by Oliver Mayes
With his eyes sealed shut he could only imagine how big it must be if one of the legs felt like a lance. His mouth had been sealed by his thrashing as well, but fear piqued his focus, resulting in a mental command that could not have been clearer.
‘Kill the spider!’
The second imp had been behind them and had not followed them into the trap.
With a piercing scream, the imp beat its wings and pulled into the air before colliding with the spider above them. The battle cry was quickly drowned out by a grating screech from the imp’s much larger enemy and the web thrummed violently back and forth from the force of the impact. Damien’s eyes were still sealed shut, but he didn’t need to see to know the imp wouldn’t win by itself.
He had to do something. With his limbs restrained, there was only one thing Damien could think of. He balled his trapped hand into a fist and focused on it, the Chaotic Bolt forcing his fingers open.
The imp let out a second cry as it pressed the attack, Noigel cheering it on from his prison.
But the cry was cut short and Noigel’s cheer faded to a whimper. The brief silence was broken by the unmistakable thud of a small body hitting the ground.
The spider’s mandibles clicked grotesquely as it scuttled down to reclaim its prize. Damien’s hand stopped forcing itself open and started producing a familiar whine. He twisted his hand in the web until his palm was facing directly upward and released. He didn’t know if it was going to hit the spider, nor did he care.
With his low intelligence stat, Chaotic Bolt was far too weak to make any sort of mark on this enemy. It was, however, perfect for burning through webs. It exploded above him and the strands around Damien disintegrated.
Webbing lost, the remaining structure could no longer support their combined weight. Damien, Noigel and the spider tumbled to the floor in a disorientated, screeching, flailing heap, the spider landing on its back. Damien might not have been familiar with spell casting in combat, but stabbing an enemy which was in body contact with him was not particularly difficult. He equipped his dagger and stabbed it recklessly and repeatedly, wanting to put a swift end to this unforeseen abomination. Noigel bound forth to aid him.
Aside from Toutatis, it was the most terrifying combat Damien had endured in his entire Saga Online career.
Suffering under the dagger and claws, the spider thankfully died quickly. Damien had nothing to show for his ordeal but 350 XP, half a soul and a brand new phobia.
What a disaster.
Damien dusted residual cobwebs out of his face as fast as he could. Noigel followed suit, finding time to deliver a few furious kicks and a big glob of spit onto the corpse of their would-be embalmer.
Now that Damien’s eyes had re-adjusted he could see everything clearly. Some grunt at Mobius Enterprises had obviously thought it would be funny to put a solo player-killing trap right inside the entrance, where players would barely have a chance to light a torch or adjust to the darkness before they blundered right into it.
On the plus side, the dagger’s ‘Sacrifice’ ability was functioning properly. In addition to obtaining half a soul from the dead arachnid, the blade was coated in the same silver smoke that Damien recognized as soul energy. As long as he used the energy in the dagger he could potentially gather souls twice as fast as before, maybe even faster if he could kill enough targets in melee. Which was important right now, since he had a lot of lost time to make up.
He pointed the dagger at the ground and cast Summon Imp. The runes burned into the floor and the mist surrounding the dagger dissipated. The new imp hadn’t even finished performing its cheerleader introduction routine before Damien was pacing into the cave, looking around warily for more webs as Noigel and the rather disappointed new arrival formed up behind him.
Damien had somewhat naively expected a simple path through the cave from A to B. This could not have been further from the truth. There were forks in the road that looped back on themselves, passageways leading to exits back into the zone he’d just left and of course, his all-time favorite: good old-fashioned dead ends.
On a normal play-through Damien would have reveled in the chance to map out the whole area. Today, after twenty minutes of aimless, increasingly panicked wandering, he felt like wrapping his hands around the neck of the level designer responsible for this mess. While the spider placement had been poorly thought out and inconsiderate, the floor plan bordered on cruel and unusual punishment.
Had Damien not been so tired yesterday when he planned his route, he might have thought to check an online map. Instead, he’d taken it for granted and was paying a disproportionate price.
There weren’t even enough enemies for him to gather a significant force. There were a few lone wolves which were easy enough to kill and occasionally his path would be blocked by a web, which he’d destroy with great prejudice before slaying the spider personally.
Yet none of these enemies were giving him more than half a soul at a time. Worse still, as his rush to find the exit overtook him, he ran his group straight into waiting enemies. For every two imps he summoned, one was slain defending him from the wolves that lay in wait to ambush them. His rush to get out of the cavern was costing him troops, and there was no point in making it to The Maw if he hadn’t replenished his forces by then.
The imps were good cannon fodder but Damien was losing them almost as fast as he could summon them. The wraith was a strong attacker but a poor defender, and not much of a team player either. He’d be wasting souls on it too, since the last leg of the trip would be through daylight. Assuming they ever made it outside. That left the hell hounds, which hadn’t even been tested. He’d have to cross his fingers.
