Vault of the Magi: A LitRPG Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 5)

by Carrie Summers

  “Huh?” Hailey said. She blinked a couple of times, then noticed the dried meat in Devon’s hand. “Oh. No. Not your snack. I was just looking inside the cave.”

  Devon raised her eyebrows. “From this far away, huh?”

  Hailey nodded, shrugging her shoulders. “I have True Sight up to tier 3. It has a big range.”

  The woman’s class, Seeker, was based around being able to determine the true nature of things. In this case, her True Sight spell let her look through walls and—apparently—across fairly long distances to see what kind of enemies her group might face.

  “So what are we looking at?” Devon asked.

  Hailey grimaced. “Mostly some kind of scorpion things. They’re level 20 and 21… Should be okay for us to duo, but we’ll have to be careful of poison damage. I don’t have a cure. There’s a boss in the back of the cavern system. Some kind of humanoid, I think? It’s mostly shadowed against my sight.”

  “I guess the yuck comment was because you don’t like scorpions?”

  The other woman grimaced and looked at Devon like she was a little bit nuts. “Are you saying you do?”

  Devon laughed. “Okay, good point. So what’s the strategy? I assume the best way to avoid getting poisoned is to avoid getting hit.”

  “Captain Obvious to the rescue,” Hailey said with a slight smile.

  Once again, Devon couldn’t help feeling worried about her friend. Usually, a comment like that would be delivered with a grin and a laugh. It was almost like Hailey was just going through the motions of trying to be herself. Putting on an act. But since Devon didn’t think she’d get a different answer by asking again, she took a deep breath and tried to forget about it.

  “Too bad Chen isn’t here to tank for us.”

  At this, Hailey did laugh a little. “Man, poor Chen. If he didn’t want to be a tank anymore, he really should have created a squishier character.”

  “No matter what he says, I don’t think he could resist martyring himself. If he rolled a caster or something, he’d probably just try to pull aggro anyway.” In their previous game, Chen had been the group’s main tank, gathering the attention of the enemies and playing the part of a punching bag while the rest of the group unloaded on the monsters. In Relic Online, he claimed that he didn’t want the responsibility, but somehow he ended up taking the worst of the beatings anyway.

  “But since he’s not here…” Devon said. “Got any new snare spells I haven’t seen? The bugs will have a harder time poisoning us if they’re too slow to catch us.”

  Hailey shook her head. “Newest spell line is a buff. Here.”

  The woman’s eyes started to glow as if icy sparks lit them from within. A second or two later, Hailey touched Devon’s shoulder, and a buff icon appeared. Devon focused on it to check the effects.

  Spell: Self-actualization

  A seeker has looked inside your soul and amplified your true nature. +15% damage on all Sorcerer and Deceiver class abilities.

  1:45 remaining

  “Super cool,” Devon said. “So. I guess our strategy is I pull as many of them out of the cave as I can. We’ll try to fight them out here?”

  Hailey nodded. “And we try not to get hit.”

  Devon grinned. “A sophisticated strategy. I like it.”

  ***

  It’s a good thing you finally got your Stealth up from “totally incapable” to “merely inept.”

  Devon rolled her eyes and brushed the popup away as she crept around the edge of an area of packed earth just outside the cave entrance.

  Oh, and:

  You have gained a skill point: +1 Stealth

  She didn’t need to pull up her character sheet to know that put her Stealth skill at 8 points, for a net of 7 after her backpack’s negative. That wasn’t exactly awesome, seeing as it was still tier 1, and from what she’d heard from other players, core skills at tier 3 seemed to be the norm.

  But at least she wasn’t so unsneaky that she might as well have tied a string of cans to her ankle.

  And anyway, she liked to think her other talents made up for the lack of core capabilities. Such as summoning shadow minions to wreak havoc and conjuring illusions that no other players could match.

