The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1)

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The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1) Page 8

by Craig Kobayashi

Unused Attribute Points: 9

  Unused Skill Points: 4

  New Skills are now available.

  Garath decided to hold off on distributing his stats until he had a look at the newly available Skills. He willed open his MENU panels and opened the Skills tab. The panel encompassed the right third of his vision, bringing up the complicated web of connected and interconnected Skills - his eyes automatically moved to the two new Skills glowing brightly, eager for his attention. The first was in the Death tree and a wild grin spread across Garath’s face as he read the details.

  Blight

  Active

  Cost: 84 Mana (.35x base Mana)

  3 Meter Range

  Instant

  30 Second Cooldown

  *Additional Cost: Tainted Soul*

  Effect: Infects all enemies in a 3 meter radius with a festering poison, dealing 31 (Death) damage over 15 seconds (1.2x Wisdom Attribute).

  *Tainted Soul: the form containing your soul is soiled.*

  Cost to Unlock: 1 Skill Point

  Total unused Skill Points: 4

  Garath felt about as giddy as a school boy in the girl’s locker room after reading the description of the AoE damage over time spell. To be fair, he was a little concerned about the fact that the majority of his Skills seemed to come with that extra cost but he knew he'd have to either find a way around it or maybe just stop being such a pussy. He still didn't quite understand what his form being soiled meant - but he couldn't keep ignoring the Skills with the additional cost. Before any other aspiration, goal, or soul-preservation, he needed to survive the next twenty-four hours. He spent the single Skill Point to unlock Blight, then moved on to the second new Skill, this one in the Blood tree.

  Sanguine Ward

  Active

  Cost: 24 Mana (.1x base Mana) + 24 Health (.1x base Health)

  Range: Self

  2 Second Cast

  2 Minute Cooldown

  Effect: Extracts a combination of your Mana and Blood to absorb 80% of all physical damage for 5 seconds.

  Cost to Unlock: 1 Skill Point

  Total unused Skill Points: 3

  Garath purchased the Skill without a second thought, leaving two unused Skill Points for later. A spell shield was EXACTLY what his small but growing repertoire of spells needed.

  The Necrologist reread the Skill description for Death Bolt, noting that it now reflected a higher damage value to match his increased Wisdom Attribute. That made him think about something that had bothered him before. When he read the details of exactly what each Attribute Point would provide, he felt like casters got the short end of the stick in this system. Dexterity and Strength directly increased the damage output of physical damage dealing Classes, but the description of Wisdom only said it would increase his maximum Mana by +10. As he thought about it now though, each of his damage-dealing Skills were based on his Wisdom Attribute, yet the costs were calculated using ‘base Mana’. Even though his Profile panel didn’t directly state that increasing his Wisdom would increase the power of his offensive Skills, it was clear that the higher his Wisdom Attribute, the higher the damage reflected in each Skill description would be. And more than that, since the cost was calculated from ‘base Mana’ - which typically excludes Mana gained from invested Attribute Points and any increased Attributes from items (like the +30 to maximum Mana from his Novice Necrologist Cap) - and the damage was based on Wisdom Attribute itself, the damage for each Skill would increase in power as he did - yet the cost wouldn’t increase at the same level. If anything, casters had it even better than other Classes, unless Garath was just missing something.

  He still didn’t feel entirely comfortable distributing his Attribute Points, but the correlation he just made between Wisdom and increased spell damage was encouraging and no serious gamer would just leave a potential advantage on the table. With that in mind, Garath dumped four points into Wisdom, three points into Vitality, and the last two points into Regeneration. When he confirmed the changes, a nearly overwhelming feeling of power surged through his veins. Between the two new Skills and substantially improved Attributes, the Necrologist felt on top of the world.

  A private message chat box stirred Garath from his excitement. Athios had apparently found what he had asked for and was waiting for him on the roof. He closed his MENU panels, got to his feet, then left to meet her.

  ***

  As the second wave of The Culling loomed closer, Athios and Garath stood atop the roof of the red brick school building. The Necrologist sprayed the final touches on a downward facing arrow on a massive American flag with black spray paint and tossed the can casually off the roof. The two of them ran the flag up the pole and took a few steps back to inspect their work.

  "I don’t think anyone is going to see this," Athios jested.

  "Very funny,” said Garath without any real mirth. "Did you already make a new community thread?"

  "Not yet," said Athios, her left hand moving up to tug nervously on a lock of black hair hanging near her neckline. "I didn't know what to say..."

  "You want me to do it?" he asked.

  "Yes!" she pleaded.

