Path of Darkness

by A P Gore

  Souls and seals? The game had gone mad. What kind of spell was this? Jon couldn't wrap his mind around the words “soul-devouring.” What did it actually do?

  Still confused, he accessed the second spell.

  Vine of Light

  Tier: Semi-sentient (Unique spell bound to the user. Can't be taught or converted into a skill book.)

  A soul-healing vine. Heals injured souls to unlock seals. Each seal grants a new power to the wearer.

  Current seals: 4

  Opened seal: 1

  Seal of Healing (Seal 1): Heals a soul for 100 points per second. If planted in the ground, can provide a healing effect in a five-meter radius for 20 points per second. Vine returns to the caster after one minute of use unless recalled. Current healed souls: 0/1000.

  Cost: 500 Spirit for a single cast. 300 + 40 Spirit per second for group heal.

  Spirit cost will be halved if the next seal is unlocked. Next seal unlock requirement: 1000 healed souls.

  This was... insane. The useless vine required 500 Spirit to cast and provided only 20 HP per second. Even his Healing Space did better than that. And did it actually heal a person or just their soul? The wording was ambiguous.

  A ferocious roar from the battleground pulled his attention back to it. Wave 4 had arrived.

  A two-meter-tall ape in battle armor stood amidst numerous monsters, roaring at the village walls. It had bloodshot eyes that incited fear in Jon's heart and protruding fangs that could behead him with a single slash. A faint red aura shrouded the ape’s body, giving off an intense presence around him. No other monster dared to stand near him. How could they? Even from a few hundred feet away, Jon felt like his breath choked in his lungs.

  Damn, why was it so scary? He cast perception on the monster.

  System: Are you nuts? That's a level 14 monster, and you are a level 5 player. Normally, you can't read that information, but as a village lord under attack I'll let you see it. +1 to Perception.

  Giant Ape of Shenron Mountain

  Class: Commander (Magic)

  Level: 14

  HP: 2000

  A commander who excels in providing battle buffs to his minions. Wears durable plate armor.

  God, now even the monsters had plate armor and he was basically a naked dude by comparison.

  There was no way he could kill this 2000 HP tank. He’d be better off stalling for time. Only one hour was remaining, and if he used his Lock efficiently, he would save his town. It was too bad that Underground Vine was gone, or he might have had a chance to kill this elite and gain a couple more levels. The worst part? Those stupid vines had replaced his good spell. Especially that Vine of Light, it was as useless as his daughter was at farming. Actually, she wouldn't need to work anymore. He had sent her to the mage academy.

  A smile appeared on Jon's face even in the middle of the battle.

  Suddenly, the elite ape started pounding his chest. His roars scared all the monsters away. They ran like their lives depended on it and only stopped after getting out of a ten-meter radius of the ape.

  "This is bad. The elite has triggered his war cry." Maggie clutched his shirt with her soft fingers. "Wait, it's not his war cry. But something else has changed. Someone else has cast an enrage spell on the whole pack. Do you see the faint red light around all the monsters?" Maggie's tone conveyed her agitation. This was the first time Jon had seen her worried. Until now, she had maintained a calm demeanor, but now she looked concerned about the situation.

  Before his eyes, every monster’s body enlarged. Every damn monster from the pack of five hundred showed sudden growth. Their eyes turned red, their breathing became ragged, and they all locked eyes on the gate.

  Jon's heart fell as the five hundred monsters attacked the gate together in one big rush, taking 80 HP from the 1500 HP gate.

  F-k! This was crazy.

  "Cast the Lock formations. Everyone stop this craziness!" Jon panicked, his voice coming out like an angry overlord. This was bad. Who the f-k had cast an enrage spell on these monsters? He would break their legs if he ever met them.

  However, right now he had to stop the monster herd. At this rate, his gate would fall in under a minute. God, this wasn't supposed to be like this.

  He turned to Maggie, pleading with her with his eyes. "Do you have anything that can save the village?"

