A Slave in the Locked Lands

by Arthur Stone

  “I have a small announcement to make. Who needs to redistribute their stats? I’m ready.”

  “Danger Babe needs it more,” said Tangh.

  The girl nodded.

  “I’d take some points off Agility, Attack, and Accuracy. Vigor, too, I don’t get all that tired. And Strength, just a little.”

  “You won’t be able to carry anything heavy,” Ros replied.

  “I don’t have to carry heavy loads—that’s your specialty.” Danger Babe smiled.

  “If you lower Attack, Fury will decrease as well.”

  “My skills have no particular need of it.”

  “Well, it’s up to you.”

  “I’ll dump everything that frees up into Stamina.”

  “Stamina doesn’t give you a lot of HP—just eight per point.”

  “Well, I’m a flighting. And we’re the frailest race.”

  “You’ll have everything rolled back to distributable points. Every single stat. So, it’s up to you to decide your priorities.”

  “Even better.”

  “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Here we go.”

  Ros activated Clean Slate.

  “Wow! You weren’t lying! You’re like the Emperor or an Archmage! Everything’s rolled back to zero and is distributable! I’m afraid to so much as take a single step—Vigor is at zero and so is Strength. I see a total overload.”

  “Set your stats up the way you want, and log off. We’ll stay here for the night. I’m really pooped, for some reason—feels like wild horses have been dragging me around all day. I think I won’t be doing anything else today other than sleep.”

  “It’s the cave that has a depressive effect. It feels ominous here,” said Tangh pensively.

  Chapter 25

  The next day, the party suffered another loss, and this time it was the immortal Ros.

  They were moving through scrum territory until noon. First, they were fighting off the “elephants.” Then those disappeared, only to be replaced by packs of underlings led by lords. There were no dangerous situations, so they relaxed—and paid for it before long when a shadowcrawler patriarch dropped from the ceiling, targeting Danger Babe once again.

  The flighting’s vulnerability seemed to irritate the creatures.

  Ros managed to react and cast Sleep. The ability didn’t take, but the mob switched to the attacker at once, leaving the girl with less than half her HP. It moved incredibly fast, and the attempt to get its paws entangled failed as well. The shadowcrawler ignored the pet, who rushed to defend his master, dealing Ros one blow after another. He tried to use a shield, but his cast got interrupted in the very beginning. Darkness descended almost instantly.

  Then he saw a message in the dark.

  “Danger Babe pours the energy of life into your lifeless body. Do you want to be revived on the battlefield? Yes/No.”

  Ros didn’t deliberate long, discovering himself supine upon damp moss the next moment. Two paces away, Tangh desperately tried to defend himself against the enormous shadowcrawler. Danger Babe stood in the distance and kept healing him.

  The worst thing was that characters resurrected with ten percent of their mana at death, and fifty percent of their total HP—before equipment bonuses. He was grateful that the mob did not use any area-of-effect skills, or the risk of another quick death would be too close for comfort.

  Ros cast a shield on Tang, then took out a crystal with the soul of an “elephant,” and activated it. It took the pet around forty seconds to rise, and he couldn’t use any other skills during this time. All he could do was watch helplessly as clumps of moss, stones, and all kinds of flotsam and jetsam formed a whirlwind where the new pet would rise from the dead.

  Once he commanded his pet to attack, Ros started to heal the norder, whose health was dangerously low by then. A few minutes later they all drew a sigh of relief. They made it, with none of them getting sent back to the bind point.

  “Sorry, Ros. I cast Sleep on that thing, but it resisted.”

  “I saw it. It’s all fine. This is one tough critter for the likes of us.”

  “Once you went down, your pet died, too.”

  “That’s how it works. They can’t live without their master.”

  “Right. I saw the same happen to necromancers. If I still had my old staff, Tangh would have died. Even with this one I couldn’t heal him properly—his HP kept falling, though not as fast as it could have. I’m glad you helped. I was on the verge of tears already.”

  “The despicable creature dented my helmet. Will you fix it?”

  “Sure, Tang. Give it to me.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, they were attacked by another shadowcrawler—also a patriarch. What saved them was that he’d chosen Tangh as his prey.

  By this point, even a total idiot would realize something was afoot. The party appeared to have entered the territory of these extremely dangerous creatures. It made no sense to keep gambling whom the next mob would attack from its ambush among the stalactites, so they changed their tactics. The party started to move at a much slower pace, and paying more attention. Danger Babe used the Light of Truth, a flighting ability, at any suspicious spot. This gave them a better chance of noticing hidden adversaries, including those concealing themselves in the shadow of the world—the deadly invisible warriors. She also used three spheres of light instead of one. It may have slowed down mana regeneration, but safety came first.

