Throne of the Ancients: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 6) Read online

  Owen’s jaw worked while he considered, his eyes growing distant as if in calculation. “I’m… I can hold. I’ve been sleeping in short shifts so that I can log in every few hours. At the very least, I’ve only needed to refresh the barrier due to natural decay in its strength. The demons seem to push lightly against it occasionally as if they’re testing that it still stands. But I’d expected more of an assault by now.”

  Devon glanced to the south. “Maybe the barrier is stronger than you assume.”

  Owen shrugged. “Maybe. But I can’t help worrying that they have another strategy.”

  Yeah, that was an issue, wasn’t it? Between the earthquakes and the relative lack of activity from the horde, it would be naive to assume the demons were just biding their time. And anyway, even if Zaa’s forces had no other plan, Owen couldn’t keep on like this indefinitely. The stalemate would break, and it would be far better if that happened on Devon’s terms.

  “How are things with Cynthia?” she asked. Owen had proposed to his girlfriend recently. His erratic schedule couldn’t sit easily with the woman, especially after everything they’d been through in the last few months.

  Owen sighed, once again looking troubled. “I can tell how much my playing worries her, but she does her best to understand that I’m doing what I feel I have to. Last night, she suggested we take a few days off. Grab a hyperloop out west or sail down to the Florida Keys. I explained why I can’t, but you know, it’s still hard for her to swallow.”

  Devon nodded. If she weren’t already focusing all her resources on figuring out how to break the standoff in a positive way, Owen’s situation would push her to it. Neither he nor Cynthia deserved to sacrifice another day to this game, but she couldn’t tell him to quit, either, because the lives of everyone in Stonehaven depended on his barrier for now.

  Sure, even if the demons took over the area, the players who’d set their bind points here could just log off, maybe find another game or leave gaming entirely. Life would go on for them. But this world was all that her sentient NPC friends had. And if Stonehaven and Ishildar fell, it seemed likely that no force could stand before the demons’ advance. The mortal realm would be lost entirely.

  She sighed and glanced up, spotted a pair of circling ravens. No doubt they were part of the awakened corvid society, the birds gifted with heightened intelligence by Ishildar’s ancient magi. Every day, ravens and crows and magpies flew high over the demonic forces, reporting back on enemy movements. But their scouting missions had gained no more information than she’d just heard from Owen. Her total ignorance of the demons’ plans sent a chill down her spine.

  Lips pressed together, she turned her attention to Jarleck. “Greel said you wanted help with some decisions.”

  The fortifications master laid a hand on the parapet as he shook his head. “I told him it could wait.”

  Devon smirked. “I figured as much. He was just looking for an excuse to be a pest.”

  Jarleck raised an eyebrow. “He needs an excuse?”

  Devon laughed, but her nagging worries made it sound hollow. “Anyway, how are things going?”

  She pulled up the settlement interface and activated the fortifications tab as she spoke.

  Fortifications:

  Status: Castle - Basic

  Completed:

  1 x Main Wall - Stone

  1 x Wall-walk

  1 x Merlons

  1 x Main Gate - Iron-reinforced Timber

  5 x Watchtower

  1 x Wicket Gate

  1 x Outer Gate

  1 x Dry Moat

  1 x Drawbridge

  1 x Dungeon

  5 x Wall-mounted trebuchets

  15 x Stocked barrels of pitch or tar

  Bonuses: Castle - Basic

  - Ranged Accuracy +17%

  - Evasion + 39%

  - Ranged Damage +25%

  - Defensive Weaponry Damage +10%

  Required for upgrade to Castle - Advanced

  1 x Armory (complete)

  1 x Inner Portcullis (70%)

  1 x Large Ballista mounted on Inner Keep (complete)

  1 x Water-filled Moat (90%)

  5 x Wall-mounted Ballistae (complete)

  She raised her eyebrows. “Looks like we’re close to that advanced castle designation.”

