Legend of the Spellthief

Cerall began the fight by utilising another use of his Rush skill. The force propelling him forwards sent off a low roar behind him, exploding parts of the stone floor as he sped towards Logan. Hoping to engage in a ranged conflict, Logan had already raised his right arm calling out, “Force”, causing a wave of energy to form in his shoulder and jetting across his limb in its normal grey design.

Shooting out a grey forceful orb towards Cerall, the Fighter kicked the floor and created another large wave of energy to crash into the rock below. Narrowly dodging the Force, Cerall slid across the floor before kicking forward again. His activated skill had already ended, leading Logan to summarise that it was more to engage in a fight rather than aid in further attacks like Dash did.

Cerall swiped out with a shortsword, Logan clashing his own dagger with the blade as the metal scratched against each other. The Fighter changed his grip slightly as he pushed it downwards, moving the clash into a test of strength. Logan could easily feel the difference as he felt his body forced down, his knee bending as the power overwhelmed his own.

Logan changed his grip to counteract the power struggle, twisting his arm he was able to have the shortsword slide across the dagger and sweep to the side of Logan in a vertical slice. Skipping around, Logan let out another swipe which was quickly parried by Cerall. Cerall retaliated with a following attack which Logan again met with his blade.

In an instant, Cerall stepped forwards, throwing his hand out and gripping onto Logan’s wrist that held his dagger. Spinning around, Cerall gave a straight kick into Logan’s stomach. Comparing the blow to those he had sustained from other unarmed foes was staggering, ignoring what Krekka had dealt to him. The solid kick winded Logan slightly as he took 14 damage.

Cerall let go of his quarry’s wrist to follow up with another spinning slash only to hit the air as Logan jumped back. Raising a hand Logan let out another round of Force at Cerall, hitting the Fighter in the chest for 12 damage. Unsurprisingly, Cerall only moved an inch from the blast.

Cerall kicked the floor again to follow Logan though the Spellthief already planned his next attack, tossing the sparring dagger at the Fighter. Cerall deflected the dagger easy enough with his shortsword, but in the instance of his vision being narrowed on the blade, the Spellthief had already half prepared their spell.

“Lightning Shot”, Logan chanted. His arm exploded in a dazzling display of darting azure arms. Crackling in the air they shot and punctured the Fighter countless times for 48 damage.

As Cerall shook all over in the barrage of electricity he brought up an axe in his off-hand, charging towards Logan ever still. Slashing out he just barely missed the Spellthief, but followed up with a horizontal slash and gashed Logan for another 26 damage.

Wanting to make some distance, Logan looked to the far end of the arena and mentally activated one of his rings. Logan was sucked into his centre with a shockwave of wind, exploding with his back against the far wall which shocked many of the audience.

Logan brought up both of his hands and let loose Force after Force at the distant Fighter. Balls of grey magic formed and slingshotted at Cerall, the first two hitting him clean in the shoulders for 12 damage each. Cerall quickly adapted as he found the rhythm of the attacks, jumping from side to side, ducking, and jumping over the attacks.

Cerall let off another large wave of power as he kicked forwards, activating presumably his last charge of Rush as he hurled himself towards the Spellthief. Logan waved his hand in front of him, curving slightly to encompass the wall behind him, “Gaia Wall”, he chanted as he also clicked with his other hand.

A large wall of rock shot upwards, digging up the mud and roots beneath, and attached to the chest-high walls of the arena. Cerall rotated his legs forward to slide to a halt before hitting the wall, though the vines did whip out to grip their next meal. Logan could see Cerall’s location on his minimap and raised his hand high.

“Necromantic Skystrike”, Logan spoke as he thrust his hand downwards. Spikes of dark energies formed in the air above Cerall, spinning and whirling into their sharp designs. Shooting to the ground, Cerall was impaled for 36 damage, the spikes melting into droplets as they flew around to heal Logan for 18.

Bringing his sword low Cerall called out, “Power Strike”, which caused his blade to become wreathed in a red mist. As Cerall slashed upwards he cut a large portion of the Gaia Wall apart, large portions of the mud shooting in all directions as the spell was cleaved in two.

Cerall’s blade glowed once again in red light as he slashed down into Logan for 29 damage. Glowing yellow the blade was brought upwards and cut into the Spellthief for a following 40. Dropping his axe, Cerall moved to two-hand his shortsword as the handle landed on his shoulder for a heavy overhand swing as it glowed blue.

“Fuck, that’s the combo!” Logan cursed in his head.

His eyes darted across the arena as he looked to the opposite end, thankfully, Logan was gifted enough seconds in Cerall’s attack that he was able to use another Dimensional Jaunt to warp away from the final strike. Cerall halted his attack before he landed with the wall behind where Logan was previously, the blue glow persisting for him to try again later.