  Though their pace slowed considerably, they were also mining more ore, and it was all high-grade. For the first time they came across beryllium ore—its level was the same as zirconium, but it was scarcer and cost more. They found lithium often, but there was hardly any gold.

  Their tightened security paid off. They managed to spot the next shadowcrawler patriarch before it could attack. It swooped in once it realized it’d been made, but Ros’ and Danger Babe’s combined efforts stopped the mob in its tracks. They approached, Tangh and the pet joined the fray, and the rest was predictable. They knew these mobs could cast Sleep on the entire party, and kept their distance to make sure they stayed out of range. The monster’s attacks debuffed the tank, while Ros kept dispelling the pet.

  The path ahead was ominous but exciting. There was the constant danger of being ambushed by a mob that even Tangh wouldn’t hold out half a minute against without support.

  The cave’s appearance began to change. Damp moss eventually gave way to pale clumps of lichen. There were unidentifiable blotches of different colors on the walls, with semitransparent palm-sized beetles shuttling to and fro. But they didn’t come across any of the large woodlice. Tufts of unknown vegetation hung from the ceiling. It looked nothing like moss—more like duckweed with extra-long filaments. Crumbly old bones often crackled under their feet, and they saw an enormous skull of a shadowcrawler patriarch once. They kept vigilant even during breaks—those creatures would make anyone uneasy.

  There were other mobs here as well—the shadow scavenger chahks that Ros had run into once. They went around in packs of two or three, and didn’t get up to any nasty tricks. One pair even retreated from the party without engaging in battle. So, they weren’t that aggressive, after all.

  Or, perhaps, they realized that the party was far from easy prey.

  Shadowcrawlers didn’t attack any more often than once an hour. There were fewer scavengers, too. The experience accumulation slowed down, but they were mining a great deal more ore, and that gave hope for better equipment. Around midday, they found an enormous hall and decided to stop there. They checked all the side tunnels first, going a few hundred feet in. They found a patriarch mob in one of them. Knowing that these antisocial beasts were reluctant to make their lairs next to each other’s, they sighed with relief—they would likely be able to rest here in relative safety.

  They didn’t stop for lunch, but, rather, to let Danger Babe go offline. Tangh kept nagging them that the girl needed rest. Ros concurred—she was spending too mu
ch time here, and that was unhealthy at any age. They agreed that she would return in three or four hours, and that they would use the time to mine all the ores and minerals in the hall.

  Ros found a few tourmalines apart from the ore. One of them helped him raise Perception and Mining & Quarrying simultaneously. Then he used the very same gems to raise his Gem-Cutting. Two of them broke in the process, but he was still happy.

  These stones brought him luck.

  Danger Babe was punctual this time, and they carried on just as leisurely. Their progress was slow, which thwarted Ros’ plans—he had intended to reach the lair of the second boss come evening, but they had to spend the night in a large hall that lay at some considerable distance.

  They’d be lucky to make it by tomorrow.

  * * *

  They discovered a new mob the next morning: the Scavenger Chahk Patriarch. Its attack wasn’t that strong, but its bite resulted in an unpleasant poison debuff that made one’s HP bar shrink rapidly. It was resistant to dispelling, too, requiring two-three casts before it took.

  The new mobs didn’t turn up any more often than shadowcrawler patriarchs. And they were a lot less trouble since they made a lot of noise on the way, giving the party ample time to prepare a warm welcome. The sound of the pickaxe was the surest way to attract them, as well as many others.

  It was already past midday when the cave they’d been following stopped winding like a snake. It became almost straight, and kept getting wider.

  Ros stopped and said in a low voice:

  “If we’re to believe Agythric’s map, this cave will soon end in a large hall where we’ll find the boss. This one is called the Shadow Demon. I have a hunch it will be the granddaddy of all shadowcrawlers. Considering our losses from their kind, I am beginning to feel uneasy.”

  “Something that hides in darkness and capable of wasting you in a single attack, but poorly protected?” asked Tangh.

  “Very possible.”

  “Pity. No matter how well we equip ourselves, shadowcrawlers deal both you and Danger Babe a lot of damage. I’m not sure we’ll make it.”

  “You were uncertain about the first boss, too.”

  “Do you have any plan, or anything else that could help? I’ll probably be able to handle a couple of attacks, but either of you will likely go down after the very first one.”

  “Danger Babe, we need to prepare ourselves for possible XP loss.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s keep as far away from each other as we can. The best way would be to let the tank deal with the boss, with us standing on either side. If the boss switches its attention to either of us, we die bravely while trying to bring it closer to our slow tank. The fallen one gets revived and then assumes his or her former position.”

  “Whoever goes down won’t have much mana.”

  “I know. Once the battle begins, just leave one of your light spheres on. Tangh, if Danger Babe falls, do whatever you can, but don’t lose the boss even if you can’t see it.”

  The norder pointed to the ceiling.

