by Dakota Krout
She nodded seriously and then moved to Tom, who was holding his side. “How bad is it, Tom?”
He grinned at her as he sweated profusely. “I don’t care to look at it…”
Rose moved his hand to the side a bit and was able to see intestines through the gash. “I need a potion over here!”
Dale hurried over and fished a potion out of his pouch. He poured half of it directly into the wound, prompting a howl of pain from the barbarian. The other half was poured into Tom’s mouth. His bleeding stopped as a scab formed, and his intestines were pulled into place by writhing muscles. He needed to see a healer quickly, as this was considered a temporary fix at best, and Adam was otherwise occupied.
Hans had walked to the corpses during these ministrations and stuffed them in his bag. He got a dirty look from Rose as he sauntered over. “It isn’t my job to kill everything for you. Think of this as… a test. You didn’t do well.”
“Everyone is on the first floor by now, so the healers should have a station set up. Let’s go,” Dale ordered, standing near Adam in case he needed help. As they walked, Rose questioned what he had been doing with the Cat. “Oh, the punching? I was trying to drain its Core. That way, I would get the Essence, and we would still be able to sell a quality Core. Win-win. It worked pretty well after it passed out.”
“Smart!” Hans enthused. “That way you won’t shatter the Core by removing all of its Essence! As long as it is alive, it will pull Essence from its body to maintain the Core. And we can still sell it! You’ve been making good life decisions today!”
His exuberance only increased the glare he was receiving from Rose.
They stepped into the portal, returning to the first floor.
~ Chapter Seven ~
Having all of these people on my first floor was slightly aggravating. Especially since so many of them were sleeping, and I couldn’t get any Mobs in to give them a good ‘ol coup de grâce. Prone target, unconscious… too bad. It was like waving gold coins at a tax collector. I felt like I was going to start drooling. So, like a fart in the breeze I drifted over to someone else.
“We thank you, we truly do, but, those trees…” Bob pointed at a new grove near his home half-hex. “Why are they screaming?”
“The general consensus here is that they are rather terrifying.” He gave a weak smile. “Would you mind...?” The cicadas stopped singing, to both of our surprise. “Thank you, that was fast.”
The Goblin paused momentarily, mind whirring. “I’ve decided we will live with the noisy bugs.” Bob nodded once. An arrow whizzed by his head. He dropped behind the wall and shouted, alerting the other Goblins. They hurriedly moved into a defensive position and started releasing projectiles at the group outside.
The tanking unit of the adventurers–a mountain of a man who only carried a spiked shield–charged the wooden gate with a deep bellow. Shield leading, he rammed the barrier, accompanied by a deep crunching of splintering wood. His shout turned into a laugh as he leapt forward again, easily breaking through the wooden egress.
Following the massive man, a few others braved the light rain of desperate yet poorly aimed arrows to charge the open gate. They piled into the open courtyard of the half-hex, setting up a defensive formation so the remainder of their team could easily join them. One of the men was a ranger of some sort and was paying better attention to his surroundings. His eyes lit up as he noticed Bob standing amidst the other Goblin defenders.
“The roaming Boss is in here!” he shouted to the people behind him with a mixture of fear and excitement in his voice. “Hurry your butts up!”
Ah yes, that was a new thing. There was a Bob for each of the half-hex fortifications, but they all spent most of their time working for me, doing research in a hidden room. Whichever Bob hadn’t been out recently would go fight, but they had to go to their own home base so that a particular fortress wasn’t associated with him. Also, if he was killed, the freshly respawned Bob could decline to go out the remainder of the day. All of these restrictions added up to Bob being a once-daily unique Mob. As his capabilities for air and infernal incantations–and what he called ‘rituals’–made him much more potent than the average Goblin, he had been dubbed the “Wandering Boss” by adventurers.
“Ah, abyss take them! They saw me. Now I have to fight. I hate dying.” Bob muttered angrily as he started hopping from foot to foot, gathering ambient Essence for his impending fight.
“Humph. Well, at least I can try out my new ritual.” Bob nodded at the large series of Runes covering a six-foot area in the courtyard. “It was done anyway, and I needed a sacrifice. Or two. Three?”
I looked at the Rune. It was drawn in blood and seemed very obviously placed to me.
“I don’t know for sure that they’ll fall for it, but since you always make me carry the nicest prizes I feel confident that they will come for me.” Bob muttered the last bit under his breath as the adventurers piled into the area. “That is a lot of humans… how many people are attacking us?”
I did a quick count.