Damien stopped in an unoccupied corridor and pointed his loaded dagger at the floor, combining the soul within with two he’d scraped up into his soul reserve. A new rune started to take shape. The imp rune bore a simple pentagram, the wraith had a scythe as its demonic symbol, and the newest addition to Damien’s sigil collection was the jagged outline of a pair of jaws.
This time the portal was stood up on the ground rather than suspended in the air. The newest addition to Damien's troops padded out of it and the enclosed space was suddenly filled with the smell of brimstone.
The hell hound was about the shape and size of a Doberman, but with a longer snout full of razor-sharp teeth that the runes had denoted as its defining feature. It bore another distinct characteristic that Damien found a little more striking: it was on fire. The portal closed and it came to a stop in front of him, standing at attention with its vivid yellow eyes fixed on Damien’s own. This was starting to look quite promising.
“Inspect.”
Hell Hound
Stats:
Strength 20 - Agility 25 - Intelligence 5
Constitution 25 - Endurance 25 - Wisdom 5
Abilities: Bite, Dash, Detect, Enflamed.
Interesting. It had slightly less agility than the wraith but was far superior in other respects. It had much more health than his other minions, too: 25 constitution translated into 250 health points, five times more than Noigel had started with. Damien couldn’t have called the hell hound a tank, but it was certainly tanky.
The high stamina meant it would deal with prolonged combat better than his other creatures as well. This was a much-needed front line unit. Bite and Dash would be fairly standard attacking and engaging moves. The other two seemed worthy of further investigation. Damien stared at them and focused on his desire for more information. It was much easier to coax the plus symbols into existence now he knew it was possible. He activated them one after the other:
Enflamed: While enflamed, attacks performed by the host have a chance of setting the target on fire, illuminating them and inflicting damage over time. In addition, the bearer of this ability is immune to fire damage.
Detect: Heightened senses allow the user to detect targets up to 50 meters away. The distance is reduced depending on the measures the target has taken to conceal themselves and
the user’s physical and mental state.
A double whammy of useful abilities. ‘Enflamed’ looked extremely cool and had excellent combat applications, but the real prize was ‘Detect’. An early warning system would prevent him from wandering into ambushes and allow him to maintain the element of surprise. At least it would, if the hound wasn’t broadcasting their presence by being on fire.
The ability description said, ‘While enflamed’. Did that mean it could be turned off? Damien pointed at the hound and gave it his first order.
“Lose the flames. Now.”
The hound gave a quick bark and shook itself as though it were drying off. Flames gone, Damien had to readjust to the darkness for a couple of seconds. When he regained his night vision he saw a feature the flames had been concealing. Rather than fur, this dog was covered in thick black plates. There were gaps in-between which Damien reckoned were weak points, but imprecise attacks with bladed weapons would require a great deal of force to break through.
He was surprised this hadn’t been mentioned in the dog’s list of abilities and was more surprised still when he checked and found that ‘Armored’ had replaced ‘Enflamed’. So, the dog could swap between being on fire or being more resistant to physical attacks. Offense and defense. Sweet.
Damien had expected to trade an advantage for stealthiness but had stumbled upon a completely different advantage instead. The only thing left now was to test it in combat.
“Hound on my right, imps in the back. Let’s go.”
They all formed up except for Noigel, who disregarded the order and remained on his shoulder. When Damien gave him a pointed stare, the imp folded his arms and haltingly pieced together a sentence, sounding every bit like he was speaking a foreign language.
“Noigel not just imp. Noigel special imp.”
Of course. Besides Noigel he had three imps out, so Noigel could speak thanks to his ‘We Are Many’ ability. Damien was surprised the imp hadn’t been talking more but decided not to ask about it. His curiosity might be mistaken for encouragement.
He gave Noigel a nod before jogging back down the passage. His minions stayed in position behind him, the hound effortlessly keeping pace by his side. They made quick pace through the already scouted territory and had almost reached the unexplored segment when the hound barked, making Damien jump.
“Hey! What was that for?”
The dog wasn’t looking at him. It was staring ahead and growling, its lips peeling back to reveal the disproportionately large teeth. As obvious a tell for the ‘Detect’ skill as Damien could’ve hoped for. Since the hound was only matched by the wraith in terms of eloquence, it would be up to him to bridge the communications gap.
“Tap your foot if there’s an enemy.”
Still growling, the hound deliberately raised its front paw and dragged it against the ground. Detect was functioning as advertised.
The enemy was almost certainly a wolf, given that he’d been running into them constantly. It would be a good chance to see his new summon in action.
“When you attack, I want you to run past and hold their attention. Be evasive until we arrive from behind, then dash in and engage with us. Do you understand?”
It dragged the same paw against the ground once. Damien pointed ahead. It was testing time.
“Go get ‘em.”
The hound stopped growling and dashed forward. It wasn’t as fast as a wraith, but it was quite a bit faster than Damien expected. He ran forward to catch up but hadn’t made it when a yelp echoed off the cavern walls. Using a bit more of his stamina to increase his pace, he came across the skirmish as he rounded the corner.
