The Horrors and their smaller brethren weren’t quite done yet, either. Another three Greater Horrors showed up from different directions and went to work ripping the smaller Earth defenders apart. The Rock Giants stomped and pounded the Horrors flat, but they weren’t quite as resilient as the Sphinxes; their limbs were quickly consumed, and they were rendered almost useless other than a massive crushing weight after a couple of strikes.
Meanwhile, as the battle above raged with more and more void monsters and Earth defenders battling to get inside Fred’s dungeon, the remaining Horrorlings were getting closer to destroying everything inside the second room. The Flametripper Spikers only managed to kill about a dozen of the Mana-less creatures before they succumbed to their consumptive attacks. The Entangling Vines placed above the stone-spike pit reached out at the Horrorlings and got caught by some extended tentacles; the void monsters literally used the vines as ropes and climbed up them, consuming them in the process.
The spike pit did a little more damage as the rest of those streaming through the tunnel into the room fell directly down in the same spot. While there weren’t large amounts of Mana inside the stone spikes, Fred had used Earth Mana to construct them; as a result, the sharp spikes slowly wore away not from the Horrorlings deliberately targeting them to consume, but almost from the friction caused by the amorphous blobs rubbing against them. While more than two dozen were impaled by the spikes initially, they eventually survived the drop as the sharp points were blunted from the constant wear of seemingly countless void bodies rubbing against them.
Once they were able to squeeze themselves between the rest of the spikes in the pit, they were easily able to climb the far wall and up to where the Eisa’s defenders were waiting for them. Just as Fred had seen up above, the Stone Golems and Goblin Gnomes did well on smashing everything that came up and knocking them back into the pit, but as their body parts began to be consumed, more and more Horrorlings were able to make it to the top and spread out. At that point, it didn’t take long for Eisa’s forces to be overwhelmed, and the next thing Fred knew, they were at the thick wooden “door” they had placed over the tunnel entrance.
“Alright, they’re here…is everybody ready?” Fred asked, as the first Horrorling completely ignored the wooden plank in its way and simply climbed up it and somehow contorted itself to fit through the gap near the roof of the tunnel. It was only about three inches tall, plenty for letting air flow in and out, but apparently also large enough to let the void creature slide through as it compressed down small enough to fit. If nothing else proved that those creatures didn’t have any type of bone structure inside them, that would’ve been sufficient proof.
They also got their first visual look at the Horrorling, which didn’t look anything like it had in his Mana and Territorial Sight. Whereas it was a literal void to those Sights – due to the lack of Mana inside of them – when seen in person, they looked more like “clear darkness”. That was the best way to describe them; it was as if they were originally the blackest of blacks they could be, and then something tried to make them invisible but failed to complete the process.
Without even saying anything while Fred and the others readied to attack, Deecy immediately ran forward and extended her aura to create a Fire Wall inside the tunnel, running its entire length except for right next to the wooden board. It was a relatively inexpensive defense that she could throw up quickly to kill the Horrorlings as they dropped off the top of the wooden barricade. When one would start to burn and consume the Wall, she would extend a little more of her Mana to repair it, keeping it in place to continue the process.
After killing over 30 of the Horrorlings – with a horde of still over 200 of them trying to make their way through Fred’s dungeon – the middle of the thick wooden board started to crack. It wasn’t from weight against it, however; the board was created from Nature Mana and the press of the Horrorlings was starting to eat away at it. After another couple of the void monsters climbed over, the center of the wood completely split down the middle and spread apart the metal rod holding them closed. As soon as there was a gap large enough for them to squeeze through, they started pouring into the tunnel in increasingly larger numbers.
Deecy couldn’t keep up and the Fire Wall was snuffed out, leaving the horde of Horrorlings to enter without trouble. Arrows started to fly out from Regnark in a steady stream; because they weren’t made from Mana – they were produced by Fred’s Conjure Object Adventurer ability – they weren’t consumed on impact. Large chunks of the Horrorlings started to disappear as they were injured by the arrows slicing into them, though they had to be reduced down to almost nothing for them to “die” completely – if that is what is actually happening to them. Fred wasn’t exactly sure that these creatures/monsters were even alive, given the explanation that Deecy imparted to him.
Either way, Regnark was making short work of them as he fired faster than Fred could reasonably follow; unfortunately, doing so was sapping his Stamina at a prodigious rate. “Regnark! Rest for a moment and I’ll take over!” Fred called out, getting ready to add his own Power to the fight.
Fireblasts seemed to be the way to go, as they expanded and did quite a lot of damage as a result. Fred started to launch one Fireblast after another down the tunnel, blowing back the ones in the front in the process; he was doing some major damage to them and taking them out two or three at a time because they were bunched up. They had very little in the way of Defense or Vitality, which he belatedly realized had updated when he finally got a face-to-face look at them.
Horrorlings (Level 1)
Vitality: 10
Attack: 0, absorbs Mana
Defense: 1, able to continue fighting even when 90% of its body is destroyed
Essentially, they were blobs of mindless, manaless voids that operated only to consume Mana; they didn’t really attack in the barest sense of the word, nor were their bodies capable of fending off any damage. They only managed to kill and destroy things because anything with Mana in it that touched them would be consumed.
