by James Hunter
“No one escapes me three times, troublesome fly,” she said. “Consider this a warning in case you should ever try to double-cross me. No one is more devious than me …” The words faded to a muted whisper as my HP plummeted to zero and the world went dark around me.
TWENTY-ONE: Debuff, Death
Ocean waves lapped at my feet as muddy sand squished up through my toes. I turned my head and smiled, regarding the magnificent sunset as a cool breeze blew in, ruffling my hair. The water glowed in rippling shades of yellow, orange, and pink, and the sky overhead was just as impressive: a patchwork of drifting clouds in a multitude of hues. A gull squawked somewhere out of sight, complementing the soft wash of the water against the sand. It was a perfect moment. Someone squeezed my hand, and I looked down, surprised to find a petite hand interlaced with mine.
I followed the hand up.
Jessica was smiling at me, her perfect white teeth brilliant against her suntanned skin. She reached up and ran her other hand through her blonde locks, absently brushing a wind-tussled strand off her face. She was beautiful. The fading sunlight stained her white tank top with color, turning it into a dreamy tie-dye. I smiled at her, but underneath, confusion surged through me. Everything felt so real, so right, but I knew we’d broken things off over a year ago. Right after she finished her Bachelors in Education at San Diego State. She’d found a job in Colorado. She’d left me to be a middle school teacher.
She’d thrown away three years together for an entry-level 30K a year job in Boulder. A flash of anger burned in my gut, but I quickly doused it, not wanting to ruin the sublime moment.
No, instead I squeezed her hand tight because I missed her so much and I wanted this to be my world, my reality. It felt so good to be back on the beach again, to see the palm trees and taste the salty tang in the air.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, except now it was Abby’s voice.
I glanced over to find my friend walking next to me, and not the perfectly rendered VR Wode version, either. The Real Abby. Dark skin, just a little overweight, beautiful smile and great dimples. She was wearing a nondescript tank top and dark jeans, rolled up at the cuffs so the incoming surf wouldn’t get them wet. “Why didn’t we ever make this work?” she asked, looking out over the water instead of at me. “Us, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Timing was always off. You were with Jordan, then I was with Jessica. The stars just never really lined up, I guess. Besides, our friendship was too good—you weren’t interested in risking that. Your words.”
She looked at me and nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line. “Yeah, but we were good together, you know? I think I was just scared. We could’ve had something, could’ve been something good maybe.” Her words faded, and the conversation was replaced by the slap of waves and the cry of gulls. I glanced away, watching the waves race up the beach ahead, then sprint back toward the ocean. “The stars are aligned now,” she said, though she didn’t sound quite right. There was an unnatural buzz to her words, like the crooning of some giant bug.
I turned back toward her, but she was gone.
Now, I was holding hands with a nightmare woman with black skin, arachnoid eyes, and spidery legs protruding from her back. Her vibrant lips were stained red with blood. My blood. I jerked my hand free and ran as fast as my feet would carry me, but the wet sand sucked me down like a tar pit—or maybe spider webbing—and try as I might, I couldn’t get away. It was like running on a treadmill: no matter how hard I tried, or how many steps I took, I never really moved.
I stole a frantic look back over my shoulder. The nightmare woman strode forward with a swish and sway of her hips, completely untroubled by the mucky sand, gliding freely over its surface. “No one is more devious than me …” she called out, “and no one can escape my web …”
I jolted upright, sweat rolling down my face, my heart thumping manically.
Where am I? How did I get here?
I leaned back on my palms, feeling silk sheets and a soft mattress beneath my hands. I was in a bed—and not just any bed, the California King back in my personal suite at the Keep—but I couldn’t remember going to sleep. No, the last thing I clearly remembered was being cocooned alive, then having that psycho-monster tear though my armor like it was made of wet paper instead of heavily enchanted leather and blackened ring mail. The same psycho-monster from my dream.
The Spider Queen.
