by Edwin McRae
The miner scratched his balding head with a calloused hand. “Yup, sounds about right, except for the eyes bit.”
“They’re blind?”
“As far as I could tell. A snout for sniffing, toothy mouth for biting, big claws on their hands for ripping your guts out.”
Mark shot a querying glance at Dayna as she returned from tending the horses.
“I thought you said there weren’t any monsters in Garland.”
“I did, and I meant it.”
“These cave ghasts sure sound like monsters to me.”
She pointed up at the mountain peaks. “Must’ve come over the mountains from the Barrens.” She raised an eyebrow at the foreman. “Mine was running fine until they showed up one night, right Calder?”
“Sure was. Young Garion was the first to go. Heard the screaming and next thing I know, one of those things is strutting towards me, its head all bloodied and Garion’s entrails hanging around its neck like some fancy lady’s necklace.”
“Now there’s an image I won’t be forgetting in a hurry,” complained Vari as she returned from investigating the shacks.
You have received the “Depths of Corruption” quest.
Clear Calder’s mines of Cave Ghasts. Avenge the miners who have been slaughtered by these noisome invaders.
“Find anything?” he asked Vari.
“A lot of old blood stains, and this.” She held up a long claw for him to see. It was curved, sharp and pitted with rust.
“Is that iron?”
She nodded. “It’s not an adornment, either. You can tell from the markings around the blunt end that this once had muscle and gristle around it. It’s an authentic iron fingernail.”
“So these ghasts are partially metallic?”
Dayna took the nail from Vari, peered at it for a moment, and then passed it on to Mark.
“They probably feed on a mixed diet, meat and ore. Also means they might be able to grow iron plating and such.”
Mark nodded as he rolled the cool metal between his fingertips. “We’ll need to get our hands on some crushing weapons then. Wish we’d brought some of those reiver maces with us.”
Calder hoiked a gob of spit onto the rail track and then pointed into the darkness.
“There’s a storeroom inside. Sledgehammers and pickaxes. Hopefully some alchemical explosive. Lanterns too.”
Your Swordplay Skill enables you to use other weapon types.
Your accuracy penalty is only 30% due to the development of your general combat footwork and hand-eye coordination.
That made perfect sense to Mark. It seemed weird to him that, as a Dark Knight specialized in two-handed swords, he should end up as helpless as a farmhand with a pitchfork whenever he had to pick up and wield anything else...like a pitchfork.
There was a guy he went to high school with, became a professional rugby player and national hero. Mark had seen him play inter-school basketball once, dribbling, weaving and shooting like an NBA All-star. He’d even taken a break from rugby at one point to play for the national cricket team. So yeah, if you got really physically good at something, it gave you a pretty bloody good foundation to be physically good at lots of things. Mark was pleased that this version of Reign of Blood actually recognized that reality.
“Good. Then let’s gear up and go bash ourselves some cave ghasts.”
Dayna grunted. “You make it sound like it’s some sort of game.”
Mark fixed her a knowing smile. “How do you know it’s not?”
“You’re fucking crazy.” She turned her back on him and headed into the mine.
They met the first ghasts in a large cavern that was thick with stalactites and stalagmites, a place the miners had left untouched due to its striking beauty. A beauty somewhat marred by the horrors that leapt out at them from behind the natural splendor. There were six of them, their exposed skin glistening grey and wet in the foreman’s lamplight. Iron scales covered their torsos, forearms and thighs, and their gaping mouths brimmed with iron teeth. Their claws were similarly metallic and brutally sharp.
“Terrifying Manifestation!” shouted Mark, casting it at Tier 2 to be on the safe side.
As his voice echoed about the cavern, Mark quietly hoped the enchantment would work on blind creatures. He’d thought about it beforehand and decided that it should work on any person or beast with senses. For anything without the human power of visualization, fear was triggered by a sense, whether it be the sight of a predator, the smell of burning flesh or the prickling itch of poison upon the skin. If you could feel, you could feel fear. At least, that was Mark’s educated guess.
