by Arthur Stone
Dark would stay far away.
He began to take a wide arc around it. As always, he denied his desire to hurry, frequently stopping and thoroughly inspecting his planned route.
What was that, peeking out from behind that overturned cart? Is it scattered cargo, turned into rubbish and dust by the centuries? Or is it a zombie, lying in tatters on the pavement? Perhaps. Some could not be identified from two feet away unless they began moving.
That kind of identification was highly undesirable. So he drew a heavy arrow with a wide copper tip, piled a generous amount of Mana into it, and fired.
He praised his decision. The victory message that followed alerted him that he had just killed a level 13 zombie, earning a number of progress points to Stealth since he had made the kill without being detected.
Stronger ghouls like that rarely approached the outer walls—they tended to live closer to the center. But they did exist, which was why he could not be sparing with his Mana in cases like these. Better to spend more Mana than to fail to kill the zombie in a single shot. He was not fast enough to charge and fire a second arrow before the zombie awoke and began its signal howl.
Reaching the cart, Dark crouched down and looted the corpse. He was pleased to find a silver bracelet. Sadly, its only bonus was a tiny boost for Athletics, which Dark certainly needed no more of. But the metal will come in handy. Silver was so rare in his mine that he could work for two days straight without finding any.
Looking around, he noticed another zombie. This one was clearly visible, the bony shape of its hand protruding from its pile of rags. Its fingers were bent, undead skin drooping from them. He could just go around, but there was enough Mana in his meter for the kill. The fewer creatures nearby, the safer he would feel.
Twang. Now, a few more steps and he would be able to climb inside the window, earning one or two Climbing progress points along the way. Like most of the windows in the city, it had lost not only its glass but also its wooden frame. This made it easy to climb into.
Once he was in, he moved quickly. He expected no zombies inside, but there were two dozen rooms of various sizes. Each was scheduled to be searched and stripped of any valuables: metal items, sugar, honey, spices, salt, recipes, maps, blueprints, weapons, and armor.
But the basement was the first on the list. That was where Dark might find was he was searching for.
He found the hatch in the kitchen, as he gathered spice jars into a pile. Spices were good both for pumping Cooking and as valuable alchemical ingredients.
But they could wait. Lifting the hatch, he drew and lit his lantern.
Holding it in his left hand and a Light-charged copper ax in his right, he descended the shaky staircase.
On the last step, his legs were beset by a huge basement rat. Hitting the rat with the ax would damage its hide considerably, so he used Onslaught of Light instead, looted the carcass, and began exploring the vast dungeon stretched out underneath the whole house.
He found his prize in the far corner: barrels. Eleven empty barrels and one partially filled with salt.
A dozen barrels. Not bad. He would drag them over to the wall and begin clearing a path to the next house.
His plan required many, many barrels. A decent day of barrel hunting yielded twenty-five of them. That was two houses, sometimes three, and four on unlucky days. Dark also took any boxes and chests he found beyond the wall. He had built a primitive field camp not far where he now spent all of his time besides that which was used for searching and carting.
A lot of material had to be transported to the camp from the mine and from Black Blood Temple. And from the city: barrels, boxes and chests. For five days straight now, he had been engaged in hard labor. It was boring work, but much better than days of destroying ghosts in the deep dungeons.
At this rate, he had five more days left.
On the sixth, the great moaning would begin.
Chapter 53
Army of the Dead
Total stat levels: 48 +7.
Character level: 8.
Mastery level: 7.
Dark plastered the final stone with mortar, squeezing it hard into the last of the empty space between the hatch cover stones. A few minutes later, the masonry would be solid. Now anyone who tried to reach the upper level of the tower would have serious difficulties.
If they ever reached it at all.
This was not his tower; it was one of the tallest towers lining the city wall. It was in excellent condition. No cracks, no cave-ins, and no big windows to climb into. This was a fortification tower, after all. Thick walls of carefully fitted stone blocks, with four levels of narrow loopholes for archers that only the tiniest of children could fit through.
Each tier was separated from the next by sturdy overhangs. The only way to climb from one to the next was via the stairs on the inside, which had square hatches at the top.
All of those hatches were now walled shut.
The entrance at the bottom, too, was reinforced with stonework.
Dark had just locked himself onto a platform thirty yards in the air.
All was well, though.
This action was all part of a plan.
He stepped towards the edge of the tower roof and surveyed the city from between the ramparts. As always, the city seemed extinct, which was close to the truth. Dawn had immobilized its inhabitants, and now the day was halfway from dawn to noon.
The door and the hatches had taken several hours. Thankfully, everything else had been finished by the night before.
It was time. For ten days, he had done nothing but prepare the battlefield on which he was going to face an entire army of undead.
It would be a more honest fight this time, without any participation from chitin hunters and other chance allies. Today, the past ten days would culminate either in a grand victory, or a grandiose waste of time.
He had spent so many valuable materials, too, that if he had obtained access to trade, he could have lived comfortably off of the proceeds for months.
