“Scyth, get back!” Crag shouted.
Retreating, I activated Ghastly Howl and started shooting arrow after arrow into the zombies in the hope of slowing them down at least a little. The ability didn’t do much, as expected, and the arrows uselessly glanced off or clattered away, dealing no damage.
Three skeletons were hanging off the satyr, a Sickening Rotter was crushing the praying mantis, the succubus and the raptor were locked in desperate close combat. Crag kept himself to the side — if he died, we’d lose his buff.
A dozen or so of the mobs grabbing onto the guardians died, but rose again immediately, revived by the magic of the dead. And once revived, they changed their tactics. They stopped focusing on the guardians and, stubbornly ignoring the strikes raining down on them, they pushed through toward me. And one of them made it.
I trusted my theoretical calculations, but when the legless skeleton at level two hundred and seventy nimbly crawled toward me, I still got scared for a moment. The pain was tolerable, and the damage took away less than a quarter of my health. Dangerous, but not deadly. The important thing was to get out of the way. The next second, a double fireball from Flaygray killed the legless skeleton.
In the hellish cacophony of screams, chitters, growls, groans, the whistle of split air and the crack of broken bones, I heard a rustle behind me. Turning around, I saw that the undead that Nega had killed were rising.
Everyone regrouped on me, treading on the bodies of crawling zombies.
“This plan isn’t working, boss,” the succubus said, breathing heavily. “We need a new one.”
“They’ll rise again, no matter how many we kill.” I looked at my allies’ health bars. Nobody was badly hurt. “Let’s get outside. We’ll kill the lich, then the servants will be easier to take care of.”
“All the same!” Flaygray bleated, smashing another skull. “If he takes control of one of us…”
I didn’t know who he was more worried about: himself or the succubus. But I went through the strategy again to calm the satyr down.
“Whoever he takes control of, the others have to break through to the lich. Once we kill him, the control will fall. He needs me, so I’ll go first. If he tries to take over my mind, he’ll break his rotten teeth on it.”
The satyr conveyed the plan to Ripta, who passed it on to Anf. Swinging and pressing the undead back, the seven-foot raptor and the almost as large insectoid threw aside the barricades covering the main entrance and burst out onto the street. The rest rushed through the open doorway. Beyond the threshold, we stood in a circle, back to back, and started approaching the boss so that I was always the closest to him.
The lich was sat by the barracks on the other side of the street. He reminded me of Dargo, the main boss in the instance under the temple of Nergal, who the late Clayton had played. A mantle like an upside-down tulip covered his body, with sharp petals spreading out in all directions.
Cursed Lich Koshch, level 306
Magical Creature
Boss
Koshch floated, not touching the ground with his blackened bare feet. When he saw me, he hissed something and I couldn’t tell if everyone heard him or if his voice just appeared in my head.
“Apostate… Traitor…”
He disappeared, then appeared again right in front of me. His extended bony fingers grabbed me by the head, pouring tons of death magic damage into me. His blackened fingernails sank into my skull, crushing the bone and pressing toward my brain. I screamed from the hellish pain, but he wasn’t actually doing that much damage — almost all of it was split among my allies. Their health was much higher than mine, and along with Crag’s buff…
“Pathetic, weak mortal!” the emissary hissed. “You cannot withstand the might of the Destroying Plague!”
My vindication meter was quickly rising, but it wasn’t necessary. My party members threw themselves at the emissary of the Destroying Plague all at once. Nega struck the boss with her whip, tearing off half of his rotting face; a series of Flaygray’s fireballs burned a whole in his chest, and the lich’s clothes caught fire. Stunning him with a strike of his powerful tail and interrupting his spell, Ripta pierced the lich with his spear, and from the back Anf attacked him with his sharpened saw limbs. My Combo missed, as did Crag’s sword strike. Koshch turned and took control of Nega’s mind, choosing her as the strongest. The succubus looked at me. Her icon disappeared from the group list.
“No!” screamed Flaygray when Iggy leapt to my defense and attacked Nega.
“Hit the lich!” I roared. “Flaygray! The lich!”
Nega swung. Her long whip with sharp needles all along its imposing length struck my back, tearing away skin, flesh and bones. Then Nega pulled the whip back…
Through their combined strength, the guardians finished off the boss before my health fell into the red zone. The battle didn’t last long, but they were the longest ten seconds of my life.
The Cursed Lich Koshch is dead.
Groaning in pain, I gulped down the health potion and asked Crag to pour some on my back. My damaged flesh hissed and smoked, and the wound drew closed. I sighed in relief, but it was too soon to relax — the dead were approaching behind me, even without their boss.
The second lich wasn’t nearby, so it was easier to fight the creatures off. The liches might be able to maintain control over a limited number of minions, which would explain why the mobs had split up instead of crushing the barrier together — the officers of the Destroying Plague identified the dangerous enemies and prevented them from uniting.
