The damage angered him. Which was good for me. Without so much as a derogatory comment towards me, Gingey threw back his head and let loose a roar.
“That’s Brutal Charge,” Ellie said.
I began loading a second bolt as he started to run, ripping the shaft imbedded in his flesh free his second step. He was so fixated on me that he didn’t see the first silk wire.
I’ve never witnessed such a spectacular fall. Gingey’s back foot caught the wire, sending him hurtling forward, legs wide apart, as though he were doing the splits. He might have recovered were it not for the slime which he duly slipped on, his face hitting the floor in what I hoped was a painful crash. Benefitting from the increased damage he was taking with Brutal Charge active, I sent a bolt into his back and hastened to load another.
Gingey scrambled to his feet. In the middle of the slime, he was a little shaky getting upright. The momentum and power of his charge had been stolen from him so he managed a few steps without falling this time.
I let loose another bolt but missed, the shaft soaring clean to his right.
Cursing, I pulled out a frost rune. Charging the single frost bolt with 500 mana, I released the spell, catching his leg.
Winter’s Chill
Movement speed decreased by 25%
+1% from gear effects (+0.25 decrease to movement speed)
Duration: 5 seconds
A blue tinge swept over Gingey’s entire body, his pace slowed considerably and I leveled another bolt. I took my shot, sure I would hit this time. A split second before impact, Gingey’s avatar returned to its normal color, the winter chill’s effect dispelled. He arched his back with an agility that I thought was impossible in a dwarf, dodging my shot completely.
“He’s used Adrenaline Rush,” Ellie said. “His Reflexes are doubled.”
“Crap,” I said, beginning to panic now. “You might have mentioned that!” I’d been counting on getting free reign to shoot him while he stumbled up the corridor, but things were not going well.
In a stroke of good fortune, I managed to hit him again but I don’t think he was even trying to waste time dodging me anymore. His health was still safely above the halfway mark and with his Reflexes through the roof, he leapt over my next silk wire without fear of the slime on the other side.
Instinctively I backpedaled but soon hit the wall behind me.
Not knowing what else I could do, I threw down another vial of slime in the hopes of catching him as Adrenaline Rush ended. Neon green covered the twenty feet left between us. What I needed was a way to either slow him down or trip him, which he couldn’t avoid.
“Just run,” Ellie said.
But I didn’t.
A mad idea struck me.
Pulling out another frost rune, I pumped 175 mana into the spell, leaving just enough for a Desperate Shot. I loosed it, but not at Gingey.
This time I aimed it at the slime.
My hammering heart ceased beating entirely as I watched the shard of ice fly. During the last ambush, the slime had conducted flames when struck by that mage’s AOE spell. Would it do the same here?
It did.
The frost bolt hit the slime, midway between me and Gingey. And it started to spread. Tendrils of ice emanated from the impact site, hardening the surface of the goo. Gingey’s eyes widened in horror as he lost his footing again, unable to control himself upon this mini frozen lake. He slipped, landing flat on his ass with a damaging thud, then carried on sliding down the ice towards me.
I leapt aside, letting him slam into the wall.
The impact damage had brought him below half health. I tried to step closer for a head shot, but his flailing arms created a swirl of sharp blades. Still, I got close enough to be sure of a hit and activated Desperate Shot, firing a bolt into his chest. He was still taking more damage due to the effect of Brutal Charge and, for a moment, I thought I’d done it. His health drained till it was so low it might as well be gone but he remained thrashing on the floor. The only problem was my mana was now empty. I had no potions and no melee weapon to score a quick hit. All I could do was load another shot.
Before I could fire, Gingey rose to his feet and lunged at me like a pro-linebacker. My head hit the ground and starry lights flashed before my eyes. Then Gingey was on top of me. Ringlets of red beard obscured my vision. Dirty hair entered my open mouth as I tried to squirm my way free. A strong arm pinned me down on my left, and on my right, I felt a blade sink in below my ribs.
