by Oliver Mayes
Damien himself had been closer to the Ex-Imp-losion’s cast than he’d have liked. At least he had a cushion to absorb the impact with. The blast sent Damien and his dead adversary tumbling backward to hit the mountain at the wall’s furthest end. Damien extricated himself from his foe’s remains before leaping to his feet and giving his full report.
“Lillian, they’re prepared for you behind the gate and Magnitude is with them. He’s some kind of crazy metal mage thing. We aren’t going to make it, we should retreat!”
Given how concise and informative Damien had been, he’d expected Lillian to finally consent. So her blend of barely contained anger and sickly sweet sarcasm came as something of a surprise. Especially since it was punctuated by successive shattering hits on the gate, so forceful he could hear the strikes echoing from below.
“Why thank you, Damien. Tell me, have you seen what’s behind us?”
Damien obligingly turned over the parapet and grimaced. Players were pouring out of the forest in droves, running toward the clumped mass of Lillian’s party at the gate. Rising Tide had turned to fight them, but it may as well have been a zombie horde. They were even attacking each other en route to the party, with isolated skirmishes breaking out all across the area. Damien could see why his raid buddy was frustrated.
If she wasn’t retreating, he had to at least do his best to give her a fighting chance. He also needed to make a break for the Inner Circle himself. Damien sent his remaining four imps and the succubi over the edge of the wall, on the enemy side. A few moments later, he followed after them.
He was now in freefall. He ordered three of the imps to push toward the ground as fast as possible. If he got there before they did, he was screwed. The last flew off to the middle of the wall, toward the group of NPC heavies.
With that done, he resumed his long-running altercation with gravity. He needed the imp to slow down before it hit the floor as well, otherwise he’d be speeding up his death rather than preventing it. Crap. Well...it would be nice if he could keep the imp, but in a situation like this he had to put himself first. Sorry dude. Damien ordered the imp to hit the ground as fast as possible. It weighed less than him and had wings, so it would both survive an impact better and be able to slow itself down faster...hopefully. The imp was only a second from impact when Damien ordered it to stop. It threw out its wings immediately in a futile attempt to slow down, but still hit the snow with a sad plomph.
Damien didn’t bother checking the damage before Demon Gating, finding himself flat on his face with all the imp’s kinetic energy already very much dispersed into the tiny crater he was lying on top of. His own kinetic energy had been transferred into the imp, which hit the ground for the second and final time about half a second later, this time with a cut-off yelp and a hearty squelch. Not his most compassionate tactical choice, but notably better than the alternative. The bodies of the guards thrown over the edge by the Ex-Imp-losion reinforced that viewpoint. They’d adopted the traditional, time-honored strategy of all human bodies fighting against gravity: unceremoniously dying.
A final loud clang drew his attention back to the gate, which was now a way off to his right. The gate had indeed been breached, although not in a particularly impressive fashion. While its durability bar was still at approximately 90%, Lillian had focused her efforts where it was weakest and she could reach: the bottom point where the steel plates of each massive door met. They were crumpled and folded, leaving barely enough room for her troops to start ducking through in single file. They were then greeted by a wall of shields and spears, which advanced on the group as a single block.
Damien pointed at the imp sailing in above their heads and eyed the cooldown meter for Imp-losion. Still five seconds to go. Curses. And Lillian’s troops were already running in, only to stop as they saw what was waiting to greet them. They started running forward again when Lillian hurtled past them, their own rather less bloodthirsty battle cries joining her own. The aura of her Divine Might suffused her entire body and her war hammer arced over her head as she prepared to swing. Then she saw what she was facing and slowed down. Damien thought she was reconsidering the engagement, and that his warnings had finally come to bear. Nope. She was just recalibrating. The hammer disappeared out of her grasp and was replaced with her sword and shield before she lunged forward.
She took a running start and hopped, the power behind her stride carrying her to her enemies with a single pump of her legs. All the guards simultaneously dug their shields into the dirt and pointed their spears to use the power of her charge against her.
