Chapter 44: Chapter 44: The Final Fight

Jace had cast his Athletic boon spell as soon as the lightning show was over.  The game kept them in combat mode for five rounds as Drescher walked over to the crystal and drained the rest of it.  During that time, Jace tapped into his Mana Bank totem, accelerating his mana generation and bringing him back to full.

Drescher stalked toward him, taking a round to cast True Strike.  The big man roared as he leaped forward in a tremendous attack.  Jace tried to Parry with his halberd.  It was an illegal move and gave him no benefit, but he didn’t want the game to think he was Standing his Ground, which would be catastrophic.  His armor class was 28, and after Drescher rolled an 18 in attack, his strike was 79, earning him five criticals.  The axe did 14 damage, which was almost incidental next to the fighter’s +49 damage bonus.  The 63 damage was multiplied 6 times to a total of 378, and Drescher assumed it was over.

Jace’s Damage Sink totem took 260 damage and exploded spectacularly in its private alcove.  The slashing protection ring took another 100, and his Damage Reduction of 12 left only 6 to hit his HP.  Unfortunately, the axe also had the explosive trait, and Drescher had Pieter fill it with fire mana, so an additional 54 damage (36 + 50%) burned into his body.  Even though his health dropped by 60, Drescher saw with the help of his operator that only 6 of it had been from the attack.  The magical damage was a one-time hit.  Despite the shock of the failed strike, the big man did manage to raise his shield against Jace’s expected counter.

But Jace didn’t attack back.  He attempted a trip.  Having read up on the trip maneuver, he knew that shields offered no protection against it, so the Raise Shield action didn’t help.  Instead, a character’s Athletic and Dodge skills were added to their armor class.  Jace had no idea what those were for Drescher, but he had experienced enough skilled shield wielders to know he didn’t have a prayer with a standard attack.  Plus, with Esther’s necklace and his Athletic boon, his Athletic skill was currently higher than his attack bonus.  Still, with Drescher’s double crit protection, he either needed to beat his AC by over 20 or roll a 20.  The halberd blade skipped off the stone floor just before Drescher’s ankle, well below the raised shield, and hit him solidly in the calf.

[Triple Crit.  Two Canceled.  Trip Successful.]

The look on Drescher’s face was priceless as his feet shot out from under him, and he fell hard to his back.  Without a specific feat, the game didn’t allow attacks from a prone position, but Drescher wasn’t stunned or otherwise restrained and still had full range of motion.  He would be flat-footed with his shield down if he tried to get up.  He was smart enough not to try that, but as Jace lined up his second attack for this round, he did an equally dumb thing and tried to roll away.

Drescher played a fighter in the game, but he was a skinny, nerdy weapons engineer in real life.  He had no combat experience to rely on and was successful in the game by boosting his stats and letting the game mechanics take care of the rest.  His attacks were always on automatic, and all he had to do was make strategic choices.  But he had never been in this situation before, and the choice that made the most sense to him was to roll away so he could get up.

This was considered a Dodge, which gave the man a pitifully small boost to his AC.  He could have raised his shield, and Jace wouldn’t have been able to crit him, but that wasn’t an instinctual choice.  Even in his semi-defenseless position, Jace still needed a 20 to get a crit through.  Getting two 20s in a row was a 1 in 400 chance, and Drescher didn’t expect it was possible.  He had no idea Jace could manufacture criticals through skill and was so used to attacking enemies on the ground that the 20-slot looked as big as a chasm.

[Triple Crit.  Two Canceled.  2x Damage? Stun?]

Jace had channeled 180 mana into his attack, the most his halberd could hold, raising the difficulty of the Stun spell from 27 to 63.  A roll of 19 would have saved Drescher, but the game was done doing him favors, and he failed.

[Stunned.  Prone.  Helpless.]

Because of their level difference, Jace knew the Stunned condition would only last one round, possibly less, and he wasted no time swinging the weapon above his head to execute a Coup de Grace.  Another 20 gave him a quadruple crit, and after two were canceled, he tripled the damage, but he didn’t feel safe it would be enough and pumped in the rest of his mana into the attack as part of his Righteous Judgement spell.  With help from his Mana Sink totem, he had 122 mana to spend which did 25 additional damage.

Drescher had recently used his Ordered alignment to reduce all damage from this spell to zero, but now that it was cast through a Chaotic weapon, it had the opposite effect.  Combined with his Guile and Liberal alignments, the damage was quadrupled.  He actually saved against the difficulty, reducing the spell by half, but the 177 total damage from the attack was miles above his Death save.

Jace stumbled back after the attack.  Drescher’s HP had dropped from 912 to 883 after the stunning attack.  Then it fell another 177 to 706.  Now it blinked red for a second and dropped to zero.  Jace collapsed to a knee, supported by his polearm, and breathed a huge sigh of relief as Gracie screamed in elation.  His plan had depended on several chance events, but most desperate situations required a little luck.  He said a brief prayer of thanks to Dexmachi and then used his weapon to push him to his feet.