The pain was greatly dulled from the game’s settings, so it wasn’t blinding, but it felt like a hard punch. Winded, I gasped for breath, held fast by the dwarf, and watched my health plunge 400 points in one go.
Another hit and I’d be dead.
Properly dead.
I felt Gingey raise his arm for a second blow, releasing the pressure from my right side. Some primal sense took me over and, with my free arm, I reached over to my quiver, drew a bolt and thrust it up.
A shocked choke, a clatter of metal to my right, then the most glorious notification I’d ever seen.
MonsterD69er – Berserker – level 31 dies – 200 EXP
The corpse fell on top of me, knocking what breath I had left out of me, but nothing more.
Ellie let loose a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. I had no idea if Adrenaline Rush would help him run over the slime, but you got him anyway. Well done. Well done, well done…” she rambled on.
Breathing hard, I pushed Gingey off me and crab-legged it out from under him. Once clear, I sat down, feeling a touch shell-shocked, and allowed my health to start ticking back up.
“That’s twenty-six of them left now,” Ellie said.
“Forgive me if I don’t find a huge amount to celebrate in that,” I said. “Did he send out a message to the others before he died.”
“No,” Ellie said. “He kept his UI clear to focus on fighting you. It happened so fast, I don’t think it even crossed his mind. That will buy us some extra time but Azrael will know something is up when he doesn’t report in. The players are sending messages to him every fifteen minutes. The next one is due in ten.”
“Okay,” I said, unable to fully process everything she’d said at once.
Baby steps, I reminded myself.
First things first, I needed to loot and Scavenge. Looting Gingey, I got the very dagger he’d used to stab me with which felt cathartic. Scavenging granted me the good old humanoid drops of coins and cloth.
With precious time to spare, I began making my way towards the archmage’s chambers, treading lightly around the still frozen slime and watching I didn’t fall victim to my own silk wires.
Once I felt more in control of myself, I noted, “That – that was close.”
“At least we know that the slime will interact with frost, as well as fire,” Ellie said. “Given this behavior, I suspect the substance reacts similarly to all magical stimulus.”
“Is it supposed to work like this?”
“I was unaware of this issue. No beta tester reported it, but it could be no tester has ever tried such a thing. The ‘slime’, as you call it, is intended as an endgame alchemy reagent, after all.”
“Issue? It’s a bloody miracle. Just wish I knew exactly how it worked.”
“I’ll review the footage and combat logs from your ambush earlier,” Ellie said. A second passed and then, “Done! The slime’s first reaction to mage’s AOE spell caused tremendous damage. When the slime caught fire, it took on the damage of mage’s attack and dealt it to anyone struck by the inflamed substance. Effectively, it became a double hit of the spell and many of those targets were already greatly weakened; hence, all the deaths.”
“So that’s why my grenades were less effective,” I said. “They would dish out way less damage than that higher level mage, but it was a bonus nonetheless.”
“Precisely,” Ellie said. “In lore, arch-solution is designed to allow potion and poison ingredients to mix without losing their potency. Seems it also has curio
us ways of interacting with raw magic.”
“Would the devs have meant this?”
“Doubtful,” said Ellie. “I have no record that suggests this as an intention of the game design. The reactions so far are also inconsistent. Fire ignites the slime, conducting the same damage, whereas your frost spell simply froze the slime solid. It did not apply the winter’s chill effect to player Monster-D-Sixty-Nine-er.”
I snorted a laugh. Hearing her say that name aloud so matter of factly was too perfect.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, feeling it was neither the time nor place to explain the joke. “But yeh, it’s cool to have discovered this secret. Nobody else will know what I’m doing. One more thing on the runes, the first time I used the frost rune I got an empowered buff to it. I haven’t since.”
“Empowered buffs are given to rune casts when the user imbues their entire mana pool into them. It has to be your entire pool, not merely the entirety of the pool you have in the middle of a fight. So, if your maximum mana is one hundred, that is how much you need to use to gain the empowered bonus. Each bonus increases the power of the cast significantly.”
