by Akella,G.
I snorted, shaking my head, then sat down on the grass next to my clanmates. Try as you might, you can't correct the son of a succubus—Reece was a scoundrel through and through, and I viewed that as a good thing. I felt a bit ashamed of my recent tantrum when I had threatened to rip his ears off for joking about me, but what's done is done. Apologizing for it wouldn't change anything—and besides, I suspected my apology would go in one ear and out the other anyway.
Eighteen days had passed since my party conquered Feator, fifteen of which had been filled with monotonous extermination of undead swarming the neighboring zones. With all the upgrades to skills and gear—even the worst-equipped member of the clan was still rocking three rare pieces of equipment—this process now resembled a combine reaping a harvest. I had leveled up to one sixty five, and my companions were getting close to one eighty, having long acquired their combat form. As a result, we were dispatching whole packs of undead within two-three minutes. The clan's level had grown to four, and our treasury was overstuffed with all the junk we had been getting while grinding. The smithy in Feator had become our unofficial headquarters, where veritable pyramids of steel bars, silk reels and the like were being produced from the raw materials looted off the mobs. All this will need to be transported to Xantarra and sold, I reminded myself, looking at the strange, vine-covered stone figures towering on either side of the entrance to the catacombs. We didn't need any more of these materials—all my clanmates had already maxed their professions for their level, which presented me with yet another challenge of supplying them all with horses. And mounts were anything but cheap in this world.
Their acquaintance with combat form had been rather amusing. Iam had been the first to shift, and it had happened while we were fighting a random pack of undead. The demon suddenly exploded in height and shoulder-width, sprouting dark green spikes from his armor that had expanded seamlessly to accommodate his increased body mass. Even his horns had grown considerably, in proportion with the rest of him. The youth didn't even realize what had happened until after the pack had been wiped out; hearing exclamations of shock, he turned to survey his companions' bewildered faces, his eyes emitting a sinister yellow glow.
"Handsome!" Reece guffawed, incorrigible as ever. Then, shooting a mocking glance at Reena, he commiserated, "Better keep it gentle between the bedsheets from here on to avoid irreparable damage. Unless you want her stuttering for life."
The young woman, however, paid no mind to the mage, perhaps for the first time ever. Staring at her transformed beloved with unblinking eyes, she approached him slowly and traced a gentle palm across his cheek. Then she turned around to the others and simply smiled, saying nothing but glowing with jubilation. I caught myself smiling back at her.
Demon combat form lasted fifteen minutes and reset after one hour. Oddly, unlike with males, combat form made demonesses more physically attractive. Even with the quiet and laid-back Hagedia, her facial features took on the hard, sovereign expression of a supreme predator, while her figure—growing more curvaceous in all the right places—invariably drew attention to itself. Or maybe that was just the demonic constituent in me talking...
"How long do you need, Reece?" I asked the alchemist, hard at work over his portable lab. "Not till dusk, I hope?"
"About thirty minutes more," the mage gestured toward several dozen tubes half-filled with a murky brownish substance peeking out of special racks. "The bile needs time to turn. Then I'll mix in some wild rosemary extract and it'll be ready for consumption!" he grinned.
"Spare us the details," Reena frowned. "Or my stomach will be the first to turn," she turned away from the amphibian corpses emphatically, closing her eyes and resting her head on Iam's shoulder.
"It'll taste like chicken stock in the end, trust me," the alchemist assured her. "Now why don't you make yourself useful and gather some blue moss to help the common cause? Instead of turning up your nose at us peasants..."
"You're right," the girl sprang to her feet easily, touched her black-haired beau's shoulder, and gave me a questioning look.
"Go on," I dismissed them. "You have half an hour, no more. Don't go too far."
"Uh huh," the mage snorted, keeping his eyes on the tube, its contents boiling on the burner. "They're off to gather moss, they'll have you believe... Won't you send Aritor and Zara for raspberries while you're at it, dar? I'm sure they'll bring back enough to feed the whole clan..."
"Why are you always such a sourpuss?" Salta sighed heavily. "Why do you care what they do?"
