War Aeternus 2: Sacrifices

by Charles Dean

“This still isn’t fair and reeks of foul play,” Lee muttered, sugar-coating his dissatisfaction as best he could. There were other things he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure the translator would have an exact match for certain creative variants of ‘fish monger’ that he wanted to spew in their direction.

  Since the Devilkin still hadn’t shown up, and he was already ready for the fight, he decided to take a moment and look at his new creation’s stats while waiting.

  Glass Sword of Plus One: grants a bonus +1 Damage. Damage: 3. It’s Fragile. Handle with care.

  Glass Sword of Plus One? Is that because the skill is only plus one? Does that mean if I level up Glass Smithing to Initiate Level 2, it’ll allow me to make +2 weapons? Or does it progress at a slower rate? Despite not having the answers he needed, he was happy with the skill. It was the best piece of news he had received since he had arrived in the town. Compared to his ability to make money selling beer, this and any similar ability to craft could change everything. He would be able to change battles by providing superior weapons and armor to his people. This could turn the tides of a war. However, even as excited as he was about the future prospects of his talent, he was still rather depressed about the damage. For his level, most of the drops and weapons he received were nearly four times as good as this sword. The only saving grace was that, even with the low numbers, it gave him a ton of range he wouldn’t ordinarily have.

  “What? Did you think being a drunk was all I was good for? Did you not remember that I’m not just the god of alcohol, but also of crafts?” Augustus’s voice echoed through Lee’s head, stressing the last two words. “That’s right, you little brat: You’ve got my blood in you. You’re far craftier than the ordinary drunk.”

  Why do I feel like every compliment you’ve ever given someone was just a way for you to compliment yourself?

  “Mmm . . .Three imps. This should be a fun one for you,” Augustus whispered back jokingly as three waist-high, pointy-eared, red-skinned creatures straight out of a dungeon-crawler walked out of the gate on the opposite side of the arena. “Easy, right? No problem for you, I’m sure.”

  If you were me, how would you fight them? Lee asked. He was hoping to get some advice on how to handle the trio of long-tailed, beer-bellied miscreants who were busy cackling amongst themselves and talking in some weird, demonic dialect. Either the system’s translator didn’t work on some monsters, or it was just gibberish meant to distract the enemy. Their speech was not only high pitched and scratchy but also rushed, and the only thing that he could pick up on sounded like ‘Raka knee shoot!’ Or it might have been ‘Raka needs you’?

  “Me? Oh, that’s a tough one. Half of me would want to summon up one of my empty, giant barrels of sake--because you can’t drink only beer if you want to stay in shape--turn into a massive hamster and then run them down from within the safe confines of my huge, makeshift hamster wheel. The other half of me would want to treat any form of excessive exercise as an odious offense and just morph into a T. rex so that I wouldn’t have to worry about whether they were chewy or crunchy as I gobbled them up like so many housewives have promised to do but have never done with their chihuahuas.

  Lee had to stifle a laugh. You’re insane. You know that, right? Even if he was frustrated that his ancestor was of no help at all, the mental images were amusing.

  “You asked how I would do it, and I told you. Don’t get upset that I’m not used to thinking about fighting in that . . . weird sort of hope-and-hit, helpless flailing you call combat tactics.” Augustus must have actually morphed into the hamster because Lee could hear the pitch of his voice getting higher.

  “Why don’t you try changing shape? Who knows? You are my kid. If you could turn into a T. rex, this problem would be solved instantly.”

  Lee shrugged. It’s not the worst idea. He focused his mana on trying to change his shape and felt his energy circulate within the confines of his body. Just when he thought he started to feel a change, nothing happened. Do I not have enough mana? Lee wondered, and as he thought about it, he heard a horrendous laughter in his mind.

  “I can’t believe you actually tried it! Man, I thought you were intelligent! Come on . . . You gotta make me work for it a little more than that,” Augustus taunted. “Changing shapes is something any deity of my caliber can do. I’m the God of Alcohol and Crafts, not the God of Moose Men Helping Teenagers Defeat Brain Parasites. Seriously, it’s like you don’t think at all sometimes.”

