Gabrielle watched at his side, her mana lamp by her feet. Her silky hair beneath that bulging hat hung at her back and chest in the still air of the mine. Her pineapple scent wafted into Rowan’s airways. “Oh yeah! My plan worked perfectly,” she said.
Her plan?
Rowan huffed and slapped her squishy, little behind. She giggled at the touch. “You know very well it was mostly my plan.”
She pouted. “Nah uh… That was my last ultimate totem and those were Ambiguous’ illusions. And I coughed up at least half of the strategy!”
After a second, Rowan blurted, “True.” Best not to send her down a psychotic tirade.
“Told ya,” she quipped and reached for the orb, “Now gimme that. Ambiguous will become a big meanie if ya drop it.”
The orb was exceedingly expensive and delicate. They worked by activating an enchantment to view a single location the user had traversed within the last week. The cooldown was a day long.
An idea sprouted. Hold the orb hostage.
Rowan swept the inane suggestion away and placed it on her needy hands. He had already won their cooperation. And Gabrielle wasn’t afraid of zapping him. His respawn cooldown was only a couple of hours at level 70.
And he didn’t wish to have another squabble with her. It had taken long enough to convince them of the key portions of the plan. Ambiguous Pain had thought it was more than likely to fail. Gabrielle had more faith, surprisingly. Something about the way she looked at Rowan since he had regained sanity hinted she trusted him—at least in some form or another. That youthful, happy expression was like none other. He wanted, needed to see the beautiful Gabrielle he’d known since high school and not that dreadful girl from the vision.
Even if it had been mostly his strategy, Rowan didn’t mind sharing half the credit. She bared as much of risk as him. If the enemy had entered the city with their full force it could’ve been a disaster. Ambiguous would have needed to activate the invulnerability totem much earlier. And it had been sheer luck that none had questioned how a level seventy necromancer wore fancy gear that looked like a level 200+ set. That leader Paladin was smart to send in a scout force of stealthed, flying mounts—but not smart enough to keep his main force close behind.
After placing the orb into her pouch with extra care, Gabrielle fed the lamp with another stream of mana, then said, “Hey Rowan?” Her tone was gentle.
He hesitated before answering. This could be another manipulation or something significant. His pulse pounded in his neck as he said, “Yeah?”
“Good job on the plan. I knew ya would be good at this stuff.” She flashed him a pure, full smile.
A warm fuzziness seeped through Rowan’s body and stirred in his head, sickening but sent him on a high nevertheless. His Ice-Dark mana recoiled though stabilized a heartbeat later. “Thanks,” he mumbled and bumped her elbow.
“But don’t get any ideas!” She pointed at his nose. “I’m just a fucktoy to you.”
The warmth faded in an instant. Still there—thanks to Gabrielle’s playful attitude. But greatly diminished.
If that’s what she wanted then so be it. Rowan spanked her again, harder this time.
She smirked in response like she'd been spanked a million times before. "Oh my Roowan," she sang, tone syrup sweet, "Is that why ya brought me to this cave? So you can have your way with me? Can't wait, can ya?" She swayed her hips alluringly.
His eye twitched. She was right. He could take her this instant in the upper level of this mine—and he sure desired it. Her petite, curvy body was calling out to him, begging for him to ram her senseless. His waist heated, his body leaking cold sweat as his mana churned in need. He wanted his irritating, luscious Gabrielle this minute. Too much, unhealthily so. But he was still 80% insane, right?
“Hmm?” Gabrielle mumbled, “No words? Should I start stripping for ya?”
Rowan's muscles tightened at the choice. It was either the plan or this. And the plan was more important while fucking could always come later. They had powerleveling and a town to build. A tough challenge.
The converted townsfolk needed nourishment, to Rowan's chagrin. An adult had drunk out of a flask he’d died with. The trio didn’t have supplies to feed a hundred children and players rarely sold common, nutritious food on the marketplace. It was one of the few markets NPCs still made a living in. Most players ate even if they didn’t experience hunger in this world, supplying a steady demand. Gorging one's self without gaining weight was a massive boon to the pastry and dessert market. However, NPCs didn't bear the same advantage.
He finally said as she began unbuttoning her robe skirt. “No,” he said, voice strong. He grabbed her wrist, gently. The feeling of her smooth, soft skin was electric.
“Huh? Why?” She blinked thrice. “Are we gonna have a hot, cave-fuck or not?”
“No.” Rowan shook his head, releasing her arm.
Gabrielle scowled at that. The look was dangerously close to Draesear’s vision. “Ya meanie liar.” She pulled a pair of oversized, crafting scissors from her pouch and snipped them in the air. “Time for those fingers…” The blades snipped once more, blue-black mana shimmering on the metal. She madly grinned. “Necromancer flesh and bone make good potions!”
She couldn’t be serious.
Her scissors moved to his hand.
Brows rocketing, Rowan flinched as a frozen weight dropped through his intestines. Somehow he had triggered her by not demanding sex. He couldn't wrap his mind around this amazing girl, understand how or why her psyche functioned in this way. He backpedaled and growled, "I'll fuck you later when we have time. We have stuff to do now!"
