Labyrinth to Tartarus: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 3)

by C. J. Carella

  “Meanwhile, Korgam is going to go to Akila and bring back more Dwarves. We spoke about it before we took the Stronghold. Stuff keeps coming up, but that trip has to happen soon.”

  Nadia nodded. “And you’re still worried about the Nerf Herders.”

  “Yeah. Kaiser Wrecker is dangerous. I don’t know how many Eternals he’s killed already, but he definitely had no problems with zeroing me out just because I didn’t jump at the chance of joining him. Guy is a psycho.”

  “Does it matter?” the Sorceress asked. “We already have at least one of his agents here. And trust me, keeping a poker face while No-Name’s around is getting to be a chore. Luckily we don’t cross paths very often.”

  “Only you, Tava and Kinto know about the Girl with No-Name. I don’t think she knows that we know.”

  “You could be right. She could have left town at any time, and by now she has learned just about everything there is to know about us. The Domain, how many Eternals we have, and so on.”

  “She wants more than what she’s got. But I figure when the caravan to Akila leaves, she’ll be on it, or follow right behind it. Especially if I’m in it.”

  “Maybe you can work out a truce with the Herders. Stay out of each other’s way.”

  “I can’t do that, even if Kaiser was willing to do that. When I swore my oath, I took responsibility for what other Eternals do here. Kaiser is going to kill a lot of innocent people if someone doesn’t stop him. I agreed to be that someone. A lot of the Eternals in the Herders are there against their will, too. Screw that.”

  “So, what’s the plan? You’re not going to bring a super-assassin along on the way to Akila, are you?”

  “We are leaving for Akila in no more than two weeks, hopefully sooner. Korgam has to set things up before he goes and leaves Egg in charge of the operation here. A few merchants in Orom will join us when we do; they don’t want to risk traveling on their own. That gives me some time for Plan B.”

  “The Dungeons,” Nadia said, not sounding very enthused.

  “Well, one of them. I want to get a couple of levels and better gear. For me and everyone. A Dungeon run is the quickest way to do that.”

  “Who’s going?”

  “You, of course, if you want. Olaf Goode, who needs the levels. I’m planning on leaving him in charge of the Domain while I’m gone.”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty smart and, more importantly, knowledgeable. And seems to be on the up and up.”

  “He is on the up and up. Hard to lie to me when I have Advanced Mana Sight up.”

  Nadia grimaced at that. “That’s great. Mind reading. Not ripe for abuse at all.”

  “I only use it when I have to. I don’t need to know everything about everybody.”

  “Just be careful, Hawke. Too much power can mess with anyone’s head. And the gods or whatever keep heaping more of it on top of you, for some reason. Maybe to see how much you can take before you break.”

  “Saturnyx will keep me honest. She’s like an angel on my shoulder, except a lot scarier.”

 

  Nadia began to say something, but the echoing sound of a war-trumped interrupted her. That was the sign for imminent attack!

  Sometimes, you didn’t need to find trouble. It went and found you instead.

  Five

  Hawke and Nadia rushed towards the courtyard, followed closely by Gzzatt, and found the gates were still open, allowing dozens of Arachnoids to enter. From the looks of it, the entire neighboring village and quite a few were-spiders from other places were being let in. They were mostly workers and hatchlings, being herded into one of the vacant barracks, under the watchful eyes of the summoned minions. The twenty human guards in the garrison were manning the battlements. The sight forcibly reminded Hawke of how few troops he still had. A gigantic Darkness Guardian came thundering out of a barn-sized building where it spent its down time soaking in the shadows. He could summon a couple more, but the town’s Mana reserves were still low after upgrading the Death Temple.

  “What is going on?”

  “The Arachnoids just showed up. Claimed monsters are tearing through the mountain and attacking them,” First Sergeant Don Juan said from up one of the battlements. As he spoke, he kept glancing down the tunnel, his longbow held in one hand. The Eternal was an Elf, so he could communicate with the locals a little more easily than most. “I let them in.”

