by Jamey Sultan
You have gained the skill: Sneak Attack
Sneak Attack (Skill Rank 1):
+ 210% damage while hidden
The Lion-Ant roared in pain as deep blue ichor dripped from its wound. It lunged at James, it’s lion’s maw closing on the air where he’d been a second before.
After it missed it seemed confused and it sniffed around the air again, like the Star Mole had. That was odd. James could see the creature clear as day. It was close enough for him to touch with his sword if he wanted to.
Why can’t it see me? It must be blind, just like the moles were.
But that didn’t seem right. It had eyes, and they were darting around as if it could see something.
Realization struck like a hammer. The mane!
Living underground with a constant light source right next to its eyes probably wreaked havoc on its night vision. It probably couldn’t see anything further out than a few inches from its eyes. But why did it have eyes then? What was the point?
His best guess was that the creatures were built as predators for outside of the cave. They hunted in the daylight and retreated to their cave after.
James shook his head. He couldn’t focus on useless questions right now. He was in the middle of a fight. The takeaway here was that the creatures couldn’t see very well. He needed to use that to his advantage.
To test his theory, James waved the point of his sword inside the ring of light emitted from the creature’s mane. Immediately the Lion-Ant growled and lunged at the sword, almost tearing it from James’ grip. James smiled to himself.
This just might work.
Carefully, he crept around the Lion-Ant until he was directly in front of it, but still out of sight. He lunged forward, stabbing into the beast’s unprotected lion head.
His sword bit deep, piercing the monster’s left eye and emerging out the back of its skull. It collapsed to the ground, the light from its crystal fading as blue ichor dripped from the wound.
You have gained 1 level in Swordsmanship.
You are now level 17.
You have killed a Lion-Ant Scout (Level 5)
+ 15 experience points
Level up! You are now level 8.
James placed two points each into Intelligence and Wisdom again, bringing them both up to 18. He also placed his Ability point into the Increased Damage Ability, bringing it up to 3. It now boosted his sword damage by 30% and he was only two points away from unlocking the coveted Sharper Swords skill.
After assigning his points, James rubbed his hands together in excitement. It was time to get gruesome. He pulled out his dagger and stabbed at the carapace, testing its durability. Because his Sharper Swords ability didn’t apply to daggers, the dagger could barely scratch the chitinous material. In contrast, James could easily cut into the skin of the Lion head. Intrigued, he tried to cut the creature’s neck to separate the crystal mane from the head. When he did, he found out that the crystals only extended partly into the Lion-Ant’s neck and were fairly easy to remove.
He pulled on one and it slid out easily. When it was free of the Lion-Ant’s body its purple light stopped fading, and its remaining energy swirled around inside the gem. Working quickly, he tried to pull out the rest of the crystals, but only pulled out two more before the color had completely drained from the rest, leaving them dull and lifeless.
Ignoring the dull crystals, James inspected the three he’d pulled out. They were double-ended crystals in the shape of a six-sided prism coming to a point on either end.
Weak Mana Crystal (x3):
Rank: Unusual
You can feel weak pulses of energy coming from this crystal.
James felt it, a low thrumming energy radiating from the crystals in his palm. Unsure as to their use, he placed the crystals into his bag in case they were dangerous, then moved on to the rest of the body.
James had heard that insects didn’t have a circulatory system like Humans and other animals. He wasn’t sure what they had instead, and he was interested to see what its insides looked like. Specifically, he was interested in how the ant’s circulatory system meshed with the lion part of its body. Upon inspection, the ant didn’t have a heart, veins, or arteries, but rather an odd muscle floating around inside that looked like it pushed around the insect’s ichor. He also found a series of long tubes filled with air instead of lungs.
When James finally finished with the Lion-Ant’s body and made his way up to the lion head, he stopped for a second, considering the best way to examine it. There were still a few dull crystals left that he hadn’t removed, and he decided to cut around them to see how they attached inside. James was surprised when he didn’t find veins, arteries, or insect parts. Instead, the inside of the Lion-Ant’s head was filled with tendrils of purple Mana that connected the lion’s brain to the mane, almost as if the crystals had been powering the creature, like arcane batteries.
You have gained 1 Skill Rank in Anatomy.
You are now Skill Rank 6.
James finished his inspection and wiped off his weapons before moving on. He was disappointed that he hadn’t had the opportunity to use his Shadow Step Spell in the fight. He hadn’t tried it yet, and his Mana regeneration was slow enough that he needed to be cautious about using any spells. He only had 163 mana, with a regeneration of 2.8 per hour, which meant that after using it twice, he’d only have 53 Mana left. He’d have to wait almost an hour for a third cast.
