Trial and Flame

by Kevin Murphy

  Melee let out a fierce battle cry and flung herself forward. To Dakkon’s great surprise, she cleared the gap of the river with her wild jump, landing sword-first on top of a mass of burning shriekers.

  The shriekers let out a shrill cry as they moved to inject Melee with their acid, but they were interrupted and stunned by her specialized yawp. “Die you disgusting freaks!” Melee laid into the flaming creatures surrounding her, frozen on all sides. They were the sort of things that could have been plucked from her own, personal nightmares.

  The queen wailed out in pain and thrashed Dakkon with its crystalline appendage, ripping into the meat of his left shoulder and causing that arm to fall limp.

  [You have been slashed by a swarm queen for 343 damage. Remaining HP 292/1040]

  [Your left arm is in a critically damaged state. To regain functionality, you must heal.]

  [Acid consumes you from within for 110 damage. Remaining HP 182/1040]

  As the queen readied her coup de grace, Dakkon desperately tumbled to the side, barely evading the strike. Next, after Roth rammed the queen with his shoulder, the creature gave up on the killing blow in favor of the more immediate threat on the other side of the river.

  The queen reeled around and leapt over the rushing water—barely making it to the other side. The creature was losing its vitality as the fight progressed. Still, the party knew, so long as one of its swarm was nearby the monster could not be killed.

  Melee embraced her fear of the horrible things around her and—through it—became a whirling machine of death. Each powerful swing spun her full circle as she cleaved through shriekers, stopping only long enough to ensure her footing would suffice among the pre-existing bones and fresh corpses to swing again. Dizzying to behold, she threw her full might behind each and every blow—damaging herself rather than allowing the maggot-creatures to get to her. The ranks of the shriekers thinned and thinned from her swings and timely arrows from Cline. When the swarm queen finally stepped into Melee’s path, the force of her blow nearly sliced it in two, and the resistance of the creature’s body finally brought the warrior’s frenzy to its end.

  A few shriekers still remained alive and on fire. The boss before them rasped for breath as it squirmed. It had yet to die, but it was in no state to live. The fatigue of Melee’s actions caught up with her. After completely draining herself of her endurance points, she had continued her reckless assault. No longer able to so much as clasp her fingers around the handle, she dropped her sword and fell to her knees—surrounded by bodies of the foul critters she so detested. Unable to lift herself, she fell forward onto the wriggling body of the swarm queen. Reaching well beyond the limits of her energy, Melee spat on it.

  Cline ended the final rogue shriekers before they could get to the unmoving Melee, and the swarm queen’s movement ceased.

  [You have gained 4,500 experience! EXP until next level 3,628/9,470]

  [You have gained a level! You have 5 free stat points to distribute!]

  [You have received a title: Culler of the Swarm]

  [You have regained the use of your left arm.]

  Chapter 13: Spoils

  “Holy crap, Melee,” exclaimed Cline. “You’re a crazy badass!”

  Melee laid, face first against the swarm queen which she’d marginally bisected. After her furious swings, she could only pant heavily in way of response to Cline as she recovered some amount of endurance.

  There was no easy way to get across the river to where Melee was. The rest of the party weren’t as confident in their long jumps as Melee seemed to be, so the group made its way to the wall where the flowing water entered the room. There, Roth began driving pitons into the stone. Eventually, they would be able to use a rope to cross.

  “Get these damned things away from me!” Melee yelled as soon as she had the energy to roll onto her side and look over at the rest of the group.

  Dakkon responded with a sympathetic shrug. He was long out of water for a bridge and certainly couldn’t make the jump himself. Until Roth drove those pitons in for them, the rest of the party was stuck on their side of the river.

  [Acid consumes you from within for 110 damage. Remaining HP 960/1070]

  “You’d better be glad you didn’t get bitten, Melee. What were you even thinking?” Mina said. “And, Dakkon, if I start resting now I may be able to heal you three more times. So, don’t blame me if I can’t keep you alive.” Mina sat down, cross-legged and folded her arms to emphasize that she wasn’t completely happy about the situation.

