“Yeah, both.” Rowan saw no reason to lie there.
“Yet you got a Path of Tribulation as a newbie.”
His brain dispensed an appropriate lie smoothly, though perhaps a tad too elaborately. “It was Gabby’s. She was able to choose a partner. She’s the romantic type and the AI saw fit. She’s got a whole library of romantic novels. Girls, you know?” Rowan smirked.
He mimicked the smirk. “I know.”
He bought it. Excellent. Rowan sent Gabrielle a message just in case if the lie was questioned.
Rowan Black (To Gabby LeMort): Say our boss ascensions and my dark mark was from your Path of Trib. Remember that urn in the Necro altar I lied about to Ambiguous?
She replied in a half second.
Gabby LeMort: Yup, and yup. Gotcha loud and clear.
Rowan Black: Good. Also say you’ve got a library of romantic novels if anyone asks.
Gabby LeMort: Huh? How did ya know? I’ve got a super long collection of adventure books with romance in em.
Rowan’s smirk grew.
Rowan Black: You seemed like the type.
Not really, but maybe.
Gabby LeMort: Haha… maybe I’ll write a series inspired by us one day. Fucktoy and Grouch goes on adventures! =P
Oh lord. What had I gotten myself into?
Rowan Black: Go ahead. Don’t leave out how much you like spankings though.
Gabby LeMort: kay! ^_^
Someone snarled. Edward. “Did you hear me?”
Gabby LeMort: Btw, the poison is coming along nicely. My cauldrons are boiling at full steam!
Very good.
Rowan’s eyes refocused on Edward. “Was just talking to Gabby about something.”
“What?”
A broad grin pulled Rowan’s cheeks to his ears. “Spankings.”
“I thought it was about something important. Why did I even ask?” Edward’s face morphed into a wrinkly death-mask.
Rowan lifted his wand, pointing at that raised chin. An ice blast burst from the tip, and to his utter amazement, Edward sidestepped the point-blank surprise with ease. He reappeared twenty yards along the cliffside, just within visibility in the mist, already with his bow in hand and an arrow aimed at Rowan.
The chatbox beeped as he jumped leftward with a Rime Blink, avoiding a Detonating Arrow by inches. The message wasn’t from Gabrielle this time.
SoSo Lovely (Party Chat): Alright, we’re ready for some dungeon diving.
About time, but first…
Rowan Black: Let us finish our spar.
Ambiguous Pain: Wow. We look away for ten minutes and you boys are already fighting.
Edward Farmer: He started it.
Rowan laughed for real, continued the spar with much vigor. Little concentration was needed to dodge another arrow and retaliate with a series of quick-fire ice blasts. The clearing atop the cliff at the tombolo’s northern face was rendered into a war-zone of ice and corruption again. For once, the game truly felt like a game in the typical definition. It was a much-needed reprieve to mentally prepare for the evil they were about to unleash onto the humans.
Oh yeah, it was going to be total mayhem.
Mayhem like right now. Nothing like a violent play-fight in virtual reality to satiate the pumping testosterone, the spar upped in tempo. Rowan was a Draconian manifestation of his mana type, and Edward was swift death in the night given life of all things. A dangerous waltz across the clifftops, a clash between two lions. Missiles bounced back and forth, one blast traded for another, politely, but the mannerisms were fleeting. Edward started sneaking in corrupting nets and bear traps now and then, and Rowan chucked an Ice Gargoyle into the fray when Edward was being more than impolite. This was no spar.
The faux-duel dragged the duo onto the continent’s shore and into the swamp’s murky, stench-riddled haze. A brightly-colored frog leaped away. The violence escalated in ferocity to greater heights than either boy had intended. While their magics clashed not too far from a dry clearings where the half-constructed farms stood, Rowan only fought for the sake of his own crazed intoxication. Ecstasy pumped in his icy yet simmering blood, this duel far more satisfying than the battle earlier.
But all good things had to come to an end. When Edward’s health bar in the party list dipped more than a third, the girls pinged for a stop, quite furious in chat.
Ambiguous Pain (Party Chat): Seriously, cut it out. We have to get moving.
SoSo Lovely: Edward! What’s gotten into you?!
Edward Farmer: Nothing. Just want to fight.
As did Rowan.
Viola Wintersow: Are you two fighting over Gabby?
Edward Farmer: No.
Good.
Gabby LeMort: Then stop it… come on… I’ll bake us some cookies if ya stop. Enchanted chocolate-chip caramel cookies. A Witch Doctor special good for keeping warm! ^_^
She was a tad kinder than usual, and that was not an unsavory proposal, actually.
An idea took root as Rowan was a mental-tug away from sending in his minions to finish it. He blinked backward, behind a rock formation next to a mangled willow tree, and began chanting his only ultimate. With Edward selected as the single target, the two-lined incantation of his Lament, first movement, slithered down his tongue. His wand hand cut a half-arc, then flicked an upward slash. A colorless drop of dark-ice mana splashed into reality, rippling.
Edward buzzed onto a fallen tree far to the left. He released a Detonating Arrow, oblivious of the transparent jagged bone ring around him.