The hound had tried its best to follow Damien’s instructions, but it hadn’t gone exactly as planned. Not least of all because the target was a bear.
Damien hadn’t thought he could hate this cave any more than he already did, but now it had decided to dump a high-tier enemy on him only when he committed his highest-cost unit. The wolves he’d been running into had about two hundred health each. This bear was endowed with a thousand points of life, with strength and stamina in good measure. It was no stretch to define it as a deadly encounter.
The hound had managed to get past, but not unharmed. Plates covering one side of its body had been shattered to pieces and although it was standing its ground and snarling it had lost a third of its health.
Damien had no intention of risking himself against an enemy this strong, but the hell hound wouldn’t last by itself. There was only one thing for it. Damien pointed at the three imps standing behind him then thrust his finger at the bear, willing them to go for the head. The three of them rose without hesitation before flinging themselves into battle on their wings.
They didn’t do much damage, but by scratching all around the bear's face they obscured its vision. The bear lashed out around itself with powerful sweeps of its huge paws, but the imps were too nimble and small for the strikes to connect, quickly changing position whenever they saw the bear committing to a new blow.
The bear reared back, allowing the hell hound to jump up and seize it by the throat between its powerful jaws. Then it thrashed violently to inflict as much carnage as possible.
Roaring with pain, the bear lashed out, but the hound immediately released its grip and pushed off, avoiding being caught before it twisted back into position to wait for another opening. A fifth of the bear’s health bar was now empty and it was also taking bleeding damage.
This was going well. As long as they stayed in control they could wear it down like this. Damien reinforced his command to the imps, telling them to attack from above in the hopes of providing the hound another opening.
One of them moved too carelessly during the transition and managed to drift straight into a sweeping claw, spiraling away before collapsing in the dirt. The attack had not been targeted and the imp managed just barely to survive, but it was battered, broken and incapable of fighting on.
Damien still had a use for it, though. This was exactly the kind of scenario he’d envisaged using Implosion for when he’d first read the skill’s description.
He pointed at the wounded imp and prepared to cast. A bright red circle immediately appeared around it on the floor, showing the range of the spell. The circle was brighter toward the outside than the center, reminding Damien it would pull targets at the edge of its range more powerfully. The problem was, all his own minions were also still in range.
“Hound, back to me, then imps back to me when the hound is clear. Go!”
The hound darted past while the bear was still preoccupied with the last two imps. As soon as the hound made it past under their combined distraction, the imps darted out of its reach behind Damien.
With the minions clear, Damien ordered the injured imp to hold still and be quiet. It stopped trying to get up and froze in place.
The bear looked around and quickly found a human standing directly in front of its attackers. It roared with the depth and volume of a jet engine and dropped to all fours as it charged, the ground trembling under its advance. Damien waited as long as he dared. If the power was strongest toward the outside of the ring, he couldn’t afford to get this wrong. A sub-par effort would not be enough to stop a half ton of angry fuzzy wuzzy.
The bear reared up, ready to bring down a paw the size of a small refrigerator onto this new, flimsy adversary.
“IMPLOSION!”
There was a crack like a sonic boom and a jagged tear ripped between dimensions above Damien's fallen imp. While the portals his summons regularly traveled through were perfectly formed and utterly balanced, this one was more unstable than a two-legged chair with low self-esteem.
The crack was followed by a loud bang as reality caved in around it, widening what had been a hairline fracture into a gaping exit wound in the fabric of the universe. The imp was quickly pulled through and the anomaly snapped shut, but not before it had seized upon everything that wasn’t nailed down within its vicinity. The force Implosion exerted on
objects at optimal distance was phenomenal.
Clumps of dirt were torn from the earth, pebbles and loose rocks in the walls and ceiling formed a deadly maelstrom as they pinged off each other at the imp-losion’s center, and the oblivious bear’s head, which had been at the very furthest point away, was jerked backward with a sickening snap. It was as if it had reached the end of an invisible, unbreakable chain.
The hell hound’s reaction was instant, triggered by instinct rather than waiting for Damien to put it into words. While the bear staggered backward on its hind legs, the power behind its charge utterly nullified, Damien’s newest summon demonstrated why it could only be a product of hell. In two short strides and one savage leap it cannoned into the exposed throat, sweeping the huge enemy off its feet. It set upon the bear with such unfathomable violence that Damien was compelled to utter a moan of awe, tempered by pity.
The bear convulsed on the ground under the combined efforts of Damien’s forces. It had been a powerful brute of a creature that he had absolutely no business fighting, but he was still surprised when its death heralded an explosion of soul energy and experience. He’d had no idea that his abilities could harmonize with such devastating effect.
His experience rose by almost 2000 points, the same as he might have expected for completing a rudimentary quest. The cavern practically glowed silver with the quantity of soul energy left behind by this worthy foe, all of it gathering up in a cloud that streamed into Damien’s free hand in long spiraling lines. It had granted him three souls all by itself. Damien knew exactly what they were good for. He summoned another hell hound, bringing his unit count up to 9/10.
The rest of the cave was considerably easier after that.