Good. She nodded and dispelled everything.
With a yawn, she headed back to the shrine and logged out. Tomorrow, the real fun would begin.
Chapter Forty
CLAD IN HER snazzy replacement armor, Devon took one last glance at the new items on her equipment screen.
Chest: Superior Medium Leather Doublet
Sabertooth-scale reinforcements give this chest piece 150% of the armor value of ordinary medium leather.
3 Constitution, +1 Bravery | 70 Armor | 50/50 Durability
Legs: Superior Medium Leather Trousers
Sabertooth-scale reinforcements give these pants 150% of the armor value of ordinary medium leather.
1 Constitution, +2 Charisma | 42 Armor | 50/50 Durability
Hands: Superior Medium Leather Gloves
1 Agility, +3 Intelligence | 17 Armor | 35/35 Durability
Head: Forest Leather Headband
A deep brown leather band set with stunning moss agates.
3 Intelligence | 45/45 Durability
Extra: +10 armor versus nature-based physical damage, +20 nature-based magical resistance
Gerrald had also made her boots, but Devon had asked that he give them to Grey. She couldn’t bring herself to give up her Tribal Sandals just yet. As for the headband, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Gerrald had known he could inset the moss agates when she’d asked for new gear. He’d had a faintly guilty look about him when he’d handed it over, perhaps evidence that he’d cooked up the plan with Dorden ahead of time.
In any case, she was as ready as she could get for the coming battle. She faced her followers.
“Okay, warriors, we’re doing this street by street. You must stay behind me. Do not come forward until I say, and don’t approach closer than a hundred paces or my spells may harm you. If I fall, retreat to Stonehaven. We’ll regroup there.”
She paused and looked over the group. Bayle and Falwon looked suitably intimidating in their new gear, and the dwarves seemed almost too eager to move in.
“As for your job, you’ll be guarding my back against corrupted beasts that circle around. I may need to leave some wounded creatures behind to keep momentum. Put them out of their misery if you can. Got it?”
Her followers nodded. She’d been worried some might argue about hanging back. Fortunately, they seemed to understand the circumstances.
As she stepped back onto the first cobblestones, the strange silence in the city seemed to swallow her up. Devon tapped nervous fingers against her thighs.
“One more thing,” she said. “You have consecrated potions. Use them as soon as you get hurt—you should be at full health all the time.”
A few of the dwarves grimaced—the consecration process did nothing to improve the smell, and no one had been brave enough to taste the potions yet. Still, she was sure they’d use them if needed. She had her own stack of 5 x Jungle Healing Potion - Mid and another 5 x Jungle Mana Potion - Mid. They were the only items in her inventory aside from her Everfull Waterskin, an extra portion of Stonehaven Scramble and the stupid soulbound pocket lint—not knowing what lay ahead, she hadn’t wanted to start the mission with a heavy bag.
Devon cast Levitate and rose a couple feet off the ground. She glided toward the first intersection where an alley opened on one side of the street. Swinging around the perimeter of the intersection, she placed six Glowing Orbs in a rough circle. The sun hung low in the sky. Combined with the strange pall that darkened the city, the dusky light allowed the glow from her spells to reach her. Devon’s shadows radiated in a dark starburst around her.
Still, no creatures approached. The ruins were as still as they’d been during her first foray into the area.
“Fool me once…” she called out. “Not this time.”
She peered into the darkness of the alley. Things moved in the recesses of the narrow corridor, darker shadows within the gloom. That hint was all she needed. She cast a tier 2 Flamestrike, and as the column of fire geysered in the alley’s depths, animals shrieked.
A pack of rats the size of Rottweilers came rushing out of the alley, eyes red, teeth yellow and glistening. Patches of fire still smoldered on their fur where the spell had splashed, and the final beast emerged dragging a charred leg and tail.
Devon poured mana into her shadows and pulled six puppets from the cobblestones. The spells drained more than half her pool, but that was okay. Out of combat regen was quick.
She gritted her teeth to dispel memories of the pain of electrocution. Before she could lose her courage, she commanded her shadows to attack. With a crackling that echoed off the nearby walls, her puppets struck, diving into the mass of rat flesh. Lightning arced from body to body, rolling in a sizzling wave that paralyzed the beasts and set their fur alight. Rats screamed as the shadows drove another pulse of electricity into the horde.
While the rats died, Devon floated above the area of effect, immune to the ground currents.
A final shock sucked the last vitality from her shadows. As her puppets faded away, just one rat remained alive. It tried to flee toward her followers, but she snared it with a Freeze spell and called down a Flamestrike to finish it off. The rat shuddered and died. Notifications about experience and skill gains started flooding her vision, but Devon waved them away.
“Who’s next?” she called.
***
Street by painstaking street, Devon cleared alleyways and crannies until the entire outer ring of the city was empty of monsters. Still, she was nervous to move inward, fearing the corrupted animals would circle around. But there wasn’t much choice. She stepped onto the first intersection deeper into the city and hurriedly stuck her Glowing Orbs to the walls.