Rowan ducked and rolled into a Rime Blink, fired ice blasts as he did so.
“I was wondering,” Edward called, prepping a shot, “when you’d use your ultimate.”
Not so oblivious after all. “It’s not a skill for a spar.”
“Neither is this.” Edward garbled through a five or six word chant, dodging ice blasts without effort. The bone ring kept spinning faster as a helix of dark mana spiraled up and around his figure. The next arrow he released was a replica of the Colossal Arrow he had used during the naval battle. The inky, gleaming darkness flew slower than the other arrows, a macabre though pleasing sight.
And its blast-radius was over four blinks worth. Reaching into his pouch, Rowan knew it was pointless to dodge. He jabbed his wand forward and tossed a bone marshmallow, mana in his flesh flowing down his arm like a melted glacier. The marshmallow detonated with avalanching mist. An Ice Drake’s birthing roar reverberated throughout the swamp.
The roar was cut short, a mushroom-cloud of dense corruption rising from the mist.
Rowan put his exposed palm in front of his face, dumbly, to shield from the fallout. The skin on his palm eroded. He instead blinked backward and planted his boots into tainted mud.
Chasing, Edward buzzed in front of him and pulled back his bow. The bone ring was almost solid.
The chilly cracked amulet swung against Rowan’s chest as his stance twisted.
Tainted ice met glistening darkness, the ice winning.
A blur, Edward dashed left. His feet made not a sound on the mud. Blood squirted from a series of wounds on his back, and before he could load another shot, Lament’s countdown blipped to one second remaining.
Zero.
The bone ring cracked into three pieces. The curved shards impaled him through the neck, chest, and stomach with sickening cracks far too pleasurable for Rowan’s ears. A hissed screamed brought on a tingling rush in his midsection. He indulged in Edward’s suffering whether he deserved it or not. Set in gray matter, it was a leftover part of Rowan’s crazed psyche from before Draesear’s intervention. The implants were more or less gone by now, his brain regenerated.
Beeping, the chatbox vibrated.
SoSo Lovely: Edward, you’re an idiot.
Gabby LeMort: Boys are so fun to keep around. Hehehe.
Edward coughed blood, sank to a knee. His health was at 14% but gradually draining courtesy of a Bleed debuff. That health bar above his head had dipped by exactly 50%,
not wiped fully as Lament’s skill description stated. As Rowan had inferred, of course the skill had a hidden mechanic when there was only one target. It’d be completely overpowered and broken otherwise. One-on-one duels would be over in fifteen seconds!
Edward laughed, showing real emotion for once. “Pity in andante! How melodramatic. What key is it in? F Minor?” 13% health.
“I didn’t name it.” Rowan shrugged, not understanding any of the music jargon. “Have you figured out the hidden mechanic?”
He ducked the question with a sarcastic remark, “What, exactly, is your lament, my lord? Do you even know?”
“If I answer, will that help you figure it out?”
Blood oozed from his wounds, drenching his black dragonscale leather. 12% health. “Perhaps.” He struggled to fetch a Health Potion from his pouch.
A moment of tremoring hesitance passed while Rowan considered divulging his secrets to this Dusk Elf player whom he barely knew. But why did it matter if he knew? If everyone knew. They were the lamb-like masses, including little Edward here. The only person who mattered to him was not this kneeling, bleeding mess. And she probably knew anyway. She was able to read him all too well with her fine-tuned intuition.
Rowan sniffed a gentle serving of swamp air. Rusty iron mixed with putrid stench offended his airways. That certainly was a lot of blood in the mud. “Draesear sure has a sense of humor. I suppose my lament is my only remaining significant fear, and my fear is losing my beautiful Gabrielle. She is my lament, my world, my little devil princess.”
Edward’s brow lifted as he drank. He swallowed. “Gabby?”
He doesn’t know her real name?
“Yeah. Gabby.”
“And if you lost her?”
Angry heat lashed up Rowan’s body, his nose wrinkling for a second. Restraint came easily; he knew he had a deal with her and her uncle. “I don’t know. I could do anything.”
He laughed that smooth elven laugh again, quite musically. He downed the entire potion and traded the empty bottle for another. His health was slowly climbing, but the Bleed debuff wouldn’t rid itself. The bone impaling him wouldn’t dissipate either. “Then maybe she should be lost.”
Rowan sniffed more iron and stench. “Some things shouldn’t be done. Many things.”
Edward huffed, nearly choking on the potion. “Like what?”
“Like this.” Rowan pointed with Anton’s Bone Wand. Edward flinched backward, and the minimum-power blast sailed over his shoulder with a rightward nudge of Rowan’s fingers. “She’d give me a pummeling to the head if I waste another one of her Resurrection Draughts.” A sigh wafted into the swamp. “So have you figured it out?”
Edward smirked. “No. It could still be anything.”
“Then fuck you.”
The bone vanished with a wand-swish, Rowan projecting his intent.
“Arrhh!” Blood began pouring from the wounds, though at least he could now stand straight. He chugged Health Potions madly like an alcoholic, but the debuff wouldn’t pass.