Anf and Ripta, our melee fighters, took on the skeletons. Nega beat everyone within sight with her whip, while Crag finished off or tried to finish off some undead set alight by Flaygray. My Thorn Aura showed its worth, constantly firing without missing, but the damage had harsh diminishing returns, and the mobs took mere scratches — I noted this while automatically firing at the walking dead.
The Foul Queaser was the hardest to deal with. The Destroying Plague had upgraded the mob, and it had learned how to cast corpse venom DoTs and cruel slimy worms. It sounds funny, but the worms were at level two hundred, and only Flaygray’s Wall of Fire kept them from reaching me.
In the end, neither Crag nor myself got experience — our team members were too high level. For every level above the mobs, the game applied a ten percent experience penalty. Any player more than ten levels higher than a mob deprived the whole party of experience. Given the level difference between my guardians and the lich and his minions, nobody got anything.
Once we’d dealt with a portion of the Destroying Plague’s raid, we looked around. Scraps of flesh glistened all around, bones gleamed, and puddles of disgusting grime steamed from the queaser and rotter. On the spot where the lich died, who dissipated after his final death, some dust still remained. Ghostly smoke rose from it and snaked toward the temple. Either Behemoth was absorbing its energy, or this lich’s life force was seeping into the other one.
Judging by the map, the second boss, feeling something amiss, was already assembling squads and moving toward us. From where we stood, we could see them marching down the street.
“Damn, no experience, no loot,” Crag complained. “This is bullshit, Scyth!”
“We’ll head to a normal instance at our level someday soon,” I reassured him. “The weekend is coming up, we’ll have time to farm and level up, don’t worr…”
The popping of torn space heralded the coming of a group of new guests. On the street, right between us and the remaining undead, the kobold s appeared. I also saw the figures of Tissa and Infect blinking in the crowd.
Seeing me, the girl waved her hand, describing a hanged man, and disappeared along with Malik, not waiting for death by Exhaustion, which killed faster than the torrid heat of the Lakharian Desert.
My familiar kobold renegades milled around in confusion in the middle of the fort. And judging by the rapidly approaching living dead, they only had a few more heartbeats left to live.
I was the first to run to them. I took out another skeleton archer close by with Sleeping Vindication before he could loose an arrow at a kobold , and stuck myself between the kobold chief, who was eagerly rushing to his death in battle, and a rotter. Hitting the thing was pointless, but I still tried a Stunning Kick before commanding:
“Grog’hyr, move your people over there! Now, hurry!”
I pointed the chief toward the approaching monsters: the hoofed satyr, the succubus demoness, the seven-foot raptor and the giant insect. The old shaman’s jaw dropped, and his eyes widened.
“Those are demons!”
“They’re our demons, Ryg’har!” I took an arrow while protecting the shaman. “Come on! Hurry!”
The tribe chief handed out the required clouts round the ear and barked orders to get his tribesmen to move, personally showing them the way. The other kobold s trotted after him.
I retreated too, fearing that the advancing undead might have enough total damage to kill me. Especially since my health still hadn’t recovered from the attacks from Koshch and Nega. I doubted it would recover before we were done.
My allies stopped when they reached me.
“We can’t get through to the lich without a fight. Think we can take them?” Flaygray asked.
“I have a better idea. I’ll try to draw them off, you go for the lich. I think he’ll chase me.”
“Alright,” Flaygray answered.
“Another thing. Get someone to escort the kobold s to Behemoth, he’s having a tough time.”
Using my speed advantage, I started kiting the undead toward the tavern. Stretching out into a scattered chain and ignoring the other enemies, the dead men shambled after me. A second lich spurred them on, twin to the first.
Cursed Lich Shazz, level 396
Magical Creature
Boss
I stopped in my tracks when I saw his level. When I checked his stats from the temple steps, he was the same as Koshch. Had the death of the first lich strengthened the second? My confidence in a good outcome reeled. Now the boss was stronger than my guards, and by a long way. How would we deal with it?
My thoughts ran feverishly while I ran in zigzags, laying a route: rounding buildings, firing slowing arrows (all missing) and hoping to needle the undead to death with Thorn Aura. By my humblest estimates, that would take days of constant kiting.
Constantly looking around, I saw Crag leading the kobold s behind the barrier, the guardians surrounding Shazz and the lich beginning to fight them. At first everything was going well, and the boss’s icon burned a constant red, showing that he was under ceaseless attack.
A lot of the hits missed the boss. Even for Nega at level three hundred and twenty, the boss was too much. But the lich was taking significant damage from Crag’s talent. Just as I was thinking that we might get through it, everything changed: Nega’s icon turned red and disappeared from the group.
Under the lich’s control, the succubus enchanted Flaygray and the satyr quit the battle. I didn’t see the rest, because I’d run to the fort’s exit, and the three-dozen undead in a chain blocked my view.
