Chapter 3

Exiting the portal, we found ourselves in a large white room. Not quite Matrix vibes, as the room appeared to be about 30’x30’ and made out of some sort of white stone including the floor, but the similarities were there. The only distinguishing feature on any of the walls was an open doorway that appeared to go to a grassy area, but that was all we could tell.

The only other things in the room were our Weapons, floating at roughly shoulder height for each of us, in between ourselves and the doorway. Walking up to my hammer, I tentatively reached out but was able to grab its handle. Once I did, some basic information made itself known to me, that I could check my Status and access my Inventory. I took a quick glance, but my Inventory was empty as of right now. I’m sure that would be addressed soon enough, but not just yet.

Deciding to wait just a minute on my other ability right now, I took the time to look over my Weapon while my companions walked over to grab their own. It was a beautifully crafted warhammer. Maybe two and a half feet from end to end, didn’t seem to weigh much more than most good-sized swords, if any. It was terribly unbalanced, with all the weight at the head of the Weapon, but it was a freaking hammer so that was to be expected. The hammer head itself had two faces; one of them your traditional blunt hammer face maybe two inches in diameter, the other being a wicked-looking four inch spike that counterbalanced the hammer face so at least it shouldn’t roll in my hand. The head looked to have been made from a single piece of metal, which would’ve been well beyond my own smithing capabilities, assuming I had ever even tried to create a warhammer myself. I couldn’t even tell how the head was locked to the haft other than ‘magic’, but it appeared to be very sturdy so I’d just have to trust in it even though it confused me. A full six inches of the haft were leather-wrapped to make a comfortable handle, one that felt grippy enough that I didn’t need to worry about the hammer slipping from my hands, but without going too far and feeling tacky or sticky. The handle portion was big enough that I could use two hands to wield my hammer if I desired, which should give me more power on the swings where I do.

Looking around to see the others looking at their weapons with just as much awe as I’d felt, I saw that all of their Weapons appeared to be roughly the same quality as mine. All appeared to be handmade, and all were beautiful.

Deciding now was as good a time as any, I checked my Status next. Another window opened in the corner of my eye, giving me some basic information:

Sean “Kraken” Farris

Hammerman: Level 1 (0/1000)

Title: N/A

Status: N/A

Attributes:

Strength: 5

Endurance: 6

Agility: 5

Speed: 5

Intelligence: 7

Health: 18

Mana: 1

Skills:

Warhammer: Level 1

Equipment:

Skullcrusher

Money: 0

Inventory: 0/100

Closing my Status window, everything seemed pretty basic in terms of what I was starting out with.

I waited another couple of minutes for my companions to finish checking their own stats, and we all seemed to be in the same ballpark and fairly average-ish. None of the others had any stats above a 6, with Ronin being the strongest at a 6, me having the most endurance, and Hurricane being the fastest and most agile. Ronin was officially designated as a Swordsman, Hurricane was an Archer, and Tempest ended up appropriately being a Lightning Mage. The only spell he had at this point was a basic Shock spell, but it seemed to be somewhat versatile in that it cost him only a single point of mana to cast (he had 6 to start with), and was able to be cast both from range and also by touch through his staff. Our speculation was that it might do slightly more damage that way, since you’d also be getting whatever damage was done from hitting the enemy with the staff itself over and above the charge of electricity. Of course, the flip side is he’d be closer to the action and thus be in more danger, so there was a pretty obvious tradeoff. Hurricane ended up with a small quiver with maybe a dozen arrows in it, and didn’t appear to have any way to obtain more just yet.

Now that we were fully geared up, we walked out of what we thought of as the staging room, and ended up in a large grassy field. Nothing grew above shin-high, but when we turned around to get our bearings the staging room was completely gone, with just more open field back in that direction. Knowing we were stuck here until we cleared the level, we started heading towards the single tall tree visible in the distance. From what had been leaked online, this grassy dungeon was for centipedes, and the “exit” and destination was located by the tall tree. I was thankful that whoever created these dungeons placed a landmark like that, because everything else was pretty indistinguishable and we could’ve wandered around for days without it.

Setting off, we started traveling in something at least approaching a formation. Ronin and I spread out in front while Hurricane and Tempest traveled in between and slightly behind us, so that when we came across something Ronin and I would be the primary targets. This wasn’t a video game with a respawn feature, it was truly life and death, so we remained cautious and on guard. It only took a few minutes before we encountered our first opponents. Chewing on some sort of small bushes that were barely taller than the surrounding grass were six giant centipedes. They were about 2 feet tall, so we could see about half of them sticking out above the grass. They were long too, all being at least as long as Ronin’s 6’4”. The centipedes didn’t seem to have noticed us yet, which is good cause we were still a fair distance away, maybe 50 yards or so.

Tempest’s spell didn’t seem to have a range attached to it other than line of sight, so we figured we’d try and have him hit one of the caterpillars to see if we could split them up. It didn’t work out quite that way. While Tempest did hit one of the caterpillars, not only did it survive the Shock but all 6 turned towards us and started rushing towards us as fast as their little legs could go ... and that was quite a bit faster than I’d expected. Tempest hit the same caterpillar with another Shock shortly before it got to us and it at least slumped down and appeared to be dead, so it looked like he could kill them if he managed to hit them twice. Hurricane started shooting as soon as she felt they were in her range. Her first shot glanced off the caterpillar’s hardened shell while the second did penetrate the top of the caterpillar and slowed it down a little bit.

At that point the 4 healthy caterpillars reached our line, trying to blow past us to get to Tempest. I smashed one in the side of the head with an underhanded swing, and the thing flipped off to the side obviously dead. I moved towards a second one trying to intercept it, and swung down with my warhammer and hit it right where another creature would have a spine. At the same time, Tempest thrust his staff out and hit the caterpillar in the face, releasing another Shock. Between the two attacks, that bug also stopped in its tracks and died. Looking over to see what happened with the remaining three bugs (the two remaining healthy ones and the one that Hurricane tagged with an arrow), two of them were already dead, with the remaining bug getting cut down before I had a chance to move to help. It looked like Hurricane got one in the head with an arrow a couple of yards before it got to her, while Ronin cut up the other two.