“Go find her for a cure before you run out of potions, and ask the others if they might know. Tell them what I said.”
“I was going to.” He disappeared in a static buzz.
What an asshole; however, it was expected for a darkie, and Rowan would expect no less from a darkie. He didn’t need some soggy noodle on the team when the whole world was currently hellbent on leveling Gabrielle’s town. He had promised her that castle would be built, so it was going to be built one way or another.
Rowan folded himself onto a mossy, thick branch and let his aching muscles recover. His lack of Strength and Dexterity points was a big problem. These common-rarity robes weren’t cutting it at all. Legendary robes, five to ten times the power on average, were sorely needed.
He checked his stat sheet, remembering to do so.
Name: Rowan Black
Titles: Powerful One, Bastard Noble Kid, Gabby’s Row
Race: Draconian-Human (focus to expand)
Gender: Male
Level: 180
Class: Necromancer
Boss Status: World, Tier 6
Fame: 41,250 (Top 20)
Faction: None
Health: 4,600
Mana: 57,700
Mana Type: Dark-Ice
Stamina: 1450
Strength: 44 (2X)
Dexterity: 68 (2X)
Vitality: 230 (2X)
Magical Power: 412 (5X)
Magical Capacity: 577 (10X)
Control: 1035 (10X)
Points Available: 60
Skill Tier Points Available: 4
Defense attributes hidden (focus to expand)
The titles really were a joke drummed up by the dark gods, and the highly-inflated numbers weren’t an accurate indication of his character’s power level. As the forums had stated many times, one’s strength really did come from skills, professions, and strategy rather than brute-force—though gear was still important like in any RPG. And for some better gear, now was an opportune moment to explore that sunken-ship dungeon while Gabrielle worked on the poison. The girls had waited long enough.
An infuriating message came as his Stamina bar regrew.
Gabby LeMort (To Rowan Black): Awwww how sweet. Your only fear is losing me? Hehehehehehehehe…
Rowan Black: You know what will happen if you go back on the deal we made at the altar.
Gabby LeMort: Of course. I am the most loyal girl there is!
Sounds about right.
Chapter 27
To Stab a Mocking Squirrel
A yellow and black spotted frog croaked on a log in a murky river next to a fairy ring. Those deformed turquoise mushrooms sent a shiver down Rowan’s spine. It wasn’t a sight one would find in the real world. The lush-green wetlands and fields were no more, mutated into this pungent swamp by the spire’s dark influence. Oh well. This terrain type made for an effective buffer against ground invasions anyway.
The chatbox beckoned for attention, vibrating. Annoying thing.
Gabby LeMort (To Rowan Black): Row? Are ya still in the swamp?
Rowan Black: Just looking around. Why?
Gabby LeMort: If ya see any poisonous mushrooms grab em for me. A hundred should be good. They can be examined if ya have the right profession… which ya don’t. Just look for colorful ones that seem dangerous.
It’s my lucky day.
Rowan Black: Sure. Are they safe to handle? I don’t have gloves.
Gabby LeMort: Yup. Safe to touch for darkies but not to eat though. So don’t bite into any even if they look tasty! ^_^
Rowan Black: The fuck? Have you been sniffing something? I definitely won’t be eating anything from this nasty swamp.
Gabby LeMort: No sniffing here. Heh. Just makin’ sure.
Even that short exchange with her was enough to brighten one’s mood, namely Rowan’s. Just what had he become? It couldn’t be something too beneficial for his mind even if it felt as so. Chuckling, he shook his head, stood, and flexed his limbs with a brisk stretching routine. The Stamina bar at the bottom of his vision was more or less topped up at three-quarters. The regen rate was in the single digits.
It didn’t take long to pluck each supple cap and stow them away—twenty-seven by Rowan’s count. None eaten.
Catching his eye, there, downstream at a mossy clearing peeked another patch of fungus through the stinking haze. And from the shield’s direction, an undulating curtain towering up to the sky in the far distance, an incoming gust buffeted against Rowan’s roughly-stitched robes, bringing forth a wall of stench and haze and oddly out-of-place white mist flecked with shades of blue. Far too out of place.
Rowan didn’t need the sinking feeling in his gut to tell him something was up. He plucked his wand from its holster, skipped back with a Rime Blink, and called a group of Demons and Undead to his side at once. A few of the remaining Stalkers and Imps that’d been lingering nearby puffed to him in an instant, those flaming orbs for eyes and matte
-black skin not as intimidating as Rowan remembered. Maybe their appearances had been patched. Likely not.
But back to to the white mist. It was inexplicably condensing into a humanoid figure. A girl’s figure. Most peculiar, Rowan humming quizzically.
Maybe it’s a swamp monster.
That guess turned out to be pure garbage when the vapor stirred with watery mana and collapsed in on itself, fountaining. A scowling girl dressed in a low-cut gray dress, older than Rowan by maybe four years, stood with her arms crossed under her chest. She had a pretty squirrel-like face accentuated by sparse freckles and fiery hair. Her Draconian eyes swirled with shades of gray. A silver staff tipped with a large sapphire poked up from her back.
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