by Jez Cajiao
I grunted and sliced the feed to the spell, gripping it tightly as it shook like a greyhound seeing a rabbit, before I finally released it.
I was hurled backwards by the spell’s departure, and it cut the air, covering the distance to the Lich with a shrill whine of displaced air.
The Lich hunched down, fear plain on its face as it frantically tried to recover its strength, draining a bone amalgamation of life.
It straightened as the spell hurtled past it, glaring at me through blackened skin as it opened its mouth to laugh at my poor aim.
At that point, the spell hit the target, though, slamming into a stanchion that held a section of the ceiling in place.
It’d been sagging already, but when the overcharged ‘Explosive Compression’ slammed into it and detonated, the effect practically vaporized a section of the roof.
The floor above it was already sagging in that section, a result of ancient damage sustained in the crash, and the roof creaked, groaned, and started to collapse.
The Lich, whose spell shield had held off most of the damage so far, and probably could have continued to hold out for a short while longer, certainly long enough for the undead to finish my party off, clearly understood its minimal chances of holding off a sliding, multi-ton mass of steel and debris and panicked, sprinting for the nearest bone giant. It reached the enormous minion with less than a second to spare as the blocks raining down hit the corpse it was hiding below. The giant amalgamation of corpses hunched down around their master protectively, and every undead in the area spun, racing to do the same, leaving us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I turned just in time to see Lydia fall. She collapsed face-first, seeming to run out of steam mid-swing as she dropped from striking a fleeing skeleton to unconscious and falling limp, her body sliding to a halt in the debris and piled bones of the floor, with only eight HP remaining.
I had enough, barely, for a single heal. I pulled out the low-grade mana potion that I had left and downed it, knowing it was barely better than water, but it’d help me regenerate slightly faster, at least. I slammed the spell into her as I went, kneeling down by her side and pulling her helm free, staring fearfully into her bloodshot and blank eyes. The Battlefield Triage spell gave me as much information as I needed, even as it worked to repair the massive trauma done to her body by whatever she’d just done to herself.
The information the spell provided to me told me what she’d done, but not how… her body had literally burned its way through every calorie it possessed, just about. She’d rendered the little fat on her body into fuel and had driven herself at an insane speed; then her body had begun to eat itself, muscles being consumed to fuel the movements she needed to make.
I kept it going as long as I could, before sagging as my mana bottomed out and the mana-migraine exploded in my mind. I fell forward, catching myself before I fell on Lydia, and I screwed my eyes closed, biting my cheek as I forced myself to squint at her.
As soon as I could focus, I saw that she looked better; not a great deal, but she had a little color back in her cheeks and her breathing wasn’t as labored, which, in itself, was a relief.
I turned, sweeping my gaze around the remains of the room, and saw my people huddling on the far side. Grizz had managed to get close enough to them to use his Iceshield, and that, along with their distance from the Lich, had been enough to keep them relatively safe beyond more bruises, a handful of cuts, and though Jian looked to have broken his arm, Arrin was already fixing it.
I scanned the rest of the cavern, seeing the dust and debris starting to settle, and swore as I made out shambling figures starting to appear. I pulled out the healing potion I had, a ‘Common’ grade, and half choked Lydia getting it into her mouth, my concern and distraction, mixed with wearing relatively unfamiliar gauntlets, making it much harder than it needed to be.
A skeleton twisted and turned to face me. I saw the gleam in its eye sockets as it found an enemy, and I growled, long and low.
I still didn’t know where my naginata was. I’d lost the spear I’d gained, and I knew a sword would be little use in here, so I reached into my bag and pulled out the kill-stick, flicking it on, and hearing the steady, rough sound of the cobbled-together device starting up.
It sounded rusty and ill made, and it looked like touching the handle might give you tetanus, never mind what getting an actual injury from it might do.
It was a perfect fit for my mood.
I patted Lydia’s shoulder and stood up, walking toward the skeleton as more of its brethren stumbled out of the darkness to join it.
