I had to worry about other things. I was desperate for a second wind. Exhaustion had made me snappy and irritable: not the best of qualities for a raid member.
I had the implant to thank for all this. It made me sense the danger coming from the cave: the beastly vibes emitted by some evil force, dark and viscous as tar, its freezing-cold waves washing over my mind.
"May I have the stone, please?"
Togien handed me the glowing rock. I squeezed it in my hand.
Its initial effect felt like an electric shock. I shuddered in an agonizing spasm which was soon replaced by a wave of warmth coursing through my veins, from my hands to my elbows and further up, sending goosebumps up my spine and making my whole body erupt in perspiration.
The stone's aura licking my clenched fingers began to weaken as if it had shared all of its accumulated energy with me.
My head cleared. "Give me another one!"
Casting wary glances at me, Togien reached into his inventory.
This time it didn't hurt. I felt much better. The sneaky ideas of Zander's potential betrayal had disappeared from my mind. Now I could see him and his group for what they truly were: they valued their reputation too much to be tempted by an extra handful of artifacts.
The stone's glow expired.
Your Synergy ability has grown 1 level!
You've learned a new skill: Energy Transfer
From now on, you can use any fragment of transformed matter to accumulate physical, mental or vital energy.
The message took my breath away. Few sorcerers could boast this level of expertise! The Neuro development branch was indeed full of surprises.
You've activated a fragment of transformed matter.
Select the type and percentage of the energy you would like it to accumulate.
Selection accepted.
Type: vital energy
Rate: 1% per sec
Time left till full charge: 1 hr. 13 min
I knew how I would use the charged stones. I had those empty slots on my sword's hilt, didn't I? The stones fit them perfectly.
* * *
THE DUNGEON appeared deserted — treacherously so. Too busy with all the latest developments, I hadn't even noticed the darkness creep up on us, thick and sticky. I struggled to breathe in the air permeated with dust.
Zander stopped and raised a warning hand.
The echoes of many steel tools assaulting the rock merged into a monotonous clatter. This sounded like a large imp group at work. Zander stepped back, simultaneously issuing orders to change our formation,
"Wizards, take the flanks. The warriors will cover you. Togien, you stay with me. Alexatis, stay in the rear with the newbs in case the demons break through. Arwan, come over here!"
Reluctantly the Elf glanced at me, awaiting my orders. I nodded.
Zander handed him a quiverful of arrows from his own supplies. "The conjurer and the totem," he said. "Think you can do it?"
Without answering, Arwan pulled the bowstring taut.
"Iskandar, I want you to cast Wind. Gently! I don't want it to alarm them."
We formed an arrowhead: Zander and Togien in front, the wizards behind them with Virgil and Tylor flanking them. Me, Platinus, the orc, the kobold and the three dwarves in the rear. The peasants were cowering in a fissure way behind.
A light breeze touched my face — more like a draft, really, which are quite common in underground caves. It blew the clouds of dust aside, revealing about fifty worker imps and a couple of dozen prisoners controlled by a dark obelisk. The group was lined up along the cave wall, monotonously hacking at it. The only untouched slab of rock emitted a faint glow. This must have been the dark spirit's temporary abode.
There were two totems here, with a conjurer posted next to each. The demons' levels were mainly 25 to 30: quite doable. Which in turn meant that the spirit's level was at least 35.
Five warriors strode to and fro behind the workers' backs.
"They've got a cheek, really," Virgil commented. "You can tell they've got no one to keep them on their toes."
Zander took in the setup. "Wizards, wait for Arwan to finish up, then begin casting blanket damage. Togien, you start pulling aggro while I try to get to the obelisk.
The sheer number of spread-out targets didn't seem to faze Arwan. Without saying a word, he deftly raised his bow and loosed off two arrows, then swung round and loosed off two more.
The guy was a born sniper, I thought as I watched both conjurers bite the dust. Two crits out of two! He did an equally spectacular job with the totems, their bony structures crumbling to the ground.
Zander lunged forward. Togien used his class ability to increase the level of danger emitted by him. The imps beelined for him, furious, ignoring everything else around.
Iskandar and Rodrigo attacked simultaneously. Pools of acid materialized in the imps' way, dealing repeated damage, followed by a flurry of Subzero which slowed up the more brazen ones.
Arwan didn't stop there. Standing behind Togien, he kept loosing off arrows. Only three of the warrior imps made it to Togien, their lives dangerously close to zero.
Both the orc and the kobold shifted from one foot to the other, impatient to join in the melee — but by then, they had no potential enemies left: our wizards had already smoked all of the workers.
The dark obelisk, however, proved a hard kill. Time and time again Zander hacked at it with his longsword but only dented the surface. The cornered spirit shrank deeper into the rock, only responding with occasional debuffs and gradually weakening Zander's auras by reaching them with its tendrils of darkness.
Once the imps ceased to be a threat, Tylor and Virgil hurried to his aid. Still, their blows couldn't do any serious damage without ruining their weapons' durability. The dark creature put up a good fight. The spectral glow enveloping the rock began to thicken, forming vague outlines conjoined by magic: skulls baring their teeth, fragments of spines, bony arms reaching out for you... Wisps of darkness trailed behind the ghosts identical to those left by the legionnaires. At least twenty of them circled the air, accelerating into the attack.
