Nova terra kingbreaker t.., p.52
Nova Terra: Kingbreaker (The Titan Series Book 3), page 52
Call the Stone Legion (Locked)
Just as Thorn was about to open the new abilities granted by his [Bearer of the Stone Heart] title, the door to his room opened a crack, and his aunt poked her head in. Seeing that he was awake, she opened the door fully. Velin, Mina, Jorge, Corvo, Oberlin, and Baxby followed Athena into the room. Feeling slightly awkward from the intense stares being leveled at him, Thorn smiled weakly and waved.
“How are you feeling, bud?” Athena sat down next to him, taking his massive hand in hers. “You’ve been out for a couple of days, but Eve said you were going to be fine.”
Opening his mouth, Thorn remembered that he could no longer speak and his shoulders slumped. Mina, assuming that he was feeling bad, patted him on the shoulder.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. You did great. That crazy attack killed the boss, and we beat the dungeon! We got some really nice rewards, too. Everyone got gear and tokens. Some people even got a master level token, which is nuts. It was scary for a moment, but you really pulled us through.”
“Scary doesn’t cover the half of it.” Jorge shuddered, remembering the void tears on the sixth platform.
“You did great, too.” Mina flashed a smile at the Dwarf. His willingness to risk himself for her had made her really happy.
Athena, who was watching Thorn carefully, saw that he was still looking a bit off, so after a few minutes she herded everyone out of the room, leaving Velin and Thorn facing each other. Just as Corvo was about to exit, Velin called him back.
“Can you wait a second, Corvo?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Sure.” Walking back over, Corvo flopped down in one of Thorn’s extra large chairs. Taking the seat next to him, Velin looked at Thorn seriously.
“Thorn, what is wrong?”
“---.” Opening his mouth and speaking with no sound, Thorn pointed to his mouth. Unable to hear anything, Velin frowned and Corvo leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
“Mina said that you grabbed the stone heart, which disrupted the spell?”
Nodding, Thorn pantomimed eating it and swallowing. At first, Velin did not understand what he was trying to communicate, but once Corvo erupted into laughter it dawned on her what Thorn meant and her eyes widened.
“You ate it?!”
“Hahaha.” Corvo nearly fell from his chair as he laughed.
Thorn rubbed his nose and glanced at his fellow avatar in annoyance. Catching Velin’s incredulous look, his expression morphed into sheepishness. Shrugging, he began to share his notification windows, allowing both Corvo and Velin to catch up on what was going on with him.
“Wow. That is crazy. I’ve seen a lot of things, but this is entirely new.” Corvo leaned back in his chair, a speculative look on his face. “I’ve seen quests that give some pretty serious disadvantages until you can clear them, but I have never seen anything this bad. No talking? Sheesh. Well, that’s what you get for eating a cursed stone heart.” It was obvious that Corvo felt no sympathy. “I mean, it was the central target of a World Quest. What on earth made you think that you could eat it? You know what, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Hey, cut it out. Thorn saved everyone. If he hadn’t eaten the heart, the whole Titan squad would be cursed.” Velin glared at Corvo.
“Haha, I know, it is just really funny.” The avatar held up his hands in surrender.
“Quiet, you are not helping. Thorn, you did a great job with this quest. There is no way we would have won without you. Even eating the stone heart. It certainly was effective, though I don’t know that I’d recommend it as a normal strategy. Now we just need to solve this curse. Tell me, can you use your messaging application?”
Shaking his head, Thorn gestured to Velin, made the calling hand gesture, and pointed to himself.
“We can call you? Interesting. Let’s try that.” Picking up on what Thorn was trying to get across, Corvo called Thorn through the messaging application.
Hearing the ring, Thorn answered the message, but was still unable to talk. After a few more tests, it was determined that Thorn could still get messages but was unable to respond to them in any way. The only option that Thorn could think of was to get a pen and paper and write out his questions and answers.
Holding up the piece of paper he had just written on, Thorn looked questioningly at Velin.
“What happened? Oh, you mean after the fight?” Velin straightened up and cleared her throat. Corvo looked at Thorn and rolled his eyes, earning himself a dirty look. “To get the full picture, we need to go back to the first fight that Ragnarok had with Courdum. From our sources, we learned that Sylith was not actually part of the group that entered the first time. Instead, it was Raeth who led the initial group.