  “Hurl one of your fireballs up there.”

  “What for?”

  “Just do it.”

  Ros shrugged and complied with the strange request. The fireball hit the dome of the cave, causing a flash that hurt the eyes. The hanging tatters of unidentified vegetation that only grew on the ceiling and nowhere else started to smoulder, and those in the center caught fire.

  Tang commented:

  “If you cast such fireballs at least once a minute, I’ll be able to see something even if Danger Babe gets killed.”

  “I see. Still, this grass doesn’t burn well, doesn’t produce much light, and will likely go out quickly.”

  “The boss will be big enough to be seen without much light. Danger Babe, please refresh our buffs, and let’s get going.”

  * * *

  Agythric’s map didn’t lie. The cave widened suddenly, shaped like the mouth of a bottle. It led to a large hall that looked rather odd, bearing a slight resemblance to the place where Ros had fought the Chaos bosses. The stalactites looked just the same, the only difference being that here they didn’t form rows, but were scattered randomly. They were also a lot thicker. These were mammoth affairs, some fifteen or twenty feet in girth. They became nearly twice as wide at the top and at the bottom, which made them look like lumps of elastic dough someone had stuck to the ceiling—lumps that would later sag until they’d reached the floor and started to spread. The dome was covered with the same strange vegetation, which meant Tangh’s idea about using fireballs as lighting might prove effective.

  “So, what’s the situation?” whispered Danger Babe softly.

  Her eyesight was even worse than the norder’s.

  “I can’t see the boss yet…”

  “It might be hiding behind these columns.”

  Ros raised his hand, urging them to be quiet.

  “There’s a method I want to try. Read about it on the forum.”

  The pet obeyed orderes and ran all the way across the hall, then stopped, turned around, and dashed back just as quickly. It looked rather amusing from a distance, as if a heavy blanket designed to resemble a bearskin had grown long paws at the corners, using them for locomotion in funny leaps, with waves rolling across its body.

  One would be less amused up close—the pet’s scimitar-like talons did not exactly encourage humor.

  The boss turned up when the pet reached the center of the hall on its way back—a dark mass dropped down from the top of one of the columns, and tried to cover the pet with its blanket-like body of enormous proportions.

  Ros ordered the pet to jump right and activate its mass Sleep ability. The ability didn’t take, but the pet managed to escape from underneath the attacker’s bulk. The boss only managed to get the shadowcrawler with a single paw, but even that took off a quarter of its HP bar, and caused a serious Bleeding.

  “Attention! You have found a named creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! This is your fourth named creature. You receive a reward: +15 to Fury. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic.”

  “The pet’s Sleep drew its aggro, the boss is attacking it now!” Ros warned them.

  The pet was fast, but the boss turned out to be even faster, managing to land another hit that exacerbated the Bleeding effect. The pet reached its master with hardly any HP left, and Ros barely managed to dispel it.

  Tangh didn’t fail, drawing aggro with his only ranged skill that looked like a flow of tiny icicles emitted from the shield. After getting hit, Shadow Demon rushed toward the norder and delivered a blow that swept all the shields cast by Ros and Danger Babe away at once, while the tank lost around fifteen percent HP.

  The situation was looking dire—the boss was truly formidable.

  Danger Babe realized this, too.

  “Heal! The regen won’t be fast enough! Ros, run off the way we’d agreed!”

  Once the pet got patched up, Ros commanded it to attack the boss from behind, positioned himself on his other side, and cast Chaos Aura. After that, he focused on healing Tangh who, despite Danger Babe’s best efforts, kept losing HP at an alarming rate.

  “Shields on the tank upon cooldown!” the girl shouted.

  Ros complied, casting his, and then hit the boss with a Chaos Arrow—just to try it out, and also to make sure it would attack him and not Danger Babe, who never so much as laid a finger on the creature.

  The next five minutes were relatively worry-free. Tangh’s HP had stopped falling, unlike the boss’, but the mob was losing his rather slowly since Ros and Danger Babe both concentrated on healing.

  Then the boss turned around and attacked the pet. The Shadow Demon managed to land two blows before Tangh managed to draw its attention back. There was no Bleeding this time, so it didn’t take Ros long to heal his pet to full. But as soon as he managed that, the monster turned away from the tank again, and proceeded to deli
ver a devastating three-hit combo to the pet, before complementing it with a bite.

  “Your summoned creature dies.”

  “Pet down!”

  “Raise another one!” Danger Babe shouted.

  “It will take about a minute!”

  “I’ll hold him! Cast a shield and get to it!”

  Once Ros did as instructed, he activated the next crystal and watched the new pet materialize from the whirlwind, unable to do anything in the meanwhile.

  It was slow.

  Too slow.

  The worst thing was that he could use no other abilities before the cast was done.