With some quick math, James calculated that recharging his entire Mana pool would take around two-and-a-half days. Why Mana regenerated so slowly was a mystery to him. It led him to wonder how mages could be viable fighters if Mana regeneration was so slow. Maybe they got special class skills, or maybe they just knew something he didn’t. He’d have to research that, because there had to be a way to use magic without draining his Mana away for days. Otherwise, nobody would want to become a mage.
While he was thinking about magic, his nose wrinkled in disgust. He’d just walked into a deeper part of the tunnel and been hit with a wall of stench that almost caused him to turn back.
James groaned. It was a smell he recognized.
No matter how often he’d had to smell it at work, James had never gotten used to the smell of decomposing bodies. It overpowered everything else and got stuck in his nose for days.
The first time he’d been called to a long-dead patient, James could smell him from outside the house. His partner had placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him from entering and handed him a few sticks of gum. The senior paramedic told him to chew that specific gum for dead bodies because it would overpower the smell. Other tricks, like Vaseline in the nose, would allow the smell to linger. The specific black packet of gum was James’ tried-and-true method for blocking the smell of a body. Unfortunately, they’d stopped selling it in grocery stores, which meant he had to order it online.
James found himself patting his pants habitually, looking for gum, and realized that not only did he not have gum, but that he didn’t have pockets either.
Shaking his head in an effort to clear his thoughts, James returned to the present. The smell was strongest around a side tunnel off the center passage, so ignoring it wasn’t a difficult decision. James had no intention of encountering whatever disgusting, decomposing body was creating the smell. No, he’d avoid it if it could.
As he continued down the passage, James noticed that the tunnel sloped downward, but not in a straight slope like a tunnel should. Instead, it was bumpy, as if whoever created it gave up halfway through, poured a bucket of concrete down some stairs and called it a day.
“Man, this tunnel must have been designed by the laziest contractor ever,” James muttered to himself, kneeling down to inspect the stone. A flash of white caught his eye, and he examined a tiny crack in the corner of the path. A bit of white peeked through.
It wasn’t something James would normally notice. He wasn’t the most observant, but the tunnel had been so uniform and boring that his mind jumped on the
first miniscule out-of-place detail.
James chipped away at the stone with his dagger, working to reveal the floor beneath it. After a few minutes, James cleared about an inch of stone, revealing white marble tile.
Interesting. Why was there marble underneath the stone? How had the stone gotten there? The longer James was in this tunnel, the more questions he had. Hopefully, he’d be able to answer them by the time he finished delving through the dungeon. He thought about chipping away more of the rock, but his dagger was looking worse for wear, and a few nicks marred its edges.
James left the strange tile behind and continued down the tunnel into a sizable room, dominated by an enormous fountain, guarded by two Lion-ants. A trickle of water leaked out from the broken base of what had once been a statue, but was now just a pile of rubble. James tried to make out what the statue may have once represented, but he couldn’t even tell if it was supposed to be a human or animal. Whatever the statue had been was long gone, lost to time. On the far side of the cavern, past the guards, three tunnels lead deeper into the dungeon.
Lion-Ant Guard (Level 7)
Lion-Ant Guard (Level 7)
James wearily eyed the two Lion-Ant guards. They were built slightly differently than the scout he had seen earlier, with larger crystals in their manes and an additional crystal set in their foreheads. These glowed brighter than the others, an almost blinding violet with James’ enhanced vision. The most disconcerting change was probably their eyes, or lack thereof. Instead of eyes, they simply had one large mouth. They still looked like lions, only oddly proportioned with a mouth that had stretched and widened in a grim resemblance of a crocodile’s face, but covered in golden fur. They stood slightly taller than James.
Fighting multiple creatures at once would probably end up killing him. James wasn’t even that experienced fighting enemies one at a time. But he was smart, and that was his advantage. Every problem had a solution. He just needed to figure out what it was.
The Lion-Ants had strong armor and dangerous attacks. Those were their strengths. The trick was finding out their weakness, if they had one.
Their eyesight was a pretty big weakness. And they didn’t have armor on their faces.
Hmm.
James grinned as he stated to formulate a plan.
James pulled one of the Weak Mana Crystals out of his bag and tossed it into the center of the room, the soft crack when it landed sounding like a gunshot in the silent cavern.
Immediately, the guards turned their heads towards the noise, but instead of rushing to investigate, they let out a pulse of violet light from the crystal set into their foreheads. The light pulsed out of the Lion-Ants in an expanding ring, covering the cave and passing harmlessly through James.
James breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been worried that the light would damage him. But his relief was short lived, as the two guards turned their eyeless faces towards him.
James reacted instinctively, all thoughts of Skills and Spells leaving his brain as pure terror took over. He bolted, footsteps echoing off the walls.
The first Lion-Ant quickly caught up with him, its sharp teeth piercing his leather and penetrating his skin. James screamed and reached down for his dagger, as there was no time to go for the sword. When he felt the familiar hilt, James yanked the dagger from its sheath and plunged it downward repeatedly into the creature’s face, but to minimal effect. The beast kept its jaws stubbornly clamped shut.
