by James Hunter
TWENTY-TWO: Grind it Down
“Incoming!” Forge hollered, planting his feet and raising his battle-axe as another swarm of murderous insects scuttled toward us.
A [Boar-Beetle]—an armor-plated cockroach the size of a small car, with a thick bony shield for a head and a formidable set of tusks—led the charge, pushed on by a swarm of [Sand Wyrm Larvae]. Though “Larva” was a deceptive term. Each had a fleshy pink body as large as a rottweiler, was covered in poison-tipped quills, and squirmed along on hundreds of stubby legs all working in concert. Behind them, loitering in the back, stood the [Scarab Shamans]: strangely intelligent bipedal creatures with black chitinous armor, burning orange eyes, flesh-rending mandibles, and sword blade arms.
The spiders of Hellwood Hollow were gross, no question, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the critters living in this underground warren. Absolute nightmare fuel delivered straight from the mind of a truly depraved Dev who needed some serious psychiatric help. Still, after three hours of constant battles, and grinding through wave after wave of oversized multilegged cannon fodder, we had killing these suckers down to a science.
Abby threw her hands forward, spirals of golden magic twisting around her limbs as a trio of flaming pythons exploded from her palms and landed on the floor with a soft thump. The fire-serpents—mindless, conjured minions that lasted five minutes—were nine feet long and moved like oil on water. In seconds, they disappeared into the scuttling legs of the seething horde, completely lost from sight, though the inhuman screeches of dying Larvae and bursts of flame, followed by curls of smoke rising into the air, told me they were working hard.
“Deploying firewalls,” Abby hollered as flames erupted from the floor ten feet in front of me. Two barriers of dancing firelight—burning with the blistering heat of a falling star—created a V with a small gap right in the center: an artificial bottleneck in the middle of the tunnel, funneling the bugs into a single choke point. And standing at that choke point, with his axe raised and a malicious snarl on his face, was Forge. The bugs were powerful, true, but their greatest strength lay in their numbers, and Abby’s simple firewalls forced the endless swarm to face our tank head-on. One at a time.
Forge drew aggro—absorbing the big, brutal hits like a champ—which allowed the rest of us to do what we did best without the fear of being overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. Abby held the flame walls—an enormous effort that took her entire focus. Vlad tossed brutally effective Alchemic Orbs over the flame walls. Nikko scampered along the ceiling, hurling more of Vlad’s impromptu hand grenades into the packed crowd of horrors, sowing chaos and confusion, then poofing into the Shadowverse, only to appear someplace else an eyeblink later.
Meanwhile, Amara launched volley after volley of obsidian-tipped arrows into the swarm. She was a preternaturally good shot and somehow, almost impossibly, each arrow found a mark—an eye, a mouth, a fleshy head—often killing outright, or maiming terribly.
Cutter, who stuck close behind Forge, darted into the open just long enough to hurl a fan of conjured blades, which sliced through exposed limbs and sunk into armored torsos and ugly, multi-eyed faces. One of the bulbous Larvae attempted to skirt around Forge, who was locked in battle against the titanic Boar-Beetle, but Cutter was there in an instant. The thief lodged one black-bladed dagger into its vulnerable maw, slashed its throat with the other, then planted a boot on its face, forcing the overgrown slug back.
Truthfully, the strategy was classic MMO. Nothing glamorous in it, not really, but it was brutal, effective, and kept everyone safe. No one played the hero, everyone did their part, and the bugs fell like dominos.
And speaking of playing the part—now it was time to do mine.
First, came Crowd Control and AOE spells.
We’d fought so many mobs over the last two hours, my hands practically flew through the motions on their own. Left palm forward as I summoned Umbra Bog: inky tendrils of power bled from the floor and walls, snaring the Larvae jostling for a frontline position. Then, without even a pause, my hand zipped through the complex gestures needed for Plague Burst. Flick, twirl, snap, fingers splayed out, hand curling into a fist as I summoned the deadly yellow fog right smack-dab in the middle of the insect swarm. Some of the Larvae possessed a degree of plague and disease resistance, but some were not all.
