Even though he wasn’t party leader, he kept track of his team’s status. Desmond was with the other tanks, but like Hawke he could dish damage as well as a pure-DPS fighter. Those magical tattoos and scars gave the Fae slave a lot of versatility. He wasn’t as tough as K-Bar, who could take multiple hits from a pair of Lords of Bones for a full minute without needing anything more than the AOE heals being applied to everyone in the battlefield, but he was close. If Hawke could get him out of Leara’s clutches, he could be an asset. But he needed to stop being a pain in the ass.
Everyone else seemed to be doing well. The former Nerf Herders were giving the attackers all they had. After multiple fights together, the party was turning into a unit, with people learning what everyone else could do and trusting them to do their jobs. Hawke left them to it, making sure no Undead survived to reach the rear lines and contributing to healing as well as damage. Problem was, more were coming up, and everyone was beginning to run low on Mana.
A lull in the fight allowed him to refill his potions and check on the raiding party as a whole. As a mere member, he only had access to the basic data, but that was all he needed: one of Kastor’s Ogres had been killed and several others were injured. He’d been using his area heals nonstop, casting them as soon as they came off their cooldown, but not even the efforts of the healers in the rear were keeping up with the continuous damage they were taking. The balance was tipping against them.
Leara and Panadel tipped it right back.
Glowing stars rose above each of them, multiplying into thousands of spheres of light before flying unerringly towards the enemy. Hawke saw a Lord of Bones at two-thirds Health take a single hit from one of the spheres and explode into a million skeletal splinters. The flying stars destroyed almost every monster still on its feet. After another few frenzied minutes, the rest of them were gone as well. Battle magic was like that, but those spells cost tens of thousands of Mana and took hours to set up. Hawke didn’t think Panadel or Leara had many of those left in them.
“We will rest for a few minutes,” Kastor announced. If the death of the Ogre – his name was Krom, Hawke reminded himself – had any effect on the party leader, he didn’t show it. “Make sure you collect your loot, especially potions. Gods know we’re going to need them.”
“We didn’t sign up for this,” said Kinux, the Silver Fists’ Goblin spellcaster. “That wasn’t a standard Labyrinth encounter. We are Proving Grounds explorers, not soldiers, to be fighting wars.”
“We are in a Labyrinth,” Kastor told the mage. “We were warned it wasn’t an ordinary one. We will fulfill our contract.”
“This is more important than a mere fight for booty,” Priest of Lumina Octovos said. “The stakes here are worth all of our lives.”
“Not mine,” Kinux replied. “Krom is dead, you sanctimonious camel penis!”
“Membership in the Silver Fists is not for those who wish for a straw death, old and cowering in bed like a coward,” Kastor told the Goblin. “Do your job or you will be cast out of the guild.”
“Let me go back and I’ll present my resignation in person.”
Kastor grinned. “No, you will be expelled now, and be left behind here, unable to escape unless you can find the way to the surface. Or you can carry on and do you job. Which will it be?”
Kinux looked at his fellow Silver Fists. All of them pointedly turned their backs on him.
“I will carry on,” he finally muttered.
“Good. Let us speak of this no more.”
“I like that guy,” Sun-Ah said, walking up to Hawke as they made their way around the piles of corpses, collecting their loot baggies.
His share so far included about nine platinum, not enough to recoup his expenses, but every bit helped. Almost twenty potions, which would come in handy. The gear rewards had been substandard, though. He sent half a dozen Enchanted Quality bits of gear into his Inventory. Someone might be interested on them, or the Enchanters or Arcane Smiths in the guild could take them apart for crafting materials.
“He’s a good party leader.”
“You know anything about the Silver Fists?” the Korean Eternal asked.
“They are looking to hire Eternals,” Hawke said. “And they are part of the Red Spears Sect.”
Sun-Ah frowned. “I’ve met the Red Spears. That’s a hard pass, dude.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They have their fingers in a lot of cakes. Or is it pies?”
“Pies.”
