Zack folded in a long painful cough, then wiped his tears with a manlike swipe of a hand, and tried to look heroic still.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“It’s the other way,” AliceX replied.
And so they went the other way.
This new path was different. Now they walked along a twisting underground passage, stalactites and stalagmites framing it like dinosaur teeth. Glowing mushrooms were around once more, and Zack cut ten or so of them with his Copper Dagger. They met more Rats on their way, a few swarms even, and these were no longer called Sewer Rats, these were Feral Rats, which, as their name suggested, were stronger or at least had more mettle in them.
However, Zack never wanted to check this out for himself. Now as they had some newly crafted Nightshade Potions combined with the outstanding Ranger skills AliceX possessed, their party could simply sneak past the new encounters, hugging stony walls of the passage and seeking alternative routes where the pesky rodents could not detect them.
“Be happy it’s not skeletons at least,” the golden-braided Elven companion told him. “They are found in these underground catacombs no less often than rats or spiders are. Except they’re worse. Far, very far worse in our case.”
“Worse how?” Zack asked.
“How do you think? Your dagger? My arrows? Piercing damage, both. The worst kind of damage to fight them with; those Skeletons are as good as immune to it completely. To really kill a skeleton, you need a Blunt class weapon. Something heavy, like a mace or a hammer. Right?”
“I hope they’re not resistant to Potions of Dizziness,” he said.
“Like you’ve got any left. And they’d be immortal anyway. Like zombies in some games. Always getting up no matter how many times you stun them. I hate it when some enemies are like that. Don’t you? No, I mean, with Rats, we’re simply dead. With Skeletons, we’d be DEAD dead.”
“Look, I can kick them apart with my boots I think,” Zack said, hoping his new fear wouldn’t show. “I mean, what is a Skeleton? A heap of walking bones. They’re only scary because it’s like a zombie, a walking corpse. Otherwise they’re fragile.”
“Oh, some of them are completely ethereal, transparent,” AliceX told him. “They’re like these glow-in-the-dark stick figures made of neon. Complete physical resistance. Poisons too. Spells only. They’re like ghost skeletons.”
“Ghost skeletons?” Zack snorted. “How does this even make sense?”
“Well, they’re like, skeletons of dead Mages.”
“Ah. Well it helps, yes.”
“Look, it’s fantasy. I understand it may seem real now for you so you’re looking for realism everywhere. But it’s, like, canon. Ghostly skeletons, so what? Didn’t Tolkien have them or something?”
“I think the first living skeleton ever is as old as maybe Dark Ages,” Zack said. “Death was usually portrayed as a skeleton.”
He quickly regretted he said it. An endless awkward silence fell, each one of them listening to the water splashing somewhere nearby and the sound of their own footsteps.
They entered into a huge underground grotto, the place where the space opened up some, and five huge pillars of standing rock loomed around Zack and AliceX. Looking a bit artificial because of their defiance of gravity and smart placement, they still were no less impressive. A massive column of daylight hung in the air between them, petals of some trees growing above and falling through the grate over their heads. A cracked marble basin of sorts could be found underneath this shifting column of light, but it was empty of water, unlike the cave system surrounding it. A small pedestal could be seen in the middle of the basin, with a copper machine mounted on top of it, equipped with a lever of peculiar design.
“Dwarves of course?” Zack nodded at the contraption as they approached it. He stomped his boots. It was pleasant to walk on marble after walking on uneven rock and splashing through water for so long. He said, “Every fantasy RPG now always has these steampunk devices, did you notice? And they’re always by Dwarves. And those Dwarves are always long gone, an extinct race. No one likes playing as a Dwarf it seems, but everyone likes steampunk.”
“Be careful,” AliceX said. “I don’t like it.”
“Come on,” Zack said. “Can’t you see? We’re supposed to climb up these rocks. Maybe jump a bit from one to another, but nothing too complex. It’s the exit. And this machine, well it opens the…”
He pulled the handle. The machine creaked, then started to clank and ratchet like mad, and the iron grating above their heads slowly parted, letting in more sunlight and falling petals.
“And there you go!” Zack said. “You are too nervous.”
