by Kyle Johnson
Rhys stepped forward and chanted a Spell, directing healing energy into the two Warriors. The LP drain stopped as the life-giving Spell countered the death mana within them, but not before both of their LP had dropped by 10%.
Aranos gritted his teeth in anger and raised both hands, channeling light mana and unleashing an Energy Barrage at the enemy caster, activating his Rapid Shot Ability at the same time. Once more, the creature raised its evil-looking shield of black and gray energy, but it held for only a handful of seconds as six blasts per second slammed into it. The shield burst into shards of eerie, gray light, and the remaining blasts tore into the enemy caster, who shrieked in pain as the light mana burned its corrupted flesh.
The first ogrin was staggering, blood streaming freely from its legs, arms, and stomach. It lurched forward with a roar, its strike slow and clumsy, and Geltheriel leapt over its fist and landed on its forearm. She took a pair of steps up its arm and thrust her sword directly into the beast’s gaping mouth. The ogrin choked and gurgled as the sharp steel lanced through the back of its throat and emerged from its neck. Geltheriel jumped back, withdrawing the blade as the creature fell heavily on the ground, unmoving in the grip of what Aranos guessed was a Paralysis debuff.
Silma darted forward and sank her fangs into the ogrin’s wide throat, ripping and tearing at the thick flesh until her razor-sharp teeth sliced open its jugular. She buried her jaws into the gaping wound and shook her head, tearing the wound open wider, then leapt back to avoid the spray of blood that gushed forth. The ogrin gasped one last time before its final breath rattled out of its chest.
The enemy caster screeched in anger as the ogrin died and unleashed another blast of death magic at the party. Aranos raised another life barrier, but he could feel the strain as he did so and he realized that while his SP were still good, he was running short on life mana.
The second ogrin was still raging, but the dabruks edged around it and charged for the doorway. The two defenders stepped back, preparing themselves for a more standard fight as the dabruks attacked. Saphielle took the brunt of the attack, her armor and increased LP allowing her to tank the vicious blows from the dabruks, while Geltheriel slipped in and out of the combat, her blade finding gaps in the creatures’ armor with seeming ease.
Aranos took a deep breath and gathered his mana, casting his Ball Lightning in the room beyond the doorway. The first arc of electricity slammed into the raging ogrin, locking its muscles and sending it to the ground, Paralyzed. Instantly, Silma blurred and appeared before the creature, her light-enhanced teeth tearing into its throat and ripping open the vein they found there. Before the nearest dabruks could respond, she vanished back into the room, leaving the ogrin to bleed on the floor.
As Aranos pulled the second bolt and directed it at the caster, the creature hissed an incantation. A glowing globe appeared around it, shedding the arc of lightning with ease. This thing is a powerful caster, Aranos realized with dismay. It’s got a lot of Spells and it knows how to use them well…I wonder if it was the one that set the tracking Spell on us back on the Road?
Hurriedly, Aranos grabbed the construct of the Tracking Spell that still surrounded them. He’d examined the Spell thoroughly by this point, so it took him less than a second to locate the channel linking the Spell to its caster and to redirect the power filling the spell-form back down that channel, pouring in some of his own precious SP for good measure. He watched the other caster for several long moments, but the monster seemed unaffected and began a new incantation.
Aranos sighed and reached out to the globe surrounding the creature with his Mana Vampire Perk. The warding Spell was complex and tightly woven, and it took Aranos valuable seconds to locate the initiation point of the Spell…seconds that allowed the caster to unleash three bolts of ebon energy. One struck Aranos’ Composite Armor and bled off into the air, only sapping the armor’s defenses, but the other two struck Geltheriel and Saphielle squarely. Aranos winced as their LP bars dropped by another 30% before Rhys stepped in to heal them back to only 15% damage.
Anger stirred in Aranos’ chest, and he felt a roar of rage building as he stared at the barrier keeping the caster safe. He tamped the anger down, though, knowing that his Roar of Freedom would leave him all but helpless afterward, and instead poured some of his precious Soul Points into his Mana Vampire Perk. The extra power made it a simple matter to wrench the warding globe’s construct out of alignment, bleeding the energy into the air and leaving the caster vulnerable.
