring at it like he’d never seen fire before and I’d just given him a Zippo.
I took the weapon back and opened its Status for everyone to see.
P1 Pistol
Tell me, punk. Do you feel lucky?
Powers:
Bang! - Fire a projectile
“You...made a gun,” Jane said.
“Something like that,” I said.
“No, exactly like that,” Sigrid said, slapping my shoulder. “What the hell, Daniel?”
“Do we need to start calling you Q?” Wayne said.
Given that this was a collection of Canadians, there were mixed reactions to the sudden appearance of firearms in this fantasy world. We from the great white north generally looked upon guns with a mixture of fear and mistrust, and I was no different. But new world, new rules.
They all fired questions at me in rapid succession.
“How does it work?”
“What does it shoot?”
“Do you have to reload it?”
“Can I have one?”
I held it up and started explaining.
“As Jane pointed out, it’s a crossbow without the bow part, and the game seems to consider it close enough that you can use your crossbow skill to fire it. I know, it’s a total cheat, but I’m not complaining. The Bang! power uses a blend of Earth and Fire affinities to create the metal projectiles, basically little musket balls, and Air to shoot them out.”
"Air, huh?" Byron said. "That explains the lack of a bang sound despite the power's name."
“So it’s a BB gun,” Bruce said.
“Something like that.”
I aimed it again, only this time I squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession. There were three thunks and three new holes clustered in the center of the target.
“Holy shit!” Kay said.
“If you liked that, Kay, you’re gonna love this.”
I passed the P1 back to Byron and a new weapon appeared in my hands. This time it was a full-sized crossbow that had been given the same treatment. It looked very much like the cultists’ darkslingers, which made sense considering I’d used a deconstructed darkslinger as the foundation for these new weapons.
“Of course you made a rifle too,” Morgan said, laughing.
R1 Assault Rifle
Say hello to my little friend.
Powers:
Bang Bang Bang! - Continuously fire projectiles
I aimed at the target again and squeezed the trigger, sending a single shot into it. Then I fired again, only this time I held down the trigger. Bullets spewed from the R1, shredding the target and exposing the tree behind it, which wasn’t faring much better than the target as the bullets tore into it too.
“Poor tree,” Sam said. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix you later.”
“Where do the bullets come from?” Bruce said.
“From nowhere," I said. "There’s a mana crystal in the stock that provides the fuel to both create and fire them the instant the trigger's pulled. A single crystal can give you lots of shots before it runs out of mana, but when you do need to reload it you open the compartment like this.”
I pressed a button with my thumb and the core of the grip dropped down, very much like the magazine of a proper automatic firearm, only it stayed attached to the R1. A small mana crystal popped out of a cavity in it, which I caught with my free hand.
“The spent crystal is ejected, and you slot in a new one.” The current crystal still had lots of juice left in it, so I put it back into the cavity and pushed the compartment back into place. “Like so.”
“I can’t wait to get into a fight now,” Nina said.
“That’s our healer talking,” Arthur said, and Nina stuck her tongue out at him.
“Why wait?” I said, handing the rifle to Nina. “Try it out.”
“Really?” she said, taking it. “Right on.” She aimed at the tree, but I stepped in the way.
“Nuh uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Not the tree. Shoot me.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
"Do it!" Lianna said with rather more vehemence than I was comfortable with. But I supposed it was only fair, given what I'd just put her through.
I also made my health bar public so everyone could see if I took any damage. I wouldn't have done it if health and mana bars used numbers, but they only showed a visual representation like a car's gas gauge. I was well aware that both of my stats were much higher than the average Player's and didn't want to have to answer another barrage of questions.
I stood still in front of the target dummy and spread my arms wide. “Do your worst,” I said.
Nina raised the weapon and took aim, then lowered it again. “But you aren’t wearing any armor.”
“Trust me.”
Up next: You really made all these?