“But then you’re left without any mana,” I said. “Not ideal.”
“Players consider runes ineffective for combat purposes,” she said. “Magic users will occasionally carry a few to supplement their powers but regular abilities for most classes are far superior and don’t carry such a high mana requirement. For example, you could use two thousand mana to bring the slow effect of the frost rune to one hundred percent, essentially freezing the enemy in place. However, that is a significant amount of mana to use on a single spell, which isn’t all that powerful. Mages specializing in their frost tree could use a simple Freeze spell to root the target in place at a fraction of the mana cost and without the need for a consumable item. And unless your class has mana, you can’t use the runes. Warriors, rogues, rangers and monks cannot use them at all. With all that in mind, there is a general limitation on their effectiveness.”
“Yeh, but no other player is combining rune effects with slime.”
“No. They are not.”
“Although,” I continued grimly, “Even with the frozen slime’s helping hand, I very nearly died. I take it there’s no way I could glitch swapping weapons in the middle of combat, and make a sword and shield for myself for when the shit hits the fan?”
“Switching officially equipped items in combat is prohibited,” Ellie said. “Taking a bolt from your quiver is one thing, and generally it is going to do so little damage it’s not worth considering. I’d recommend you focus all of your resources on upgrading the crossbow.”
“I agree,” I said. “I think my next attachment will be the bayonet. I’ll need something for melee range.”
“That’s up to you, Zoran. Though I am concerned that you won’t be able to find enough resources to upgrade the weapon beyond epic quality. You may only have two attachment slots to use and so placing on a bayonet will prevent you attaching a grenade launcher.”
I squeezed my hands into fists at this latest drawback. Yet, as ever, Ellie was right. No way was I going to risk not being able to build a grenade launcher attachment just for a little knife on the end of my crossbow. Who would? That was all a bayonet was in the end, a gun with a big knife shoved on the end. Or a dagger?
I drew up short before the archmage’s chambers, opening my inventory to take a closer look at the loot I’d acquired from Gingey.
The Ogre Carver
Dagger
Quality: uncommon
Item level 30
Requires level 30 to equip
Damage: 40-45
Thick Blade: Chance on hit to ignore 10% of enemy armor
+4 Might
+4 Reflexes
Withdrawing the knife, it weighed nicely my hands. The blade was visibly thicker than any other dagger I’d seen and had piranha-like serrations.
I’d been able to lash six battle axes together to make a pendulum device. It hadn’t been all that stable but it had got the job done. It would be too clumsy to use rope to tie the dagger onto my crossbow as it could muck up the function of the weapon altogether. But the silk trip wire was far finer and plenty strong enough.
“What are doing?” Ellie asked. “Get inside, we don’t have much time.”
“Just let me try something,” I said, already Crafting another silk wire. I crouched down, placing the wire and dagger on the ground, then unholstered my crossbow. Lining up the hilt of the dagger with the underside of the frame, I began to wrap the wire around them both, tying it off at both ends. Once that was done, the blade stuck out exactly as a bayonet should, but so far as the item description went, nothing had changed.
Delighted, I swung the crossbow around a few times to check how stable it was. It wasn’t exactly welded in place and might just fall off at the first sign of trouble but it would serve as a test. With luck, I’d just added on a higher level ‘bayonet’ than I’d be able to make outside of another Intelligence boost from Kreeptic.
“That’s uhm, new,” Ellie said.
I beamed. “Best of both worlds, right?”
“Not… exactly.”
I should have learned at this point not to be so optimistic. “Will it not work?”
“It will work to an extent,” Ellie said. “But as the dagger isn’t officially equipped by you, it’s not operating like a weapon is supposed to. It won’t benefit from any of your stats nor any modifier that would be applied by an ability like Desperate Strike. Skill with the weapon would also be negated. What were you expecting, Zoran? Did you think a level 1 player would be able to tie a level 50 sword onto a stick and wield it?”
I grumbled. “Will it do damage or not?”