Remembering her brought back a flash of pain; hesitantly, I reached down and ran a trembling hand over my pecs, searching for the gaping hole I knew would be there. Except it wasn’t, and neither was my armor. My fingers ghosted over gunmetal gray skin, and there wasn’t a mark on me, not even a scratch. Everything looked whole and healthy, exactly the way it should, but I couldn’t shake the memory of her ripping through my skin. Of her smashing past my breastbone, then rupturing my lungs and heart. That had happened, I was sure of it.
I took a few deep calming breaths, pressing my eyes shut as I worked to get my head on straight. It was so hard, though, mostly because I felt absolutely awful. Worse than the worst hangover on the planet. A throbbing headache pounded away inside my skull, and though there were no physical signs of injury, it sure felt like someone had pushed me into an industrial meatgrinder, shoveled up my remains, then fed those into the meatgrinder again. Everything hurt. My skin felt tight and raw—as if I’d sustained a blistering sunburn—my muscles were basically Jell-O, and my bones ached with muted fury.
This had to be some kind of debuff, that was the only thing that made any sense.
With a grimace, I pulled up my interface and was immediately inundated with notifications:
<<<>>>
Ability: Shadow-Spark
Ability Type/Level: Passive / Level 3
Cost: None
Effect: Umbra unlocked. All Shadow-based skill stats are increased by 3% per Shadow-Spark level (Current: 9%).
<<<>>>
Skill: Stealth
Skill Type/Level: Active / Level 10
Cost: 20 Stamina
Effect: Stealth 20% chance to hide from enemies (+15.6% augmented Stealth).
<<<>>>
Skill: Backstab
Skill Type/Level: Active / Level 8
Cost: 20 Stamina
Effect: A brutal backstab attack can be activated while an adventurer is in Stealth. 7x normal damage with a knife; 5x normal damage with all other weapons.
Effect 2: 8% increased chance of critical hit while backstabbing.
<<<>>>
Skill: Blunt Weapons
Skill Type/Level: Active / Level 11
Cost: None
Effect: Increases blunt weapon damage by 25%; increases blunt weapon attack rate by 5%.
<<<>>>
Skill: Medium Armor
Skill Type/Level: Passive / Level 5
Cost: None
Effect 1: 16% increased base armor rating while wearing Medium Armor.
Effect 2: +0.5% additional increased base armor rating for every piece of Medium Armor worn.
<<<>>>
I quickly read over the list of skill increases, then closed them one by one and scrolled over to a section listing my current active effects:
<<<>>>
Current Debuffs
Death’s Curse: You have died! You have lost 22,920 EXP! Skills improve 20% slower; duration, 8 hours. All EXP earned reduced by 15%; duration, 8 hours. Attack Damage and Spell Strength reduced by 20%; duration, 8 hours. Health, Stamina, and Spirit Regeneration reduced by 25%; duration, 8 hours. Carry Capacity -50 lbs; duration, 8 hours.
Death’s Sting: Suffer extreme physical discomfort and waves of weakness; duration, 4 hours.
<<<>>>
I read the various debuffs over much more slowly, my head pulsing as I tried to focus, and swore silently under my breath.
Wasn’t actually suffering a horrific death bad enough? This was just cruel. Sadistic, even. I wasn’t a big believer in God or the afterlife, but I sure hoped there was some cos
mic force responsible for doling out Karma, because these Devs had some serious payback coming their way. Although, a part of me begrudgingly admitted the debuffs made a certain sense—if death wasn’t permanent, what exactly was the incentive to not die? Why not take big risks unless there were real and awful consequences associated with failure?
Losing all current EXP—which would be devastating at high levels—and living through these debuffs were a pretty damn good deterrent, in my opinion. Still, knowing there was a good reason for my suffering didn’t make it any easier or less painful.
Disgruntled, I opened my inventory and let out a sigh of relief as I found my gear, unequipped but waiting for me in my bag. That meant V.G.O. didn’t require corpse runs, which was great considering where I’d kicked the bucket. I hastily equipped my various items—Night Blessed Armor, Cloak of Web-Walking, Belt of Agility, Fortified Braided Leather Leggings, Helm of the Owl, plus all my various rings and talismans. I immediately felt better. All the Stat and Regen boosts my equipment offered eased the pain rampaging through me.