Her eyes narrowed. Those pretty, pink lips curled. She said after a handful of strained heartbeats, “Do you promise?”
Rowan resisted a confused twist of his face. “I promise.” He focused on the eddies in those large, deep-blue eyes. “We’ll have our dark empire and I’ll ravish you every day and night once things settle down.” He meant every word.
“Mmmmm…” Gabrielle’s frown faded as her tongue poked into her cheek. Her usual cheeriness returned, her scissors dropped back into her scaled pouch.
Rowan’s storming mana settled and he slipped the wand he didn’t realize he had drawn back into its holster. He exhaled and deflated as Gabrielle hummed a tune, waiting for him to explain the rest of the plan. She was such a handful—but he’d have her no other way. This was his beautiful, intoxicating Gabrielle.
She said, “So, what’s the plan? Is there something down here?”
Indeed there was. Or so Rowan had guessed, judging from what the old, lazy Mage had said. “The magic shop owner back in the town said something interesting…” He suddenly remembered Ambiguous and the dark humans as he thought through the pieces of the plan. “Wait. Has Ambiguous messaged you regarding our subjects yet?” He had forgotten to send Ambiguous a friend request. It was one of the few ways to maintain long-distance communication.
Gabrielle’s face blanked. Her eyes sank to the bottom-left where the chat-box should be in an unmodified interface. Elation broke out on her face. “Yup! She gave the injured children potions and that swayed most of em over for now. They still don’t don’t like me though.”
Excellent. “They’re safe in your cave?”
“Nope.”
What?
Rowan’s neck constricted. “Where are they?”
She tapped her chin, one her cute mannerisms. “There wasn’t enough space in the room with my spawnstone. Ambiguous had to teleport to another one of my spawnstones two hundred miles to the west.”
"In another hidden cave?"
“Yup. All my spawnstones are in pretty caves or buried deep in jungles!” A thumbs-up. “Don’t tell anyone.” She flung him an implying look. One involving fingers and other body parts.
Rowan let out a lukewarm breath, ignoring the threat. “Good. And I won’t.”
A different cave was an acceptable compromise—perhaps a better arrangement than befor
e by separating Gabrielle’s main base from the dark humans’ temporary holding location. A rudimentary town was crucial, both for swaying over new dark converts and serving as the birthplace of Rowan’s dark empire. It had to start somewhere. Why not here and now with all those malleable children? Maybe the new cave had enough resources and space for a hidden, small city. Gabrielle’s base surely didn’t. Hers was more snug and cozy than spacey and plentiful in resources.
Gabrielle’s hum interrupted his rumination, “Ah…”
“What is it?” Rowan nudged her side. He liked touching her despite her crazy tendencies. It felt good. It felt right.
“Ambiguous had to put them in stasis because they were about to go look for food outside.”
Rowan nodded. “Just as I thought.” And didn’t he mention this part to her? “Did you forget?”
“It’s not that…” Gabrielle’s lips puckered in thought. “Their buffs wore off and the children were weakening and Ambiguous gave a little boy a sandwich but it didn’t help. They seem to need a source of dark mana. Only the adults generate enough for themselves. The mayor has tonnes and tonnes but it’s not enough to sustain all the children. They need a loooooot.” Her brows wriggled for a moment. “Yeah, I think that’s what she meant… More or less. Her stasis is helping but they’re still weakening. They’ll last the whole 72 hours… Maybe.”
New Quest: Dark Mana Source
Your new dark followers need a constant source of dark mana before maturity else they wither away. Find such a source before they perish.
Difficulty: S
Length: Medium-Long
Recommended Level: 175+
Failure conditions: Your immature dark followers perish.
Success conditions: Find a source of dark mana for your followers.
Reward: A source of dark mana for your followers.
Great. Just great. S difficulty and level 175+
Though if he saved all those children, the dark humans would be further swayed to his cause. If he failed, it’d be a massive blow and the adults would likely turn on him in an instant. This quest was as important as The Frozen Calamity for taking over the continent. For winning over Gabrielle. Rowan couldn’t lose her like in the alternate timeline. He’d just have to level up at lightning speed in these mines and scan the world for such a source.
Resolve hardening and cool mana pumping through his arteries, Rowan interrupted Gabrielle’s silent, tense conversation with Ambiguous, a hand on her shoulder. “72 hours is more than enough time. It’s still mid-day in real life.”
Her eyes snapped to his. A little smile spread on her lips. “Ya really think?”
He nodded, returning her smile. “You and Ambiguous are both over level 200. And I’m a Necromancer. We’ll get the quest done easily.” He gave her tender squeeze. The action felt like the right thing to do, protective, reassuring. His fingers met steel muscles. Her smile grew to light smugness. That Morgana’s set sure granted a hell of a strength bonus. “Now, do you know where a dark mana source could be?”
“Yep,” she said deviously.
These conversations were both fun and irritating. “Where?”
“We gotta…”
Rowan swallowed a sigh and enjoyed her playful nature. “Gotta what?”