"But Salta should go by herself. Maybe she'll kill some critters and finally find peace," turning around, Reece winked at the grim huntress.
Clearing the swamp cave was the final stage of the quest given by Gvert, the elder of Ballan. Once done here, I planned on taking my clan to Xantarra. Our treasury now counted nearly twelve thousand old bones, which needed to be turned in to the city's quartermaster for another quest. We had also compiled a ton of rare and uncommon quality items that we couldn't use—so much, in fact, that I was starting to fear we simply wouldn't be able to carry it all, not even with the help of the residents of Ballan whom I had promised to lead to a safe place.
We had liberated Uriatta the day before yesterday, after clearing the whole zone of the undead that had swarmed it. The strategy had remained unchanged: just like with Feator, we first picked off all archers and mages, then drew the remaining fifty or so warriors into a nearby ravine where, after creating a choke point, we proceeded to massacre them from high ground with ranged attacks. Their boss—wedged in on all sides—was the first to fall.
Our party had spent all of yesterday burying the fallen Uriattans and transporting trophies to our permanent base. This morning we had finally made it to the cave marked on the map, where we were welcomed by two packs of huge horned frogs, each the size of a small horse. The very first specimen had dropped a recipe for an elixir against Nature magic. The fortunate drop had forced us to make this impromptu stop to allow Reece to brew enough elixirs for the whole party on account of our severely lacking Nature damage resistance. I hadn't doubted that we would sweep through the dungeon even without it, but there was no sense in being reckless and risking the lives of my clanmates. The instance was designed for a party of five to ten players, but we were heading in all together. I was perfectly happy to sacrifice experience under the game's laws in order to maximize our chances of clearing the dungeon with zero casualties. Besides, the rewards for being the first to clear it would most certainly make up for it.
Reece had been right on the money with his estimate, as the elixirs were ready in exactly thirty minutes. But he had lied about the taste, and what a vicious lie it was! Chicken stock my ass! It was all I could do to keep myself from puking after downing the muddy liquid with a yolk-like consistency that reeked of something terribly, repugnantly rotten. It took three deep breaths and sheer force of will to keep it down. Why oh why were elixirs necessary to consume while potions were sufficient to simply break open? Sure, they had a longer duration and it was assumed that they would be drunk in a calm atmosphere out of combat, but then why the utterly repulsive taste? Then again, considering the ingredients that went into this particular concoction, perhaps it could have been even worse.
"Everybody ready? Let's go!" Fixing the sword at my waist, I patted the razorback on the withers as he rose sharply at my command. "Wait for us here, Gloom. We won't be long."
"Go on, sweetheart. Eat some acorns," Salta scratched the beast behind the ear as he screwed his eyes shut with pleasure, then motioned at a nearby oak.
"Ha! What kind of idiot do you take him for, settling for acorns after his royal diet of apples and plums?" I grunted. Then, casting one final glance at the stone monsters depicting fish reared on webbed feet, I shook my head and entered the dungeon first.
An underground river rumbled somewhere ahead. Moss and lichen glimmered off the cave's walls in uneven green patches. Stalagmites stood tall, radiating an inner azure glow that was a
t once soft and powerful enough to illuminate the space up to fifty yards. Falling drops ricocheted melodiously off the walls and disappeared in the thick velvety moss carpeting the floor. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling was concealed by the darkness. To the fore, maybe a hundred feet away, the cave's denizens hung around in packs of four-five. So it's their blood that Master Skyle asked to bring back, I noted to myself. Each pack included a pair of horned frogs that we'd already met, while the other mobs were carbon copies of the statues that stood at the cave entrance, and were called starx. The fish people wielded long silver tridents and, just like the frogs, were level 170.
"What beauty..." Zara whispered in awe, as if afraid of disrupting the fragile balance of sound.
"Right on," Aritor echoed his girlfriend, then tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to the right wall. "That there is an ore outcrop, dar. The one the blacksmith mentioned," the demon added in his signature deep voice.
"Go on," I nodded to him, then turned toward the rest of the party. "Buff up!"
