I could hear Kodiak fighting behind me, but his health was low.
Time’s running out…I thought grimly. An idea popped into my mind. It was a Hail Mary, but I didn’t see any other choice.
I yanked my daggers to the side, releasing the wolf’s claws, and took a giant leap back. The creature roared and charged. Instantly, I activated Eye Gouge and prayed it landed.
My dagger shot forward, spearing the wolf in its right eye. I heard the sound of a debuff and felt my heart leap as the beast froze in its tracks, stunned for three seconds.
Wasting no time, I unloaded on it with everything I had. I used Rush to increase my speed, and followed up with Mutilate, Blade Flurry, and then a follow up of single strikes as fast as my arms would listen to me.
The werewolf’s health plummeted, reaching almost critical but not quite. The stun effect wore off and it leapt towards me. One of its claws burst with red light, a deadly vapor swirling around its arm.
A special ability?
The strike slammed into my chest, causing me to double over in agony. A debuff flickered in my vision.
Bleeding Wound. 55 Damage Per Second for 5 seconds.
With only 300 health remaining, that DoT would kill me even if I somehow managed to dodge every other attack the wolf aimed at me. And unless a miracle happened, there was no way I’d be able to use another charge from my Health Kit.
I looked up as the wolf slashed its claw through the air towards me. I managed to duck out of the way, and rolled forward, doing my best to ignore the shooting pain in my stomach, to avoid a follow up attack.
I landed behind the wolf and quickly activated Ambush, scoring a critical hit and driving its health down into critical.
A tick from Bleeding Wound ripped off more of my health. In four seconds I would be left with 5 health total, with two of the wolves still standing.
“Jane!” I heard Gehman shout from somewhere.
“Stay back, Gehman!” I snapped, leaping out of the way of another claw attack.
What happens when I die? I wondered. Where would I respawn? Would I respawn at all? Would I start to go Sunken? What happened if I, the one supposed to save everyone from the Dark World, went Sunken?
My mind was thick with the fog of uncertainty as another tick from the DoT ate away at my health. The wolf brought both claws down towards me for a blow that would spell the end for me. I threw my blades up above my head, blocking the strike before it hit me.
Another tick.
Kodiak shouted and I looked to my left to see him dodging and weaving all over the place, chipping away at his wolf with shallow blows and then leaping out of its attack range before it could land another hit. His health was well below half, but not yet critical.
You have to run! I realized as the fourth tick of Bleeding Wound hit me. There’s no other way!
If I stayed, I was a dead woman. There was no way to help myself, let alone Kodiak. A bolt of anger shot through me. Running was not something that D did.
But you’re not D anymore, I thought. You’re Jane. And now, you have to run.
So I did.
As the last tick of the debuff hit me, I tore away and began sprinting as fast as I could down the slope. There was a chance, a small one, that the wolf wouldn’t follow me, but as I glanced over my shoulder, I saw it was right on my heels.
I vaulted over a low boulder, then leapt over a crevice as the beast pursued me. Five hit points remained on my health bar. Basically anything could kill me.
The wolf snarled behind me, and despite my high quickness, seemed to be closing in. The terrain was just too uneven, forcing me to concentrate on where I was putting my feet, which slowed me down significantly. But the wolf—it was built for this. It leapt easily from rock to rock as it chased after me. I knew I only had a few seconds left.
“Jane!” I heard Gehman shouted. I looked up to see him standing in front of me at the edge of the trees, his smith’s hammer in his hand.
“No, Gehman!” I yelled back, waving a hand at him. “Get back!”
“I got this, Jane!” he said confidently. He dashed forward, faster than should have been possible for someone his level, and raced towards me, his hammer held slightly behind him, almost dragging along the ground as he prepared to swing.
He kicked off a fallen branch and launched himself high into the air.
“No!” I screamed as he soared over me, straight towards the werewolf. But it was too late. There was nothing I could do.