They lunged at our warriors. Zander left the obelisk alone, stepped back and cast Expulsion.
The cave filled with mournful howling as the spell's beaming light scorched the darkness, destroying the summoned ghosts. The dark spirit, however, stayed intact in the safety of its rocky shelter.
Togien produced a pickaxe from his inventory. He spat on his hands for a better grip, ran up to the rock and began swinging at it strong and fast.
I watched his damage stats.
Not good. Togien may be a Master in Mining but even he had trouble handling transformed matter. His every blow only removed 20 pt. of the rock's durability while the haze of Infernal darkness enveloping it promptly restored the damage.
Even worse: the trapped spirit had regained control of the prisoners, making them pick up their weapons in preparation for a counterattack.
We might end up having to fight with potential allies before we could resume our attacks on the rock!
That wasn't the way to do it.
I waved to Rodrigo and Iskandar, motioning them to stop. Accompanied by the orc and the kobold, I made a dash for the obelisk, splashing through the hissing pools of acid still streaked with frost.
As I ran, I glanced over the NPC prisoners' name tags. Much to my surprise, one of them turned out to be a player in dusty but still sturdy cloth gear. A cleric? He was straining to overcome the obelisk's dark charms, shaking his head and mouthing something, stubbornly trying to cast a spell.
Some willpower the guy had! I watched in awe as he resisted the spirit's pressure on his mind.
"Zander, stop wasting your abilities!" I shouted, noticing him readying his hands to cast Cleanse.
Grudgingly he obeyed.
Counting each pace, I ran past the obelisk. The distance seemed enough for my purposes. The spell's range could affect both the obelisk and the prisoners enslaved by
it.
Casting Exorcism required 8 sec. concentration. Never before had I cast a spell without previous practice. Needless to say, I was nervous — especially because the prisoners armed with whatever they could find were already heading for me, rattling their shackles.
I took my time enunciating the words of the spell.
Done it.
If I was expecting some spectacular visual effects, I was wrong.
A thick, dull silence hung in the cave.
The prisoners stopped. A fine web of cracks ran over the obelisk, oozing ectoplasm. Its green droplets hissed, evaporating, leaving deep dents in the rock.
The spectral haze began to rise toward the cave's ceiling, condensing to form a face distorted with fury.
An otherworldly whisper entered my mind,
"I'll remember you."
* * *
YOU'VE RECEIVED a new level!
You have new abilities available!
I breathed slow and deep. Pain was scorching my mind. I was so weak it felt like I would never move again. My mental, physical and vital energy bars all hovered at 30%. The spirit's level had been considerably higher than mine — and now I was paying the price.
"You okay?" Zander looked seriously worried.
"That's what this spell does to a caster."
"I can't see any debuffs. Why isn't your life growing?"
I wasn't going to explain the mechanism to him. Zander must have realized it as he stopped asking questions.
Iskandar walked over to me. "You think auras might help?"
"Maybe. Something to bring up health capacity and regeneration rate."
A gentle soft light enveloped me. The pain subsided but I was still weak.
"This is a ten-minute buff," Iskandar said. "I'll cast it again when it expires."
"Thanks, man," I perched myself on a flat rock. "Togien, I want you to mark the obelisk," I said, trying to sound matter-of-factly.
In any case, I'd had my dose of ancient spells for the day. I looked around. Arwan stood nearby, busy explaining something to the group of liberated prisoners. "Arwan, I need to talk to their cleric."
The only player in the NPC group confidently walked over to me. Nickname: Raoul. Level: 27.
"Thanks for your help," he said, brushing the dust off his clothes.
"How did you get here?"
"I was doing some leveling near Agrion when those Darks captured me."
I couldn't believe my ears. "Not players, surely?"
"Nope. NPCs," he cringed. "They needed a healer! Wretched savages. They cast control on me and ported me out. I don't remember very well. There was this ravine we had to cross..."
"Why didn't you provoke them? They might have smoked you. You could have started a fight or something. "
"I didn't want to lose my gear," he admitted. "I had no idea where I was or where I might respawn. Also, I hoped it was just a plot line. They said there was an ogre in need of a heal. If I did that, they said, they'd make it worth my while. But I received no quest message. I thought it strange."
"And? Did you heal him?"
Raoul heaved a sigh. "Impossible. Level fifty-three, five thousand hp, how are you supposed to heal that? He'd gotten caught in a rockfall. Broken every bone in his body. Was squirming and screaming like you can't imagine. A Grand Master in Mining, can you believe the irony? His Regeneration ability wouldn't let him die. They used him as some sort of tunneling machine."
I made a mental note. Despite their rather questionable intellectual skills, ogres can be quite useful — like, when one needs to storm an enemy castle. And I was pretty sure you could come to some arrangement with them.
"I tried to do what I could for twenty-four hours," Raoul went on. "They couldn't keep me for any longer. So I just logged out and went to bed. The next day I logged in — and I was back here! Shackled to the rock, pick in hand, with imps all around me!"