Fishing a pickaxe out of his inventory, which looked like a tennis racket in his massive hand, the miner waddled over to the dark patch on the wall and, with a short swing, plunged the tool into the bedrock. The noise from the impact resounded off the walls in a dull echo, as chips sprayed in all directions. Reece, rubbing his cheek after catching one such ricochet, proclaimed with sorrow in his voice:
"Anybody else wondering why I took up alchemy? On the one hand you have a noble science, a delicate pursuit of the nimble mind. On the other, metal banging against rock..."
"Oh, sure," Aritor chortled without interrupting from his work. "Rummaging in frog guts is as delicate a pursuit as I've seen..."
"Since when have you gotten so smart?" the mage smiled. "Don't get too excited now or you'll cut another way to the surface. You're just smart enough to do that..."
The miner retorted with something of his own, but I didn't hear him, distracted by movement just ahead and to my right. A creature clothed in a black robe had emerged from the darkness suddenly, startling me. The stranger wobbled maybe five yards, panting as he moved, then turned around slowly, letting his eyes flash crimson from under the hood. Reeling like a drunk, he spread his arms wide, one of them gripping a kris the color of midnight. Then he brought his hands back together in what seemed like a monumental effort, releasing a clot of crimson energy that lunged my way. My body reacted all by itself: with a cry of alarm, I dropped like a rock onto the moss, letting the projectile swoosh overhead and crash harmlessly into the rippling screen of the portal that separated the dungeon from the rest of the world.
The stranger was gone, with only a soft air disturbance remaining where he had just stood.
"What happened, Krian?" There was great concern in Salta's voice.
"Did anyone else see that?" I asked, getting up off the ground and sheathing my sword. My mates were on full alert, weapons drawn.
"No..." Iam shook his head. "What were we supposed to see?"
"A necromancer just walked by," I said, my expression dour. "At least I saw him walk by. And he fired something at me... Never mind, let's pretend it was all my imagination."
"You can see all sorts of things in places like this," Reece noted. I glared his way, but there wasn't a hint of mockery in his face or voice. He looked toward the passageway obscured by darkness. "Who knows what vile things await us further..."
"Everybody ready?" I cut short all ensuing chatter and put on my helm. "Tanks in the front! The pack on the right is first. Same strategy as always. Let's roll!"
We were in the final chamber of the cave. Here, the vaulted ceiling was covered with clusters of brightly glowing mushrooms, creating the illusion of a starry sky and looking altogether fantastic. Large formations of pink and pale-brown stalactites added to the ambiance. A river crooned to the right of the square entrance, half-disguised by streaming seaweed. If you looked hard enough, you could see through the clear black water to the distant bed, making out the bundles of phosphorous weeds and fish slowly stirring their fins. The whole thing would have been perfectly idyllic if it weren't for the final boss—the same necromancer I'd encountered earlier. At level 220 and 110 million HP, he seemed especially out of place.
It had taken us maybe two hours to get here. All the mobs we had encountered so far—frogs, starx, giant brown slugs oozing toxic vapors, and creatures that resembled land octopuses—hadn't given us any trouble. Neither had the four bosses we'd already slain, of which the only one that stuck with me was a mythical three-headed poison-spitting hydra. Of course, those heads didn't get to spit their poison for long. But what was a high-level raid boss doing in a level 170 dungeon designed for a party of ten? That was puzzling, to say the least. A trick of some sort on the part of the local AI?
Magus Diarten stood on a round square platform, his expression grim. More like, his fierce and arrogant face wore no expression at all. His right hand rested on the hilt of a black kris, while the left hung freely at his side. His tail lashed from side to side, and if it weren't for ominous crimson flame splashing out of his eyes, one might mistake him for a tifling immersed in his own thoughts after randomly wandering in here.
