by Jez Cajiao
Level: 6
HP: 140
Mana: 0
I had no idea what a normal ‘Shir’ was, but these looked like a cross between a man and an oxen. As the largest one lumbered toward me, its enormous curved horns arrested my attention. The bony protrusions lifted straight out to the sides of its head before jutting forward, ending in sharp tips. Its head hung low between huge, heavily muscled shoulders, and it carried a club in one massive hand. The other appeared to have been burned off at some point. Its two legs barely seemed able to support the weight as it continued to charge. The other two that followed it looked much the same; all three were rotting, with muck-encrusted clothing that had been stained with years of funk.
Whatever they were, they were big. Despite the fact that they were slow, if they got in one good hit, it’d be good night. With a thought, I sent Bob to engage them. He rattled across the floor and leapt on the lead creature, taking it to the ground and driving his teeth into its neck. His jaws tore flesh free as his opponent began beating on him with its club. I heard a bone break even as I cast a firebolt, hitting the second one in the face and snapping its head back with the impact. The third one kept coming, the floor shaking with the impact of each massive hoof as it closed the distance. I saw the second one recover from my firebolt and continue toward me. The flesh had burned off its face and small secondary fires were still going across its face and shoulders, but it seemed not to care in the slightest. My mind flashed back to the notification I’d read. ‘…. Undead Slave….’ Yeah, that summed up this creature nicely, and explained why it wouldn’t care about pain.
I cursed, ducking under a blow from a massive club. I could feel the wind from its passage as I lashed out with the naginata, driving deep into the Shir’s leg as I slipped to the side in an attempt to keep its body between me and the last one. My blade had sliced deep into its thigh, then stuck fast in the knee joint. I pulled hard at the shaft, but it was no good. I’d managed to cripple one of them, but the one whose face I’d burned was circling its fallen partner as I abandoned my weapon. I checked my mana, and found that I still had sixty three out of ninety points, but that equated to only six firebolts. I still had one spell that I hadn’t used yet, which I’d been given specifically to face the inhabitants of this tower. I backed up a little to get some room. I didn’t know if it’d kill Bob as well, and I preferred to not have to raise him again.
I began the gestures to cast ‘Cleansing Fire,’ using both hands as I muttered and concentrated on not mispronouncing anything. Light erupted from my fingertips as the spell wore on, causing the first sounds I’d heard from the Shir as they hissed in anger. As the ten-second casting time ticked down, I dodged back and forth, lunging in between them just as the spell activated. It had begun as a bright white light that centered on me, building up in spirals and waves of light as I’d cast, but now the lines erupted out. When the waves had reached ten meters in every direction, they branched out, linking to create a pattern like a wagon wheel full of spokes. The spokes then connected to each other, with smaller tendrils joining together and radiating out to touch the outer rim. Once each line was set, they suddenly burst into flames. I shielded my eyes reflexively as the flames reached waist height, then died down to lick along the lines. They gave off no heat that I could feel, appearing to simply glitter and dance, but the Shir both screamed in agony as the flames raced up their bodies, clinging to them as they tried to escape the circle. I stepped forward reflexively as I saw them backing away, wanting to retrieve my weapon and crossing the lines of fire before I thought about it.
Instantly, I felt a warm sensation, like a gentle breeze on a hot day, as several flames jumped onto me, spreading up my legs and over my body. Once they reached my head, they simply flowed back down, and I exhaled a sigh of relief. I hadn’t even considered the potential effect on me. The spell recognized its caster, however, and before I’d taken another step, the flames had returned to patrolling the spellform. My health bar also started ‘ticking over,’ for the lack of a better description. The line kept flickering, until I realized I was at full health, and I discovered that the spell also gave a minor healing bonus. God, I loved that one; I just wished it was faster to cast! I grinned as I caught up to the Shir with my blade still stuck in its knee. It was huge, but as badly balanced as it was, I managed to pull it over. It fell to the floor, thrashing as the flames continued to spread across its body. I decided it was time to go hard or go home. A quick check of my mana revealed that I’d recovered two mana since the battle had begun. Wow, how over-powered I am! I thought grimly.
I had twelve mana, enough for one normal firebolt, or I could experiment a little…all I had to do was survive long enough for my mana to recover further. I waited until the Cleansing Fire had begun to die out and then attacked the final Shir that stood waiting. It had been deliberately staying out of range as I kited it around the room, ignoring the injured creature that lay on the floor. I spent the next eight minutes stalling until I’d finally managed to build up a decent amount of mana.