Logan was down to 47/136 HP, Cerall at 70/186. It would take only two blows to find a victor, but Logan had the advantage at range and he would see it put to use. As he began to throw his hand out for another ranged barrage he remembered that Cerall had dodged before, and he didn’t want to waste spells.

Grabbing onto his periapt of mana with one hand and waving his hand across the floor with the other, Logan granted himself 2 MP and chanted, “Necromantic Wall”, which caused a torrent of waving shadows to appear in front of him, as if they were black flames.

Clicking his fingers alerted him to the space that Cerall found himself within, and so Logan let down another Necromantic Skystrike but followed it up quickly with a Lightning Shot through his own wall of darkness.

As the dark shards shot from above Cerall dodged them as he anticipated, but was unable to dodge the faster attack of electricity as it slammed into his frame for a heavy 48 damage.

“Fuck, nice shot!” Cerall called out through slightly jittery teeth.

Out of Logan’s sight, Cerall kicked up his old axe into his hand and chanted, “Axe Hurl”, to which the axe had a visible whirlwind appear around it. Tossing it horizontally towards Logan, the axe sang through the air and cut through the Necromantic Wall and into Logan’s chest, pushing him against the arena wall. Logan winced as the blade cut deep for 37 damage.

Cerall’s minimap dot started another run towards Logan’s position, but any hit from either party would spell the other’s end. Wanting to continue to spice up his attack pattern, and keep hold of his ranged advantage, Logan looked to the sky. “Dimensional Jaunt”, he thought, his body warping with another airblast.

Appearing in the air his body was aimed high with his head pointed to the floor. Spotting his foe easily Logan aimed his arm at Cerall and called out, “Force”, sending a surprise shockwave at the Fighter. Bashing into Cerall’s upper back caused the Fighter to falter to his knee with a fist halting his entire body falling down with it.

Logan was about to let loose another blast at Cerall until held up a hand and shouted, “I yield!”

Logan retracted the energies surging in his shoulder and rotated his body to land on his feet on the arena floor. The two men spent a few moments breathing heavily on their knees, the fight taking a lot of skills, spells, and blood. The crowd in the background added to the sounds of exhaustion with their hearty claps and cheers.

“Good showing, Cerall!”

“Nice blasts there, Logan!”

“Fooled him didn’t ya?!”

Punching the floor in either frustration or acceptance, Cerall stood up and ran a hand across his face and through his hair. With a heavy breath in he turned and spoke to Logan, “Damnit, I would have had you with my next attack. How many bloody teleports do you even have prepped?”

“Now that would be telling, but it was close indeed”, Logan replied, noting in his mind that he only had one left.

“Fair is fair, I don’t face casters often, mostly just people with spell rings. Yours hurt like hell all the same”, Cerall continued as he approached Logan to offer a hand to help him up.

Taking the hand Logan stood and faced the Fighter. “You’re only my second real match, all others were my marks. Best Fighter so far”, Logan informed with a smile.

“Oh, my ego rejoices”, Cerall replied in a cheeky sarcastic tone.

As they chatted during their return to the benches closest to the exit Logan spotted his experience reward for the fight, a pleasingly high 1,045 XP. He could level in just over a week if each fight took so many of his spells as this one did.

The losers in the betting department had already started their walk through the hallway out, while the winners gathered around the mage who was handling the bets. Two gold coins flew to Logan as his reward, passing the table he saw that Marcus was staying behind to get his own earnings.

Cerall wrapped an arm around Logan’s shoulder as he guided him through the hallway and spoke to him, “You will be a good addition to the guild, the others that we have are quite sedentary, always standing still and slinging from the back. Terrible dodgers.”

“Well I am a Grasp expert”, Logan informed with a chuckle.

“Damn, truly? Glad you didn’t get your mitts on me then.”

“I didn’t want to push my luck with your melee skills.”

“Nice foresight, one more combo and I could have thrown off a finisher.”

As the pair talked they eventually got back to the foyer room where the dominating presence of Cassius halted the discussion.

“Who won?” Cassius asked with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.

Cerall answered with a thumb pointed to Logan.

“Good, no beaten coins out of a potential partner”, Cassius continued with a laugh. “Cerall, mind leaving us to our meeting?”

Cerall gave a solid nod to Cassius who was obviously much higher up the chain of command. With a pat on Logan’s back, the Fighter made his way up the stairs to another room.

“Friendly guildies you have here”, Logan mentioned as he was handed a glass of water by the attendant Debrek.

“A bit antsy with any adventurer over rank 10 being asked to go on standby”, Cassius replied as he shrugged his shoulders with indifference.