“We should have expected this, as it is standard practice for Ragnarok to send a scouting party into every boss fight. They do this so they can get a sense for the fight and sniff out any surprises. Anyway, they had to fight all nine of the Stone Guardians by themselves which killed most of them. Raeth fell in the second phase, which is why he wasn’t part of the group that Sylith led, and only three Silver Guard were still alive when the stone heart spell went off.
“When they came out of the fight, they had the same curse that you do. All abilities locked. Though, they can still talk.” Velin shot Thorn a glance. “Presumably because they did not eat the stone heart. Regardless, Sylith must have figured out that they could avoid the fight if they waited for the platforms to fill up. We’re still not entirely sure how they avoided getting dragged into the fight, but they were able to log out after it started.”
His eyes lighting up, Thorn remembered the silver flash he had seen falling from the central platform. Now that Velin was mentioning it the pieces fell into place. Using his fingers to try and illustrate what had happened, he soon got frustrated and just wrote out a brief description. “Ragnarok only sent one member of their team forward to start the fight,” he wrote, “keeping everyone else out of combat. Then, before Courdum the Stone King could make it onto their platform, that player jumped off the platform to his death. This kept everyone else out of combat until the third phase started and Courdum started to cast, allowing them to log out.”
“What a nasty plan.” Corvo grimaced. “Honestly, though, this is already the best possible outcome. If you had not, uh, disposed of the stone heart, the whole Titan squad would be cursed. Along with the teams from Eastern Alliance, Mirage, and the Tower of Immortals. Can you imagine that? Four of the best teams from top guilds suddenly becoming next to useless because their abilities are completely locked? Ragnarok would have gained a huge advantage. Especially since they could come in and actually try to beat the quest once you all died. Nasty.”
“Thankfully, you did something about it.” Velin allowed a small smile to curl the edges of her lips as she thought about it. “Think about how upset Sylith must be right now. On top of losing the rewards from the quest, Ragnarok has been blacklisted by Eastern Alliance and some of the other top guilds. They probably have a war on their hands.”
There was no doubt that the Heavenly Silver Dragon Knight must be livid. Things had really seemed to be going his way only for his plan to be thwarted at the last pass. Thorn could not deny that he was happy to have finally gotten one over on the leader of Ragnarok. Scribbling another question, he looked at Velin curiously.
“That is the best part. So, you know how the announcement for the Stone Dwarves said that they dislike outsiders? Well, it turns out that is not even close. They are really distrustful. As soon as Courdum died and you ate the heart, we got a bunch of notifications announcing all of these changes. One of them was that the Dwarves were turning over the fortresses to the guilds who were part of the final boss fight.
“Since Ragnarok left before the fight, they currently have zero reputation with the Stone Dwarves, and were kicked out of the fortress. We were the only other guild who made it through the forge district, and we are considered friendly thanks to you dropping a rock on Courdum’s head, so they gave the fortress to us. They don’t want to have to deal with outsiders, so they are leaving that to us.”
“Sylith is in major trouble.” Corvo could not help but jump in. “He not only lost the World Quest, but he lost the fortress as well. This means that Ragnarok has no base in the Deepworld and that every member of their guild has to grind their own reputation up to friendly before the Stone Dwarves will give them the time of day. Add to that the guild war that will probably erupt soon, and Ragnarok is in a really rough place.”
Grinning, Thorn nodded. Things really could not have turned out better. Still, reality quickly pulled him back to the ground. No matter how happy he was that Sylith had lost this round, he was still stuck with no voice and no abilities.
Corvo, ever observant, caught the change in his expression and brought the conversation back around.
“So, you don’t have access to any of your abilities? Nothing? No passives or anything?”
Thorn nodded. While his titles seemed to still be active, anything that was deemed an ability was completely locked down.
“Whew, that is an annoying curse. And it locks down your ability to communicate. Crazy. You might want to find a way to break that soon.”