  “You did the right thing,” Hawke replied. The Arachnoids were now in a formal alliance with his Domain. Offering them sanctuary in the face of a new threat was part of the deal. “Stay on the walls. Remember to use the Inscription spells if you have to.”

  Hawke had spent some time using his new Inscription ability to leave several pre-cast spells all around the Stronghold and selected areas of Orom. Any guard on duty could activate them by speaking code words, and the spells included a variety of offensive and buffing spells, as well as several heals and a couple of summons, all ready to be deployed at a word from one of the guards. There weren’t as many as he would have wanted because the process was time- and Mana-intensive, but anybody who tried storming the walls would be in for a big surprise.

  Nadia was speaking with the terrified Arachnoids. Hawke left her to it and walked through the gate. More Arachnoids were pouring in, singly or in small groups. He could tell that the second wave of refugees came from more distant villages; the Murk people didn’t wear much clothing other than armor and cloaks, but they used bits of jewelry and other decorations to identify their tribal affiliation. The only Warriors he saw were wounded; he spotted one that was missing two of its legs and one arm. An expectant mother – the egg sacks on her lower abdomen were a dead giveaway – and a male worker were dragging the Warrior’s limp body on a travois made of hardened resin-like excretions rather than wood.

  “I can help him,” Hawke told them in Common Fey, motioning at them to stop.

  They did, and he knelt over the Warrior. Third level, with only two Health left out of his normal forty-nine, and several ‘bleeding’ and ‘crippled’ status notifications floating over him. Not good. He cast Lesser Healing, his most potent medical spell, on the Arachnoid. The bleeding stopped but the missing limbs remained gone. However, he was surprised to see the beginnings of limbs growing out of the mutilated segments.

  Saturnyx explained.

  Hawke nodded and explained the situation to the Warrior’s friends or relatives. He had fixed broken and paralyzed limbs with that spell before, but none that had been bitten or torn off. It was good to know that he could help even those injuries.

 

  “Remind me to pick those up or find a teacher.”

 

  “I’m still a low-level scrub, I hear you,” Hawke grumbled as he reached the end of the main tunnel, stopping to heal any badly injured Arachnoid refugees along the way. There weren’t many of them; whatever had happened didn’t seem to leave many survivors along the way.

  Hawke reached a tunnel junction just in time to see Korgam Stern running up from another passage. The Dwarven Shield Master was moving at a brisk pace despite wearing over a hundred pounds of heavy Masterwork Quality plate armor that made him look like an oversized silver-and-green fireplug. A war-hammer that crackled with magical electricity was in his right hand; a shield almost as tall as he was hung from his left arm.

  “It appears I reached you in time,” Korgam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Invaders tore their way through a cave wall we were exploring. Tarakken, they are, Elemental monsters that burrow through rock. Someone has stirred a nest of them.”

&
nbsp; Hawke had never heard the word, but he could imagine monsters that could carve their own tunnels could also kill and maim Arachnoids by the truckload.

  “Where are the others?”

  The Stern Company currently had seven members; three of them were Dwarven Eternals, two of whom no longer remembered enough of their life on Earth to be anything other than the characters they had created, back when they had thought they were playing a game. Their dim memories of a world of electricity, cars and the Internet were useless to them; they had become Dwarves and the Sterns had taken them under their wing.

  “They are holding our camp. More creatures were headed towards it. I decided the lads could hold them off on their own, so I came to warn ye, and to lend a hand.”

  Nadia and Gzzatt appeared next to Hawke in a burst of blue Mana; her Jaunt spell allowed her and one passenger to teleport up to fifty feet at a time. “Mind if I join in?”

  “What did the Arachnoids tell you?” Hawke asked as the three Adventurers followed the trail of fleeing refugees and abandoned possessions leading deeper into Arachnoid territory. The spider people understood and could utter a few simple Common Fey words, but having a detailed conversation with them was tough.

  “Most of the civilians only knew monsters were coming. An advisor to one of the chiefs told me that the monsters come from a town down and to the northwest from us. I was there on my diplomatic tour; it’s one of the biggest settlements they’ve got, built next to a major underground river that empties out into the plateau.”

