He moved without consciously willing it. Both of his hands rose up, wreathed in white smoke. Without any thought of preserving his rapidly diminishing source of mana for shots at the Windstalker’s wings, Luke stretched out both hands, and screamed his revenge as magic poured out of him.
Six ice daggers shattered the right wing. Eight the left. Two smashed into the floor. One hundred and forty hit points taken off of the Windstalker’s health bar. And he was out of mana. But the Windstalker could no longer fly. It tumbled to the ground in a heap.
Luke unsheathed Dragon’s Claw and leaped towards it. The flames and the burning in his tattoos seemed to join. Something in him felt empty, like an empty sack, that needed filling, and the Windstalker’s death would fill it. With every step he took, he felt like he was going down a well-worn path, one he somehow knew, one that had been made for him. There was this rapturous joy as he stabbed Dragon’s Claw downwards towards the crown of the Windstalker’s head. But the tip of his blade struck stone and not flesh. The Windstalker had disappeared. It had not disappeared because he had conquered it. His HUD would have alerted him. The empty feeling inside him screamed in anger. He whirled around.
“Where did it go? Where--”
“It can turn invisible,” Mack groaned as he sat up, holding the back of his head. “Damn. Christopher, heal us!”
Red light flooded the room as Christopher did as Mack asked. Alicia unsteadily got to her feet, shaking her massive head. Cassie rose up on trembling legs.
“Oh, my head,” she said, but as the red light dissipated, she straightened up fully. “So much better. What the Hell was that move, Luke? You went all suicidal on the Windstalker!”
“I…” The relief of them being back made words impossible so he just shrugged. He closed his left hand into a fist to stop the trembling. What had he been thinking? He was out of mana now. It would take forever for 50 mana points to recover. And they were nowhere near done with the battle.
I thought I’d lost them. But there was more than that. I wanted to kill.
A cold wash of sweat came over him. He hated being weak. He hated it now more than anything, he realized.
“Hey, he got the damned fiend on the ground,” Mack pointed out.
Alicia, who had retrieved her cudgel, was slowly turning in a circle, looking for any trace of the Windstalker.
“Everyone, the Strikers!” Christopher cried.
The five orbs that all of them had evidently forgotten about, were glowing brightly once more. They were about to lose their plasma bolts. Christopher’s staff spun and a gold Shield surrounded each of them. Everyone scattered as five bolts headed towards where they all had been standing moments before. One of the bolts grazed his Shield, but it was still holding.
“We’ve got to get these bloody things!” Mack growled. “Cassie, can you hit them?”
She was already taking aim. Her arrow hit one and 35 hit points were taken off. The Striker drunkenly whizzed towards the ground. Mack jumped up, and brought Cutter down in a silvery arc. The axe chopped the Striker in two. It winked out of existence, and Luke’s HUD told him that he’d just been awarded 25 experience points.
“The light balls are not our main problem,” Alicia was low to the ground as she muttered this. She jerked to the right and then the left as small sounds alerted her to movement of a monster they could not see.
“Let them handle the Strikers. You and I will get rid of the Windstalker,” Luke said as he joined her.
Mack held his axe over his head, and aimed for one of the Strikers. His axe went flying and struck one of them, nailing it against the wall, with 25 points of damage. He let out a woot of success. Cassie raised her bow, and shot the Striker for another 35 hit points. Luke’s HUD erupted in congratulations at earning another 25 experience points! Luke thought that these were some of the dearest experience points he’d ever earned.
“Good job, Mack, but your axe is now stuck in the wall over your head,” Cassie pointed out.
Mack looked crestfallen, but then he brightened. “Alicia, toss me!”
“What? Can you not see I am--what are you doing?” Her eyes bulged out of her head as Mack raced towards her at full speed. At the last moment, she dropped her cudgel and brought her two hands together like a stirrup. Mack’s left foot slid on top of her hands and Alicia heaved him towards the wall where his axe stuck out. Mack managed to pluck it out of the wall in mid-flight. Then he struck the wall, and he and the axe slid down to the ground. He made an audible groan when he landed.