“Why?” Jace started but found he was out of breath.  “Why did he come like this?”  He walked over to the dead man and looked at his equipment, unable to shake the feeling that it was familiar for reasons beyond the half-orcs in Ironfel.  “My plan was a long shot; it might not have worked if he had come with better equipment.”

Gracie was quiet for a while.  {You don’t know?} she thought he might be able to figure it out, but his mind was probably rushing with too many endorphins right now.  {Those are the items you sold in Cepton, the Strength module.}

Now he recognized them.  The explosive axe, the Deception chainmail, and the +3 large shield.  He touched the hovering item icon above the dead player and saw the longbow as well.  “But you told me these were legendary items.  There should only be one copy of them in the game, right?”

{Correct,} Gracie replied.  She didn’t want to tell him, so she let him work through it.

“Did he hack access into my MIM?  That seems like something no one should be able to do.”

{He didn’t hack access.  He was given access.}

“But how?  That is my unique MIM.  Only someone who has access to it should be able to do that.  No one has ever been there but me and . . .” he paused as motion to his left caught his attention.  At first, he thought it was Gwen stirring, but it was Esther peeking her head out of the tunnel to her room.  She scanned the carnage until she saw her nemesis on the ground.  The fallen rogue was beginning to wake up, but Esther was quicker, jumped onto her, and easily grappled her into a Helpless condition.

“Esther did this?”

Gracie knew Jace’s thousands of followers couldn’t hear what she had to say, but she paused the feed anyway, not wanting Jace to have to deal with this information publicly.  {When you gave her access to the Strength Module, did you scroll through the options?}

Jace shook his head.  “Full access was the first one, and I picked it.  I didn’t want to restrict her.”

{When you sent her on a mission to Safe Haven, did you put the town on her map?}

Jace shook his head again.  “I didn’t know I had to.  It is a public area, and I could go there, so I assumed she could too.”

Now Gracie was shaking her head.  {NPCs can only travel to areas where they have been before or where a PC gives them access.  I have access to Esther’s travel logs, and it looks like she left your stronghold and went to Portsmith.}

Jace sucked in his breath, realizing how dangerous that was with a bounty on her head.

{I can only assume the rest,} Gracie continued.  {You can’t track characters with bounties across the whole realm, but some items and spells can let you know if anyone in your current module has a bounty.  My guess is that someone who works for Drescher met her.  They were smart enough not to try and capture her, but when they found out she needed to get to Safe Haven, they were willing to trade that information for access to one of your private MIMs.  Then that PC went and gave access to Drescher.  I’m guessing the informant hid the fact that Esther was going to Safe Haven, or Drescher’s men here would have been ready for an attack.}

“They were playing both sides,” Jace reasoned, wishing he knew who it was.  “But Esther betrayed me.  Why would she do that?”  He was staring at her now as she sat on Gwen’s stomach, torturing the woman with her weapons.

{Would you rather she have traded the information for sex?  I wouldn't doubt our mysterious informant offered that deal to her.}

Jace didn't respond.

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Gracie continued. {She is Guile, Chaotic, and Progressive.  To you and me, those are just words on a character sheet.  To her, it is how she lives.  If you ask her how she got to Safe Haven, she will probably lie.  But in her mind, she did what you asked, and the two of you survived.  She will do this again.  I assume you gave her full access to your stronghold too.  You might want to change that.  If you change it to restricted access, you have a ton of options to customize it.}

Jace didn’t want to do it.  Despite the apparent fact that Esther couldn’t be trusted, he wanted to anyway.  In the end, the result of her betrayal only helped him as Drescher had undoubtedly intended to boast about the stolen equipment an how he could access Jace’s private areas, but Jace never gave him the chance.  Could Jace risk that her next deception would be equally advantageous?  Gracie was right. He would have to restrict Esther’s access from now on.

He was still looking at Esther as she leaned over Gwen to either whisper something in her ear or suck the life out of her.  Possibly both.  When Jace saw the rogue’s health drop to zero, Esther got up and turned to look at him.  She was wearing her armor again, leaving Gwen topless on the ground.  All her adjustments from before were back as if she had never taken it off.  In addition, she was wearing Gwen’s black hat, which looked great on her.  She smiled at Jace and wiped blood from her lips.

It was finally over.

 

---

 

Jace was eager to get back to the real world, but there were a few things he needed to set right first.  There wasn’t much loot to collect from the victims.  Gracie let Jace know that Drescher had a craftsman in Ironfel that could curse items, so they lost all magical ability when their wearer died.  He hadn’t had time to do that with the things he had bought in Cepton, so Jace was able to collect those.  He silently thanked Drescher for bringing them back to him, as he would now be able to sell them again in Crestfall.  Also, Esther had taken the armor and hat off Gwen while she was still alive, so the curse didn’t destroy them, assuming they even had a curse.  The armor was probably safe, as Gwen had only worn it for a few hours, but they might have to reverse a curse on the hat.

The experience points he got from the fight were real, though.  He got a full 250k for each of his first three kills but only 125K from Gwen, as Esther had helped.  That was enough to push him to level 12, but he would save the level-up process for later.  Even though she had only joined in at the end, Esther leveled up to 12 also.  NPCs didn’t collect experience like players and leveled up with their PC leader. He could deal with her level-up later too.  She was plenty powerful as it was.

