“Never met a man who refused Syl’s hospitality,” he beamed. “Now, about that Tomb. You’ll need the Rags of the Lich Queen before you go in.”
Nick stifled a surge of frustration. The artifact would be well secured in Jannibar’s command tent.
“Impossible,” he muttered, fearing this whole affair had been a waste of time.
There was a commotion outside the room. Several raised voices disturbed the dreamy ambiance and a haggard guard peered through the doorway.
“Milord,” he said. “Jannibar is here.”
Alain nodded, clearly expecting as much. Nick felt like striking him where he sat.
“You set me up,” he snarled.
“On the contrary,” Alain drawled, drawing Syl into his lap. “I’ve given Durandor a fighting chance. Good luck, hero.”
Alain’s gaze was wistful as Nick took his leave. There were several guards in the hallway, all watching him like a hawk.
Flanked by his Royal Guard, Jannibar waited outside. He was shorter than Alain but much, much broader. His hollow eyes and scarred visage marked him as a genuine warrior. He wore impressive plate armor and held a veritable slab of greatsword. The weapon would’ve taken immense strength to wield.
The newly-anointed King gazed at Nick with palpable hate.
“At last, face-to-face with my father’s murderer,” he said. “What say you, scum? Ready to die?”
Several hundred soldiers had gathered to watch the confrontation. Nick sensed that Jannibar needed this fight to restore morale and assert his authority. These men were tired and scared. A convincing victory over the man accused of killing Andaran would be worth a lot to this desperate boy King.
Nick was about to duel in front of a billion viewers. He could even see the name tags of other pixel runners in the crowd. Kain was among them, glaring at Nick and gripping his weapon as if he was itching to join in.
“Time is short, murderer,” Jannibar said, twirling his sword as if it were a matchstick. “Jago is in that Tomb, and will soon emerge with a ghoul host. The Kobolds approach from the west. I believe I have you to thank for that intelligence. Alas, nowhere near enough to compensate for my father’s death.”
Despite his fearsome demeanor, Jannibar looked pale and sick. If he was carrying the Rags of the Lich Queen, the artifact could be corrupting him.
It didn’t matter. Nick was about to relieve the King of his burden. In theory.
The adversaries circled each other in silent appraisal. Jannibar looked to be a classic Knight, extremely well-armored and a master of swords. Nick didn’t doubt there were other tricks up his sleeve, too.
This was going to be very difficult fight - particularly since Nick was fighting without a shield. He couldn’t quite believe he’d arrived at this critical point without his preferred setup. The truth was he wouldn’t have it any other way. This contest was all about risk, and there was nothing riskier than two-handing a fucking halberd. If he missed, just once, he would be wide open to a critical hit from that greatsword. All Jannibar needed was two of those and Nick was done.
To win, he’d need to manage his stamina like a true master and read Jannibar’s attacks closely. The problem was, Nick knew these so called NPCs were human-controlled. That meant he wouldn’t be able to predict Jannibar’s attack patterns. He’d need to rely solely on instinct.
The King came at him. Nick stepped back, mindful of the hostile ring of soldiers. The full weight of this confrontation hit him - if he killed Jannibar, discipline would collapse and many of these soldiers would flee. The Kobolds would carry the day, killing thousands of good men and perhaps marching all the way to Durandor.
If he didn’t kill Jannibar, sacrificing himself for the good of these soldiers, the King may not get to the Lich Queen in time, if at all. She would rise for her revenge, calling every ghoul in Tyrennia to her side. To Nick, that was the worse of two evils. He would fight Jannibar for the future of Durandor and let the Gods decide.
“Are you going to fight, or cower like the sniveling back-stabber you are?” Jannibar sneered.
Nick advanced quickly, feigning anger, before tumbling to the side. Jannibar’s sword kissed the sand, inches away from Nick. The pixel runner landed two standard attacks on the King’s exposed flank. They caused some damage, but not as much as he hoped.
Jannibar recovered quickly, squaring off and pressing hard. He didn’t seem to have any glaring weaknesses. Relying on standard flanking attacks wasn’t going to win the day. Nick was bound to make mistakes in a battle of precision, and that’s all Jannibar needed.
