I laughed. "I doubt it. You're just in love with the part of her that acts like you would."
He thought for a second. "You're right. I'm awesome."
It was impressive how a little adrenaline and a few near death situations could unite people. Bear and I had been a little distant because of Ted and Melkier, but now we were good buddies again. Even his relationship with Daggers was improving.
I had already finished healing Daggers and was halfway through filling up Bear's HP bar when something appeared on the edge of my vision. I turned and saw an elite minotaur, wearing its impressive golden armor, appearing from the until-now unused doorway.
It wasn't alone; another came right after it. And third followed suit.
"So, how hard is it to kill those things again?" I asked.
"Not easy," Bear said.
"Damn." I got up. "Daggers, keep resting and only attack if you see an opportunity for a kill. Bear, you're with me." I used the mind chat next.
Lieutenant Tank Turtle was fully healed and had over half stamina. Private Tank Eleven was also full HP, but his stamina pool wasn't looking great.
We got up.
Turtle liked the idea.
I sighed. Fire morbs were popping up above my head every second.
Bear was the first to run at his elite and Turtle followed suit. They hit the elites like trains. Bear jumped, slashing vertically and using his armor-ignoring skill on his opponent's helmet. Turtle did almost the opposite: he ducked as he got close and bashed the elite's legs with his shield, causing it to fall.
The elite in the middle looked at his two engaged friends and was about to help the fallen one when I picked up my new staff off the ground and sent a firebomb at its face.
291 fire + 84 burn damage dealt to Middle Elite Minotaur (375 total)
HP: 4703 / 5078 <?>
My party had already killed an elite minotaur before, so I knew its approximate HP, as shown by the question mark.
The elite looked at me and I threw a new firebomb at it.
This time, it was prepared. It moved the halberd to try to intercept but I was prepared for that and made the morb evade the weapon. Boom. It exploded right in its face again.
My third morb flew but this time the elite didn't try to defend; he just began charging at me faster.
The fourth firebomb flew true, so did the fifth. The bastard was now running full speed in my direction.
I only had time to send four more firebombs at it before throwing the staff on the ground, and drawing my sword. I checked its HP.
HP: 1413 / 5078 <?>
Knowing that it had only that much HP, I relaxed a little. Since my own HP and my stamina were full, I was very confident I could kill the damn thing.
It closed with me and slashed its halberd horizontally. I defended with my shield.
No damage was received but I was thrown sideways, falling to me knees. Before I could recover, the elite dashed forward and thrust the halberd into the nape of my neck.
600 slash damage received
HP: 2456 / 3070
The pain was blinding and I couldn't stop myself from screaming. I'd barely recovered my feet when the minotaur attacked again and I raised my shield just in time. I managed to brace myself against the power of the attack and stayed on my feet, then rushed to close with the minotaur. He stepped back, and I found myself out-ranged as he jabbed the halberd at me.
As before, I blocked and tried to close in but he back stepped. Attacks continually rang off my shield; all the while my neck hurt like hell. I tried to back the minotaur into a corner, but he skillfully avoided the walls.
And just like that, it was a stalemate. I couldn't kill it without magic, and it couldn't kill me.
Or so I thought, until the halberd shone white and came at me. I defended the first attack, but the second came fast, right after the first. I also defended, and the speed of the third was even greater. I barely dodged, but the fourth attack hit my chest.
231 slash damage received
HP: 2225 / 3070
I was thrown backwards by the unexpected impact and the fifth attack struck me in the side of the head, throwing me to the floor and dealing another six hundred damage.
As soon as I struck the floor, I rolled to the side just in time to hear a clank where I had just been.
Quickly standing, I raised my shield again. And the halberd, which had stopped glowing white, glowed green instead.
I jumped back and tried to open a gap between us, but the minotaur followed. The overhand blow came and I blocked it with the shield, only to receive fifty-two points of damage anyway and feel the lightsteel shield bend under the power of the attack.
Holy shit!
Bear hadn't been kidding when he said the elite wasn't easy to kill.
The halberd's glow died and the fight went back to what it had been before: I defended without taking damage, the minotaur attacked, and nothing happened.
