Hawke fired off a Burning Light but the Archer-Warrior pushed through it without losing much of its Health and attacked with its all-metal spear, skillfully avoiding a shield block and hitting Hawke on his right shoulder, right below the pauldron protecting it. There was an almost musical ding sound when the glowing spearpoint pierced his breastplate, and then pain as a Major Undead Curse bit into him. The Orc’s Masterwork weapon also had a Fire aura with a piercing effect that negated much of Hawke’s resistance against Elemental attack. All his pools began to drop, with Mana suffering the most.
Grunting, Hawke used his shield to lever the spear off him, dropping his Mana by another two hundred points as the barbed point tore away from his shoulder. His counterblow sheared off half the Orc’s face and cut deep into its left shoulder; a moment later, Korgam’s war hammer smashed into Gorat’s other side, crushing bones and taking the monster down to well below half its Health. There was no sportsmanship in a battle to the death. Before Gorat could recover from the Dwarf’s blow, Hawke beheaded it with a brutal chopping swing, a critical hit that cut through armor and dead flesh with only a brief feeling of resistance. Gorat fell, but other silent figures stepped in its place, reaching for him. Heketa’s special spell removed the curse before it could do much more damage.
If his party had been fighting alone, it would have started taking losses, even with the Green Coven’s witches and Jake Duchamp helping out. From the looks of it, the Revenant had turned over a thousand people, far more than Hawke had seen during his scouting trip. Many were skeletons, that must have been raised from graveyards and mausoleums rather than victims snatched off the streets. The dead outnumbered the living, and a place the size of Akila must have hundreds of thousands of tombs. Funeral rites and prayers should have protected those bodies from being turned, but the Revenant wasn’t bound by normal limitations.
Fortunately, they weren’t alone. The Imperial magicians and priests in the following groups had been preparing a counterattack, putting to good use the time Hawke’s people bought them. Less than a minute after Hawke defeated Gorat, multiple Mass Blast Undead spells exploded over the packed enemy ranks, tactical spells with far greater damage and area of effect than the individual versions. Even the protective auras the elite Risen Leaders generated collapsed under the attack, and hundreds of monsters simply ceased to exist, collapsing into piles of bone or chunks of rotting or embalmed flesh. Not a single Undead remained standing after that. The first battle was over.
Good Guys: 1,123. Bad Guys: 0, or 12 if you counted the Elemental scouts that had been wiped out at the beginning of the attack. The Undead had wounded several of Hawke’s people, but the healers in the party had been able to keep everyone on their feet. The closest one to a casualty had been one of the Stern Walking Fortress crossbowmen, when the poor bastard was dragged into the sewer canal by a Risen who got past the pets in the water. Tava sent Rabbit in after him, and the Dire Bear dealt with the zombie and dragged the wet but otherwise unharmed Dwarf out. Tava’s pet and the sputtering crossbowman were covered in filth, but the sewer had already killed everyone’s sense of smell, so it wouldn’t matter until they were back in polite society.
For slaying your foes, you have earned 12,000 Experience (1,500 diverted towards Leadership; 1,500 diverted towards Node Mastery).
You have found: 87 gold, 5 Major Mana Potions, 3 Major Healing Potions, 1 Major Rejuvenation Potion.
Congratulations! You have reached Level Twenty-One!
You have gained 6 Attribute points to distribute.
New Spells are available.
Current XP/Next Level: 126,452/150,000. Leadership XP/Next Level: 52,827/75,000
Current Node Mastery XP/Next Level: 28,238/35,000. Current Guild XP/Next Level: 5,549/7,500
Hawke decided to keep the level in reserve. He didn’t need the relatively paltry benefits, and the ability to get a level-up reset might make the difference between life and death in the coming fight.
“This was harder than I thought, but it still feels like it was too easy,” he muttered to Jake Duchamp after he dismissed the notification.