No, he needed to be aggressive. The King grinned as Nick rolled to the side and strafed from left to right. Constant movement was highly risky but it was the only chance he had. Once his stamina had maxed out he flung himself at Jannibar in a power strike. Jannibar side-stepped and Nick watched helplessly as his halberd bit the sand.
The King capitalized like any good solider would, striking hard at his back. Nick was flattened, his HP plummeting to less than 50%. That greatsword was a beast. Nick half-expected a killing blow, but it didn’t come. He scrambled to his feet and moved away, allowing his stamina to rise.
The cost had been high, but he’d exposed a potential weakness in his opponent. Jannibar’s stamina regen was slower than one might have expected, possibly due to the artifact he had in his possession. Nick needed to zero in on that defect and mercilessly exploit it.
Part of adopting an effective strength build was knowing its weaknesses as well as its strengths. Nick had known for a long time that strength builds with big, two-handed weapons could be exploited if the opponent worked in close to the body and strafed to one side, pressing hard against the left arm and leg.
Occasionally, if the positioning was right, the enemy’s haft would strike instead of the blade head, resulting in minimal, if any, damage. It was Nick’s only gambit and he drove in without hesitation. Bemused, Jannibar let him come, striking when Nick pushed up close and strafed. As hoped, he was caught by Jannibar’s haft, which barely scratched him. He retaliated with a power strike while the King was open, draining a good portion of his enemy’s HP. Nick backed away and replenished, adrenalin coursing through his veins.
The ploy had been successful, but he wouldn’t be able to do it again - Jannibar was too seasoned, too smart for that. But Nick could execute minor variations. He moved in again to press and strafe. Interestingly, Jannibar allowed him to do so. Guessing the King would try a cross-cleave this time, Nick rolled backwards and swung hard, using the halberd’s full range. He loved its fast, overhead strike - it hit like a motherfucker. The blade head smashed into the King’s helm, bringing him down to 33% HP. The gallery was deathly silent.
Jannibar grunted and advanced aggressively. It had become a chaotic battle, fueled with white anger. Nick had one chance left. He wouldn’t be able to approach Jannibar, so at the right moment he would bring to King to him.
Nick intended to use the barbed hook on the opposite side of his main blade. It offered an alternative attack he’d never used before. The moment was imminent. Nick evaded Jannibar as best he could, ensuring he had plenty of space to work with. The idea was to make the King think he didn’t want to engage.
Just as an arrogant grin formed on Jannibar’s pale features, Nick tumbled forward and lashed out with his polearm’s alternative attack. The barbed hook caught the King in the armor join across his neck. Surprising even himself, Nick pulled on the haft with all his might, forcing Jannibar his way.
When the enemy was halfway across, Nick thrust his halberd forward, releasing it from the groove. The pointed end struck Jannibar in the face, stunning him. Nick closed the battle out with a standard attack across his opponent’s chest plate. The King of Durandor sank to his knees and toppled to the ground, vanquished.
The only sound was the 10,000 XP flooding Nick’s tally. He cheekily used the shocked silence to level up three times. All points went to STR. Soon he would be ready to one-hand his halberd.
A massive advantage over his competitors.
KainDestroyer18 was red with fury, but smart enough to know when to shut the fuck up. Besides, Nick was a level above him now. Nick handed him a pitying smile, which was no doubt enough to send the psychotic pixel runner into abject despair.
The rest of the soldiers looked tired and defeated before their battle had even begun. Far from looking to avenge their King, these men were thinking about loved ones back home. Family they would never see again.
Nick was no leader of men, but he needed to galvanize these troops somehow. At the very least, he needed steadfast resistance against the kobold host while he slipped into the Tomb of the Fallen. He knelt beside Jannibar’s corpse and looted it. Gabriel’s chestplate. Gabriel’s gauntlets. Gabriel’s greaves. Gabriel’s helm. Nick didn’t know who Gabriel was, but the armor was heavy as fuck and had a defensive rating of 20. It severely affected his load and therefore his agility and stamina, but it turned him into a slab of stone that liked to say no.