My HP, however, was barely over half. It was only a matter of time until the minotaur's skills were off of cooldown and it killed me.
In hindsight, it hadn't been smart of me to fight without getting my helmet, which would prevent me from taking critical damage on the head. 'Overconfidence kills,' father always said; I hadn't expected it to be so literal.
It was damn interesting to discover that I could get so involved in the moment that I forgot to think straight. I had thought I was better than that, but thankfully it wasn't too late to learn.
I felt Daggers leap off my shoulders, then the rush of air past my head as the halberd swung past.
She was invisible and landed upon the elite's chest without difficulty. The moment she touched it, she became visible again, but it was too late for the minotaur. Her blades pierced the helmet as if it was made of butter.
Each attack was a critical and dealt two hundred damage; the helmet's defense against critical damage didn't apply to her for some reason. She shadowed to attack faster and seven thrusts later, the elite dropped dead.
I took the chance to amass more fire morbs and check Bear's and Turtle's fight.
Turtle was lying in a corner of the room, his legs missing, and Eleven was fighting his elite.
Bear was faring much better. He had dropped his greatsword and was trading punches with the minotaur he'd somehow managed to disarm.
I'm sure Eleven appreciated the distraction of the firebomb I threw into the minotaur's face.
289 fire + 81 burn damage dealt to Left Elite Minotaur (370 total)
HP: 4642 / 5012 <?>
The elite minotaur we had just killed had taken less damage to die than the one before, so the estimated HP had been lowered.
What surprised me was that neither Turtle or Eleven had managed to deal even a single point of damage to the elite!
With Eleven focusing on defense and my firebombs flying, it died in a little over a minute. I had less than four hundred MP remaining.
Meanwhile, Bear and his elite were still punching each other.
I rolled my eyes and healed everyone who was injured, including myself. It was kind of strange seeing Turtle sprout new legs as he was healed, and Eleven was already back at the doorway, helping the other zombies.
After I created ten extra fire morbs, we walked over to look into the room where the elites had come from and saw a kind of office. There was a massive gold throne at the back with a huge lightsteel table right in front of it. In front of it were four smaller lightsteel chairs and tables. Smaller, but still too big for a human; clearly, they were intended for the elites.
The four tables had some communication crystals, piles of scrolls, along with pen and ink on them. The
gold table was bare except for a small statue of a minotaur.
The minotaurs looked all the same to me, I could not tell if it was the same minotaur as the statues on the ground floor.
Behind the huge table, at the corner of the room, were four armor stands.
As soon as I saw them, I felt like an idiot.
The first elite had taken some time to get to the lever room after Daggers killed the first mage minotaur. And the other three had also taken some time to come after the first elite died.
All the while, they had probably been sitting there, wearing common clothes and as fragile as flowers. I'd given them time to get armored and come at us fully prepared.
Thankfully, I knew how to make myself feel better: shift the blame.
Daggers was the scout; she should've scouted.
Feeling a lot better, I was about to go in to search the room for loot when the zombies screamed behind me.
I turned just in time to see an elite minotaur entering through the doorway that the zombies had been defending.
26. Secrets
It was as if a dam had broken. Along with this first elite, three others were able to push the breach open even further, allowing a host of common minotaurs to join the fight.
An elite had five thousand HP but Bear had managed to deal almost fifteen hundred damage to it. By punching it. I couldn't even begin to phantom how he had done that.
He had sixty stamina left and Daggers had less than thirty.
The zombies couldn't stop the elites from entering, not with the elites' halberds swinging left and right and their skills making it impossible to completely block them, but now that the enemy was already inside, they could at least slow the minotaurs down.
Ten firebombs, one after the other, hit Bear's ex-opponent and killed it. Then, I turned to the incoming wave with less than a hundred MP left.
I opened the built-in VirBridge calculator and did some math. The result was clear:
We were screwed.
The greatest issue we faced was the lack of mages on our side. Both dedicated healers and damage dealers were needed. The crossbowmen were useful, but they were just a stop-gap measure. A way to add some quick ranged damage but without the impact of a true damage dealer.