At least the materials would not have been spent in vain, even if he lost, since he had gained some crafting skill points from using them.
He drank an elixir that gave him a 45-minute Magic boost, then munched a cake of herbs and fish dressed with spices that gave the same effect.
Grabbing his bow, he took aim and fired the first shot. This arrow was not charged with Light Magic. Even if the hit was a critical one, the zombie would survive.
That was the plan.
He missed, in fact. The distance was too far and his height too great for him to score a guaranteed hit on the small target. The second missed, as well, but the third struck the leg of the zombie curled up under the stoop of a nearby mansion.
Immediately the undead man howled.
In the seconds that followed, the whole city awoke. If “awoke” was the proper term for the undead.
Heaps of skin and bones began to rise and straighten. The hordes proceeded towards the wounded ghoul. Dark wanted them to stir, but he was in no hurry to intervene further. He would wait for the most favorable moment.
When the mobs had crowded around the victim, looking maximally confused as they sought the culprit of the crime, he took his next shot.
This time, the target was big.
He fired into the crowd and immediately took cover, making sure only the very top of his head was showing, just enough to see over the wall. Grunting in satisfaction, he watched the fussing of the ghouls increase, along with the volume of their moans.
Every two or three minutes, he loosed another arrow into the crowd, in the same fashion, trying not to give himself away. At this distance, with his Stealth and the low levels of these mobs, his chances of being detected were tiny. Sooner or later, though, random chance would betray him to one of them, and they would assault the tower. This was a game, so stone walls and ceilings would eventually fall to their bare hands. But it would take them many hours to accomplish the task, one tier at a time.
He
saw no alternative in their playbook, as the tower was simply too high to scale with a zombie ladder. Nor did the smooth stone walls offer enough handholds and footholds.
Here, Dark could withstand a protracted siege. Alas, his inevitable surrender would follow.
Perhaps.
* * *
Twenty-three minutes after the first shot, the ghouls located the archer’s position. It was Dark’s fault. By that point, every last inch of space between the houses on that street was packed with the horde, including undead mages. The most elite of them had not yet appeared, which irritated Dark since the whole show had been planned specifically for him.
These were no hesh’ells. They were more powerful and much larger, so their elite was larger, as well. Dark remembered the damage he had taken from the monster. Avoiding a second attack of such force was why he had spent ten days preparing the field.
But where was the fiend?
Unable to resist, Dark took a shot at a higher-level mob. He hit, but just as he saw the damage alert, his position was given away.
The horde howled and charged the tower in a stumbling avalanche of bone and cloth. Less than half a minute later, they were packed so tightly down below that he could not spit without hitting several. Even the numerous primitive carts which had been positioned nearby were filled with clambering ghouls. Unable to push through, many of the undead in the rear began climbing over those in front.
The mages, though able to hover without touching the ground, were unable to rise in the air. Dark knew this about them thanks to his experience in a different tower, where he had gathered a small crowd and watched them.
The mobs pounded on the door, slowly but surely destroying his stronghold. No elite showed its face. Dark had grown tired of sitting and doing nothing, so he began teasing the zombies, moving from one spot to another in a game of peekaboo behind the ramparts. With each appearance, he was greeted with an intensified collective howl and attempts made to hit him with black blots of magic.
The comedy tour lasted for several minutes before the zombies achieved a minor success, breaking into the doors. They crowded inside. Now Dark could not see what was happening, but he had a pretty good idea. Filling the whole first floor with their bodies, the zombies would mill about as the nimblest began beating on the first hatch.
Where is that damned elite? About a hundred zombie mages had gathered by now, several times more than he had seen by the chitin brood’s hill. He could not even estimate the number of normal zombies. A thousand? Three? Five? The population of the undead city had all come out to join the party.
Except for their leader.
What, was he on vacation?
* * *
His appearance was unexpected and terrible. Without warning, he appeared on the flat roof of the nearest house. He was fifty yards away from Dark, and that was, as it happened, not enough distance to hinder the magic from his wicked staff: the dead, red-haired head atop an exposed spine.
The tower shuddered as a blob of darkness struck it just above the top inside floor, and a black cloud grew in the air. Thankfully Dark had rushed to the opposite edge, where he took refuge behind a barricade, just in case. The move was unnecessary. The tentacles of black appeared between the ramparts, but proceeded no further, dissipating quickly.
Yet another magical blast flew overhead, followed by another that struck the tower. One second later, another blast hit.
What is this, a fully automatic staff? How did this monster have such a high magic rate of fire?
The onslaught continued for about a minute before falling silent. The quiet was unnatural, and the tower was still.
Then the silence erupted in such a howl that Dark pressed his hands to his ears. He shrank back involuntarily, pushing his palms tighter, twitching violently.
The tower shuddered far more violently than before. As he pulled his palms from his ears, he heard the sound of stones collapsing.
Not just stones—pieces of the very blocks the tower was made of. Or perhaps even the blocks themselves, blown clear off the tower’s form.
The force such an attack would take was unfathomable.
