Cantankerous Cheater 4 (Patreon)

Warcraft adventures, ho!

-VB-

Cantankerous Cheater

Chapter 4

-VB-

After crashing the bank heist, I knew that I needed to lay low lest the Protectorate cracks down on me hard.

And what was better at laying low than being off world?

My hearthstone point, where the iconic item from World of Warcraft teleportd me to, existed not on Earth Bet but on World of Warcraft.

There were two reasons as to why I came to this world. First, I needed a safe house(world?) that would not connect me to Earth Bet. Second, I needed to train my classes and myself so that I could use more variety of spells. Unfortunately, I only gained EXP Points by completing quests and killing. In Earth Bet, the first option was not available because, to be honest, taking on quests was taking on mercenary contracts, basically, and no one trusted someone so new to the scene.

But here on Azeroth where a plenty of adventurers took on quests, the locals wouldn’t haste too much before giving me something to do.

“... Yer a big lad, aren’t ye.”

“I’m only sixteen,” I grumbled to the man in front of me.

“A big lad but a lad still. You’re not a man yet,” Marshal Dughan grunted.

I sighed. “Look. I just need to learn some coins, marshal. If I die, then I die taking out a few Defias and kobolds. What’s so wrong with that?” I asked.

He looked over me like a housewife looking over a particularly strange meat. He wasn’t sure what to make of me, which made sense. My clothes and attire in general must have been strange to him, and my rusty road sign cleaver was not helping.

“You fight with that thing?”

“Half of it.”

“Then show me how you fight. We do a standard sparring, and I’ll see if you’re worth sending an errand.”

I nodded. “So where-”

He struck. For a man in full plate knightly armor, his arms and sword moved lightning fast.

Too bad I was neither a novice or only a warrior that my road sign cleaver implied.

I ignored his attack, spinning in place and placing my faith into the Light. I used this spell so many times that it came naturally now.

There was a flash n my left shoulder as I finished spinning and slammed the flat side of the cleaver into Dughan's armor. He coughed violently as he stumbled backwards. "Y-you're a priest?!"

"Not just a priest," I grinned indulgent as I took a Battle Stance. I saw the marshal recognize it. "BUT A WARRIOR AS WELL!"

He shook off my Demoralizing Shout with only a flinch before relaxing and grunting. "Alright, alright. You have … an impressive array of skills." He paused as I relaxed, too. "You could work for Stormwind, boy."

"Not interested," I replied. "So. Where are them Defias and the like you need dead?"

Duggan frowned. "Before you go after the Delia's Brotherhood, I need you to check on two mines for me. There's one south and another northeast. They've been overrun by kobold and I need to know the exact depth of their infestations."

Kobolds made for good source of EXP, I guessed.

"Sure, boss."

And promptly ran off towards the mine south of Goldshire, ignoring the looks the townspeople sent my way.

-VB-

In hindsight, I should have realized that not all game mechanics worked the same.

Namely, the NPC respawns.

I stood in the deepest tunnel of the Fargodeep Mine. My hands, cleaver, the ground I stood on, my pants, and my shirt, and my skin were all dripping and drenched in kobold blood.

And even as I saw the clear near sociopathic disconnect I felt in this massacre I just committed, I realized that no more kobolds came to attack me.

I stood still, looking towards the only way out of the tunnels.

Nothing.

Grunting, I knelt down and began collecting the candle sticks the kobolds had glued onto their heads. Kobolds never allowed anyone to touch their candles, so bringing them back was a sure way of showing that I had killed them.

I paused after the thirty-seventh candle and looked over all of the weapons and tools the kobolds had.

Could I… sell them? They were my lot, but did the kobolds loot them from the human workers and the mine itself or did they bring it with them? If the loot came from the mine, then I couldn’t sell it; I would be stealing from good and hard workers, and stealing from such people was unacceptable!

But if the kobolds brought it with them?

They had to have conquered the mine somehow, right? They couldn’t do that with mere fists - their fists were half the size of a human’s.

I picked up a spiked club and looked it over. This definitely didn’t look like a standard mining or guard duty equipment. I’m keeping this at the very least.

“... I’ll chuck it all in my inventory and see what they say afterwards.”

And so I did.

It took me a while, but I got out of the mine just as the sun set over the horizon, plunging Elwynn Forest in darkness.

And men and women covering their faces in red bandana walked out from the treelines.