Nearly a fifth of the bugs squealed and shrieked in protest—their bodies writhing, their limbs flailing, their mandibles clacking—as they choked and died. In seconds the cloud dissipated and I moved, triggering Shadow Stride, calmly stepping into the Shadowverse as I’d done so many times before. I took a second to savor and appreciate the blissful quiet and frozen peace. This dungeon system had been the grind to end all grinds—monster after monster after monster—so even a forty-second break was a relief. I stepped directly through Cutter and Forge, then carved my way through the mass of minion bugs, back to the bipedal Scarab Shamans.
They were the real enemy.
Up close, they boasted some powerful physical attacks and could spit acid, but their real threat was as clerics for the horde. They could heal injured insects, and even worse, revive them completely. Even one lone Shaman, left unchecked, could raise the entire swarm back to life in a matter of minutes. This group had four Shamans, on top of another creature I’d never seen before: a horrifying new bug, nine feet long, covered in hard gray chitin, that looked one part centipede one part scorpion, one hundred percent horror-movie superstar.
A brief description appeared over its head before vanishing. [Armored Protector].
Briefly, I considered going after the newcomer first but finally decided against it. As deadly as that thing looked, the Scarabs needed to go to win this battle.
I maneuvered over to the left-hand wall, ensuring there were at least two Shamans and a handful of Larvae between the Protector and me, dropped into a crouch, raised my hammer, and stepped back into the Material Plane. I was a shadow, a specter, and a black-plated Shaman didn’t notice me until my hammer smashed into the back of its nubby, armor-plated head. The spike, protruding from the back of my weapon, penetrated like a hot knife through a pad of butter.
Green, acidic goo spurted on impact, and the Shaman dropped, dead before it hit the ground.
My appearance might have gone unnoticed, but that Shaman’s abrupt death didn’t. The other Scarabs swiveled toward me, almost as one, their droning, unintelligible voices warbling in anger and outrage. That was okay, though. I was more than ready. I threw one hand out, unleashing a wrist-thick javelin of Umbra Flame. The purple fire wasn’t neat, clean, or precise like my Umbra Bolt. No, it was more like an unruly flamethrower: perfect for dealing out wholesale slaughter for a short time over a short distance.
And it worked extremely well.
Waves of shadow fire washed over two of the three remaining Shamans and splashed onto the back row of Larvae, setting the whole lot of them ablaze. Chitinous armor cracked under the intense heat and thick plumes of steam burbled out as the creatures within cooked alive like prawns thrown into a pot of boiling water. It was a legitimately terrible way to go, even for a bunch of randomly generated dungeon monsters, and a small part of me wondered if they could feel the pain in the same way I could. That same small part of me fervently hoped not.
In the end, though, I shoved the thought away because I didn’t really want to know.
The Umbra Flame ate through my Spirit at an alarming rate—after only eight seconds, I was uncomfortably close to zero, so I cut the spell off, taking a second to survey the battlefield as I downed a Spirit Regen potion. A ring of charred and burning bodies stretched out in front of me for a solid eight feet, and only one of the original four Shamans remained. A quick glance around the tunnel revealed a field of dead and dying Larvae—some burnt, others cleaved in two, still more peppered with arrows or conjured obsidian blades—with only a few pockets of resistance remaining. Almost in the clear.
That could all change in seconds, though, if I didn’t end that la
st Shaman.
The only problem was the Armored Protector blocking my path, scuttling toward me with hate in its multitude of beady red eyes. But I was no beginner, no lowbie—not anymore. This thing was scary, true, but I was scary too. With a shout, I charged, using my superior movement speed to duck below a pair of thrusting jaws, then sidestep an incoming scythe-blade arm. I juked left and weaved right, twirling my hammer in a tight arc and smashing the creature across its armored face with a crack. One mandible snapped free, accompanied by a spray of neon-green blood.
The blow didn’t knock off more than a fraction of its overall HP, but the centipede-horror staggered left from the force of the impact, giving me a small opening to do even greater damage.