“Oh?”

“You were 8, right? Maybe 9 or 10 by this point. The guild sent out correspondence with most of the higher-ranked adventurers to make sure they had the class power to fight off another invasion.”

“How long for?”

“Ends tomorrow, at least it should. No other enemy heroes have been found and the goblins are all but extinct in the local area.”

“Seems a little drastic”, Logan said off-hand.

“In Gauntlet’s eyes, the goblins started a war. They aren’t overly organised, so I doubt we’d have any reason to worry, but the monarchy is playing it safe with overaggressive action.”

As Cassius and Logan talked, Marcus finally made his way to the foyer with a look of victory on his face as he won his bet. Placing a hand onto his ally’s shoulder he began using Healer’s Caress.

“Nice to meet you again, Cassius”, the Devout said.

“You too, Marcus. We were just waiting for you, and discussing local events.”

“How much you get?” Logan asked as he turned his head to his friend.

“Same as you”, Marcus replied with a gleeful smile.

“Before you two drain my guildies dry, mind if we step into the recruiting room?” Cassius interrupted as he waved his hand to the hallway they had just come from.

“Sure, your attendant filled us in on a bit of the details already”, Logan replied as he nodded towards Debrek who gave a slight bow.

Returning a smile Cassius continued, “Good, though I may repeat a few things he said.”

Walking in a trio, the group made their way through a door within the hallway they had only just come from. Entering the first room, which had a plaque on the door that read “Interviews” in the middle, the group found themselves in a modest seating room.

A square table was placed in the middle of the room, a clean dark-brown wood that was topped with some documents and folders. Three sides of the table had three chairs each, with the last side only holding two. With how the documents were laid out it was obvious the two-chaired side was for the interviewers.

In the corners of the wall that held the door were two floating rocks, one had icy-blue veins across it whereas the other had hot-red veins. Pulsating, the blue rock let off a cool wind which caused the room to be quite pleasant. The red rock instead let off a calming glow that seemed to fill the room with waves of light, though strangely it did not blind anyone to look directly at it.

Cassius moved to one of the chairs on the double side, placing his coat over the backrest and taking his sword off his belt to place against a table leg. Logan and Marcus did similarly, Logan taking his coat off and placing it on his chair, whereas Marcus unbuttoned his robe to reveal his tunic and trousers underneath. The cool air caressed their arms and neck, applying a soothing sensation.

“Ok, we’ll start with the introductory explanation, you two haven’t looked into guilds before this point. Correct?” Cassius spoke as he opened up a book.

The pair shook their heads, leading to a long explanation by Cassius. Marcus used Healer’s Caress when he could during the meeting to bring Logan back to max HP.

“First off, a guild is a group of adventurers or craftspeople. Ours is mostly full of adventurers that take on any quest that suits them. When in our guild you will be treated as secondary family, akin to aunts, uncles, and cousins. We do not enforce anything if your family is in danger, or have an event with such. Blood is thicker than friendship to most. Following that ideology, if a guildie is in trouble we grant aid. If your family is in danger, we grant it further.”

Logan held up his hand to ask a question to which Cassius halted his explanation, “So, for example, if my family’s town was under attack, I could ask the guild to join me in a quest to go save the town?”

“Yes. Though they would expect payment if it were harassed by monsters, we’d gladly drop mundane activities to help.”

“That means Kreya is guildless”, Logan thought to himself.

“All of our guildies have their information checked, and we do not accept anyone under the 7-day death timer. We have only had two instances of traitors in our midst, over the sixty-eight members we hold. If you are a traitor, it is our duty to apprehend you as we unknowingly aided your lawless actions.”

Handing out two sheets of paper to Logan and Marcus, Cassius continued, “We own an alchemist shop, blacksmith, and enchantry. Guildies who shop at these locales get a 5% discount and no upcharge due to recent events. If you provide materials you get a further 5% discount.”

Logan remembered that an enchantry was a business suited to making trinkets or granting magical bonuses to already made items. It was also used to recharge magical items that had a certain number of charges, though he had yet to encounter those.

“The taxes of our guild are 20% of each completed quest, this encompasses both adventuring hall quests and hunter marks. Your tax is cut off at 2 silver per mission, and no more than 20 silver per month. Taxes go towards our permit costs, staff payment, and general maintenance, alongside any other costs. With our coffers, we also grant loans to guildies based on their time spent with us at a 0.5% increase per month not paid back.”

“Debrek did mention the tax.”

“He most likely mentioned our permits then. We hold a tier 2 tome permit, and a GH permit. These allow us to share the use of tomes within the grounds around second-level spells and beginner skills. You may also use skills and spells at your leisure within our grounds, ignoring capital laws. Though we will require reimbursement if you damage anything outside of the training grounds.”

