Sam's efforts at grinding had been quite taxing at first. He had started his fight against one Forest Barker, like before. And like before, it was completely docile initially. Resting at the Beacon Fire seemed to reset all enemies' positions, so now the aggressive clones were gone. Once he killed the first one with a Backstab, Parry, then Opening Blow, he found that fighting the other Forest Barkers the second time wasn't much easier than the first. Killing them almost seemed pointless as each time you killed one, it would leave its remains and grow into more identical Forest Barkers. Sam was somewhat lucky this time since the Barker he killed had only split into two clones. The splitting was worse than he initially thought, because Sam didn't understand the timing for when the new clones would sprout up. It seemed random to him. He had missed some easy parries and got punished hard for his mistakes. The enemies seemed a little smarter this time around and he wasn't able to hide behind the trees as much as he did before. They also varied their attacks and timing more.
By the end of his second outing, he ended up limping back to the cave, past a grinning merchant, worse off than the first time he had come with hardly any health, a depleted Soulfire Flask, and only four hundred measly souls to show for it. He kept his goal in mind. His next purchase would be that shield.
He rested at the Beacon Fire briefly, instantly regaining full health and a full Soulfire Flask then he went back to the forest for more souls. His timing was a little better now when it came to roll dodging and Parrying. He lost most of that anxious feeling that was over him last time and he was more focused than he was the first time he fought the Barkers. Whenever he rolled, he kept the position of the trees in mind so that his enemy would strike those instead of him. By moving, using cover, and isolating the group of Barkers into one-on-one fights, Sam was now up to two thousand hundred souls. He'd quickly killed four of the Barkers including the first docile one. Getting Backstabs and Opening Blows on each enemy behind cover had helped him greatly and he'd only used one Soulfire Flask amidst those kills. But the odds were quickly stacking up against him and he already found himself facing six enemies at once. His limit was three at a time, he decided. If he was really pushing it, he could maybe challenge four, but six was out of the question. They had too much of a range advantage.
Sam cut and ran and found himself in a similar situation to before. He ran and jumped off the cliff and into the cliffside cave entrance rather than the one that opened in the middle of the forest. He went straight to the merchant and stared him in the eyes. At this range the merchant looked quite weary. There were dark rings under his brown eyes and baggy flesh. Now, his eyes even seemed to sag.
The torchlight covered both men, as Sam made his request, "Inventory please."
The two dimensional dark gray and white grid panel opened up and Sam scrolled over to the shield he wanted and read its stats in great detail.
Metal Crest Shield
Mid Blocking Shield
A wooden shield with a mid-sized iron crest of falcon on the front of it. The crest sits in the middle of the shield and is scuffed from all the times it has deflected sword blows. An iron border around the shield increases its defensive capabilities even more without sacrificing much of its light weight.
ATK 18
Weapon Damage 10
S ATK D = 8
D ATK F = 0
M ATK F = 0
F ATK F = 0
F RAT 0
L RAT 0
P RAT 0
D RAT 0
B RAT 1
The first page of stats looked to be all offensive. Sam found these stats to be pointless for a shield so he flipped over to the next page with the defensive values.
Metal Crest Shield
Mid Blocking Shield
P DEF (Physical Defense) 93%
M DEF (Magic Defense) 71%
L DEF (Lightning Defense) 65%
F DEF (Fire Defense) 25%
D DEF (Divine Defense) 30%
A DEF (Abyssal Defense) 30%
P RES (Poison Resistance) 85%
D RES (Dust Resistance) 70%
C RES (Curse Resistance) 30%
B RES (Bleedout Resistance) 100%
Stability 54%
Durability 300/300
Weight 2.8lbs
This shield definitely had its uses. Right now Sam just needed to be able to properly block. He quickly purchased the shield which depleted the amount of souls he held down to eight hundred.
"Great purchase!" the merchant yelled with joy, "I knew there was a reason I liked you. It's always better to spend a soul than to hoard one. You never know when you might die and of course your corpse has no need for them, hahahahahaha. Imagine that, a corpse with no need for souls, hahahahaha."
Sam ignored the creepy merchant, who seemed to be having the time of his life laughing at his own macabre jokes. He quickly exited out of the purchase menu, since there was nothing else that he wanted right now and ran over to the Beacon Fire. He sat and rubbed his cold hands in the warm flames. He accessed Beacon Fire menu and scrolled to the Level Up options. He looked at his stats and pondered which one he'd level up next. He currently had enough to gain one Soul Level, which of course meant that he had one attribute that he could increase.