  Jarleck couldn’t help but look pleased with the progress. “The biggest step will be opening the headgate on the diversion ditch and finally filling the moat. It was something of a trick to bring the water under the walls without leaving exploitable weakness.”

  Devon nodded, thinking of the stream that ran through Stonehaven and disappeared, just as it had sprung, near the base of the semicircular cliff that guarded the settlement’s back. The watercourse had been a mega bonus when it came to founding the settlement here. Abundant, readily available water that couldn’t be poisoned upstream and that left the settlement in a way that wouldn’t undermine the foundations or introduce secret entrances—pretty much a jackpot. When it came to filling the dry moat with water, they’d needed to construct a channel that did flow under the wall. Deld’s stonemasons had painstakingly carved a series of grates that had been set into custom masonry at the base of both the palisade and the curtainwall. A determined infiltrator might chisel their way through, but they wouldn’t do it unnoticed, and even then, the channels themselves were scarcely large enough for a child to wriggle through, much less an armed and armored fighter.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “Some people in your position might be too freaked out by the nearby army to keep building. It might seem kinda pointless. But we need every scrap of advantage we can muster. Are you worried about filling the moat?”

  The man shook his head while absently pulling a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and polishing them on his leather jerkin. Which reminded her, she ought to check in with Tamara to see how her training as a brawler was coming along. Devon hadn’t known what to expect when inviting her friend into Relic Online, especially because Tamara had never really gamed before. But she was a natural, out-leveling pretty much every noob around. Between her and Emerson, equally inexperienced, but using that to his advantage—his tactics were unconventional to say the least—Devon had been forced to eat her annoyed words regarding the noob influx.

  “The problem isn’t with the fortifications, Mayor,” Jarleck said.

  Devon felt her shoulders slump a little when he used her title. She’d found that when her original followers fell back on formality, they were usually trying to figure out how best to deliver criticism.

  “Just say what’s on your mind. Seriously. You know way more than I do about a ton of things in this realm. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have made you our official quest giver and fortifications master.”

  “It’s this policy about granting sanctuary to everyone even though we’re out of space to make them citizens.”

  Devon nodded. The demon invasion had totally screwed up her settlement advancement track, and the local population was nearly at its cap while the construction and resource pipelines hadn’t caught up. Until Stonehaven had enough buildings to fill the advancement requirements for Township, the settlement was stuck as a Hamlet. But seeing as there was a bloodthirsty demon horde rampaging to the south, and Stonehaven was the only defensible location around, she’d declared that everyone should be allowed free passage through the city gates. When an attack came, anyone who asked would be granted sanctuary inside the walls.

  “They haven’t been cutting into our stores, have they? We can teach them to hunt and forage for themselves, but our farms and the settlement’s hunters just barely meet our food needs.”

  Jarleck shook his head. Leaning over the parapet, he pointed down into the so-called killing field, the area of empty ground between the inner and outer walls that was meant to leave would-be attackers vulnerable to archers on the palisade. Whereas the cliff at Stonehaven’s back protected the settlemen
t by being too sheer to scale on the outside face, the inner and outer walls made a semicircular corridor around twenty feet wide that defended the front half of the settlement. Devon had to lean far over the parapet, enough that her lower back tensed due to the sense that she might fall before she could see where Jarleck was pointing. At the far northern end of the corridor where it dead-ended against the base of the cliff, refugees from Eltera City seemed to have erected a temporary camp.

  Devon grimaced. “Hard to get a clear shot at an attacking demon with a bunch of innocent civilians and their stuff in the way, I guess.”

  Jarleck let out a low grunt of assent. “There’s another smaller camp at the other end. The thing is, there’s no room to sleep inside the walls, but you can’t blame them for being afraid to camp on the open savanna. Not after demons burned their original homes in Eltera City.”