  Maggie shook her head. "No, all my Paladin class skills are player protection oriented. I've got nothing that can stop this insanity, but you can still save your village if you kill the elite."

  "Kill the elite?" Jon turned his gaze to the scary-looking ape. To his surprise, the ape stared back.

  Maggie slapped his shoulder. "Don't look at him and draw his aggro. Right now, he's just boosting his minions. If you aggro him, he’ll attack you and then all hell will break lose."

  Quickly averting his gaze, Jon assessed the other players. They stood motionless on the guard towers, dumbfounded.

  "Don't you have a darkness spell?” Maggie asked. “It's quite good against the monsters.”

  Chapter 49

  The expression on Maggie's beautiful face confused Jon. "Darkness spell?" He gave her a bewildered look, hoping she would explain herself.

  Maggie shook her head in disappointment. “You’re really a noob, aren’t you?”

  Jon smiled sheepishly. Indeed, he was.

  She sighed, but her expression changed into a teacherly one. And damn, she looked stunning with that look in her eyes. Back in real life, his first crush was on one of his teachers.

  "Darkness is an element in Blackflame that can bypass all defenses. Armor, magic, etc. Only specific skills or resistance potions can reduce darkness damage. Even the spells are rare, and not many magic classes have access to them. Those who do are in demand from super guilds.”

  “Okay.” So, his Ring of Darkness was a special item as well.

  “Technically, only players have access to these resistance potions or skills. Monsters generally don’t. So, if your spell can do 10 damage to a player, it will do 20 to a monster. Got it?”

  “Double, really?” His mind went into a super-fast calculation mode. This was an epic discovery. His Vine of Darkness dealt 100 damage per second for three seconds before it needed more Spirit. Once the initial cost was taken, he would be left with 10 Spirit, and in three seconds he would regenerate 42-45 Spirit. That meant he would be able to cast the spell for four straight seconds. That would be 800 damage to the elite ape.

  Holy f-k. This was crazy. If he had a pool of 600 Spirit, he could kill the elite in one go.

  Wait, could he?

  Water of Darkness. It might have generated one drop.

  Smiling wickedly, he accessed his ring interface.

  Water of Darkness - Available 1334/10000.

  Again, holy f-k. The goddess of darkness must have showered him with her blessings. He had 1000 drops. What if he used more than one on his Vine of Darkness?

  He read the fine print on the Water of Darkness.

  Water of Darkness

  Water of Darkness grants +20 Wisdom and +20 Constitution for 12 hours. Cooldown period of 24 hours after use. Water of Darkness can boost a darkness type creature to go into a frenzied state, increasing its attack speed and damage by 40%.

  So, how did it work? Did he have to feed the water to the Vine of Darkness?

  With that thought, he called the Vine of Darkness to him.

  Boom.

  300 Spirit slipped out of his body, applying a Spirit debuff to him.

  An inky dark vine materialized from thin air. Instantly, an area of a few inches around it went completely dark. Every spec of light was sucked inside the vine. The scene reminded Jon of his first space travel; space had looked exactly like this. Black and void.

  The vine blinked. Yes, that damn thing had an eye and a few tendrils placed on one end. The eye stared at Jon.

  “Master.” A deep, rotten voice echoed in his mind. “Command.”

  A murderous feeling enveloped Jon
, sending chills into his core. The thing could speak?

  “Vine?” he asked to confirm.

  The vine nodded. Actually, it shook a little. The timer had started, and he had already lost one second of his spell time.

  Imbue the Water of Darkness, he willed.

  A thread of water shot from his ring and entered the vine's body. The more water that slipped in the vine's body, the more murderous the aura it gave off.

  The counter reached 2 seconds when the water injection stopped.

  This was bad. He only had 2 seconds left with his current supply of Spirit. If only he had a way to boost his Spirit!

  Water of Darkness.

  Glancing at the ring, he found 434 drops still remained. That damn vine drank 900 drops in a single second. What the heck?

  Without thinking, Jon drank one drop.

  A black aura shrouded his whole body, sending pulses through it. It felt like someone had poured an energy drink directly into his blood vessels, giving him instant energy.

