by Sean Oswald
Obviously the creature had expected to see him bowled over too, as it shook its head and reared its first few segments up into the air before driving back down with a high pitched screech. Mandibles spread this time as if trying to swallow its prey. This time though, Jaselm didn’t just stand there and take it but angled his body slightly so that he was able to cause the attack to deflect harmlessly to the side off of his shield and exposing the centipede’s side to a slash from his sword. Like a consummate professional, he didn’t over extend but simply took a test swing at the space where the first and second segments met. The blade hit just right and drew a long slash causing (28) damage even though it was only a glancing blow. A sickly green blood dripped down as the blade was pulled back and a scent filled the air reminding Mira of when she was little and Jackson liked to squish stink bugs on her bed.
With the creature’s attention fully on him, Jaselm was able to maneuver it further up into the tunnel so that the rest of the party could step in and attack it. Even Daichi did one of those instant stand things that the ninjas did in those goofy movies her dad and brother had liked to watch. One second he was flat on his back, the next he was up on his feet and driving his left foot into the flank of the beast.(46) Kraden slammed his mace into the opposing flank, and it seemed to do almost as much damage as the monk’s kick had. (39) The main effect of those blunt attacks though was that they collapsed the carapace of the affected segment and further slowed the creature. As it lost control of more and more of its legs, the strength of its attacks against Jaselm grew ever feebler.
Dave saw his opening and cast a Sure Strike spell before sliding in next to Kraden and driving his blade down into the exposed area broken by the miner’s mace. The magic and the sword driven by his full effort caused a critical strike for (244) damage. The centipede had only taken a little less than half its total health in damage, but her dad’s blow had severed the first three segments from the rest of the body. He ordered everyone back, and they all stepped away from the thrashing beast as it bled out unable to control its body any longer.
“Shouldn’t we put it out of its misery?” Emily asked with her ever kind heart.
“Only if we can do so without putting anyone in harm’s way or wasting resources,” Daichi answered.
“Even if I drive my blade into its tiny brain the back half of its body is going to wiggle around for I don’t know how long, but if you want, I can at least do that much,” Dave said.
“Please do, it looks so pathetic.”
Since the front part of the body was essentially unable to move, its mandibles cracked against Jaselm’s shield and its rear legs immobilized by the crushed segments. There was little risk. Dave stepped up and drove his blade down through the top of its thrashing head. His aim was true and his arms were strong enough to force the blade through its armored hide. Whatever he hit caused the front part of the body to spasm once and then stop moving all together, and even though the rear segments were still thrashing about, they all got an XP notification.
You have defeated: Giant Centipede lvl 18. XP: 108 x .5 numerical penalty x .8 Tier Penalty x 2 (killing blow) divided by 6 party members =86 + racial bonus 25%= 18 XP
Mira realized at this point that she hadn’t even cast a single spell but felt better for it as Jaselm said, “Well that is very sustainable. I only used two skills, Taunt and Stalwart Stance. The first one is a free skill that I can use every fight and the second one only requires 1 point of faith, so I can do it several times. I suspect it will be necessary since those things charge like a bull.”
Dave looked around at the party before saying, “So Daichi, what did you see down there?”
The monk paused for a moment. It was something he often did, as if he was assembling his thoughts. Mira wondered if he did it on purpose to try to look like the wise old man or if it was just a nervous tick. She couldn’t help but overlay an image of Rafiki from Lion King against Daichi in her imagination and just barely contained a giggle. “So the good and bad of it is pretty simple. There appears to be a ton of metal ore down at the bottom, but the cavern is literally crawling with these giant centipedes. Most of them are smaller than this one but there must have been three dozen at least that were this size, and I’m pretty sure that there is one which is much larger. It is hard to say exactly because it was covered by the smaller ones.”
“Eww!” both Emily and Mira said at the same time.
“No one likes bugs, but we just need to stay the course. If anyone needs a rest let me know otherwise as soon as one dies, I want you to go down and pull another one. Try for the bigger ones like this, one at a time. While you do that, Kraden and I will pull the corpse of the last one out of our fighting area and Emily and Mira can examine the corpse for anything of value?” Dave spoke laying out the plan like a general discussing tactics.
“You think I’m gonna touch one of those things? Besides it’s not like they have a coin purse or anything,” Emily complained.
“Just off the top of my head, their carapaces, legs, and anything like venom sacks may have value. We should at least collect samples.”
Shaking her head in disgust, Emily just stared at him till Mira said, “It will be just like when you helped me dissect that mouse for biology class.”
Apparently, the anticipation of doing something with her daughter outweighed her distaste for touching the insect corpse because Emily didn’t say anything further.
After that, the serious work of grinding began. Pull after pull, Daichi managed to bring up just one centipede at a time. Each time they got a little better at positioning it and even began to manage to kill them without using any magic other than Dave doing a quick binding of a front a couple of the front legs when a new one would charge up. He would only do that when Jaselm needed to regenerate his Faith points and since the spell had a low casting cost, Dave was able to regen the points between fights. It was gruesomely comical the first time that the beasts own forward momentum sheared its legs right from underneath it, but even that sight grew to be old hat as they killed monster after monster.