  Garath just nodded and opened his MENU, then focused on the World icon. He found that the map still hovered over the city of Everett, now displaying a small green dot to notate the position of each member of his Raid group. To the right of the digital map, he located and opened the Community panel. He had opened this panel once before, when he had found Athios' original post - a few more posts had been added since then. He scrolled past them until he found the option to 'Post Thread' and keyed in his message.

  Thread Title:

  Safety near the high school

  Thread Body:

  There are about thirty of us holed up in the old, converted school building you may know as the church of Immaculate Conception - it's the red brick building next to the basketball courts by the high school. I just put a flag up on the roof with an arrow facing down at the building. We don't have any food or water, but there are eleven of us actively fighting to keep everyone in the building safe.

  If you decide to join us, I can't guarantee your survival. When I saw that over 17000 people have died to this shit in right here in Everett while our little group comfortably took shifts to protect the single entrance made me sick.

  Get here. Be safe.

  Would you like to post this thread?

  Yes or No

  Garath chose ‘Yes’.

  "Posted," he said, looking out over the city as his MENU panels vanished. With the limited view atop the two story school building, it almost looked like any other morning. Birds sang their songs to welcome the day and the weather was beautiful. Apart from a handful of broken windows, crashed cars, and the sporadic human remains, even the city itself seemed normal. "I guess the monsters aren't really that interested in destruction."

  "Yeah,” said Athios, nodding her agreement. “Just killing people."

  "Well..." he started, then thought better of it - Garath had always been superstitious about things like that and he didn’t see any nearby wood to knock on.

  "Well?"

  "...not these monsters," he finished, already wishing he hadn't. "They were skeletons, even the Inspect description called them mindless. There are another seven waves."

  The black orbs distributed across the planet once again began to spark and pop with malevolent energy. Athios looked at Garath, shaking her head with one eyebrow cocked.

  "You had to say it, didn’t you?"

  “You asked!”

  Chapter 11

  Fight or Die, Win and Live!

  Seven black orbs accompanied Garath and Athios on the roof of the school building. Garath opened his map and took note of the positions of his fighting force. Nine of the eleven brave souls were huddled around the door ready for another round. The healers were all in place at the building’s entrance with the children and various non-combatants just behind them in the safety of the Raid’s stronghold.

 
"Looks like the door’s covered. Wanna see if we can manage some kills from here?" Garath asked Athios.

  Athios considered it for a moment, then nodded. Her dimensional skills would be just as potent from the roof, if not more so. The range of her transporting disks, the relocation spells both for enemies and the spell for allies, was thirty-meters - which would be more than adequate from their location.

  Garath addressed the fighting force over the Raid sub-channel, "Athios and I are going to fight from the roof, it looks like you guys already have the door covered. Who wants to volunteer for standing guard at the rear?"

  Nobody responded. Garath looked to Athios, who raised her hands to the side in the universal gesture of 'idk'.

  "No volunteers? Warrion, you're up for the first shift then. We're gonna handle this wave just like the last one, call it on this channel if you need to switch out and Warrion will relieve you."

  "Fine," a disappointed voice came back over the channel.

  This time, Garath wasn't surprised when the orbs began to vibrate wildly. ‘Should still have about three more minutes,’ he thought to himself, opening his MENU panels to confirm. At 02:58, the Necrologist mentally readied himself for the fight, and it hit him that he had forgotten to attempt a summon. It was as good a time as any to test his theory about using his House Cat form when casting spells with the additional cost of Tainted Soul, he figured, and got to work.

  To Athios, only a second passed while the Necrologist morphed into his smooth coated, tiny white cat form - to Garath, that same second felt like several minutes. His skin tingled as soft fur sprouted from it, his bones and muscles shook as they became smaller and lighter.

  "Awe, kitty!!! Oh my God, you're adorable!" said Athios, bending to pick him up.

  "Meeeow!" Garath meowed adorably. ‘Shit. Forgot about that,’ he thought to himself in self-recrimination.

  *Can you hear me?* he projected the thought to her.

  Taken aback by his voice in her head, Athios' face screwed up as she struggled to mentally communicate.

  *Yeah. Can you hear me?* Athios asked, hoping her words made it to the little white cat at her feet.

  *Yeah,* Garath confirmed. *Hey, question. Does my voice sound the same?*

  *More or less,* she told him, *but somehow cuter.*

  Garath hissed fiercely in his cat form and swiped at the air with his precious little claws. *Hey. I'm about six pounds of raw dont-fuck-with-this-ness. Anyway, I'm about to summon some help but the skill descriptions mentioned one of them may turn on me. So...*

  *I got your back, kitty.*

  *Thanks a lot,* he thought to her. Somehow, his projected thought oozed sarcasm and she laughed openly at him.

  "...but you're so cute!" she said aloud.

