by Kyle Johnson
He sat down, trying to reason the problem out. It’s likely that the entrance is close by, he began, thinking carefully. It wouldn’t make sense for the questline to deposit me halfway across the city from it and make me search for days, especially when death means failure. I remember, though, that the elves had ‘hidden’ kingdoms, so there wouldn’t just be a wide-open door to walk through. It’ll be something hidden.
Unfortunately, he had no idea how to search for a secret door hidden by long-dead elves to protect an entire city from being discovered. He guessed it wouldn’t be as simple as yanking on a specific branch and having a door pop open. It would probably be something super complex, like performing a water ritual in light of the morning sun while completely naked, and he didn’t have any extra water. Or sun, for that matter.
He turned the problem around and around in his head, but no matter what approach he tried, nothing he considered seemed workable. Every idea basically boiled down to, “Walk around and feel up a bunch of trees”, which didn’t seem like a stellar way to start his final Sorcerer Quest. Frustrated, he leaned back against a dead tree and let his mind drift, trying to stop focusing on the problem and let his subconscious offer solutions.
Maybe I could something like Empowerment, but with Perception, he mused. I could send mana to my eyes instead of my muscles…although, since the mana damages my body when I use it like that, it seems like a great way to go blind. Okay, not a solution. Or, I could send out a pulse of mana, like magic sonar, and read the echoes when they come back. Not sure how I’d read them, though, and if there’s still anything hostile around here, that’d wake them up pretty quickly. Hmm…
As his mind wandered, he felt a sudden urge to get up and start moving. He resisted it at first, but he quickly realized that the sensation felt similar to when his Archery Skill had tried to guide his hand. It was a gentle but constant pressure, and he realized that the system was trying to assist him somehow. Shrugging, he surrendered to the feeling and rose to his feet.
The nagging sensation pulled him to his left, so he turned and followed it for several minutes, the feeling wove him between trees, until he at last stood before one that, basically, looked exactly like every tree around him. Nothing about the tree screamed, “Hidden entrance!”. I guess that would be the point, though, wouldn’t it, he mentally sighed. Curiously, he walked around the tree, inspecting every inch of the bark, and to his complete lack of surprise, he found that it looked like a tree. There were no out-of-place straight lines, no weird markings on the bark, no smooth spot where a hand or a rune could go. Just wood, wood, and more wood.
He felt his frustration starting to rise once more, but he forcibly calmed himself and let it go. Anger wouldn’t help him here, he was certain, especially in a place that seemed to be almost a reflection of pure rage. He relaxed his focus once more and just let his thoughts drift, not concentrating on anything. Immediately, he felt an urge to walk to reach out and touch the tree. He did so, but nothing happened. Wait, he stopped himself, thinking hard. This is supposed to be a Sorcerer Quest, right? So, I’m guessing that I have to do something Sorcerer-ish to open the door. Otherwise, pretty much anyone could get in and complete the Quest.
The idea came to him in a flash of intuition. In other games, sometimes magical locks could only be opened by a wizard channeling raw magic into them, rather than by casting a specific spell or using a key. It was a classic way for a magic-user to be certain that only another magic-wielding character could open the lock. On a whim, he imagined his mana rising from his center and trickling out of his hand, into the tree. In his mind, he could feel the mana leaving his hand, the tingle as it passed his skin, and the sensation of the tree greedily soaking up the energy. The tree felt totally devoid of life, he realized, and he pictured it springing back into full bloom as his power filled it. He could smell the scent of the tree’s leaves bursting forth, could hear the groaning of its bark as it swelled into new life. Once he had the image firmly in mind, he began to pour SP into it, over and over until he felt a surge of energy rush up his arm and into the tree.
