Brightblade

by Jez Cajiao

  Hearing a hiss from below, I turned to find not one, but three skeletons charging around the twist of the tower. The first two looked fresh, or at least as fresh as their kind could, while the third limped along at the back. Obviously broken bones were hanging from it, and it was unarmed. That little bastard had gotten to its feet quicker than I had, to be returning up the tower already.

  I straightened up, the same determination that filled my dreams and had gotten me this far coming to the fore. I wouldn’t get far by running, especially on what was starting to feel like a twisted ankle, so it was time to teach these creatures to regret cornering me.

  Looking over the weapons they brandished, a rusty mace and a crossbow without any quarrels, I grinned. The one at the back had lost its spear, and I had the high ground. I liked my odds against three bags of bones, even if the DarkSpore Parasites were more of a challenge.

  Remembering the Sporeling’s reaction to sunlight, I spun around and hit the window with both fists as hard as I could, using precious seconds to smash the coating away and open the stairwell to the light of the sun. Spinning back around, I saw the skeletons cowering back, hands raised to block the light from their skulls, and I took my opportunity.

  I sprinted forward and jumped, twisting to land with my feet connecting to the head of the foremost skeleton. Its mace went flying as its skull detached from its body and bounced away down the stairs. I tumbled down the spiral stairs with the two other animated skeletons and the rest of the headless one in a mixture of bones, fists, and feet, weapons forgotten as we all pounded into each other until we erupted onto the floor below.

  Head spinning, I noticed my health bar flashing, with a sliver of red all that remained. I rolled away from the nearest movement, focusing blearily on a faint light off to one side and stumbled to my feet. Trying to run into the safety of the sunshine, I teetered dizzily and fell over. I knew I was probably concussed, so I gave up on standing and frantically crawled towards it. The only thought in my mind was that I needed to reach the rectangular patch of sunlight several feet away. At some point, something had shattered the window on one side of the room, and that was my savior now.

  As I neared the light, I felt a sudden pain from my left leg. A skeleton had grabbed it and was clawing its way towards me. Glancing back, I frantically kicked once, twice, and a third time at its head before it released me, and I scrabbled into the light.

  As my head and my vision cleared, I checked frantically to find that, out of the three skeletons I’d collapsed down the stairs with, two were now dead‒dead again, actually, I supposed. The remaining one had only one leg and was slowly dragging itself toward me until its grasping fingertips hit the light, and it pulled back, as if burned by it.

  I turned my attention back to the other two corpses, watching the swarming clouds rise from the shattered bone piles. The parasitic vapors slowly mingled, hisses and flashes of chittering sounding across the room as they melded together. Feeling the hairs on the back of my neck rising, I looked down at the patch of sunlight I sat in and realized that it was getting smaller as the sun started to fall. I had to kill these things and fall back to somewhere safe!

  Pulling up my status bars, I could tell my health was slowing climbing. With a thought, I added percentages to the HUD, and the simple bar was further clarified by showing 8%. Not enough to survive another fight, that was for sure. My Stamina became 62% in the green bar, and the blue mana bar displayed14%.

  I had enough mana for one Firebolt, and maybe if I waited a few more minutes, I’d be able to survive a single punch, but that’d be it.

  “Shit…. shit…. shit! Think, dude, think!” I muttered, scouring my brain for inspiration.

  I felt something blocky in my pocket and remembered my phone. Struck by a sudden thought, I pulled it out and checked it over. Yes, the screen was intact, and very, very reflective.

  Grinning at my reflection, I angled it and aimed the reflected sunlight across the room until it hit the nearby skeleton. Flinching back in surprise and pain, it covered its head and tried to scuttle away. Before it had the chance to get far, I hit it with a Firebolt in its crossed hands, blowing one off entirely and badly damaging the other. Rushing forward, I grabbed the outstretched arm and dragged it mercilessly into the light. A screech echoed from the inside the skull, the buzzing raising to a fever pitch for a brief second before its skull exploded into flaming shards.

