by Kyle Johnson
Create a shield that is highly effective against magical attacks.
Effect: When you cast this Spell, a shield of mana shaped like a circle 8’ in diameter springs into being 4’ in front of you. This shield can be moved to face any direction you wish; if it is not otherwise directed, it will always move to stay exactly 4’ in front of you in the direction you are facing.
This shield will absorb damage from any sort of magical attack directed at you, so long as the shield is between you and the magical effect. Its effectiveness is not reduced against Enhanced mana Spells or attacks, and it is effective against attacks that utilize mind mana. While the shield is translucent, it has enough opacity to hold out light and dark-based attacks. The shield absorbs damage from an attack equal to your [(Int -10) + Mana Mastery Skill + (Spell level x2)]. It also reduces additional damage by [(Int + Mana Mastery + Spell level)/5]%, rounded down. The shield is 50% more effective against necrotic attacks.
If the Spell to be resisted doesn’t inflict direct damage, the caster of the Spell must make an Opposed Check to pierce the shield: the caster’s [Int + Mana Manipulation Skill + Spell level] versus your [Int + Mana Mastery Skill + Spell level of the shield]. Failure means the attack is totally held out; success means the attack penetrates the shield but has its effectiveness reduced as above.
Duration: 1 min + 10 s / Spell level
Cost: 111 SP, 58 mind, 62 soul, 74 spirit SP
Sometimes, the best defense is just a really good defense
+250 XP
Aranos did some quick calculations in his head. With his bonuses, the shield should stop about 400 points of damage from a regular magical attack, or 600 points of necrotic damage. After that, it would reduce additional damage by about 40%, or 60% for necrotic attacks. That wouldn’t have held out Zoridos’ overwhelming attack from before, of course – Aranos guessed that had to have done at least three thousand damage to punch through his armor and kill him instantly like that – but it would reduce the damage of that attack to less than a thousand points of damage. Hopefully, his newly upgraded armor would handle the rest.
He closed his eyes and went through his plan once more in his head. It felt sound, especially with Lily out of the city. He ran it in his mind repeatedly, trying to see if there were improvements he could make, but he eventually forced himself to stop. The plan wasn’t complicated, and that meant there wasn’t much that could be done to improve it; adding needless complexity also added more ways for everything to go wrong. Keeping it simple minimized the chance of someone making a mistake and the ways that he could have made poor assumptions.
As the dawn grew closer, he instructed Silma to return to the camp; part of him wanted her to go scout out his target, but he was fairly certain that would be a mistake. It would be heavily guarded, of that Aranos had no doubt, and Zoridos had no doubt warded it heavily. While Silma might be able to get through those wards, she wouldn’t be able to do so without tripping them. That would utterly ruin his plan; the risk just wasn’t worth the advantage of having eyes on the target in advance.
The pieces were all in play, and Aranos was about to make his move. He sighed, both eager and nervous for the sun to rise, and despite his promises to stop, ran through his plan once more in his head.
It was going to be a long couple of hours until dawn.
Chapter 19
Phil wasn’t at all happy with Jeff’s plan. He corrected himself – that wasn’t true. He didn’t know if he was happy with Jeff’s plan, because he honestly didn’t know what the plan was. He knew what Jeff had asked him to do, along with the bulk of the party, and he personally thought it was a bad idea. Yeah, Martina had found a back door into Zoridos’ palace, but assaulting the lich’s throne room seemed, well…suicidal. Phil hadn’t been the only one to think this, and the party had been so concerned about it last night that none of them had made the obvious joke about entering Zoridos’ back door.
Jeff had managed to talk everyone down, fortunately. “Yes, Zoridos is powerful enough to wipe the party if it really wants to, but it won’t do that. This is where you have to trust me. It’s saving its power for something else, and it made a mistake taking us all out the other day. It’ll probably rely on its minions to deal with you, and if it joins in, it’ll stick with regular spellcasting unless it’s really threatened. You’ve all got the charms that will let you disjoin any Spells it casts on you, and I’ve given you all the best protection I can by Enchanting your equipment.”