Thankfully, that guess turned out to be a good one. The ghasts howled and shrank back from Mark, snorting and shaking their heads as if trying to dislodge some loathsome scent from their nostrils.
Dayna made the most of the opportunity, firing an arrow at close range, piercing a ghast’s throat just above its iron chest plating. It went down, gurgling, as Mark muttered “Second Skin” under his breath, willing the spell in at Tier 2 so as to conserve EP. It wouldn’t do to blow all of his magic on the first encounter.
He charged forward and brought his sledgehammer down upon the shining, bald head of another ghast. The tempered steel cracked the ghast’s head open like an egg, spilling a yoke of grey matter onto the cavern floor. Vari followed up by animating Dayna’s victim, pulling its arcane puppet strings so that the thing leapt onto one of its living companions, knocking it to the ground. Vari made snapping motions with her right hand while clawing the air with her left, and the dead ghast responded by biting and clawing its former pack-mate into a twitching pile of lacerated meat.
Behind him, Mark heard Calder retching behind a stalagmite. He didn’t blame the man. Had he not been preoccupied with the three remaining ghasts, Mark might have done the same at the sight of their brutal handiwork. At least the foreman had the presence of mind to keep his lantern raised and steady as he puked his guts out.
Dayna snapped off another arrow at one of the surviving ghasts. It glanced off the monster’s iron scales and skittered away into the dark.
“Shit!” she cursed as she moved to nock another arrow.
The three remaining ghasts shook off the dregs of Mark’s Terrifying Manifestation spell and charged headlong at Dayna.
Uh oh, thought Mark. Looks like I’m not the only one who knows that it’s best to take out the long-range fighters first.
“Look out, Dayna!” he hollered as he leapt between the ranger and the ghasts, bringing his sledgehammer around in a sweeping arc that ended in the scaled chest of the lead creature. The force of the blow stopped the ghast dead in its tracks, and Mark heard the sickening crunch of the thing’s ribs caving in. But then the other two were on him. His Second Skin shattered as it took the brunt of the damage from their claws. Garridar’s Ironhide saved him from the rest until one of the ghasts scored a strike across his neck, opening a deep gash from his ear to his collarbone. Mark gasped as the pain roared up the side of his head. Blinking away tears, he drove that pain into his next strike, knocking one of the ghasts clear. He then managed to shove the second beast backwards with his hammer and stumble clear before it could attack again.
The Cave Ghast has damaged you for 20 HP!
HP: 50/70
Warning! You are suffering from bleed damage!
Bleed rate = 1 HP per second.
Shit, he thought. Must’ve hit an artery. I’ll be dead in less than a minute.
He had little time to ponder his impending doom, raising his sledgehammer again as both ghasts came charging forward, their echoed howls cascading from the cave walls.
The closest ghast dropped mid-run, an arrow planted squarely in the centre of its eyeless face. The second ghast ducked under Mark’s hammer swing and ploughed into his belly, knocking the wind out of him as he tumbled to the ground. He smelled the fetid reek of the creature’s breath as it leaned in close, jaws wide, bearing down on his neck. Mark closed his eyes and
braced himself for death. He’d set a respawn point in the miners’ tool room, so at least it wouldn’t take long to get back here. Still, he was going to have to live with the experience of having his throat torn out, a memory he would have to relive in his idle moments for many days to come.
But then the monster’s weight was gone, knocked to the ground by Vari’s ghast puppet. The two creatures struggled, and the living ghast exacted its throat-tearing malice upon its former companion. As Vari’s puppet slumped to the ground, dying a second time, Mark rolled to his feet and brought his sledgehammer down upon the living ghast, the steel head plunging into the thing’s back, breaking its spine with a nauseating crack. This time he had to put some effort into yanking his sledgehammer free, so deeply was it buried in twisted iron, pulverised flesh and shattered bone. After several tugs, the shaft snapped away from the head, sending him stumbling backwards to fall on his ass on the cave floor. He shook his dizzy head and checked his health stat.
