by John L. Monk
“Now what?” I said, looking around the natural arbor for the path out.
I staggered as a rock sapped 30 points from my shield. I whirled in the direction it came from and fired off Greater Invisible Fist, flattening a monkey hanging upside down from a branch. Hoots and screeches sounded from on-high as monkeys swung unseen through the thick foliage. When my Greater Lightning Bolt was ready, I blasted a monkey that popped into view.
In response, a shower of rocks rained down, and soon my 500-point shield was wiped out. I ran behind a tree but got hit along the way for 30. Painful, but not debilitating. When Greater Ice Bullet finally came off cooldown, I hopped out and shot another monkey.
But there were a lot of monkeys. They leaped through the air at dizzying speeds, and I could hardly focus on one before another appeared. And all my spells were on cooldown.
Then I remembered: I still had a bunch of free skill points!
Quickly, I chose Flame Lance and fired it at a monkey, killing it.
In the same instance, I saw stars when a rock bashed me in the back of the head for half my health—a reminder, if any was needed, that where I got hit also factored into the damage.
Dizzy and bleeding, I struggled to my feet. While scrolling through spell choices, I went back down, clobbered by another rock. At the last second, I twisted to see a monkey leap from the trees with a sharp stick in its hands, and that was the last thing I saw before losing the first of my 100 lives.
Three minutes later, I resurrected at the binding stone, way back at the edge of the swamp.
Chapter Nine
So maybe I wasn’t so smart after all. Here I’d thought by avoiding the lesser spells I could save my skill points for bigger ones later. Instead, all I’d done was disarm myself against creatures numbering more than four. Those one-minute cooldowns … I felt both stupid and ashamed, and angry at Jaddow. He should have been here helping me, dammit.
For now, I added seven new low-level spells to my repertoire: Ice Bullet, Lightning Bolt, Invisible Fist, Shadow Beam, Acid Orb, Poison Lash, and Solar Strike. This left me 13 free skill points, but I kept those in reserve.
Each of these spells was rank 20 and under, and hit for considerably less damage than their greater counterparts. Lightning bolt, for example, hit for 30-40 points of damage, whereas Greater Lightning Bolt hit for 300 points, flat. My sub-20 spells also cost less mana, so I could go a long time without stopping.
Though alive again, I couldn’t head right back into the swamp. My Greater Shield had an eight-hour timer with six more to go. No way I’d risk those monkeys again without it. For now, I set up camp at the binding stone and waited.
And waited.
Lying in my noob tunic, drenched in sweat and bereft of my new pack and other gear, I felt truly pathetic. If I could die so easily to cute little monkeys, what hope did I have later when faced with a real challenge?
By the time my shield came off cooldown, the day had grown dark. I almost chose Light Rune. It’d attach to my staff and light the way like a lantern, but I worried at drawing attention. Bobbing along with a light over my head was a great way to get killed.
Feeling suddenly lonely, I raised my voice in song: “Ninety-nine Mythian lives on the wall, ninety-nine Mythian lives … Take one down, pass it around…”
My voice sounded scratchy from disuse, but comforting to hear. I continued to sing as I settled in.
Sleep, I willed … and issued a quiet groan when sleep eluded me. My insta-sleep attribute had vanished with Hard Mode. Now I had to do it the old-fashioned way: lying on my back with no pillow trying desperately not to think. Eventually, after what felt like hours spent tossing and turning, I woke up and saw it was dawn.
I felt achy from having slept on the flat, unyielding surface of the binding stone. Hungry, too. And I had to pee something fierce.
After handling the latter, I summoned an apple and quickly ate it. Juicy and tasty, but hardly what I really wanted: bacon and eggs, toast and juice. In lieu of that, I ate another apple, then set off in my noob tunic and sandals under the protection of Greater Shield.
The swamp was noisy with morning birds, frogs, bugs, and the occasional roar of creatures deeper in. An hour into my trek, I cautiously approached the area where I’d been attacked but saw nothing but viny trees and no animals.