  Staggering back from the bone shrapnel that flew everywhere, I quickly dashed back into the safety of the light to catch my breath. The bone pile was shifting ominously. Grinning, I began to plan the next fight. I had to get the creature that was building itself now to either run away or give me the time to heal. I didn’t have any real chance in a straight up fight, but these things weren’t very bright, so maybe…

  “Yeah, that’ll work…” I said aloud, pretending to ignore the writhing pile of undead remains. Aside from the night in the arena, I’d never been in so much danger in my life, nor felt so alive.

  I could tell that the heap of remains was being drawn together quickly, building into a new creature by using all of the bones, as near as I could tell, but it’d take at least a few more minutes, and that would give me all the time I needed. I hoped, anyway. Taking a deep breath, I looked around the room and spotted the mace that one of the skeletons had been carrying, laying off to one side of the stairwell I’d exited earlier. Before I could let my doubts build, I set off running across the room, scooping it up in my right hand and kicking off the wall nearby. I turned back to challenge the newly forming creature. As I closed the final few feet, I saw a skull twist to face me, rising out of the pile with a warning chittering.

  Ignoring the danger and my low health, I cast the Firebolt that I’d just regained enough mana to afford again. The strike hit the skull just above the eye sockets, knocking it back as bones audibly cracked, I swung the mace hard across the bridge of the nose as it began to turn back, and I was rewarded with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. The pile sagged for a few precious seconds, and I grabbed the vertebrae connected to the skull, dragging it as fast as I could towards the light.

  To avoid a swipe from a claw-tipped arm, I released my grip, dodged aside, and brought the mace down on its shoulder joint, breaking the bones again. Aiming the upswing at its skull, I swore as the blow was deflected off a hastily raised limb. I grabbed the upper arms and dragged it another foot or so. Jumping back a second too late as I caught a glimpse of another arm flashing out at me, I felt a hot sting of pain down my cheek as bony fingertips scored three furrows in my skin.

  My health bar dropped again, down to 4%. With my mana at 3%, I was out of my long-range options. I swung hard, one blow after another, breaking as many bones in the heap as I could. I started shifting around the pile, careful not to inflict too much damage in any one area and force the Parasite out into the open air, as I had nothing besides the sunlight to fight it. My naginata was lying somewhere on the floor above, and I had nowhere near enough mana for another Firebolt.

  Knowing I couldn’t survive another hit, I dodged another clumsy swipe from the creature’s fingers and smashed down once more as I staggered aside. I quickly knocked a second swinging limb aside and began kicking the body closer to the light.

  As the seconds blurred into a dodging, desperate nightmare of mace swings, clawed fingers, and hissing chittering noise, I finally got the jumbled bones close enough that the leading edge touched the light. With a scream, it all lunged into motion. Bones cracked as they strained to drag it back from the one thing it seemed to truly fear.

  As it began to rise to its feet, it forgot me in fear of its primal enemy, the sun. I took my last chance and lunged, striking the center of the flailing mass of bone, torn leather, and rotten flesh. As it staggered, I dove into it, using all the force I could muster to drive my shoulder into it and shove it back into the light.

  It began to shake and scream, collapsing under the unforgiving rays of the sun. The bones being held toget
her by the DarkSpore fell away, causing the inky mass to shrink as it tried to escape the cleansing light. As it dwindled, it kept trying to escape the light, but I waited with my mace, smashing bones and driving it back. After a handful of seconds that passed like hours, it finally exploded, once again peppering me with bone fragments, and finally I could check over the notifications.

  Congratulations! You have killed a DarkSpore Wandering Guardian. You have gained 25 Exp.

  Congratulations! You have killed a DarkSpore Wandering Guardian. You have gained 25 Exp.

  Congratulations! You have killed a DarkSpore Parasite. You have gained 25 Exp.

  Congratulations! You have killed a DarkSpore Devourer. You have gained 100 Exp.

