One of the roach hounds sunk its teeth into my leg, and I tried to kick it away. Those teeth sunk deep into my skin, and the hound component of this roach hound wasn't letting go. Another roach hound leaped up onto my back. I tried to shake it off, but all I could hear was the gnashing and crunching of the thing's mandibles on either side of my head.
The next thing I heard was the sound of Ellie's hammer being hurled straight at me. I stayed exactly where I was, putting all my faith into the knowledge that Ellie knew exactly what she was doing. The hammer flew straight past my head at speed, and suddenly the weight of the roach hound on my back was gone. It squealed in pain and surprise and it went tumbling backward. Broken.
I slashed my sword down at the roach hound at my leg. It sunk into the meat behind the roach hound's shoulder, but it still didn't let go. I lifted my sword again and brought it down just as hard. This time, the sword went straight through. The back half of the smaller roach hound fell away, and its jaws sprung open.
Every one of these small roach hounds gave me a small burst of experience points. They were only worth 5 points each, but there were so many of them, and they were easy to kill.
I used my Expose Weakness ability on one of the smaller roach hounds, just to get some more information about it.
Roach Hound Swarmer
Level 5
These fledgling roach hounds have not yet matured. Unable to hunt on their own, they use their numbers to overwhelm their prey. A Roach Hound Swarmer is not dangerous by itself, but they are deadly in groups.
I could see why. I realized now what had happened. The roach hound that chomped down on my leg was just trying to disable me while the other roach hounds overwhelmed me.
If it hadn't been for Ellie's quick reflexes, I might have died. I used my Expose Weakness ability on each swarmer that I attacked, as long as I had the CP to do so. Every single time I used it, the weak spots lit up like a Christmas tree, and I was slowly but surely leveling the ability up. Hopefully, by the time we fought the next boss, I'd be able to use the ability on it. Knowing their weaknesses really could mean the difference between life and death.
A light erupted as James summoned a fireball and hurled it towards a mass of Roach Hound Swarmers. The fireball landed and exploded outward. Bits of oily flame flew through the air, landing on a multitude of roach hounds. The monsters' strategy relied on constant movement and confusion to be able to take advantage of opportunities to attack, but it worked against them while they were on fire. As they passed close by one another the flames spread from roach hound to roach hound. Soon, there were more swarmers on fire than not.
Ellie, James and I dealt with the roach hounds one by one. The body count rose higher and higher with each swing of our weapons, and so did the experience points we accumulated. I was shocked at how quickly my experience bar was filling as the chamber filled with the smells of burnt fur and flesh.
Their numbers dwindled until there were only a handful left. I almost expected that this might just be the first wave. But as the room grew still, except for the crackling of the flames, it became apparent that we had won.
A message appeared in the bottom of my view.
You defeated the Roach Hound Swarm!
150 experience points gained!
You have grown to Level 5!
You have received one Primary Attribute Point to distribute.
Holy moly. This dungeon had turned into a great opportunity for growth! There had been so many of those things that killing them had elevated me all the way to Level 5!
I pumped my fist in triumph. "Another level up!"
"Seriously?" Ellie asked.
"Seriously. Didn't you level up?"
"No, I-," Ellie began, then her expression changed. She looked shocked. "Holy crap."
"You did level!"
"No, but damn, I'm close! That combat encounter supercharged my experience. I did not expect that."
"I'm not complaining!"
"Neither am I. You figure out your stats and I'll see what's in the chest," Ellie said.
I opened my character screen again, and this time I sunk a point into Perception. If my attribute was higher in that statistic before rushing headlong into that room, I'm sure I would have seen the trap that had been laid for us. Besides, we were going to be out of the sewers soon, I was sure of it. Perception would help with the next crime scene.
Lucas Hutchins
Investigator
Level 5
HP: 152
Strength: 5
Dexterity: 6
Intelligence: 7
Charisma: 6
Perception: 9
Endurance: 6
Resilience: 6
Fortitude: 7
I was happy with leveling up again, but I was hoping that my constant usage of Expose Weakness might have allowed me to level the ability up. I really needed it for the next boss fight. Empyria had said that ability levels would take quite some time to level up.
Ellie made a beeline for the chest. She used her hammer to smash away the hardened ichor piece by piece. The substance cracked and fell away. She opened the treasure chest and looked inside.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Stagnant Hive: The Fossil
I rushed to Ellie's side as she opened the chest. I wanted to see what was inside too! We had just survived something that should have killed us. Ellie rummaged around the chest, but my heart sank by the second. Nothing glittered inside it. Nothing shone. Everything looked like junk.
"I think this trunk belonged to a vagrant," Ellie said. "There's nothing in here but filthy rags. Wait a second..."
Ellie pushed all the rags to one side and found something hidden there at the bottom. It was a chunk of rock, about the size of a fist, covered in small bubble-like formations.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Not sure," Ellie said. "Some kind of fossil maybe?"