The wizard had moved forward to survey the carnage. Just getting rid of the mounds of bodies that blocked the passageway was going to take some time, mostly from wizards using assorted Holding containers to pack the bodies away, an undignified way of disposing of the twice-killed victims, but the only quick way to clear the obstacles, which could also become a flooding hazard if allowed to block the canals. He ended up ‘donating’ thirty slots in one of the chests in his Inventory for that purpose. Jake had picked up a hundred corpses himself; Hawke figured that the Eternal’s Inventory must have the cargo capacity of a supertanker. If you were wealthy enough, you could fill your 48 Inventory slots with containers of holding, and you could put another layer of containers inside them, although that was the limit, perhaps because packing too many pocket dimensions inside each other could cause the whole thing to collapse and turn into a black hole or something.
“You think so?” Jake asked. “It’s the most work I’ve had to do in a while.”
“What about the attack on your Council?”
“That wasn’t a fight. Got hit with a few bullets while some sneaky bastard dropped an Anti-Magic Sphere right on my lap. It’s a Legendary-level artifact that nullifies all magic in its area of effect. I got sucker-punched. This was a fight.”
“They had to know they couldn’t win.”
“If the Special Cohort and a couple companies of regular guards had come down here by themselves, those Undead would have wiped them out without working out a sweat. We’ve already killed more Undead than you said we would face, by the way. Don’t think that Legate Neron hasn’t noticed that.”
“You think he’s mad? We did most of the work.”
“No,” Jake admitted. “But if a scout gives him bad intelligence, he will be less likely to listen to him next time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. This attack seems like a waste, though. We only lost a few summoned critters, that’s all. Mana potions will get us back to a hundred percent in a few minutes.”
Jake nodded. “It could have been a probe to gauge our strength. Or a way to lull us into a false sense of security.”
“We’re headed into a trap.”
“You’re probably right, Hawke,” the wizard said. “But we still have to take the bait.”
“Agreed,” he replied.
Something else was nagging at him, and it took him several moments to realize what it was.
Desmond was gone.
Thirty-One
Hawke asked around, but the last time anybody had seen Desmond was when the fight had been the most intense and some Undead had reached the rear lines; that was when they had almost lost one of the crossbowmen. Desmond was no longer in the party interface. Hawke went back on his notifications and discovered that the Eternal had quit the party shortly after the second wave of Undead had attacked. Had Desmond run away, been captured, killed? Hawke doubted Desmond was dead. Maybe the whole thing had been a setup, but he couldn’t figure what purpose it would serve to have the big guy tag along until the first time he could have been useful, then disappear. Maybe he teleported away. He didn’t know, and it bothered him.
Legate Neron also suspected that they were walking into a trap. Sending the entire force down the single tunnel leading to the Trogg city was too risky, so he detailed magicians with Earth spells to dig two alternate routes. One was assigned to the Special Cohort, and another to the legion’s detachment. Hawke’s group got the honor of going down the original passage. The good general might not be deliberately trying to get Hawke killed, but he seemed to delight in giving him the most dangerous jobs.
Each group was assigned two or three priests from the temple contingent. Hawke’s team got the High Priest of Lumina and the Hierophant of Vitara, naturally enough, along with a handful of temple guards. Hawke welcomed the extra healing and anti-Undead magic the priests provided; he only hope it would
be enough to win the day.
He led the way down the Trogg tunnel, his Advanced Mana Sight, Enlightenment, and Detect Traps all turned on. The enemy knew they were about to have company, and they had all night to prepare some nasty surprises for the invaders. Sure enough, he spotted the first trap fifty feet beyond the entrance of the tunnel, a ward against living beings that would unleash an overpowered Death Cyclone on anyone within a hundred feet of the magical construct. Hawke had everyone stop and quickly disarmed the construct by releasing its Mana without triggering the spell, one of the tricks he had learned from developing his inner energy flow. Spellcraft was an art developed normally by high-level students of magic. Hawke had picked it up along the way, thanks to his Eternal nature and more than a little luck.