That fucker, that Lich, had done this. It had hurt my people.
I moved slightly faster, striding purposefully, no longer walking.
The stupid bastard had hurt Lydia. It had made me ask her to push so hard that she was close to death. She’d pushed that hard for me, and I’d let her. Hell, I’d asked her to. That made my anger boil higher, turning to fury.
We could be trapped down here now; we might have lost our chance at an escape before the enemy fleet arrived. We might be fucked, all of us. Lydia, Grizz, Yen, Bane, the gnomes, all of them.
They might be stuck here, trapped down in the darkness, eating fucking mushrooms for the rest of their lives, however short they might be, all because of That. Fucking. Lich.
I broke into a jog, then a run, then a sprint, hearing the animalistic growl of fury that lifted from my lips, hanging in the air behind me as I raced forward.
I jumped, my left foot landing on a pile of rubble, and I kicked off. Bracing against a fallen skull and flying through the air, I lifted my knees closer to my chest and struck out with both feet to slam the first skeleton backward.
I landed on my feet and lashed out with the kill-stick to the right, catching the nearest figure on the jaw, smashing it apart as the trio of buzz-saw blades burrowed into it, and ground out the back of the neck, the head flying free with a grating sound that echoed in the chamber.
As I pulled the kill-stick back, I spun, thankful for the well fitted armor as I kicked out, first smashing another skeleton’s knee, then using it to propel myself higher, grabbing the top of the skull and bringing my knee up to smash the armored plate through the bridge of the creature’s nose.
The force was enough to send it staggering back, but I twisted as I fell back to the ground and tucked my legs up, using my weight to yank the skull down and driving the much lighter skeleton downwards. My momentum rammed its face into the ground; driving the kill-stick into the back of its neck to chew its way through finished it off nicely.
The sight of more and more of them coming, stepping forward out of the darkness, only served to enrage me more.
I knew roughly where the Lich had disappeared, with the largest amalgamations crouching down to wrap themselves around it in protection.
Fuck fighting its minions.
I started running again. I blazed toward the pile where I knew it had been earlier, bashing them out of my way, until I was shoulder-charged by a larger creature.
I’d not seen this thing before, but I didn’t give two shits about that as it slammed into me from the right, staggering me.
It was short and broad, like a centaur that had topped out at five feet and had six legs. Its upper body was rotting, but it had clearly been heavily muscled once, with thick three-fingered hands tipped with claws that skittered across my armor, even as it lunged at me with mandibles spread, an insectile face glaring at me.
I’d staggered when it hit me from the side, but I quickly grabbed its right arm with my left, twisting it until it locked, and used it to hold the fucker in place as I beat it repeatedly, the saw blades chewing entire sections through as I roared out my hatred of it.
I drove my weapon through its forehead last, making it collapse as the kill-stick gave a chirp of warning and started to slow. I flicked the switch, wanting to save it for later, and slid it into a bag, before grinning as a Shir lumbered into view, its right leg shattered
and barely able to hold its weight.
I lunged for it, kicking the knee and sending it tilting towards that side as the leg gave out; then I grabbed the horns and drove its skull down as hard as I could into a pile of rubble, making the air resound with the sounds of bones breaking.
I yanked it back and then down again, ignoring a dagger that slammed into my armored back and scraped along before glancing off.
I heaved it back and staggered as one of the horns I was holding broke off. Growling in fury, I began ramming the horn into the Shir’s skull until it collapsed, then ripped it back out and searched around.
My unthinking savagery had carried me through the majority of the group, and as I’d run, I’d beaten and kicked others aside, which meant I now stood encircled.
The majority of the undead were unarmed; only a few actually carried real weapons, with the majority relying on teeth and nails. The few that did have weapons were starting to surround me fully now, their swords and maces, spears and flails, morningstars and axes dimly reflecting the light from my team’s lights in the distance.
