Seeds of Discordia: New Arrival Mayhem

Liam’s body felt weird as he exited the portal. His head felt dizzy as his vision swirled. He hunched over as he felt bile start to rise and began to dry heave. After a few failed attempts he righted himself and muttered, “That was horrible. I hope that does not always happen.”

A sound that resembled a bell chime echoed in Liam’s mind as a notification screen popped up.

 

“Congratulations! You have received Mental Resilience - Teleportation Sickness. Mental Resilience - Teleportation Sickness has reached level 1!”

 

“Teleportation sickness? What is that?” Liam questioned as he clicked it.

A description notification appeared.

 

“Teleportation sickness – a mental sickness that occurs when going through portals or when using a teleportation gate/ability. The higher you raise this resilience the better you feel when going through portals or transporting lengthy distances. Creates less chances of being disoriented and lowers the chances of upchucking your recent meals.”

 

Liam gave a mixed expression as he read the description. “I don’t know if I’m pleased that I can work on creating a resistance to this or upset that I’m going to have to play upchuck roulette every time I go through a portal.” He then shook his head dismissing the thought as he waved away the notification and looked at his surroundings.

He was standing in a long wide corridor. A red-carpet tapestry with gold lines around the edges covered most of the solid grey stone floor. Several glow stones lined the white walls on both sides giving plenty of light. Next to the walls, spaced out evenly, stood different life-like creature statues.

Most of the creatures looked like duplicates of the same kind. For example, there were a lot more Skeletons holding swords and spears than goblin-like creatures. Some of the statues were carved into beast forms that stood on either two or four legs. There were also armored human-like beings standing on pedestals.

“Before I move on, I should probably see what I have in that bag,” Liam muttered as he brought up his inventory. He stopped and stared blankly at it as he thought to himself, “I can’t believe this is a thing now. Inventories and the like. It feels like some sort of game.”

He shook his head again to stop himself from getting distracted as he looked back at his inventory. It looked similar to one you would see in an RPG style game. It had three rows of ten boxes. All the squares except one were empty.

At the bottom there were pictures of coins with an X and the number zero next to them. One coin was the color of iron, another copper, a third silver, the fourth was gold and the last was a platinum color.

He then took his finger and moved it like he was clicking on the square that had a bag.

A notification popped up.

 

“Starter Bag.”

 

A smaller separate box appeared with the question.

“Would you like to open Starter bag? Yes No?”

Liam clicked yes.

The small notification box disappeared along with the bag. A few boxes filled with pictures. There was a dagger with an x and the number two in it, a small greenish vial with the number four in it, a small yellowish vial with the number four in it, a small blueish vial with the number four in it, a photo, and a mask. It was the family photo and mask he was holding onto before teleporting. He then saw that the numbers next to the iron and copper-colored coins changed too. The Iron coin had the number one hundred and the copper had fifty next to them.

“That’s cool,” Liam said to himself before he groaned. “I’m going to have to learn how the currency works here.” He shook his head as he clicked the two daggers.

 

“Crude daggers. Daggers made using the lowest skills while blacksmithing. Negative 15% to attacks and successful hits. Would you like to equip Crude Dagger? Yes No?”

 

Liam clicked yes and was shocked to see a red notification window appear.

 

“Warning! You do not have any skill levels in daggers. Equipping will give you an additional negative 15% when trying to land a successful hit on an enemy. Would you still like to equip Crude Dagger? Yes No?”

 

“I guess there’s got to be checks and balances. Although I’m curious to see what it means about the successful hits,” Liam thought as the dagger appeared in his right hand. He then went to click on the other dagger.

 

“Would you like to equip Crude dagger? Yes No?”

 

Liam clicked yes again but frowned as a red notification popped up.

 

“Warning! Cannot equip second Crude Dagger. Need to have a level of 10 in Weapon skills - Daggers in order to dual wield.”

 

“What the hell,” Liam groaned as he stared at the screen. He then looked at his crude dagger and muttered, “God damn checks and balances.”

He then looked at the vials and clicked the green one.

 

“Weak Health Potion. A weak potion made by a beginner alchemist. Restores 25 HP. Would you like to use Weak Health Potion? Yes No?”

 

Liam clicked no and then clicked the blue vial.

 

“Weak Mana Potion. A weak potion made by a beginner alchemist. Restores 25 MP. Would you like to use Weak Mana Potion? Yes No?”

 

Liam clicked no again, then looked at the yellow vial and stated, “This one must be a Weak Stamina Potion. Makes no sense to see how much it can give if the other two give the same amount.”

He then gripped the dagger in his right hand and looked at it. The craftmanship was in fact crude, but still looked like it could do some damage. It felt light as he practiced swinging it around. When he felt comfortable enough with the weapon he walked forward cautiously.

He eyed the statues and stuffed creatures on the pedestals. He paid close attention for movement as well as at the detail of them on both sides. The realism made him question if they would jump at him.

Once when he reached the end of the hall, he felt his body ease up. He lightly jumped up a few times to loosen his stiff muscles. He rolled his neck and shook his hands as he looked at the door. He then stretched his arms across his chest and over his head as he thought, “If there’s no monsters in this hall then there’s bound to be one behind this door.” After he stretched his legs, he opened the heavy wooden door with his free hand and peered inside.

The room had an old dark Victorian church feel to it. The walls were a deep black with several paintings hung up. Glowing stones were planted on the walls as well as on a couple of chandeliers that hung from the ceiling. There were no windows to found in the room.

