That made me raise an eyebrow. "What? Why?"
She didn't answer.
"No, I mean it. What did I ever do to you to be untrustworthy?"
"You are too childish."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You really do not know?"
"If I did I wouldn't ask, would I?"
"This is exactly what I am talking about. You are always attacking, provoking others for no reason, and making jokes with very bad timing. You are a big child."
I knew what she was doing: she was trying to make me feel inferior to her. First, with the 'no one cares about you' speech disguised as if she cared about me; and now with 'you're a child' one.
After handling lots of psychologists in my life who could really mess with one's head, and some women who tried to do exactly what she was doing, her kindergarten psychology tactics didn't get even close to affecting me.
So, I showed her she had chosen the wrong guy to try that with. I smiled and winked to her. "Don't worry, Daggers. I like the way your ass is outlined in that cloak. You don't need to try to get my attention with all these words."
She didn't answer and we waited in silence until Eternal came back with the requested information a few minutes later. Since I was the one who had gathered our merry group for the quest, it was agreed that I should be the party leader.
Party create, I thought.
Party created
You have created your first party!
Parties are groups of people who unite for a common goal.
The main benefits of a party are:
» Free mind communication between the members
» Easy loot sharing
» Seeing the party members' data
» Seeing the party members' location in your map, if you have one
Current loot policy: round robin
"Wait, we can have maps in the game? The kind that automatically draw your surroundings and you can see easily in the personal vision?" I meant 'user interface'.
"Don't even think about it, these maps are worth as much as enchanted wood in the Underworld. They are also forbidden; even if you get your hands on one, there are high-level NPCs who will kill you for it. I heard they'll do so even if you start drawing a map on a common piece of paper and get discovered"
"Oh." That was disappointing; an automatic map would really make things easier. Maybe that's why the high-level NPCs didn't want everyone to have one in the Underworld: here there was no high mountain or something you could climb to see your surroundings, so geographic information was extra valuable.
After a quick talk, we agreed that a round robin policy for loot was best. That way we would take turns receiving any items the enemies dropped.
Add members to party, I thought while thinking about Daggers and Eternal.
A 'waiting for confirmation' message appeared and shortly Eternal and Daggers HP, MP and stamina bars appeared in my vision, right under my own bars. I checked Eternal's first.
Eternal (level 7)
HP: 170 / 170
MP: 290 / 320
Stamina: 153 / 155
It seemed that Marbareus was really messing with the guy's growth. I checked Dagger's next.
Daggers (level 10)
HP: 235 / 235
MP: 125 / 125
Stamina: 207 / 210
Daggers, on the other hand, looked like a highly specialized character. Constitution affected HP and stamina, still, she had lower HP than me while having higher stamina, which meant that the secondary attribute affecting stamina – willpower – had to be high. Together with the high dexterity she had informed us about before, my guess was that she was an agile-type warrior, like an assassin or something.
I was more of a jack of all trades, even though I favored magic. Playing alone without mentors, I had to be prepared to do anything the game demanded of me.
Another interesting thing was that the names on the status bars were the ones I had in mind when I thought about both people, not their full names. Well, at least not Daggers; for all I knew Eternal's full name was just that: Eternal. Did it mean people could lie about their names and still get into a party?
"Wow, so much MP," Eternal said.
I ignored him, held my shield – which was still attached to my left arm – in front of me, crouched a little to make myself a smaller target, and started to walk; my sword was firmly held in my other hand. "Let's go."
Thus the exploration began.
"Stop!" Daggers yelled into my mind a few steps later.
"What?" I turned to her while still walking.
The world turned upside down as the big explosion deafened me. My body hit the ceiling and then hit the floor. Fire covered engulfed me.
200 fire + 50 burn damage received
HP: 25 / 275
Status effect received: Legless (level 1 – max)
Until you are magically healed, you:
» Will have no legs
Status effect received: Grossly Open Wounds (level 50 – max)
Until you are magically healed:
» -50 HP per second
Status effect removed: Grossly Open Wounds
You have discovered a new way of removing an Open Wounds status effect.
Status effect received: Slightly Dazed (level 1)
For 1 minute, 59 seconds, you:
» Cannot see properly
» Cannot move property
The pain was sharp and made me scream, but it was not nearly as bad as losing my legs should have felt, I guessed. The worst was the blurred world around me.
I tried to heal myself, but more pain found me.
Spell Disrupted: 18 pure damage received
HP: 7 / 275
Shit. Spells couldn't be cast while dazed. I had forgotten that.
She did. I could see her and Eternal's shadows, but it was all very blurred and darker than I remembered; my Flame of Revelation had gone out too.
I closed my eyes but the world didn't stop spinning until the countdown on the dazed status effect was out. I just grunted in pain all the while.
When it finally stopped, I opened my eyes and sat as best as I could. I was legless alright. The very short stumps I now had were sealed on the bottom, cauterized by the fire.
Some new way of removing Open Wounds status that was.
"Are you alright?" Eternal asked.
I healed myself. As soon as the death morb touched my body, my legs faded into existence, but my pant legs and boots didn't. Almost five gold coins gone in the blink of an eye.
Getting up, I saw the floor where I had stepped only had a small crater.
She had a point. I had been ridiculously lucky.
She interrupted my protest.
Dungeon was game-speak for the places where a player went to kill monsters or find items. They usually had weaker monsters and weaker traps first.
If a two-hundred and fifty damage trap was the weakest of the traps, this wouldn't be a walk in the park.
But there was no way in hell I'd admit defeat this early.