My corpse, when I found it, was half-submerged in a deep puddle and mostly rotted, thanks to Mythian’s accelerated decomposition rate. Stripping it was gross. Cleaning my bloody robes in the muddy water didn’t help much, but I tried my best.
A while later, I found another grove of trees with a clearing beneath it, and that’s when I heard my first stirrings in the foliage above. After edging around a large tree, I slumped into the hollow of two shoulder-high roots. The massive roots offered a physical barrier on either side, such that I was only vulnerable from directly above and ahead of me.
With a screeching battle cry, a monkey swung out of the trees and chucked a rock my way. I ducked in time, and it missed.
Figuring it was best to use my longer cooldowns first, I shouted, “Greater Lightning Bolt!”
Crack went the bolt and down went the monkey.
The canopy erupted in a boiling mass of swinging monkeys and flying rocks, which I noticed were actually coconuts. My shield took the brunt of the assault—30 points a hit—and there were plenty of hits.
“Greater Invisible Fist!”
“Greater Ice Bullet!”
The spells did their trick, but now I was out of greater-level attacks. Hoping my plan worked, I started on the entry levels:
“Flame Lance!”
“Ice Bullet!”
“Lightning Bolt!”
“Invisible Fist!”
These worked just fine, knocking the little beasts from the sky with no problem. The monkeys were dangerous, sure, but had few health points. Otherwise, with my shield in tatters, they’d have finished me quick.
As if on cue, another coconut smashed into my shield and suddenly it was gone. Then another struck my shoulder, numbing my arm.
Despite their first good hit, the monkey assault had slowed. They were afraid to appear directly in my line of sight and were now trying to lob coconuts over the protective roots. Though this gave my bigger spells time to come off cooldown, I had a few new ones I still wanted to try.
A rustling above alerted me, and I rolled out of the way with surprising ease, thanks to my higher agility score. In the spot I’d been standing, two pointy sticks stood quivering in the ground. Dangling from a thick branch looking down were a couple of grinning monkeys.
“Shadow Beam!”
A shaft of pure blackness burst from my chest. When it struck the monkey, the creature issued a mournful howl and faded from view.
Acid Orb engulfed the other one in a sizzling gray bubble that smoked and spouted liquid in all directions. Seconds later, the bubble burst and the creature fell apart in a splatter of steaming chunks.
I never got a chance to try Poison Lash or Solar Strike because the attacks had stopped. No more screams or shaking branches. The area was as quiet and serene as a clearing full of dead monkeys should be.
Chapter Ten
Having ignored the battle messages during the fight, I now checked the game log to see how I’d done. At 2000 points a monkey, I’d earned a total of 18,000 points, taking me more than a third of the way to level 27. The monkeys hit hard and with great precision, but had shockingly few health points. My low-level spells used so little mana, I could have done the whole thing over again if I wanted to. Provided there were more monkeys.
Continuing down the path, I kept an eye out for coconut trees but didn’t see any. My guess was there were none. The little beasts probably materialized them out of nowhere, like my apples. But you didn’t see Jaddow marching on Everlife’s headquarters accusing them of cheating, now did you?
Let it go, I told myself.
After a miserable half hour wading through ankle-high water and wondering
if I should turn back, the water receded, exposing a muddy path to my next elevation. It was another grove of swamp trees with a leafy canopy. There could have been anything up there, but I hoped it was monkeys.
Curious to see what happened, I summoned an apple and chucked it high into the branches. It should have bounced around and come back, but didn’t. Not immediately. About ten seconds later, something small and white came hurtling down. It bounced once and rolled toward me.
A half-eaten apple.
I narrowed my eyes, chose a new spell—Weak Shield—and cast it. Quickly, I found another of those trees with the big roots and tucked down into it.
The monkey attack came almost too fast—five of them, each chucking coconuts through the air. Most flew wildly, but two didn’t. I blasted one with a Lightning Bolt, bursting it in a steamy cloud that knocked the other one astray.