  From the corner of his eye, he spotted Maggie stepping back, fear in her eyes.

  Jon’s body changed. It bulged a little, and his Wisdom and Constitution jumped by 20 points. Glancing at his stats, he found his HP at 795 and Spirit at 510.

  “This is f-ing awesome.” He laughed, feeling like a villain. Did they feel the same when they received a power boost like this? Now he had 7-9 seconds of uptime for the spell. In that time, he could kill the elite easily.

  Wait, he had 31 Spirit regeneration. That meant his spell was practically free to use whenever he wanted.

  A wicked smile played on his lips. He was going to kill them all.

  "Go, and kill them all," he shouted, laughing and ignoring Maggie who was staring at him with wide eyes. Maybe she was thinking he’d become an evil person. Heck, he didn't care. He would save his village first and then think about a woman’s impression of him. To hell with that!

  The vine zipped into the battle, shooting directly for the elite ape.

  Just before it reached the ape, said ape must have sensed something coming at him. Its face contorted in rage, and it raised its hand into a fist to block the incoming attack.

  But when the ape spotted the dark vine lashing out at him, its expression changed from fierce to scared. The elite ape tried to avoid the vine by stepping back.

  The vine was surprisingly smart. It ducked below the ape’s hands and shot toward its neck.

  The ape stumbled and fell on its back, crushing dozens of monsters behind it in an eye-wrenching scene.

  Jon’s insides churned. He hoped he never saw something like that again.

  Yuck!

  Though he had killed dozens of monsters, and in the most cruel fashion he could by melting their skin with his acid spray, he didn’t squish out their brains or blood like the ape did. Even Maggie had a bit of a green look about her, seeing that.

  The game developers must love gore.

  As the ape crushed the other monsters, the vine turned into a two-meter-long rope and wrapped itself around the ape’s neck.

  The ape cried out in pain. Grabbing the vine with both of its hands, it tried to pull it away. Yet, the vine remained attached to him, coiled as tightly as a noose.

  The sheer arrogance the ape had displayed when it joined the battle was long gone, replaced by a murky expression of death. It knew what was coming.

  As a last resort, it roared and cast something on itself.

  “He’s casting his war cry!” Maggie said.

  “War cry. Interesting.” Jon kept his eyes glued to the ape, forgetting the damage the surviving monsters’ combined attack was doing to his gate. It had only been three seconds since he launched the vine, so it could wait.

  The ape’s body grew in size, but the vine remained latched onto its neck, doing whatever it did. Devouring its blood or soul.

  In less than ten seconds, the ape dropped to the ground, its face turning completely white. Blood oozed out of its body.

  When the ape died, a faint ball of white light shot from its body and entered the vines. After swallowing it, the vine jumped through the air, spreading its tendrils and latching onto two new monsters. After devouring the elite, it seemed to have grown a little.

  Maggie gasped. “What— What is that thing?”

  Jon stared at her, surprised. “That’s a Vine of Darkness. My darkness spell.”

  “No, that’s a soul devourer. A forbidden magic in Blackflame Online.” She stared back at him, her face almost bloodless. “Don’t you know you’ll receive divine punishment for using a forbidden spell?”

  Chapter 50

  The vine leaped at two more monsters, latching onto their necks and sucking whatever it was already. With each passing monster, it grew in length and accumulated more tendrils to devour more monsters with. Surprisingly, Jon could see everything clearly even from ten meter’s distance. It seemed like the increase in Constitution had improved his eyesight.

  The vine grew into a thing with hundreds of tendrils sticking out from one end in no time. Jon wondered if he could still call that thing a vine, because it looked like a commonly found macrobacteria in the soil with hundreds of tendrils.

  "What do you mean, ‘divine punishment?’" Jon asked, tearing his gaze away from the vine. With the speed at which it was devouring the monsters, the danger seemed to be over. The vine had wreaked havoc among all monsters, and they were running away from it now.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. "You're a total noob." Her eyes jumped to the vine that had latched onto another ten monsters. "That vine is using the Devour spell. It's a forbidden darkness spell that’s banned in BlackFlame Online because it can devour players too."