Just as she reached the center of the intersection, a wave of spiders poured over the rooftops. Her shadows rose from the ground. The spiders screamed and died. Too easy. Devon waited until her mana pool was full then started gliding for the next intersection.
The roar came from behind, claws screeching against stone.
“Devon!” Heldi’s cry brought Devon whirling around. She dashed to the nearest wall and slammed an orb into place as she searched for the threat.
Between Devon and her group of followers, a corrupted jaguar leaped from atop a building and landed facing the small group of dwarves and humans. Devon slapped another Glowing Orb onto a wall as she swept forward. The massive cat, large as a stegosaurus skeleton, prowled forward. It jerked as a crossbow bolt pierced its chest. Tail switching, the jaguar snarled and seemed to focus on Heldi and her crossbow.
Devon cast Freeze on the beast and pressed forward. She cursed once she got close. Unfortunately, the cat was too near to her followers for a lightning attack.
“Back off!” she yelled as the jaguar shattered its icy prison. It clawed the ground, spinning out as it tried to pounce on Devon’s friends.
Devon threw a desperate Fade spell over her followers, hoping to clear their aggro. Shadows rose from the ground, fuzzing their shapes and blending them with the background. The cat slowed but didn’t stop.
She brought down a Flamestrike, burning the animal’s fur, but the beast still advanced, searching for the prey it had been so determined to eviscerate. Clenching her jaw, Devon focused on the shadow beneath her feet. She raised a Shadow Puppet and sent it high up a wall, gliding toward her followers. Exceedingly careful not to let it touch anyone, she brought the shadow down to street level and molded it into Heldi’s approximate shape. She cast Ventriloquist with her best imitation of a dwarvish yelp and sent the shadow Heldi scurrying down a side street and out of sight.
The cat shook its head as if disoriented, then turned its attention back to Devon.
You learned a new spell: Simulacrum
You may manifest a rough approximation of a person or NPC. Colors, motion, and voices are rough but passable. Your creation is unlikely to fool a creature of mid to high intelligence.
Cost: 40 mana
; Duration: 2 minutes
“Not now!” she hissed, brushing away the notification.
The jaguar leaped. It hung in the air above her, blocking the setting sun.
“Oh lord this is going to hurt,” she muttered, scrambling to the side. As she escaped the jaguar’s shadow, the idea struck her. She slammed mana into her shadow to summon a sun-cast Shadow Puppet, forming it into a black spike erupting from the ground. The jaguar came down hard, and the spear plunged through the animal’s chest, opening a hole in its back before shattering.
Devon flew back, gliding at least a hundred paces from the knockback as the animal died.
She just hung there in the air for a moment, so tired. That had been too close, her mana sinking to 30%.
With a few deep breaths, she watched her pool refill in five-second pulses. It had only reached 65% when she heard the next wave of attackers. She slid to the wall and started casting a Glowing Orb as the hissing approached.
Hissing and… ribbets?
Groaning, Devon rummaged through her inventory and came up with a mana potion. She downed it in one disgusting gulp and hurried to finish hanging her orbs.
“Come and get me!” she yelled.
***
The final corrupted tree frog sizzled as she finished it off with a tier 1 Flamestrike. Devon dropped to a seat in the middle of the cobblestones on the final street outside the Temple of Sorrow, exhausted. If more monsters came now, she wasn’t sure she could even climb to her feet, much less concentrate hard enough to float in the air while commanding a half-dozen electric executioners. As she dragged out her last mana potion—just in case—a notification popped into her vision.
Quest update: What’s Wrong with the Wildlife?
You’ve cleansed the corrupted animals! Well done. Now about the source…
You have gained a special attribute point: +1 Bravery.
You have gained special attribute points: +3 Cunning.
Congratulations! You have reached Level 11!
You have 4 new attribute points.
Devon flopped back onto the street, relieved. She couldn’t even be bothered to spend her attribute points.
From the previous intersection, the closest she’d allowed her followers to approach, Bayle called out, “You okay?”
She nodded and waved them back toward the edge of the ruins. “We’re done here. Let’s pull back.”
“What about the…. Don’t you think there’s something going on in the glowing building?” Dorden shouted, clearly trying to remain tactful.
Devon slowly clambered to her feet. “It can wait. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m hungry.”
Chapter Forty-One
“YOU SURE YOU don’t want a full night’s sleep?” Dorden asked. The dwarf sat with the rest of her followers in a circle around the large fire they’d built to keep out the jungle night.
Devon shook her head. “Nothing like a power nap to knock down the fatigue score.” She’d conked out almost as soon as she’d taken a seat beside the tipi of wood Bayle had been building in preparation to light the campfire. By the time she’d awakened, the moon had traveled halfway across the sky. After scarfing the Stonehaven Scramble from her inventory, she felt almost as good as new.
She bent and straightened her legs one by one to work the stiffness from her knees. “If I’m not back by dawn, head to the village. It may take me a few attempts to deal with whatever’s in there.” She gestured toward the temple.
“You mean, you may lose your life,” Heldi said quietly.
