Chapter 10

Since I was about to do a run with David’s team, the terrible Trio took the bus to Nancy’s Gym and home again.

Later that night. the girls crashed through the front door while I watched the Blackhawks about to get knocked out of the playoffs.

Tired from a hard practice session, the shower warmed up while Nat waited impatiently with a towel over her shoulder. Kate headed to the kitchen to warm up food, and Jude crashed on the floor, not even trying to move.

No complaints, just three exhausted young ladies.

“Was Nancy mean to you?”

“She wasn’t there, some other old asshole thought we weren’t trying hard enough,” Jude mumbled barely loud enough for me to hear.

Cracking an eye open from my chair across from me, she balefully accused, “let me guess, you didn’t even work up a sweat today.”

“I’ll tell you, after you all had showers and some food.”

‘I knew it.’ I thought I heard.

“You gave away all our secrets,” Nat complained after my briefing.

“The coffee cups I took as a reward. The safe, they would have probably looked for anyway, after finding the key,” I defended. “In the end, we became closer as a team. I felt the tradeoff of information was worth it. Besides, how long do you think that the coffee cup trick will be a secret?”

“He’s right, Nat. But he still hasn’t said how easy it was with his new team,” Jude complained.

“We haven’t discussed it yet, but we will probably go to the level three, after clearing two next time.”

“Admit it, it was easy.”

“It was easy,” I gave in.

“HAH! I knew it.”

“Jude, they had six Jasons on one team. What did you expect?” Kate the peacemaker, struck again.

“Edna is better than I am.” I added for effect.

“No shit?”

“She is.”

Fighting two-foot tall ants was a pain in the back, literally. My spike got a full workout, along with countless thrusts swings and chops. The hammer end worked better than the blade, which had a smaller chance of glancing off the shiny armor of the huge carpenter ants. The bosses were no harder to kill for any of us than the regular types. At least that is what it felt like.

At one point I felt like I was playing golf with the way those things flew of my hammer end. The ant warrens were eight-foot tall in most places. Where the egg chamber was supposed to be only resided the a few dozen royal guards. All five of us charged in and engaged them. Only a few of the boss ants felt that they had enough room to shoot. Those shots missed.

David prepped me. As long as you didn’t give them time or distance to set up for a spit, which was very similar to that of the shots the Fire Mages shot from their staffs, the royal guards posed little danger outside of being tougher and 50% larger.

I agreed with the rest of them that passing on and going down to the next floor wasn’t worth fighting a bunch of two-foot-tall creatures throwing fire, unless we all were equipped with hockey sticks or golf clubs. It was even worse for David, since he had a pair of fifteen-inch blades. Edna’s twenty-one inch short swords weren’t much better than his daggers for reaching the short giant insects, but she seemed to have little difficulty killing everything in reach.

83 experience each sucked for the aggravation. We all agreed in white room that David needed to find us a second Indigo or a Violet Portal with larger foes. Without poison.

That they all were happy was an understatement. Each of them Leveled to 2. Following my example, they all put two points in their weapons. Except for Edna, hers went in Agility and Endurance. By my recommendation.

That night while getting my massage from an over tired Jude, more of her drawing lines with her fingers on my back, I froze.

Jason Blakely. Axeman: Level 3 (638/3500)

Title: Orc Slayer(White), Zombie Slayer(White), Earth’s First Gate Walker(Gold).

Status: N/A

Points 3

Strength: 7

Force Multiplier: 1

Agility:7

Endurance: 8

Pain resistance: 1

Perseverance: 1

Speed: 7

Intelligence: 7

Health: 44/44

Mana: 3

Skills:

War Axe: Level 3

Equipment:

Krell’s Rune Axe

Locked.

Money: 4249 silver

Inventory: 3/100

“Jase? What’s up?”

“I got a new title,” I answered distractedly.

Clicking on the gold title: First person from the Planet Earth to clear at least one level from three different colored Gates, including one Green or higher, leading to Dungeon World.

Bonuses:

Ability to enter in any Gate, without a time or place restriction.

3 Stat points.

A non-transferable credit for a one-time purchase of anything from the Store of less than 10,001 silver.

“Are you okay?” I heard serious concern from Jude. She had stopped playing around and waited for my response.

“I think I need to keep this one a secret for now,” I replied, after some thought. ‘Earth’s First’, was dangerous and would let anyone know that I had access to a higher Portal than I should have. The name Dungeon World could not be known outside of a few militaries. If that.

I was literally carrying a bomb with me now.

“What is it?”

“A title that will get me arrested.”

“We won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m not too worried about that. Still, I’m going to hold on to it for now.”

“Okay.”

“Let me up please. I’ll be in my office for a while.”

We were correct in our assumption that five thousand was the break point for the decent items to start showing themselves in the Portal Store. First tier, secondary Skills abounded, hundreds of them.

Expected ones, like sharpness and armor piercing.

7500s had armors. Jacket, or pants only. Physical Damage Reduction of a 3 but it would be tailored to suit at time of purchase. The description of those armors was fantasy-like; the example gave a bikini top which gave the same protection as a full combat vest with Kevlar sleeves. The pants description was the same, with bikini bottoms giving the same overall protection as combat armor; waist to boot top. Combat boots and gloves sets with a DR (Damage reduction) of 3 were also customizable at the time of purchase. They had to be worn on top of all other clothes though.