  Congratulations! You have killed a DarkSpore Melded Parasite. You have gained 50 Exp .

  I kicked the bones out of the light and collapsed down in their place. Each time my mana was high enough, I cast Minor Healing. I rinsed and repeated until I was finally fully healed. It probably took just over an hour, but with the constant threat of something coming up the far stairwell to attack me when I had no mana, it seemed like days. Finally, I was healed and my mana was restoring, so I set to quickly looting the corpses. They had nothing that seemed to be of any real value. A green mold-encrusted lump on one finger turned out to be a copper ring with a tiny red gem in it, but beyond that, all I found was a handful of copper coins that I added to my pockets. I immediately discarded all the weapons, since they were essentially useless, before setting off back up the tower. I’d had enough for one day. Gathering up my naginata as soon as I reached the next floor, I began to run, climbing the stairs as fast as I could. I walked when my stamina bottomed out, but only long enough to refill it before running again. By the time I reached the top level, I was exhausted, sore, and generally pissed off, as I knew I’d have to be careful going back down the stairs tomorrow. I’d have to find a way to take and hold a section of the Tower. That way, I wouldn’t have to clear the same ground each day.

  I entered the Pearl Chamber and sank to the floor, glad to be somewhere I could let my guard down again. In a bare few minutes, I was asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I woke up a few hours later. How long it had been, I had no real idea, but as I lay there in the darkness, I felt less exhausted and worn, so I figured at least six hours must have passed. I got to my feet and made a quick meal from my rations and some fresh fruits I’d found yesterday, then got down to business.

  First, I channeled all of my mana, save ten, to Jenae, and then I got to stretching and exercising. An hour later, I was sweating, and my legs shook like they’d never hold my weight again. I’d hammered the exercise routine I’d been given in training as best I could without any weights or equipment, concentrating mainly on sit-ups, sprints, and burpees. I’d checked my stats before I started, and after that hour, I’d raised both my Stamina and my Strength by nearly forty percent of the way to another point gain. Pleased with the rate of improvement, I resolved to continue every day, until I couldn’t get any more gains, or I grew too bored with it. I needed to grow in every attribute, but some weren’t as easily increased, like Luck, and my free points would be better spent there than anywhere else.

  When I’d recovered, I gathered my gear together and started setting up the alchemy equipment. I knew the very basics of using the set; I’d had some training back on Earth after all, and had learned chemistry at school, not to mention the hundreds of hours spent playing RPG’s, but the skill book seemed to provide the most information for me. It made links between certain items, such as Junit Berries and Milk Thistle being two common ingredients to make a Cure Poison potion, and that Ginseng and Milk Thistle were used to cure diseases. I set to work, pausing only to drain my mana periodically to my new Goddess. Three hours later, I was exhausted. The grinding, boiling, and straining had taken forever, not to mention the distillation, but it was worth it. As I put the stopper in the last bottle and sat back, I used my Identify skill to determine what I had made.

  Minor Cure All Brew

  Further Description Yes/No

  Details:

  This brew will remove any low-level toxins from the body. Works against basic infections, poisons, and numbing agents.

  Rarity

  Magical

  Durability

  Potency

  Uncommon

  No

  100/100

  1/10

  I’d managed to make four of the small potions. It had taken ten sets of ingredients, and I was nearly out of a lot of them now, but I didn’t mind collecting more. Even the times I’d failed had counted towards my experience, and I’d managed to level the Minor Cure Poison recipe to level three, along with the Minor Cure Disease recipe. I’d even ‘made’ a new recipe all of my own by combining the two into my new ‘Minor Cure All Brew’. Between all of them, it had brought me sixty percent of the way to the next level in Alchemy. It seemed that, for each aspect of the skill, such as making a Cure Poison potion, I gained a certain number of points. The first ten levels of any given recipe would provide twenty points per attempt towards the next level. Levels eleven to twenty provided ten points. At levels twenty-one to thirty, I received five points per attempt, and then from thirty onwards, I would gain one point per attempt. Each level of a recipe was also worth ten points in the overall scale of that skill, so leveling both of the recipes to level three had given me sixty points out of a hundred to reach the next level of Alchemy. Each rank in the skill would come with small bonuses, until I was making true wonders from simple ingredients and curing the illnesses of the Gods with more complex things.

