by G. Akella
My jaw locked up from the bitter taste. I crushed the empty vial with my fist, chasing down its contents with an elixir of constitution. This tried and true method sure beat the alternative—walking around with a screwed-up face for the next several hours, constantly spitting viscous saliva... Back on Earth everybody knew that pure alcohol and vodka could be washed down with water, whereas soda could be mixed with a bit of whiskey. In here, however, you couldn't avoid the shotgun approach. But not drinking the Great Elixir of Possibilities just wasn't an option—three hundred points to all stats wasn't something we could afford to pass up. It was back at the Swamp Cave that I'd discovered that washing it down with an elixir of constitution fully mitigated the bitterness, leaving your mouth feeling pleasant and fresh. Well, almost. It was probably closer to the feeling you get after rinsing with mint-flavored mouthwash. Not quite like the taste of candy, but after the initial bitterness, the aftertaste was indeed quite pleasant. Even in a realm of magic, the law of relativity remained intact.
"What level is this insect, dar?" the mage proffered his palm—lying in his open palm was a dead bug unknown to human science. It looked like a mix of fly and wasp. Two pairs of membranous wings, glistening black belly, hooked feet and a sharp stinger sticking out the back. I couldn't quite remember what wasps looked like back on Earth, but this specimen here would probably be their queen, given its size of a small field mouse... I considered the question for a moment.
"Don't you have anything better to do?" I asked him skeptically.
"Well, buffs and potions are all up," Reece shrugged. "Besides, you're a little too serious for my liking. The boar isn't here, so who's going to distract you from somber thoughts of world domination and installation of a new order for the benefit of all sentient beings?"
"Right," I smiled, patting the mage on the shoulder as I went around him.
The youth was back to being his clownish self—as obvious a signal as any that his spirits had stabilized. And I knew exactly why: back there in the dragon cave, Raena had joined our clan. I didn't know what had pushed her to finally take that step—perhaps Vaessa had been right, or maybe the girl was just an adventure junkie. Whatever her reasons, I wasn't going to reject a level 320 healer and frost mage! Did Sata lie when she said she couldn't help me? Is she sitting up on a cloud somewhere, smiling down on me? I gazed up at the sky, just in case, but it was completely clear. Not a cloud, then. Slipping my sword out of its scabbard, I lowered my visor, then looked at Kan standing still on my right.
"Everyone ready?"
The knight nodded, and I gripped tight the straps of my shield. Our party began to move.
"Watch out! From the air!" the knight-commander cried out in alarm.
There air overhead exploded with a terrible racket: the flapping of wings, crashing or rocks, and a high-pitch squealing sound like that of a buzz saw. At once, I rolled to the right and raised my shield—just in time to block the downward strike of a scowling serpentine skull. Bones cracked, and the wyvern collapsed at my feet, having lost more than eighty percent of its HP. The next beast's claws scraped the top of my helm, nearly spinning me around, and then something struck me hard in the right shoulder. Just before I toppled over, completely disoriented, I popped Aura of Horror. Once on the ground, I rolled to the side and sprang to my feet. One of the beasts was writhing right in front of me, and I put it out of its misery with a fair of quick strikes before looking up and assessing our situation tactically.
Wyverns! More than thirty of them in all. Glistening serpentine bodies, huge membranous wings, all of them level 185 and with half a million HP! I'd been saved by my shield, which prevented the beasts from overwhelming me with numbers. They must have been hiding up in the cliffs, completely undetectable from down below. As to their vastly superior numbers, that was on account of this being a raid instance. Six of the creatures were already down: two taken out by Kan, and one each by the rest of us. And George wasn't far behind, clutching another one in its jaws as it writhed helplessly. My Aura had caught all the still-living mobs, scattering them in all directions and giving our party the thirty-second break we so desperately needed to regroup.
My mind raced frantically, trying to formulate a viable strategy as the wyverns scrambled in fear. Being twice their level, Kan might be able to tank them all, but he had no chance of grabbing the attention of a few dozen mobs. Some would no doubt pounce on Raena for her heals, or on the damage dealers. If only there was a way to take them all out in one fell swoop, despite the beasts being all over the place...