I charged again, thrusting the spike on top of my warhammer into its face, skewering it through one eye, and pushing it back with brute strength. Then, as it wriggled on the end of my hammer, fighting to break free as its many legs clawed fruitlessly at the air, I summoned a new wave of Umbra Flame and roasted the stomach-churning bug like a hotdog over a roaring campfire. It was down to nearly 50% Health when a lightning bolt of white-hot agony struck, frying my nerve endings in an instant; my Umbra Fire dwindled and died as I dropped to the floor, doubled over, clenching my stomach.
It felt like there was a wildfire rampaging through my whole body, burning down everything in its wake. A prompt flashed:
<<<>>>
Debuff Added
Diseased: As a result of the Death-Head Mode, your body is slowly dying! You’ve been afflicted with Death Head’s Disease. Attack Damage and Spell Strength reduced by 15%; Health, Stamina, and Spirit Regeneration reduced by 25%; duration, until death or quest completion.
<<<>>>
Excellent—as if I didn’t already have enough on my plate.
Fortunately, the pain receded almost as fast as it had hit. Unfortunately, the temporary distraction had cost me in battlefield advantage: the hideous Protector now loomed over me, its jaws yawning, its mouth ringed with nasty undulating spikes. It regarded me for a second, a clicking hiss growing in its throat, then launched a giant wad of green phlegm directly into my face. I shot one arm out, batting at the ball, but that only splattered the viscous substance along my hand and into my eyes.
I screamed again as my right eye went black and the other blurred, making it almost impossible to see, while a sharp, biting pain worked its way through my skin. That earned me another notice:
<<<>>>
Debuffs Added
Acid Burn: You have been acid burned! 7 pts Acid Damage; duration, 25 seconds.
Partial Blindness: Vision reduced by 79%; duration, 1 minute.
<<<>>>
The agony was an enormous living thing, but I fought and flailed all the same, lashing out with my hammer in one hand and bursts of Umbra Bolt with the other, hoping—praying, really—to hit something. Anything. My hammer landed with a wet thunk, followed by a high-pitched squee as the dark shadow hanging above me retreated out of sight. Driven away for the time being, though certainly not dead. I scrambled to my feet and lurched away, but only a step. A giant set of insectile jaws immediately wrapped around my left foot and clamped down on my ankle like a vise grip.
With a sharp tug, the creature jerked me from my feet, sending me back to the floor. Panicked, I glanced down, and even with badly blurred vision, it wasn’t hard to make out the centipedal Protector with its mouth engulfing my boot. I screamed again, this time for help, as I kicked at its face with my other foot, hoping to dislodge it.
It was a useless effort.
The Protector absorbed my kicks like an implacable brick wall while slowly sliding its jaws inch by inch up my leg—first to my calf, then all the way to the base of my kneecap. Spikes lined its gullet, sinking through my leather armor, kneading into my flesh as it moved. Holy crap. This thing was eating me, and even worse, my skin was burning as acid soaked through the punctures in my reinforced leather leggings. Not just eating me, then—dissolving me. And there wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t effectively swing my warhammer and I couldn’t use Umbra Flame without the risk of setting myself on fire, too.
Still, no matter how bad it looked, I wasn’t about to call it quits. I leaned forward with a grimace and bashed at the Protector’s beady eyes with the spiked edge of my battle vambraces, activating Black Caress over and over again. Slowly chewing away at its HP while absorbing a fraction of its life in return.
But it just kept moving. Eating. Another chomp brought the Protector’s mouth up past my knee, all the way to mid-thigh—
If I didn’t do something soon, it was going to saw through my leg entirely and then I’d be done for. The flashing blade of a battle-axe saved me the trouble, though. One second I was struggling against the Protector, beating at it with my spiked gauntlet. The next, the pressure around my leg slacked and vanished as a gore-soaked Forge appeared, his weapon planted firmly into the base of the Protector’s neck. I let out a shuddering sigh—I’d never been more happy to see someone in my entire life. With the immediate danger past, I turned my bleary gaze on the tunnel, expecting to see more Larvae flooding toward us.
But there were none. The insect horde lay dead. All of them smashed, hacked, or burned into little pieces.
“Forge? Jack?” Abby called out. “You guys okay?”