“One observes that the qualintar has likely surrounded itself with legions of undead,” Rhys had pointed out. “Even without its full powers, it could simply wear us down with sheer numbers, could it not?”
“Eventually, yeah, but if things go well, you won’t be fighting that long. If we haven’t won in the first fifteen minutes or so, we’re not going to win, and you guys should pull back.”
“How will we know if we’ve won?” Meridian had asked. “I mean, will all the undead just fall to the ground or something?”
“You’ll know, trust me,” Aranos had said with a smile. “But even if you don’t, Geltheriel and I will be in constant contact, so she’ll tell you if you guys need to do anything differently.”
He’d stood up at that point, and even Phil had to admit that the young man projected nothing but confidence as he spoke. “We can do this,” he told them firmly. “You guys are a great team, and we all know that a great team can take on challenges that should be far too powerful for them. Fight smart, conserve your resources, and remember that you all have one another’s backs. We’ve already succeeded where armies have failed, and we’ve all beaten enemies that should have destroyed us. I know you guys don’t like being kept in the dark, but I’m putting my faith in you. We’ve all got our parts to play, and yours is vitally important.”
Phil smiled remembering that moment; Jeff had grown a lot in the game. The young man was normally quiet, diffident, and rarely sought out company. He’d always been the man with the plan, but he’d relied on Phil to get everyone onboard with whatever ideas he created. The figure standing in front of a group of players, using his words to turn them from reluctant to eager participants, was about as far from the nervous programmer Phil remembered as someone could get.
Phil had seen reports of things like that from the Alpha tests, but he’d dismissed them. Games like this were often a way for a person to safely be someone they always wished they were, a chance to step outside of themselves. He’d seen people acting out before, deliberately adopting a persona that let them do things they wouldn’t be able to do in real life. It could be cathartic, and he’d certainly taken advantage of that in the past.
Jeff’s behavior seemed different, though. Phil knew the young man well enough to know that he wasn’t acting or putting on a show – Jeff was a terrible actor and tended to underperform any role he tried to play. Jeff had actually become more confident, more assured – more charismatic. At that thought, Phil’s eyes narrowed; he wondered how high the Sorcerer’s Charisma Stat really was. If it was jacked up like his other Mental Stats, that might explain why everyone seemed so willing to follow him. It didn’t explain, though, how the young man had changed to fit his heightened Stat – unless, of course, the AIs were messing with Jeff’s mind somehow.
Phil shook that idea off. He knew that the AIs had access to their minds, of course, but if they were deliberately affecting a person’s mind, the entire beta test would have been pulled by now. Neo-dyne was being very careful and was worried about legal liabilities associated with both the pods and the game. They wouldn’t let the computers go around rewriting people’s personalities, which meant that Jeff was simply thriving in his new role.
Phil’s eyes turned to Geltheriel, who walked at the edge of the group as they traveled through the tunnels, following Martina. The elf Warrior was probably one of the reasons Jeff was doing so well; she seemed to bring out the best in him. She was good at both encouraging him and reining him in, depending on the situation, a
nd the two seemed to have developed some sort of sibling-like bond between them. The woman acted like she genuinely cared about Jeff, and surely having that kind of support had to help boost his confidence.
That same concern, though, had the woman in a decidedly surly mood. Jeff had insisted that she go with Phil and the others, taking only Silma and Saphielle with him. It made sense: only Jeff, Silma, and Geltheriel really knew what his plan was, so one of the pair needed to be with the main group in case something changed or went wrong. While Silma could communicate with Rhys, who could then translate for the party, that would have been a lot more awkward than just having Geltheriel go along. The eminently practical elf hadn’t complained about the separation, but Phil could read her frustration in her face and eyes, and he felt a twinge of sympathy for her.