  It seemed a complicated system, but considering the bonuses for the two skills I’d managed to raise to level two, they seemed a real target to aim for. So far, my leveled Naginata skill had given me a boost of five percent to my speed, and my stealth skill was boosted by a further five percent by my cloak. I was especially excited to realize that reaching level twenty in Staffs would increase my Naginata speed by one hundred percent! It seemed weird, since I couldn’t imagine what level forty could be like. A two hundred percent increase in speed would be insane, after all, but when I considered the fact that some of the deaths I’d suffered in the dreams had come from beasts so fast I’d barely seen them, I’d need the skills to be able to fight creatures like that.

  I began to ponder my current abilities, considering the rapid rate at which I was leveling so far. What would happen if I put every point for the next ten levels into Wisdom? My mana would jump to a regeneration rate of 6.5 points per minute, or 390 points an hour. With Firebolt only costing 10 points a cast, I’d be able to hammer any creatures like the ones I’d fought so far.

  That begged the question about higher level spells. Was it a case where the next spell up would cost twenty mana, or two hundred? There was so much I didn’t know, but I thought I might have discovered a really important fact: my physical stats would increase with exercise. Sure, it was boring, but if I increased them that way, and dumped my points into my mental attributes, I could become something seriously dangerous, even a true Spellsword or Battlemage.

  Forging myself into a warrior that was equally at home casting spells and fighting on the front lines sounded great to me. I had no friends or teammates here, so I had to become a one-man wrecking ball, and the fastest way to do that was to make sure I leveled fast, rested little, and generally pushed myself to the limit. I’d find Tommy eventually, I knew I would, but it could take years. For now, I was on my own.

  I set my mind back to work and drained my recovered mana again, then got on with my exercises for another hour before deciding that if the sun wasn’t up yet, it wouldn’t be far off, with a bit of luck. I checked my quest log and verified that I’d made a fair amount of progress toward making contact with Jenae. I had tithed 490 out of a thousand points in just a few hours. I resolved to have it done inside the next twenty-four hours, just to get it out of the way and all that.

  I gathered my g
ear, leaving the majority of the odds and ends in the room. I only equipped my weapons, my bag of holding, and some food and drink. I’d come back for the rest later, but I wanted to be as light as possible.

  I had a tower to explore, after all.

  I opened the door to the room at the top of the staircase and stood waiting, half expecting something to attack me immediately. When nothing came, I stepped through the doorway and moved to the right, bracing my back against the wall and sweeping my Naginata from side to side as I looked around.

  The floor was deserted. I couldn’t even hear a single sound. Crossing the room to the huge windows, I started chipping at the gunk that covered one. After a minute of quiet cursing and grunting, I managed to get the point of a dagger under a section of the coating. It came away with a loud crunch, faint cracks running out and spreading across the remaining coating, a small patch of early morning sky gleaming through the newly cleared opening. Setting back to it with a will, I spent another twenty minutes partially uncovering a window that soared higher than I stood and was easily twice as wide. It was still filthy, with bits of the coating stuck everywhere, but now when the sun arose properly, this room would be a death trap for the Sporelings and their cousins.

  I sheathed the dagger and stood listening for a brief second. Nothing seemed to be coming close, so I swept up my naginata from where I had leaned against the wall and set off down the stairs, starting to jog as I went. Ten floors passed without incident, then ten more. I stopped to rest, always pausing as I walked out onto a new floor, making sure they were truly empty, but each time, I was the only thing there. I passed balcony gardens like the first, badly overgrown and crumbling stone everywhere. The occasional footprints could be traced in the dirt and dust of millennia, but little else.