Nick got Jannibar’s greatsword too - a Royal Greatsword. Superbly forged. It was quite powerful and surprisingly light into the bargain, but Nick preferred the Halberd of the Moon. If he was going to two-hand anything, he preferred to be able to attack at range.
The last item in the inventory was the most important. Nick transferred a small pile of tattered clothing called The Rags of the Lich Queen. His stamina was immediately slashed by half, which was very concerning. There wasn’t much he could do about that.
Every soldier in Jannibar’s army was watching intently. Nick couldn’t just slink away, not after looting Jannibar’s corpse. He’d look like a base thief and would be cut down. His only option was to lead. At least until he got a chance to slip into the Tomb.
“The Kobolds approach,” Nick yelled, finding it surreal to be making a speech in front of all these hard-bitten men. “Our only choice is to fight. Side by side. I will lead you into battle - if you let me.”
It wasn’t the most inspiring speech in the world, but these men didn’t need flowery words. They needed focus and direction.
A horn blared from the west.
“The kobolds are here!” a scout shouted from high up on the dune ridge before a spear cleaved his head in two.
“Defend yourselves!” Nick bellowed, drawing his halberd.
Spurred into action, hundreds of men pressed toward the newly-erected palisades to the west, but alarmed shouts from the north confused matters. Nick watched with sinking horror as a huge black scorpion emerged from the Tomb. It was truly enormous, at least thirty foot high and sixty long. Its stinger quivered with anticipation, and that armor looked nigh impenetrable.
“Pixel runners!” Nick shouted, searching the disorganized mass of soldiers for name tags. “I need mages to help with Jago!”
He hared through the press of soldiers pushing west. Some hadn’t even noticed the threat from the Tomb. He was joined by a group of six or seven runners - a promising mixture of STR, DEX, PIE and MAN builds. It was the latter he needed - that scorpion looked impervious to physical attacks.
Over a hundred undead shambled in the great beast’s wake, complicating what would already be a difficult fight. Jago stopped short of the human force and began slaughtering with abandon. It had three attacks - mandible, foot stomp and poison stinger. It used all three to devastating effect, obliterating over a dozen soldiers before Jake even reached it.
Kain and a few other strength builds worked in close, looking to form a ring around the beast. Even though it was heavily armored, its relatively thin legs might be attackable.
“Target its eyes while I distract it,” Nick said to a pair of Archivists, who nodded eagerly. He sprinted underneath the busy animal, hoping to draw its attention. It took a few steps back when it saw Nick, alert to the danger he represented. He power-attacked one of Jago’s forelegs, testing the thing’s resistance.
He struck hard, but only managed to draw 33 HP. Time for a different plan. But first he needed to negotiate Jago’s lethal legs. He rolled to the side as one of its hind legs came crashing down. Thankfully his fellow pixel runners were keeping it occupied from the front, leaving him to climb several tiers of crumbling stone behind the beast.
A stream of ghouls were still pouring from the tomb like rancid vomit. Nick would need to clear the area if he had any chance of putting his plan into action. He gripped his halberd tightly as the first wave of ghouls approached, their guttural cries reaching fever pitch.
He timed his first attack perfectly, swinging the blade straight into his target’s rotten head, which gave way like a watermelon. One more cross-cleave and the ghoul was done. If he timed his attacks correctly, he should be able to manage his stamina and work his way through the ghoul horde. A second ghoul fell to the Halberd of the Moon, followed by a third.
Nick maintained his position at the top of the stairs so he could keep the ghouls in front of him. A couple were able to flank him diagonally but his new armor absorbed most of the damage. Even better, the Ring of the Succubus was perfect for this situation, adding HP on a kill for every chunk that was taken away.
Behind Nick, the corpse scorpion squealed and flailed, its stinger piercing the brave throng that had gathered to fight it. Nick stepped up his efforts to clear the tomb entrance, swinging his halberd with bleak efficiency. After a couple of minutes the stone floor was covered in undead. Seeing the threat he posed, the ghouls began using a side stairwell to flank the humans from the northwest.