“Pies. My old guild ran into a Red Spears cartel not too long ago. Like a drug and human trafficking cartel. We took them down. They sent their Assassin Guild after us. Those peeps aren’t nice, my dude.”
“And they’ve got an Assassin Guild?”
“Yeah. Like ninjas on acid. All over the Realms. The Merciful Men, they call themselves.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“No problemo, amigo,” Sun-Ah said in fake Spanish before heading off to talk to Aristobulus. Maybe they would trade spells or cooking recipes.
There were too many other things to worry about, but Hawke was now doubly glad that he hadn’t taken Kassia’s offer. He looked at Kastor and his people. They seemed okay. Maybe they didn’t know that their patron sect was involved in criminal activities. Or maybe they didn’t care. Laws changed from country to country, let alone from Realm to Realm. He didn’t like it that his family was involved with them through Kassia, but given the estrangement between them, it probably wasn’t his problem.
Blaze came up to him. He was covered in Mauler blood and other kinds of congealed gunk the Undead had spattered over him during the fight. From the way his claws were caked with the stuff, his fighting had gone into close quarters more than once.
“I got you,” Hawke said, firing off low-power Mind-Fire puffs over the soiled areas. The bodily fluids boiled away without hurting Blaze’s fur, thanks to the Drakofox’s shockingly high Mind resistance.
he commented as Hawke groomed him.
Those battles had involved thousands of enemies and over a hundred soldiers and Adventurers on his side. Did that make the months-old Drakofox a child soldier? It probably did. Blaze seemed to take the violence in stride most of the time, though. Neither Dragons nor Fae were known for their squeamishness.
“Yeah. And we’ve got at least one more fight that’s going to be bigger.”
“Which is why I could use more arrows, darling,” Tava said, walking up to him.
“You got it.”
He always carried an extra two thousand arrows for her, packed in his inventory in twenty ‘bundles’ of a hundred. His Bonded Vault had been augmented by several other containers of holding, so the twenty slots the arrows took up barely put a dent in his total capacity. He handed her five slot’s worth, five hundred arrows, which she promptly transferred to her Quiver of Ulysses, a very useful doodad that, among other things, had ten inventory slots that could only be used for missiles, and which let her call its contents instantly, cutting down the time between shots. She was up to about three shots per second without losing accuracy, and five shots per second for close-up targets. At full speed, her arm and bow became a blur.
After taking care of that, she leaned on him for a bit, her arm around his waist, his over her shoulders. He allowed himself to relax a bit. Always good to remember that, no matter what master plan the Makers had for him, in the end he was fighting to protect his family, friends, and people. They were what gave him the strength to get up in the morning and attend meetings or fight monsters. He got a rush from fighting monsters, but the meetings were a labor of love, in the sense that if he didn’t love his people, he wouldn’t do it at all.
“I still have three Inscribed arrows,” she said, getting back to business. Everyone was doing a final checkup on their gear, anticipating Kastor’s order to move.
“Make
them count,” he said. “Save them for any Chaos boss that comes up. I don’t think they will do as well against Undead.”
“For them, I have fifteen arrows Inscribed with Mass Blast Undead.”
“What? I didn’t make those.”
He would have if he’d been expecting Undead. Probably should have done it anyway, he told himself. Those bastards had a way of showing up everywhere.
“You taught Nadia how to inscribe spells, remember? She sold a hundred of those to the guild and gave me another hundred as a wedding gift.”
“Wish someone would have told me.”
That was a problem. His guild now had close to seventy people, or maybe had gone over it since he’d been gone. Adventurers from all over the Common Realm were trying to join, and unlike the Nerf Herders, his Guild had no prejudice against non-Eternals. And there had been a steady trickle of Eternals from elsewhere as well. Having that many members was great, but that meant they were doing all kinds of things he wouldn’t hear about unless he made it his business to find out.
“She has chosen to distance herself from you,” Tava said. “That is something you will need to deal with when you return. Her power among the Arachnoids continues to increase. Soon she may try to forge her own Domain.”