“Is it free reading? Do guildies ask for payment to use their tomes?” Logan asked.

“We mostly place any used tome within our bookshelves for others to use. I haven’t heard of any guildies asking for payment. The better prepared we are, the better suited we are to helping one another.”

Logan nodded and motioned his hand to allow Cassius to continue.

“Outside of what I mentioned, your signet will have our guild symbol applied to the back. It is of a radiant light hitting a sword, representing Lightbeam. If you do decide to sign on with us, our contract does have a two-year service, after which you can stay as long as you like or leave as you wish.”

“So, we are forced to stay for two years?” Marcus queried.

“It is a common trait for guild contracts. It stops people abusing guild services for themselves, and makes sure their tax covers most of the help they gain.”

“What about death insurance?” Logan asked.

“We offer that too, same as a loan. You can tick that box on the contract or at a later date. If we can retrieve your body we will revive you and you can pay us the fees needed for revival, or with time if you need it.”

“Do you know how a guild would interact with the Magi’s Tower association?” Logan pushed.

Cassius rubbed his chin as his face took on thinking wrinkles, “The MT follows a lot of guild guidelines. As such you cannot be in a guild and the MT. That is one of the reasons I invited you. The MT likes to snatch up every mage they can.”

“A shame. I was interested in furthering my knowledge of teleportation magic. I wish to become an expert in that category”, Logan informed.

“Teleportation. Hmm. Sorry to say, but I don’t believe we have anyone like that in the guild. Maybe Woevenk, our hero leader, would know more since he had the aid of portals to invade the demon realm. However, he is currently still there. If you waited for his return I am sure he could at least ask Hero Zeronax for you.”

“The Sorcerer hero? He was rank 53, close to what I was informed of being a requirement for what I need.”

“Fighting demons for over thirteen months is surely enough to have increased all of the hero’s ranks. When they return I have no doubt that Woevenk has upgraded from 56 to 60.”

“I take it we would not be disallowed to talk with other guilds or the MT if we were in your guild?” Logan asked.

“Discussions, and even aiding, are allowed. You can just only join one guild.” Cassius replied. Pulling out two more sheets of paper he handed them to the pair, “This is the contract if you wish to go over it. Do you have any other questions?”

As Logan took the contract in his hand a new window appeared next to it. “You have been invited to join the Lightbeam guild. You will suffer a 20% reduction in quest payments (maximum 2 silver, and 20 silver per month), as well as a 20% reduction in all experience rewards (no maximum set). Do you wish to join? Yes / No.”

Logan’s eyes went wide as he stared at the space next to the contract. “20% less experience? Why? Avanarians don’t have a concept of XP. Was this a mistake?” he thought to himself.

“Cassius, do you also require us to pay any other tax outside of coins?” Logan asked aloud, trying to not make his eye movements too erratic from the window that only he could see.

“Any other tax? No? Just the fifth of your quest payments. We don’t ask for anything from what you craft or earn during missions. The leader of your missions, if they are a guild member, may ask for a specific item from a dungeon at times”, Cassius responded as he thought hard about his answer.

“System, can you remove this 20% XP cost?” Logan asked in his head.

“We cannot affect any other guild’s settings, Logan. If you were a leader we could help you change them”, the voice in his head responded.

“Fuck. Was it set because of their money tax? Do they have a guild coffer for the experience tax?” Logan mulled.

“We believe that is the case, Logan. Since NPCs do not have a solid grasp of experience it is possible they have this number stored but have not accessed it. There is also the possibility that another PC implemented this, or perhaps the hero found a way to do such. The latter has a low chance of being correct, however”, the System responded.

“The MT have a similar monetary upfront cost, plus rooms and using their items. Does that mean they also have an experience tax? Even if they grant me a new road to teleportation, this will exponentially slow my progress.”

“Everything alright, Logan?” Marcus asked as he turned to his friend.

Snapping out of his train of thought, Logan looked to Marcus, “Huh? Yeah, just reading and thinking on it.”

“If you wish, with the explanation I have given to you, you may come back another day with an answer”, Cassius interrupted.

“Thanks. I think we will do that”, Logan replied with a sigh.

Placing the contract and sheets of paper on the table caused Marcus to copy the Spellthief’s actions. Standing up from the table the trio shook hands.

“I may be busy in the coming days, so you can set up another meeting with me through Debrek. I hope you decide to join us soon”, Cassius announced with a smile.

Marcus had a slight look of confusion on his face, though he guessed that Logan still wanted to explore his options. Saying their farewells, the pair left the guild building to the streets outside. Logan stretched tall as the new information granted to him went wild in his head.

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