by Arthur Stone
Progress points distributed.
+23 Athletics progress points.
+52 Heavy Weapons progress points.
+64 Physical Attack progress points.
+11 Acrobatics progress points.
+29 Ranged Weapons progress points.
+17 Physical Evasion progress points.
+33 Speed progress points.
+22 Accuracy progress points.
+14 Physical Critical Hit progress points.
Note: You have discovered a new creature: Zombie Ethrian. Common mob. Level 8. Base XP: 80. Note: Undead creature! 1.5x base experience! Health: 543. Mana: 65. Stamina: 298. Aggression: aggressive, socially aggressive, summons horde, extremely vindictive, pursues its prey tirelessly. Magic abilities: unknown. Poison level: unknown. Chance of valuable loot: low. Description: the dead body of an ancient inhabitant of Ethria, defiled by dark magic. An insatiable, wicked creature that attacks everything it sees. It is slow and clumsy, but compensates for this with its matchless persistence and tirelessness. One on one, it can be defeated even by a weak opponent, but remember that the black magic of the ancients covered large areas. When you encounter one zombie, others may be nearby. Together, they can cause a great deal of difficulty.
No player in the history of X has ever encountered a Zombie Ethrian! You receive +250 Knowledge progress points. You receive a bonus +1 to any skill. The leaders of the Explorers League may present you with a reward for adding creatures you have discovered from your personal bestiary to the league archives. Congratulations! Keep discovering new things to unlock more generous rewards!
Dark bent over the corpse to collect the unimpressive trophy it gave him. He paid for this mistake—instead, he should have read the warnings in the message and been on his guard.
A second zombie had crept up without so much as a warning moan, grabbing him by the elbows and biting into his unprotected left shoulder with its rotten teeth.
Zombie Ethrian deals you 18 damage. Debuff received: Reduced Speed.
Dark screamed and pulled away, somersaulted, and leaped up as he turned to face the creature, intent on tearing it to shreds. But he got a grip on himself then and looked around before committing to the attack.
The message had hinted very strongly at zombies’ pack mentality. This one had come in through the door that Dark had walked through a short time ago. In through the other door across the yard, another stumbled in, still partially hidden by the thick branches of the overgrown garden.
Was there a third in the window? Yes, there was, and soon he would join the fight.
Dark had no trouble taking out one of these. Two would be tougher. And three—even if he did win, it would be only at the cost of significant Health, Mana, and Stamina. The bite had debuffed him, noticeably reducing his Speed. He could see a timer ticking down on the debuff icon—the effect was short lived and would be gone in half a minute.
As long as he kept them all away from him. What did he care about a courtyard owned by dead Ethrians?
He looked around for an exit.
Rushing past the zombie marching across the yard, Dark nearly collided right into another that appeared in the doorway he had selected. He barely managed to slow his pace and turn off to the right. There, he saw yet another exit from this jungle trap. Leaping into the building, he immediately backpedaled. Four undead Ethrians hobbled towards him, moaning all the way.
He looked around in dismay. As clumsy as they were, the zombies were still gaining the upper hand in the situation. He barely managed to rush back out into the courtyard. Slowly and confidently they cornered him. More and more were coming, and soon he would have no chance but to fight the whole horde.
For a few brief seconds.
He ran around the perimeter of the courtyard, dodging the warped arms reaching at him from all sides. I have five seconds to get out of here, at most. Every door served as an entryway for more ghouls.
He had to think outside of the box to escape it. Can’t use the doors. What else? There was another way.
Sticking his ax in his belt, Dark broke into a run, jumped and seized a window sill, and pulled himself through. He was inside, and mercifully not in the middle of a dozen zombies.
Hopping into the corridor, he rushed into the opposite room, intending to leap through the window on the other side, but then he halted on the window sill. Damn! At least a dozen zombies were in his view now, all rushing towards him. Somehow that one he had killed had roused the entire undead population of the city.
And not all of them were as clumsy as the first. Some even looked nimble, and thus perilous. Other types of zombies, perhaps, or higher levels.
He was surrounded. Should he fight one last battle, hoping to kill at least one of them?
No. Dying was always a card he could play later. These zombie bites were extremely painful, too, so it would be an unpleasant death.
He re-entered the building. Flipping the bird at the first zombie in the hall, he whipped past it to the stairs. Skipping two steps at a time, he bounded up to the second floor, then to the third, and grinned.
This feature had also been present in the first house he had explored. A flimsy wooden ladder leading up to an attic door. Its rungs seemed so rotted that they barely held his weight. But only a couple of them broke on his ascent.
Once he emerged onto the roof, Dark crouched down and pulled out his ax to literally cut loose the only way up. Though it was dilapidated with time, the ladder resisted. The first of his pursuers even managed to climb up, scrambling to catch him.
He slashed it in the hand, chopping several of its fingers off, then followed with a blow to the head. Stunned, it let go and collapsed to the ground.
No, not to the ground—on top of the other zombies which were already crowding in. Dammit, how are there so many? Dozens, at least, with no end in sight. They pushed their fallen comrade up, as if trying to throw it into the hatch.