  He ignored her and began to focus his will into the casting - as soon as he did, a neon-green circle appeared on the ground in front of him and began to thrum rhythmically, almost like a pulse, as the green light intensified. When the three-second cast was complete, a sickly-green and vaguely canine head began to emerge from the center of the summoning circle, followed by the rest of its hulking form in short order. The Fel Hound's long grey tongue hung lazily out of its mouth between long, pointed black fangs. Its muscular body emitted a neon glow and its sharp, black claws clacked on the rooftop as it eagerly approached its tiny summoner. Having just cast his first Skill with the Tainted Soul cost, Garath was expecting something to happen, but it didn’t. At least nothing immediately apparent. He strained to perceive any change with all of his senses, but came up empty. The demon-beast looked down at Garath and wagged its stubby tail just as the black orbs around the planet reached their climax.

  In a single instant, the seven orbs on the roof - and those spread every few feet across the globe - spawned their monsters with the same deafening boom that had signalled the start of the first wave. And with that, the second wave of The Culling was underway.

  What spawned from the orbs this time looked similar to the skeletons of the first wave, with a few minor differences. Each of the newly spawned undead minions had rotting gobbets of flesh still attached to their bones and they wore chainmail armor. Instead of a randomly assigned weapon, these new enemies wore a uniform scimitar and buckler. Patches of long hair hung ragged from their heads and a demonic green glowed in their empty eye sockets. Still in his House Cat form, Garath triggered Inspect on the closest enemy atop the roof.

  Fetid Ghoul

  Undead

  Health: 25/25

  Level: 4

  Station: Infantry

  Mana: 0/0

  Description: Fetid Ghouls typically act as infantry units in service of a Lich Lord. The Ghouls were summoned to Earth without leadership and will attack anything and everything - except for other Ghouls, of course.

  Average Respawn Time: 10 minutes

  Level Range: 4-6

  Before Garath even finished reading the short description his Fel Hound leapt into action, attacking the Ghoul closest to its master. It jumped into the chest of the undead soldier, knocking it to its back, and then started ripping furiously with its long fangs at the boney arm raised in defense.

  ‘Good boy!’ thought Garath to himself. ‘Boy, right?’ he wondered, but didn't check.

  As soon as he targeted a Ghoul rushing toward his Fel Hound with its scimitar held high, Garath began to crave the experience points this creature could give him. He craved it then even more than he had ever craved anything in his life. He felt powerful and yearned with every fiber of his being to show these monsters just how powerful he was.

  In House Cat form, the build up of Mana into a spell felt awkward - when Garath funneled his Mana into Death Bolt, it formed a ball of black energy that hovered just in front of his nose instead of between his outstretched hands. Though Death Bolt's energy was black, and directly in front of his field of vision, he found that he could see through it just fine - the effect, like seeing the world from behind a pair of aviators. He wondered briefly if that was because his night vision was so vastly improved in feline form or if the system worked that way so that he would be able to aim effectively. The pulsing energy tickled his whiskers as he targeted the Ghoul approaching his Fel Hound from behind. Garath released the spell and it sailed unerringly into his target, knocking it backwards and off the roof.

  Athios dispatched three of the Ghouls with what was quickly becoming her signature move, the sky drop. Each of her targets dropped to the cement below and shattered into a miasma of neon colors.

  Another of the rotting corpses atop the old school building lunged at the little white cat with its scimitar but the Necrologist’s enhanced reflexes and greatly reduced size allowed him to dodge it easily. The wicked sword hit nothing but air then sliced harmlessly into the roof.

  As Garath's Fel Hound tore the arm from the Ghoul beneath it, the fluffy Necrologist sent another Death Bolt into the one armed bastard - parting it from its last few HP. When the arm dangling from the Fel Hound's mouth flashed and evaporated. Garath could swear he saw the canine brute pouting as his prize vanished without ceremony.

  Athios ducked a broad sweep from a notched, steel weapon and sent a disk from her right hand to land below the feet of her attacker. Before getting pulled into the shimmering portal, the undead soldier wound up and hurled its weapon at her. The razor-sharp scimitar cleared the few feet between them and pierced her chest, tearing through her skin easily then puncturing the lung inside.

  She spat blood and dropped to her knees with the sword still embedded in her chest. The throbbing agony near her heart served as an all-too-real reminder that she wasn't playing a game. She tried to reach for the scimitar's handle but the pain was too much, every movement of her muscles grinding bone and flesh against steel. Her head swimming and breathing ragged, Athios fell from her knees on to her back and looked into the sky. Birds continued to sing to the morning and a comforting breeze graced her face, then her vision dimmed to a blurry vignette and she blacked out.

 

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