Mira found herself rather bored actually. They had collected samples as best they could of the venom, blood, carapace and legs of the centipedes, but for the most part, both she and her mom found themselves just standing there. Three hours went past like that with a growing sense of malaise and indifference to the potential danger presented by the centipedes. That all changed though on the twenty-ninth pull when, Daichi came running up the stairs and instead of falling to the ground he was yelling, “Swarm, swarm of little ones.”
Mira listened closely and sure enough the sound was different this time. Higher pitched but many more individual feet were coming up. If she had to guess, it must be thousands upon thousands. Crawling over each other in the urgency to reach the tunnel at the top of the stairs was a wave of centipedes each between six inches and two feet long. All would have been considered wide and large insects back home with the bigger ones being impossibly massive for earth yet she felt no fear, only an excitement that she would be able to finally do something.
Stepping up next to Jaselm, she startled him as he moved to push her aside but saw that she was casting a spell and so thought better of it. Her Flame Fan spell went off in front of her, and unlike when she had been trying to scorch the violent fungus earlier, she didn’t have to move because the target kept coming straight at her. The sizzling and popping of fried insects was like the world’s largest insect zapper, but the problem was that their momentum was greater than her spell. When her spell had first gone off she was more than ten feet from the edge of the stairs, but now the bugs had closed half that distance despite dozens of them having died.
Mira had no choice but to briefly drop her spell and with a thought activate the mage shield inherent in her staff. The benefit of this rather than waiting for Jaselm to activate his golden barrier was that she could still cast her spells through it. She followed with a quick cast Flame Fan and began cooking dozens more of the cen
tipedes. The instant that spell ran its course she triggered the same spell that was stored in her staff. Despite killing literally hundreds of centipedes, some of the creatures still swarmed over her. They crawled up the mage shield that was protecting her and slowly killed themselves while draining the power of the shield.
Others of the swarm went around her and attacked Jaselm or the others. The paladin was doing his best to bat them away with his sword or smash the creepy crawlies under foot. Daichi fell back to try to protect Emily and Dave had taken to using his new spell Lesser Repulsion on its widest setting to push the insects back. He directed the force back and forth like a mystical leaf blower. The pressure was enough to squish some of the smallest of the centipedes but the others were only knocked off their multitudinous feet and rolled backwards.
The swarm finally stopped and little by little, sword swing by sword swing they were able to finish off the remnants. Only a half dozen or so escaped by running further up the tunnel and then eventually during down the right fork. Even Emily got in on the action using her daggers to skewer more than one of the crawling pests.
Once this battle was over and everyone had shaken their clothing and hair out several times to make sure that no centipedes or centipede parts were clinging to them, they discussed what to do now. Mira had to admit that it had been scary, and she was emotionally drained now. Even though individually the swarm members had been only a tiny fraction of the threat that the giant centipedes represented, it still seemed more overwhelming. Maybe it was because they had successfully pulled and killed the larger monsters twenty-eight times in a row that she had become calloused to the danger they represented. Or maybe it was simply that no one likes having bugs crawling all over them.
It was decided that they would call it a day and set up camp back in the right fork of the tunnel near where they had scorched the walls clean. Her dad insisted on people sleeping in shifts and taking turns watching. He and her mom would take the first shift with Jaselm and Kraden taking the middle shift, and then Mira would have to take the final shift with Daichi. It would mean less sleep, but they would all be able to rest more soundly if they weren’t worried about being swarmed over in the middle of the night.
Once they had set up the camp location and made sure the immediate area of the tunnel was clear, Mira noticed Daichi setting up some scrap wood which must have come from the beams that supported the tunnel. While for the most part, the tunnels were natural stone filled with veins of metal ore, there were sections where plain dirt was held up wooden posts, mostly as the junctions where the tunnels split. The monk started a small fire with some flint and steel, using a pile some of the wood which had worn away. It wasn’t exactly a large fire but it did warm things up. Mira hadn’t even realized how cold and dank the mine was until she felt the warmth of the fire.
The next thing though was disgusting as the monk created a crude spit and started to roast a ten pound hunk of centipede flesh. Upon seeing all of the eyes upon him he simply said, “When you have lived as long as I have, you learn to accept what nature gives to you. We may be down here for a long time and our limited pack rations will only last a short time. I believe that there is water down at the bottom of the centipede cavern, but even if there is drinkable water we will still need food, preferably meat if we are to keep our strength up.”
None of the party could argue with the wisdom of what he said, but only the men were able to force themselves to partake of his feast. Emily and Mira contented themselves with eating some jerky and dry bread while taking slow sips of water and talking quietly between themselves about how disgusting it was. A high Intelligence score might give an increased objectivity, but Mira still wasn’t able to force herself to eat centipede roast.
