Book 2 Chapter 21: Cedric's Fight

Cedric

April 4, 1787, Realm Time, Kamianets Fortress, Paris

One of the things that often befuddled Cedric was why older people tended to blame teenagers for things beyond their control. Thus, he and Juniper had reached the perfect conclusion together, meaning to keep Cerkez's apparition a secret. After all, no harm was done, and if no one knew what happened, no one could scold them.

In the evening, Samuel the Samurai had arrived with a chopper, together with Aldric and the Juggernaut. The first started immediately reinforcing and enchanting the fortress walls and overall defenses. The Tatars and the Cossacks went out discreetly, because they were useless inside, and because Osman feared the enemy would send a division or two to cross the river and attack from the back.

Leaving the adults to their business, Cedric and Juniper snuck out in the middle of the night, using the cover of the woods and the river's valley. Their Stealth was undetectable as long as they had trees nearby, because they could merge with them, basically, for a limited time.

The sortie had a good motif. Simply by grabbing the staff, Cedric had leveled up thirteen levels, from fifty-four to sixty-seven, breaking into the third tier. And Juniper had broken into the first tier just by being near him. Logic dictated that the Cerkez man had been somebody of importance, and his words were to be taken seriously. Maybe they could find a good moment to kill the army leaders, as he had suggested, and become heroes in the process.

After exploring a bit, they figured out a bend in the river would be a safe spot for them and climbed into an oak, making do for a while. The night was still young, and they were too, and boredom comes fast when you're a teenager.

"They'll have to attack through the fords," Juniper said. "I'll prepare some raising runes beforehand, and sic their own dead on them."

Since showing his concern was counterproductive, Tristan swallowed his worries and let her go with a simple, "Take care." To kill time, he reviewed the notification and his stats.

You have stolen an Ancient Artifact from a foe that would have used it for great evil. MAIN TARGETS CLEARED: 6/10. Level up x 15.

Albeit its name has been lost to the ages, this artifact's properties have remained unchanged:

Its master gains access to any type of magic, as long as they don't have specific restrictions (like Necromancers' inability to use Healing magic, for instance).

The staff will amplify those of your stats that have a value of 100 or above by a factor of x2. The staff is indestructible, and if lost, it will return to its master if called upon.

The staff reduces Mana consumption and can use environmental Mana instead of yours.

How an ancient artifact knew what stats were was a mystery, but maybe the System was filling the blanks or interpreting things in its own terms. What mattered was that Cedric had two stats at a hundred: Strength and Arcane Power, and was not far from reaching it with three others: Constitution, Perception, and Nature Affinity. Cedric had invested only in what he considered important. A twenty in Int still meant he was twice as smart as the average person, and it was okay with him. On top of that, in war form, his stats were also enhanced. The staff and his species buff combined were the most OP thing Cedric had seen on the Realm.

Since he had tons of free points, if thirty-nine could be called a ton, he raised out all the three stats that were near a hundred using thirty-two attribute points. He added the remaining seven to Mana Affinity because he had a feeling magic was his thing now. Then, he reviewed the result with satisfaction.

Name: Cedric Beville

Age: 19

Species: Elf

Class: High Druid

Level: 67 (Third Tier)*

*As an Elder Species, your stats are no longer compared to a normal human being. Each point in your Mind and Magical stats is three times that of an average person. Body stats remain at the same value they had at their Second Tier. War Form raises your Body stats and lowers your Mental ones. Applies retroactively.

Stats:

Body

Strength: 100

Dexterity: 28

Constitution: 100

Agility: 23

Endurance: 70

Speed: 26

Mind

Intelligence: 20

Wisdom: 18

Perception: 100

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Knowledge: 18

Focus: 20

Willpower: 23

Magic

Arcane Power: 100

Nature Affinity: 100

Mana Affinity: 50

Mana Capacity: 70

Soul Resonance: 30

Humanity: 63

Skills:

Passives: System Interface / Universal Translator / Poison and Curses Immunity / Forest Master / Stealth Detection / Trap Detection.

Active: Healing / Mass Healing / Cleanse / Mass Cleanse / Smite.

The new ones made him giggle.

*Staff-related skills:

Fireball / Lightning Bolt / Force Field (self or/and target)/ Vine Bomb / Teleport / Rezz Target (once per day) / Recall (Auto Teleport and Rezz to a Safe Location, once per day)/Detect Weaknesses / Assess Strengths / Overwhelm (Ignore most defenses with your staff attacks) / Instant Heal. Upon entering or exiting War Form, the staff will heal all your wounds and restore you to full Health and Mana (12-hour cooldown).

*For now, an expanded description of these skills is not available. Practice and train them to discover more and fine-tune your staff skills.

Satisfied with himself, he grinned into the night, then dozed off. Two hours later, Juniper returned, shook his arm, and let him know that she had placed a hundred automatic Raise Dead runes along the most evident attack routes.

They took a second nap in each other's arms, only to wake up to the enemy bombardment. The walls resisted. Their own cannons began firing, with a higher-pitched noise.

At six, a frontal all-out assault began, at the same time as an attack from the back. As anticipated, the enemy had crossed the river elsewhere. Force fields began to counter each other, rejecting projectiles shot by both camps.

Then, the Tatars and the Cossacks came from behind to attack the Russians from the rear. The Tatars still had some poisonous gas arrows and managed to take out hundreds of enemies. Still, the Russian cavalry reacted immediately and charged at a speed greater than expected. The Tatars lost the fight, broke, and ran.