Just as he had imagined, the withered trunk sucked the energy up like a sponge, greedily grasping for more until he felt the flow slow to a trickle. He gasped and pulled his hand away from the tree, quickly checking to see that his SP were down to only 10%. He gazed hopefully at the tree, looking for signs of life within, but it still looked completely shriveled and desiccated. The wood had sucked up something like 350 SP, but to his dismay, the energy seemed to have had no effect on the tree at all. Maybe I need to cast a specific Spell, he thought a little despondently, taking a step away from the tree.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud cracking sound, as if someone had snapped an enormous stick over their knee. He blinked as he saw a thin line suddenly appeared in the center of the bark and began traveling vertically, both up and down, accompanied by the sound of snapping wood. The line raced down until it touched the earth, then up until it reached a point about 5 feet above his head. There, it stopped, and the tree was still once more.
“Well, looks like that was the key,” he grinned excitedly, his voice echoing in the hushed landscape. He quickly clamped his lips together glancing around to see if his outburst had attracted any attention, but the decaying forest around him remained still and silent. That won’t last, though, he thought grimly, his excitement dying. The quest wouldn’t be A-ranked if I wasn’t going to be facing at least some kind of boss mob. In most games, a difficult Quest usually concluded with a huge battle with some uber-powerful monster or character: a boss mob. Regular mobs were just random creatures one might encounter anywhere in a dungeon, castle, or, of course, a ruined elven city. Boss mobs were much more powerful and dangerous, though, and it usually took a full party to take one down.
As he considered the situation, he realized that he was about to make the same mistake he had facing the great wolf. He was preparing to open a door into an ancient city that had been overrun by some form of evil creatures, and he had done basically nothing to prepare. Sighing, he started by summoning his mana armor and readying his staff. Then, he stopped to consider what could go wrong as he opened the door fully.
The most likely scenario, he considered, was that his presence and the sound of the door opening had awoken something behind the door, some sort of sleeping guardian, and the moment he opened the door, it would spring upon him. That, he figured, he could do something about. Using his Forge Mana Spell, he fashioned a long, pointed spear made of hardened mana and set it into the ground, angled up to point directly at the center of the door. If something rushed out of the door, it would find itself eating six feet of mana spear.
The next most likely possibility, as he saw it, was that something was lurking behind the door with some sort of ranged attack. That didn’t worry him as much, since his armor was currently blocking almost 370 points of damage, and anything that could do that much damage in one shot was something he would have had no chance against, anyway. I’ve got no choice but to trust that the AI’s wouldn’t do that, he sighed. This is a game, and they would make sure it was winnable.
Finally, he considered, something might be waiting within to ambush him. That was actually the most worrisome: he couldn’t prepare for an ambush without knowing what it looked like inside the tree, so there was little he could do about it except make sure his armor was prepped and maybe hold a mana arrow ready to be released.
As prepared as he thought he could reasonably be, Jeff placed his hand back on the tree and once again began feeding it his SP. As he felt the energy begin to flow, he idly wished he had an SP bar in his display, something he could glance at and get a rough idea of where his mana stood. He had a lot of SP, but it would be easy to burn through it quickly in the heat of combat. He was about to reach out mentally to Veronica, when suddenly, a small, blue bar and an equal-sized red bar appeared in the upper left corner of his vision. “As requested, your SP and LP bars,” Veronica’s voice reminded him of her
ability to read his thoughts.
He watched his SP bar slowly trickle down, until it hovered around the halfway point. When his SP hit 50%, he cut the connection and stepped back. If something was going to burst through the door, after all, it wouldn’t do him much good to be empty of SP. He quickly moved behind his glowing spear and began to summon a Mana Barrage into his arms. Overkill is usually the best kind of kill, he thought grimly, pointing the arrow at the door. I mean, at least compared to underkill. Is that even a thing?
His focus was jerked back to the tree as the line up the middle split into two segments, traveling both left and right, downward in a pointed arch shape, the wood snapping and popping as it split. A similar sound came from the bottom of the tree, which he assumed meant the base of the door was cracking open, as well. The top lines moved about four feet each before slowing to a halt; after that, the door remained still.