Pews lined up in two rows with a scarlet red carpet rolled down the middle to a couple of steps. Two organs sat on both sides of the room near the steps along with two harps, violins, and weird shaped acoustic guitars. On the raised platform stood a podium. From the angle he was looking at, he saw a thick book resting on top of it. Hanging up on the wall behind the podium were seven paintings.

Liam peered as hard as he could but could only see they were blackened out, devoid of any pictures in them. “That’s weird,” he whispered as he took a couple of steps in.

After he was fully inside the room, the wooden door slammed behind him. This cause Liam to jump and swiftly turn around.

Nothing was there.

An eerie angelic sound started to float in the air. It was soft reverberations of strings being plucked in a slow but mesmerizing rhythm.

Liam slowly turned his head to see the strings of both harps being strummed. As soothing as it sounded, it was also alarming at the same time. The hair on the back of Liam’s neck stood up as he witnessed a form rising from behind the podium.

It wore a ragged and ripped black and red church robe with a biretta hat on its head. Liam looked closer to see the figure had no eyes, nose, or mouth. In fact, there was no skin on the figure. It was a smooth whitish grey skeleton.

A notification popped up, causing Liam to raise his hands up to block his face out of sheer reflex. He then let out a shaky sigh as he read the message.

 

“Church of %$#^%$ Undead Priest.”

 

Liam gave a confused look. “Why is the Church’s name errored out? Is my notification bugged or something? That would be my luck,” Liam complained as he waved the box away and stared at the creature before him. He then pondered, “Now how should I do this?”

Without waiting the skeleton raised one of its clothed arms and pointed at Liam. A small dark orb appeared and shakily pulsed in front of its index finger.

Liam went wide eyed and jumped to his left as the ball shot forward.

The object flew pass Liam and collided with the door causing a loud boom and dust to appear.

He fell to his stomach as he hid behind one of the pews.

“That thing has magic!? How the hell is that fair!?” Liam shouted as he looked at the spot where the orb landed.

The dust cleared to show the door still perfectly intact, but the floor had a hole with broken wood and cement.

Before he could think or say anything else, a part of the pew he was hiding behind exploded into splinters.

“Oh crap!” Liam shouted as he scrambled to his feet and ran towards the end of the pew before another explosion happened where he was.

Liam noticed the skeleton slowly readjusted to focus on him as another orb grew. He ran forward, towards the steps dodging the attack.

As he reached the steps, he ran around to position himself in front of the podium and on the side of the skeleton and stabbed forward with the crude dagger. The dagger pierced through the robes to puncture the rib area, but nothing happened.

“What the?” Liam stated with confusion.

This hesitation gave the skeleton enough time to turn his finger right in front of Liam’s chest.

Liam’s eyes grew wide as he pulled the crude dagger out and started to move out of the way, but it was too late. The orb was released and slammed against Liam. The explosion caused him to fly over the podium and crash into a couple of pews.

“Ow,” Liam groaned as his mind swam and pain danced through his body. After a moment of reorienting himself, he noticed his health bar drop a third. It was the same amount as his Stamina bar except his stamina was slowly rising back up. He looked at the skeleton and noticed the area he stabbed was the open part of the rib cage.

“Mistakes like that get you killed Liam,” Liam admonished himself. He then saw the skeleton had charged up another orb. He sprung up as fast as he could and jumped out to his right.

He rolled to his feet and turned his attention, back to the enemy. He then chastised himself again, “Not paying attention can get you killed too.”

As he stared at it, he noticed something. The skeleton moved slowly to readjust.

“Its magic can be hurtful, but it looks like its movements are slow,” Liam thought as he jogged to his left to assess a theory that was brewing.

As he jogged in the line of sight of the glowing ball it shot towards him. Liam jumped out of the way again and watched as the creature’s finger slowly moved to its right to point at Liam again.

Liam went from a jog to a fast walk to stay ahead of the finger and looked at his stamina to see if it would rise back up. He then went over in his head, “So, if the finger is pointing in your direction the spell will be released. Its movements are slow, but its spell is powerful.” Liam smiled. “I love checks and balances.”

As he continued to circle around the figure, he whispered to himself, “Let’s see how much milk you drank growing up.”

Liam approached the skeleton from the side and swung down with his crude dagger. As he swung down the dagger’s trajectory curved to the left and missed.

“What the hell?!” Liam moved away and circled again as he thought to himself, “How did I miss? I know I was close enough to hit it.”

A notification message appeared.

 

“Missed.”

 

Liam glared at it. “Are you mocking me? I know I missed! But how did I miss?!”

As he shook the message away, he remembered what he read earlier about successful hits having a negative fifteen percent. He looked at the dagger. “Is that what it meant? That is so stupid.” He gripped the dagger tightly as he thought, “Looks like I’m going to have to strike more than once to get a successful hit to land.”

He timed the moment when he was behind the skeleton and ran in. When he was in reach he swung down then back up. The downward motion sliced against the bones, but the upwards missed. He continued striking up and down before the creature turned around.

Liam backed up and moved to the right in order to get out of the finger’s trajectory.

Multiple messages had appeared. Some read miss, while the successful hits read.

 

“Crude dagger strike caused 5 damage.”

“Crude dagger strike caused 3 damage.”

“Crude dagger strike caused 3 damage.”

“Crude dagger strike caused 5 damage.”

 

“Only three to five damage? These negatives are killing me,” Liam complained. He let out an annoyed sigh as he squinted his eyes at the enemy. “Oh well, only way to get out of here is to keep at it.