The rear gate opened, revealing three men. Sam, Emilios, and the Juggernaut. The first unsheathed his sword and, to Cedric and Juniper's amazement, pricked the other two men's thumbs. The Juggernaut and Emilios blurred out of his sight faster than Cedric could see, even with his huge perception, mowing through the enemies like butter through a hot knife. Then more enemies arrived, and they had mages amongst them, because layers of forcefields began to appear, a maze that diverted Emilios and the Juggernaut to useless paths.

"The f…" Cedric mumbled absently, unable to believe the tag he was reading, hovering over Sam.

Time Samurai, Shogun, Third Tier. Time Affinity. Level of Challenge: Impossible.

The Juggernaut, who was back to normal speed, was marked Level of Challenge: Extremely Hard. Emilios registered as moderate, and after a few minutes, he slowed down, exhausted. Sam teleported back into the fortress, taking the chef with him.

"It's time to make our move," Cedric decided.

It was eight in the morning, but it was rainy, and the dim light allowed them to follow the river, directly in the middle, swimming or walking, in war form. Cedric's sense of smell didn't detect any danger, nor did Juniper's radar for living beings who could be turned into unliving ones. They crawled up on the eastern bank half an hour later, as close as possible to where they thought the command tent would be.

They were behind a hill, the fortress hidden from sight. In the valley, the enemy had raised a small energy dome to protect their leaders. There were people with modern weapons patrolling. Nevertheless, they snuck to the dome undetected, using the cover of the rare trees around.

"I'll go in," he whispered to Juniper. "Wait here."

Cedric tried to teleport inside the dome, but the skill didn't work. He either didn't know how to use it yet, or the dome was preventing him from doing so.

"It's like in Star Trek, right?" he said to himself. "If you shoot enough torpedoes at the shields, you break them."

Abandoning all attempts at being unnoticed, he exited the cover, took position at thirty feet from the dome, his legs spread wide, and shot a fireball at the force field. Instead of dissipating at the point of impact, it bounced off toward his face and missed only because the recoil had thrown him on his back.

From his position, Cedric saw the fireball arching on a low trajectory, falling into the fields on the other bank, where it exploded with a loud bang, sending earth, trees, and rocks high into the air. Everything in an area of a hundred feet was obliterated.

"Shit!" I'm more a danger to myself and Juniper than the forcefield…We have to retreat.

His plan was cut short by the enemy itself. Whoever was responsible for the forcefield dismissed it to let the guards fire their weapons. A stupid decision. Ignoring the bullets, which didn't even register on him, Cedric rose and launched another fireball, which landed a bit short, killing or maiming a few shooters nevertheless.

Other guards ran at him with short spears and sabers. The effect was barely more noticeable than the bullets until somebody used an enchanted sword, planting the blade in Cedric's chest, where it remained stuck. Panicked, he swiped his staff blindly. The foes he hit broke like piñatas, spraying bones and gore.

From her hideout, Juniper was firing her rifle, a weapon Cedric had forgotten she had. Her shots were lost in the overall ruckus. He decided to throw a lightning bolt, but it turned out more like a laser, holding for two seconds and cutting through everything and everybody in its path. Cedric swung it like a whip to widen his damage, and it worked.

Only a handful of guards remained, and they ran. Orienting the staff toward the tent, he failed to invoke a fireball. It fizzled in a burst of sparks.

Warning: Insufficient Mana. Recommendation: Use a Vine Bomb instead.

"The heck is a Vine Bomb?"

Cedric recalled seeing it in the notification and thinking it worked like his usual restraining vines. But since he was there, he shot it. A ball the size of a fist erupted out, screaming. When it hit the tent, it spread thorned tentacles, whipping and shredding anything in its path. Only one man remained standing, miraculously untouched, defended by a portable energy shield that started from an item on his neck. Then, the enchanted amulet flickered and vanished, exhausted. It was the Russian general, a man in his sixties, on the fat side.

Cedric raised his staff for another projectile, but instead of showing fear or trying to run, the man smiled. Cedric's habit of not killing indiscriminately—he was, people said, a nice person, thus his high humanity—stopped him from firing.

"Surrender!" he said.

The general shrugged and raised a pistol to his temple. Before he pressed the trigger, he gasped, looking down at the tip of the sword protruding from his chest and the red stain spreading on his shirt, then fell dead.

"You're such a softie, sweetie," Juniper said, dismissing her Stealth.

"What's the point of killing him? He was going to die anyway."

"Blown brains don't tell stories. His smile was not normal," Juniper said, starting to draw her usual circle of runes. "Take that blade out of your chest; it's disturbing."

"Ah, that…"

Pulling the blade out was painful. The fastest way to heal was to exit War Form, which he did, only to get back into it the next moment, getting ready to fight again. Fortunately, there was no more enemy in sight.

This staff is really great…

"Why did you smile before?" Juniper asked.

The general opened his eyes, panting, his wound still bleeding. "We know… about the Tsarina's a-assassination. We split… our troops. Half… are going back… north… Half… attack the protecto… rates. Here… only a tenth… pretending… more."

"He's not good at math," Cedric noted.

"We should tell Samuel as fast as possible," Juniper said.

"About this, yes, but not about Cerkez," Cedric pleaded. "He'll ground us."