Without its protective globe, the spellcaster howled as the next bolt of lightning arced to its flesh. However, it seemed to shrug off the blast of power and raised its hands, glaring at Aranos. Suddenly, it froze, and Aranos felt a wave of mana silently enter the room and slam directly into the creature. The caster screeched in pain and dropped to the ground, clutching its head in seeming agony while Aranos stared, dumbfounded.
The tracking Spell, he realized a moment later. We had traveled so far from where I locked it down, it took a while for the energy to travel around the Spell Anchor and back to here. Good to know that mana doesn’t travel anywhere near the speed of light, I guess.
He took advantage of the monster’s incapacity and launched a series of Composite Bullets at the prone beast, followed by a Fire Barrage. The projectiles tore into its body, eliciting more screams of pain and tearing off chunks of flesh as they exploded within it. The Barrage lasted for a full five seconds before the creature’s thrashing stilled at last.
Saphielle and Geltheriel were still battling the remaining dabruks, while the last ogrin was scrambling to its feet, just in time for Aranos to pull his fourth lightning bolt and send it crashing to the ground again. Only two of the dabruks remained; the rest had fallen beneath the Warriors’ attacks. Silma vanished once more and tore into the ogrin, no longer worried about the dabruks, until it began to thrash and rose to its feet.
The last two dabruks fell, and the ogrin finally ceased its mindless raging and charged at the party. Aranos called his last lightning bolt, but although the ogrin stumbled under the impact of the arc of power, it kept its feet and didn’t collapse again. Instead, it rushed at the pair of Warriors, roaring and swinging its massive fists.
Geltheriel and Saphielle renewed their deadly dance, one distracting the beast while the other tore at it, but this time Silma teleported behind the creature and added her attacks to the mix. The creature swung its fists wildly as blades and teeth tore at its skin and shed its blood. As it overextended with a powerful backfist, Saphielle struck its chest with her shield, knocking it sideways, while Geltheriel slid her blade into its exposed armpit. At the same time, Saphielle’s spear darted out, puncturing the nearest eye, and the beast roared in pain and grabbed at the shaft, which Saphielle hurriedly retracted.
Silma took the opportunity to dart in, her jaws snapping hard on the ogrin’s unprotected groin, her head whipping back and forth brutally. The shriek of pain from the massive creature was startlingly high-pitched, and it slammed its fist down toward the fenrin’s skull. Aranos felt a moment of panic, but the wolf released her grip and danced back – allowing the fist to slam directly into its own horribly wounded crotch. The ogrin dropped to its knees, clutching itself in pain, and Saphielle leapt forward, driving her spear directly into the monster’s damaged eye. The blade encountered brief resistance before sliding through the socket and plunging into the ogrin’s brain. The monster froze for a moment, shivered, and then collapsed to the ground.
As the last of their enemies fell, and the tower descended into silence, the party stood quietly for a moment, staring at one another.
It was Geltheriel who finally broke the silence. “Oathbinder,” she gasped as her Stamina and LP slowly began to refill, “what did you do?”
Chapter 7
Aranos blinked, stunned. “What do you mean, ‘what did I do’?” he repeated, his face blank. “I told you I could turn that tracking Spell it was using against it…”
Geltheriel
shook her head and raised her hand, interrupting his words. “That is not what I speak of,” she said flatly. “Did you not see the notice about that Evolved Kerruk? It said its mana core was forcibly filled with death mana, causing an Evolution! Did you do that?”
“Wait, what notice?” he protested. A moment later, her words sunk in, and he realized what she was saying. “Hold on, that’s not what I did. I turned one of its traps against it, sure, but that should have hurt it, not helped it!”
Saphielle stared at him for a moment before shaking her head ruefully. “With all of your power, Redeemer, it is easy to forget what you do not know. Tonight, we will begin learning the Inspection Skill, and you will make no complaints. Had you possessed it, that battle might have been far easier.”