Superman Underoos underwear worn outside of your tights, type.

10000 both had better versions of the armor with a DR of 4. They also included accessories.

Starting at 7500. Earrings, necklaces and rings gave an extra DR of 1 to a specific body part. Head, groin, hands, hips, were examples.

At 10K points, resistance rings appeared. Those caught my attention; Resistance to: Charm, Fire, Cold, Poison, Curse and the like were all listed.

Standalone Skills, like Mage Armor and Cure Poison; Basic, began at 7500 points and increased from there along with secondary Skill increase books. Choosing FireStaff as a benchmark, its description was exactly as Natalie read off. The individual stat increases, like the Marble I gave to Jude, were also 7500. Weapon upgrade to a Rune Weapon was 7500 and so too was Unlock Rune weapon.

I remembered that my Axe was marked Locked, I noted that one right away!

10k silver had a huge list of Skills and addons. Perseverance was listed under Endurance. So too was Damage Resistance and Kate’s Bless. Main Weapon Skill upgrade was listed, when I clicked on that item for a description, it maxed out at Level 4.

Somehow, I knew that more expensive Weapon upgrades would be needed for progression to five and above, costing a great deal of silver to purchase.

I kept making notes, pages and pages of them.

Brass Lock-Box showed its beautiful head at 10k. Sighing aloud, I realized a Gold Lock-Box to match my Key, was probably 25k or more.

“Jase, it’s one o’clock. How late will you be up?”

“Thanks.” I set the notepad aside and went to bed, lost in thought. As much as I liked the other choices, three stood above the rest. Unlocking my Axe was a sure win.

Another was a onetime use, single person, Portal escape necklace. The down side of that item was a broken weapon. But I would be alive. Nothing on the list said anything about repairing weapons.

The third was a spell. One of countless others that stood higher than the rest; Refraction.

Refraction: With a successful block by the Weapon of the Gate explorer, fifty percent of the damage blocked is reflected as damage to the attacker. 10000 Silver nuggets.

If I chose that one, I would need to spend some of my new points on Mana. Probably only one of the three.

I was over halfway to the 7500 needed to unlock my Axe. We weren’t all that close to diving into a dungeon that would cause my death. The others would die first. I know that if I did buy the lifesaver, it would not be me using it.

If I had it in my inventory or around my neck, how would I be able to get it to whoever was in life threatening danger in time? If I could get there and place the necklace around their neck, wouldn’t I be able to take care of whatever the danger was to begin with?

Sigh. What to do. What to do...

I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Friday, I settled down on my Project. This last week had been too busy for me. Losing time from work wasn’t too harsh on my work timetable, but I could not afford to repeat it too often. Getting a reminder popup, I UPS’d Paula a joke gift, of a fake ticket to a Carnival Cruise for Single twenty-five to thirty-year old professionals.

Her real gift was a spa treatment in the Royal Miami Hotel, thirty minutes away from her father’s house. She had mentioned more than once that she loved to get manicures, but hated having to talk to the people. As usual.

Her initial text was, ‘NOOOO! Paula was in tears on the other end of the IM, thinking that she had to go, since I already purchased the tickets. How she ever got a job in an office was beyond me.

My rows of laughing smiley faces cued her to the joke.

‘Tell me you bastard!’

I resent the Smilies. ‘Your real present will arrive sometime today.’

‘Not funny. You know I hate those things.’

‘That’s why I sent it.’ grin.

After that fun conversation, I decided: The spell; Refraction.

Not enough mana to learn.

I spent an available Attribute point on Mana. My Mana total increased by seven, the same amount as my intelligence score, to ten. With 10 Mana, I could now learn and cast Refraction.

Exactly ten Mana was needed. I could only cast it while wielding my Axe in both hands, I needed to chant, Refraction thrice for the Spell to activate.

Mages too, had to chant their spells thrice to cast them.

The girls returned from school and saw me sitting on the floor while holding my Axe in my lap. If they looked closely, they could see my Runes glowing.

Not that we could see each other’s Runes...

“What-cha doing Jase?”

“Timing my new spell. I want to see how long it lasts.”

“You can cast spells now?”

“What did you get?”

“Did you get that with the title you won’t tell us about?”

“Yes. Refraction and yes.”

“What’s it do?”

“Any successful block with my Axe gives the attacker feedback, I think it’s like an electric shock. The description says up to 50% feedback.”

“Cool, how much Mana does it cost to cast?” Nat jumped in.

“10.”

“Ten! I only have seventeen. How do you have ten Mana?” all three of them were paying attention, now.

“I started with 1 Mana, got 2 for Leveling twice and when I spent a point on Mana to increase it, it went up by my intelligence. Hence, ten total Mana.”

“You suck.”

Giving me the Evil-Eye, Kate demanded, “Jason, your title gave you a Skill point and a Skill. What the hell is your title?”

“I can’t tell you. If anyone finds out, I will be locked up.”

“It can’t be that bad. You are the best adventurer ever.” Score one for Natalie, my number one fan.

“Yes, it can. Take your jackets off, I have something to show you.”

Once seated at the kitchen table, I passed around the notes I took on the store.