“Eek eek eek!” eeked a monkey off to my right.
The little sneak swung through the air gripping a sharp bamboo spear. In all my time in the swamp, I hadn’t seen a single bamboo tree. That didn’t matter, because it slammed through my 20-point shield, delivering a residual 5 points of damage to my shoulder.
Wincing in pain, I shouted, “Ice Bullet!”
The creatures screamed crazily as they swung from tree to tree, firing only the occasional coconut or spear. They’d grown wary—staying farther away—and that ruined their accuracy.
Unlike their projectiles, my spells were deadly accurate. I used that accuracy to blast each monkey that came in range, and soon the swamp returned to the calm serenity of insects, birds, and frogs.
“Twenty-two thousand points,” I said wonderingly.
I’d level any time. Two more levels and I’d gain access to some serious firepower: a grayed-out series spell called “Spike Blast.” The description said it’d send a cone of spikes out in front of me, hitting up to five enemies at once. Just the thing I needed for these amazingly lucrative monkeys.
An hour later, I found another monkey camp but didn’t go in. Instead, I backtracked a ways and camped for several hours, then went in with a fresh Greater Shield and a healed shoulder. Turns out, I didn’t need the shield. Either I was getting better at this or the monkeys were simply unlucky because I blasted them all easily with zero attacks landed against me.
YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO LEVEL 27!
+5 Stat Points
+1 Class Point
+1 Skill Point
So far, vitality hadn’t done all that much for me, whereas jumping out of the way had allowed me to avoid damage altogether. Despite Jaddow’s admonishment not to waste points, I nonetheless added 5 more to agility, bumping my avoidance from .11% to .16%. Not a lot, but the new points affected me in a way the previous 10 hadn’t. Suddenly, I felt a lot more agile—even more so than during my active teenage years.
On a lark, I set down my staff, stepped a few feet away, and performed a shaky backflip. The only thing surprising was that I wasn’t surprised. In addition to greater limberness and coordination, something in my newfound physicality had informed me a backflip was doable.
Too bad intelligence didn’t work the same way. With my 81 points, I’d be a world-class genius.
Happy with my new abilities, tired and uncomfortable from a day of fighting and trekking, I settled down for a dinner of purified water, apples, and coconuts (picked from the ground and then opened with an Ice Bullet).
In the morning, I cycled through the various monkey camps I’d hit the previous day, and that earned me yet another level, and with it Spike Blast. Eager to try it out, I pushed into the evening and murdered a camp full of monkeys with ease, then camped for the night.
Sometime after midnight, I was awakened by that strange gong from two days before. Once again, all the animals in the vicinity howled, screeched, hooted, or chirped.
The sound came from what I thought of as the middle of the swamp. Until now, I’d mainly stuck to the outskirts, avoiding any splits that would take me deeper. With only 99 lives left, one could never be too cautious. But I was feeling pretty good now, and I was sick of coconuts and apples.
The next morning, secure in my newfound agility—and armed with my amazing new spell—I took the first path I came to leading deeper into the swamp.
Chapter Eleven
Along the way, I occasionally passed what looked like a perfect monkey camp—trees overtop, dry ground below—but the treetops were empty. Perhaps my reputation as a brave monkey killer had preceded me. Or maybe the monkeys knew something I didn’t and were avoiding the center like the plague.
“Or maybe they just hate gongs,” I said bitterly, still tired from the previous night.
The ground had gotten muddier, and the tufts of grass I’d been stepping on grew fewer and farther between. Soon I was ankle-deep in water again. Then knee-deep. Then waist-deep, and that’s when I turned around. This couldn’t have been the way to Jaddow’s mound, or at least not the best way.
A sudden splash, and a huge black tentacle grabbed me around the middle.
Scared out of my wits, I shouted, “Lightning Bolt!”