“Let me add that to the list of things I worry about. Look at that, it’s not even on the top ten.”
Hawke set those things aside as the raiding party resumed its advance. If he didn’t keep the eye on the ball, he wouldn’t need to worry about anything ever again.
He still had over seven hours of zero extra lives remaining.
Thirty-Eight
The Deepest Pits’ name came from the fact that the entire zone was covered in sinkholes, some of them bigger than a house or even a small castle. Fortunately, the High Fae’s ability to push off the mist and the party’s night vision resources allowed them to skirt the pits without much trouble. Other than that, the land was largely flat and featureless. Here and there, they passed some ruins, little more than fragments of walls or half-buried foundations. That was about it. Until now.
“There is a structure up ahead,” Kinux said.
The Goblin had sent a handful of Blue Imps ahead. The small Demi-Elementals had the upper torso of a blue-skinned Goblin and a swirling whirlwind for a lower body, like some sort of cartoon genie. The critters weren’t powerful but could fly and see through the mist, making them good scouts.
“What kind of structure?” Kastor growled, still in a bad mood after the argument with the mage.
“Walls. Maybe part of a castle.”
“Is it on our way? We are getting close to our goal, and I’m not disposed to linger in this place.”
“There is a big sinkhole between us and the Great Working. If we go around on its left side, we’ll pass by whatever this is.”
“Might as well, then. Does anyone object?”
Nobody did. A few minutes later, the party had reached the remnants of a defensive building of some sort. To Hawke, it looked more like a fort than a castle. The castles he’d seen tended to have tall towers and a large keep, plus a moat around it. This place was a walled enclosure encompassing four small buildings; all but one of the buildings had collapsed. The walls were crumbled in places, but about two thirds of them were still standing. One of the corners had a slightly taller structure on top of it; the rest had simple protected stands where archers could shoot from.
Amidst the remains of one of the buildings, he spotted a set of stairs going down. As soon as he did, a notification appeared:
You have been offered a Quest: What Lies Beneath
Error: Quest deleted.
Quest Objective: Deleted
Quest Rewards: Deleted
The fort had been a quest location, but the transforming Labyrinth had erased it. Maybe that was for the best. They didn’t have time to explore the fort’s basement, and now there was no reason to do so. Hawke shrugged and began to turn away when a new notification appeared:
Unclaimed Dungeon Elements Detected!
Minions: 20 (Level 30 Troll Warriors, Nature Attuned)
Lieutenants: 4 (2 Level 30 Troll Elite Warriors, 2 Level 30 Troll Rock Weavers, Nature Attuned)
Boss: 1 (Drattar Human-Killer, Level 30 Elite Chieftain, Rock Weaver, Summoner)
Structures: Underground Lair (3 Chambers), Fort (4 Chambers).
Cost to Claim: 650 Structural Mana.
Claim Dungeon Elements? Y/N
What the hell?
Apparently, some parts of the original Labyrinth were still around. If he claimed them, could he use them? 650 Structural Mana would cost him 3,250 regular Mana, thanks to his new Dungeon Core bonus plus his Arcane Steward discount, or 3,087 if he activated his Lord of Sunset Valley title. He wasn’t sure if it was worth it, though. Having an extra twenty-five fighters wasn’t bad, but it looked like he would have to buy the whole package, including the structures.
“We’ve got trouble,” Aristobulus said.
The Archmage’s warning snapped Hawke out of his reverie. He looked up and saw the mist retreating at shocking speed, all flowing toward their objective. The massive gathering of Mana about six miles away. As the fog went away, replaced by the Deepest Pits’ ordinary darkness, everyone could see a pillar of Chaotic light reaching all the way to the ceiling of the massive cavern, five hundred feet up.
“They are opening portals,” Leara announced. “Bringing in reinforcements. And they have reset the Labyrinth’s forces. We will be attacked soon.”
“Uh, we should make a stand here,” Hawke said. “I can claim this place and summon the original monsters here.”