“Unless he decided that the ogrins were not quite powerful enough, as well,” Rhys murmured. “Perhaps he could have given them horns or claws, to make the battle truly exciting.”
Geltheriel sighed. “While I am certain that whatever happened was in error, Oathbinder, it could have been a deadly error. When the final kerruk appeared, I admit that I was somewhat afraid, as its appearance resembled that of a lesser annablis, one of the lords of the urukkai.”
“While it is unlikely but possible that together we would prevail against one such,” Saphielle interjected, “it would be impossible when it had ogrins as minions.”
“Not that the Liberator is familiar with the word impossible,” Rhys snorted.
“You can imagine both my surprise and relief, then,” Geltheriel continued, ignoring the interruption, “to find that it was an advanced kerruk – one that had exceeded the normal level constraints of the race – that had been forcibly mutated by an influx of death magic. And you say that you turned its own death Spell back upon it…”
Aranos began to protest again, but he caught himself. Maybe I did do something wrong, he admitted silently. Best to check instead of assuming. He closed his eyes and mentally called up the image of the kerruk’s warding Spell, the one he had reversed upon it.
Everything looks fine, he grumbled to himself. All I did was reverse the targeting runes, so that instead of the magic spreading out away from the caster, it would return to the caster… He gulped as he realized his error. And condense inward. I reversed the Spell from an outward burst to an inward compression. I basically gave it a massive boost of highly compressed death mana. Idiot!
He swallowed again and opened his eyes, his expression of guilt certainly writ plain upon his face. “Umm, yeah,” he admitted weakly. “So, it looks like I screwed up a bit. I meant to change the Spell’s target to its caster, so that the Spell would hurt it and anything around it when it was triggered. I…did it wrong. You said it made the thing evolve?”
Geltheriel stared at him flatly for several long moments, and he added. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake, and I’ll be more careful in the future. I figured out what I did wrong, and I won’t do that again, I promise.”
She grunted and seemed to let the matter drop. “Let us first ensure that the tower is clear and see if the kerruks at least had anything worth our keeping. And do you not wish to use your Soulmending Skill?”
Aranos blinked in surprise. In his confusion over his mistake with the warding Spell, he had entirely forgotten to take advantage of his Skill. He quickly reached out and found that, while the souls of the kerruks and uruks they had first encountered had already moved on in their journeys, those of the creatures they had just killed still lingered. Easing the passage of the dabruks and ogrins was a simple enough matter – the ogrins, especially, gave a significant number of Soul Points – but that of the Evolved kerruk was another matter.
Aranos frowned as he realized that the Evolution he’d forced upon it had affected more than just its body. Its soul was steeped in death mana, the grayish strands entwining it so thickly that his Soulmending Skill couldn’t even touch it, much less ease its pain. He tried again, but the field of death mana rebuffed him almost painfully, and he could sense the magic corroding the attached soul as every moment passed.
Aranos gritted his teeth and tried reaching out with his Mana Vampire Perk, attempting to use the probe from his Soulmending Skill as a guideline for his mana tether, but he couldn’t make a connection. It was as if, to his mana tendril, the soul simply didn’t exist. Or, he realized in a flash of insight, as if they existed out of phase with one another. But there has to be a way to connect them; after all, I can use Soul Points to power my Spells. I ought to be able to reverse that and connect a Spell to a soul…
Before he could contemplate further, the soul beneath the shroud of death magic shuddered and collapsed, finally obliterated by the relentless magical assault. With the soul’s demise, the death construct unraveled, dissipating into the air harmlessly. Aranos flinched as he realized what that meant: with the death of its soul, the kerruk was gone forever. While he knew that it was a monster and thoroughly a creature of the Dark, the thought of its entire existence simply ending like that bothered him.
Silma interrupted his thoughts by nuzzling her nose into his left hand. Why are you upset? she asked curiously. It was a simple mistake, and in the end, no one died because of it.