  “Any idea why the attack happened?”

  “The town – its name roughly translates to Big Web, by the way – has been expanding. Maybe they dug up something they weren’t supposed to.”

  “Tarakken have been known to slumber for centuries,” Korgam explained as they entered the main tunnel headed to the town. “They are demi-elementals, creatures of Earth who are not bound by the limitations of creatures of flesh and bone. The Troglodytes and some Dwarven kingdoms keep them as beasts of burden. These were likely abandoned by their former masters and slept away the ages until some unlucky soul awakened them.”

  Bands of Arachnoids from other tunnels came out. These were Warriors led by Shamans, marching off to deal with the invaders. After Nadia explained the situation, they formed up behind the Adventurers. Most of them were below fifth level, which might be a tad low when dealing with monsters that had just woken up from a multi-century nap. Nadia told them to act as support for Hawke and Korgam, and from the way they hung back, they listened to her. Her title might be mostly ceremonial, but Nadia had earned a lot of respect by bringing peace to the mountains.

  They picked up the pace to a steady six-minute mile or so; the Arachnoid forces struggled to keep up but lacked the high-level Attributes to do so and were soon left behind. Following Nadia’s directions, the small party left the main thoroughfare and took a descending tunnel to reach Big Web. The sounds of fighting echoed in the distance: metal on metal, angry or terrified buzzes and clicks, and heavy stomping and crunching sounds that didn’t bode well for the spider-people. Hawke included all four Adventurers into a Party, raising everyone’s level by two, among other bennies. The group cast their buffing spells on themselves and each other as they advanced. Hawke’s auras gave him magical armor, a heal-over-time, a damage absorption force field, and the ability to heal by inflicting damage with his weapons, among other things. Nadia had several Paladin spells that provided as much survivability for her, and Korgam’s shield-based abilities made him almost impossible to kill. Gzatt strengthened himself with an Elemental ability that temporarily turned his exoskeleton into stone. All four were glowing brighter than torches, each in a slightly different color, when they reached the settlement.

  The tunnel opened up into a vast underground space, over two hundred feet wide and with a clearing a good seventy or eighty feet high. A walled town filled most of the cavern floor, or at least it used to. One of its walls had been reduced to rubble, along with many stone houses nearby. Large shapes, some the size of horses and a few as big as elephants, prowled through the town, hunting the scuttling figures of Arachnoids.

  The Tarakken looked like the bastard children of lobsters, scorpions, and squids. Their armored bodies were bright yellow and ended in sting-topped tails. Eight segmented legs allowed them to move with surprising speed. A cockroach-like head with long cutting mandibles was flanked by two huge pincers and six worm-like limbs, each ending in an open maw. Just as the trio entered the cavern, Hawke saw one of the tentacles catch a fleeing Arachnoid with a swing that sent the poor bastard flying until he smashed into the nearest cave side. From the way the body deformed under the initial impact, the Arachnoid was dead before he hit the wall. Another tentacle sucked away the remains like some biological vacuum cleaner.

  Greater Tarakken (Demi-Elemental, Earth and Life)

  Level 15 (Elite)

  Health 3,000 Mana 600 Endurance 1200

  Young Tarakken (Demi-Elemental, Earth and Life)

  Level 12

  Health 600 Mana 120 Endurance 600

  If nobody stopped them, those giant lobster things were going to wipe out the entire settlement.

  Six

  “I count seven,” Nadia said. “Two big ones and five slightly less big ones.”

  “Yep. Korgam, do you think you can call them to us?”

  “I will try, Hawke Lightseeker,” the Dwarf replied. “Seven may be beyond my power to provoke, however.”

  The Shield Master stepped forward, raised his war-hammer, and shouted with inhuman loudness. The Cry of Challenge reached all the Tarakkens in the cave, causing them excruciating pain for a few seconds and inciting them to attack the noisy stranger who had interrupted their fun. Taunt abilities weren’t much good against intelligent targets, although some could force people to (briefly) attack their users even when they knew it wasn’t the best thing to do. Against animal-intelligence critters, they did wonders. All seven monsters stopped on their tracks, turned towards Korgam, and began to skitter toward him. He had caught their attention, all right.