Kastor gave him a suspicious glare. “How?”
“A special ability I have.”
“Even the ruins are a more defensible position than anything else we may find in this wasteland,” the War Chief decided. “Do whatever it is you can do, Twilight Templar. Everyone else, get ready.”
Hawke clicked ‘yes’ and burned through the thirty-two hundred Mana to claim the fort and its inhabitants, not wanting to wait to change titles to get a discount. A moment later, he felt his senses run through the ruins and the network of tunnels beneath it. The fort had been an Imperial structure, abandoned for centuries, and Trolls had taken over and built an underground settlement. He skimmed over the backstory and concentrated on the details. He could restore the fort’s walls (which counted as one of the Dungeon’s chambers) for another 500 Structural Mana. He chugged a Mana potion and spent the 2,500 Mana to pay for it, and a bunch of people shouted in surprise as the walls rose to their original twenty-five foot height and an iron-bound single door sprang into place with a loud clang.
He felt the presence of the Trolls underneath the fort. A mental click showed them to him. He didn’t know if all Trolls looked like the bunch below, but these had dark gray skin and patches of bright green hair that seemingly grew at random over different portions of their bodies. Their arms were long and apelike and their legs were jointed like a horse’s, but ended with wide-toed claws that might belong to a bird or dinosaur. Their weapons were clubs with obsidian blades attached to their sides and their armor was made of the shells of some kind of giant creature turned into breastplates, greaves and vambraces. The twenty minions and the lieutenants were divided in groups, one to each chamber, with the last one holding the most troops as well as the boss, who was sitting on a stone throne. Their stats were decent: 5,000 Health for the minions, 7,500 for the Lieutenants, 12,000 for the Boss. Their resistance values weren’t great, but they could soak up a lot of damage, and deal quite a bit back as well.
His senses also told him something that he had long suspected about Proving Grounds creatures. Unlike regular monsters, these were true ‘NPCs,’ artificial constructs with some basic programming that determined their behavior. That made them weaker than ac
tually thinking beings, although dungeon beasts would have the same set of instincts as their counterparts. Those Trolls would fight and use basic tactics, but had little sense of self or even a survival drive, happily fighting to the last man if they were commanded to do so.
Contacting them mentally was as easy as communicating with Blaze or Saturnyx. Hawke had the Trolls gather in one group and come up the stairs. He figured that as long as they stayed close to him, the Dungeon Core would keep them around.
Progress to Dungeon Access Level 2: Chambers: 7/10. Minions: 20/100. Lieutenants: 4/25. Bosses: 1/5.
And I had to spend a fraction of the Structural Mana it would have cost to create all of them. Nice to discover a shortcut.
“I’m bringing allies up,” he announced. It would suck if his new pets got shot to pieces by a nervous ally.
Everyone looked at the twenty-five Trolls that came out of the cavern with mixed emotions. Nobody had expected a member of their party to be able to call up Proving Ground minions into service. Aristobulus just groaned and looked away. The Trolls in the Labyrinth must have done a number on the poor guy.
“I have some questions, but they can wait,” Kastor said. “Just send them where I tell you to. While you were playing with your new toys, Panadel said the portals have closed.
“We’re about to have company.”
Thirty-Nine
“It’s going to be a combination of Labyrinth monsters and whatever they brought from those portals,” Kastor said. “At a minimum, the Labyrinth will send the same forces as the last attack, plus a Boss or two.”
Hawke nodded and checked the walls of his new mini-Dungeon. They were all fully repaired and everybody was on the battlements or corner towers, ready to shoot and fight. The taller tower on the corner opposite the gate was the only one with a roof, so they’d put most of the mages there, to keep them out of the reach of the Upirs. The walls were tall enough to keep the Maulers and Troggs from swarming them over, although the Titans and Lords of Bones could reach the defenders on the battlements or simply knock holes on the walls. Still, the fort was a force multiplier, and they were going to need every last bit of it.
Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story Page 26