Chapter 9 #2
Guy rifles around in it. Then shakes his head at me.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Um…what about a water bottle? Oh, shit, no. I left my water in my car.”
“You need water?” Guy asks.
I nod. “To flush out my wound.”
Guy points his staff at my arm, and a snakelike stream of water leaves its tip before wrapping around my arm. It’s cool against my skin, literally washing me with relief, as it soothes my pain. I watch in awe as I see the pus dilute and leave my wounds.
“That enough water?” Guy asks.
“Yeah, looks like it is.”
He takes my arm to inspect it. Satisfied that my wound is clear of any pus, he flicks his staff away, and the water splashes onto the ground. While it didn’t get rid of the wound, it cleaned it out, and I no longer feel the searing pain of the poisoning condition.
“Heal Minor Wound,” I say, looking at the small punctures still on my arm. They close up, and I sigh with relief, just before fatigue makes gravity that much harder to fight against. I can only keep this up a little longer, but I’m sure Guy won’t let me pass out.
“You’re really getting the hang of this!” Guy says. Then, he nods toward the herd of cercopes. “Looks like they’re all under Joshua’s spell now. All that’s left for us to do is follow along.”
Just as Guy said, other than having to make such a long hike, the rest of the quest is a piece of cake.
Within an hour, we trap the cercopes in a cage where their mother has been waiting for them.
To my great surprise, she’s quite beautiful.
She’s an Oceanid with black curly hair and a sheer chiton that shows off enough to make Joshua visibly pleased.
Unlike the locket quest, this one puts me in a good mood.
We’re all feeling festive, in fact. Once we’re done setting up camp and Sylvia comes back from fishing from the nearby stream, we make ourselves a little feast of her catch.
Joshua plays his fiddle for us, and holy shit…
If the Devil ever comes down to Legends of Sacrifice, he shouldn’t go head-to-head with our bard. Mr. Satan would lose for sure.
With a full belly and a lightened spirit, I lay my head down and close my eyes.
Before I can drift off to sleep, I hear the disembodied voice say, “Cleric of Aphrodite: Level 3. Spell Gained: Restoration. Skill Gained: Strategy Under Duress. Stats Unlocked: Strength - 8, Dexterity - 14, Constitution - 14, Intelligence - 17, Wisdom - 15, Charisma - 16, Faith - 10. Favors Gained: Beguiling Eyes, Soothing Grace.”
That’s a lot to process when I’m this tired, so I promise I’ll look into it in the morning. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of questions for my companions.
The sounds of Cait and Sylvia clanging about outside of the tent wakes me.
They must be making breakfast because I can smell a campfire and rosemary.
I’m still bone weary from the long herding quest from yesterday.
However, after several minutes of trying to return to sleep, I’m certain that I’m awake for the day.
So I leave my dozing companions behind to step outside.
My head is buzzing with the questions that haunted my dreams last night.
It’s disorienting. All my thoughts dissipate before I can make sense of them, like soap slipping from my hands in the bathtub.
However, when I leave the tent, I’m greeted with the crisp mountain air of Peripeteia, and it brings me clarity.
Last night, the voice told me I’d leveled up, and today I realize there’s a ton of information about what that means in my UI. I’ll need to read it all and see if my friends can help me make sense of it all. But first, breakfast.
Sylvia cracks eggs onto a flat slab of rock next to some fish and sliced-up turnips roasting over a campfire.
I used to watch Instagram reels of people camping out in the wild like this.
It was intriguing, therapeutic even. Seeing someone do it right in front of me has me in awe, even after watching her do it several times already.
How did she learn to do it? Was this a gift given to her as an Archer of Artemis?
“Can I help?” I ask her, but she shakes her head.
With a kind smile, she says, “Honestly, one of my favorite things to do is cook breakfast alone before everyone wakes up.”
Cait chuckles from her perch on a boulder where she’s weaving reeds. “That’s her nice way of saying you need to get out of her way and be quiet.” She pats the expanse of rock next to her. “Come sit with me where we can whisper and gaze at this fantastic scenery.”
That sounds like an amazing idea, and Cait seems to be in a rare, non-grumpy mood, so I climb up and join her.
Our vantage point from the tent is already breathtaking.
We’re high up enough that villages look like dollhouses in the green valley below, but the mountain peaks are still a little further up.