Unable to hold himself back, Dark stood, crept to the edge of the tower, and leaned over the edge. He realized then why the magic attacks had stopped.
The earlier frequency of the attacks made sense, too.
The tower was being assaulted, not by one elite, but three.
All of them now surrounded the tower in a semicircle, keeping about twenty yards’ distance. Before the decimated door stood a horror next to which the elites paled in comparison.
Clad in blue-black armor, this giant was at least thirty feet tall. He wore no helmet, so his head was perfectly visible: a huge skull with a tangled mane of impossibly blond, almost radiant hair, bound with a thin, blood-red band.
The colossus held in its hands a stupendously rich-looking halberd, which was, like everything else, massive in size. A single stroke of its blade would easily dismember fifty normal-sized beings at once. That likely had just happened, mere seconds ago. Crimson streamed onto the pavement from the wide blade. Perhaps it was just for effect, and not actually from the blood of the boss’s forces.
The dead giant swung again. The tower swayed dangerously, whole blocks scattering to the ground as the zombies moaned in triumph, welcoming their leader to the fight.
The elites had only been lieutenants.
He hadn’t even known that the city had been home to three of them. All of his calculations had been aimed at laying only one huge creature flat. Based on the forum, he had estimated the maximum hit points a monster of one of the elite’s size could have and had taken every measure to make sure he would reduce that number to zero.
His plans had no room for this inestimably stronger opponent.
A dire elite? A super elite? Perhaps even a boss, one of the strongest monsters in the game?
Do something, Dark. Now. The tower was noticeably weaker after the second blow. It would not stay standing for long. Perhaps it would crumble in a minute, perhaps two—burying its only defender under its rubble or flinging him into the howling crowd.
The giant struck again.
Dark felt as though his refuge was barely holding its ground.
Grabbing one of his arrows, he pumped all of his Mana into one, gathered those he had charged in advance, and added all of them to his small quiver. Drinking a Mana Regeneration Potion, he had no intention to wait for it to take effect.
Hurrying to the far edge of the tower, he drew the burning torch resting there, returned, and set fire to the long wicks leading to three bombs resting against the ramparts. One after the other, he sent them over the edge, trying to throw in a pattern that did not land them all in the same location.
He counted the seconds in his head, then braced himself against a short pole used centuries ago to fly a flag. A rope ran from the pole, tied on earlier by Dark. He grabbed the belt draped over the rope, pushed off, and began sliding down the makeshift zipline.
The other end of the rope was tied to a similar strong flagpole crowning the next tower down. Sadly, the rope itself was sagging. During his dry runs, Dark had given it a couple of tries. The first attempt almost got him killed, but the second went without a hitch—or without a fall, anyway.
Even if he died on this run, it might not matter. He had already done everything he needed to do.
Four, three, two... he continued counting down, his heart sinking as he realized he would not make it in time. The wicks had been too short, and the bombs would explode before Dark reached the lowest point of the rope.
One, zero.
Nothing. There was no blast. Dark continued to slide, his speed increasing as he approached the wall. The builders had built it wide enough to ride a cart on top of. As long as he grabbed the edge quickly and firmly enough, he would not sail over the edge.
Something black flew past him. The mages or elites were firing their abilities, trying to hit the rapidly accelerating
target.
Still, no explosion. He didn’t understand.
Had the bombs failed? Had they broken into pieces on landing? Nothing like that had happened in his trials. They were highly reliable bombs, in copper shells. In every test, they had exploded as intended.
Another blast of lethal magic whipped by, dangerously close.
Suddenly, the world turned black, and not from the magic. Dark’s hearing cut out, and his hands let go on their own. He flew down onto the top of the wall.
Or rather, where the wall should have been.
If it was there, he didn’t feel the hit.
He felt nothing at all.
Chapter 54
Boom
Total stat levels: 48 +7.
Character level: 8.
Mastery level: 7.
First, he saw the message.
It was long.
You have destroyed a large number of opponents of various levels. Note: You cannot receive base experience for these victories. Note: You will only receive half distributable experience for these victories. 83420 distributable progress points received.
You can view a detailed victory log in the Victories section of your log archive.
Note: The detailed victory log is 1396433 characters long, including spaces. Reading it might take a significant amount of time.
Note: You have discovered a new creature: Elite Ethrian Necromancer Lich. Elite Mob. Level 52-56. Base XP: 1620. Health: 82970. Mana: unknown. Stamina: unknown. Aggression: aggressive, socially aggressive, summons horde, extremely vindictive, pursues its prey tirelessly. Magic abilities: Mortal Black Cloud. Poison level: not poisonous. Chance of valuable loot: high. Description: Created from the mummified corpses of the most disgusting creatures and charged with the black soul of a cursed magician, who was treacherously slain by his own creation. The lich’s magic is fast and covers a large area of effect. Unless you can manage to take cover, prepare yourself for a quick and terrible death. If you do defeat one of these monsters, remain vigilant. The undead of Ethria are vindictive and exhibit horde behavior. By attacking one, you risk drawing the wrath of many.