A little, anyway.
I couldn’t believe the Spider Queen had killed me—I’d been so close to completing that stupid quest without getting captured. Really, though, I was angrier at myself than at her. She was a monster—a semi-intelligent one, but still a monster. I shouldn’t have expected anything else from her. She was a crafty killer who respected strength and cunning, but had no room for mercy or weakness. It was my fault for thinking she would behave like a human.
I also felt a flash of irritation at myself for not going in there better prepared. I was a level twenty-eight now, and I had 55 undistributed Attribute Points and 12 Proficiency Points doing absolutely nothing. Nothing. I couldn’t help but wonder if that whole encounter would’ve played out differently in the end, had I just distributed those damned Proficiency and Attribute points earlier on. I couldn’t ever know for certain, but it was definitely possible. So far, I’d been hesitant to commit my points, because once spent, I could never get them back, but I now realized how much of a handicap I was putting myself at by doing that.
A handicap which might’ve just killed me.
Well, I wouldn’t let that happen again. My dad was a hard man—a career in the Corps will do that to anyone—but he was always gracious when it came to mistakes and failures. So long as I learned from them, of course. To him there was no failure, only an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to do things better the next time around. In the end, things had worked out okay with the spiderkin, but there was no doubt in my mind that I’d screwed up. Thankfully, this mistake was something I could rectify. So, even though my head felt like a smashed watermelon, I gritted my teeth and pulled up my character menu.
No reason to put this off any longer.
First, I turned my attention to my Attribute Points. My Attack Strength was calculated like a Rogue class—based primarily off of Dexterity instead of Strength—so I immediately dumped 15 points into Dexterity, bringing my damage up significantly. Spirit and Intelligence were both obvious necessities, so I dropped 12 points into each of those, leaving me 20 points left to divide up between the other stats. A measly three went into Strength, bringing me up to an even forty, and 5 more went into vitality, since a little extra Health was never bad to have.
My battle style revolved around speed and agility, and I’d noticed my lagging Stamina had cost me more than once in the last few days, so the last 8 points went into Constitution. Satisfied, I surveyed my new character stats:
Everything looked good to me, except that big fat goose-egg of a zero staring at me from the Current EXP box. I couldn’t believe how much experience death had cost me. I’d been nearly half-way to my next level. There was no point beating myself up about it further, though; I just needed to be smarter in the future. Next, I pulled up my Shadowmancer Skill Tree screen and took a long look at the abilities available to me. Many of the previously blocked skills were now open, which made me feel marginally better even if it didn’t actually do anything for the pain crashing through me like a goblin raiding party.
First, I decided to beef up the skills I already had and loved.
Immediately, I invested two more points into Shadow Stride—since it was easily my coolest ability—bringing it up to level 3, Adept. Surprisingly, the spell cost increased from 100 Spirit to 150, but the range shot up to 100 meters, the length of time I could spend in the Shadowverse also jumped by 20 seconds, and the cooldown time dropped from 45 to 35 seconds. And best of all, I earned a new effect: increased Health-Regen rate by 15% while Shadow Striding, which was a killer bonus. Definitely a good investment.
Umbra Bog had also been super useful, so it got another point—bumping the “slow-movement” rate from 75% to 80%, while increasing the spell’s duration by 10 seconds. I couldn’t neglect Umbra Bolt, since it was my go-to range attack, so that got a point as well, bringing it up to the Journeyman level, which increased the attack damage to 200% Spell Strength and added a new effect: Umbra Bolt has a 10% chance to confuse enemies, causing them to randomly attack other hostile forces. I smiled. I could just imagine the kinds of crazy-chaos an ability like that could cause if utilized properly.