At 100 units of Power per Fireblast, he was using his available Power up quickly and the end of them never seemed to be near. Eisa joined in with her own Power by sending simple Magestrikes which she had unlocked with a little of her Essence. After she had exhausted her Power and he had used over 30 Fireblasts – killing a few score of them in the process – Eisa sent in a squad of a dozen Stone Golems she had created and said, “You rest now, Fred – I’ve got this!” And then she transformed into her Earth Elemental form and followed after them.
“No! Don’t get near them, Eisa – they’ll consume all the Mana inside of you!” he shouted a little more harshly than he intended, snatching her by the arm and yanking her back. He didn’t want anything to happen to her and was perhaps a bit too forceful in his protection, and the shock and surprise was evident even on the normally expressionless Earth Elemental form’s face.
“Fred! What are you—”
“I’m sorry, Eisa – but I can’t let you go in there. If they get ahold of you, you could die!” He tried to apologize, but there was too much happening to see if his apology had been accepted.
Eisa’s Stone Golems had paused in their advance when he had snatched Eisa back from almost certain death, which allowed a few of the Horrorlings to push out from the tunnel and spread out. Her defenders started toward them soon after – but the damage had already been done. Fortunately, Regnark had seen and started to fire arrows again and destroyed the ones that had broken free of the tunnel, while the Golems attempted to contain the flood of void monsters.
Deecy got back into it with the establishment of one Ice Spear Barricade after another, set lengthwise in the middle of the tunnel. Each one lasted about a second before it was consumed, but it also took out between five and seven Horrorlings at the same time. She even threw in some Fire Walls that didn’t last any longer but did about the same amount of damage to the swarm.
The Stone Golems didn’t la
st long as defenders and were soon taken apart as they touched the strange void monsters in their attacks. Outstretched tentacles on the part of the Horrorlings also managed to touch or snag a stone body part or two, which hastened their destruction. And through it all, not a single drop of Earth Mana was left behind for either Fred or Eisa to reabsorb.
As soon as the last Stone Golem fell, Fred tossed more Fireblasts into the tunnel, destroying even more in the process. Regnark’s arrows quickly ran out and he threw down his bow and grabbed the two-handed, double-bladed Steel Longsword Fred had Conjured for him. He ran over next to Deecy and prepared to hold back the tide once the Dire Wolf was out of Mana.
“Here, Eisa – take some Earth Mana and create some more Stone Golems – those seem to be the best for getting in there and stopping up the tide of these things,” Fred said, while pulling out all 60 Earth Mana from his Core and sending it right to her. She had dropped her Earth Elemental form and frowned at him but did as he asked; soon enough another three Stone Golems appeared and went towards the front line, holding back the Horrorlings with great sweeps of their bludgeoning fists.
Looking at the other room with his Territorial Sight, he could see that the end of the Horrorlings inside his dungeon was near; there were probably only 50 more or so still trying to make their way into the tunnel, but they were all quickly running out of ways to kill them. Fred had even supplied Deecy with some additional Fire and Water Mana from his cores during the fight, but now she was getting to the point where she had to choose whether to transform into a giant Dire Wolf and go down fighting, or use what she could to produce additional defenses.
Fred was going to make that decision for her. “Deecy, grab your weapon and go for it!” he called out to her, just as he was throwing his last few Fireblasts down the tunnel.
Deecy transformed into her Giant Dire Wolf form and quickly picked up her massive morning star weapon with her teeth and started swinging it around and around. Moving closer to the tunnel entrance, Regnark moved back in case he was needed and watched with the others as the spinning spiked ball smashed into the first Horrorling perfectly. It basically disintegrated on contact, but that proved not to be a good thing; expecting at least a little resistance, Deecy mistimed her next rotation and the spiked ball was jerked forward to impale itself inside the tunnel wall, smashing four other void monsters in the process. She tried to yank it out and made it move a little bit – but it was ultimately stuck fast.
“Leave it! We’ll take it from here. No, stay back, Eisa – if they touch you, you’re dead,” he called out, looking at Eisa and seeing a frustrated expression on her face.
“Well, what about you, Fred? You have Mana inside you, too!” she yelled back, as he moved up with the longsword he had picked up from the supplies near the back wall.
She has a point, but at least I’m trying to use a longer-reach weapon. He preferred to use his knives if he were to engage in close-quarters combat but getting too close to those things wasn’t the best idea. Eisa, on the other hand, only had her own form to use for attacking; he had to think of a weapon that she, as an Earth Elemental, could use other than her own fists – or whatever bladed weapon she made from the dirt surrounding her.
One on each side of the tunnel exit, Fred and Regnark stood and swung their swords back and forth with abandon. Regnark used his exceptional skill as an experienced Adventurer to cut down the incoming Horrorlings with precise cuts; Fred, on the other hand, felt like he was flailing about with a long pointy stick and had almost no idea what he was doing.