“When we saw the kobolds running for their lives, we thought it was Stormwind sending their men to clear this place out of them. Instead, what do we find?” a man in the lead asked as he twirled a sword in his hand.

I looked around. There were a dozen of these bastards, and the red bandana signified who they were: Defias Brotherhood, the most powerful bandit group in the Kingdom of Stormwind. I could tell that each of these bandits were experienced. The way they encircled me with their weapons out told me that they were ready to pounce me.

But they were bandits, not outright killers; they were probably hoping that I would give up my loot, weapon, and clothes without fighting back.

“And you lot are Defias,” I hummed as all manners of defensive spells activated, shrouding in magics of fel, nature, and Light. “I wonder how much each of your heads are worth.”

Before any of them could comment on the strangeness of my spells, I Dashed forward, slamming into the bandit who’d been speaking before me. The bandit didn’t even get to scream before I used the momentum of the Dash to stab right through his chest with one of the shortswords I’ve looted. Then I brought down my cleaver and hacked into his neck.

“Daniel!” someone shrieked in grief.

When one of the bandits tried to jump me from the side, I blasted him with Earth Shock. She dropped to the screaming in pain. I switched out the shortsword for the spiked club and brought it down. The mace smashed into the bandit’s head and crushed her skull.

I turned around and met the charge of the other bandits.

“Shit, I can’t shoot him if all of you charge him!” a bandit in the back shouted.

Yeah, I’m not going to let you do that, mate.

I parried a few attacks before breaking off from them.

And then I Dashed to the archer.

He tried to dodge, but I came around swinging the cleaver horizontally instead of in a thrusting motion. The difference in my attack from my previous one caught him off guard, and he squawked as the tip edge of my cleaver bit into the front of his neck and sliced it open.

“What the fuck is he?!” one of them shouted.

“Just kill him!”

However by this point, they were starting to back away. I killed two of them in less than five seconds, which was shocking enough by the fact itself, nevermind the execution of how I went about doing it.

Still wrapped in the uranium green fire of fel, the lighter light green glow of nature, and the white and yellow aura of the Light, I stood over my latest kill and stared at them blankly.

I needed to kill more of them. I couldn’t have them run. That wouldn’t do.

I needed to get stronger.

My hands lit up in the glow of nature, tree roots erupted from the ground.

The bandits screamed as the roots wrapped around them, and then they grew frantic in their desperation as I advanced on them.

“Bandits die, I get paid. This is a great news for me, isn’t it?” I asked them rhetorically as I lifted my cleaver above my head. “Bye bye.”

-VB-

Dughan stared at the twelve heads inside one bloody burlap sack and too many used candles sticks of varying lengths in the next slightly burned burlap sack.

“Are those proof enough for you?” the young man in front of him asked.

He looked up and saw the blonde haired boy - no, man - smiling casually as if he had helped his family with some house chore or family business and was expecting to get praised for it. Dughan hid his gulp as he looked back down.

Twelve Defias bandits and … what could possibly be evidence for the death of nearly all, if not all, kobolds that infested the Fargodeep Mines.

“That’s … a lot.”

Even a platoon of trained footsoldiers would have trouble doing this.

“I took the bandits out by surprise. I think they weren’t expecting someone who could kill three of them so quickly before I surprised the rest with druidic magic.”

Everyone would be surprised by that. Hell, Dughan himself had been surprised by it, but for the man to go and kill so many?

It spoke of experience.

“What is it that you want?” he asked the man.

What was his name?

The smiling man grinned.

It was a bloodthirsty grin. It spoke of the man’s desire to cause bloodshed and revel in such an evil act.

But was such an act evil when done against those who would harrass, murder, and rape the regular and good people?

“I’m just here to help.”

Yes. Just here to help. That’s … all this would do. It would help Goldshire and the kingdom.

Dughan smiled weakly and feebly. “That’s good to hear. Can you check out what help the Eastvale Logging Camp might need?”

“Sure. Do you mind if I go around and od some shopping? My cleaver won’t cut it for any long term work,” the killer laughed sheepishly as he held up a blood-crusted cleaver up in the air. “Oh, and I looted all of the bandits and the kobolds. Am I allowed to sell them off?”

“Yes. Nothing they held should be ours,” he replied evenly.

“Oh good. I’m sure Goldshire will love to have a hundred or so cheap pickaxes.”

“Yes, the town would like that,” Dughan mumbled as the man walked away. ‘He was going to come back to Goldshire, wasn’t he? Ugh. My stomach hurts.’

-VB-