by Jez Cajiao
99/100
Congratulations! Through hard work and perseverance, you have increased your Luck by one point. Continue to train and learn to increase this further.
Congratulations! You have killed the following:
1x Drow squad leader for a total of 3,500xp
2x Drow soldiers for a total of 4,000xp
Progress to level 15 stands at 123,030/120,000
I was gutted. My mana regeneration had been halved until I could level the mana manipulation skill up, and it had effectively removed the opportunity for me to use stealth around any magic user at all.
I seethed inwardly while I forced myself to my feet, snapping directions out as I led the way to the entrance to the smuggler’s path, which was now a Drow home. It wasn’t far; maybe twenty meters through the trees to a large mound, overgrown with rocks. I’d clearly drawn the Drow away from covering the entrance with my wild approach, as we could see a handful of plates of food and a campfire that smoldered away merrily just inside the entrance.
As we walked, I brought up the last notification, realizing suddenly what I’d missed in my irritation before…
Congratulations! You have reached Level 14! You have 5 points to invest in your stats. You are now at 3,030/140,000 Exp toward Level 15.
Well, I was glad to see I’d finally hit level fourteen, and was climbing towards 15, but I now had to decide on the allocation. Did I continue to try and ‘fix’ myself, by dumping points into the weaker areas, such as putting all five into, say Charisma, or Luck, or did I keep building my stats? I considered what my Charisma was doing to me so far, I’d probably have been able to turn the ‘Reeve of Lorek’ to my side if it was higher…but he was a fucknut, and I’d wanted to smash his teeth in as soon as I’d met him.
I could concentrate on building my Charisma organically; maybe try chatting some random people up when I reached the city, and pile the points into Luck…or I could fix some of the damage my new ability had done, and bring my Mana Regeneration back up a bit.
I flicked my eyes from one side of the character sheet to the other, picking reasons to choose different things each time, until I sighed, and gave in to what I knew I needed to do.
My training with Flux and Bane had made it clear; I’d be able to raise my purely physical stats though practice, and as such, piling points into them right now could be classed as a waste, especially as each level was harder to earn than the last. The problem with that was that I had to survive long enough to make use of those methods.
I sank four points into my Dexterity. It was the stat that directly affected my weapon handling, and the likelihood to fumble a move, which brought it up to twenty-five, then I dumped my single remaining point straight into Charisma.
I hated doing it; it felt like I was wasting the point, but for all I knew, I’d need it, and it galled me that my lowest stat was directly related to my looks and popularity. I’d never had that much trouble getting laid, after all… admittedly I usually went out in Newcastle, so it wasn’t hard, but still.
I stomped straight inside, watching out for the signs I’d been told about. As we walked into the darkness, Lydia’s squad lighting torches behind me, I soon found the first trap.
I’d begun to calm down by the time I found it, which was lucky, as I almost missed it, despite the Drow telling me exactly what to watch for.
I paused, crouching down as I spotted the faint tripwire close to the ground, at the beginning of a field of rippled dirt. I grinned, liking the simplicity of the trap.
The rippled effect made it much harder to see the tripwire, and you instinctively moved closer to see what had caused the ripple, pulling in close enough to both trip the wire, and to be hit by the dozens of poison flechettes that would be fired from the concealed, heavily modified crossbow.
I had everyone move back, and I slowly examined the bow, finding a poisoned needle hidden in the grip right where you’d lay your hand to disarm it.
“Sneaky bastards…” I whispered, avoiding the needle and disarming the trap carefully, a notification springing up once I was done to tell me that my ‘Traps’ skill had increased by one.
I dismissed it quickly, too busy checking to see if there were any more traps to pay any real attention. The Drow hadn’t warned me about the needle, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d forgotten, which was unlikely, or if it was a last attempt to kill me.