Once she was laying down, Mira tried to fall asleep but even though she was exhausted sleep wouldn't come. So she instead turned to review the notifications of the day and tally up what she had gained. It had been a good day’s haul. While it didn’t seem fair that the low level creatures from the swarm didn’t provide her with any XP, she had still managed to earn 508 total XP for the day. It was enough to push her well into level 19. The big relief then was that she still had an amount listed till her next level, and so she knew she would be able to progress into Tier 3. She didn’t spend any time pondering how a girl who thought gaming was a form of social death could now be so fixated on getting to as high a level as possible. She simply knew it was what she wanted.
Next came the exciting part. She had three stat points to spend. Mira had had some discussions with her dad about what he called build as well as with Jaselm and her mother about how they thought she should spend her stat points. The problem with what they were all advising her was that she felt like she was stronger than they were, so maybe what she was doing made more sense than what they were doing. She also weighed out the option of saving the points but decided that was only a mental excuse for uncertainty. She was smart enough to figure out the best way to use the points as they came to her and unused points didn’t benefit anyone. With that in mind she added 1 point to Intelligence. No matter what everyone said, she was going to keep increasing it. In a concession to what everyone else warned her about though she added the remaining points between Constitution and Endurance. She really hadn’t liked being unable to breathe when those spores had attacked her. Hopefully by raising those scores over time she would be better able to resist attacks like that.
As for her character points, she was up to 67 of those saved up. Unlike the stat points, she saw a clear purpose for saving those points up. She wanted them available when she broke into the third tier and would be able to increase her casting skills again. Mira so far mostly had to make due with Tier 1 spells and had visions of what she would be able to do with Tier 3 spells. It was to those pleasant thoughts that she drifted off to sleep on the hard stone.
The next thing that Mira knew was that she was woken up by screaming. She bolted awake, jumping to her feet. Her mind immediately processed several things. The first was that she was well rested, so it must have been more than six hours since she fell asleep, the second was that all but one of the torches were out. That torch was in placed in a sconce in the wall behind her and the shadows it cast made it difficult to see exactly what was happening.
From what she could see, Kraden was laying on the ground screaming and Jaselm was trying to pull him by his left arm. As the sleep cleared from her eyes, it looked like the paladin was in a tug of war battle with a shadow that was latched onto the miner’s left leg. Mira saw Daichi rush forward and swing his arm in a partial circle. With that motion, she felt the air in the tunnel rush around her. The torch on the wall flickered and was almost blown out from the force of the air.
Mira went to get closer herself but was grabbed by her father who said, “It's some kind of slime, as soon as we free Kraden we will need to blast it with spells. For now, cast regeneration on him.”
Looking closer, she could tell that his description was right. It wasn’t a shadow like she had thought at first. It was pure obsidian black, glossy like a very thick liquid or more like a pudding. The effect of the monk’s attack seemed to have pushed it back off of Kraden’s leg, but she could see white bone jutting out where his boot should have been.
Emily ran past, “What are you doing? Attack it!”
Dave released Mira and grabbed Emily from behind. “We can’t. It devours weapons. It already ate his mace. Just heal him.”
“It’s eating him. I can’t heal parts that are gone.” Emily screamed frantically at the raw horror of a creature which could do this, but then a calm settled over her as she went into nurse mode and focused on healing. She cast a quickened heal and then a regeneration. The healing from both of the women may have restored his health points, but they didn’t stop the agony of the black acidic material eating away little spots on his left leg and right arm. Everywhere it had splattered in the burst of wind it continued to devour mindlessly. Kraden was only lucky that none of it h
ad struck his face.
Jaselm finally managed to pull him free and an instant later Daichi stepped in and helped carry Kraden further from the black blob. The force of air from his attack had pushed the blob back but only a few feet, and now its mass was growing. The black which they had seen upon the walls started oozing from further down the tunnel and swelling into a gelatinous wall four feet high.
Dave and Mira both began casting spells in unison while Emily kneeled down next to her patient. While a fine mist of ice blasted off of Mira’s fingers in a wide fan into the blob (142), Dave cast Assess Enemy.
Hell Slime Level: 35 Health: 1106
Dave shouted out its name and stats to everyone, which caused several sharp intakes of breath. As he did, Mira noticed that the elemental damage of her spell had severely affected the creature like it was extremely vulnerable to cold but the force aspect of the spell split it into two. Everyone continued to fall back with Jaselm helping Emily move Kraden who continued to scream. Daichi called out, “I’ve never heard of a Hell Slime but slimes are mindless blobs which live by consuming organic and metallic substances. It must have gotten into the mine to eat the metals and somehow has become infused with infernal energy.”
Mira followed up with a quickened Ice Dagger spell for (118) elemental damage but again the force of the blades bored small holes into the closer of the two split blobs which just closed up immediately afterwards. Immediately afterwards she cast her Web spell to block the tunnel but the slime just oozed through it. Meanwhile Dave had scored a series of thin cuts into the stone floor with his sword and was bending over trying to pry up the cut out section. While Jaselm stepped forward boldly and said, “If it has infernal energy it may be subject to a Holy Smite. The paladin raised his hand up in a fist and then brought it down. A bolt of searingly bright energy flashed from the ceiling of the tunnel into the more injured of the two blobs. The bolt blasted it into a donut and the black in the slime seemed to fade and become more muted as it dealt (380) holy damage.