Devon nodded. The notion of her death clearly didn’t sit easily among her followers. As far as she knew, they had only one life. It seemed like that was part of the game design, a living, breathing world where a player’s actions permanently changed the realm. It would never have worked without something like Veia creating the content, because even the simplest quests couldn’t be reused. A mission to kill the bandits harassing some small town in the middle of nowhere would eliminate those bandits for good, and a new threat would have to come around to replace them.
Maybe the long hours of playing were making her overly emotional—or maybe she’d taken the “settlement leader sworn to Veia” thing too seriously. Either way, she felt a strange wave of appreciation and affection for the game’s AI.
Devon laid a hand on Heldi’s shoulder to reassure her. “If I die, rest assured I will return to the village and try again. I’ll ask for your help if I think it will aid the mission. We will retrieve the Greenscale Pendant if it’s in that building, or if it’s not, we’ll eliminate whatever force is endangering our village by corrupting these creatures.”
As Devon slipped away, the village fighters settled back into a somber discussion. She hoped they’d get some sleep tonight though doubted it would come easily.
The Temple of Sorrow stood alone on a city block paved with massive slate flagstones. This close, the walls seemed to hum and vibrate to a beat that matched the undulations of purple and black across its walls. The front entrance was a dark hole in the building, offering no clues to what lay inside. Devon gripped her dagger tight as she cast a Glowing Orb and stepped beneath the archway and into the temple’s entrance corridor.
Immediately, the oppressive sense that had filled the town intensified, squeezing her from all sides. She felt as if a presence oozed through her pores, filling her with despair. Gritting her teeth, she shook off the sensation and raised the orb higher, its blue glow crackling off ancient stone walls. She strode forward, footsteps clicking against the floor slates.
As she stepped into a T-intersection where the entrance corridor dead-ended, she looked back. Devon’s heart slammed her ribs. Behind her, a long hallway stretched into darkness. There was no entrance archway, no moonlit city. No escape.
“Guess that answers the question of retreat…” She turned to the right, determined to use her old dungeon-crawling trick of always exploring the rightmost passage so that she usually needed to make only left turns to find her way back out. As she started forward, the light from her orb seemed to dim. Darkness pressed down like the weight of the ocean on a drowning person. She took a deep breath to assure herself the air was clear and focused on her orb. The light bloomed as the darkness retreated.
You resist the Fear spell. (+110% chance due to Bravery score of 8)
Maybe Relic Online would never stop surprising her. When she’d been feared in other games, the software had just taken control of her body and forced her to run. Here, she had no doubt she’d have felt the dread if her Bravery score hadn’t helped her resist. Hugging her ribs with her elbows, she shuffled forward. She shouldn’t think about that sort of thing, not right now.
The corridors seemed to go on forever. At every branch or intersection, she turned right if the passage allowed. No beasts leaped out to challenge her, and no more spells attempted to twist her mind. All she knew were these endless, twisting tunnels.
Devon walked for an in-game hour before stopping. From the outside, the temple wasn’t nearly big enough to hold such a large maze. That either meant she’d entered some kind of pocket dimension, or there was some sort of illusion at work. Could she have gone in circles? Maybe. The scenery didn’t change. Just gray stone walls and more gray stone walls.
With her dagger, Devon tried to make a scratch on the wall, but the blade wouldn’t bite. She pried at a crack between stone blocks but couldn’t free a piece of mortar. She could start dropping items to mark her progress, Hansel and Gretel-style, if she hadn’t emptied her bag before beginning this little adventure.
Frustrated, Devon looked through her pitiful collection of items anyway. She could dribble a trail of water on the floor from her Everfull Waterskin, but chances were it would dry too quickly. Earlier, she’d chugged almost all of her potions, tossing away the clay pots in her haste to get back to the fight. That left just a couple health potions and her soulbound pocket lint. She hadn’t inspected it in a while, and when she hov
ered her attention over it, an item inspection window popped up.
Item: A Truly Enormous Ball of Pocket Lint
Have you ever heard of Chekov’s Gun? Look it up.
When, exactly, had her ordinary pocket lint become “an enormous ball?” And what the hell was Chekov’s Gun?
Devon pulled out the item. The ball of fluff was truly immense, filling both her hands. Though she knew what would happen, she set it on the floor and tried to take her hands away.
To her shock, the lint remained.
Somewhere, in the giant server room where Emerson’s AI concocted its evil plans, Devon imagined Veia was laughing.
Standing, she pulled a little tuft of lint from the ball and dropped it on the floor. She walked ten paces and did it again.
And again.
***
About twenty minutes later, Devon arrived back at her first piece of dropped lint. She sighed and leaned against the wall.
“Well, I guess that answers that,” she said aloud.
Now what?
There was clearly some sort of trick involved, a hidden door or an illusion or both… The problem was, she didn’t have any sort of detection abilities.
But she did have her own two hands.
Starting out again, she ran fingers along the wall as she walked. The blocks were cool and ever so slightly damp. She hadn’t gone far when she paused, noticing a piece of lint that had strayed closer to one wall than the others she’d dropped. As she watched, the little ball of fluff rocked then slid another inch, moved by some unseen breeze. Devon dropped to her knees before the opposite wall and started searching for the source.
Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) Page 25