A large red inscription appeared in the center of my field of view:
Crag, level 27 dwarf warrior, has died.
Did the succubus take Crag out first, knowing the value he added to the group? Couldn’t fault the lich for his strategy.
Crowded out by the undead, I was forced to retreat from the fort. And in the end, I ran, because something even more terrible joined the common walking dead. Bone Hounds, assembled by magic from the skeletons of the dead, and Plague Vectors, gray blobs that took no physical damage. I’d encountered them in Tristad during the assault.
The hounds were at least as fast as I was, and as soon as I saw them, I made a run for the jungle as fast as I could. Pushing my way through the undergrowth and trees, tripping over roots, I ran and wished with all my heart that the guardians succeeded and managed to get behind the barrier if they started to smell burning.
The next notifications that appeared in my field of view a few seconds later finally crushed all my hopes:
Ripta, level 307 predator, raptor, has died.
Anf, level 310 flayer, colicoid, has died.
Flaygray, level 305 adventure, satyr, has died.
The Bone Hounds silently followed somewhere behind me. My vigor was into the yellow zone, but I kept moving. Then I got a last message:
Nega, level 320 temptress, succubus, has died.
A triumphant whisper carried on the wind:
“Worthless traitor! The worms will eat you from within!”
The sickly-sweet smell of rot filled my nostrils.
Chapter 11. Walking Dead
THE SKY WAS ALMOST completely obscured with stormclouds. A tropical downpour could start at any moment. The air thickened and seemed almost tangible, making each breath a challenge. I would have winded myself after ten minutes of running like that in real life. I knew that for sure from my physical education lessons.
In Dis, thanks to my leveled-up endurance, I lasted a lot longer. But running is pointless if you don’t know where you’re running to, and you can’t stop. Breathing deeply and heavily, I started to feel sick. The sweet smells of the jungle (flowering plants, raw earth and damp wood) added to the stink of the rotting undead corpses.
I heard the hounds’ bones crunching as they chased me into a thicket, and along with my heart beating its way out of my chest — my real heart, in real life — my panicking brain ran through my survival options at the same feverish rhythm. One of those ideas — doable, though risky — was using the Montosaurus. The huge boss, who had already eaten one lich just because it felt like it, was wandering the island somewhere. Introducing him to the second dead warlock would be a great solution. For everyone except the lich and his master, the Nucleus of the Destroying Plague.
With that thought, I found the tallest peak of the mountain range in the north of Kharinza, oriented myself by it and started to move with more purpose: I changed my direction and moved toward the mine. By Manny’s words, the dinosaur now wandered there constantly, having realized that there were always snacks to be had around the mine. The miners made peace with this, drawing lots at each shift to decide who would die. The unlucky man wolfed down an anesthetic — the strongest dwarven ale — and went to distract the monster, clearing the path into the mines for the others. They returned from their shifts the same way.
“You will serve, mortal,” the lich’s voice whispered.
The echo in the jungle created the sensation that the undead were all around, but the minimap convinced me otherwise: the walking dead were stretched out in a chain, and the boss closed it, ever crying:
“Traitor! Accept your fate!”
His insistent challenges distracted me, messed with my head, but I stopped paying attention to them and tried to concentrate.
Was it possible that what was happening was just another modeling of the future from Divine Revelation? Unlikely. It was probably still on cooldown.
Could I leave the game just by pressing the Quit button? No, not in combat, that wouldn’t work. An emergency exit from the capsule? My character would be considered killed if I was in combat when I did that. Not to mention that the temple of the Sleepers and the civilians would be without protection. Even with the help of Patrick, the workers and the kobold tribe, Behemoth wouldn’t be able to hold up the barrier for long. The treasury guardians…
If Crag stayed in the group after reviving, then Flaygray, Nega, Anf and Ripta had just disappeared as if they’d never been. My heart clenched painfully at the thought that I might not be able to bring them back. Ordinary mobs respawned, but not them.
Refusing to believe in the finality of their death, I opened the clan member list. Scyth, Crawler, Bomber, Tissa, Infect, Crag, Patrick. Period. My eyes stung. I saw the dead guardians not just as NPCs I barely knew. Flaygray had seemed far more alive to me than some human beings. Nega, who had protected the civilians in
the tavern out of nothing but good will. Ripta and Anf, ready to sacrifice themselves if only they could help Behemoth hold back the undead onslaught and protect the miners… No, they were alive. And I was proud to call them my friends…
The chat icon flashed. The notification sound was lost in the drawn-out roar of the dinosaur from the direction of the mines.
[18:09] [Clan] [Crag]: You OK, Scyth? All the undead went after you, the fort is clear. Should I come help?
[18:09] [Clan] [Scyth]: You can’t get through to me. I’m going to try and kite the lich to the dinosaur. Stay close to Behemoth. How is he?
[18:10] [Clan] [Crag]: Flickering. He doesn’t speak to me, I’m not even an adept.
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