“Yeah, we’re alright,” Forge replied with a holler. “This nasty sumbitch just about took off one of Jack’s legs, but I think he’ll recover.” He grinned, shot me a wink, then dropped to a knee and helped me wriggle the Protector’s mouth and gullet free from my leg. “Seriously, though, you okay, Boss?” he asked me in a whisper, eyeing the multitude of lacerations and the green acid staining my trousers.
“I’ve been better, but I’ll live,” I replied, extending him a hand.
He stood and pulled me to my feet with a heave, a giant grin breaking out across the sharp angles of his face. “Hell yeah, Jack. Get some.”
The rest of the party was busy rummaging through the corpses, which dropped some serious loot. No shoddy beginners’ gear, slated for the scrap heap. Nope. Not in this dungeon. Each bug carried rare chitin, a handful of coins—silver or gold, never copper—and usually at least one item. A gleaming dagger with a +2 Dexterity boost here, a Belt of Troll Might with a +3 Strength bonus there. None of it was rare, but all of it would either fetch a decent price with the Merchants or go right into the faction vault.
Our influx of new members never ceased, and getting quality gear for lowbies was always an issue.
It took another five minutes to finish looting the bodies, which gave me time to tell the rest of the party about the Diseased debuff, then we headed on, ever deeper into the warren of passages. Thirty minutes—and a small army worth of Sand Wyrm Larvae, Boar-Beetles, Scarab Shamans, and Armored Protectors—later, we reached an ancient stone doorway set into the yellowing skull of a long-dead dragon.
Directly in the center of the door, surrounded by a ring of electric-green runes pulsing with eerie life, was a handprint. I’d seen something like this once before, during my raid on Gentleman Georgie’s underground laboratory. This door was a port-hub: a custom transport artifact that allowed a dungeon’s final room to be perfectly tailored to unique players and quests. Port-hubs made it possible for an infinite number of potential “Boss Rooms” to exist at the end of any particular location. And from what little I’d found about them on the game wikis, they were rare and only used for most challenging or unique quest lines.
With a gulp, I pushed my hand against the palm print carved into the stone.
Heat exploded beneath my skin as a flare of iridescent light enveloped me and the world spun and vanished, replaced by a chaotic swirl of color and a beating wind.
TWENTY-THREE: Sky Maiden’s Tale
The quiet hum of thoughtful chanting resonated in the air as my feet touched down on rough stone. It was a sweet melodic sound, which reminded me more of a Buddhist temple than the stronghold of a bloodthirsty cult ready an
d waiting to summon a murder-demon. Smells came next: sandalwood smoke—a hint of vanilla sweetness dancing with a musky cedar—and the pungent aroma of freshly turned earth and smoldering campfire logs. I kept my eyes shut tight, waiting for the wave of vertigo to pass as I wobbled drunkenly.
After a few deep breaths, the nausea faded, the room stopped spinning, and I could finally open my eyes.
I stole a quick look left and right, double-checking to make sure the rest of the party had made it through in one piece. A quick head count put me at ease. We’d all made the jump, though everyone—except Forge and Nikko—seemed to be reeling from the effects of the port skip. “Everyone okay?” I asked in a harsh whisper, receiving a muted round of yeses and a few thumbs-ups in reply.
I gave everyone a few more seconds to recover before trudging on down a narrow hallway fashioned to resemble the bone-lined throat of a great dragon. The hallway dipped and turned, but eventually terminated at a cavernous room with a dragon’s spinal column running down the center of the ceiling, just like in the vision I’d received back at the Dark Conclave. The walls were fashioned from intricately carved sandstone, but support beams also dotted the walls at regular intervals, built from curved rib bones as thick as telephone poles. Dragon bones.
I was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu as I surveyed the room: there was a small library off to the left and glass-fronted cases marching off in a line on the right. My gaze lingered on those cases—more specifically on the wide array of rune-worked weapons and trinkets on display. Good, good loot. The wooden benches, more like traditional church pews than anything else, filled most of the hall, but this time, those benches were filled with cultists. Most were Accipiter—though, surprisingly, there were a few Wodes and even a pair of burly Dwarves—and all were decked out in tight-fitting brown leather armor studded with spiky ridges of yellow bone and plates of red, overlapping scales.