Name: Sarem the Sanguine
Class: Cutthroat
Soul Level: 7
HP: 180
Held Souls: 800
Souls to Next Level: 640
VIT 9
DEF 6
RES 7
STR 6
INT 10
DEX 15
SPD 15
ATN 4
FTH 4
PCP 3
It didn't take him long to figure out which path his character would take. Even though he'd only now just figured it out, he was glad that his previous stat increase would favor his newly thought up build. He still didn't know too much about this particular game, but it was similar enough to The Death Planes that Sam could form a good grasp on how he would specialize his character. His start of a Cutthroat build ensured he'd have to play a certain way and so far he was doing better than he thought he'd do with his playstyle. He placed his next point into vitality which increased the stat to an even ten and granted him two hundred health points. He told himself that it would be the last point he'd invest in vitality for a while. His next focus would be on getting his dexterity up to twenty. Since it directly affected the attacking power of the skill based weapons he planned on using. His Dagger had a B grade scaling (power adjustment) with his dexterity stat, meaning that the weapon would attain more and more attack power as his dexterity increased. A B grade meant that the Dagger would receive a bonus eighty percent extra damage whenever Sam would attack with it. If Sam's Dagger had lacked a listed grade then it would only do the base amount of damage, which was only ten. With A B grade scaling in dexterity, Sam's Dagger had gotten an extra twelve points of damage. So with the weapon's base ten damage, along with the fifteen points of damage added by Sam's DEX stat, and the twelve from the Dagger's scaling; Sam did thirty seven points of damage with his weapon. Weapon scaling was enormously useful as even an E grade with the weapon insured that he'd get the whole fifteen damage from his DEX and at least a twenty percent extra on top of that. As long as the weapon didn't have an F grade, he'd get at least some benefit from scaling.
After all that he'd increase his speed to twenty or maybe just increase his dexterity all the way to twenty-five and wait to see if he needed more speed or health at that point. If he came across any useful abilities, he could add a point to attunement along the way to get a single Spellcrafte slot. But that was it. He didn't need any of the other stats at all. Putting points in defense would only slow his growth down. Increasing his health and mobility was the priority along with his pure offensive power. With high dexterity and a good DEX based weapon, he didn't need the strength stat at all. The default six amount given at the start was good for equipping all the small and mid-sized shields so he wouldn't need to increase it at all. Resistance could come in handy, but Sam figured that the points were better spent in speed so that he could just avoid potential status afflicting attacks with quick dodging. A ten in intelligence was a good base to learn some basic level Spellcraftes, but Sam couldn't see himself increasing it. While a four in faith was four points too many as far as he was concerned. He wished he could take all those points and put them into his dexterity right now. The faith stat only affected the power of Blessings, Blasphemies, and divine as well as abyssal weaponry, four things that Sam had no desire to use with this character.
With his plan in place, Sam set out again on his quest to gain more souls. He tested out his improvements in live combat. With his new shield, he didn't have to rely on the trees for cover as much. Though his enemy limit remained at three at a time. Each blow he blocked with his shield consumed a sizable portion of his stamina gauge and after so many consecutive attacks, his guard had been broken. After that happened, he was left vulnerable to attack. He quickly learned to block only at specific times while mostly using his dodging to avoid damage when possible. He'd also noticed with the Metal Crest Shield that the opening to attack after Parrying was about a second less than with his Deflector. He returned to heal and reset the enemies again at his Beacon Fire and did it all over again, attaining forty-eight hundred more souls before deciding to move on. He still hadn't figured out the trick to killing the Barkers for good. Alex had earlier eluded to there being one. Instead of vainly focusing on that, he used all of his souls to increase his dexterity to nineteen. He was one point shy of his goal, but figured it was best to move on to find his first glitch before he lagged behind too far in that competition.
******
Sam had bypassed a few lone Forest Barkers as he journeyed deeper into the forest. He made sure to creep by them silently in case even one of them proved to be aggressive. Way past them, he found some sort of large bear decked out in knight's armor from its head to its hind legs. The armored bear sat on its rump like a human and stared listlessly at its feet. Sam was curious about why the hell a bear would even be wearing armor in the middle of this forest, but something told him to just leave the whole issue alone and just sneak past the bear. He did just that and far from there, found himself near another clearing. This time he stayed hidden amongst the trees so he could better see his surroundings.
There was movement at the far end of the trail so Sam stopped and crouched near a tree to see just who or what was approaching. It was some sort of bearded huntsman who appeared to be looking for something. He wielded a huge two-sided greataxe in his left hand and a wooden shield with a chipped blue deer painted on its front in his right hand. He gazed from left to right as he passed tree after tree. Sam grew a little concerned when the huntsman stopped only a few yards in front of him and started sniffing.