“Corrupt and taint a natural focus of ambient mana…” She giggled excitedly. “Like where the Water Mages are. Take over that spire and we’ll have unlimited Water-Dark mana! And I’ll finally start building my dazzling castle!”
Oh. No wonder it was an S difficulty quest. That place had to be swarming with high-level Water Mages and fortifications.
And that couldn’t be the only natural focus.
“Well…” Rowan said and looked at the scorch-marked rock. Fire elementals were wandering below. “What about here? Elementals are spawning.”
“Not big enough.” Gabrielle gestured with a gap of her fingers, two inches wide. “This place is small and has at most this much mana even if there was a big fire boss on the bottom level.” Her arms spread wide. “We need a huuuuge place with this much ambient mana.” She put on a sad, poor expression. “The Water Mages have one of the few and they're the weakest in the game. There’s no other choice.”
Well, that made sense at least. Rowan resigned to her explanation. He nodded, a course of action already germinating in his brain. The Water Mages will be the first to fall—right after he gained some levels and raised a small army of fire demons if his hunch was correct.
He looked Gabrielle in the eye again. “Alright. We will take them out and build our first city there—” She erupted in glee. Rowan continued in a louder, firmer rush, “But first I need an army and a lot more levels—which is why we are here. The good players won’t suspect we’re so close after Ambiguous mass teleported with our illusions and your high-level confusion ward will hold back any of their scouts.” He took an exaggerated breath. “And…”
Blinking, Gabrielle tugged at his low-level robe sleeve. She was still quite giddy from that first bit. “And?”
Rowan beamed at her. “You might just be right about that fire boss... Much more than that, highly likely.”
“Huh?” Her features twisted into confusion.
It didn’t seem like Gabrielle was a fan of the fantasy classics. Though perhaps she hadn’t needed to deal with a starting town as cliche as the one he had spawned into. “So as I was saying. The old magic shopkeeper said something interesting about the dwarfs and mines. ‘They dig deep. They dig greedily and before you know it the mine is swarming with fire and lava elementals’.” He paused, checking if she caught on.
She hadn’t. “Yeah? What about it?”
“That’s a direct reference to a fantasy novel from the nineteen hundreds, Lord of the Rings by a guy named Tolkien I believe.” He paused once more and Gabrielle was still ignorant. He chuckled a breath—she wasn’t a genius in this field like she was in the sciences. Rowan was superior in this regard. “I think the AI controller generated a lot of this area and world based on those novels and many others. In that one book, there was a massive fire demon at the bottom of a dwarfs’ mine because they dug too deep and greedily. There’s probably a similar one down here but lower level because this is a newbie zone.”
It finally clicked for her. “Ooooh!” Her hands clapped together. “I read demons make the strongest Undead minions!”
Even better. “Excellent. Then let us get this power-level session underway. Use your broom to round up monsters. We’ll quickly kill packs with wide-area skills and work our way to the boss.”
“Kay!”
Gabrielle led the way on her broom, mana lamp hanging on her wand-hand wrist as she gripped the onyx shaft. Rowan jogged along and shot a Tainted Ice Blast at low-level fire elementals that floated into view. They sported typical appearances similar to that of many other fantasy games. Nothing impressive. Gabrielle’s Dark Water Aura doubled the effectiveness of his ice blasts. Elementals up to level 40 died in a single hit as they traversed the mine at record speed—not a single player or NPC in sight. The dead elementals left no usable corpses, as Rowan had inclined.
The mine had evacuated hours earlier after the bombs went off in the town. None had been brave enough to challenge Gabrielle, those weaklings. Though granted, they were mostly low-level adventurers and NPCs with the miner profession. The upper levels had long been mostly cleared of elementals and safe to scour for uncommon metals and gems.
Large packs of mid-level fire and lava elementals soon entered view, loitering next to glowing veins and flowing rivers of lava. Gabrielle joined the slaughter by tossing small bombs of corrupting water, Rowan’s ice blasts losing effectiveness against the level 120 targets. She carried several stacks of those in her giant inventory.
The temperature grew exponentially, sweltering in the thick, smoky air. Rowan sank deeper into the cool air of his Cracked Necromancer’s Keystone and Gabrielle’s supportive auras. Not a single fire demon wandered among the packs as Rowan gained le
vel after level. The cave system was endless, some tunnels natural and others dug by the greedy dwarfs. The artificial tunnels ended as the first level 140 Medium Fire Elementals spewed streams of blue-yellow flames at Gabrielle. She laughed and massacred them in waves, Rowan slightly behind and offering a blast here and there. His Mana Shield finally leveled to Tier 1 after taking 10,000 damage total. It grew from a small, directable disk to a larger shield.
Chapter 21
Grinding
Three hours of continuous grinding had passed and Rowan approached the zone considered as mid-level by most players. Level 120 to 170, approximately, because the better armor and weapons in the game asked for a minimum of level 180. Elite, super-rare gear became available at 210—Gabrielle’s Morgana’s being one. The first lot of mid-level mythical rarity gear was available at level 120 for most classes, Necromancer included.
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