“To the left,” Bane whispered, and I looked up at him questioningly. “The ground to your left has something hidden in it; I can sense it,” he said, and I crouched down further, examining the ground. Sure enough, there was a hair-thin strand of silk that led to a second needle trap, and I disarmed that as well., stashing away the various parts and passing the crossbow to Bane to examine.
“It’s an assassin’s weapon all right,” he commented, and I felt the approval.
“Keep it, if you want.” I replied, and then shook my head, calling out to the others. “I’m sorry for back there, people. I had to deal with something, and I’m worried about Oracle.” I received a series of nods and shrugs, and I turned back to Bane.
“You’re probably going to be better at this than I am, and we need to move quickly. How close did you get before you spotted that tripwire?” I asked, and Bane shrugged.
“A dozen feet or so, before I was sure,” he replied, and I sighed. “I would have warned you, if I’d not known you had seen it already.”
“Yeah, I saw it like a foot or two away. You lead, Bane. We don’t have time for me to learn the hard way,” I said, checking my mana again and shaking my head. I couldn’t afford to put up with this, and I popped open a mana potion, gulping it down and healing myself for a final time, making sure that I was at full health and the debuff from using the mana manipulation skill was gone.
Bane slipped past me, and I quietly filled him in on the traps the Drow had told me about; he spotted them both within minutes, and we jogged along the smuggler’s path at speed.
I looked around as we went, seeing the traces here and there of old stonework, bracings to secure the ceiling and walls, and repairs that had clearly been done, both ancient and recent.
It took over an hour before we came to the first branching of the path, where a second, more recent path joined the first. I closed my eyes and searched for Oracle, finding her still far in the distance, but stopped at last, and below us to the left.
“The new path.” I said, and Bane took off at once. Where the first path was hard ground, compacted over the years by the passing of countless booted feet and small caravans, this second path was far narrower, and clearly not the work of smugglers. We saw boot prints regularly, and occasionally other, stranger signs, areas where the path had been swept clean by something wide and low.
We began to find segments reinforced by a sparkling, ridged material, strands of something that braced entire sections, and an awful smell began to build.
We paused to rest after two hours, and I summoned a pair of fountains again for the group, this time realizing what I’d done so thoughtlessly.
You have discovered a new Ability: Multi-cast.
You can now cast two spells at the same time, provided they are either the same spell, cast twice, or complimentary spells that you have at least reached level ten (10) in.
“Well, shit.” I muttered, reading the notification that had appeared. I’d done it without thought, so used to the feeling of Oracle casting a second spell and using my mana that I’d replicated it, not knowing it was something strange. I also didn’t realize just how damn expensive the spell was; instead of costing me ten mana, it was costing me ten for the first one, and thirty for the second, plus an additional forty to keep them both going every ten seconds. I cut the second fountain immediately, explaining to my team and letting them share the first.
Once everyone had drank their fill and refilled their canteens, Bane rested in the water for a few seconds, and we took off again, jogging for another hour almost, before Bane slowed to a hal
t, his right upper hand waving in warning.
We gathered around and the torches were lowered, hands raising to shield them as much as possible.
“Up ahead…” Bane whispered to me. “I can sense something vibrating; I think it’s some form of Spiderkin…” I cursed, and passed the word on, turning back to him as he continued.
“I’ll go ahead and scout. Wait here.” I nodded, and he was off, his natural camouflage allowing him to blend in with the tunnel as he went.
Silence reined as the minutes ticked by, my naginata resting in my right hand, loosely held, while I toyed with the dirt, idly drawing patterns as I stared into the tunnel. Long minutes passed, and then more, slowly ticking on and on. I frowned suddenly, a single soft sound seemingly out of place in the silence of the tunnel, and I listened for it again.
It sounded like sand shifting, or soil…I concentrated on it, a noise from behind distracting me and I turned to shush Miren, the youngest of the group who’d just started to whisper a joke to Stephanos.
Lydia growled a warning at them all to be silent, and I turned back to the tunnel before me, freezing as I saw a quartet of eyes staring back at me.