  You’re an ass, Lee grumbled and grated his teeth. That little attempt had cost him time, and now he had even less to figure out what to do about the imps.

  “No, a hamster. But I did go as a donkey during my trip south of the border,” Augustus said.

  “What’s he doing now?” the quieter of the two gate guards asked

  “I think he’s praying to his god to protect him again, but who knows? It’s not like it’ll work. That fire of theirs burns everything to the bone, and water only causes it to erupt and grow faster,” the guard responded. “He’s a dead man this time for sure.”

  The other guard didn’t seem to share his buddy’s enthusiasm when he said, “You’re just hoping that because you don’t want to pay up.”

  Lee couldn’t help but think back to cooking fires. Wait, these people aren’t drilled over and over again at the start of every day for the first six years of education to stop drop and roll. If they got hit with a grease fire, they’d screw up and toss water on it. They wouldn’t know to either cover it in a substance like baking soda or sand or that you should just suffocate the flame instead of flailing about and letting it breathe. Lee felt a little bit relieved. Thank you, modern science.

  There was no way that his shield would be able to block every attack, but at least he now knew what to expect. He watched as the imps approached, still cackling like corny costumed witches on Halloween.

  “Alright, come on, you little bastards,” Lee taunted. Since he knew their method of attack, which was apparently an oil-based fire, he’d just use his glass shield to block as much as he could and stab at them. Despite the burning attack that he knew was coming, the imps didn’t look that threatening. They didn’t have sharp claws as far as he could see, they didn’t have thick spiked tails, and they didn’t even have jaws conducive to biting. If their mode of attack was just going to be fire attacks, he could put them out and heal his injuries back up. “Let’s do this!” he shouted, charging forward with his shield at the ready, not wanting to be as passive as he had been in the previous encounter. He was tempted to make glass walls that he could use for cover, but he didn’t want to use up all of his spirit in case he needed it to recover quickly.

  The imps attempted to correct his cocky attitude when all three opened their mouths and shot out fireballs simultaneously. Fire rushed toward Lee, missing him but still sending a heat wave that left at least one hair on his head singed in the process.

  What the hell? They weren’t kidding! How the heck am I supposed to stop, drop and roll when I’m surrounded by basketball-sized blobs of napalm? Lee switched course and ran to a nearby pillar rather than directly at the enemies. Okay, there are three of them, but they seem to move as one. If they stay together . . . Lee looked at his surroundings. Then I can use annoying arena tactic one, a warrior’s main tactic against any ranged fighter: running the heck away and hiding behind stuff.

  “That’s it, kid,” Augustus noted, seeing what Lee was up to. “And to think: your mother used to be so worried that all you did was play video games. ‘If he keeps playing those games, they’ll ruin his life,’ she said. I wonder what she’d think now.”

  Quiet, I need to focus. Lee did his best to silence his abusive ancestor’s backseat heckling. He flattened his back against the pillar. He switched his eyesight from his own to his golem’s, and he was able to see exactly what the imps were up to--and he watched as they stood in place for nearly five minutes. The wait was agonizing. He knew that he apparently had to kill them before sundown at the lat
est, or he would be shot to death by the guards watching over the colosseum, but he had a feeling that the bored crowds might call for an early execution if he just stood there playing hide and seek with the imps for too long as well.

  He took advantage of the fact he had two golems and used one of them to scan the audience while he waited. No sign of Ling, Amber or Miller . . . While disappointing, he figured it was for the best. If they showed up and cheered him on, it would only implicate them in whatever nonsense he had apparently gotten himself involved in. Lee didn’t think for a minute that they didn’t show up because they abandoned him. He kept searching, but the only familiar face he managed to recognize was the creepy guy who had been popping up everywhere, standing in the back row with a hood on as if it did anything to hide his face. Lee wanted to turn and look at him directly, to yell out at him and find out why the guy was following him, but that wasn’t possible. Not only would it have alerted the man to the fact that Lee knew he was being followed, but it would require Lee to round the pillar and potentially take a giant ball of fire to the face.