Aranos smiled weakly. He wasn’t sure how he could explain to the fenrin about the kerruk’s soul, so he decided not to even try. You’re right, he thought back at her. Plus, I’ll bet we both leveled up from that fight. Let’s make sure the tower is clear, check for loot, and then we can go through our notifications and see.
Clearing the tower didn’t take long; all they found were a handful of grievously wounded uruks and dabruks, all of whom they quickly put out of their misery. Apparently, they didn’t heal as quickly as the party members did; Aranos wasn’t really sure why. He had a couple of questions for Veronica once they were settled in for the night, though, and that could be one of them.
He was also gratified to find that the advanced kerruk, at least, had amassed a decent store of treasure. It took them some time to find the strongbox hidden behind a pile of rocks in the largest room, but once they located the key on the kerruk’s body, opening it was a simple matter, as was avoiding the crude poisoned needle trap Geltheriel noticed under the lid.
The box was more or less a cube, about a foot wide, tall, and long. It was about half filled with various coins, which Geltheriel dumped into her coin purse. There were also a handful of small, jeweled items in the box, two of which radiated under his Sense Mana Skill. Examining them both triggered a pair of notifications:
Arcane Lore Success!
You have identified:
Talisman of Warding (Death)
Rarity: Uncommon
Quality: Standard
Benefit: When this talisman is held or worn, the bearer receives +30% resistance to all death mana Spells, attacks, and effects. This applies to both beneficial and harmful effects.
Arcane Lore Failure!
You have failed to identify: Unknown Amulet.
The talisman he’d identified was made of silver and shaped like a four-inch-long ankh but had no clasp or pin that would allow it to be fastened to anything. Of course, he could use his Goldsmithing Skill and High Mastery Ability to fix that, but he could also attempt to Deconstruct the Enchantment and see if he could make it better or add it to an existing item.
The amulet, though, was something of an enigma. It radiated a very faint mana signature to his Sense Mana Skill, but it was obviously potent enough that his Arcane Lore couldn’t identify it. The amulet had a heavy, gold chain with a single, square-cut onyx set into the pendant. It didn’t have any runes that he could see, which meant it had to have been Enchanted instead. Well, I’ll have to keep working on my Arcane Lore Skill, he shrugged mentally. Maybe once it gets to the Adept rank, I can try again.
With the tower cleared, he pulled up his notifications at last:
You have slain Uruk x6! 114 XP Gained (Base 455 divided among party members)
You have slain Dabruk x6! 223 XP Gained (Base 892 di
vided among party members)
You have slain Kerruk x2! 268 XP Gained (Base 1072 divided among party members)
You have slain Ogrin x2! 400 XP Gained (Base 1601 divided among party members)
You have slain Evolved Kerruk! 865 XP Gained (Base 3459 divided among party members)
You have cleared High Road Waystation (East Cendarta)
You may set this area as your spawn point; this will also make it a safe zone to rest in.
Do you wish to set this as your spawn point? (Yes/No)
Your Companion has gained a level!
Current Level: 12
Per +3, Agil +3, Other Stats +2, +5 Stat points to assign
Congratulations: You Have Leveled Up!
Sorcerer Ascendant Level: 6
Current XP: 109224/120000
Int +5, Wis +5, Cha +4, +5 Stat points
I am without peer! Without sane peer, anyway…
Aranos quickly set his bind point to the new tower before examining the pair of level up notifications. For Silma, he put a point each into End and Str, making her a tougher for situations like this, with two going into Agil and one into Per. For himself, he decided to drop two points into each of Int and Wis, since those were harder for him to advance by training, and the last into Cha, which was now only two points shy of reaching 100.
He noticed Geltheriel and Saphielle looking distracted as well, and he grinned at the pair. “Leveled up?” he asked them curiously.
Geltheriel blinked, seeming to shake herself from a trance – which meant she was probably dismissing her notifications – and smiled at him warily. “Indeed,” she acknowledged. “It is…surprising, if I may be honest, Oathbinder.”
“Surprising?” he repeated curiously. “Why?”