James snatched the item out of Ellie's hand. He held it away from himself, as though being in close proximity to it was dangerous.
"Hey, what's the problem?" I asked.
"These are eggs... fossilized eggs. From a species that should have been extinct an age ago." James turned the fossil over in his hands. "Hardy little bastards, too. If there is any chance at all that there are active eggs left in this rock, we can't risk it. I'm taking this for inspection and destruction."
James slipped the fossil into his coat pocket.
"Hang on a minute, you can't just take that from us," I said. "We all fought the roach hound swarm, and we should all get a say in what happens with it! A fossil like that would be worth a lot of money, wouldn't it? We should all get a cut!"
A dark look passed over James's face, and then it was gone in an instant. When he next spoke, it had a measured cadence, dripping with contempt. "Your ignorance knows no bounds. It's almost impressive. You can try to take it from me if you wish. I can assure you that it will be the worst and last decision of your life."
Ellie's hand clasped my shoulder. "Leave it," she said.
I was furious. "Tell me what they are!" My voice echoed through the chamber around us. How far would my voice carry? How many waiting roach hounds would it summon?
"Destruction on a scale you can't imagine."
"Then explain it to me! Because all I see right now is you trying to pocket something that we might all benefit from!"
"The profits we would make from selling this would be outweighed by the cost," James said. "Yes, we could sell this fossil for more gold than you have ever seen. Does that mean we should? If there's a chance that one single egg is still viable, we put the lives of every Eldiner at risk. No. Not just Eldin. All of Crematoria. You need to trust me on this. If we sell this, even to someone reputable, the temptation to sell it on to a warmonger or bellicose lordling would be too great. Gold corrupts all but the purest of hearts."
Damn. He was right. Was this a test? I hadn't given a second thought to what might happen if we sold the fossil and spli
t the proceeds. I was only thinking about how much gold I would make.
Back in the real world I spent so long being angry at previous generations of humanity for what they did to our planet. They mined our planet into a husk to make money. They burned our future to make their present more comfortable. Money won't matter once we all start choking on the fumes.
"I guess my heart could be purer," I said. "I'm sorry. I was thinking about how much I could get, not the impact my actions might have."
"That's the trick, kid. No-one's heart is pure. We've all got a price." James's smirk returned, and all trace of malice disappeared. "And now I know yours."
Damn it.
"Come on." Ellie walked past me, towards the burrow that led back to the chamber above. "Are we going to finish this?"
"Not so fast," James said. "We need to pile these roach hounds up and burn them. This infection must be purged."
Ellie and I helped James drag all the dead roach hounds into a big pile in the center of the room. These swarmers weren't as solid as the other roach hounds we had fought, but eventually, they started taking a toll on me. Nevertheless, I kept at it. My Heavy Lifting skill ticked upwards by a few points.
When all the swarmers were piled up, James threw a fireball right into the center. He winced as he summoned the flames, and after he threw it, I could see why. The skin on his palm and fingertips were blackened as though covered in ash. Was the fire hurting him? He shook his hand, as though he had just touched something hot.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"It's nothing," he insisted. "Just a little side effect of using my curse so often."
"It hurts you?"
"Not as much as it would if I didn't have these warding tattoos." James lifted his forearm towards me. He pointed at two solid black bands that encircled his arm. They interrupted the triangles and curves. Those bands had a slightly blue hue, whereas the curves and triangles had a red hue.
"They used the blood of a fire demon to give me the ability to control fire, and the blood of a frost scion to protect me from the flames. Without these bands, I'd just destroy myself any time I used my curse. The frost shield isn't as strong as the flame, so if I use it too much, I get burned. I'm going to need to give it a rest for quite some time after we finish here."
"Interesting," I said.
So, tattoos in Crematoria Online could imbue people with special powers. Now I had a little bit more information about how they actually worked. Every massively multiplayer online game had a system to control who and what could use magic, and under what circumstances. I hadn't chosen a class that could use magic, but that wasn't to say that magic was out of my reach. James was an Investigator just like me. Would I be able to get powers like that somehow?
I remembered back to something Empyria said, and it seemed like a lifetime ago. She had talked about being able to unlock different subclasses as I played the game.
I wondered how difficult would it be to get James to tell me where he had his tattoos done?
A message appeared in the bottom of my view.
It wasn't a notification this time. It was a question.
Do you wish to begin a new case file?
A new case file? About what? I hadn't stumbled on anything that started a new quest, so what had triggered it?
I thought in the affirmative and a new case file summary appeared, floating in front of me.
Investigation: Arcane Tattoos
Investigate the origin of James Treborn's tattoos.
James Treborn, Senior Investigator at Langdon specialist Investigations, has revealed a secret to you. He has abilities granted to him through the ink tattooed into his skin. You seek to know the origins of how he got these tattoos.
How the hell had Crematoria Online extrapolated a new case file from a simple question that I had thought privately to myself?