I wonder why there is no Luck Attribute in the ‘rules,’ he thought as he stepped past the inert trap. There was another one a dozen feet ahead.
Too bad. It’d be nice to always be lucky, although it feels like I usually get more than my share, he replied as he used Spell Deconstruct to take out another Death Cyclone trap.
I’ll take it.
The next trap was a lot more complex, and hidden so well that only his Advanced Mana Sight let him spot it before he triggered it. Layered spells had been inscribed into the walls and ceiling, all set to go off when the trap on the ground detected a living being within ten feet of it. He identified a few of them, but three of the nine spells he could see were from a Force he didn’t recognize. Even so, it was easy to know what would happen if the energy construct went off: a vortex of Death, Chaos, and the unknown Force – Soul, he suspected – would rush through the tunnel like a bullet through the barrel of a gun, delivering lethal amounts of damage to everything in its path. He and maybe the top priests and magicians in the group might live through it, but nobody else would. And it had dozens of countermeasures against disarming attempts. This was going to be tricky.
He wished Girl-Has No-Name was there. The Shadow Assassin was incredibly proficient at dealing with traps. If only she weren’t a murderous psychopath on the fast track to becoming an Infernal being, she would have been a major asset. His second-best trap disposal specialist, Alba Bastardes, was back in Orom, keeping an eye of things. He hadn’t brought any rogue types along, mainly because he was better at the sneaky stuff than anybody else in his guild. Which meant it was his job to deal with the mess in front of him.
“Move everyone well back from the tunnel,” he told Tava before considering how to deal with the trap.
His first impulse was to use a Tulpa to trigger the damn thing while everyone was out of range of the Earth-shattering kaboom. Some of the spells linked to the trap were of the unknown Force, however, and he didn’t know what they would do. They might be able to hit him through his connection to the construct. He’d better make sure before he blew himself up like a dumbass.
Whoever had designed the energy device was a genius and had a near-infinite supply of Mana, courtesy of Node in the Trogg undercity. Also insane, but that went without saying. After finding no way to deactivate the device safely, he asked Jake to join him. Hawke had a feeling he needed more magical expertise than he had. They soon ran into a problem, however.
“I can’t see the trap,” Jake said. “I can sense a great deal of energy where you’re pointing, but it’s veiled beyond my ability to pierce. I’m impressed that you detected it at all.”
“Crap. Okay, I have a way I can show you what I see, but it’s going to take a lot of trust from both of us.”
Hawke really didn’t want to use Mind Magic and let Jake into his head to look through his eyes. The wizard might be an Earthling, but the sad truth was that many of Hawke’s enemies in the Realms had been from his home world: Necromancer Greg, Kaiser Wrecker, and, to a smaller degree, Desmond, who remained MIA. He’d only known Jake Duchamp for a little over twenty-four hours, nowhere near long enough to form an educated opinion about the guy. But he needed to find out if the trap would fry him even if he used a Tulpa to set it off from a distance, and they didn’t have a lot of time to fiddle with it.
“I know a Mind Magic spell, Communion,” he told the wizard. “It lets me…”
“I know what it does,” Jake interrupted him. “Everything it can do, although I never messed with that Force myself. You’re awfully low on the totem pole to know that sort of magic.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“We’ll see things in each other’s head that we might not want to share,” the wizard said. “I’ve gone through it a few times. Never liked it.”
“I know. Maybe I’ll just use a Tulpa and set it off instead. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“You can create Tulpas? How long have you been in the Realms again?”
“A few months.”
“Hit the ground running, didn’t you?”
“And fell on my face a bunch of times, too.”
Jake gave him a considering look before answering. “Tulpas are extensions of yourself. Physical and most Elemental effects won’t bother you, but there are plenty of spells that will affect you through the Tulpa. Using it as a Polish mine detector is about the dumbest thing you can do with that ability.”
“That’s what I was worried about,” Hawke said, deciding not to mention that he’d been doing just that ever since he’d learned the trick. Luckily, all the traps he’d detonated had not affected him.