  Devon straightened and crossed her arms over her chest, thinking. When she groped her way back to memories of tenth-grade world history, she seemed to remember similar descriptions of medieval fortresses and cities. The lucky citizens had homes inside the stronghold, and everyone else was forced to live outside. With good fortune, the town-dwellers made it through the gates and into the stronghold in the case of an attack, though sometimes they didn’t. She also seemed to remember that the hovels and shanties outside the castle walls had sometimes brought about the fortress’s defeat. Alleys hid attackers just as easily as they sheltered beggars, and by torching thatched roofs or canvas tents, an attacking force could both terrorize the population and provide smokescreens for the movement of troops. But usually, those ancient kings and lords had confronted the same problem Devon now faced. Building stone walls, not to mention defending them, was freaking hard work. When they’d laid out the line of the initial wooden palisade, the enclosed area had seemed huge. More than she’d ever be able to fill with NPCs and buildings. Now, the walls were overflowing.

  She pulled up the settlement interface again.

  Requirements for expansion to Township:

  - Advanced NPC: 25/25

  - Buildings (Tier 2): 15/27

  - Buildings (Tier 3): 7/15

  - Buildings (Tier 4): 0/2

  - Population: 490/500

  Filling out the final ten citizens to cap the population would scarcely dent the number of refugees camping around the settlement and screwing up the defenses. To house them all, she’d need to finish the construction requirements for advancement to Township.

  She quickly flipped to the building lists, skipping over the Tier 1 structures because they were now unlimited in quantity and no longer part of the requirements.

  Tier 2 Buildings - 15/27

  1 x Medicine Woman’s Cabin (upgraded)

  2 x Crafting Workshop

  1 x Basic Forge

  2 x Kitchen

  4 x Barracks

  4 x Warehouse

  1 x Smokehouse

  1 x Tannery (in progress)

  1 x Smokehouse (in progress)

  Tier 3 Buildings - 7/15

  1 x Shrine to Veia

  1 x Chicken Coop

  1 x Inner Keep

  1 x Leatherworking Shop

  1 x Woodworking Shop

  1 x Tailoring Workshop

  1 x Advanced Forge

  1 x Stables (in progress)

  1 x Barn (in progress)

  1 x Weavers’ Workshop (in progress)

  Tier 4 Buildings - 0/2

  1 x University (in progress)

  No matter how many carpenters and masons she threw at construction, it would still be quite some time before the requirements were met.

  “I can’t just send the refugees away. The barrier could fail, and they’d be toast.”

  “What about Ishildar?” Owen asked.

  Devon nodded. She’d considered that. The city had no walls, but the Veian Temple likely offered as much or more defense as the Shrine to Veia did for Stonehaven. But she didn’t know that for sure, not enough to bet innocent NPC lives on. And besides, now that the jungle had been cleared, Ishildar was, in many ways, an urban desert. It was one thing to suggest that newcomers forage for themselves, but quite another to ask them to do that when there was no game or plant life.

  She cast back again to her memories of those ancient real-world cities. Hadn’t some of them had an inner stronghold as well as a wall surrounding the larger city? Even if she couldn’t provide soldiers to guard another wall, hard stone could provide enough deterrent to allow residents to evacuate their homes and retreat to the greater safety of Stonehaven. But if an army were attacking, it wasn’t like she’d be able to open the gates and let in innocent people. As she considered the dilemma, another detail about castles swam up from the depths of her memory. She glanced back toward the cliff that stood at Stonehaven’s back.

  “Isn’t there something called, like, a poster gate or something?”

  Understanding immediately flashed in Jarleck’s eyes. “Postern gate. A secret exit that allows the keepers of a castle to evacuate if all is truly lost.”

  “But couldn’t it also allow entrance?” Already, she imagined the layout, a wall built behind the defensive cliff, small cottages tucked up tight against the cliff’s shielding bulk. And at the base, hidden behind the rearmost of houses, a secret entrance into Stonehaven. Of course, that would require tunneling through the cliff, but with war looming, she’d already recalled the dwarven miners from the Argenthal Mountains. Given the amount of ale brewing that was going on, she’d considered looking for a distraction anyway.