  At the edge of the boulder hill, she slipped into a gap between stone faces, pressed her back against one side, her feet against the other, and started chimneying her way up. Her Climbing skill, at least, was already 8, plenty for a straightforward ascent like this. Less than a minute later, and with a few more percentage points to her Fatigue, she clambered onto the top of the boulder that overhung the cavern entrance and crept to the edge.

  Devon crouched and listened for clues about the situation in the cave. The sun was warm on her back, and the crystals of granite rough against her palm. Above the lightly waving grass of the savanna, butterflies fluttered, and clouds of smaller insects hovered in the shimmering heat. She could hear something—a small rodent, perhaps—moving through some of the shorter tufts of grass that had found purchase higher up the rocky hill. But as for the scorpions and their strange noises, those which had caused the caravaneers to turn tail, she heard nothing. If not for Hailey having confirmed their existence, Devon would have probably chalked the report up to fear of the dark.

  She glanced down at her friend, who had crept closer and now crouched in the grass near the edge of the cleared area. The other woman nodded and raised two fingers, which Devon interpreted to mean that there were two scorpions near the entrance.

  Okay then. Hopefully this would work. In preparation for combat, Devon glanced down at her shadow and raised a tier 2 Shadow Puppet. The spell had different effects depending on what kind of light had cast the target shadow. In this case, the sunlight created a sharp-edged, inky minion that Devon could form into different shapes for different purposes. Usually, she created some sort of projectile weapon, lances of darkness she used to impale her enemies. The downside to the shadow lances was that they shattered on contact, and the sudden severing of her link with them created a knockback effect that sent her flying. Given her perch fifteen feet off the ground, being flung in an unpredictable direction could end up hurting. A lot. Fortunately, Devon had more tricks.

  Next, she cast Levitate, tier 1 only, because a higher level of the spell would gain her too much altitude over the boulders. As her weight left her feet, she started to slide down the front of the boulder. Right. Friction. Leaning farther to the side, Devon pressed the tip of her dagger against the stone, stopping her slide. Fortunately, the dagger’s status as a magic item meant increased durability, and the ivory tip held firm. Pulling gently, she slid herself back from the edge and onto the flat top of the boulder. Below, Hailey shook her head. The woman looked as if she’d been preparing for an unexpected surge of monsters when Devon fell off the hill and landed in front of their den. Devon met her eyes and shrugged apologetically.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed. Finally, Devon targeted the ground in front of her friend and cast Illusion, conjuring a wall of denser grass between Hailey and the cave entrance. The seeker, Devon knew, would have no problem peering straight through the spell effect, but the scorpions would have no such ability.

  Unless the game was being a jerk again.

  Preparations finished, Devon focused on the ground immediately in front of the cave and cast Simulacrum. Whereas Illusion copied the appearance of inanimate objects, Simulacrum created images of living things. She hadn’t actually decided who to mimic as a target for the spell, but as her cast bar filled, an image from earlier flashed into her mind. An illusory manifestation of Valious the Noob appeared in front of the cave. Hailey looked up at her with a truly perplexed expression as the cloth-clad, bug-goo-smeared player started brandishing his practice sword. Devon shrugged again. She’d have to explain later.

  Finally, to get the scorpions’ attention, Devon cast Ventriloquism and forced Valious’s puppet to speak.

  “Foul beasts!” she yelled with his
voice. “Prepare to meet your maker!”

  With gratingly high-pitched squeals, a pair of pure white scorpions rushed out of the cave, tails poised high.

  Ew. White? For some reason, that struck her as ultra creepy. Devon was off-balanced by the surprise, and it took her a moment to reorient. But as soon as she did, she forced a terrified shriek from Valious’s mouth and sent him fleeing into the grass. She quickly cast Freeze on the lead scorpion, then nuked the other with a tier 2 Flamestrike. Smoldering, the second scorpion turned on her. Its tail vibrated, and a green dart shot out.

  Crap. Ranged damage.

  Levitation was great for avoiding ground currents caused by the version of her Shadow Puppets that caused lightning damage, and it was awesome for turning the knockback effect from her shadow lances into a benefit, allowing her to kite mobs by knocking herself around the battlefield. But floating a few inches off the terrain made for terrible Dodge attempts.