Dark activated Onslaught of Light in desperation. A dazzling ray stretched out of his hand and struck the undead being in the torso, causing it to contort severely. All of the other zombies whined and moaned, in unison.
So they hate the light? That made sense. Undead creatures preferred the darkness.
He blasted short charges of Onslaught of Light into the crowd below, sowing disarray in their ranks. Then, he took advantage of the pause he had earned to return to his ax work.
Snap! At last the ladder collapsed, and the creatures pulling themselves up on it slipped and stumbled into each other.
Returning the ax to his belt, Dark realized he had lost a large portion of Mana, but at least he had finished off the first zombie. Both a mathematical and a moral victory.
But he was not about to stick around and use this Sparta-style bottleneck to attempt an organized zombie execution using the powers of Light. Below, they were beginning to climb on top of one another. A second level of swarming ghouls was growing. Soon, a third would form, and then they would be able to reach the door.
He had to be gone by then. Carefully he walked along the fragile tiles to the edge of the roof. Now he was glad that the roofs had such pronounced overhang, even though they blocked the sunlight—he could make the jump across.
His flight was short, and his landing very noisy. The ancient tiles gave way, a few squares crashing onto the heads of the zombies in the streets.
Of which there were hundreds.
Dark charged across the roof and took another jump to the next house. Moving from one building to the next, eventually he reached the place he had seen at the very start, when first he laid eyes on this abandoned city. One of the towers had collapsed, but it had not fallen apart. It lay nearly intact, running down the street.
After several more roofs, he landed on this tower. Crossing it, he jumped down into a shallow ditch. Both legs were bruised in his fall, but not broken. Flipping his face into the dirt, he grunted and shook his head, then scraped dirt from his ears. Pushing to his feet, he ran without looking back, t
he mournful howls from the parts of the city behind him still filling his ears.
It sounded like thousands.
Ancient Evil was right.
I’m a little too new for these ruins.
Chapter 37
Under Siege
Total stat levels: 33 +1.
Character level: 5.
Mastery level: 2.
Beside himself with anger, Dark ran through the meadows and the hesh’ell pastures, past the line of bushes that stretched out from the mine all the way to the ruined waterwheel. At last he stopped to wash the city dirt from his hands. He knew from experience that the filth would disappear on its own, without needing to be washed off. But he’d rather not wait. Water felt good on his skin and helped him collect his thoughts.
Dark was not, in fact, very upset about the events that had occurred in the city of Omertis. He had spent relatively little time there and had gained much. Plus, he had found a location where he could grind later by facing thousands of fairly easy-to-defeat mobs.
As long as he devised a way to deal with them one by one rather than in a crowd.
Devising could wait. Perhaps the forum had some suggestions for him.
Returning to the mine, he made a couple of runs from the tunnel to the smithing area, dragging loads of ore. Then, he ascended to the second floor of his tower and began storing his trophies in the chest. Only the smaller items had come back with him, but they had some worth. The diamond was the exclusive item with appreciable value. It was a high-level gem, which high-level players would pay a great deal for. Dark’s miserable Stoneworking skill made him fear breathing in the gem’s direction. He needed to gain experience on worthless raw materials before he tried to work with genuine treasures. Attempting something on the diamond and failing would give him nothing but a small pinch of dust. But selling the gem, completely unprocessed as it was, would fetch enough money for a level 30 character—or even higher—to get a full set of equipment and consumables.
High-quality equipment, in fact.
The Lesser Modifiers were valuable, as well. He could sell them to players or NPCs so they could upgrade their gear with them.
Of course, there was no one in Ethria to sell anything to, and trying to add modifiers to worthless low-level items was like plating and inlaying a chamber pot in gold and diamonds in hopes of ennobling the stench proceeding from it.
Dark would accumulate these things, over time. Then, with a solid stash, he could begin experimenting.
A familiar sound grew in from behind. The second to last step of the stairs up to the second floor squeaked terribly under the slightest amount of weight. There was no mistaking that sound.
Dark turned and jerked to his feet in shock as the uninvited guest moaned at him.
A zombie? Dammit! Where did he come from?
There was no time to consider the question. He seized his ax and chopped the ghoul’s outstretched arm, then tried to sidestep, but the forearms grabbed him with such force it nearly broke his bones. Within seconds he had been pulled eagerly towards the grinning, drooling mouth.
Zombie Ethrian deals you 7 damage.
That was just from the grab!
Wait... I’ve taken damage. My health bar is no longer at full.
Perfect.
Dark activated Onslaught of Light at maximum Mana drain. The zombie released him instantly and twisted in distress at the flash of light, collapsing onto its knees and then its side as it began softly convulsing.
All Dark had to do was hold out for five seconds, and he would have another victory under his belt. But then that step creaked again. One more zombie, and another looking over its shoulder.
In this cramped second floor of the tower, the ghouls could easily take him down. His Light Magic was only good against single targets, and he didn’t have enough Mana to use it for long.