  I’ll just have to remember to hunt the guy down and milk him for information when I get out of here, Lee noted as he took a deep breath. He was starting to get bored, and a few jeers and boos from the Firbolgs in the seats let him know he wasn’t the only one. The only bright side of the wait was the fact that his mana had climbed back up by 2 percent. Considering how low the fight with the slime had left it, and subsequently how much mana had been eaten up making the small, two-foot blade of glass, he needed the break to restore the mana. This also left him with plenty of time to test exactly how fast his mana came back.

  System, can you make a timer appear so I can count out the passing seconds?

  You meet the parameters for me to assist you.

  Will you please do that? Lee asked after five seconds passed and nothing appeared.

  I will if you require it.

  Please do. Lee felt a little annoyed at having to be so specific.

  Certainly: 00:00

  Alright, start it now. Lee watched as the floating set of digits popped up in a blue box in front of him. He marked the time when his mana was restored one percent and then waited to see when it would tick again. Every two minutes and forty-four seconds. That means I will recover a little over twenty-one percent of my mana per hour. With Amber, Ling and Miller around, he hadn’t had time to do this magical combat stuff before. He was always around other people, and he had become reliant on traps and traditional weapons like swords and a bow to kill enemies. This was the first time he had needed to actually depend on his spells to survive since he arrived in this world.

  Well, with a little over two-thirds of my mana bar missing, it will only take four hours then to get it back. That shouldn’t be too hard at this rate. Either they probably don’t want to chase me around with their small legs, or they know what I’m up to . . . Or maybe they’re just so stupid they forgot that I was here the moment I stepped out of their vision.

  One of the guards started yelling at the imps impatiently.

  “You stupid imps! Kill the damn prisoner already!” one of them said.

  “Yeah, burn the little Human alive!” a Firbolg from the stands shouted, chucking what Lee was relatively sure was a tomato at him but without enough force or accuracy to even come close to hitting him.

  The tomato hit the ground with a splat, and the combination of verbal taunts and the thrown fruit were enough set the imps in motion. They started around the pillar in a wide arc, and fortunately for Lee, they stuck together in a small cluster just as he had expected. All he had to do was shimmy a few inches to the side at a time in order to match their movements and remain hidden from their line of sight. Since he was basically the center of the circle they were moving around, he was able to easily outmaneuver them with nearly zero effort.

  Can’t hit me if you can’t see me! Lee remembered exactly how annoying this used to be in video games when he was playing as a character with a bow. All an opponent had to do was find any large enough object that couldn’t be easily destroyed by the in-game mechanics and then keep rotating around it so that the opponent never could get the game to allow them to take the shot. With Lee being as stealthy as he could and using the golems to show him a third-person view of the entire arena, he was easily able to do it with such perfection that he wondered if the imps might suspect he wasn’t even there anymore.

  The game of cat and mouse continued on for another few minutes with one of the imps yelling at the other two and even going so far as to strike his companions as he urged them to move around the pillar faster and faster, but it was all to no avail. No matter how fast they ran or how often they changed direction, they couldn’t catch Lee. Finally, they gave up and did what they obviously feared most: they moved in closer, one wary foot at a time until they were right on top of the pillar.

  Lee didn’t run away from them this time. He circled straight to them as fast as he could, whipping out his sword and slicing it hard at the first imp to come into view. He wasn’t expecting a lot of damage given the sword’s low Damage stat, and the second it struck, the sword dug into the imp’s flesh and then shattered faster than a dropped smartphone screen. Little shards of glass flew everywhere, sinking into the imp’s flesh. The other two creatures panicked at seeing Lee appear so suddenly and so closely, and they opened their mouths and shot out two giant fireballs point-blank as if they were acting on reflex. Lee threw his shield up at the last moment, although he had truthfully been expecting something of the sort, and hoped that he would be able to mitigate some of the damage.