"Your bind point must have been changed."
"Exactly. Some bug this is. Every time I log in, I get back here. I wrote to Support but they never replied. I thought I might have to create another char and start all over again. Luckily, you came."
"You can stay with us if you want," I suggested.
His eyes lit up. "I'd love to! I need to settle a few scores now. I've got plenty of time — I've lost my job because of these Dark bastards!"
"Why, did you fail a quest because of this?"
"Not here. A real-world job," he admitted reluctantly. "I missed a few days at work trying to get out of here. And had I lost my char, I'd have had nothing left at all. This way at least I could use the game money."
"You have a family?"
"No."
"Any idea where you are?"
He shrugged. "I only got the local map working."
"These are the Toxic Moors."
"No shit! How am I supposed to get out of here? Are we right under the moors now?"
"Ever heard of Rion Castle?"
"I think so. Some kind of old ruin. The Ravens were going to purge it and claim it, I think. From what I heard, it's packed with artifacts. They were going to call up a raid but it didn't work out for some reason."
"Rion Castle is right above us. I'm its new owner," I said to duly impress him. No point trying to conceal from him what everybody already knew. Firstly, because our group could use a healer. And secondly, because this Raoul definitely wasn't as simple as he looked. His gear was quite mediocre. It definitely hadn't been worth him staying in slavery. Which could only mean that he must have had some cool character-boosting items in his inventory.
Raoul widened his eyes in surprise. "No way! So you're the clan leader?"
"Ever heard of the Black Mantises?"
"Nah. I spent all last week here, I told you. You're cool, man! I saw you squeeze that spirit out of the rock!"
Zander walked over to us. "We've found three chests: two with gold and one with cargonite. About thirty grand in total. The imps weren't exactly poor. We also found four more rune tablets same as before, with random stat boosts."
Raoul listened to it, spellbound. I had to strike while the iron was hot. "So would you like to join us?"
"May I?" he asked, suddenly doubtful, so generous my invitation must have sounded after Zander's announcement.
"You most surely can," I said, "if you don't mind sharing your local map with us."
"Not a problem," he said, forwarding it to me.
"Zander, can you send him an invite?"
Zander chuckled. "You've got the whole lot of them waiting."
* * *
THE PRISONERS were gaunt and emaciated. About twenty of them were farmers; they were already casting greedy glances around the cave in search of anything worth pilfering in recompense for their years of slavery. I told them to join the others in the rear and stay put.
I was left with five Elves, three dwarves and two tall warriors of some unknown race.
"Master," Arwan dropped on one knee, speaking for everybody. "Please allow us to join you."
"You want to join the battle?"
"We want to join you. For good."
I looked questioningly at the dwarves.
"For good," they echoed.
"And you," I turned to the sinewy warriors, "where are you from?"
"We're Arhats, the Guards of Gloom. Our home is in the desert behind the Azure Mountains. My name is Kray."
"I am Ikhtar," the other added.
"The Guards of Gloom?"
"That's what we've always been called. Darkness is everywhere, even under the desert sun. We are the warriors fighting the spawn of the Dark."
"How did they manage to capture you?"
Kray frowned. "In battle, you can never tell. We all swore to serve the one who delivers us from slavery."
"We did," the dwarves nodded, fingering their shaggy beards streaked with dust.
"Very well. You're in," I said, ignoring Zander's silent disapproval. "Found any weapons?" I asked him.
"Only some
cargonite," he replied. "Two very weird spears," he showed me a naginata-like weapon, "and five swords with unreadable stats and low durability."
I looked over the ex-prisoners. "Any of you know how to use polearms?"
"We do," the two Guards of Gloom stepped forward.
"We can fight with our picks," the dwarves hurried to assure me.
"Okay. Then you," I looked at the Elves, "will take the swords."
Their faces lit up. What a shame Enea wasn't with me now. She would have appreciated this moment of unbridled joy.
"How susceptible are you to the power of totems and Dark Obelisks?" I asked the two warriors.
"Alas," Kray lowered his head. "Their power is overwhelming. It's the only reason we found ourselves in slavery."
Zander butted in via the group chat.
Alexatis, are you nuts giving cargonite artifacts to NPCs? I can buy them from you!
Don't worry, I replied. You'll get your share of the loot. But first we must purge the caves — and to do this, we need all the help we can get.
By then both Kray and Ikhtar had already had their naginatas at the ready. The Elves — who were generally much more resistant to mental attacks — looked at me expectantly: even despite their natural 10% resistance, the obelisk had managed to keep them under its control. I had to give Arwan his due: his killing of the dark conjurers at such a dangerously close distance must have demanded every bit of willpower he could muster.
"Now listen to me," I said to the two Guards of Gloom. "The only way I can protect you is if you join my clan and stay in the castle."
The two eagerly nodded.
The Elves held a whispered discussion between themselves. They weren't any less eager to join us in battle — but still I thought I'd caught the word "family" in their arguments.
Finally Arwan seemed to have snapped at the others, using a language I didn't know. He raised his head sharply, looking at me,
"We're joining the clan!"
The Curse of Rion Castle (The Neuro Book #2) LitRPG Series Page 9