With the Imp-losion on cooldown and Lillian too close to avoid Circle of Hell herself, Damien could do nothing but watch. They were higher level than her, but despite being a tank Lillian had invested heavily in strength. Which was doubled by her Divine Might, putting her far above them in terms of raw power. With her shield squarely in front of her, she was not altogether unlike one of the cubes of metal that had crushed Damien’s wraith. The spears attempting to strike her bent on the shield she was holding close to her body, then snapped and splintered. Lillian crashed into the ranks holding them with the approximate force and subtlety of a cannon ball.
A Lillian-shaped hole appeared in the front line, while the Rising Tide members running through the gap took advantage of the broken formation to lay into them with arrows, spells and brute force. Having found her point of entry, Lillian was creating space by running up to enemies and punting them back with her shield, knocking them into their allies and completely obliterating any sense of order their lines still had. Whenever she came across an immobilized enemy sprawled on the ground, she’d execute with a strike through the neck and then return to shield-bashing.
The Carlisle-Elite players were now running in. Ah, a chance for Daemien, Champion of Arcadia, to show his quality. He maneuvered his imp over their path and—
A hairy block of green rock popped out of the ground in front of him, blocking his line of sight. Damien leapt backward as a pickaxe swung through the area his head had just been occupying. The back of his head hit the floor, his legs following his movement to put him back on his feet as Magnitude pressed forward, trying to prevent him from escaping.
Damien kept the distance between them. It was quite easy. Magnitude was a dwarf. Which meant his legs were moving almost twice as fast in order to match half Damien’s running speed. It should’ve been funny, but when he was running at you with murderous intent it was actually quite scary. At least he clearly wasn’t agility-based, so Damien would have no trouble staying ahead of him.
Damien caught sight of something much scarier than Magnitude’s pumping legs. Magnitude’s health had been at 80%, but over the course of a few seconds it had risen back to 100%. When it hit max, he hopped up in the air with his arms over his head. It was a modest hop, but his feet didn’t touch the ground again. The ground simply swallowed him up, as if he’d pencil-jumped into a swimming pool.
This was how Magnitude had gotten the first hit in, appearing right in front of Damien out of nowhere. Well, there was a simple solution: if that’s where he currently was, it wasn’t where he was going. Damien dug his toes into the ground and leapt forward, turning around to see if he’d been right. Magnitude popped out of the ground, already swinging the pickax in advance of his arrival. He was back down to 80% health.
Every time Magnitude used this skill, he took damage. This would’ve been a lot more comforting if not for his obscene health regeneration. Damien could only get a percentile reading, since he couldn’t see Magnitude’s stats, but aside from Berserking warriors he’d never seen anything with HP regen so high. Magnitude was back to running after him again. As he backpedaled, Damien willed a health potion into his hand and started glugging. Magnitude immediately stopped and slammed both his hands against the floor. The same thing he’d done against the wraith.
Damien came to an immediate stop and there was a rush of air behind him as two cubes of tightly packed earth slammed into each other.
Magnitude was now at 64% health. He stopped advancing, waiting for his health to rise back up, as Damien drained the potion.
Damien took the time to condense all the information into a single package. Slight delay on spellcasting, so spells are cast predictively. Changing direction is a good preventative measure. Fast movement from underground “tunneling” is tempered by a 20% health cost. The trash compactor move appeared to be the same, 20%. He’d thought Magnitude was a metal mage, but it was broader than that. More like an earth mage.
Damien had enough information to start guessing.
“That’s a neat class. What’s it called?”
Magnitude stared at him angrily, his health still rising at about 4% per second. That wouldn’t do. Damien hadn’t had the focus to order his minions when he was getting to grips with this secret class, but he did now. A Circle of Hell formed directly around his enemy. Magnitude ran out of it as fast as he could, which was gratifyingly slowly, only to turn and find he was being chased by imps. Even more gratifying was that the moment the black flames took hold, his health regeneration completely stopped.