That’s when the bones started raining from above. And skulls. And ribcages. All of them human. Some of them charred, some still wearing pieces of rotten cloth. Zack could swear he also spotted a couple rusty daggers clunking down, and one mace.
“They’re just decorative, relax,” Zack said. “To show you there’s a dangerous world up ahead. You know. An atmospheric thing…”
“Zack!” AliceX shouted, running into him and trying to push him away from the machine. “Zack, CAREFUL!”
Clack! Zack heard a sound and felt the marble shift underfoot, as if the entire bowl was a huge button he had just depressed.
Magical Trap Lvl 7 detected!
Magical Trap Lvl 7 reveals Wind from Below!
A whirlwind suddenly rose up in between the columns, and quickly became a small tornado, picking up bones and skulls and rusty weapons and swirling them around in a wide circle. A myriad of silver sparks, the entire galaxy of them, materialized all around Zack, penetrating the swirling bones and stitching them together, until he realized what was happening.
Wind from Below:
A whirlwind of dark forces stirring the old bones and coffins.
Spawns an army of undead.
“Skeletons,” Zack gasped.
“Now we die,” AliceX said.
The solid silver tornado seemed then to break and flow apart into three whirling blotches of color – one orange, one blue, and one green. The blotches concentrated into shapes, and three more skeletons popped out, these ones ethereal and see-through, their eyes and open maws shimmering in the air like ghostly neon. One of these three immaterial skeletons seemed to be filled to the brim with splashing flame, its reds and oranges sloshing around in the Mage Skeleton’s skull. Its hands were on fire. The second Mage Skeleton was all crystals and ice, its hands emanating magical cold. The third transparent creature seemed to be seeping with poison. As this last Mage Skeleton looked at Zack, it screeched, and its hands burst in green acidic flames.
Other freshly spawned dead things, a whole army of them, were pressing from all around.
You encountered an Army of Skeletons!
Fire Skeleton Mage Lvl 7 Frost Skeleton Mage Lvl 7
Skeleton Lvl 6 Skeleton Lvl 6 Ice Skeleton Mage Lvl 7 Skeleton Lvl 6
Skeleton Lvl 6 Skeleton Lvl 6 Skeleton Lvl 6
WHOOSH! Zack expected a rocket of poison tossed by the green Skeleton Mage, but was hit by a common fireball instead. He was instantly on fire, and burned, his armor stinking of burning canine hair. Zack felt like he was being submerged in poison ivy.
Zack was hit by Fire Skeleton Mage Lvl 7 and lost 11 hit points
Zack lost 5 hit points to Fire damage!
Zack lost 3 hit points to Fire damage!
Zack was hit by Ice Skeleton Mage Lvl 7 and lost 7 hit points
WHOOSH! The Ice Skeleton Mage froze him next, and Zack could do nothing, feeling the heart-chilling cold piercing his arms and legs. At least the fire is gone, he thought, sluggishly watching as the Poison Skeleton Mage swung its bony arm at him, ready to discharge that green rocket Zack was expecting for so long and now was about to receive.
If Zack was to roll his eyes all the way to the right, he could see AliceX, a quick beautiful ghost stepping out of shadows then back in, assessing the sit
uation on their compact battlefield. An idea struck him. Zack moved his eyes in the other direction and instantly saw this flower in the greenery hanging from a standing rock nearby.
He looked at AliceX again. She saw him being targeted by the Poison Mage Skeleton, visibly sighed, and nocked a special flaming arrow. The arrow struck the green translucent creature and broke through its Physical Resistance, setting the skeletal Mage on fire. Two simple Skeletons, one carrying a mace, another a long sword, converged on AliceX from behind.
Poison Mage Skeleton Lvl 7 was CRITICALLY hit by AliceX and lost 7 hit points
Poison Mage Skeleton lost 4 hit points to Fire damage!
Poison Mage Skeleton lost 3 hit points to Fire damage!