16
The Smith
I heard the sound of the blow ring out as Gehman brought his smith’s hammer down against the werewolf’s head. I’d expected the attack to miss, or simply not register, but to my utter shock, I heard the sound of a devastating critical attack and spun around just in time to see the werewolf drop to the ground dead.
“I did it!” Gehman shouted as the beast’s corpse exploded into soot and flame.
“Holy shit, Gehman!” I cried out, spinning around in time to see the celebratory gold and purple sprites that signified a level-up circling around him.
“I’m leveling up like crazy!” he shouted as I drew my crossbow and glanced up the slope where Kodiak was still fighting. He was dangerously low health, but so was the werewolf. I wasn’t a crossbow fan, but I had no choice. I took aim and let loose a bolt.
It streaked through the air toward the werewolf, striking it in the shoulder. It cried out and spun around to face me as I struggled to reload.
“Slow-ass thing!” I cursed as I fumbled to lock back the string. Kodiak jumped off a tall rock and brought his dagger down with both hands into the wolf’s back, scoring a critical hit that instantly destroyed its remaining health. With a death howl, the werewolf collapsed to the stony ground and burst into flames.
“Yeah!” Gehman shouted, throwing a fist high into the air. “Hell yeah!”
“Haha, Hell yeah!” I laughed, repeating his victory cry.
More sprites enveloped Gehman’s body—another level-up.
“The Smith has entered the building!”
“The Smith?” I asked, trying not to laugh as he twirled his hammer triumphantly.
“That’s right,” he replied with a smile. “Holy crap! Level 48!”
“Seriously!?” I replied. “Up from 24!?”
“Those things must be seriously high level!”
“Thanks, Jane!” Kodiak shouted down towards us. I smiled and began walking up the slope towards him.
“Wait a second,” Gehman said quickly. “It dropped some stuff!”
“Oh, right,” I chuckled. “Loot.”
Gehman bent down to the shimmering pile where the werewolf’s corpse had landed.
“Some Pareals, you can have those, D—uh, Jane,” he said. “A Tattered Hide and Ruined Werewolf’s Claw.”
“So helpful,” I groaned sarcastically. I reached Kodiak as he was using a Health Kit to restore his health to full. “Any loot from these two?”
“Junk,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Shit!” I cursed. “If those are the guys outside the castle, what are we going to find when we get in there?”
“There’s really no telling,” Kodiak replied. “For all we know these guys weren’t even supposed to spawn here. There’s a chance everything inside is lower level.”
“Yeah…” I muttered, not buying it. “Or we get in there and everything is max level, and we run out here and these guys have respawned and we’re screwed.”
I wasn’t being helpful at all, and I knew that, but the Dark World was really getting to me. I’d had a grip on what Carrethen once was and what to expect. But now everything had changed and I felt like a fish out of water. Kodiak was a great companion, and it was nice to see Gehman again, but they weren’t Jack. And what was worse, I still had no idea where to find him and couldn’t help but feeling like I wasn’t any closer than I was when I first arrived.
“So, you want to go back?” Kodiak asked. I glanced up at Chilgrave Castle, loo
ming over us, the single flickering flame in the top window. Gehman was assigning his experience points beside me, looking more confident than ever.
“I’m 48 now!” Gehman said with excitement. “202 Strength! My Mace is at 217! I’ll be able to help now!”
“I leveled up too,” Kodiak grinned. “82. You, Jane?”
“Nothing,” I replied, shaking my head. In Call of Carrethen, leveling up got progressively harder, and my experience bar was only about a quarter of the way to 127. What’s your health, Gehman?”
“Uhm…165,” he replied.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I have 210 more than you.”
“And I’m at 245…” Kodiak added.
“Okay, so I’ll stay out of the way!” Gehman protested. “I’ll stay in the back again and just come in to finish things off. If there are more high level mobs in there, I’ll be leveled up in no time!”