Void Terror earned itself another point, so that if, on the off chance, I ran across another formidable shadow minion, I could capture it without a problem. That dropped me down to seven points with a lot of skills left to explore. Dark Harmony, Night Armor, and Dark Shield, I left alone, since they were mainly passive and defensive abilities, and so far my play style had focused more heavily on Stealth, quick attacks, and crowd control tactics. Instead, I decided to pick up a few new abilities that looked promising:
<<<>>>
Skill: Black Caress
With the power of the Black Caress, you can charge your weapon with a potent bolt of shadow energy, which will inflict harm on enemies while simultaneously allowing you to absorb a portion of their health. At higher proficiency levels, both damage and amount of life absorbed increase.
Skill Type/Level: Spell/Initiate
Cost: 120 Spirit
Range: Weapon
Cast Time: Instant
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Effect 1: Add shadow damage to one regular attack.
Effect 2: Shadow Damage for 190% of Spell Power, plus regular attack damage.
Effect 2: Absorb 15% Health of total attack damage dealt during the attack.
<<<>>>
Skill: Plague Burst
Summon a billowing, toxic plague fog from the deepest recess of the Shadowverse. This spell unleashes powerful forces capable of killing most lesser-summoned beings on contact while causing significant poison damage to everyone and everything—friends, foes, and even the Caster—within the area of effect.
Skill Type/Level: Spell/Initiate
Cost: 375 Spirit Initial; 5 Spirit/per second for 1 minute.
Range: 40 Meters
Cast Time: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 5 minutes
Effect 1: 50% chance to instantly kill lesser-summoned creatures on contact.
Effect 2: Shadow Damage for 275% of Spell Power on contact. Initial Plague cloud lasts for 5 seconds.
Effect 3: Disease Damage for 5% of Spell Power/per second to all exposed combatants; duration, 1 minute.
Restriction: If the caster runs out of Spirit before the duration of the Disease Damage Debuff expires, the Debuff will terminate prematurely.
<<<>>>
I was excited to try Black Caress, since it seemed more or less like the Shadowmancer version of Savage Blow: adding a bunch of Shadow Damage to a single strike.
By itself, Black Caress didn’t deal much more damage than my Umbra Bolt, but I was pretty sure I’d be able to stack it on top of the Savage Blow ability, which could further be combined with Backstab. If I was right—and there was no reason to think I wasn’t—then I had a potentially devastating attack, which could KO most regular mobs in a single shot. I was also excited about Plague Burst, which seemed perf
ectly tailored for use with the Umbra Bog skill: just pin the monsters in place with the first, then hit them hard with the second for big damage.
Really big damage. With my current spell strength at 87, that Plague Burst would deal over 250 points of initial Shadow Damage, plus an additional 275 points of disease damage over time. I’d have to be careful of friendly fire, though, since I could just as easily kill Cutter, Abby, Amara, or even myself by mistake. Next, I chose a passive ability that drastically boosted Spirit Regen—an essential, considering how much some of these new spells cost.
<<<>>>
Ability: Shadow Minded
Draw on the ever-present power of the Umbra to restore your Spirit from the strains of battle and spell casting.
Ability Type/Level: Passive/Initiate
Cost: None
Range: N/A
Cast Time: N/A
Cooldown: N/A
Effect: Increase Spirit Regeneration by 15%.
<<<>>>
That left me 4 points left to work with.
I looked over the other skills in my tree, and though all of them looked awesome, I figured it would be better to invest what I had left into some of my more mundane abilities—something that didn’t depend solely on Spirit to use. I toggled over to the General Skills menu, then brought up Blunt Weapons; since I was now at level 11, I could finally pick up the Crush Armor ability: a special power attack activated like Savage Blow. It cost 100 Stamina per shot—nearly a sixth of what I had—but the result was a blow with 250% attack bonus against opponents in heavy plate armor. Wicked cool.
Since Dark Templars were specifically designed to be natural enemies to the Holy Templars of the empire—who were renowned for their specialty heavy armor—that seemed like a skill too good to pass up. One more point down. Though I relied heavily on Stealth, I already had a bunch of points invested there, so instead I turned my sights on the Medium Armor Skill Tree. I was still relatively low level, but I had one option, called Sprint, which increased my movement rate by 2% for every piece of medium armor I wore—since speed was central to my character, that seemed like a real no-brainer.