AliceX was hit by Skeleton Lvl 6 and lost 5 hit points
AliceX was hit by Skeleton Lvl 6 and lost 4 hit points
AliceX was hit by Skeleton Lvl 6 and lost 6 hit points
“Ow,” she said as their blows rained down on her, producing metallic sparks often, but once or twice drawing blood. “Ow. Ow. Sorry, this arrow was the last one of these beauties. No more magical attacks. A five-minute timeout.”
The Poison Mage Skeleton did throw his ball of green – which turned out to work exactly like a Noxious Grenade, Zack discovered, except it blew up on contact. Thanks to AliceX’s flaming arrow, this first poison rocket missed him and crashed into a rock pillar, leaving a wet smear of glowing greenish ooze. Zack reached for the same rock, not for the smear but to harvest a Nightshade…
Items Harvested:
Nightshade 15 gold
Nightshade (X2) 30 gold
Sulfur 25 gold
“Sulfur!” Zack exclaimed. “Look, Alice, here’s another… Nightshade Potion… or whatever.”
At some point, he was scared he forgot the proper recipe name amongst all the hassle, like some wizard who forgot an important incantation because of his old age, remembering it by everything except for its proper name.
Items Lost:
Nightshade (X3)
Sourberry (X3)
Items Gained:
Potion of Nightshade
Finally the thin crystal-shaped flask full of deep velvet glow filled Zack’s hand. He popped the potion open, and tossed the flask contents like a thin veil over AliceX, covering her in ever-lasting shadows. Her stun finally gone, the Elf Ranger could move once again.
“What’s the point of this?” AliceX said. “I can barely harm them, don’t you see!”
“Hold them back for a while!” he shouted. “Just keep luring them away or push them back!”
“OMGee,” she responded, darting back and forth between the Skeletons, who were slower now, and dispensing one blow after another, none of them affecting the monsters’ HPs but pushing them around a bit and keeping them busy at least.
The Green Poison Mage Skeleton happily locked on Zack when Zack approached it.
WHOOSH! Zack avoided another Fireball tossed by the Fire Skeleton. The creature snapped at him, then it was lured away by a nearly useless AliceX’s arrow which thonked harmlessly into its eye socket, caught on fire and went up in smoke in a few seconds.
Items Harvested:
Sulfur 25 gold
The Poison Mage Skeleton tossed one more grenade of his, leaving one more smear of sulfur for Zack to collect. Then it was another Ice Mage rocket of ice that found him – almost like it had a homing mechanism of some kind. Zack froze again, and shouted out when another poison grenade landed on top of him. It burned much worse than Fireballs, and the Poison Damage stacking overtime threatened to deplete Zack’s hit points completely, which was something he could feel, reeling from a mind-numbing whiff of rotten-egg smell multiplied by a hundred.
Zack felt like his own life was about to abandon him if he wouldn’t move-move-move, fighting the enemy he never had a chance to defeat.
Items Harvested:
Sulfur 25 gold
Yes, it was incredibly silly, but the remaining bit of Sulfur he needed was collected right at the moment when the poison grenade exploded.
“Firebomb,” Zack said, and the commotion of ten or so Skeletons, three of which were ghostly Skeleton Mages, seemed to grow quieter to him as the heaviness of the metal bomb filled his hand. “Alice!”
She looked at him. A Skeleton’s blade struck her, and the Elven Ranger fell to her knees, nearly dead.
“Stay put,” Zack said. “Please, do not respawn, whatever happens. You hear me? This is the only way to do it.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You are crazy.”
“Promise you will not respawn!” Zack shouted.
“Just do it,” AliceX said, dispensing her last arrows from kneeling position, unshielded against many blows raining on her. She was triggering Skeletons to attack her instead of Zack, to converge on her position and bunch up.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted, tossing the Firebomb right at her feet, into the middle of the fray.
BOOM! The explosion was massive; its sound so loud Zack was shell-shocked again, and his ears rang.
AliceX ended up worse. Her character screamed and died in agony right before his eyes. Zack felt nauseous sweetness rising from his stomach, but then it passed.
Because the plan had worked.
All the Skeletons were thrown apart and broke back into a pile of disconnected bones, and the explosion of his Firebomb snuffed them all out like a flame. There were flames, also: the three Skeleton Mages, resistant to the physical component of the damage, caught on fire instead. The ethereal Mages turned out to be extremely fragile, and the flames ate their HPs up in a few seconds. They were ghost skeletons, after all.