  Slowly sliding to the right, feet paddling in the air, she managed to get far enough to the side that she could get an arm up and deflect the dart. The projectile glanced off Devon’s bracer, but the impact set her spinning.

  “Damn it,” she said, as she whirled around. Throwing an arm out, she managed to stop the spin and get reoriented on the mobs as Hailey stood from behind the screen of illusory grass. In an attempt to distract the scorpions from her friend, Devon sent faux-Valious charging back toward the fight, his practice sword raised high.

  The scorpions weren’t having it, and the smoldering one raised its tail again, preparing another ranged attack on her.

  “Uh, no,” Hailey said. Her eyes glowed as the cast bar for her Crippling Self-Doubt ability appeared on Devon’s screen. When the spell fired, striking the burning scorpion, the bug staggered, its attack interrupted when the debuff landed.

  Devon raised her eyebrows. The interrupt was a nice addition to that spell line.

  The frozen scorpion shattered its prison and turned on Devon’s friend.

  “Nope. Not you either.” Devon sent her Shadow Puppet streaking forward and formed it into a thin wall in front of Hailey. The poison dart struck the barrier, which shattered, sending Devon flying. But she was ready for it, and she turned the momentum into a sort of parkour, redirecting the force off a nearby boulder and bringing her down to hover near ground-level. She wrapped the scorpion targeting Hailey in Phoenix Fire, which slowed the beast as it tried to move through burning molasses.

  Nodding, Hailey cast Charm on the other scorpion. The woman’s mouth turned up in satisfaction for a fleeting second as the spell connected, and then she lowered her brow and sent her new thrall after its friend. The scorpions clashed, tearing at each other with pincers and stabbing with poison-tipped tails. Devon watched with a smirk, and once they were down near 10% health, she finished them with a pair of Flamestrikes.

  You receive 3100 experience!

  You receive 3200 experience!

  Devon turned to Hailey, who stood silently. She expected some sort of celebratory gesture from her friend, but the woman just looked…sad. Well, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Maybe some more battling would cheer Hailey up.

  “Ready for that dungeon crawl?” she asked.

  Jaw set, Hailey nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  ***

  Once inside the cave system, the going was easier. Devon was able to use her Wall of Ice spell to section off the dungeon and keep the number of enemies manageable. With each pull—the term used to describe the act of aggroing a few monsters—she and Hailey worked in tandem to control the fights, using Phoenix Fire and Freeze to slow their motion and root them in place. Hailey was high enough level that her Charm spells worked almost without fail, allowing her to take two scorpions from the fight at once. When possible, Devon was even able to knock out some of the groups of bugs before they had a chance to attack by sending her lightning-based Shadow Puppets, those cast from the light of her Glowing Orbs, underneath her ice wall to shock the massing scorpions to death.

  The biggest problem remained the poison darts. Devon had found she could turn them away with Downdraft, one of her level 20 Sorcerer spells that created a massive gust of wind, but the refresh time on that was fairly long, and her reflexes weren’t always quick enough. Devon took one dart in the neck, another through a gap in the thick leather patches on her trousers. Both times, the women had to sit and rest for a few minutes, Hailey constantly refreshing her heal-over-time spell, Guide Vitality, to keep Devon’s health up. Even so, it took half an hour of steady forward progress, feet crunching over gross bits of carapace shed by molting bugs, before Hailey declared that they’d reached the chamber directly before the boss’s room.

  Unfortunately, she still couldn’t discern any specifics about the boss, even with her tier 3 True Sight. Apparently, that was unusual, which made Devon nervous. So far, the dungeon had been fairly straightforward. Was that intended to get their guards down? Or was Devon just paranoid?

  She opened her inventory, checking through the loot they’d received so far. The 22 x Scorpion Poison Glands would make Hezbek happy, no doubt. But otherwise, there were just a few bug parts that she would probably just ditch later. Sometimes the loot from the cannon fodder mobs would give clues about what they faced in the boss chamber, but not this time.