“Hmmm…” I thought, looking up at the castle again. There was no telling what was inside, but by the looks of thing, it wouldn’t be a bunch of low level spiders and undead. The whole place just stank of high level monsters, like an end game area that should have been found in some much more dangerous section of the world, but had somehow ended up here.
More backup issues, I thought.
“Well, there’s nothing behind us,” I said finally. “We could go back, waste a few more hours looking for a place to level, or…”
“We could go inside,” Gehman finished, his eyes lighting up.
“Okay, you need to cool it, Mr. Incredible,” I told him, growing angry. It was one thing for him to be excited and happy about leveling up, but an entirely different and possibly dangerous thing for him to be ready to rush into anything.
“What?” he replied indignantly. I stepped forward and glared at him.
“Okay, we’re going to go in there,” I told him. “But you’re going to listen to everything I say. Understand?”
“Yeah! Sure, Jane—!”
“And if I tell you to run—you run,” I continued, cutting him off. “Are you bound in Stoneburg?”
Gehman opened his mouth quickly, then stopped. “I uh…I actually don’t know.”
“Great,” I sighed, turning to Kodiak. “And what about you?”
“North of Stoneburg,” he said.
“So, if you die, I have to head all the way back to town to find you,” I groaned.
“There’s another problem, Jane,” Kodiak added. “We don’t know where you respawn when you die.”
He was right. Wintermute had dropped me into the wilderness and I hadn’t used a Bindstone since I arrived. If our group was killed inside Chilgrave Castle, there was a good chance we’d be scattered all over the world.
“Are there any Bindstones near here?” I asked. “Wilderness ones?”
“Not that I know of,” Kodiak replied.
“Great,” I groaned. “Okay, well—we go in and we see what the deal is. If it looks survivable, we’ll do some leveling, but if we run into anything we can’t handle, we get out. And if one of us dies…we regroup at Stoneburg. Sound good?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Kodiak nodded.
Yeah, not a very good one, I thought.
But what choice did we have? I needed gear, and Gehman and Kodiak needed levels. In fact, we all needed levels, considering the level cap had been raised to 252. If my friends were trapped in Sheol, being guarded by the Lord of the Flame, I wouldn’t be going up against him at half his level.
This sucks, I thought, glaring down at my terrible cloth newbie clothes.
“All right,” I said finally, starting up the slope towards the castle. “Let’s do this.”
17
The Houndmaster
As we stepped through the twisted wrought iron gate, I understood where Chilgrave Castle got its name. The temperature dropped as soon as we entered, low enough that our breath was visible in the air. Ice clung to the ground and walls and enormous shards hung from the ceiling like stalactites.
“Do you think those will fall when we walk under them?” Gehman asked hesitantly.
“Only one way to find out,” I replied, stepping out underneath one. Sure enough, the ice cracked above me and the enormous frozen spike came crashing down towards me.
I was expecting it, and was able to leap easily out of the way, but the ceiling was covered with them, which was sure to make our progress through the castle slower than anticipated.
“I wonder what other traps this place has in store for us,” Kodiak whispered.
We were standing in a quiet hallway that led deeper into the castle before forking to the right. There were no obvious enemies, so I took the lead and pressed forward, avoiding the ground beneath the massive icicles dangling precariously over our heads.
“See anything?” Gehman whispered.
“Not yet,” I said as we approached the corner. Someone took a wrong step behind me, and I heard the sound of ice cracking. I spun around just in time to see Gehman leaping out of the way as the deadly trap smashed into the ground where he had been standing.
“Careful, Gehman!” I scolded him, but I could see he already felt stupid, so I didn’t press him further.
I pushed on and finally reached the end of the hall. I peered around the corner and saw the hallway open up into a great hall—a library that appeared to have been torn apart long ago.
Rows and rows of bookshelves had toppled over, spilling their contents to the floor. Several chandeliers lay in pieces at the center of the room, and two great staircases on each wall led up to a mezzanine where somebody was standing with his back to us.