  Nodding to herself, she opened the resources tab and checked the supply of stone and mortar. There likely wasn’t enough for the wall in the current stocks, and access to the quarry had been sealed by Owen’s barrier. But even if the vast sprawl of Ishildar made for terrible hunting, thousands of ruined buildings certainly provided materials.

  Clapping her hand on the parapet, she started explaining her plan to Jarleck.

  “I think it could work,” the man said when she finished explaining. “I’ll check with Deld tomorrow.”

  Good. It might not be progress toward ousting the demons, but it felt satisfying to solve at least one problem. And as a bonus, it likely skated around the restrictions on settlement advancement. She’d be willing to bet that once Stonehaven could officially upgrade to a Township, the additional area would automatically be incorporated into the town, giving her a head start on the next stage of progression.

  She smirked. It wasn’t at the level of a mechanics exploit Chen might come up with after forty-eight hours spent sifting through his spreadsheets, but it wasn’t bad, either.

  As for solving the demon problem, she was expecting reports about the additional troops she could expect from the surrounding territories as early as tomorrow morning—a couple of hours after sunrise, she would hurry over to Ishildar for her daily meeting with the leaders of the various groups she’d tasked with wartime preparations and Ishildar’s exploration. It was tempting to ask for updates now, but nobody, not even NPCs, became more effective by being micromanaged.

  Best to log out and get a little rest herself, because the following days would just get busier.

  She touched Owen’s shoulder before leaving, meeting his eyes. “Keep me up to date on how you’re coping, okay?”

  He nodded. “Thanks, Dev. I will.”

  Chapter Three

  “YOUR MAINTENANCE REQUEST has been added to the queue. Please allow ten to twenty business days while we evaluate the costs and schedule a repair. Thank you for contacting Juniper Terrace. Apartments, and so much more. Is there anything else you need assistance with?”

  Devon pulled her phone from her ear and stared at it in disgust. Ten to twenty days? Weren’t these people under some kind of contract to provide livable accommodations?

  She jabbed the button to put her phone on speaker. Her phone. What kind of place required you to make maintenance requests via voice anyway? Shouldn’t th
ere be some kind of messenger portal?

  “I need this fixed sooner,” she said.

  “Okay, I understand that you wish to escalate the urgency of your maintenance request for…” The obnoxious robo-woman cut out with a click, and then a recording of Devon’s voice was spliced in. “My stupid blind cord broke, and now it’s stuck diagonally open. I can’t close it, so anyone on the balcony can watch me eating my cereal.”

  Devon cringed. Maybe that hadn’t been the best way to report the issue. “Yes, escalate please.”

  “Confirmation acknowledged. I can apply a higher priority to a request under one of a few conditions. Is this an issue of sanitation such as clogged plumbing or an infestation by disease-carrying rodents?”

  “What? Have you guys had problems with rodent plagues lately?” Devon glanced at the grimy baseboard near the refrigerator.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand your response. Please answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

  Seriously? The apartment complex’s automated system had to be at least thirty years old with this level of stupidity. She could buy an espresso maker capable of better language processing than this.

  “No. I don’t have an overflowing toilet or rabid ground squirrels. But there’s a dude who lives a couple of doors down and is always trying to stare through my window.”

  “Okay, I understand that there is no sanitation concern. I can also reprioritize your request if there is an extreme risk of injury or death due to this issue. Examples of such conditions are exposed wires, particularly those throwing sparks, or ceiling fans that appear to be at risk of detaching. Note that if there is a fire actively burning in your apartment, this automated system cannot notify emergency services. Please dial 911.”

  “Well, I might die of annoyance that you people are using a robo-answering service from 2015 to deal with requests from your paying tenants.”