  Unlike the rest of the cave system—a series of chambers and tunnels lit by glowing mushrooms—here an actual door stood between them and the boss. Stepping closer, Devon peered at the construction. The wood itself was a dark variety, swirled here and there with lighter bands, and the hinges looked to have been forged of decent-quality iron. The presence of a door indicated a boss of mid to high intelligence. The craftsmanship indicated either someone who was handy with tools—and likely, weapons—or someone who had contact with civilization.

  “How do you want to do this?” Hailey asked.

  Devon cocked her head, thinking. “Well, I guess we could try the Simulacrum again.”

  “Oh, right. About that…you were going to explain? Why the crazy warrior in the cloth armor?”

  Devon smirked as she opened her character sheet to the abilities tab and glanced at her refresh timers. Downdraft still had a couple of minutes before it would be ready to use. And anyway, Hailey’s mana was still at 70%. They had a little time.

  She leaned against the wall to slow her Fatigue gain and sighed as she looked at her friend. “Did you happen to see the newbie yard outside Stonehaven?”

  Hailey’s eyebrows went up. “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah. So apparently, Stonehaven is going to be a starting location. Replacing Eltera City, I guess.”

  Her friend actually laughed. It was such a nice sound after the dark mood that had surrounded Hailey that Devon could almost be glad for the noob plague.

  “Oh, man,” Hailey said. “That’s pretty much your worst nightmare. At least Torald and his friends keep their distance.”

  Devon nodded. “I know, right? Though actually, Torald isn’t too bad.” She hadn’t seen much of the paladin since the day she’d returned from the underworld. Though she didn’t exactly like the idea of heading out to the player camp in search of him, she probably would if he didn’t show up soon. Since it seemed she needed to find a way to get through Ishildar, the journey to the Stone Forest was going to require a group she could rely on. After following Torald through the Drowned Burrow, she had to admit that she liked adventuring with the paladin.

  And speaking of putting together a party to attempt the crossing, she definitely wanted Hailey to be there.

  “Hey,” she said, “before we go in, I wanted to ask you something.”

  Hailey stiffened slightly but nodded. “Sure.”

  “So for the next relic, I have to go to some place called the Stone Forest. Sounds like kind of a grim region at this point, something about drakes and wyverns.” She’d tossed in a mention of the small dragon species in hopes of making her friend smile, but Hailey didn’t even
react. “Anyway, the bad news is that the only way to get there on time is to cut straight through Ishildar. I’m still not sure how we’re going to manage it or when we’ll be able to head out, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t have any plans that would keep you from playing over the next few days.”

  Hailey swallowed, her lips pressed together. She wouldn’t look at Devon.

  “Hailey?”

  “I dunno, Devon. Sorry. I’m just…I’ve got some shit going on, and I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be. I think it’s probably best if you don’t plan on me being there.”

  “Wait, what? No. You’re going. I don’t mind being a little flexible with when we set out.”

  Hailey continued to stare at a point on the stone wall of the cavern. “Listen, I gotta log. Sorry, Dev.”

  “What? Now? But what about…?” Devon gestured toward the door to the boss chamber.

  Hailey didn’t respond, and a second later, her group icon went gray, then vanished. Her unpiloted avatar remained in the world for around a minute after that, a standard practice in games to make sure that people didn’t just disconnect if they were about to die. Throughout the timeout, Devon just stared. Had she said something wrong?

  She reviewed the conversation in her head. She thought maybe she’d been too pushy but compared to the way she and Hailey usually interacted, she hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. Had she been too insensitive to Hailey’s mood, maybe?

  She sighed when her friend’s avatar finally dematerialized, vanishing into mist and leaving her alone in the dungeon. Well, shit. She glanced at the door again, debating whether she should even attempt the boss.

  “You’ve come this far, right?”

  Devon actually jumped when Bob piped up.