Martina was out ahead of the party, scouting the path and returning to guide them as needed. The woman had an advantage over the rest of them: her Stealth actually worked against the undead, so she could sneak fairly close to them without being spotted. She’d led them around several clusters of the rotting creatures already, since Jeff didn’t want them to engage in combat until they absolutely had to. It made for a long and circuitous trip, but Phil thought he understood. None of them really knew just how much control Zoridos had over its minions in the city; if it knew when they were killed or could see out of their eyes, a battle would alert the creature that the party was free of the Library and on the move.
Beyond that, though, Phil had no real idea what the plan was. They were invading the palace of a creature far too powerful for them and were supposed to pick a defensible spot near the throne room and start a fight. He had no clue why they were doing that, but as he considered it, he guessed he didn’t really need to know why. It all came down to whether or not he trusted Jeff, and there was only one answer to that question. Phil had trusted the young man since almost the start; there was something special about him that Phil had recognized early on. Jeff understood things. He was smart, sure, but that wasn’t it; Jeff was great at taking what was in front of him and making sense of it. He could reason out the why of things faster than anyone Phil had ever met, and he was great at using that information creatively.
At the end, Phil realized, it was a question of faith. Did he have faith in his friend, in his friend’s understanding and creativity? If he did, then there was no point grousing about his lack of knowledge; faith meant he just had to accept what he didn’t know and do the best he could. If he wasn’t willing to do that, why was he following a woman who’d hated him less than a week ago into the lair of the most powerful enemy any of them had seen in game? Why were any of them?
Phil sighed and felt the frustration slide away from him. He did have faith, not just in Jeff, but in his party. They’d worked hard together, become a team, and Jeff was right. They could do things that they shouldn’t have been able to, just by trusting one another and following their roles. They each trusted the other with their lives – their in-game lives, to be sure, but that still required faith.
Phil grabbed hold of that faith tightly. They would succeed. They would do what they came to do. They’d win, somehow, against the lich-king. He had faith.
And deep inside him, a tiny spark burst into being, unnoticed by the Spellsword but glowing dimly in the depths of his being.
Lily swore as she roused from her sleep and found herself surrounded by rotting corpses once more. While she personally enjoyed being undead, she didn’t at all enjoy being around the damn things. Most of the minions Zoridos had given her were mindless shells of hatred and hunger, and the few that had brains weren’t worth talking to. They were too damn still – she’d ordered them to stop while she’d tried to Dream Haunt some of Aranos’ party, and they’d taken her literally. Not one of them had moved so much as an inch while she’d been out, and they weren’t moving around, now.
Most of all, though, they stank. The undead reeked of rotten meat, old blood, and plain, old shit. How they smelled like shit when, as far as she could tell no one in this game ever took a dump was beyond Lily, but there it was. The damn things smelled like rotten, bloody shit. And thanks to the Stat boosts she’d gotten from her transformation, she could smell each and every one of the damn things in all their glory. Fucking Perception boosts suck, she grumbled silently.
Lily rose to her feet, kicking a jangshie that was too close to her and knocking it back several feet – high Perception might suck, but having a Strength Stat way over 50 was awesome. The creature lay perfectly still, not even acknowledging the blow, and Lily sighed in frustration. Be honest, you’re not pissed at these things, the voice in her head told her. You’re pissed at yourself.
The voice was right, as usual: Lily was pissed at herself. She’d managed to Dream Haunt several of Aranos’ party, although it had been a bit harder than it usually was, as if they’d been in some sort of warded area. She wouldn’t put it past the Sorcerer to figure out a Spell like that, so she supposed that was totally possible. The ward hadn’t kept her out, though, just made everything take a minute or so longer. That wasn’t what was bothering her.
She was pissed because she’d been trying to pass a message on to Aranos through his damn friends, and it didn’t work. Her Skill was great at learning information – for example, she’d discovered to her vast frustration that the party was planning a two-pronged attack on Zoridos and the damned palace, which was absolutely the wrong thing for them to do – but she couldn’t give her targets any information and have them remember it. Part of her Skill was that her victims wouldn’t generally remember their nightmares the next morning, which was great when she wanted to spend the night cutting tiny pieces off someone in their dreams and not have them remember her the next day. It also meant that anything she told them would be lost unless they beat her in an Opposed Check, which wasn’t likely since she had a shit-ton of bonuses to those.