  “Ugh!” Melee exclaimed. “I hate this place! Roth! Cline! Get over here already!”

  “We’re coming, sheesh,” Roth said. “Just hang tight.”

  “Cheer up! We just beat the boss!” encouraged Cline. “Try to imagine you’re lying in a field of… tapioca balls or something.”

  “But, I don’t like bubble tea…” whined Melee, uncharacteristically.

  Cline grimaced and shrugged.

  “All right then,” said Dakkon. “In that case, think of them as overgrown, extra wriggly maggots.” His lips twisted into a wicked grin as his own tension from the fight replaced itself with relief.

  “I know they are!” Melee said, missing the gibing humor in Dakkon’s tone. “That’s why I want help!”

  [Acid consumes you from within for 110 damage.]

  Dakkon winced as he was karmically rebuffed for his snarky remark through the bite of acid still lingering in his system.

  It took five minutes to safely cross the river. They worked slowly since none of them had ever had any reason to use pitons before. During that time, Melee had recovered enough to get up and begin scrubbing herself vigorously in the river water. She was frantic in her cleansing. Dakkon suspected that the only reason she didn’t jump in fully clothed or otherwise, despite present company, was a barely-winning inner voice telling her the fast-flowing river was too dangerous to play around with. Luckily for Dakkon, and thanks to Mina’s heals, he managed to outlast the queen’s acidic parting gift.

  In Melee’s haste to rid herself of the creatures, she’d neglected to check the boss for any loot.

  “Wait a minute,” Dakkon said aloud. “Shouldn’t there be a boss chest?”

  “A boss chest?” echoed Roth. “What’re you on about?”

  “They’re rewards for boss battles of a certain scale,” Mina answered. “I’m willing to bet that fight qualified.”

  “Maybe it’s up on the ledge where the boss was?” suggested Cline.

  “Maybe so,” Dakkon said with a nod. “If it’s all the same, would you guys mind if I was the first to check it out? As things stand, I have an unusually high amount of luck from randomly distributed points. I’m not sure if it’ll change anything, but—”

  “Worth a shot,” Roth said, giving a thumbs-up sign.

  “In that case, why don’t you try harvesting the boss’s corpse as well?” Mina suggested.

  “Sure thing,” Dakkon said. “Anyone got a knife?”

  Roth did and handed over the specialized harvesting tool.

  Dakkon approached the swarm queen’s body with the harvesting knife held awkwardly in his right hand. He hadn’t used the auto-assist harvesting system before, but he’d seen it done plenty of times to the large foul-smelling, black-furred krimmers near Tian. Mimicking the motions he’d seen, Dakkon simply thought about harvesting the boss’s body and quickly swiped the knife horizontally through the creature’s flesh. A flash of light briefly obscured the large corpse as it faded away and left behind a small pile of items.

  Stooping lower to inspect what had dropped, Dakkon examined the remains:

  |Name: Large Acid Sac

  |Item Type: Material

  |Durability: 15/15

  |Description: Taken from a large monster capable of storing quite a bit of acid, the rubbery flesh might be refined into an acid-resistant swath. It is covered with a slimy film.

  |Name: Strip of Rigid Flesh

  |Item Type: Material


  |Durability: 20/20

  |Description: Unusually strong, this strip of flesh might be used in place of fibrous cord.

  |Name: Unrefined Crystal Core

  |Item Type: Material

  |Durability: 40/40

  |Description: This cloudy orb radiates red light.

  |Name: Hardened Crystal Sickle

  |Item Type: Material

  |Durability: 300/300

  |Description: This incredibly dense crystal has been hardened well beyond its normal, natural limit. Only a talented craftsman will be able to work with such a resilient object.

  “Just more crafting materials,” Dakkon said to the others with a sour expression. “I doubt those three crystal defenders’ orbs will still be intact from their fall, but I’ll check. Roth, can you hammer some more pitons into that far wall? I’m not sure how else we’re supposed to climb it.”