  The fiery liquid that sustained the fireballs splashed off his shield, splattering everywhere and even coating the imp he had just struck. The heat alone was enough to strip six hit points off Lee, but he had barely gotten hurt compared to the imp, which had been turned into something resembling a lit marshmallow. It screamed out shrilly in a combination of shock and surprise. Lee took the opportunity to quickly stick the imp one more time for good measure. The creature then bolted away before succumbing to its wounds and a scorching demise, collapsing in the sand a short distance away.

  You have killed a Devilkin. Your party has been awarded 1 Devilkin skin and 500 Experience. Your share of this is 1 Devilkin skin and 125 Experience.

  Lee pressed the attack, stabbing straight toward the next closest imp’s bloated beer belly with the remaining half of his crappy, broken sword. He wanted to avoid striking anything solid again out of fear of the remainder of his blade shattering completely, and sure enough, his sword sank in, easily ripping through the imp’s flesh when it was too slow to move. The imp twisted and turned, and its mouth opened and closed as it worked to process what was happening. Lee quickly pulled the blade out and pushed it in again in order to make sure that the job was done. In a desperate attempt to stop Lee, the imp grabbed onto his sword arm as the blade was entering his stomach and held it firmly. Then it exploded.

  You have killed a Devilkin. Your party has been awarded 1 Devilkin skin and 500 Experience. Your share of this is 1 Devilkin skin and 125 Experience.

  Lee gasped in horror, the adrenaline surging through his brain causing him to watch the whole thing in slow motion as the imp’s flesh separated and flames shot out. He raised his shield as quickly as he could, but the beast’s dying attempt to latch onto Lee’s sword arm made him too slow. Flames erupted outward from the combustible monster, covering over a third of his body. He closed his eyes as the last possible second, so he never saw the incinerating attack that burned through his gear and flesh alike, but he felt it. His pants were singed and scorched until they were little more than tatters and his right arm’s armor, as well as a good chunk of his chest and stomach protection, was simply destroyed.

  His shield cracked under the concussion of the explosion and shattered into his arm, riddling him with small glass shards and letting flames pass through unabated. These fires weren’t as intense as the original wave, but combined with the harm d
ealt by the ruined shield, he had taken 243 points of damage. Lee thanked his lucky stars that the slime had provided him the chance to heal up. If he had gone into the fight with anything less than full health, he would have been killed on the spot.

  You have killed a Devilkin. Your party has been awarded 1 Devilkin skin and 500 Experience. Your share of this is 1 Devilkin skin and 125 Experience.

  The bleeding damage over time caused by the glass shards disappeared before it even showed up, but the fire didn’t cease at the imp’s death. Lee was speckled with glass, and he didn’t have many hit points left, but he knew that he had to put out the flames at all costs. Without even checking to see if the third imp had suffered as badly as he did, Lee dropped to the ground and rolled about in the sand, putting out the flames while using his mana to patch up the wounds on his body and heal himself. It wasn’t incredibly effective, and he was actually taking damage from the shards on his body being pressed back into him as he rolled around, but it was still better than nothing.

  Once the fire was extinguished, he stopped and checked his condition. 19 hit points and 19 percent mana left. What are the odds? Lee looked at his bars and the area where the imp had self-destructed in his face. He caught sight of the other imp as well--or what remained of him. Looks like you didn’t do any better. He wanted to sympathize with the imp that had been taken out in his companion’s kaboom, but he just couldn’t. There wasn’t even a proper corpse left to sympathize: only broken bones, ash, and some still-burning flesh.

  If I lie here, do you think they’ll take me for dead? Lee didn’t even want to move as he slowly circulated his mana to restore his health. That’s a thing, right? I can just play dead, and they won’t make me fight again? Lee winced as he felt his mana expel a shard of glass from his cheek. He didn’t want to admit it, that he was partially shallow and egotistical as he healed himself up, but he also really didn’t want any of these cuts or tears to leave a scar on any place too visible.