“Oh! Really?” Bob perked up significantly at these words, then started gibbering in the Goblin language. Pauses in his speech were accompanied by sharp movements of his now-sinisterly-glowing staff.
“He’s starting to summon something! Hurry up, he’s distracted!” The humans gave a resounding war cry and charged.
They were met in the open by the most uncontrollable of the Goblins, the Goblin berserkers. Each of these Goblins had had their mind damaged by repetitive respawning and strangely developed an unusable affinity for fire Essence. Their bloodlust was unmatched in the dungeon, and they threw their lives away for the chance to do any damage whatsoever to their opponents. Brutally attacked, the humans were forced to stop and defend. Most of the berserkers used simple blunt weapons, such as maces or one-handed Warhammers. The blows rained down on the humans, heavy weapons whipping through the air as if they were enchanted.
The berserkers screamed in rage when their first attacks didn’t kill their targets, so they redoubled their efforts. They began to fall apart, tearing their bulging muscles with the force used and frothing at the mouth as their bodies unconsciously re-routed Essence to increase their strength. For every attack which damaged them–or an opponent–they seemed to get slightly faster and stronger. They also seemed more feral, less able to deal with changes on the field of battle.
A heavily dented shield blocked one last blow and shattered, opening a human up to a deadly attack. The shield-bearer fell backwards and the Goblin screeched in glee, dropping his weapon and tearing into the now-prone human with his claw-tipped fingers. Chunks of flesh were tossed to the side as the battle raged around them.
The humans seemed to get serious, their formations coming together while
they began attacking in waves. They smoothly set their shields, pushing forward as a single unit with an air-shattering shout. My front line was staggered, and the humans followed up with efficient thrusts of their various stabbing weapons. A berserker took a sword to the neck and fell just in time for a bolt of infernal Essence to smash the offending adventurer in the chest. The rapidly dying man fell to the ground, writhing in agony. His flesh seemed to melt away as a combination of deep rot, fluid, and pus drained onto the floor.
Bob looked at his staff in wonder. “What an excellent weapon! Thank you, Great Spirit!”
<…Might be too good. We’ll reevaluate later.> While muttering at Bob, I was looking at the actual effects that the bolt had had on the corpse. For every magical effect I had ever seen, there was a discernable reason for the following reaction. For instance, a sharpening Rune didn’t just ‘sharpen’ a blade. Instead, Essence flowed into the blade and increased the bonds along the edge of it. This had the effect of making the blade thinner and harder to chip, resulting in a ‘sharpened’ or ‘honed’ blade.
It seemed that infernal Essence would enter the body and attach itself to impurities in the flesh. After latching on, it would force the Essence of the tissue to deteriorate quickly, generating more infernal Essence from the death of the cells around it. To the casual observer, it looked like the body rotted away at high speeds. Since it was targeting impurities, this also explained why infernal Essence had less of an effect on people of higher ranks; their bodies expunged impurities as they reached higher cultivation ranks! Therefore, they were less susceptible to the pure version of this energy.
I really needed to devote some time to the origin of both infernal and celestial Essence. If I could find their source, it would be a great step toward generating them myself. I assumed that death was the origin point of infernal, but I bet there is more to it. In the interim, it looked like Bob was going to die. Too bad!
The berserkers had been slain, their brutality defeated by the simple expedient of a solid defensive formation. The archers had been counter-sniped by the dungeon-divers, and a group was converging on Bob. I was about to offer him my condolences when I noticed him grinning a disturbing smile. To be fair, with their sharp teeth and extra-wide mouths, most of their grins were a bit frightening.
Bob fired off a bolt of darkness every few seconds, but the shields seemed to block the Essence effectively. I didn’t see why he was happy about this until I saw that the pseudo-phalanx was almost to the center of his ritual formation. Their dedication to their shields didn’t allow them the option to look where they were walking!
Taking a step forward, Bob openly laughed as the humans warily halted. Poor life choices on their part. The Goblin set the end of his staff down on the stone floor with a resounding *rap*, and the dark glow of the infernal spread from the wood... into the blood underneath it. There was a disturbing organic sound, and a small shriek of torturous pain. Each of the humans in the ritual area then slumped to the floor with a hollow clatter.
Hollow clatter…?
“Not done yet,” came the short reply. He was still channeling Essence into the ritual, and the glowing lines pulsed one last time and pushed a wispy darkness into the air, which vanished into the armor on the floor. As he finished his work, he collapsed to the floor breathing and sweating profusely. I looked at his Center, reeling in shock from the huge amount of personal Essence he had used. My guess was that since he hadn't been able to move around, he was not able to use ambient Essence as he usually did.