"Lay off! No damage!" I bellowed into the party channel, grimacing at the nauseating squealing. "All aggro on me! Raena, shield me! Vaessa, on my order, cast Desiccation on me!"
"Aye aye, dar," the magus' voice quivered, but she didn't object or say anything else.
I loved that about her. All business, no cheap theatrics...
I Jumped over to the right, pressed my back against the wall of rough rock, and put up my shield. Any crowd-control skill—and my Aura was exactly that—drew the mobs' ire far better than your standard swing of the sword. Ten seconds, nine... How dare these filthy beasts... A wave of rage washed over me momentarily, but I willed it back down. Three seconds... two...
"Are you certain, Krian?" The necromancer's daughter asked in a calm voice. Too calm...
"It'll be fine! I'm rocking ninety five percent resistance!" I replied, raising my shield just as the first wyvern smashed into it. Another sickening crunch of bones, and the quasi-dragon reeled, then fell, its wings whipping at my shoulder. Before I could follow up, the next one crashed into my shield, and I felt somebody's teeth clamp down on my right wrist. The sky quickly grew dark as the winged bastards swooped down on me, like pigeons on a tender-hearted granny with a bag of breadcrumbs. Something struck me right in the head; the next moment, a wyvern that had crashed into the rock just overhead fell right on top of me. My HP bar began sliding rapidly to the left. Now!
"Now!" I roared to the necromancer's daughter, realizing I wouldn't last much longer.
For several seconds, nothing was happening. At a certain point I realized I couldn't breathe. There was a clapping sound, and then...
Your Toughness skill has increased to 63%.
Darkness. I felt pain take hold of my body, belatedly. Not pleasant, but bearable. Especially since my health bar was already back to full. But the smell... The revolting smell of decomposition seemed to permeate my very bones. I got up, kicking away a limp wyvern's body. Well, I definitely wasn't lacking for strength; if only I had a brain to match... Sadly, increasing Intellect did diddly-squat in that department. The lifeless animal's head jerked, and its carcass began sliding down, revealing a heap of corpses underneath. Vaessa had done quite the number on them with that AoE! Squaring my aching back, I rolled my shoulders, found Vaessa with my eyes, and gave a reassuring wave of the hand.
"Sometimes I really hate you, dar," she grumbled, her voice breaking, then let out a sigh of relief.
"This isn't exactly my idea of a good time, either," I smiled, still grimacing from the nauseating smell as I worked my way out of this trench of corpses.
"How low did I get?"
"Less than ten percent," the woman frowned. "Do you realize how risky that was?"
"Nonsense!" I waved dismissively, trying to sound carefree. "Raena is practically your level, and her shield is top notch!"
I glanced over at George, who was blithely munching on the crumpled body of a wyvern in his death grip, grinned, and gestured at the piles of dead mobs, who were presently doing their best impression of blue-skinned plucked chickens.
"We could easily meet another dozen of such flocks up ahead. You see now that we mustn't underestimate the dangers lurking in this place—we can die here. At least now we know for sure that your Desiccation is effective against them. And I don't mind the pain—I'm used to it."
Desiccation was a skill that had appeared on Vaessa's talent tree at level 350, same as George. Out of nowhere, wit
hout rhyme or reason or any connecting talents. Vaessa didn't bother guessing where it had come from or why; after a quick consult with me, she simply threw five points into the skill. The skill's description was rather vague—something about the Great Darkness coming to the aid of its servant by draining a certain amount of life force from all hostiles caught within a square-shaped area of fifteen by fifteen yards, and with a two-minute cooldown. Oh, and the casting time was fairly long at five seconds. In practice, the spell turned out capable of putting down a whole pack of mountain wolves upwards of level 210 and rocking 300,000 HP in a single cast. Against skeletons and earth elementals, however, it was absolutely harmless. Similar to Nerghall's life-siphoning ability, you could only take life from someone who actually had it. As for the origin of the actual skill, well, this wouldn't be the first gift Vaessa would get from her Mistress. And it didn't matter whether Celphata had bestowed it personally or it had manifested on its own. It was entirely possible that skills and abilities would soon disappear from this world altogether; instead, warriors would start pumping iron to increase strength, while mages would enroll in Ravendum, the local Hogwarts, to hone their specialization. I didn't care either way, as long as we still had immortality. Actually, the locals were already doing something similar. Raena and Kan, for instance, hadn't felt any changes upon getting accepted into the clan, aside from the clan bonuses. As for Reece and Vaessa, they now had the same action bar that I did—and the magus was convinced that it made her life much simpler. The crossover between the game's magic world and real life was becoming so convoluted that you could easily go insane trying to make sense of it all. Or you could be like me, and not stress it.