He held two short axes in each hand, and word simple studded leather armor with a dark blue tabard. Flanking him on either side were some kind of beast, most of their bodies hiding by the guard rail. I inspected him.
Houndmaster Gurrell—Level 78.
“Mini-boss?” Kodiak asked, coming up quietly beside me.
“That would be my guess,” I replied. “He’s got some sort of pets with him, but I can’t get a good look at them.”
“Lower level than him I bet,” he suggested. “Depending on his abilities, we could just focus them down first and then take him on.”
“See what he’s wearing?” I asked. “Studded leather. Something I could wear.”
“If he drops it,” Kodiak reminded me.
“If he drops it.”
“What about Gehman?”
“What about me?” Gehman asked. “I can help!”
I turned to Gehman. It was impossible to ignore the look of excitement on his face, and after all, he had leveled up significantly.
“What’s that armor you’re wearing, Gehman?” I asked him. It looked like nothing more than cloth with a leather smith’s apron over it, almost as bad as what I was wearing.
“Oh, this is just cloth starter clothes underneath,” he grinned. “But this is my Armored Blacksmith’s Apron! It may not look like much, but it has a 75 armor level.”
“That’s nothing,” I sighed. “Not for a level 78 mini-boss that we don’t even know what to expect from.”
“Come on!” Gehman protested. “I killed that werewolf back there!”
“You finished off a werewolf,” I snapped, correcting him. “Not to say you didn’t save my ass, but knocking off what’s left of his health and taking on a high level monster on your own are two entirely different things.”
I turned back to the Houndmaster and tried to get an inspect on the animals on either side of him, but they were too well hidden to do so. All I could see were the tops of their backs rising up and down with their breath.
“Okay, here’s how we’re gonna do this,” I said, turning back to my group. “I’ll unload with the crossbow and get as many shots on the Houndmaster as I can. Kodiak, draw the two…dogs or whatever they are, and I’ll see if we can get one of them down quickly. Then we can all gang up on the boss, but Gehman, if you start drawing aggro, you need to back off. Got it?”
“Got it!” h
e replied instantly, nodding his head. It wasn’t the world’s best plan, and I’d have killed to have Vayde back healing us, but we had to work with what we had. I pulled out my crossbow, loaded an arrow and took aim.
“Here we go,” I said as I fired.
The bolt slammed into the Houndmaster’s back and scored a critical hit, dealing significant damage. The beasts he had with him snarled loudly and as I began to reload, whirled around and leapt off the mezzanine towards us.
They were massive undead dogs, missing chunks of flesh all over their bodies. One’s ribs were exposed, and the other, the bone of its skull. They hit the ground in front of us, crashing through the mounds of books that lay on the floor. I managed to get another bolt loaded and aimed it at the first dog as it leapt towards me.
The shot slammed straight into its chest. Screeching, it hurtled back into one of the fallen bookcases, at least a quarter of its health gone. Apparently the dogs weren’t as tough as I was expecting.
“Kodiak!” I shouted, pointing to the fallen dog.
“Got it!” he yelled back, leaping off one of the fallen bookshelves, his dagger poised to strike.
I turned as the second dog leapt at me, narrowly managing to avoid its jaws. I spun around and used Ambush on its back before it turned around to face me. The blow was devastating. I followed up with Eye Gouge, stunning the snarling canine for a few seconds, the unloaded with everything I had. Its health began to plummet.
Gehman leapt into the fray, swinging wildly with his smith’s hammer, bludgeoning the dog’s exposed back. The dog clawed out at me, slicing into my arm and dealing a little damage, but it wasn’t enough. My next attack finished it off, and with a howl like rusted hinges being torn apart, the dog collapsed to the ground in a plume of fire and smoke.
“That’s one!” I cried out, spinning around to see the Houndmaster coming down the right staircase towards us. Kodiak was fighting the second dog, but he was doing fine. Within a few seconds he’d be ready to help us with the boss.
Lord of the Flame: A LitRPG novel (Call of Carrethen Book 2) Page 8