  "A real soul?" Jon gasped. If that was true, the implications were truly dire.

  A rare smile popped on Maggie face. Since the elite had appeared, her face had turned as serious as stone, always frowning. "Not an actual soul. Nothing can kill a player in BlackFlame Online. But some things can keep the player away from the game for a long time. Soul devouring is famous for this purpose. If your character's soul is ripped apart, you can't log back on for fifteen days. And the vine is actually devouring it from the bodies of the monsters."

  "That bad?" It was indeed bad. Jon hadn't played this particular game, but after striking the deal with Baltazar, he’d read a lot about the game and found out that multiple large corporations had invested a lot in the game, and many people had been using the game for years as their full-time job. The in-game gold could be converted to chips in real life, and it sold at a very lucrative value. Jon had aimed to earn a good amount of gold in game and send it to his daughter through the currency conversion auction houses as real life money. Even though his daughter had enough money now to attend the mage academy, the expenses there would be huge. As her father, he had to do what he could to help her.

  So, theoretically, a fifteen-day period could result in a huge loss for certain players.

  "Yes." She stared at him, her blue eyes shining. "But where did you get that spell? Aren't you just a level 5 noob? Even level 80+ players don't dare to use such a spell."

  The Crystal of God. What was that thing? Now Jon's curiosity had tripled. Someday, he had to make a trip to that storage room again and see this crystal for himself. If it could evolve his spell, he bet it could do many more things too.

  "So, what if it's forbidden? I haven't killed a player with it."

  Maggie tapped her chin with a fingertip. "How should I put it... The game isn't like a normal game where NPCs are just NPCs. This game has gods, and they are mostly possessive, angry bitches. The god of light doesn't like any darkness-related forbidden spell, and the god of darkness doesn't like any light-related forbidden spell. Almost all the spells have a divine punishment attached to them. But I'm not sure what you're going to attract." Her voice had a hint of worry in it.

  Jon kind of liked it. It meant she worried for him. Was he too handsome to resist?

  System: Your Vine of Darkness has consu
med 100 souls. Seal unlock available, do you want to activate it? Yes/No.

  The message gave Jon a dilemma. But what the heck? He was already receiving a divine punishment. How much worse could it get? At least he would see what the second seal did to his vine.

  He selected yes.

  System: Second seal activated.

  Seal of Freedom (Seal 2): Temporary grants freedom to the vine, providing 40% increased damage and attack speed. Vine can target its own enemies. With each enemy devoured, vine obtains a 0.5% increased damage and freedom time. Base time: 30 seconds. Next seal requirement: 500 souls.

  What a useless power. What would the vine do with this?

  "So, what kind of divine punishment do you think I’ll get?" Jon asked, focusing his attention on Maggie. The word divine scared him a little. All he wanted was to become a farmer, and here he was killing hundreds of enemies with a forbidden spell. There was so much about this game he didn't know. A primer or a tutor would be a good idea.

  "Permanent stat reduction, a death aura, some have even gotten a rotten smell that won't go away even after using a perfume. A bad smell reduces your Charisma for a day."

  Stat reduction? Damn, that could hurt him. He prayed he wouldn’t get a stat reduction. The rotten smell would be fine.

  Jon glanced at the vine which had devoured another 100 monsters by then and had started targeting far away enemies.

  Before he could relax, the Vine jumped at one of his villagers on a guard tower.

  "Not that one, sweetie." Jon muttered under his breath, hoping that vine would listen to him.

  But no, the Vine attacked the next player on the same guard tower and devoured him. What the heck was happening? Why was his vine targeting players now?

  DEATHBLADE WATCHED Ashima taking a lady from the assassin group inside a makeshift tent.

  “Pervert,” he said to himself. It was true, the rumor about Ashima. While everyone else watched the battle around the village, that bastard had taken a woman inside the tent for, well, everyone knew what he was planning to do.