I could feel the gloating of the Lich under my feet, hidden safely away under the rubble, as its creatures prepared to slaughter me and mine.
“I don’t fucking think so,” I growled, taking a deep breath in and glaring down at a gap in the rubble where I could dimly see bones.
The knowledge was there, I knew. It had come as part of the enormous amount of information Amon had shared, but as disjointed and incomplete as it was, I didn’t have it all. I had a vague sense of danger, a warning of damage, and that was it. Well, if it was a choice between a little pain and fucking this asshole’s day up? That wasn’t a choice that needed to be considered.
I checked, seeing I’d managed to regenerate eleven mana so far, and I needed far more, at least thirty-five.
I thought I knew what to do, but before I tried it, before I risked breaking my mana channels and seriously fucking myself up, I had one single, tiny, sneaky trick left to play.
I dug my hand into the bag on my hip and summoned the bottle I wanted to my hands, checked it, and grinned evilly down at the Lich that was trapped beneath the bodies of its minions below me.
It might be safe from me, at least until my mana regenerated… but it wasn’t safe from this.
I bit into the cork, pulled it out, and spat it to the side, before giving the Lich the finger and pouring the sluggish, foul-smelling concoction down the hole.
“Say hello to my little friend!” I called down before turning and glaring at the ring of oncoming undead. I could see the others smashing through the back ranks in a frantic attempt to get to me before I was overwhelmed, but I stood tall and rolled my shoulders, getting ready.
You have summoned a small Earth Golem… do you wish to command this creation now?
Yes/No…
I grinned and selected ‘Yes’, feeling a new sensation bloom in my mind. It was a hollow, echoing feeling, and I sensed it was the basic mentality of the Golem, unthinking, waiting for orders.
Well, I reflected, they wouldn’t need to be complicated, at least.
“Smash Barry the Lich into paste,” I ordered it aloud, remembering how well telling the uncovered War Golem I’d found in the Waystation to ‘tear his arms off and beat him to death with them’ had worked with regards to the Ogre which the goblins had thought was their trump card.
It’d been over very quickly.
When a creature made of a mixture of stone and metal, and god only knew what else, weighing several tons and filled with implacable resolve, faced off against a dumb creature of meat and bone that weighed less than a third in comparison, it rarely ended well for the fleshling.
I heard a screech of fear, pain, and fury rising suddenly from under the rubble, and it started to move as the amalgamations frantically tried to respond to their master’s cries for help.
While they scrambled to save him, the undead surrounding me were rapidly abandoned by their directing mind, and it showed. The entire first rank staggered, slowing and beginning to move disjointedly, staggering and pausing, as opposed to the single-minded intensity they’d begun to demonstrate once again.
When they were distracted, I struck. The nearest one was less than five feet away now, short, thick bodied, and armored in chainmail that had seen better days. The undead dwarf was dragging a maul that was almost as big as it was.
I lunged forwards and kicked the dwarf’s right arm as it started to bring the weapon around, slamming it backwards. As the dwarf staggered, I grabbed its left and right upper arms, then lifted my leg and planted my right foot on its face, heel to chin, before kicking out and pulling at the same time.
The rotten links of flesh and sections of beard that made up most of the face and throat tore through quickly as the head popped loose, and the corpse lost the animating force, collapsing to the floor in true death.
I grunted as I released it, reaching down and lifting the maul, then giving it a swing to get the weight right in my mind.
It was a giant of a hammer, close to a mix of a long-handled Mjolnir and a mattock, with a slightly curved spiked head on one side opposite a huge, flat slab of metal.
I hefted it in one hand as I grinned at the mobile corpses around me. They’d gone from a risk to essentially walking skittles as they responded to their master’s fear and demand for help.
They totally ignored me and my team, staggering forward and grabbing at the debris, trying to dig their way through, and the change was huge.
Suddenly, the others weren’t battling creatures that were a threat; they weren’t even fighting anymore, not really. It became simple manual work, destroy the skull, and move on.