HP: 17
Trying to blink the gathering spots from his eyes, he dropped the broken hammer shaft and touched his hand to his wounded neck. Blood bubbled over his fingertips.
He lay down on the stone, hoping to steady his spinning vision, and felt a warm hand on his forehead, heard a gentle whispering in his ear. He didn’t recognize the lilting, phlegmy language, but he knew the voice. Vari was casting a spell, and as the bleeding slowed to a trickle and the stinging pain left his face, he understood that she was healing him.
He turned to look up at her but Vari put a finger to her lips and then continued her soft chant. Mark nodded and enjoyed the tingling sensation of his neck wound closing up. It was strange to think that this was only a virtual body, a digital representation of flesh and blood. Just a bunch of code. It sure felt real enough as the skin knitted back together.
HP: 70
The whispering stopped and Vari gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.
“Feeling better?”
Mark grinned as he looked up at her. “I didn’t know you could do healing spells.”
She grinned and shrugged. “Flesh and bone are a figurist’s trick and trade. We can mend as well as we can control and mold.”
He got to his feet and turned his head to the left and right, testing the muscles in his neck. They felt strong and stable. “How many times a day can you do that?”
“Five times, if I don’t cast anything else.”
“How many castings left now, since you animated that ghast?”
“Two.”
“Ok, then don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t cast that on me again. At least not today.”
Vari raised a sleek, sable eyebrow, looking a little hurt by Mark’s rebuff. “Why not?”
“Sorry, I meant that you should cast it on Dayna or Calder if they get hurt, or yourself. I come back from the dead. As far as we know, you guys don’t.”
“What?!” This from Calder who now looked more afraid of Mark than he had of the ghasts.
“Easy, old fulla.” Dayna gave him a pat on the back that was too hard to be reassuring. “It’s a warlock thing. He’s like crabgrass in your vege patch. You can rip him out as many times as you like, but he just keeps growing back.“
Calder smiled. “Ah well, glad he’s on our side then. It’d be bloody awkward if he was one of them reivers.” He grew a little redder and tipped his cap at Vari. “Apologies, miss. Didn’t mean any offense by that.”
Vari smiled. “None taken, Calder.”
“Oh, and that reminds me of something else...” added Mark.
Like Calder, he felt his own face grow redder. “...if I die, I want you to loot me.”
“Loot you?!” Vari looked positively outraged at the suggestion.
Dayna didn’t even blink. “Sure. I know a blacksmith who’ll pay good-”
“Not so you can sell my gear, Dayna,” snapped Mark. “So you can recover it for me.”
“Actually,” interrupted Vari, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Your body, what happens to it once you…”
She faltered, seemingly unable to broach the subject of Mark’s potential death. Mark found her discomfort quite endearing, especially considering Vari’s calm willingness to turn corpses into flesh puppets.
“It kind of just fades away, leaving behind any gear I might have on me. Then I turn up at my resurrection point with some basic leather armor and a bog-standard longsword.”
Vari nodded slowly as she took it all in. Behind her, Dayna sighed with impatience.
“Fine, Mark. We’ll salvage your gear for you. But don’t expect me to clean it up for you.”
Mark shot Dayna a wry grin. “You did last time, with the chainmail.”
“Yeah, and then you went and fucking lost it.”
Mark’s rebuttal was cut short as a notification rolled into view.
Your party has slain six Level 3 Cave Ghasts.
Your XP reward per party member = 60 XP
Mark looked to Vari and Dayna to check if they too had seen the notification. Both nodded but were careful not to say anything in front of Calder who was now bending over the closest ghast, inspecting its iron plating.