The ones above are craggy and snowcapped.
The ones on our level are smoother with greenery.
Legends of Sacrifice is supposed to be in a fantasy version of the Aegean area and its surrounding regions.
I wonder if this is what the real Greece looks like or if this is just how the game engineers imagined it.
Whatever the answer it is, Peripeteia is beautiful, and Cait has picked the perfect spot to admire our current high altitude.
“God, this is gorgeous,” I whisper.
“It’s the only part of this game that hasn’t gotten old for me,” Cait responds.
“The mountains, the islands. The valleys, villages, and farms. All of it. If I leave—when I leave—I hope I can go to the Mediterranean Sea and go to places like this again. But with my friends and family and all the people I miss.”
Cait’s eyes lower from the mountain range, and I can tell she’s thinking about her loved ones. I wonder if Mom is okay. Is time the same here as there? She may not have noticed I’m gone yet. Or maybe it’s been months already, and she’s assumed the worst.
She could be dead already.
I hope I can get back soon so that I can give her a big hug. But before I can do that, I need to figure out this game and win it.
“I leveled up last night,” I say.
“Oh?” Cait asks. “What level? Two?”
“Three, and I got a whole of lot of notifications about it,” I answer.
“That comes with level three,” Cait says. “By that point, the game or gods or whatever have figured out enough about you to give you stats. And at every level up you get some other stuff. What did you get?”
I bring up my menu and read my new stats to her. She winces.
“Are those bad?” I ask.
“They’re not bad per se, but…” She hesitates. “It’s just…as a cleric, your wisdom should be higher than your intelligence, and your faith should be a lot higher. You’re spec’d more like a wizard.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Well, like I told you before, I’ve played a healer a bunch, and I’m familiar with their ideal stats in other games,” she explains.
“As for your faith stat, that’s more of an assumption on my part.
You’re a cleric, the holy servant of a deity.
You’d think your faith would be kind of a big deal.
Ten is the minimum without taking a penalty. ”
“So that means I’m going to take a penalty with strength?” I ask.
Cait nods. “Yeah, anything you need to do that requires strength will tire you out quickly now and make all your other actions suffer.”
Well, I guess I should avoid anything related to that. Thankfully, I’m with a group that seems to work well with collaboration.
“How do they figure out these stats?” I ask.
“They evaluate the way you’ve handled quests and go from there.” She must see the anxiety on my face because she continues, “Don’t worry, they tweak them at levels five, ten, and twenty. So, you have time to nudge things in the right direction.”
That’s a gigantic relief. I like a challenge when I’m playing video games, but I’d like to make my experience here as easy as possible so I can get home. Having the wrong stats could really be a hindrance.
“Did you get anything besides your stats?” Cait asks.
I close my eyes, trying to remember what I can without going through my menu first. “I got a spell, a skill, and two favors.”
Cait’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Two favors? Already? People don’t usually even get one until level four or five. Having two this fast is impressive, especially with a low faith stat.”
Ah, so that’s what the faith stat does. Cait’s right, then. I wonder why I got so lucky.
“Well, go on, tell me what all you got,” Cait prompts.
“I remember I got Restoration, probably because I got rid of a poisoning condition,” I say. “If there are more poisonous creatures, that should be really helpful.”
I look next to my spells to find my skills. “I got the skill Strategy Under Duress. That must be because I figured out a solution for the poisoning while the cercopes were attacking us.”
Cait nods. “And why your intelligence is so high. You were thinking strategically. A good thing in the moment, but you’ll need to counterbalance that by finding ways to use wisdom. Sylvia can help with that.”
“As for my two favors, I have Beguiling Eyes and Soothing Grace.”
“Figures Aphrodite would gift you with Beguiling Eyes,” Cait says. “That’ll be handy when we get to cities. Not sure what Soothing Grace is, though.”
I shrug. “The only way to find out is to use it. It sounds positive. Would you let me try it out on you?”
“Favors aren’t spells, they’re features,” Cait says.
“It’s a boost that helps you in certain situations.
You won’t need to cast Beguiling Eyes if you’re trying to sweet talk someone into something.
Persuading others will just come more easily.
You may never know what Soothing Grace is because it might make a subtle difference that you don’t notice. ”