So far, Aranos and Zoridos were the only ones who’d ever beaten her in a Check – and, she supposed, that asshole Golloron back in Eredain, who’d seen through her shapeshifting Spell, at least before she’d returned from Haerobel. She assumed that meant that the Elder couldn’t beat her at a Check anymore, though. If the old Wizard couldn’t beat her, it wasn’t likely any of the players could, either, and that meant she couldn’t tell Aranos he was making a huge, fucking mistake.
She wanted to go back to the city and catch the asshole before he screwed up, but even the thought of disobeying Zoridos hurt like hell. She might be out of the necrotic zone, now, but she was tied to it and couldn’t break free, no matter how hard she tried – and she’d fucking tried. The problem was, as she saw it, now that she was undead, most of her magic had been tainted with void and necrotic mana, the same mana that Zoridos was using to bind her. Trying to break its hold over her meant trying to overpower it with its own kind of magic, and she just wasn’t strong enough to do that.
Yet.
The voice in her head was strangely reassuring, and she grinned as she understood what it was saying. She knew that players got powerful way faster than NPCs in the game, and that meant that she would get stronger a lot sooner than Zoridos probably guessed. Even if Aranos fucked up and ended up getting his whole party killed, Lily would bide her time. It might be a couple weeks or months, but she’d become strong enough and skilled enough to snap the leash Zoridos had on her.
And when she dead, the dead king would fucking pay.
Aranos hovered at the edge of the huge cavern in front of him, staring at the shimmering curtain of energy that lurked just beyond the edge of the tunnel he was in. The pulsing, green barrier reeked of necrotic mana, a twin to the shield surrounding the city aboveground. Aranos’ charms were effective at keeping the passive effects of the necrotic zone out, but they wouldn’t help against that shield. He could punch through it, of that he was certain, but doing so would be holding up a big, flashing sign screaming, “Aranos is here!” for Zoridos to see.
With his now larger wellspring of SP
, Aranos also guessed he might be able to disjoin this barrier. It was much smaller and less powerful than the one above, after all, and it would certainly be subject to a disruptive combination of life and spirit mana. However, that would probably also alert the qualintar to their presence; Aranos’ plan rested on Zoridos not realizing how the Sorcerer was going to strike until it was too late to do anything about it.
Beyond the barrier, ranks of undead stood, waiting in endless patience. Aranos counted thirty of the creatures including three lanohtars, one armed with what looked like an ebon-bladed halberd. It was enough force to stall any attack he might make unless he struck with overwhelming force. As he’d suspected, Zoridos hadn’t totally overlooked this vulnerability, but with the qualintar convinced that the party was trapped in the Library, it hadn’t filled the room with undead – which it might have done had it suspected that Aranos was free to move about the city.
He’d already empowered Silma and Saphielle as much as he could, boosting all of their Physical Stats, giving their weapons – and teeth – bonus restorative damage, strengthening the elf’s armor and shield, and laying a mind shield on each. They were prepared for the battle ahead, but the time wasn’t right. The party hadn’t entered the palace, yet, as they’d been forced to take a roundabout path to avoid any encounters with the undead that milled constantly underground. Until they started their part of the plan, Aranos couldn’t do much about his part. Well, except for one thing, he supposed.
He closed his eyes and reached his mana probe out to touch the curtain of eldritch, green light that shimmered a dozen feet away. His mind recoiled at the vile touch of the necrotic mana, but he forced himself to endure it and slipped the probe into the shield, frowning as he did. He recalled the ward surrounding the city; it had been a finely woven mesh of mana, one so smoothly and seamlessly done that Aranos hadn’t even considered trying to pry an opening into it. Whoever had created that had been a Master or Grandmaster at spell-weaving, someone with much more skill and ability than Aranos had. It reminded him, in a way, of the shell of mind mana surrounding Lythienne’s memory stone; both had been crafted by a caster far beyond Aranos’ meager talents.