The armor on the floor clattered and started to move.
The armor stopped moving, looking at Bob. Totally silent, they did not make a motion until he pointed at the remaining adventurers. Then they moved, and they moved quickly. At a slightly greater than human walking pace, they marched toward their ex-comrades. Confusion was evident on their faces, which only increased to terror as the blades started to fall upon them. Soon, no humans were alive in the immediate area.
“It… *pant*... worked!” Bob was trying to stand, but even with the support of his staff, it was very difficult for him to do so. The refined Essence from the dead adventurers was making its way to me but was much less than I had been expecting.
“Yes, Great One. This was a ritual to create walking armor or ‘Phantom Armor’. It is the greatest, most dangerous ritual we have been able to recreate,” Bob began to explain to me.
“Not quite. A ritual is a series of interlocking Runes that activate one after another in intervals, a set of sequential instructions. It is hard to do because, unlike a Runescript, the Runes do not all activate simultaneously at the end with an even distribution of Essence. These lines,” he pointed at the shadow of the lines that remained on the floor, “are called ‘symbolic links’ and allow you to send various amounts of Essence to each Rune. The trick to this is that all of them must be maintained for the entire ritual after activation. The Runes have their own effect, which changes the ‘meaning’ of the next activated Runes. Then their effect is spread over the entire ritual area. Just like normal Runescript though, the use of catalysts or reagents can aid in this greatly.”
“This, as I said, is the most demanding and dangerous ritual that we–the Bobs–know.” I chuckled at that, they referred to themselves collectively as ‘The Bobs’? Excellent. “To facilitate the effect, we drew the Runes in a tincture of Flesh Cat blood and crushed opal. The first Rune was the Rune to dissolve armor. By using the Flesh blood as a reagent, it dissolved bodily tissue instead!”
I was stunned by this revelation. I knew reagents could alter the effects of Runes, but I had no idea it could be this drastic! Changing the destruction of armor to the destruction of flesh? How did they come up with the idea?
Bob continued his lesson, not noticing my speechlessness, “The next Rune set hardened the armor, fixing imperfections and binding it together tightly. It also inserted tiny speckles of opal across the armor, allowing for easy influx of infernal Essence. The final Rune used the Essence from the body to create a lesser shade, a phantom. The phantom can’t hold its shape on its own, so it needs a vessel. The result? Phantom armor!” He proudly waved his hand in a grand gesture.
Bob started speaking at once, as he had expected these questions. He held up an amulet hanging from his neck. “If this is destroyed, they are banished. They cannot touch it or attempt to take it. Therefore, whoever holds this controls them. They can be banished by simply smashing their armor and waiting, but after they are released they are beyond furious. They know they only have a few seconds remaining, so they will vindictively attempt to kill anything near them by flooding them with infernal Essence.”
“Yes, while in armor. Very quickly otherwise. Nearly the speed of darkness.” Bob grinned then or
dered the armors to begin patrolling the floor. The eight creatures marched out and started wandering like normal adventurers. Anyone coming across them would be in for a deadly surprise.
~ Chapter Eight ~
“Try to take it easy for a few hours, will you?” The cleric patted Tom on the washboard abdomen she had just finished fully healing.
Tom nodded at her. “I will do my best, but if needs must, I shall always step into danger to protect my comrades.”
Her fingers slipped over his now-smooth skin. “So brave…” she whispered, looking up at him with wide eyes.
*Ahem* Adam reminded her of his presence with a clearing of his throat. She flushed and turned away. Adam was the protégé of the most powerful cleric in the area, Father Richard. No one wanted to alienate him, and taking advantage of your patient was a sure way to earn the ire of clerics in general.
Tom looked at his friend with a tinge of anger in his gaze. “Maybe you should get that cough looked at, Adam?” the barbarian growled, making ‘shoo’ motions at him. “If it gets much worse, you could die.”
“We have work to do, spread your wild oats on your own time.” Adam turned away, Tom following very reluctantly. They walked until they found Dale who was deep in conversation with a trader friend of his.
“I’m glad to hear that your business is going so well, Tyler!” Dale offered his waterskin to the merchant.
“Thank you! So very well, indeed. I was one of the first merchants to return, and I brought enough trade goods with to make a huge profit with the influx of new dungeon divers! I’ve bought into a few other companies in the area and even started an exotic weapons shop,” Tyler boasted happily, taking a long drink from the water skin.