"It's strange, dar," the knight-commander's voice interrupted my musings. "I've never seen anything like this. These beasts are predators—each one requires a vast territory to hunt. You should never see them even in pairs outside of mating season." Leaning over one of the bodies, Kan unsheathed his dagger, the wedged it into the wyvern's jaw.
"Aye, definitely predators," he wiped the blade on his sleeve before putting it away. "The teeth and jaws confirm it." He nodded at the mountain of corpses, then looked at me searchingly.
"But if that's the case, what were they eating here?"
"They were nourished by the holy spirit," Reece helpfully interjected.
"By what?!" the bemusement on Kan's face gave way to curiosity.
"Oh, you'll have to ask our noble prince about that," the mage was back to playing stupid—his favorite part of all. "He'll explain, and I'll listen along with everyone."
"You start looting, listener," I snorted, then explained:
"These are mobs, Kan. I told you about them. Just like skeletons and earth elementals. They don't eat anything, existing simply to make us stronger. I don't know what this world was like half a year ago, but that's how it is today. For now..."
"So, the world has changed not only for you, the arrivals, but for us as well," the knight-commander studied the surrounding cliffs skeptically, then sighed. "You mentioned before that Pangea and Karn became entangled somehow? And then your world, more recently? Do you think that maybe your Earth is but one of many possible, infinite worlds?"
"Save the philosophy for those brainiacs," I smiled, nodding at Raena and Reece, who were already looting the corpses dutifully. "I have enough on my mind without all that. All right, listen up!" I spoke up, addressing everyone now. "We have twenty minutes' downtime, then we keep going. Same strategy as before: Kan and I are in front, and everyone else thirty yards behind us." Seeing that Kan was about to interject, I shook my head. "No! I know that you can tank them better than I, but if things get hot, you can only fear seven. And that requires using up your Charge, which may be problematic with a flying mob. So, we'll do strictly as I said. Let's roll."
He looked kind of like a mole cricket—if mole crickets grew to twenty five feet in length. Long antennae and two pairs of mandibles on either side of the half-opened maw, dark facet eyes, forepaws like crayfish pincers, bronze forebody and olive belly. The size of this thing made it real difficult to call it an insect, despite what a proper entomologist might say. Then again, I doubted that any entomologist back on Earth had ever seen anything remotely like it.
The boss stood on a square-shaped platform the size of about one quarter of a football field, its body blocking the entrance to Xahrien's lair. Atrylus (that was the lobster's name) had 220 million HP at level 190, and a fight with the creature seemed unavoidable... He wasn't put here as a decorative piece, now was he?
Why hadn't I bothered to look up the Azure Dragons' clearing of this dungeon? At least I would have known what to expect from Xahrien, as well as from this shrew. Of course, hindsight is everything—who could have predicted that we'd end up here, of all places?
We had made it here without any casualties. As for Vaessa, she'd just have to get over it. Sure, it couldn't have been easy for her seeing me flirt with death, but there wasn't anything to be done about that. I wasn't a masochist, but this was the optimal strategy for our team. The six packs we'd encountered thus far, I'd been essentially knocked out every time. And yet, that had only netted me one point to Toughness, from the very first time.
Judging by the level, there should be other bosses between this one and the last one, Xahrien. And if I didn't anticipate any issues snuffing out Atrylus, a level 380 bone dragon wasn't exactly a gopher. Where's a raccoon when you need one? I thought with a sigh, and glared at the monster's twitching antennae.