Interrupting his current spell, Dark rushed for the stairs to the roof. He managed to climb high enough to barely avoid the fingers that swiped at his ankles. Flinging the hatch open, he emerged onto the roof. There was no lock and no heavy objects to block the door. It was a big, empty space, saved a narrow bench by the very edge, with a cracked wooden bucket underneath it.
The ghouls knocked lightly on the underside of the hatch three times, then struck it with such force that Dark nearly jumped.
“Occupied!” he shouted, looking around feverishly.
On three sides, a peaceful, beautiful landscape stretched out from the tower, but on the fourth side, things were in bad shape. An endless chain of undead stretched out from the city to his tower. Hundreds upon hundreds of zombies, following Dark’s trail, with no end of them in sight.
That message had said something about how vengeful and persistent the zombies were, but how could he have known the extent?
Still they came, marching, piling up, knocking. Many times more than the number of hesh’ells in the largest of storms.
Only one zombie could get enough leverage on the narrow staircase to knock with any force, and still, banging like that would be uncomfortable. They didn’t have the strength to actually lift Dark as he sat on the door.
For now. Based on recent events, he predicted that the situation would rapidly deteriorate. Soon they would press together and climb each other. Their force would drive against the hatch, and they might even pile up around the tower walls.
Either way, he would ultimately lose.
That would be bad. His respawn point was on the first floor of this very tower. After all, he had decided on a convenient respawn point. Without a doubt that floor was now full of zombies, and their number was not about to decrease. Respawning blind and disoriented in the midst of a howling crowd would have a predictable ending.
He had been in a situation like this before, shortly after escaping Kim’s dungeon. How many times had he perished at the end of that skeleton’s rusty sword?
Countless times.
Dark had chronic bad luck with the undead inhabitants of the world of X.
How would he get out of this one? The longer he waited, the worse his chances became. Given enough time, the zombies would pile up, burying him and his tower underneath the sheer bulk of their bodies. No one was coming to help, either.
Looking around, Dark quickly evaluated several options.
All of them seemed naive, or even insane. All had approximately equal chances of success.
He could jump down to the roof of the attached warehouse, run down to the end of it, and make a break for it. But that roof was in such bad shape after all of the centuries that even birds feared to nest there. It was too far down, as well—Dark risked serious injury at that height. Zombies weren’t the most nimble of creatures, but he doubted he could outrun them with one broken leg, never mind two.
He could attempt to climb down part way first. But his Climbing skill was weak. On his first day here at the mine, he had needed to build a pyramid of barrels just to reach the first floor window. The large blocks which made up the tower were cut so precisely that there was hardly a gap between them.
Once again, this option in all likelihood would lead to serious injury. Even if he somehow made it to the bottom, the zombies would likely react by the time his climb was finished. He would reach the warehouse roof only to find himself surrounded by hundreds of them.
The hatch took a hit serious enough that it picked him a few inches up off the ground. I have less time than I thought.
There were no options. The warehouse was falling apart, and the ground itself was much too far below. And increasingly covered in zombies. Sadly, there were no ropes of any kind on the roof. The roof of the smithy shed itself was nearby, but too far for him to jump to, even if he had double the strength. Closer was the chimney of the metallurgy furnace. Dark could, in theory, reach it with a jump that ended in a painful hug, using his arms and legs to catch the chimney and stop his movement. But he was unlikely to make the distance, never mind the maneuver.
I should have put more effort into
Acrobatics! His skill level there was a meager 6. Yet that was what he needed the most at the moment. A leap to a faraway furnace chimney was not in the cards for him. If only his Acrobatics level was a little higher...
Idiot! He was wasting time!
After all, he wasn’t just sitting on a hatch—he was sitting on 1,545 distributable base skill progress points. Nothing was stopping him from using them to level up his Acrobatics!
He threw all but 45 points into the Acrobatics skill. Those last points he would have spent, as well, but sadly they weren’t enough for another level. Some might call him foolish to spend so lasciviously, but with his respawn point now the capital of Nova Zombia, he had to escape this situation at all costs. His Acrobatics grew to 18, bumping his Dexterity to 8. He had no idea whether that was enough.
Perhaps he could use his distributable skill levels as well, as he had earned some of those. Using them on low-level skills was regrettable, of course, but a new cycle of infinite deaths might kill him in the real world.
An even stronger bang on the hatch told Dark his time was up. He had seconds, perhaps. Not even enough time to take one last look at his stats. It felt like the zombies had brought an elephant to help with the hatch, and by some miracle it had not splintered into nothing at the last blow.
Dark hastily discarded his bag, weapons, and armor. All he kept was his trusty loincloth, which gave him no weight penalty. Every last ounce was critical.
The hatch began to groan as it opened, his weight on it notwithstanding. He leaped off and climbed up onto the stone parapets encircling the platform. Surging forward, he pushed off with all his might towards the chimney.
Groans of frustration filled the air behind him. Likely dozens of arms stretched out over the edge after him, but he was unable to see them. He tried not to look down, not to lock eyes with the dozens of undead watching his insane leap intently.