Somehow the game had known that there was a question that I wanted answered. It used that question to form the concept of a mystery that needed to be solved, and pro-actively triggered the creation of a case file that I hadn't even known that I could trigger. What else had the game put in that case file? I had to know.
I opened my menu and navigated to the Investigations Journal. I found the newly created case file and opened it up. There were some notes there that appeared to be handwritten, even though I had no recollection of writing them.
James Treborn, Senior Investigator at LSI, has revealed an intricate pattern of tattoos that allows him to use magic.
- The tattoos allow him to control fire, including the ability to summon fireballs.
- The tattoos need to be balanced out with a set of warding tattoos to protect his body from the destructive powers of the flame.
- Using the abilities too much causes him harm.
- The blood of creatures with elemental affinities was used in the creation of his tattoos.
Further avenues of investigation
- gather information about the tattooing process
- research imbuing ink with magical abilities
- find out where it was done to James
It was difficult to know exactly where this case file might lead. Would it give me the knowledge to be able to seek out similar tattoos for myself? Or would it lead to the opportunity to learn how to give the tattoos to others? Or was this perhaps a hornet's nest? Did I really want to go digging into James's past?
Regardless, I decided to keep the case file open. Having access to an ability like being able to summon a fireball at command would be very powerful. Perhaps it could also work the other way. Would it be possible to tattoo in some kind of shielding that would grant me a permanent defensive bonus?
Knowledge is power, after all. Having access to the knowledge of how to do it might even be worth more than having the ability granted to me directly. I really didn't like the idea of abilities that might hurt their user.
"Well, that fossil was definitely all that there was in the chest," Ellie said. "Shall we continue on and finish this?"
The light of the roach hound pyre danced as the corpses popped and crackled under the intense heat. I remembered back to something that I'd heard in a movie once. Sometimes when people got trapped in buildings that were on fire, the flames grew so hot that the teeth just popped like popcorn. It sounded like that's what was happening to the roach hounds.
"Yeah, I've had just about enough of this hive." I turned and started walking back towards the burrow's entrance.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched James shake smoke from his fingertips.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Stagnant Hive: Long Live the Queen
The Roach Hound Matriarch was waiting for us when we arrived. She stood in front of a clutch of eggs at the end of the corridor covered in hardened goo. She looked every part the queen. A ridged crest rose high above her roach-like mouth. A long tongue snaked out from between the chaotic mess of chittering mandibles that never ceased moving.
She was larger than any other roach hound we had encountered so far by an incomparable margin. Even her body shape was completely different. She had four strong legs that supported an enlarged abdomen, with a pair of thick armor plates running along the top. Below those plates would be a set of wings, but would they be able to support her weight in full flight?
Her thorax rose almost at a right angle from her abdomen, and her crested head jutted forward between the shoulders of what looked almost like a human torso.
It was almost impossible to believe that there were only elements of roach and canine biology in this enormous creature. Was there a little human in there? Based on the swell of what looked like breasts on her chest and the ridged sections of the thorax that looked like abdominal muscles, I was almost certain there was.
She was flanked by two Roach Hound Defenders with ridged spines on their carapaces, and smaller but still matching crests that rose above the roach-like heads. They looked like her elite guard and appeared to be much more dangerous than the defenders
we had faced previously.
"What's our strategy?" I asked.
"Don't get killed?" Ellie replied.
"That's a good start," I agreed.
"Let's stick with our plan. It hasn't steered us wrong yet," James said. "I'll distract the matriarch with a fireball, Ellie can distract one of her alphas and keep it busy while Lucas and I finish off the other. We'll do it quick, then come and pull the attention of the other alpha from Ellie."
"Then you'll kill that one, and I'll get ready to defend against the matriarch as the fireball wears off," Ellie said.
"It might not be as easy as that," I said. "The armor on those alphas is thicker than the defenders. I won't know their weakness for sure until we start the fight, but it doesn't look like they have any weak spots on their underbellies."
"Yeah, this isn't going to be a walk in the park, but we can do this," Ellie did.
I nodded in agreement.
"Are we ready?" Ellie asked.
"Let's get this done," James said.
"Yeah, let's get this party started," I said.
The thrill, the anticipation of combat coursed through me. I was starting to enjoy this. At first, I had been apprehensive. Scared, even. The fear was still there but didn't speak as loudly.
James pulled his sleeves back again, revealing the smoking black lines of his tattoos. It wasn't just his fingertips that were smoking now. Wisps rose from every line of his tattoos now except for the horizontal warding bands. Those appeared to have a crust of frost covering them.
That was a hell of a thing. He was hurting himself as we fought these monsters.
His fingertips erupted with flame. It seemed to run out of his fingertips, then coalesce in the palm of his hand, building itself up and holding itself together. Was that his own blood that was acting as a catalyst for his abilities?
Rise of the Crimson Order: A Crematoria Online LitRPG Novel Page 19