The wind was blowing patches of dry grass all over the platform. The air was scented with wormwood and something rotten. My back ached as if I'd just completed a triathlon with a hundred-pound backpack strapped to it, which actually described my path in this world thus far rather aptly. The others were looking pretty fresh—Kan especially seemed to have not a care in the world.
"I suppose that one is in our way?" the knight-commander broke the lingering silence, pointing toward the boss with the tip of his sword.
"Well, yeah," I nodded.
"Let's hope that dung beetle will have something better than worthless junk, stinky viscera and scales," Reece said, curling his lips skeptically.
"Were you disappointed with the wyverns' gallbladders?" Raena put in her two cents, giving the mage a sidelong glance. "They fetch twenty gold a piece in Vaedarr!"
"Not for sale!" Vaessa frowned, shoving away George's sniffing muzzle. "We'll get plenty of use out of them ourselves. I'll spare a dozen for that spindly one, if you like, but no more. As for you, young padawan," she gave Reece a stern look. "You've made a choice to pursue serious science. So man up and act like it!"
The "spindly one" was obviously Saverus, whereas "young padawan" was clearly my doing. Though I never considered myself been a fanboy of the classic space opera, the term was a fun one for sure, always evoking in my mind the image of a pimply bespectacled nerd making swooshing noises while swinging a dummy sword. Leave it to us humans to introduce neologisms into the local lexicon. I bet the heads of NPCs above are exploding with useless information. And in the end, will we bend this world to our will, or vice versa?
The nearly two hundred wyvern corpses had indeed produced nothing valuable, aside from the aforementioned gallbladders—the two pairs of common quality chainmail gauntlets were swiftly discarded right on the spot. However, watching Reece get swarmed by wasps and midges after getting covered with goop extracting said bladders—that was quality entertainment. Heck, he could proclaim himself Emperor of Midges, and few would dispute such a claim. Instead, he seemed thoroughly annoyed by the worshippers as he tried to get rid of them using magic. The young man had become a powerful mage in his own right, his Ice Spear tearing through wyverns like a hot knife through butter. Plus, he was now a prince of a fairly large barbarian kingdom. In a few levels he would be able to don the set of Saethdien Roa, gifted by me, whereupon he could probably rival even Raena. And yet, he obeyed his elder sister—whom he affectionately called "auntie"—unquestioningly. W
hen ordered to gut the beasts, he'd simply nodded and proceeded to gut them. All of them. All the while jumping on every opportunity to tease her. These locals sure were an odd bunch. Odd, yet honorable. And for that I loved them.
"Earl! Any special instructions?" Kan Shyom's low voice interrupted my musings.
Take the knight-commander. He was a simple man at heart. See an enemy, punch the enemy in the face, and the sooner the better. And I could see that all these delays annoyed him. He was always perfectly civil toward everyone—even our clown mage—avoiding arguments, keeping quiet unless he had something to say, and executing my orders without question. And now, here was a boss right in front of us, twitching his bloody whiskers, while we were twiddling our thumbs!
"The rocks," I pointed to the boulders lining the platform. "I bet the bug is going to burrow into the ground, and when it does, we'll all need to jump on top of the rocks. Kan, tank him by the left wall, with his back to us. If any adds appear, I'll use Aura to send them scrambling for Vaessa and Reece to wipe out. Raena, your primary job is to heal, and help out as needed otherwise. And George," I turned to the baby dragon, who was hearkening to my instructions intently. "You can gorge on anything you like, just don't get in the way. We've still got buffs, so let's do this!"
Before the echo of my voice had faded, the knight-commander was already Charging the cockroach blocking the cave entrance. There was a sickening crunch as a chunks of chitin flew in every direction, along with one of the beast's antennas. Losing exactly one percent HP, the boss began chirping maniacally, blocking itself with one claw while lunging with the other. That was an attempt at an attack, at least—valiant yet futile. Moving with inconceivable swiftness, Kan shifted positions without even bothering to put up a shield, severed another of the boss' antennae, and began backing up to the left wall. By the time I cleared the gap with a Jump, shifted into combat form and struck out with an ice Blade, the boss was already down five percent HP! Shortly thereafter, a pair of Ice Spears plunged into the monster's side, leaving deep gashes that oozed a dark viscous substance.