  Hawke stood by the Dwarf’s side and called for reinforcements. A Darkness Guardian that matched the big Tarakken in size if not quite in power arrived in a black cloud and charged towards one of the big critters. It had no head, four elephant-like legs, and a mess of tentacles ending in pincers, making it an ideal dancing partner for one of the Earth-based monstrosities.

  Darkness Guardian (Shadowling)

  Level 14 Elemental (Elite)

  Health 1400 Mana 700 Endurance 1400

  The Guardian was Hawke’s most powerful pet, but had the drawbacks of being usable only once a day, and for no more than fourteen minutes. The fight was unlikely to last that long, though. And he wasn’t going to let it do all the work, either. As his pet thundered forward, Hawke dropped a Death Cyclone on the monsters, followed by a Fireball and a Burning Light. The three area spells caught multiple creatures in their blast radius, and their gross damage should have been enough to destroy the younger monsters, but reality was always more complicated than theory. The Tarakken had strong resistance values against Elemental attacks, so only a fraction of the damage went on to drain their Health. In the Realms, it was hard to deliver a one-shot kill on anything close to your own level.

  Hawke wasn’t alone, of course. Nadia’s own spell rotation (Fireball, Ice Storm, Ice Shards) inflicted even more damage; one of the lesser monsters was unlucky enough to be caught by all six spells and literally exploded under the barrage of Elemental energies. That left six. One of the big monsters and the Darkness Guardian tore into each other in a brutal flurry of tentacles, pincers and crashing bodies. The other Greater Tarakken went straight for Korgam; its Health had only been reduced to 2,374 by their first volley.

  The five monsters tried to surround the Dwarf and overwhelm him, but Gzzatt guarded one of his flanks, striking one of the small beasts with his glowing two-handed sword. Hawke summoned a second pet – a bear-shaped Nature’s Gu
ardian that wasn’t terribly effective as a fighter but could run interference against one of the monsters – just as Nadia called upon her six pet spiders, another ability granted by her Vestments. The additional pets kept the monsters busy, allowing Hawke to tear into a single target with everything he had. A combination of spells and the Saturnyx Twins soon took care of another Young Tarakken; after making sure the remaining three were occupied, Hawke used Twilight Step to teleport behind the giant monster fighting Korgam and backstab it for a good fifth of the critter’s Health.

  The demi-Elemental beasts weren’t pushovers, however. Without turning away from the Dwarf, the Greater Tarakken delivered a series of tentacle strikes against the annoying Half-Elf behind it. Hawke nimbly dodged two swings, but the third one landed squarely on his left shoulder. Despite the pauldrons’ protection, the blow knocked him down to one third of his Health. He healed himself and rolled away from a fourth blow, and countered with a dual-cast Hammer of Light that burned a hole through the segmented carapace protecting the monster. The creature staggered; on the other side, Korgam’s war-hammer had crushed one of its pincers, crippling it, and Gzzatt had delivered several devastating blows with his hacking sword. Things were looking up.

  A moment after he had that thought, the Tarakken’s stinger punched right into his back.

  Warning! You have been poisoned!

  You will take 75 Life damage per second for 25 seconds.

  Since his Elemental resistance was 75%, that poison had a base damage of 300! Nothing normal could survive that. Between that and the 104 damage the actual hole the stinger had made in his back, Hawke was hurting.

  I’m on it, Nadia told him through their sword link.

  Putting his life in her hands, Hawke stayed on the offensive. Two tentacles and the stinger tail went flying off when he landed criticals on all three limbs. Each hit he inflicted also restored a bit of Health, courtesy of his Healing Blows spell. It wasn’t much, but between that, his aura and Nadia’s Paladin abilities, he kept breathing and fighting. Magical healing mitigated a lot of pain as well, so he only felt the poison burning him with a fraction of its intensity, which still made him want to roll over and die. He kept going instead. One could ignore a lot of pain by focusing on the task at hand.