The bolt cracked into the appendage, then into me for 85 points of damage. My body seized in sudden shock, and the world rang with a high-pitched tone as I gagged on the increasingly familiar smell of my own fried skin.
Spinning…
Falling…
Choking on swamp water…
From a million miles away, a tiny part of me shouted good advice: Get up! Move!
The tentacle was gone—blasted away or retracted, though I couldn’t know for how long. Sloshing onward, I made it to where the water was only knee-deep, then fell back against a rotted tree stump.
Good job, dummy.
Having fought monkeys for two days straight, I’d forgotten about the thing in the water. Some sort of octopus creature, I figured, though I hadn’t seen the bulbous head with the beak.
One of my few fears as a child was of being in the water and something slimy pulling me under. Probably the main reason I’d never much liked swimming.
Waiting to heal—trying not to cry at the relentless aching in my bones and teeth—I pieced together what happened. Much like the goblins in the Swaze Pit who’d shot me with poisoned wads, the slimy tentacle had breached my shield. The attack hadn’t been damaging in and of itself, so the shield had let it through like it did the air or the water I waded through. In contact with my skin, the tentacle had provided a direct electrical conduit, bypassing my shield yet again.
A look through the log sparked a chilling realization. The point-blank bolt had caused twice the damage listed in the spell description. If I hadn’t been surprised, I might have thought to cast the Greater version of it. At a flat 300 points of damage, the multiplier would have killed me outright.
“Gotta be more careful now,” I said shakily, then blinked in surprise at how hoarse I sounded through my muffled hearing.
Another realization: the swamp creature hadn’t died, as I’d gotten no points. It was still out there, waiting for me.
A look in my combat log finally delivered the creature’s name: “Muck Monster.”
Two hours later my health had sufficiently recovered, and with it my hearing. My clothes, however, were still clinging to me, due to the humidity. There had to have been other places for me to go, but Jaddow had sent me here, to this festering, stinking, bug-infested mess. To do what, I still wasn’t sure. Something about a mound in the middle of the swamp. And gaining levels. Always levels. The ultimate rat race.
“Squeak, squeak,” I said.
I took a path running at an angle to my previous one. This one also had me wading at times, but the water rarely came higher than my knees. At one point, I left the path when I heard what sounded like loud grunting, then stopped when I stumbled across an enormous two-headed giant. The creature was easily over twenty feet tall, and it was faster than it looked. When it saw me, I barely got away using Greater Sprint.
Even if I could have beaten
it, why take the risk? What I needed were more monkeys. Or that muck monster. Something that gross had to be worth a lot of XP.
After backtracking a ways, I found another path and continued toward what I considered the center of the swamp, based on my mostly grayed-out map. Lots of ground to cover—about thirty miles, judging by where the edges aligned, and the numerous encroachments I’d made into the gray filler.
For the next two hours, my path varied between mudflats and floating sections of decomposed vegetation that shook with every step, and soon even that ended. I could either head back and find a new route or…
“Or use that,” I said.
Way out in the water—too far to risk swimming—was a raft.
While puzzling what to do, I materialized an apple, took a bite, and chucked the rest about thirty feet out. The apple bobbed around, then abruptly disappeared in a loud splash.
“Greater Lightning Bolt!”
The bolt burst directly over the spot.
ENEMY DEFEATED: Huge Carp, 1 EXPERIENCE POINT
“Fish…,” I said thoughtfully.
“Fish!” I said again. Hungrily.
My new condition dictated that I eat every day or risk starvation, and I was beyond sick of apples. If I could retrieve that fish, I could start a fire using branches from a deadfall and then cook it. But there was a lot of water between it and me.
“Coward,” I said.
After setting down my staff and pack, I took off my boots, stripped off my sorcerer robes, and waded in.
Chapter Twelve
About ten feet out, the bottom fell away and I was swimming for the first time in twenty years. Pretty well, too. Ahead of me, tentacles appeared, thrusting out of the water with my carp gripped in a slimy coil.