Supposedly, ranged attackers such as archers and crossbowmen could deal more single target damage than a mage, but not at the earlier levels, and not without the right skills.
Daggers positioned herself by the doorway to the lever room and started giving orders.
I ran to her side and began sending fireballs flying every second. A hundred MP was enough for three firebombs or twelve fireballs, so I chose the latter. Twelve seconds later I was out of mana.
Under Daggers leadership, the zombies were able to create a defensive line that was quickly pushed back. They soon had their backs to the doorway to the lever room, which was a good development for us; the elites and their halberds needed space to be effective and the other minotaurs couldn't attack effectively with the larger elites in the way. Even their mages had some difficulty getting their spells to us with the elite minotaurs blocking their line of sight.
The few spells that came through were usually destroyed by the zombies' bolts, as those too weak to fight on the frontlines were equipping their crossbows.
I took my own short bow out of my storage ring and started helping. A couple minutes later, the first elite fell. I almost wish it hadn't; bolts and spells came flying through the gap opened by his death.
It still had to be killed though; the zombies had held the doorway for a very long time against the common minotaurs, but the elites' damage was simply impossible to stand against, and all the healing I had done was going down the drain way too fast.
One minute later, a zombie tried to dodge a halberd that was glowing white but tripped over the leg of the tank to his side. The halberd hit him with five attacks too quick to defend. He survived that, but then the halberd glowed green and the zombie was too slow getting up.
The weapon's blade cut through the zombie's armor and sliced the zombie in half. He died screaming in pain.
Another minute later, the second elite fell; I was counting each second.
A quick headcount showed that half my tanks were using crossbows by now. That's when Daggers gave us new orders.
She had predicted things perfectly: the moment the third elite fell, only seven tanks were fighting and we could barely hold the line.
As if I could do anything else.
The last elite minotaur kept attacking at the doorway and my arrows kept going.
When it died, I was out of stamina and we only had five tanks in any condition to continue fighting.
Daggers told the men with too little HP who were resting by the side.
A few moments later, they produced the zombie. He had less than two hundred stamina left.
She was damn impressive; the zombies had broken when the elites had first arrived, but now they held. Of course, the fact that the elites were unexpected before made a big difference.
By my side, Bear was talking to the zombies; they were smiling and laughing.
"So, having fun?" I asked.
"Yeah," one of them said. "Thanks, boss."
"Boy, this is intense! I never had a fight like this!" Another one said. "I love this!"
They all gave me their input. Bear was the last. "Ugly-face, it's not often that you give us a good fight, but when you do, it's epic."
I smiled. "Wait until we fight the dudes on the third floor," I said thinking about the huge minotaurs that had spotted Daggers even though she had been invisible. "And then, the boss. That will be epic."
I talked to them for a few minutes and then closed my eyes. I had the Meditator trait that increased my MP recovery rate by five percent if I sat cross-legged with
my eyes closed.
Normal MP recovery was my intelligence points per minute. The Meditator trait increased this number by one — quite good considering that this was a large-scale battle and therefore each heal only consumed six MP.
Eyes closed, I focused fully on recovering my mana points.
Meditating in the game was just like in real life. I crossed my legs and focused both inward and on the subtleties of the environment.
The coldness of my armor, the coolness of my own undead flesh, the soft brush of my hair against my skin, the slight pain in my feet because my boots were a little too small, the constriction of the circlet on my head and the ring of fire on my finger.
I could smell blood and sweat in the air, mingled with the aroma of fear, rage, and excitement.
As I let go of my mind and superfluous thoughts, slowly reaching a blank state, the sound of the battle faded away.
I was now focusing on the smoldering heat of the spider ring in my bag, filling my body with strands of warmth that traveled from my waist to my head.
It was pleasant, so cozy.
How comfy would it be to put the ring on?
The moment that alien thought crossed my mind, I opened my eyes and jumped up.
The cacophony of battle slammed back into my awareness and I was startled... I checked my purse, the ring was still safe in there.
The clock in the corner of my eye told me I had dozed off for five minutes.
I smiled. I had just had an epiphany.
Unbound Deathlord: Obliteration (The Unbound Deathlord Series Book 2) Page 32