Topper and Snowy returned from town fifteen minutes after the end of the fight bearing gifts.  The group had a massive order of pancakes, sausage, bacon, and fruit juice.  The gnome got the pancake recipe from the diner and returned with a load of raw mix.  He would need to add milk and eggs, but the gnomes tended a few subterranean goat-like creatures that produced milk and could get eggs from birds that looked like a cross between a duck and an ostrich.

Topper also took this opportunity to present Esther with the four knives his people had enhanced.  The handles were now inlaid with diamonds, and the edges of the weapons gleamed with an added shine.  Jace asked to inspect one and found they were now level 6 and +3 knives.  They still had the bleeding trait on crits.  That would give her more options in combat.  Jace also returned the dog collar and bracelet he had taken from when they had released the orc.

Jace even invited Trixna to the meal.  The orc looked at the fluffy pancakes and well-done sausages hesitantly, but she tried them anyway and soon snarfed them down as quickly as Esther.  Topper and the other gnomes didn’t like the orc’s presence, but because Esther treated her as an ally, Topper had no choice but to accept her as well.

Jace explained to them that he had to leave for a while.  He needed to go to the other dimension to ensure Gracie and Conor were okay.  When Trixna asked how long, Jace said it might be days.  With this information, she was finally willing to move out of her tiny room and into something more spacious.  Jace told her that if she were bored, he wouldn’t mind a few of the magical upgrades in his room that Carrak had gotten.

Topper joined in with a few other ideas the gnomes had to spruce up the cavern, and soon they were all talking about how they could make this stronghold into a luxurious estate.  Jace knew he wouldn’t stay away long and looked forward to when he could come back.  Even so, he was anxious to feel real ground under his feet and breathe actual air.

He said his goodbyes and promised he wouldn’t be gone long, and eventually, they let him go back to his room.  Only Snowy followed him, not completely understanding what was happening.  She had an advanced intellect for a wolf, but the talk of other dimensions confused her.  Jace gave her a good rub down and promised he wouldn’t be gone long.  It had been less than two hours since he had woken up that morning, but he lay back on his bed and opened his inventory.  He had eyed the “Sleep and Log Off” option several times, but now he actually selected it.

 

---

 

Jason Hawthorne opened his eyes slowly.  Gracie had been watching him on the screen and was standing by his chair, ready to greet him when he woke up.  Despite the differences they had experienced during the game, she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  “Thank you so much,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek.  She wiped it away deftly and stepped back to let Jason sit up.

They weren’t alone, and two armed men stood waiting further away.  Jason assumed they weren’t going to hug or kiss him.  As Gracie carefully removed the devices that had kept him alive while he was in the game, taking special care with the catheter, one of the men walked up to him.  “Jason Hawthorne?” he asked.

Jason hadn’t tried to talk yet and only nodded.

“Your government thanks you for your service.  You took down a pretty major player just now.  Drescher’s ability to run his business is over.  He might be able to claw his way back, but it will take so long that he will have lost all his clients.  He will never be the same.”

Jason tried to say, “You’re welcome,” but it came out as a hoarse whisper, and Gracie was quick with a glass of water.  He took a few generous swallows and then eased out of the chair.  He needed to grip the armrest for support, but he could soon take a couple of steps, and his coordination returned quickly.

“When you are ready,” the man said.  “There is someone who wants to talk with you.”  The soldier held up a cell phone.

Jason looked at Gracie, wondering if this was a call he wanted to take.  She nodded her head.  Jace took the phone and looked for a place to sit down.  The couch was empty and clean, but he took one of the chairs out of respect for the man who had recently laid there.

“Jason, this is Agent Ross Fordier, with the CIA.  I can’t thank you enough.”

“You can try,” Jason said.  “I was promised $100k for a job.  I think I came through.”

The agent laughed at his directness.  If Ross had any thoughts about strong-arming this man, they disappeared.  “Of course, of course, that won’t be a problem.  We’ll have the money wired to your bank account first thing in the morning.  Maybe with an added bonus.  But what I really wanted to know was if you were interested in a new job.  You obviously have a knack for this type of thing.”

Jason took a moment to look around the room.  Gracie watched him expectantly, her eyes still brimming with tears.  Conor was probably on the way to the hospital, where he would get the lifesaving care he needed.  Jason had gained two friends during this ordeal that he knew he would never be able to part with.  Then his eyes found the TV on the wall.  There he saw Esther, Topper, and Trixna eating and laughing around the table.  Jason smiled.

“Yes,” he said after making the agent wait.  “Yes, I think I would like a job.”

The END

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Thank you for reading this story.  This is the end of Book 1.  I will start to post Book 2 shortly.  If you've read this entire story and enjoyed it, I would appreciate a good rating or even a review.

Book 2 involves Jace recruiting three more NPCs in order to achieve a hostage rescue mission that the CIA assigns to him.  Stay tuned.

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