He waved his retrieved axe in the air, sort of like a white flag of surrender and said, “I’m okay. Just going to lie here for a moment. A wee moment.”
Cassie lightly raced over to him, and urged him to his feet. “The Strikers are powering up! Come on, let’s take them out so Luke and Alicia can kill the Windstalker.”
Luke pulled his attention from them and towards Christopher. He gestured for the cleric to get away from the ruins of the Huntress statue.
“Christopher, get into the middle of the room. I don’t want you by the walls. It’s got to be hiding there,” Luke said.
Christopher moved swiftly to them, and stood where Luke had indicated. He kept his robes tightly clutched to him as if he feared the Windstalker grabbing onto them, and dragging him away.
“Do you see it?” Luke asked Alicia.
“Dust over there is more disturbed than the rest of the place. But I heard the dry rasp of its breathing over there.” She pointed in the exact opposite direction of the dust.
“I go one way and you go the other?” he suggested.
She gave a nod, and headed towards the breathing while he went towards the dust. The dust was near the left side of the ruined Huntress shadow. Luke kept Dragon’s Claw in front of him. The blue flames grew higher, and his tattoos began to burn. The emptiness inside of him pricked to life once more. The Windstalker was near. And he was hungry to kill it.
But where?
His eyes strained in the green light coming from the ceiling to see any movement. Just as his gaze was swinging away from the statue’s base, more dust rose up, and he saw the nearly transparent Windstalker creeping towards him.
“Alicia, here!” he shouted as he sliced at the invisible foe.
He felt Dragon’s Claw hit something. His lips skinned back from his teeth. A red five rose up. He must have just nicked the monster. But then his own Shield shattered. He was falling backwards. Something very heavy was on top of him. His sword arm was pinned beneath this weight. He was helpless.
The evil, scaly face was pressed practically against his. Hellfires filled the Windstalker’s eye sockets. Breath that smelled, and tasted of sulfur, gusted over his skin. Luke froze for a second, transfixed by the sheer detail of that face, and the frightening realization that demons really did exist. At least in Neverfall.
The Windstalker raised both clawed hands above its head. It was going to rake his face. Luke cursed himself for his stupidity, and started to buck wildly beneath the fiend’s body. But it was surprisingly heavy. He only managed to shift it a few inches. Its clawed hands scraped along the sides of his armored arms. The red shield that Dragon’s Blood Armor cast shattered. The next blow would hurt.
There was a growl above him, but not from the Windstalker. Instead, a huge green orc appeared with a cudgel raised. Alicia brought her cudgel down on the back of the fiend’s head with all her strength. He could see the veins in her arms working as she struck the thing again and again. Two red 25s floated upwards as the fiend scrambled off of him and scuttled away, turning invisible once more.
Luke got up and drew in a deep breath. He hadn’t realized how much the Windstalker had compressed his lungs. Alicia grabbed his right arm, and yanked him to his feet. She then looked him over, saw he was fine, and slapped his back.
“Be more careful,” she grunted.
“It was invisible!” he protested.
“All the more reason to be careful,” she said, which was true.
There was a sudden commotion behind them. Both turned. The three Strikers had surrounded Christopher. He frantically cast Shield even as he attempted to run from them, but the three remaining orbs stuck to him like glue. Cassie sent arrow after arrow, but they missed as the orbs dodged and weaved.
“Cassie, I can toss you!” Mack cried. “C’mon, girl, you’ve got the dexterity of a cat!”
“Right!”
She slung the bow and sheaf of arrows over her back before taking out her twin daggers from their sheaths on her belt. She lightly dashed towards Mack. The Strikers’ power levels were seconds away from unleashing three plasma bolts at Christopher. Even with his great immunity to magic, the first of those bolts would still shatter his Shield, and two more would likely put him perilously close to zero hit points. Luke didn’t know how much mana Christopher had left as he’d been generous with the Shield and Healing spells already.