For defeating your enemies, you earn 178 XP
LEVEL UP!
Congratulations!
Your Alchemist is now Level 9!
+1 to Perception
+1 to one of the skills:
Dash - Sneak >Alchemy<
They were ghosts. Of a kind. This was what Zack had hoped for.
“Do not respawn on me,” he said to a little kawaii corpse of his Elven companion. “Please, Alice, please, do not respawn on me!”
Zack darted towards the pile of bones, towards the spot where he remembered the Fire Skeleton Mage was standing, and dug in like a dog, throwing hipbones and skulls and ribcages aside in fury, digging into them in order to look below, underneath.
There it was, he saw. A little smear of ghostly greenish slime, just like something every ghost must drop on dying.
Items Harvested:
Ectoplasm (50 gold)
“Don’t respawn on me!” he said to AliceX’s corpse again while running past it. “Please, please, please don’t respawn on me!”
He sifted through another pile of bones, around the area from where the Poison Skeleton Mage was tossing his grenades at him. The smear left by this creature was far bigger.
Items Harvested:
Sulfur X3 (75 gold)
Ectoplasm (50 gold)
The last bit of ectoplasm, from the Ice Skeleton Mage, was especially hard to find, because it was tossed over the rim of the marble bowl with the grate-releasing machine on top of it. The bowl now was full of broken bones, dead AliceX in the middle.
Items Harvested:
Ectoplasm (50 gold)
He rushed towards her, hands outstretched, like a divine healer.
“Resurrect Ally!” Zack spat out. “Please! Come on! Resurrect Ally! Resurrect!”
At first, nothing happened. Then, with Zack already despairing, the head of AliceX lolled to a side. He touched her cheek. It was warm.
The next second, the little Elf Ranger’s corpse burst up with sunlight, and floated above the ground, seeping with energy and reabsorbing it, the human player being called back into the shell she had just vacated.
Finally, AliceX opened her eyes.
“You didn’t respawn,” Zack said.
“I had to reset the timer for the fourth time,” she said. “What took
you so long?”
They climbed up the rocks, then through a stony well, round as a stovepipe, iron clamps circling it in a clumsy spiral going up, up, and away. When Zack, then AliceX, made it out the drainage fall, a quiet rain was falling outside, whispering through the trees.
“I know the place,” AliceX said.
“I recognize it, too,” Zack responded. “It’s the port village near the capital.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a boat that takes you into The Swamplands docked here, isn’t there?”
“Yup,” she said.
“Alright,” Zack replied. “Goodbye then. Thanks for all your help. I have to go.”
AliceX looked at him, her features tormented. “Go where?” she said. “How about me? You want to leave me now, huh? After I waited so patiently for you to bring me back?”
He shrugged and smiled, then nodded at the road sign pointing the way towards the port village. As Zack walked towards it, she walked beside him, and never argued about following him anymore.
Chapter 11: The Chosen One
The Swamplands were in flames, smaller and bigger fires raging all around them. One veil of mist behind the other towered in front of Zack and AliceX, all of them fed by the smoke from the marshes endlessly burning and exploding below, bright geysers of ignited swamp gas like flamethrower discharges from under the ground, fiery columns of titanic size.
Zack felt every heat wave with his entire body, every time an eruption of flames burst from under the ground, blasts of summer-hot air in the middle of the autumn cold of the Swamplands. The burning marsh smelled as well, and the stench was sky-high, and disgusting at that. It’s probably every true hero’s destiny, Zack thought. To smell unpleasant things over and over again, and still move forward, without moaning. This was a talent neither Bilbo Baggins nor Harry Potter seemed to need, an ability to repress or switch off their feeling of smell, all the way along their heroic adventures. Zack certainly didn’t feel like a fantasy character. He felt closer to a World War One soldier, or maybe Vietnam, trampling through ditches full of mud, all the world around him ablaze and his life gone totally down the drain, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The Alchemist of Aetheria: A LitRPG Adventure Page 18