“It will damage people in the same way a sharp piece of metal falling on them from a height would in this game. It’s going to have a minimal effect at best.”
“Minimal is better than zero. If it doesn’t work I can always add a proper attachment later. No harm in trying.”
“Just taking up time…”
“No more dawdling, I promise.” I pushed on the door to the archmage’s guest chambers. “Let’s grab some rare herbs for a creepy torture master.”
21
Entering the sanctum of the archmage, a feeling of serenity enveloped me. The very air took me in a loving embrace, warming my aching muscles and banishing my woes. It felt like sitting by a fireside after a heavy meal and a glass of wine; drifting between wakefulness and sleep.
I yawned and swayed where I stood. “What’s going on?”
“The archmage is addicted to the spores of a plant called dream shade,” Ellie said. “He grows them in the alchemy garden.”
“Ohhh?” I said, swaying again.
“Zoran, focus.”
I shook my head to little avail but through sheer determination, I blinked back this intoxicating haze long enough to get my bearings. At the center of the chamber was a miniature garden, complete with a gnarled tree amidst a sea of colored herbs. Great mushrooms with stalks as thick as a man’s arm towered over huge violet clovers. Gray ghost-grass sprouted between golden roses, and all of it drew water from droplets running down an encircling marble wall. Some magic powered it all, the water never ceasing its cascade and a clear beam of sunlight nourishing the garden in a windowless room.
I stumbled towards this garden, this paradise.
“Wait,” Ellie said sharply, “Step back out, Zoran. Don’t breathe it in.”
Relaxed as I was, I complied without protest, stepping lazily back out into the hallway. At once my head cleared, my vision sharpened.
“Take a deep breath out here first,” Ellie told me.
In the real world, I could barely hold my breath past thirty seconds without my lungs screaming. Inside Hundred Kingdoms, a timer appeared before my eyes, counting down how much longer I could hold on.
Holding Breath: 120 seconds
W
ell, this was a cool mechanic. A way to avoid toxins in the air, and I foresaw many a dungeon or boss encounter where this might be utilized. All the same, I could hardly talk like this.
“It’s for underwater breathing as well,” Ellie said. “The undead like Azrael can hold their breath for far longer. No oxygen required and all that. Now get in before it runs out.”
My first thought was to pick the dream shade to lessen the miasma. I spotted it quickly upon returning, its name appearing over an offensively bright pink flower, gently swaying despite there being no breeze. I moved towards it.
“There’s too much of it,” Ellie said. “Just pick the herbs we need.”
I acknowledged her with a nod, then referred to my quest log to see what ingredients I needed. The cinderflake was easy to spot, for it was the only plant growing in a patch of sand. Black moss was trickier, but I found some by turning over a rock placed in the shadow of the tree. Scouring the garden, I found them all. One fingleweed, five dead looking whitherweeds, five snappersaw plants – receiving two bites for my troubles – and, finally, the bile blossoms. The blossoms stunk worse than a men’s locker room with a broken AC unit and the janitor on vacation. But I’d done it. All the ingredients had been collected with breath to spare.
It was almost too easy. I’d need to get a move on lest Azrael send more players to corner me, though I knew I might not get another chance to return to this room and I’d regret not rooting around for some items. I ought to scavenge.
As the final seconds ticked down upon on my breath meter, I made a dash for the edge of the room where glass cabinets lined the wall, the promise of loot inside.
“I told you, they ransacked the place,” Ellie said.
“There’s got to be… something,” I said, drifting back to a happier place as I was forced to inhale again. Feeling dazed, I scanned my surroundings as best I could. The cabinets were all open. Their locks had been picked and their valuables stolen. Whatever powerful gear had been in there was now out of my reach, but I could only ever have broken it down. By the alchemy bench, I saw a near-empty shelf of potions; all the powerful combat enhancers and health restorers had gone. They’d left some mana potions though, probably thinking it was not all that useful for me. Limited by their own bag space, they’d left what they thought was unthreatening.
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