We need health and mana potions! But, for that, we need coin! Which means we have to battle where we need the potions…
It was like an evil circle. Luke shook himself out of it as he saw that, like Alicia had for him, Mack had made a stirrup of his hands for Cassie. Though not as strong as Alicia, Mack was evidently more than strong enough to send a wood elf flying.
Her high Dexterity allowed Cassie to gracefully fly through the air, a dagger in each hand to strike two of the orbs for 15 hit points a piece. That interrupted their power-up cycle, and they wound their way down to the ground where Mack was waiting with Cutter. Two more of the Strikers were dispatched, and all received 50 experience points. The last Striker sent its bolt to where Christopher had been standing. But the cleric had learned his lesson about standing still from the King Rat incident, and he had already raced halfway to the other wall. Mack was already bending down to send Cassie into the air after it.
There was a sudden roar from Alicia. Luke had, foolishly, been distracted by the others battling, and the Windstalker had snuck up on the orc. It had jumped on her back. Blood flew into the air like rain as the fiend shredded her broad back with its terrible claws. She flailed at it with her cudgel, but the thing easily dodged her wild blows while turning her into hamburger.
“Alicia, run your back into the wall!” Luke commanded, pointing towards the direction of the nearest wall.
She didn’t respond. She just did as he said, moving like a freight train towards the wall. There was a sickening crunching sound as she impacted the stone wall and the whole temple shook from the impact. Alicia wrenched herself away from the wall, but the Windstalker remained partially stuck to it.
Even with its wings ripped to shreds, and its body mostly crushed, the Windstalker still tried to fight. But Luke was having no more of this. This thing had done enough damage to him and his friends. With a roar of his own, he raced towards it, Dragon’s Claw raised high. The empty feeling was back. He had to kill.
He stabbed the point of his sword into the Windstalker’s chest where its heart would have been if it was at all based on human anatomy. It let out a cry of agony. Dragon’s Claw’s blue flames suddenly became blinding, and engulfed the beast. The Windstalker screamed horribly. Luke’s ears rang with it as it was burned to ashes. He felt something pass from the creature to him.
But it was not enough.
Not enough. I need more...
“Your sword… it’s never done that before, has it?” Mack asked in the ensuing silence.
Again, words would not come, so he just shook his head. His HUD then joyfully informed him that he had received 500 experience points! Luke just concentrated on breathing, and on the strange tingling sensation that resided in his tattoos, almost as if the last of the Windstalker’s life force had been absorbed into them.
Cassie suddenly let out a sound that was like the sneeze of an angry cat. “I cannot believe this!”
Luke raised Dragon’s Claw up, convinced that there was another foe, but no, Cassie was just checking out the coins that had been dropped.
Her expression was furious as she informed them, “We only got 50 silver for this battle!”
10
SHORT CUT
“It’s got to be pay-to-win. Fifty silver for all that? I mean, I like to grind as much as the next bloke, but that’s crazy town! We might be able to afford to get Cassie a few arrows after ten more fights just like this one! How many do you have left for that bow of yours, Cass?” Mack asked as they exited the Temple of the Huntress. The force field had disappeared the moment they’d defeated the bow’s defenders.
“Looks like there were 24 originally in the sheaf. I used half of them, and was able to recover five. So I’ve got 17 left,” she said as she counted the arrows.
“You best ration those considering how light our coin purses are,” Mack snorted. “Pay-to-win, I cannot believe it! With a game this expensive?” He shook his head in disgust.
“The economy likely wasn’t balanced yet before the bug happened. Do you remember when people were looking at the cost of ships in Star Citizen, which were like millions of dollars, and an hour and a half quest would only net you like $4000? ” Luke reminded him.
He was surprised that he felt a little nettled at his father being accused of pay-to-win tactics, considering everything else the man had done.
“They were still doing major changes even before the bug with Neverfall was discovered,” Alicia surprisingly came to his father’s defense. “The economy probably was the last thing on their minds.”