He plunged the dagger down again, and this time it hit the gemstone in the Lion-Ant’s forehead, cracking it and causing the beast to roar in pain. There was a solitary flicker of violet light from the crystal and it exploded, shaking the tunnel and launching James into a wall.
When the smoke cleared, James saw the second Lion-Ant stepping over its still-twitching comrade. But now James was prepared. He raised his sword to block the oncoming attack, but instead of rushing forward, the Lion-Ant raised its head into the air, the gemstone glowing green.
It almost looked like…
Oh no.
James jumped to the side just as the Lion-Ant let out a breath attack, blasting grey liquid over the tunnel. James avoided most of it, but not all. His left hand was coated with the liquid, which was quickly drying and transforming into the same stone as the walls of the cave.
At least he’d solved one mystery.
As the Lion-Ant advanced, James reacted without thinking, punching it in the face with his rock-covered fist and following up with his sword, skewering the beast through the skull.
You have killed a Lion-Ant Guard (Level 7)
+ 21 experience points
Level up! You are now level 9.
Before James could finish reading his prompt, the first Lion-Ant leapt towards him, cyan ichor streaming freely from its wounds. It landed slightly to his left, snarling, and snapped at him, missing completely. James stepped back and it turned, homing in on the sound of his movement. Before it could react though, James sliced through its head with ease. Fighting creatures that couldn’t think was… different. Great XP, though.
You have killed a Lion-Ant Guard (Level 7)
+ 21 experience points
Level up! You are now level 10.
Congratulations on reaching level 10, the first real milestone in your journey.
Your Ring of Sytar has expired. Experience required to level has been returned to normal.
Hidden Effect: Your Ring of Sytar was suppressing the power contained in your brand. Other contestants may now recognize you.
A crystalline aura surrounded James’ ring, and it crumbled to dust, releasing a nova of energy.
James frowned when he read the notification, he’d gotten used to the easy levels. He sighed. It looked like things would get harder from here on out.
James felt a disturbance in the energy flowing through him as it suddenly reversed its flow, expanding outward. Before, it had felt like all the Mana in his body was travelling towards his core. Now, it felt as if his core were cycling the Mana through his body.
As the mana flowed out of his core, it flooded his body. When the Mana reached his skin, it burst out, sending a sharp pain throughout his body as if he were being pricked with millions of needles at the same time. Briefly, a thick layer of Mana surrounded him, leaving him empty, before it pulled back, leaving him with a thin shell coating his entire body. James looked down, but he couldn’t see the thin aura around himself. He could feel it, though. It felt like the warmth of a ray of sunlight suffusing his entire body.
James shivered, then grinned. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been until he was suddenly warm again. His Mana seemed to drive away the damp and cold of the cave.
Please choose your path.
A new screen popped up.
Path of the Swordsman (Common)
You focus exclusively on the sword, ignoring all other weapons. You rely on your skill to masterfully dismember your enemies. Choosing this path will grant you either the Strongest Sword or the Hardest Armor passive Ability.
Path of the Mage (Rare)
The first step on a long journey. Mages harness the unnatural powers of the land. Use your Mana to lay waste to kingdoms or vaporize your enemies. Choosing this path will unlock a random Tier I - III affinity.
Path of the Beast (Uncommon)
You are more at home in the forest than in the cities. Choosing this class will grant you a single-use Ability to permanently bind a beast as your Animal Companion.
Path of the Thief (Common)
You prefer to live in the shadows, sneaking around and attacking from behind. Choosing this class will give you the opportunity to add a passive Bleed or Poison debuff to your weapons that can be upgraded through Abilities.
Path of the Shadow (Epic)
Flashy elemental magic isn’t for everyone. You prefer to hide in the darkness, striking at the most opportune time.
James knew what Nana would tell him to do. And what he wanted to do. From what he could tell, most of the classes wou
ld pigeonhole him into a particular style of fighting, which Nana had warned against. The only class that didn’t seem to do that was the path of the Shadow, which seemed to specifically strengthen his connection to Shadow Magic and nothing else. But the Path of the Mage was tempting. James would love to unlock two extra affinities. He could see himself as a powerful caster, throwing chain lightning around and destroying swathes of enemies on the battlefield. But he knew it was the wrong choice. With maybe a touch of hesitation, he selected the Path of the Shadow.
You have chosen the Path of the Shadow.
New Level-up bonus:
+ 5 Free Stat Points
+ 1 Wisdom
+ 1 Intelligence
+ 1 Endurance
+1 Ability point
Your Warrior class abilities have been modified.
As James watched, a shimmer of black energy appeared and sunk into his skin. He admitted to himself that he’d made the right choice and clapped his hands together, excited to see what had changed. His jaw dropped when he read his new Ability descriptions.
Warrior of Darkness I