We weren't leaving this cave without killing this necromancer first. But how were we supposed to kill him? Our strategy against the first four bosses had been to simply overpower them on account of our high levels relative to this instance. The same approach wasn't going to fly here, and there were no strategy guides readily available for us to look up. We would need to play it by ear. Any raid boss fell into a rage half an hour after being engaged, at which point the fight was a guaranteed wipe due to a tenfold increase in damage. In theory, that time should be enough. Taking into account my Legendary Warlord achievement, the raid sporting more or less decent gear, and morale sitting at 30%, our collective damage output averaged around 85,000 per second. Even if the boss had resistance to cold, slashing Reece's effectiveness in a fight, we should still come out on top. His robe just couldn't absorb more than twenty percent physical damage—that was one of the game's principles. I would rather not have to waste one of the remaining three vials with Shaartakh's Venom on this dude, but let these precious potions be our ace in the hole in a truly desperate situation that would surely come up sooner or later.
"Problems, dar?" Iam's pensive voice brought me back.
"I'd say," I said with a grave nod. "We haven't encountered an opponent as strong as this one. And we cannot leave this cave for as long as this tifling lives. The main thing I need you all to remember is this—don't be a hero. If anyone dies in this fight, the whole clan will suffer as a result. I don't know what to expect once we attack, so stay sharp. Certain moves or attacks can be foreseen if you're paying attention."
"Who's going to tank him?" As usual, Aritor was all about the brass tacks.
"I will tank him. If anything goes wrong, I've got a shield that will give us an extra twenty seconds. Reece," I turned to the mage. "Throw Silence on him after I do. Melee, use rotation to try and interrupt all of his long casts. Pop combat form fifteen minutes into the fight. Everybody drink an Elixir of Possibilities—this is exactly the time to do it. Put only potions with mana and vigor on your belts—those should be enough for a half-hour fight. Any questions? Then buff up!"
The next half hour will decide if we're actually any good in a fight that counts, I touched the vial with the venom of the Netherworld's Elder Demon, and raised my eyes to the tifling. His haughty face expressed absolutely no emotion. Should anything go awry, this potion and the shield gifted by the goddess will be my overriding argument.
"Ready!" Reena was the last to report. Steadying the traitorous tremble in the knees, I barked the command. "Attack!"
"Vile creatures!" a voice boomed in my head, dripping with fury and madness. "Have you come to release your master? You shall die!"
The tifling's left hand lit up with black flame, but I shut him up right away with a Silence. Then, coming up right on top of him with a Step throu
gh Darkness, I drove an Ice Blade into his flesh and followed the momentum with a shoulder, hoping to topple him to the floor. The necromancer's body shuddered, but he kept his footing—his strength seemed to be no lower than mine. The magus stabbed my exposed side with his hideous kris, shaving off around 10% HP, as I registered information in the combat log about the boss' immunity to freezing. Shit! I started backing away from him, alternating my attack skills as usual, shielding myself from the flashing black dagger and the lashings of the bone-tipped tail. Ten seconds later the rest of the party joined in the fight. A cool wave of healing washed over my body; at the same time, an Ice Spear and six arrows plunged into the magus' chest. In an instant, the fight scene became crowded with Charging warriors.
For the next minute we hacked away furiously at the necromancer as he spun like a top. At exactly the sixtieth second, the tifling threw up his hands and let loose a dark wave that flung back everybody around him but me, then detonated in a series of ear-piercing mini explosions. The entire raid party's health dropped by a quarter, as searing pain shot through my body. Relief came several seconds later—a cool gentle touch lifting the anguish. Reena's alarmed voice boomed in the raid channel.
"How are you, dar? The wave put Silence on everyone but the tank!"
"I'm all right," I said, blocking another one of the magus' strikes. "Make sure to put Nourish on everyone before the next wave hits."
In the second phase, the wave of darkness gave way to stalactites falling from the ceiling. The spots where they would fall would begin to glow white three seconds prior, which made them easy to avoid—the only annoyance were the showers of shards that would spray my armor upon shattering. The third phase brought back the wave of darkness to go with the falling stalactites, causing some initial confusion, as evidenced by the pained cussing of fighters after failing to avoid one or the other. Thankfully, the healers pulled through and kept everybody alive, as I kept my eyes on Magus Diarten's rapidly diminishing health bar and on the timer counting down the seconds remaining before the boss flew into a rage. So far so good—let's hope it stays that way, I thought as the necromancer's kris glanced off my shield with a grating sound, and I countered yet again, connecting with a Tongue of Flame.