Jeff held his barrage at the ready for a long minute, his arms burning and trembling from the mana filling them, before releasing the spell with a sigh. His arms fell to his sides, the muscles shaking from exhaustion, and he settled in to wait the 5 minutes for his Str debuff to fade. It was a little annoying, but at the same time, he’d rather be safe than sorry.
When his arms stopped spasming, he moved back to the tree and channeled his SP for the third time. This time, the door was almost three-quarters of the way outlined when he stopped feeding it SP, and faint, swirling cracks that reminded Jeff of runes started to branch off from the edges of the door. 5 minutes later and another attempt at forcing his SP into the tree, and Jeff was rewarded with the groaning, creaking sound of wood shifting against wood. The swirling runs across the door lit up with a weak, silvery light that flickered and danced in the gloomy air.
Jeff took up his position behind his spear, summoning his mana barrage as the door finally began to swing toward him. The heavy doors creaked, as ancient wood began to shift in what was probably the first time in centuries. Dust shivered and swirled into the air as the crack between the doors widened from a hairline, to several inches, to a couple feet…and then shivered to a halt.
Jeff stood, blinking, waiting to see if the portal would continue to open, his arms shaking from the energy they held. After a minute or so, nothing had moved, and Jeff released the held spell. Well, doesn’t look like my first two worries were correct, he grumbled silently. Which, of course, means that something’s going to ambush me in there. Yeah, that figures.
As he waited for his Str debuff to fade, he considered adding more energy to the tree, but decided against it. He had already poured almost a thousand SP into feeding it, and all that had done was to open the doors partway. He guessed that one more application of mana would probably finish the job, but what would be the point? The doors were open enough for him to slip inside, and that was really all he needed. It wasn’t like he had to power the thing to full capacity, or anything.
The shaking in his arms finally stilled, and he hefted his staff and cautiously entered the tree, summoning a mana arrow as he did. It took a moment of finagling to slip between the doors: he wanted to enter arrow-first, but his staff got stuck across the entrance and slammed into his chest. He had to turn sideways and shimmy through, arrow pointing into the room and staff held upright in his left hand.
The arrow’s glow lit the space beyond the doors feebly, revealing a wide, featureless, circular space maybe fifteen feet high and twenty across. The walls and floor were pitted, cracked wood. The ceiling was lined with what was likely thousands of concentric rings, a testament to the bole’s ancient age before whatever cataclysm struck this place had destroyed it. He turned in a slow circle, his eyes scanning for threats, but not only were there no enemies visible, he didn’t even see anything they could have used as a hiding place. The room was totally bare, which made Jeff sigh in relief but also presented a different problem. So, he wondered, rubbing his head and sighing, I’m in the tree…so how do I get up into the city from here?
Since there were obviously no threats, Jeff dismissed his arrow, but to his surprise, the gentle glow of mana didn’t fade completely. He looked down and saw that the floor, which seemed featureless in the light of his arrow, was now lined with swirling, silvery runes. The light of the runes was pale and flickering, the lines marred by myriad spots where no energy seemed to flow. Okay, Jeff thought slowly, so maybe this is some kind of teleport pad, to send me right into the city. Looks like it’s broken, though – or else it just needs more juice. He sighed and laid his hand on the floor. Looks like I’m filling the tree completely, after all.
As his SP flowed into the wood, the radiance in the floor steadily strengthened. Many of the runes stopped flickering and burned with a steady glow, while a few of the dark spots vanished by the time he ended the flow of energy and waited for it to regenerate. It took him two more attempts before the swirls of energy were all lit and glowing brightly. The moment he ceased the energy flow, though, the groan of wood scraping against wood filled his ears, and he spun to see the doors inexorably closing, the wan light streaming in between them steadily narrowing. With a curse, he rushed to the closest door and pushed, trying to hold it open, but the door simply slid him back as it sealed itself with a loud boom.