The creature was long and low, maybe three feet tall, oval in shape, and running back around the tunnel’s bend to disappear into the distance. I could see that it was at least four feet long, with a bulbous form like a pale-skinned cross between a worm and a gelatinous blob. It had paused as soon as I turned back around, it’s almost silent approach on dozens of small spiked legs arrested as its black orb-like eyes stared at me. Slowly, just below the eyes on its rounded, bulbous head, a jaw hinged open, and a proboscis slipped forward, a hollow tip pointing straight at me.
My eyes widened, and I dove to the side instinctively, roaring out a warning as a stream of white liquid sprayed the area I’d been crouching in.
I heard a scream from behind me, and a hissing, bubbling noise, and I rolled back from my left to the right, jumping back to my feet in the middle of the corridor, and stabbing out with the naginata.
I could hear someone behind me sobbing in pain, and I felt others stepping up. Lydia was on my left, and Barrett on my right, a trio of small missiles flashing past me to embed themselves in the creature as it pulled back from my blow, exploding a second later and spattering small sections of the tunnel in goo.
I yanked back on the naginata, feeling resistance as the flesh of the creature flowed around the wound I’d made, tugging back at the weapon and pulling me closer.
“Be careful!” I managed to get out, before the creature lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut inches from my arm, as Barrett shoved me aside. He dove back, the creature’s pale flesh brushing against his hand and eliciting a groan from him.
“It burns!” he warned, frantically waving his hand, and trying to shake off a layer of slime that I now saw covered the creature, even as Lydia smacked her mace into it with a dull squelch.
“Fall back!” I ordered him, and Arrin stepped up to take his place, firing a Firebolt into its face.
Where Lydia’s and my weapons had barely registered on the creature, the fire did. It spread quickly, flashing across the surface of its flesh as the acidic slime burst into flames.
The creature making a high-pitched mewling sound as it shook itself from side to side, trying to shake the fire off.
I grinned as I channeled my own firebolt spell, not into my hand to throw, but instead into the naginata.
It immediately burst to life, the length of the weapon glowing a red that cycled all the way from a dark red as it began, to a bright blazing white as I plunged the weapon deeper, then slashed it from side to side, eviscerating the creature and cutting its head free.
I stepped back, pulling my mana back into myself and letting the naginata return to its normal color as the creature collapsed to the ground, seemingly dead.
The remains twitched as the flames still coating it caused pockets of fat to pop and crackle, but as soon as I saw the small death’s head float up from the corpse, I relaxed. For all of a second.
I could hear whimpering from behind me, and I spun to see Miren laid on the floor of the tunnel, Stephanos holding her arms down, as Jian poured a healing potion over the raised and bubbling skin of her face and neck.
Whatever caustic shit the creature had spit at her, it was steadily burning through her skin, making it bubble away as it sank deeper.
I had a few potions I’d made when we’d been experimenting, but as I frantically checked them, I saw there was nothing that would act to counteract the acid, and I growled at myself, mentally adding more potions and counter agents to my list to learn. I cast ‘Battlefield Triage’ on Miren, channeling it for over a minute before the crap burnt out.
Barrett luckily had a spare shirt and had wiped the majority of the slime off his hand with it before it dissolved, He was using a healing potion on it and didn’t need my help.
“Where’s Bane?” Arrin asked, and my blood ran cold. There was no way that thing should have been able to get past him, so something must have happened.
“Fuck.” I whispered, looking at the corpse that filled the tunnel before me.
It was slumping even lower to the ground now, as whatever muscles had kept it in its semi inflated shape released in death, but it was long, and whatever had burned Barrett could still be covering it, despite the flames that had spread.
“I’m going after him.” I said after a second, only to have Barrett and Lydia speak up immediately.
“No, you can’t…”
“I’ll go...”