She passed by me and knelt a few centimeters ahead. Then she took a very thin and very long knife from inside her cloak and meddled with a flat rock on the ground. As hard as I tried, I couldn't see anything.
A few seconds later there was a 'click' sound and she stood up.
Now that I thought about it, the lack of traps in the prison was strange. Unless, of course, Renno had been even more arrogant than she had seemed, which in a way was an amazing accomplishment. When I thought about the expensive wooden double doors on the prison entrance, it made a lot of sense.
We kept walking and Daggers stopped us to disarm traps a few more times.
For lack of information, I had to believe her to some extent, but I still wondered if she was keeping something to herself.
I mean, if a trap could've blown me to pieces, telling me that wouldn't exactly encourage me to act as a meat shield.
This was a girl who got into character.
We kept moving, me feeling very awkward for the half-destroyed pants and lack of boots, and it didn't take long for us to find ourselves our very first gabat. And five more.
They were in a small cave chamber with the remains of a bonfire in the middle. Three beacows were to the side, locked in a crude metal fence; one of the gabats was there, licking blood from a cut on the side of the animal. The gabat's tongue was huge and the meekness of the wounded beacow as it had its blood consumed was disconcerting.
Four of the other gabats were sleeping, curled together on the floor the opposite the beacows.
The last one was standing on a kind of small platform, its wings covering its body as if they were a cloak, its eyes open.
Looking straight at me.
I had just turned a corner in the tunnel and was seeing the scene from a little outside the cave chamber. This close the gabats were even scarier, especially the wolf head and the three meters' height. Oh, and the four sturdy arms that seemed as if they could crush me with ease.
It made me freeze for a few seconds.
My mental gears ground into action. If I considered them just another street gang who I wanted to beat up, I might come up with some not entirely stupid tactics.
Roger? What was she, role-playing as a commando?
Eternal let out a gasp and soon enough I saw a translucent Daggers walk past me. When she got a little ahead of me, the gabat's stare turned to her.
I did too. With my luck, I would just trip and fall into the trap.
Aiming the best I could, I threw the coin at the gabat.
It hit him and the eating gabat looked at the almost inaudible sound and then at me; it hit the ground and all four sleeping gabats woke up and did the same chain of looks. Then the standing gabat opened his jaws and howled.
As one all the other five gabats came at me, their growls terrifying. I used the opportunity to test my magic on the nearest one.
16 darkness damage dealt to Almost Naked Gabat
The dark liquid seemed to be absorbed by the hairy hide of the beast and the fifty percent darkness resistance confirmed it. It seemed darkness magic would not be very useful in the Underworld except for the darkvision it provided.
80 death damage dealt to Almost Naked Gabat
Death magic worked the same way as always: the dark gray smoke tried to cover as much as possible of the target's body and made the area's color lighter as it passed through.
86 fire damage dealt to Almost Naked Gabat
And fire was fire. It created a small explosion, slightly slowing the gabat, and the fire expanded as much as possible, filling the air with the smell of burnt hair. Sadly, the beast hide seemed to prevent it from taking extra burn damage, but it was still the best thing I had.
More important than the visual effects of the game, though, was a single fact: the damn bat had taken a hundred and eighty-two damage and was still coming.
I took a few steps back, going around the corner, and raised my shield high, feeling more anxious each second. Their growls were filling the entire cave and they ran slower than I expected – maybe because they had bat feet and not lupine ones.
After I had created two extra fire morbs, the first gabat appeared and I threw fireballs at it. If finally died, three hundred and fifty-four damage received.
Its body was removed by one of his pals and another one appeared before I could even create another morb. I hoped the damn thing hit weakly.
Its four-fingered hands – strange the things you sometimes pay attention to in a fight – had sharp nails and it slashed at me fast, but not quickly enough to keep me from defending in time.
12 shock damage received from Almost Naked Gabat
HP: 263 / 275
For once my expectations had been met. I thrust my sword and... The gabat dodged. Shit. Then it attacked again.
10 shock damage received from Almost Naked Gabat
HP: 253 / 275
Again I tried to hit it with my sword and again I failed.
al yelled in my mind.
I obeyed as I defended yet another attack for extra ten points of damage and something hot flew over my head. Eternal's fireball struck the beast in the chest for laughable forty points of damage. Only three hundred and freaking fourteen to go.
As I prepared to attack and be dodged again, something happened. A shadow moved from behind me to the beast. I heard the sound of three very rapid thrusts, then the shadow leapt back behind me.
[Daggers] 120 (40 x 3) piercing damage dealt to Almost Naked Gabat
HP: 194 / 354 <?>
The gabat whimpered and I used its distraction to finally hit it.
49 slash damage dealt to Almost Naked Gabat
HP: 144 / 354 <?>
Its hide was hard. Hard enough to decrease my damage by about twenty percent. And Daggers had pierced through it like it was nothing.
Unlike magic – at least the magic I had been able to do until now –, physical skills could, and usually had a period between usages: a cooldown time.
I began to suspect this fight would not go as well as I had thought.
My stamina was draining fast – one-quarter was already gone – and I stopped trying to attack. Two more attacks of the beast later, a new fireball flew over my head. Three new blocks and a last fireball later, it finally died.
From the corner, the hands of a fellow gabat took the body away and soon enough there was a new one before me. The bit of good news was that I had had time to create a new fire morb and that its likely max HP had been updated to a little less: three hundred and twenty-four.
The battle followed the same script another two times: I got attacked three times and Eternal threw a fireball at the gabat. Until Daggers acted again for her hundred and twenty damage and I slashed the damn beast to death.
Unbound Deathlord: Challenge Page 28