Suddenly, Damien had the upper hand. Magnitude ran a hand through the ground, manipulating the burning earth as if it were no more than butter, and propelled a sphere of condensed rock and dirt at the nearest of the imps. It was obliterated, the ball passing straight through it and smashing into the wall behind them. Damien looked at Magnitude’s health. It cost him around 10% health for the nasty long-range earth ball.
“You’re an earth mage? Nah, too predictable. Geomancer maybe?”
The question marks above Magnitude’s name in lieu of his class persisted, but he was getting agitated. The rock he pelted at Damien was evidence enough of that, but Damien already knew how his class worked by this point. Hands above head, ground diving. Hands hit the earth, nasty crushing blocks of death. Single hand through the ground, mud ball. The burning from the Circle of Hell stopped as Magnitude reached the outside of it and his health regeneration kicked back in. More information. So long as he was taking persistent damage, he wasn’t regenerating health.
While it was a known mechanic that passive regeneration stopped in the presence of damage over time, it had never really mattered before; passive health regeneration was only 1% of full health every ten seconds, whereas Magnitude was sitting pretty regenerating around 40% over the same period.
“An alchemist? Sorry, that was a long shot...deep mage? Earth-bender?”
The imp caught up with Magnitude and whapped into his face, but it turned out this particular strategy did not work very well on this target. Magnitude grabbed it with both hands and squeezed it like a toothpaste tube. The imp behaved much the same way you’d expect a toothpaste tube to, albeit louder. The poor thing’s eyeballs were the last extremities to vacate its now lifeless body. Pop, pop.
Magnitude ran a hand over his face to remove the fluids, then started running away. It was good to know his skills, but Damien was yet to figure out a way to finish him off. Most of his damage was from backstabbing, and this guy did not seem like a fun character to get within range of. There was one thing he could try. Damien flicked his wrist at Magnitude’s retreating back and cast a spell he hadn’t found use for in a long time.
“Corruption.”
Damien might not have focused on his intelligence stat much, but this situation didn’t require high intelligence. He just needed a persistent damaging effect. At the very least it would stop Magnitude from casting at random, which would relieve pressure.
All this time, Lillian and her team had been fighting and he’d been preoccupied with Magnitude. Damien turned, fearing the worst. Rising Tide was pincered in between the Carlisle-Elite and the gate, through which the influx of reinforcements was long over and a steady stream of injured enemies was filing through instead.
Lillian was still standing, although she’d brought herself a lot of attention with her stunt. BiggusDickus had gone straight for her and she was on the defensive. Her Divine Might had burned out and her stamina was more likely than not low from dealing with the NPCs that had been placed to absorb the brunt of the player attack. The imp he’d wanted to disrupt the enemy formation with was long gone.
Damien looked back to Magnitude, who was smiling and still at 65% health. His health regeneration wasn’t working, but Damien’s Corruption was doing almost no damage. Time was up. Damien abandoned tact and ran straight toward him. If Lillian was going to lose, the least he could do was finish this guy off. Magnitude had other ideas. The dwarf grabbed his own wrist, opened his palm and placed it on the floor.
The floor in front of Damien rose up and started to curve inward. Damien ran up it and saw that it wasn’t just in front of him. Magnitude was creating a dome of earth and rock, with himself at the center. Damien was no slouch and could move pretty fast, especially in the dark, but he was only barely catching up with the growth of the dome. This spell had a longer cast time than the others, and Damien noticed something new. Rather than all Magnitude’s health disappearing in one go and the dome immediately appearing, this was being cast over a long duration. A channeled, free-form spell, with health instead of mana as the resource.