“No,” I said cutting them off. “I’ve the best chance to get around there. I can run, jump off the walls, and…”
“And probably die when you fall on its back and dissolve.” Barrett finished for me. “We’ve no idea how long the thing is; what if it’s hundreds of feet long?”
“I…” I broke off, knowing they were right, but Bane was out there somewhere, and something must have happened for this thing to get past him. I needed to get to him; I needed to get to Oracle!
“I’ll burn it.” I turned to see Arrin standing next to the corpse. I regarded him thoughtfully, and he grinned at me. “You gave me FlameShield and Magic Missile, remember?” I nodded.
“So, all I’ve got to do… is walk forward while I channel into the shield, right? It’ll burn the corpse, wont it?”
I paused for a second before grinning back at him and passing a mana potion over.
“Do it!” I told him, and he started to cast, walking forward as we moved back, his gestures describing a circle around him, three feet out from the ends of his fingers. As his hands moved faster and faster, the flames that appeared at the tips of his fingers began to drip, falling and flowing in the air as he moved. They began to swirl, drawn into a pattern as though being blown by the wind to coat the outside of an invisible bubble, and he slowly began to walk forward.
The minute the outer edge touched the corpse, it began to blacken and shrivel, the skin crisping up and curling back as fats inside the body began to pop and crackle.
Arrin moved slowly, a single step, then a pause, and a second step. I had to resist the urge to shout at him, but I knew he was going as fast as he could. Long minutes passed as he took the corner, finding another dozen or more feet of the corpse ahead of him, only partially burnt.
I exchanged a long look with Barrett and nodded, admitting that he was right.
“Glad to see we agreed, Jax,” he whispered. “Just think how lucky you are that Oren isn’t here; he’d be telling you ‘I told you so…’ but not me. I don’t need to say it. I’m a bigger man than that.”
“Not by fucking much you’re not, mate. He’s a bloody dwarf, and you’re still only what? A foot taller?”
I whispered back, grinning at the black look he gave me. “Don’t worry, though, just like you’d not say, ‘I told you so’, I’d never draw attention to your shortcomings…”
With that, Arrin released his FlameShield, the corpse wit
hered and blacked to such a degree that we could walk across the top safely, and he started chugging the mana potion I’d given him.
“Let’s go!” I said, pushing forward. I clapped Arrin on the shoulder in congratulations and started to run, taking the twists and turns of the tunnel at speed. My meridian-enhanced vision worked in concert with the Tracking Skill to occasionally highlight Bane’s distinctive three-digit toes where he’d left a print.
It was only a handful of minutes before we passed a side tunnel that the creature had clearly come from, and I checked the ground, finding Bane’s prints leading onwards on the main path. We ignored the side tunnel and continued on until we came to a widening in the tunnel, as the five by ten-foot tunnel grew out to a cavern dozens of feet across at the narrowest, and the ceiling hung high overhead, covered in spiderwebs.
I skidded to a stop. The clattering of the rest of my group as they caught up was more than enough to ensure the awakening of the few giant spiders I hadn’t already woken with my own arrival. I looked up at them as they slowly lowered themselves down, ranging in size from the size of my hand to over a dozen feet tall, long legs flickering and twitching as they shifted on their webs and lines to surround us.
“Back away, slowly…” I whispered, looking up at them, well aware that with the limited light given off by the magelights behind me, the rest of my party had no idea what was coming.
“What is it?” Miren squeaked as Stephanos grabbed her arm, having seen a hint of movement in the darkness.
“Spiders…” I replied, and just as I was about to throw a Firebolt into the webbing, in the hopes of injuring them and killing a few, I saw a cocoon in the middle twitch and thrash.
On the floor, directly below it, lay a pair of spears, and I knew I’d found Bane. Dozens of smaller spiders crawled across his thrashing, thick-webbed cocoon, and I could see blood stains coloring it. “…and Bane.” I whispered. I saw the way the spiders gathered themselves, and I yelled in warning.