Her eyes flickering, Velin pulled out her notebook and began to flip through the pages. Finding the spot she was looking for, she flipped the book around and pointed to a drawing of a large tree. Underneath it were copious notes, and the more Thorn read, the higher his eyebrows rose. Finishing the page, Thorn looked up to meet Velin’s golden eyes. For the first time in a while, Thorn saw a full blown smile spread across her face as she spoke.
“I have a plan.”
End
Afterword
I really appreciate the time you have spent with me in Nova Terra. I am working on Book Five right now and cannot wait to share it with you. Before I tell you how to get a peek at what that looks like, please spend a few moments and leave me a review. Reviews are so important to indie writers, like me. Knowing that you are out there, reading and thinking about Nova Terra, is what keeps me writing.
Now for the good stuff. After you leave a review, head on over to my Patreon to learn how you can see up to 7,500 words per week of brand new material. There are lots of different levels of participation, all with various cool benefits, including being first to read new stuff, guiding the story line and character development, having a character named after you – lots of possibilities. There are a lot of really cool things coming this year and next in the world of Nova Terra and the best way to get involved is to join us on Patreon.
I’m a Monday – Friday member of the #5amWritersClub on Twitter, so if I sleep in, you have my permission to send me disappointed gifs. I’ve been fortunate to participate in panels at various conferences, so please sign up for my Patreon and/or follow me on Facebook to get announcements of new material and where I am speaking. I’d love to meet you and hear your thoughts about Nova Terra, writing, and world building in general.
www.patreon.com/SethRing
www.twitter.com/SethRing
www.sethring.com
If you are interested in reading more GameLit or learning more about this or related genres like LitRPG, there are a couple cool communities on Facebook where you can find new books and get recommendations for old books.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to my friends and family who encouraged and supported me on this wonderful journey.
Thank you to my Patrons, who make my writing possible.
A special thank you to the following Patrons who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in funding this story:
Allen burger
Kyle Gravelle
Alyssa
Kyle J Smith
Barry Rucker
Matthew Bennett
Berzerker
Max Lambon
Brandon Johnson
Monkeyking331
Dominic Pernicone
Patrick Garrett
Eric Gilbert
Quintin
James A Ring
Robert Zelensky
Jermey Anselmi
Tricky402
Seth Ring, Nova Terra: Kingbreaker (The Titan Series Book 3)
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Just as Thorn was about to open the new abilities granted by his [Bearer of the Stone Heart] title, the door to his room opened a crack, and his aunt poked her head in. Seeing that he was awake, she opened the door fully. Velin, Mina, Jorge, Corvo, Oberlin, and Baxby followed Athena into the room. Feeling slightly awkward from the intense stares being leveled at him, Thorn smiled weakly and waved.
“How are you feeling, bud?” Athena sat down next to him, taking his massive hand in hers. “You’ve been out for a couple of days, but Eve said you were going to be fine.”
Opening his mouth, Thorn remembered that he could no longer speak and his shoulders slumped. Mina, assuming that he was feeling bad, patted him on the shoulder.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. You did great. That crazy attack killed the boss, and we beat the dungeon! We got some really nice rewards, too. Everyone got gear and tokens. Some people even got a master level token, which is nuts. It was scary for a moment, but you really pulled us through.”
“Scary doesn’t cover the half of it.” Jorge shuddered, remembering the void tears on the sixth platform.
“You did great, too.” Mina flashed a smile at the Dwarf. His willingness to risk himself for her had made her really happy.
Athena, who was watching Thorn carefully, saw that he was still looking a bit off, so after a few minutes she herded everyone out of the room, leaving Velin and Thorn facing each other. Just as Corvo was about to exit, Velin called him back.
“Can you wait a second, Corvo?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. Sure.” Walking back over, Corvo flopped down in one of Thorn’s extra large chairs. Taking the seat next to him, Velin looked at Thorn seriously.
“Thorn, what is wrong?”
“---.” Opening his mouth and speaking with no sound, Thorn pointed to his mouth. Unable to hear anything, Velin frowned and Corvo leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
“Mina said that you grabbed the stone heart, which disrupted the spell?”
Nodding, Thorn pantomimed eating it and swallowing. At first, Velin did not understand what he was trying to communicate, but once Corvo erupted into laughter it dawned on her what Thorn meant and her eyes widened.
“You ate it?!”