  “No problem,” Roth said, with his hammer already in hand.

  Dakkon rummaged around the shattered forms of the three large core defenders that had fallen to their demise, but, as he had suspected, their glowing cores had been crushed and were unsalvageable. Attempting to be as resourceful as possible, he tried to harvest the rubble of their bodies with the auto-assist system by swiping Roth’s blade through the crystal, but it bounced off with a defiant *tink*. A knife designed for skinning wouldn’t serve as a universal tool here, it seemed.

  “I’m going to harvest these shriekers, just in case,” Dakkon called out to the others. “Anyone want to shove a big pile of bug bits in their bag? I’m not keen on washing mine out.”

  There were no takers on his offer, so Dakkon harvested each shrieker body while Roth worked on building a scalable path up the wall. Dakkon finished a minute before Roth. Although he didn’t receive any universal bonus to harvesting, he did gain a point and a half of a new, more specific trait: Butcher.

  |-Butcher: Gained from repeatedly harvesting flesh. Every rank in Butcher increases harvested flesh yield by 1%. Current effect: 1%.

  As far as first impressions went, the trait was not one Dakkon was particularly excited for because leveling it up would be a problem. He didn’t want to become known as a psychopath who needed to stop and hack away at everything he fought. This world felt realer than other games in practically every way it could and having the reputation of a madman might close a lot of promising doors. Furthermore, the amount of harvesting it took to get a little over half a bar of experience meant that focusing on the trait would likely be a major time investment. Then again, it might just prove useful one day for harvesting something exotic like dragon meat, he supposed. Forward thinking couldn’t hurt. Perhaps he’d learn a bit more about it and see if he was using the best tool for the job. Maybe he’d need to start carrying a cleaver around.

  “Well, well,” Roth called down from the top where he’d climbed. “There’s a chest all right. Good call on suggesting we check up here. I’ll throw a rope down.”

  Roth let a rope dangle beneath him and Dakkon grabbed onto it. “Hold tight,” said Roth before jumping down while holding onto the other end. Three pitons at the top served as a wheel-less pully. The difference in their weight seemed subtle at a glance, but the way Dakkon shot upward made it clear that Roth was quite a bit heavier than the edgemaster. It took all of Dakkon’s strength to hold on as he was dragged upward along the side of the room’s wall, over two sets of stone globes which acted as speed bumps. He felt lucky to have avoided the pitons, but that was due to Roth’s good sense in securing the acting-pulley off to the right side.

  “Woah, that looked crazy fun!” Melee guffawed. “I call dibs on going next!”

  At the top, Dakkon pulled his way up onto the ledge, letting out a deep sigh brimming with a mixture of exasperation and joy to be finished with the vertical ride. Before him sat a small, stone box wrapped in carved ornamentation. The box’s top and bottom banding was designed to look like a string of interlocking mandibles like those on the shriekers they’d fought.

  Dakkon stooped down and placed both hands on the box, then flipped open the lid. A prompt appeared describing what they could claim.

  |Stairs of Stijgen: A six-meter chain made of interlocking metal squares with hooked ends. When the chain is pulled tight for five seconds, each square extends a column beneath it to the height of the lowest link in the chain, creating a thin but serviceable staircase. The stairs will automatically retract when either end of the chain is pulled free.

  |Polypoison Dagger: Every hour, this dagger creates and stores a random, debilitating poison to a maximum of three. On a successful attack, the dagger unloads all stored poison at once in a single foul cocktail.

  |Drift Cloak: A popular toy for nobility’s youth from a bygone age, wearers may grab the tips of the cloak to ride a localized updraft. This allows wearers to jump higher and farther. Smaller individuals may use the cloak to float around with limited control. Due to the nature of how the cloak is operated, it is difficult to use in an emergency.