Nick couldn’t do much about that. He turned and faced the rear of the scorpion, momentarily frozen by the sheer brutality of the monster. At least a hundred soldiers lay dead on the sand, all of them victims of the mighty Jago. A group of pixel runners were approaching from the south. It was likely they’d been killed already and were returning from a respawn point.
A selfish part of Nick didn’t mind seeing that - it meant they were losing points while he was gaining them. What he was about to do, however, had every chance of reversing that trend. Taking a deep breath and making sure his stamina was maxed, he took a running jump off the raised stone area onto the beast’s armored back.
The surface was smoother than he’d anticipated and he began sliding down the thing’s haunches. He swung the halberd’s barbed hook and was rewarded with a meaty squelch. His shoulder was almost ripped from his socket as he jerked to a stop, hanging precariously from the beast. Pulling himself up by the haft, he waited for a lull in the monster’s movement before pulling his halberd free from the armor join it had been snagged in.
Crouching low to maintain his balance, he sprinted across the thing’s neck and onto its head. There was a sinewy join where the hemispheres of its skull came together. Sensing a weak point, Nick plunged the halberd through. It wasn’t part of his standard move-set and might’ve only been available against large beasts.
The halberd sank halfway down its length and stopped at the scorpion’s hard jaw. Its entire body gave a shudder and Nick barely had time to extract the weapon before being thrown off its head. He landed awkwardly on the sand and simply lay there for a moment, completely disorientated. He gradually became aware of the general chaos and forced himself up before an opportunistic pixel runner ran him through.
His HP sat at a measly 10% - falling in heavy armor wasn’t the best idea in the world. Worse still, the mortally wounded corpse scorpion was scuttling back and forth in a blind rage.
“One more effort!” Nick shouted, gathering the pixel runners in the vicinity. Teamwork was required here before the dying scorpion routed the Durandor soldiers. Without a care in the world, a runner by the name of Aramis24 sauntered past. He cut a curious figure, incredibly thin and fine-boned. His clothes were colorful and tailored, very much like those of a rich dandy. The only weapon he carried was a thin, fragile-looking estoc. Crowned with a broad-rimmed hat and goose feather, the overall effect was vaguely ridiculous.
And yet the runner, who could only have been a Duellist, leaped with amazing agility
into the path of the rampaging scorpion, his estoc spitting like a cobra. The beast’s upper knee, out of reach to the other fighters, exploded in goo and ichor. Though it was crippled, Jago limped on, determined to fight to the end. It had certainly left a vast trail of dead bodies in its wake.
At that moment its head was hanging low, offering the perfect chance to land a killing blow. Nick made a run for it, spotting movement out of the corner of his eye. It was fucking Kain, and he was moving faster because he was stark naked.
Nick’s nemesis howled with glee as he swung his sword home. The corpse scorpion finally crashed to the sand and turned to ash, which was lifted by the wind and scattered across the doomed human army. Nick’s pulse quickened as he drank in the sheer scale of the massacre taking place. The kobolds were all over the pride of Durandor, butchering with glee. It wasn’t really a battle any more - thousands of Jannibar’s men were trying to flee to the east only to be run down by wolf scouts.
“This is your doing, Nick,” Kain said, making a show of leveling up twice. “How does it feel to have all that blood on your hands?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nick said indignantly, but of course he knew. Kain just laughed in his face and walked away. The other pixel runners were making their way to the side of the tomb, toward the entrance Prince Alain had showed to Nick on the map. It seemed the information had been widely disseminated.
The corpse scorpion was no more. Kain had taken the glory (and the XP) but it had been a rare case of pixel runners working together. Sensing the human soldiers’ vulnerability, ghouls were still pouring from the tomb entrance. There was no sign of the Lich Queen, but it was only a matter of time. That was a problem for tomorrow.
Nick’s timer suggested there were only a few minutes left. Feeling strangely flat and despondent, he trudged across the sand toward the secret entrance. He should have been elated. He’d done well with the central quest, being the only runner to take on Jannibar in what had proved to be a critical, world-changing decision.
Strength Build: A LitRPG Saga (The Complete Strength Build Cycle) Page 13