I cast firebolt with both hands, but instead of releasing it, I continued to force mana into it. I could feel the spell start to swell and pulse, but I waited until I had reached thirty mana input. My bar bottomed out, and I fired it at the remaining Shir that had managed to escape the Cleansing Fire’s reach. It thumped toward me, its body blackened and smoking and hatred in its eyes, until my overcharged firebolt took it in the face. Rather than simply burning some skin away and momentarily shocking the creature, it caused a spectacular death. The firebolt seemed to smash into the bovine face with the force of a hammer, but as soon as its outer form was disrupted, the spell detonated. It crushed the front of its skull in, blasting out in a wave that left the shoulders and upper chest denuded of flesh. The rotten clothes erupted in flame, and a horn went flying off to shatter against a nearby wall. The remainder of the skull was reduced to part of the jawbone hanging from some blackened flesh, and the top of the spine was visible. The rest was blown into shards and spread across the room. The demolished Shir stood there for a second before collapsing, hitting the floor with enough force that I felt it in the soles of my feet.
I gaped at my hands in shock before returning my gaze to the one creature that had managed to crawl its way out of the cleansing fire. It lay there, badly burned and obviously trying to recover. I waited, allowing my mana to refill as I planned out the chance to use it again. Once I’d built up to twenty-two mana, I cast ‘Identify’ on the charred and barely intact creature in the hope of getting more information, or possibly being able to ‘spam’ the skill higher.
DarkSpore-Possessed Shir
This creature was once a living, breathing inhabitant of this realm, but no longer. It has been infected with a parasitic DarkSpore, turning the peaceful Shir into an undead slave to the SporeMother that puppets it.
Level: 5
HP: 37
Mana: 0
I grinned, observing its smoking, trembling form as the last of the flames died out. Satisfied with its current state, I turned my attention to the fight that was still going on in the background between Bob and the first Shir, and grimaced as I realized he wasn’t winning. I wanted to Identify his opponent to see how much health he had left, but I couldn’t risk it. Bob was being slowly smashed into pieces, while the Shir appeared largely unaffected by the damage he’d done. Huge sections of flesh and hair had been torn free, but as the thing was dead already, all Bob had managed to do was make some holes in its body. The black cloud had extended tendrils out to Bob in comparison, however, and they were burrowing deeper into his limbs, turning his bones brittle and speeding his demise.
I backed up to the farthest side of the room from the Shir as I watched the badly wounded remaining creature clamber to its feet and advance on Bob from behind. I ordered him to disengage and run, but it was too late. With a few heavy blows of the club, Bob collapsed into a pile of bones as he was killed. Again. I turned and started running, hearing a hiss fro
m behind as I disappeared into the stairwell. Sprinting up the twisting steps, I was starting to feel the strain on my stamina as I erupted onto the next floor and sprinted to the end of the hallway. My stamina was rapidly dropping, but I’d gained a bit of distance. I paused at the foot of the next flight of stairs and sat down.
I made a conscious effort to slow my breathing and chill, even though I heard the two remaining Shir clumping up the steps. By the time they’d arrived, I had a surprise waiting. I had run for nearly thirty minutes up the steps, which was more of a workout than I’d been expecting, in all honesty, but that wasn’t the point. In those thirty minutes, I’d also recovered sixty mana, and as soon as I had been able to hear them coming, I’d started to channel my mana into a single Firebolt.
I waited until they had both cleared the stairwell and charged toward me and released it. I had invested nearly the full sixty mana into it, and it had begun to buck and shake in my grip. I held on longer than I thought I would be able to, and the lazily spinning ball of fire had evolved. It had grown to three times its normal size before changing color and beginning to shrink. By the time I released it, it was barely the size of my thumbnail, but it glowed a bright white and spun so fast, the air around it whined.
When I sent it flying, I paused only for a split second to watch before throwing myself into the shelter of the stairwell. In that time, it had impacted just above the lead creature’s right eye. I’d seen the hit, but not the effect. As I scrambled up the steps, a bright light flared from behind, filling the area like a warship’s search light. It lasted only a second before the force of the explosion rolled over me. My eardrums vibrated painfully as the air channeled past me into the tower with a great roar.
As everything went silent, I shook my head, trying to get the ringing out of my ears, then slowly edged back down the steps and looked around the corner.
It was a scene of devastation. Not only were the Shir both dead, again, but a nearby door was smashed open, swinging crazily on one hinge. The floor was littered with debris, clothing, rotten flesh, and bone fragments everywhere, and my notifications tab was flashing busily again. I stalked into the hallway, ready to cast at any time, picking my way toward the impact point. I scanned the corpses. There was no way I could use either of the scattered remains as a new ‘Bob,’ and if they had ever had anything I could have looted, it was long gone. Dismissing them, I stepped into the room, which was small, but well appointed. A table, chairs, and a bed sat against the walls, but in pride of place was a huge map on one wall, and set in the other was an undamaged window.
I ignored the map momentarily, choosing instead to look out over the new world I found myself in.