Where I was, I went from being surrounded by armed undead, intent on killing me, to all of them dropping weapons and staggering forward, grabbing at the metal, rock, and debris and yanking frantically.
I simply started to crush skulls.
One after another, I went, methodically raising the maul and bringing it down. At first, I was shattering them, but then as I moved, I worked to improve and to learn, seeking more to destroy just the skull, rather than shattering half the body at the same time and having to kick the weapon free of the pile of bones.
This wonderful XP farm lasted less than a minute, though, before the mound, with a final screech of pain, went silent, and the remaining undead collapsed to the floor, bones losing all cohesion.
The clattering filled the air for several seconds, echoing, and then suddenly it was over and more notifications flashed for my attention desperately.
I searched about, grateful that everyone appeared okay, if dirty, dusty, worn out, and bloody from dozens of small wounds. I spun around as the mound made a sound, lifting the maul, but a few seconds later, I dropped it as the small earth elemental oozed its way back up into sight to stare at me, waiting for more orders.
“Retrieve anything the Lich had on it and bring it up here,” I commanded, watching it turn and flow back down into the darkness.
“Well, thank fuck for that,” I muttered to myself, watching the group as they began picking their way across the room, and I made my way to Lydia, checking on her.
She was still unconscious, but my mana had recovered enough for a second healing spell, and using it restored more color to her and she seemed to rest more comfortably.
“What happened to her?” Grizz asked, and I winced, concern clear in my voice as I replied.
“I don’t know, in all honesty. I asked her to hold them as long as she could, and boom, she went nuts. Suddenly, she was everywhere, moving faster than I could believe, and then it was like someone flipped a switch, and she just collapsed. When I got to her, she was almost dead, totally drained,” I said, brushing her hair back from her face and peeling one eyelid back to look in.
There was no reaction, and I sighed, letting her eye close again and patting her shoulder.
“Miren!” I called, and she stepped forward. “Stay with her and watch over her
while I meditate. As soon as I’ve got enough mana, I’ll heal her again, but wake me if she doesn’t look well, okay?” She nodded soberly, settling down next to Lydia. I took a moment to look at the way the entire group regarded her, and I sighed. I might be their leader, but Lydia was their heart.
“Arrin, what’s your mana like?” I asked him absently.
“I’ve got enough for a single heal…” he said, stepping forward, but I held up my hand to stop him.
“No, save it for now; do you know how to meditate?” I asked, and he grimaced, looking embarrassed.
“Sort of?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can sit and clear my mind, and I got the skill, but it’s only at level two…”
“Then it’s time to level it,” I said, sweeping a space clear on the floor. “We need to keep moving, and to get to the ship, but if there’s anything else out there, we’re dead as we are. We need to recover as much as possible,” I said to the group. “Arrin and I will meditate. Bane, you go explore; Tang, stay and watch over us. You’re more likely than the rest of us to spot any stealth types. Yen, you direct everyone; you’ve got twenty minutes. I want this place searched, my naginata found, and grab anything we can loot. That fucker had to have some decent gear,” I growled, gesturing toward the mound.
With that, I sat down and took a deep breath, then closed my eyes and started to speak. I spent five minutes explaining all that I could to Arrin about how I meditated, then the next fifteen was spent trying to balance the relaxed mentality needed for meditation with building and maintaining my mental ‘box’ to increase my regeneration.
When I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, I let it slip away and blinked into the light cast by Miren’s magelight.
“It’s time,” she whispered simply, and I nodded, forcing a smile for her. It wasn’t her fault, I told myself; it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but I could feel Oracle.
She was leaving; she’d gone from somewhere higher overhead and to the right, to heading away, climbing higher and at speed. I knew what that meant. The fleet was leaving, and I was stuck trying to recover my mana in a rotting, stinking, shithole of a city, trapped underground and surrounded by wreckage and the dead, with a goddamn gang of SporeMothers incoming.