  |Civix’s Discombobulator: A ring once commissioned to be made by mage and master craftsman, Civix. The ring can be activated at range and requires its wielder to sneer exaggeratedly, as Civix claimed melee specialists were incapable of using simple mental triggers. Once activated, the ring’s target feels as though they were forced to perform an unexpected, gut-wrenching flip, breaking their concentration on whatever spell they might be casting. After each use, the ring requires several minutes to recharge. Popular rumor suggests that the egocentric master craftsman was undone by his own creation, falling to the hands of a sneering warrior.

  |Tome of Echostrike: Only usable by warriors, this book grants the skill Echostrike and will be consumed once read. While concentration is maintained, Echostrike creates an echo of force which will exactly mimic each of your strikes. The force attacks impact your target immediately after your own, effectively doubling their number.

  |Tome of Retribution: Only usable by paladins, this book grants the skill Retribution and will be consumed once read. You emit a shimmering aura which grows brighter each time you are struck resulting in moderate-to-severe damage to your attacker. As your aura brightens, the damage of all your skills will increase dramatically.

  |Tome of Treeform: Only usable by druids, this book grants the skill Treeform and will be consumed once read. You become immobilized, sprout roots, and grow a thick, bark-like carapace. While standing in direct sunlight, your health and mana will regenerate through the magic of photosynthesis, no matter what your current degree of satiation. While in your altered state, you will be unable to cast any spells, but may end the skill at any time.

  Beside each item, Dakkon could assign a number based on his desire for it. A one would indicate his first choice, and a seven his last. Once everyone submitted their choices, the AI would then distribute the first pick of whomever it deemed to be the most important figure in the fight. Next, the second most valuable player would receive their first pick so long as it hadn’t already been taken. If it had already been distributed, they’d receive their second pick, and the pattern would continue—starting over again at the top once every player had received an item. The system seemed fair, overall, but it did favor the more capable players.

  Dakkon wasn’t familiar with skill tomes. He knew of their existence from other games, where they could often be quite rare. In some games, tomes were designed to increase skill level—but these seemed to grant entirely new skills. If they were skills that couldn’t be learned through conventional means, then they could prove to be incredibly valuable. It was worth noting that these were consumable, meaning that they were only good for a single use. After that, they’d be destroyed or rendered unusable.

  The Stairs of Stijgen looked to be an interesting item, but the ability was somewhat redundant for him as he could already create stairs made of ice—when his reserves allowed for it. It took time and resources to make a staircase via thermomancy, but he could do it. A magical staircase wasn’t a high priority, but uti
lity was never a bad thing. He’d definitely rank it above the tomes and another, weaker dagger.

  The Polypoison Dagger was peculiar. If he was reading it correctly, it seemed built for approximately one attack every three hours. Perhaps it was a powerful tool for defeating boss monsters, but the type and potency of its poisons were random. Dakkon had experienced, first hand, how powerful poisons can be, but he had no idea how weak they could be. Like the stairs, the dagger was somewhat redundant. He already had an incredibly powerful weapon. It was hard to imagine a situation where he’d want to use this one over his own. Still, it didn’t take up much room on his belt. He’d rank it low, but not last.

  The Drift Cloak was bizarre and Dakkon found its effect intriguing. It would allow him to jump higher—and possibly even float downwards. The utility of that couldn’t be overlooked. Needing to slowly descend from a high place could prove invaluable. Who knew, maybe it could even be used as some sort of absurd means of transportation. He’d only just launched himself sideways by using Afterburner to dodge an attack. Who’s to say he couldn’t rocket himself through the sky with a little practice? With his curiosity for the utility item piqued, he ranked the cloak highly.

  All speculative considerations aside, Civix’s Discombobulator was what most caught Dakkon’s eye. He’d seen what Lina could do with her spells. Her unmatchable power left so much of an impression on him that he’d actively sought out and taken up pyromancy. Now, ChronCast was reporting on stories of more monsters like her every day. Being able to interrupt a powerhouse mage as they tried to cast their spells would be a colossal advantage in the certain-to-come player-versus-player fights that would be brought about by the Tournament of the Gods. The momentary advantage gained in the instant when a caster drops their spell could be everything in battle— possibly negating the awestriking power of such super-mages. This was his choice for the best item.