The window was grimy and covered in hundreds of years of dirt and dust, streaked where rain had slowly run down it, but as I peered through it into the night, I could see tiny pinpricks of light in the far distance, glittering against the darkness. I resolved to return to the room soon. Now that I knew it was night, it would be a simple matter for me to come back in a few hours and see this world in daylight. As I gazed through the dingy glass, I kept telling myself it was time to go, and countering with staying for just one more second. I was rewarded for my stubbornness.
A flash of lightning tore through the night, miles away, but in the split second it covered the sky, I saw it touch the earth and cause what might have been a tree to erupt in flames. I waited, staring at the fainter light of the flames, until a second flash lit up the world and I saw more clearly. I was indeed in a tower, and a huge one at that. The world below was covered in darkness, but I’d seen enough to determine that there was a forest out there, and possibly a lake or sea in the distance. I turned to the map on the wall, my eyes aching now, as the bright lights had not been kind to my DarkVision enhanced sight. An examination of the map started to reveal patterns I thought I had seen from the window.
In the top left of the map was a land bordered with mountains. A single tower, outlined in gold, stood at the foot of the mountains, deep in the curve of the range, The highlight made me assume that must indicate the tower I was standing in. South from the tower was a valley that led away, opening as it went onto rolling forests to the south, and the sea to the east, both the north and west routes cut off by the snow-capped giants.
Following the forested lands to the south, I found several large towns and a city with another smaller tower in its center. This one wasn’t detailed in the characteristic gold, and as I quickly skimmed the rest of the map, I couldn’t see any other locations marked out as clearly as the first Tower had been. From there, I traced a path across to the east to find the other city I’d noticed. It appeared to sit squarely in the middle of a bay surrounded by high cliffs. Judging by the wilderness covering the rest of the land on this continent, it seemed unexplored, while across the sea were dozens of progressively more heavily populated islands and continents, until I reached the middle, marked with a single great city, marked as Dai’Amaranth, that seemed to fill the entire center Island. I knew where Tommy would be headed now, and that he had probably arrived in one of those cities; likely the one with the small tower, if Sintara had told me the truth, anyway. Leaning closer, I squinted at the two cities, finding the furthest one to be the harbor city marked as Narkolt.
“Of course, it’d be the furthest away!” I grumbled to myself.
I leaned in again and started measuring distances off with my fingers. Yeah, if this was accurate, it was going to be a fucking long walk.
I started to curse, then stopped myself and grinned instead. I would find Tommy, and then to hell with Earth. I’d make a proper new life here. I was practically immortal now after all.
“Hell yeah!” I muttered, taking a deep breath and feeling freer than I had at any time in my life. I had no debts, nobody relying on me, save Tommy, and knowing him, he’d be hip deep in women, booze, and sketchy gear by now. I had a forest below me to explore. I’d been trained to forage and hunt, so I wouldn’t be going hungry anytime soon. I grinned and searched the room quickly, finding nothing of value, and then I turned to my notifications, a faint recollection tugging at my memory.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 5 DarkSpore. You have gained 50 Exp.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 5 DarkSpore-possessed Shir. You have gained 25 Exp.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 6 DarkSpore. You have gained 60 Exp.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 6 DarkSpore-possessed Shir. You have gained 30 Exp.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 5 DarkSpore. You have gained 50 Exp.
Congratulations! You have killed a level 5 DarkSpore-possessed Shir. You have gained 25 Exp.
Name Jax
Class: Spellsword
Renown: Unknown
Level: 4
Progress: 1595/2700
Patron:
Points to Distribute:
Meridian Points to Invest: 0
Stat
Current points
Description
Effect
Progress to next level
Agility
15
Governs dodge and movement.
Average speed + 50%
47/100
Charisma
10
Governs likely success to charm seduce or threaten
Success chance; average
12/100
Constitution
15
Governs Health and Health Regeneration
HP+50, Regen 5pts per 600s
31/100
Dexterity
15
Governs ability with weapons and crafting
+ 50%
71/100
Endurance
16
Governs Stamina and Stamina Regeneration
STM +60, Regen 6pts per 30s
52/100
Intelligence
15
Governs base Mana and number of Spells able to be learnt
+50 Mana, Spel
l capacity: 7 spells
11/100
Luck
12
Governs overall chance of bonuses
+20%
17/100
Perception
13
Governs ranged damage and chance to spot hidden items/traps
+30% Ranged damage, +3% chance to spot hidden items/traps
20/100
Strength
18
Governs damage with melee weapons and carrying capacity
+8 Damage with melee weapons, +80% carrying capacity
89/100
Wisdom
20 (15)
Governs Mana Regeneration and memory
+100% Mana recovery 2pm, 100% more likely to remember things