“Can’t have you out of commission while you rise from the dead, can we?” Jake said. “Let’s do the Communion.”
It took a few seconds, but it felt like a lot longer. Having been inside the minds of two psycho killers had been worse, but Jake’s experiences left Hawke feeling almost overwhelmed with sadness. The guy had lived a lot, and lost a lot. His first wife had been on Earth, and he assumed she was dead; her unknown fate continued to haunt him. His other marriages, both with non-Eternals, had also ended in tragedy. Hawke saw dozens of faces: friends, loved ones, companions, all dead, each loss delivering another stab of grief to the wizard’s spirit. Eventually, Jake had decided to be alone, a man with acquaintances and colleagues but no friends, and that bothered Hawke most of all. Was he doomed to end up like that?
He pushed past the memories and concentrated on the task at hand. Jake was shaking his head and staring at the magical pattern that he now could see.
“Soul Magic,” the wizard said. “If you trigger the spell, it will suck your soul right out of your body. And it’d do it right through the Tulpa, too. You’d be lucky to Reincarnate again, and even if you did, you wouldn’t come back for days if not weeks. Lose a whole lot of Identity even if you survived. Five, six points, minimum. Whoever designed that trap meant to take out an Eternal. It will also kill anybody else, of course.”
“That’s great,” Hawke growled. “How do we get past it?”
“We destroy it in place. Heketa and I will take care of that. We’ve got enough magic juice to overpower, now that I can see it. It will cost us some of our Mana reserves, but we have to keep moving. The other two teams must have dug halfway there by now.”
“What do you mean Mana reserves? Wouldn’t Mana potions get you back to full?”
“Our normal fuel tanks can be topped off, sure. But high-level wizards never rely on those alone. There are ways to store many times our maximum Mana capacity, but it takes hours to create the ‘spare tanks.’ Heketa and I are going to go through at least half of them. If takes a five to one ratio to counter an unknown spell. Ten to one to be safe.”
“There’s like three thousand Mana in that trap.”
“Yep. Which is why it’s going to cost us. If we knew the spell in question, it wou
ld be cheaper. Maybe Heketa does, although I doubt she’s mastered Soul magic.”
“I couldn’t identify it. I tried.”
“Another ability a Paladin, or even a Twilight Templar, shouldn’t have picked up at your level. But when I was inside your head I think I caught a glimpse of one of the Makers. There are dangerous enemies, but also dangerous patrons, kid, and you’ve got one of the worst.”
“Who is it? Laughing Man?”
“You should be so lucky. If I’m right about what I saw, you’ve somehow earned the favor of the Prime Mover. The Maker of Makers.”
Thirty-Two
“But that’s not important now,” Jake concluded after dropping the little bombshell. “Miles to go before we sleep, and all that jazz.”
Hawke had a bunch of questions, but they didn’t have a lot of time. Jake and Heketa dealt with the trap in under a minute, linking hands and delivering a massive blast of Mana that erased the pattern and all the attached spells without activating them. Hawke watched the process carefully and learned a new trick.
Congratulations! You have learned a new Mana Channeling Ability: Overwhelm Magic I
Overwhelm Magic: You can now destroy any spell by overloading its pattern with more Mana than it was designed to handle. This requires a minimum expenditure of 4 times the amount of Mana spent in the original spell. Chance of Success: 25%, plus 10% per additional 100% extra Mana added in.
Prerequisite: Dispel Magic I
It was a nifty ability, but far more expensive than Dispel Magic, although that only let him counter spells that he knew, while the new one would work against any spell, as long as he had the necessary amount of Mana. Jake and Heketa had burned over thirty thousand Mana in the process, tapping not only on their personal stores but the reserves the wizard had mentioned. Hawke didn’t even see where the extra energy came from until the two magicians called it forth, and he wasn’t able to learn the process. Probably had requirements that he hadn’t met yet. He wondered if Jake would teach it to him. You could never have too much Mana.
Guilds at War: The LitRPG Saga Continues Page 23