The huntsman walked forward a little more, stopped again and stared with wide opened eyes at something straight ahead of him. Sam looked over and saw what he was looking at. It was a dreadful sight. A tall beast of a man with a large and broad frame noisily approached, each of his footsteps hit the ground with a metallic clatter. He was decked out in black and red metal and had a blood red cape draped across his shoulders which fell to the length of his calves. His mask was absolutely terrifying, it looked like the bleached skull of a huge vulture and attached to it were pristine white feathers which fell down the back and sides of the mask and further obscured the man's features. A cross-guard sword hilt poked out from his back.
The swordsman drew his weapon very quickly and held it down to his right side. The knightly greatsword caught the moon's light and refracted it into the dark forest. The huntsman quickly strapped his shield unto his back and gripped his axe tightly with both hands. Sam had learned from the manual that wielding a weapon with two hands increased its attacking power greatly.
As the two combatants stared at one another, the forest seemed to be on pause. Sam was forced to wonder if the game had frozen. They stayed that way until the swordsman with the vulture skull helmet broke the silence.
"Can you satisfy me?"
His voice was all ice, but it had a polite quality to it.
"You fiend! I've come to end your miserable life and to insure that you lose all your quintessence. You're not a man anymore now, so you don't need it. I'll send you to the abyss where you belong!" screamed the burly huntsman.
The armored swordsman casually lifted his massive greatsword and laid it down on his shoulder. He then flexed the fingers on his free hand and strolled towards the huntsman calmly, his cape catching some of the night wind.
The huntsman gritted his teeth and gripped his great axe even harder.
"For Marcus, for Maria!" he shouted as he ran towards the swordsman.
On approach the huntsman hefted his mighty great axe overhead and came down with a powerful blow that Sam thought would cleave the swordsman right in two. The swordsman was too fast however and had anticipated the blow. Sam had seen it all. The swordsman had stopped the blow at its base by catching the axe's handle and pushing it aside. The swordsman then took his greatsword into both of his hands and sliced through the huntsman's right shoulder and neck. The huntsman's blood had sprayed through the air and his head went rolling along the open forest trail and into the dark woods. Sam had to stop himself from cursing aloud and whistling at such an impressive yet frightening showing of strength. He certainly didn't want to attract the attention of the bloodthirsty swordsman so he kept completely silent, didn't move, and hardly breathed.
"I guess you'll do. I'll hang you up real nice." the swordsman said, murderous glee in his voice.
He bent down and grabbed the dead huntsman by his foot and started dragging him down the forest trail. Sam felt an unease in the pit of his stomach as the swordsman and his carcass passed by only a few feet in front of him. The unease turned into a heaviness when the swordsman had suddenly stopped only a little ways past that. He inclined his head to the side of the forest that Sam was on. Sam couldn't help but stare into the hollow sockets of the vulture mask that the swordsman wore. But he made sure to stay low and out of sight. There was no way that he could be seen from the clearing, no way at all.
Sam resolved not to move until the swordsman was completely out of sight. Nothing would convince him otherwise. Thankfully the swordsman focused his attention to the path ahead of him. Mentally Sam was relieved, but his virtual body had yet to relax even as the swordsman began to shuffle forward. A light breeze buffeted Sam, the swordsman, and the forest trees in a brief cold wind.
"Ah, there it is. Another trophy."
The swordsman had reacted so fast that Sam, in his confusion, didn't properly know how to react. The huntsman's carcass was dropped, the swordsman's greatsword was drawn so fast that Sam called hax. The nightmarish warrior was in Sam's face in only a few seconds. Once he knew for certain that he was caught, Sam lifted his shield and drew his Dagger.
With both hands on his sword hilt, the swordsman busted through Sam's meager defense easily with one downward strike, draining all of his stamina in the process. Sam was left stunned and vulnerable as the swordsman naturally finished his attack with a vicious two handed thrust into Sam's midsection. Sam felt the tremendous pain and cold weight of the steel inside of his digital body, which was starting to feel indistinguishable from his real one. He felt all of his strength draining right out of him as his blood spilled onto the forest floor. The swordsman violently pulled his greatsword upwards and wrenched it out of Sam's body with a vicious slash that ripped apart Sam's flesh from inside out and sent his blood spraying into the surrounding forest.
Sam's health had already depleted and he was now simply waiting for the translucent ghost health bar to fade completely. His vision had blurred and he felt an overwhelming urge to just lie still and rest. And so he did, not knowing if it would really be his last breath. His vision faded to black and dark red words painted his screen:
YOUHAVE DIED