“Damn!” he cursed, striking the door with his staff to no effect. “I freaking hope I’m not trapped here…” As he spoke, the energy in the floor began to churn, its radiance brightening, sending shafts of silver light climbing toward the ceiling. Jeff felt the energy wrapping around his feet and tried to step back, but his boots were glued to the floor. The power roiled up his legs, curling around his stomach and chest and engulfing his face in its eldritch glow. He felt a sudden jerk, as if his whole body had been yanked to the side, and vertigo swept through his body as the silver light faded.
He blinked and wobbled, his head spinning. He sat heavily on the ground and swallowed, trying to keep from vomiting. He almost succeeded, as well, but he ended up on his hands and knees, heaving out the meager contents of his stomach. Fortunately, his Survival Skill had made it unnecessary for him to actually eat anything, so there was very little to come up except for some acid. Unfortunately, that meant he spent a couple minutes dry-heaving before he could finally roll back to a sitting position. “Oh, that sucked!” he panted loudly, wiping his mouth off on his sleeve. “That cannot be normal for this sort of thing, or nobody would ever do it! What the hell?” He groaned and slowly rose to his feet, finally able to take a look around.
He was standing in an area that was enclosed on three sides in some kind of dark wood that seemed to have resisted the corrosive nature of this place fairly well, although it did look like scattered chunks of it were strewn about along the base of the walls. It was open to the sky, and the walls were pierced every few feet with tall, narrow slits. Probably arrow slits, he realized as he understood where he was standing. This is a kill box. If an enemy teleports into the place, they can get hit by archers from the arrow slits, and probably some kind of aerial attack, since the roof is open. That also explained why the door to the teleport room shut before the teleport happened: even if an invading army filled the room with attackers, they probably wouldn’t get more than 20 or so to teleport at a time. They’d just be jumping into a slaughterhouse, he thought grimly.
A sudden click sounded to his right, and he turned to look at the sound. All he saw was a particularly large pile of dark, broken wood, stained and scorched-looking. He stared at it curiously but saw nothing. Just as he was about to turn away, the pile shifted with another click, as if something was moving within it. He took several steps back, expecting some monster to leap from the stack of wood. Instead, he blinked as he noticed a chunk of wood roll over from the base of the nearest wall and flip up to the top of the heap of wood with an even louder clack.
More pieces started rolling toward the pile, some even lifting up into the air and hurling to join it as the stack shifted and grew. Jeff swallowed nervously and began summoning a mana barrage as he retreated
slowly. Oh, this is gonna be bad, he groaned internally. I don’t know what that thing is, but I know it’s gonna be bad…
The pile shifted again, and as the pieces began to shiver into place, Jeff realized that the chunks weren’t wood, at all but heaps of scorched, rotting bone. As the bundle clacked and rattled, slowly unfolding, a grinning skull lifted from the center of it and turned to face the room. The last few bones shifted into place, and the figure rose to its bony feet and lifted its arms to the sky.
The skeleton before Jeff was enormous, easily standing 30 feet high and much wider than Jeff was tall. Its bones were thick and seemed seamlessly joined, despite Jeff having seen them piece themselves together from scraps just moments ago. Each of the skeleton’s hands was as big as Jeff’s fist, and its movements were smooth and swift, not jerky and uncoordinated like undead in many other games. The giant skull turned to face him, and a sickly, yellow light filled its eye sockets. At the same moment, a purple-black flame erupted in the center of its ribcage, the flames spreading up over its arms and down to its hands.
Jeff wasted no time and fired off the first burst of his Mana Barrage, running sideways as he did. The first orb streaked out and slammed into the center of the skeleton’s chest, just as its fist smashed into the ground where Jeff had been standing a moment ago. Jeff stopped and aimed his next shot, trying to put it into the creature’s eye socket, but the monster’s hand swept sideways, crashing into the Sorcerer and hurling him from his feet. His armor stopped the impact, but Jeff still flew a dozen feet in the air and slammed into one of the walls. That thing hits like a freaking truck! he thought as he bounced off the wall and crashed to the ground on his stomach.