“Hahaha.” Corvo nearly fell from his chair as he laughed.
Thorn rubbed his nose and glanced at his fellow avatar in annoyance. Catching Velin’s incredulous look, his expression morphed into sheepishness. Shrugging, he began to share his notification windows, allowing both Corvo and Velin to catch up on what was going on with him.
“Wow. That is crazy. I’ve seen a lot of things, but this is entirely new.” Corvo leaned back in his chair, a speculative look on his face. “I’ve seen quests that give some pretty serious disadvantages until you can clear them, but I have never seen anything this bad. No talking? Sheesh. Well, that’s what you get for eating a cursed stone heart.” It was obvious that Corvo felt no sympathy. “I mean, it was the central target of a World Quest. What on earth made you think that you could eat it? You know what, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Hey, cut it out. Thorn saved everyone. If he hadn’t eaten the heart, the whole Titan squad would be cursed.” Velin glared at Corvo.
“Haha, I know, it is just really funny.” The avatar held up his hands in surrender.
“Quiet, you are not helping. Thorn, you did a great job with this quest. There is no way we would have won without you. Even eating the stone heart. It certainly was effective, though I don’t know that I’d recommend it as a normal strategy. Now we just need to solve this curse. Tell me, can you use your messaging application?”
Shaking his head, Thorn gestured to Velin, made the calling hand gesture, and pointed to himself.
“We can call you? Interesting. Let’s try that.” Picking up on what Thorn was trying to get across, Corvo called Thorn through the messaging application.
Hearing the ring, Thorn answered the message, but was still unable to talk. After a few more tests, it was determined that Thorn could still get messages but was unable to respond to them in any way. The only option that Thorn could think of was to get a pen and paper and write out his questions and answers.
Holding up the piece of paper he had just written on, Thorn looked questioningly at Velin.
“What happened? Oh, you mean after the fight?” Velin straightened up and cleared her throat. Corvo looked at Thorn and rolled his eyes, earning himself a dirty look. “To get the full picture, we need to go back to the first fight that Ragnarok had with Courdum. From our sources, we learned that Sylith was not actually part of the group that entered the first time. Instead, it was Raeth who led the initial group.
“We should have expected this, as it is standard practice for Ragnarok to send a scouting party into every boss fight. They do this so they can get a sense for the fight and sniff out any surprises. Anyway, they had to fight all nine of the Stone Guardians by themselves which killed most of them. Raeth fell in the second phase, which is why he wasn’t part of the group that Sylith led, and only three Silver Guard were still alive when the stone heart spell went off.
“When they came out of the fight, they had the same curse that you do. All abilities locked. Though, they can still talk.” Velin shot Thorn a glance. “Presumably because they did not eat the stone heart. Regardless, Sylith must have figured out that they could avoid the fight if they waited for the platforms to fill up. We’re still not entirely sure how they avoided getting dragged into the fight, but they were able to log out after it started.”
His eyes lighting up, Thorn remembered the silver flash he had seen falling from the central platform. Now that Velin was mentioning it the pieces fell into place. Using his fingers to try and illustrate what had happened, he soon got frustrated and just wrote out a brief description. “Ragnarok only sent one member of their team forward to start the fight,” he wrote, “keeping everyone else out of combat. Then, before Courdum the Stone King could make it onto their platform, that player jumped off the platform to his death. This kept everyone else out of combat until the third phase started and Courdum started to cast, allowing them to log out.”
“What a nasty plan.” Corvo grimaced. “Honestly, though, this is already the best possible outcome. If you had not, uh, disposed of the stone heart, the whole Titan squad would be cursed. Along with the teams from Eastern Alliance, Mirage, and the Tower of Immortals. Can you imagine that? Four of the best teams from top guilds suddenly becoming next to useless because their abilities are completely locked? Ragnarok would have gained a huge advantage. Especially since they could come in and actually try to beat the quest once you all died. Nasty.”
“Thankfully, you did something about it.” Velin allowed a small smile to curl the edges of her lips as she thought about it. “Think about how upset Sylith must be right now. On top of losing the rewards from the quest, Ragnarok has been blacklisted by Eastern Alliance and some of the other top guilds. They probably have a war on their hands.”