Right, thought Mark, only combat-related classes could gain XP from battles. Non-combat NPCs, like Calder, probably picked up their levels the old-fashioned way, through practice and hard work.
Which also got him to thinking about NPCs in general. Dayna, Vari, Calder...none of them came across as being ‘scripted’ in any way, shape or form. Either they had truly massive banks of dialogues to draw on or they were AIs capable of machine-learning. And by the unnervingly natural way they acted, and the unconscious way he found himself treating them like living, breathing people, they’d perhaps been acting independently and learning from this virtual world long before he’d turned up. Some games, in fact most games, felt like they’d been constructed only moments before the player’s arrival. This game, this version of Reign of Blood, somehow felt like it would go on existing, the AIs continuing to live and learn even if they never met or saw another player. In some ways it was frightening to think that the game world could care less whether he, the player, existed or not.
Then again, how different was the real world? His father was dead and his relationship with his mother was strained, at best. He and his brother had nothing but hereditary short-sightedness in common, his divorce had shrunk his circle of friends down to the size of a cheezel and a chimpanzee could do his job, and probably have more fun with it. In truth, it was the bricks and mortar world that was likely ticking along without him and could frankly care less whether he existed or not. Sure, Calder’s mine and this “Depths of Corruption” quest might be utter fictions. But at least they made him feel like he was doing something useful with his life, making a difference to others, and that was a damned nice change.
Congratulations!
You have reached Level 6 as a Warlock.
Progress to next level = 507/1000
You have been awarded 2 Attribute Points.
Spell Selection
As a Level 6 Warlock you have 7 magical spells available for selection.
You have 5 spell slots remaining.
Doppelganger (Cast cost = 6 EP)
Cunning Linguist (Cast cost = 7 EP)
Brain Leash (Cast cost = 7 EP)
Lurking Inferno (Cast cost = 8 EP)
Forge Anew (Cast cost = 8 EP)
Crippling Lethargy (Cast cost = 9 EP)
Contagious Fervor (Cast cost = 9 EP)
Alternatively, you may wish to save your spell slots for ‘found’ spells.
Mark was sincerely relieved that he wasn’t having to grind his way through hundreds of mobs to achieve each level, as had been the case in some of the ARPGs he’d played. Instead, each battle pushed him to the limit, and beyond in some cases, but added significantly to his character build. He dropped both attribute points into his Body score, having decided he wasn’t enamored with the idea of bleeding to death.
Bod
y: 16
HP: 96
The more HP points he had, the more time Vari would have to patch him up before he exsanguinated himself next time.
Your “Terrifying Manifestation” spell has reached Tier 3.
Understanding deepened by successful execution upon a sentient, non-human species.
Tier 3: Your “Terrifying Manifestation” spell gains a 20% chance of causing an anxiety attack in 1-4 victims. An anxiety attack will completely incapacitate a Level 1-3 victim for up to 30 seconds. For estimates of higher level victims, divide 30 seconds by the target’s level.
Now Mark had to tackle the rather daunting list of spells. It was starting to look like his “Game Library of Unplayed Shame” in his Steam account.
He dismissed Brain Leash immediately. Mind control spells simply weren’t Mark’s style. He was fine with Vari and her puppeteering of the dead, but the thought of turning a living, thinking creature into a puppet just gave him the creeps. Instead, he reminded himself of the ins and outs of the Doppelganger spell.
Doppelganger
Creates an illusion of image, scent and sound that is the identical copy of the caster.
Tier 1: The doppelganger can appear up to 10 meters away and lasts for one minute.
“My darling wife aside, I tend to prefer my own company.” - Zevryn the Everborn
Scent and sound made the spell good for distracting cave ghasts so he mentally slid Doppelganger into one of his free slots. Lurking Inferno was enticing, but was probably more use back at Citadel than here. He wasn’t keen to develop the highest costing spells until he’d built up his essence pool a bit more, so he summoned the description for Forge Anew.
Forge Anew