In practical terms, what this meant was that when Magnitude was finished casting he’d have very low health. If Damien could get in there with him, he’d be able to finish him off reasonably easily. With the Rising Tide forces all but overwhelmed it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, but it could open the floodgates to further consequences. With Magnitude and many NPCs dead, their gate damaged and their strategies exposed, their defenses would be strained and more guilds could come to finish what Lillian had started. But killing Magnitude would be by far the most important factor. Damien had to take this chance.
The dome was always developing just slightly ahead of him, as if it were teasing him. He could see Magnitude just over the lip of it, eyeing him warily as his health continued to drop. This was shaping up to be by far the most costly spell he’d employed. He’d started the cast at about 64% health, was already down to 30% and was still afflicted by the Corruption spell.
The dome was almost done and the hole in the top was rapidly closing. If it closed over him, Damien would have no way of getting inside and Magnitude would be able to regenerate freely. Damien might have a shot at making a break for the Inner Circle, but that paled in comparison to removing this player from the game for twenty-four hours. He owed Lillian that much.
Besides, it would look really good on his profile page.
Magnitude was at 18% health and the opening was still staying just out of reach. Damien braced his feet and dived forward, half expecting to get caught by the dome and severed in two. Instead, it slowed at the last second and he plunged into the darkness headfirst. He’d no sooner rolled than the dome sealed and the dim twilight became total darkness, which his eyes adjusted to quickly. Magnitude was at 14% health. Too low to tunnel out, by Damien’s calculations. He had him right where he wanted him.
Except as Damien ran forward, daggers raised, Magnitude uttered a single word.
“Renewal.”
A burst of green light emanated from him, lighting up the dome completely. Damien shielded his eyes, blinded out of nowhere, and hopped back. When he could open them again, Magnitude was at full health. The Corruption was gone, too, ahead of time. It was hard to tell through his beard, but Magnitude looked pretty jovial all of a sudden. Damien couldn’t blame him. He was now trapped in close proximity with his enemy and all his minions were still outside. This instant healing ability meant that Magnitude had been completely safe the whole time. Damien had been played.
Magnitude threw his hands above his head and hopped while addressing Damien for the first time.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Then he vanished into the earth and was gone. Damn. That had not gone well. Damien ran up to the wall and stabbed at it in a futile effort to escape. He knew it was hopeless before he even started: the walls of the dome were at least a couple of
feet thick. He was trapped in there, while Magnitude dealt with Rising Tide and Noigel’s ragtag party at his own leisure. He had to get out, fast. He was already past the wall, if he could figure out how to break through the dome he could make a run for it.
He tried to Portal, but was informed he couldn’t cast the spell if there were enemies nearby. Par for the course. He’d picked up some souls from the very high-level NPCs, but only six. Not enough to summon an incubus. Which was the only summon that might’ve got him out of here. He was still pondering his options when something grabbed him by the back of the head.
“You’re a pain.”
Damien was flipped over by the back of his head, his face hitting the floor hard. He struggled, but it was pointless. Magnitude had overwhelmingly high strength.
Damien had moved to the wall yet Magnitude had arrived right behind him. How was this possible? Damien mulled it over while he ate dirt. He’d already seen this, back when he lacked context to make sense of it. When Magnitude had touched the wall, he’d immediately found Damien’s wraith. Even when Damien had been in stealth mode and a long way above, where Magnitude had had no business anticipating an enemy. It fit the profile of his other abilities. Magnitude could sense where enemies were standing if they were touching the ground. (Or whatever else they were touching, judging by the failed wraith attack.)
Well, even if the situation was bad, it was a plus to understand how he’d got there. This situation seemed somehow extremely familiar. Magnitude was employing the Bartholomew methodology of negotiation. But unlike the last time Damien found himself in these circumstances, his mom was waiting for him at home. This wasn’t a big deal. He took a leaf out of Aetherius’s book.
“Just get on with it.”
Magnitude pressed his head into the ground a bit harder and muttered under his breath. The ground suddenly glowed with faint blue light.
“Believe me, I’d love to. But you’re lucky. We have an offer for you.”