There was no doubt that the Heavenly Silver Dragon Knight must be livid. Things had really seemed to be going his way only for his plan to be thwarted at the last pass. Thorn could not deny that he was happy to have finally gotten one over on the leader of Ragnarok. Scribbling another question, he looked at Velin curiously.
“That is the best part. So, you know how the announcement for the Stone Dwarves said that they dislike outsiders? Well, it turns out that is not even close. They are really distrustful. As soon as Courdum died and you ate the heart, we got a bunch of notifications announcing all of these changes. One of them was that the Dwarves were turning over the fortresses to the guilds who were part of the final boss fight.
“Since Ragnarok left before the fight, they currently have zero reputation with the Stone Dwarves, and were kicked out of the fortress. We were the only other guild who made it through the forge district, and we are considered friendly thanks to you dropping a rock on Courdum’s head, so they gave the fortress to us. They don’t want to have to deal with outsiders, so they are leaving that to us.”
“Sylith is in major trouble.” Corvo could not help but jump in. “He not only lost the World Quest, but he lost the fortress as well. This means that Ragnarok has no base in the Deepworld and that every member of their guild has to grind their own reputation up to friendly before the Stone Dwarves will give them the time of day. Add to that the guild war that will probably erupt soon, and Ragnarok is in a really rough place.”
Grinning, Thorn nodded. Things really could not have turned out better. Still, reality quickly pulled him back to the ground. No matter how happy he was that Sylith had lost this round, he was still stuck with no voice and no abilities.
Corvo, ever observant, caught the change in his expression and brought the conversation back around.
“So, you don’t have access to any of your abilities? Nothing? No passives or anything?”
Thorn nodded. While his titles seemed to still be active, anything that was deemed an ability was completely locked down.
“Whew, that is an annoying curse. And it locks down your ability to communicate. Crazy. You might want to find a way to break that soon.”
Her eyes flickering, Velin pulled out her notebook and began to flip through the pages. Finding the spot she was looking for, she flipped the book around and pointed to a drawing of a large tree. Underneath it were copious notes, and the more Thorn read, the higher his eyebrows rose. Finishing the page, Thorn looked up to meet Velin’s golden eyes. For the first time in a while, Thorn saw a full blown smile spread across her face as she spoke.
“I have a plan.”
End
Afterword
I really appreciate the time you have spent with me in Nova Terra. I am working on Book Five right now and cannot wait to share it with you. Before I tell you how to get a peek at what that looks like, please spend a few moments and leave me a review. Reviews are so important to indie writers, like me. Knowing that you are out there, reading and thinking about Nova Terra, is what keeps me writing.
Now for the good stuff. After you leave a review, head on over to my Patreon to learn how you can see up to 7,500 words per week of brand new material. There are lots of different levels of participation, all with various cool benefits, including being first to read new stuff, guiding the story line and character development, having a character named after you – lots of possibilities. There are a lot of really cool things coming this year and next in the world of Nova Terra and the best way to get involved is to join us on Patreon.
I’m a Monday – Friday member of the #5amWritersClub on Twitter, so if I sleep in, you have my permission to send me disappointed gifs. I’ve been fortunate to participate in panels at various conferences, so please sign up for my Patreon and/or follow me on Facebook to get announcements of new material and where I am speaking. I’d love to meet you and hear your thoughts about Nova Terra, writing, and world building in general.
www.patreon.com/SethRing
www.twitter.com/SethRing
www.sethring.com
If you are interested in reading more GameLit or learning more about this or related genres like LitRPG, there are a couple cool communities on Facebook where you can find new books and get recommendations for old books.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to my friends and family who encouraged and supported me on this wonderful journey.
Thank you to my Patrons, who make my writing possible.
A special thank you to the following Patrons who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in funding this story:
Allen burger
Kyle Gravelle
Alyssa
Kyle J Smith
Barry Rucker
Matthew Bennett
Berzerker
Max Lambon
Brandon Johnson
Monkeyking331
Dominic Pernicone
Patrick Garrett
Eric Gilbert
Quintin
James A Ring
Robert Zelensky
Jermey Anselmi
Tricky402
Seth Ring, Nova Terra: Kingbreaker (The Titan Series Book 3)