Luke glanced over at her. With her own quickened healing plus Christopher’s Heal spell, there was no trace of the damage that the Windstalker had done to her back. Luke felt it was incongruous--though he was grateful for it--that they could fight so hard, be hurt so badly, and yet not show any evidence of it a short time later. In contrast though, his tattoos still burned, and he wished he could look at them to see if anything was different since Dragon’s Claw had behaved so strangely with the Windstalker.
Maybe the sword did that because I stabbed the monster in the heart. But he didn’t really believe that. Something weird was happening to him.
“It would make sense if Neverfall has some additional form of monetization as the cost to make and maintain this game will likely be astronomical,” Christopher pointed out.
“But there’s already going to be the cost of the rigs, the implants, people to monitor you, the monthly subscription, and who knows what else.” Luke ticked off on his fingers as they walked down the stairs onto the grassy sward. The sense of being watched was gone now, and it was pleasant. The sounds of birds and wind were back as well. “I’m betting that there will be microtransactions for purely cosmetic options, if not better armor and weapons.”
“I think it’s meant to be grindy regardless if it is pay-to-win,” Cassie said as she adjusted her new bow over her shoulders. “You don’t want people to become overpowered right from the get go. Players are going to spend ages in here. So the devs have to balance the grind, the progression, and the amount of coin. If we were just playing, we wouldn’t be all that outraged by the paltry amount of money that killing major monsters brings.”
“Your earlier tone sounded otherwise, Cassie,” Mack chortled.
“Well, yes, because I do think we were robbed.” She gave one of her brother’s sniffs.
Christopher brought up the Map, likely to lead them to their next destination when he said, “Good thing we can sell that bow, isn’t it, Cassie? That piece of loot will, undoubtedly, give us much coin.”
“What?!” Cassie clutched at the bow. “We are not selling her!”
Mack elbowed Luke. “I told you that weapons are always women.”
“Not selling the bow? Really? Now why have you changed your mind?” Christopher’s voice was cool. “I thought you were going to sell whatever the next piece of loot we found and swim--”
“Okay, okay! So I see the error of my ways! At least in this case.” Cassie stroked her bow. “I realize that not everything should be sold. But we still h
ave a coin problem. A big coin problem. We might have to take drastic steps to remedy that.”
“Maybe because we got the bow, that’s why there wasn’t much else in terms of rewards,” Luke suggested.
“I hope you are right,” Cassie sighed.
Luke looked over at Christopher. “So, Christopher, which direction do we head in next?”
“I cannot believe we are trusting him with navigation,” Mack muttered with a roll of his eyes.
“I will have it noted that I got us here without incident,” Christopher replied tartly with a sniff.
“We literally followed the road from the town to the path and the path to here. That is hardly navigating,” Mack needled.
“I shall demonstrate to you all that I am an excellent navigator.” Christopher closed out the Menu and pointed not back towards the path they’d come in on, but through the woods. “That way.”
“Shouldn’t we stick to the path?” Luke asked, remembering more of the Strikers and webs he’d seen between the trees before. Not to mention, Cassie had been certain they would get utterly lost if they left the glowing path before. He mentioned that, but Christopher shook his head and still pointed into the woods.
“The magic that would have led us astray before has dissipated since we passed the test, and earned the Bow of the Huntress. I can sense this,” Christopher told him. “Where I’ve set the marker is the most efficient way to lead us to the cave where we can get Maxina her mushrooms.”
Mack’s head tipped back and he let out a loud groan. “Mushrooms?! Ach, God, no! Let’s go to Denarius’ forge! I want my axe!” But then, as if feeling guilty, he whispered to Cutter, “Not that you aren’t a magnificent weapon, but at some point, we must part.”
“The cave is the next nearest quest. After that, we will pass by the last place Edmund’s goods were seen, then we will go after your axe,” Christopher said authoritatively. “It would be illogical to bypass the cave simply to get to the forge first. I am taking us on the most efficient route.”
Neverfall: The Dark Path (Book 2): A Gamelit Lit RPG Series Page 10