Fortunately, it didn’t take a lot of skill to hit the void monsters as they didn’t try to dodge, and they were relatively slow in comparison. Unfortunately, most of those coming out of the tunnel entrance turned in his direction first, even if they ended up being cut down from behind by Regnark. Neither of them could keep up with the incoming flood of “clear darkness”-colored forms, however, and inevitably Fred was hurt.
A cold spike of pain erupted out of his chest as a tentacle shot out from the closest Horrorling and wrapped around his upper right arm. He fell to his knees in weakness as he felt like his very soul was being drained – but in reality, his Unconverted Mana was being sucked out faster and faster the more he looked at it. Fred couldn’t even stand up and defend himself, and he looked up to see two more descending on him.
Then suddenly all three were destroyed before his eyes as a weapon flew through where they had formerly been. It wasn’t the two-handed, double-bladed longsword that Regnark was wielding, however; it was the large warhammer he had Conjured for the Berserker/Marksman in case he needed it. Only, it wasn’t being wielded by the human – it was being swung with ease by Eisa in her Earth Elemental form.
“Get up – I can’t do this all by myself! And don’t look at me like that; I’m pretty sure you know I’m not going to let the man I love die without a fight!” Eisa yelled at him, swinging the warhammer again and almost hitting him in the process. She might have enough strength while in her special form to wield the heavy warhammer, but she didn’t necessarily have the skill to go with it.
He stood up, the weakness a passing memory as he threw himself back into the fight. With all three of them taking a different section of the tunnel exit, they were able to fight through the rest of the void creatures until there were none left. Panting and sweating by the end of it, Fred walked over to Eisa and smiled tiredly at her. “Thanks, Eisa. I probably would’ve died if you hadn’t come to my rescue.”
She smiled back at him, though with a harder expression on her face, which stayed there even when she changed back to her normal “human” form. “You’re welcome…just don’t yell at me like that again or I’ll chop your—”
Regnark grunted in restrained laughter as Eisa cut off what she was going to say. “Uh…yeah, well…I’d help grow them back with my new special ability, of course, but just so long as we have an understanding, right?”
“Right,” Fred answered right away. He never really understood what Metch had always said about women being difficult to understand, and now he didn’t think he ever would.
Chapter 16
The fight was far from over, however; the battle aboveground was only seeming to intensify by the time Fred and the others had managed to defeat all of the Horrorlings already inside the dungeon. All Fred could do was watch and recover from the Mana and Power expenditure from their own fight, as the ground shook from the battle between the Earth defenders and the Horrors that came from the Deadlands.
The shaking had been going on during their own defense against the Horrorlings, of course, but he had barely noticed it in the heat of the fight. Now that they were all sitting down and enjoying a bit of a rest, it almost felt worse; a couple times the surrounding earth shook so badly that Fred thought his dungeon would collapse despite the protections put in place automatically. Fortunately, nothing like that happened and they weren’t squished by falling rock as the dungeon collapsed around them.
His entrance, however, was completely demolished. It was only luck that any air was able to get in and out through the rubble filling the entrance tunnel, and Fred didn’t look forward to clearing it out. Normally, he’d be able to just eliminate it with his Dungeon Core skill, but with Regnark inside the dungeon at the moment he couldn’t – which meant it would probably be a lot of manual labor instead.
Instead of worrying about the battle waging above their heads, Fred decided to take advantage of the situation. Since everyone was essentially out of Power – Regnark had even used most of his for a few of his Marksman abilities – he decided to use his Conjure Object skill to make them some food, before attempting to Teach each of them as much as he could. He figured that even with a little bit of time to recharge what they had spent, that it wouldn’t really matter if thousands of the Horrorlings or hundreds of Earth defenders (whoever ended up winning) streamed down into his dungeon. They were lucky to have survived even that long and a few extra points of Power weren’t likely to make a h
uge difference.
First, he looked at his own Adventurer Status to see where he was at, and whether or not he could spare some more Essence to increase the chance of success.
Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface
Name: Fredwynklemossering
Class: Instructor-Researcher
Rating: E-7th
Essence Needed to Rate-up: 61947
Total Essence: 869053
Available Essence to Distribute: 166466
Unconverted Essence: 6520
Body: 14 (0/81920)
Brawn: 13 (0/40960)
Mind: 16 (0/327680)
Vitality: 180/180
Stamina: 145/160
Power: 125/5100
Base Physical Attack: 13
Base Physical Defense: 13
Power Regen Rate: 25/min
Class Traits (Instructor)
Your available Power is increased by your Mind stat
Your Power Regen Rate is increased by your Mind stat
You are able to pass along the knowledge of your spells and abilities to another (success is variable)
Class Traits (Researcher)
Your available Power is greatly increased by your Mind stat
Your Power Regen Rate is greatly increased by your Mind stat
You have a much-heightened ability to adapt known spells and abilities for use in other applications
Class Abilities (Instructor)
Teach 4 – 0/27000
Class Abilities (Researcher)
Experiment 0 – 0/100
Adapted Abilities
Animate Dead 1 – 0/1000
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 13