by J. A. Hunter
So instead, I scooted around to the creature’s front and lined up my body like I was teeing up at the driving range. I dropped my hammer low, a putter on the green, squared my shoulders, and took a few warm-up swings—my hammer swished harmlessly through the mantis’s oddly shaped head. Satisfied with my form, I nodded. “Take a bite on this, jerk,” I muttered, deactivating Shadow Stride as I swung my hammer in a wicked uppercut. Time resumed in a flash, and the creature’s descending jaws collided with my ascending strike: the result was as brutal as a head-on freeway crash.
Its mandibles shattered and its face imploded in a divot of flesh and gore and chitin. My solid follow-through actually lifted the mantis from its legs and into the air; it crash-landed squarely on its long, serpentine neck with a terrible crack. Dead before it ever hit the ground.
I felt a twinge of smug satisfaction, reveling in the sheer coolness of my new abilities, but I couldn’t celebrate for too long—there were still two of those things waiting in the wings to dance. With gunslinger speed, I pulled a Spirit Regen potion from my belt, popped the top, and slammed it back as I scanned the battleground for my other opponents. The one that I’d hit twice with Umbra Bolts was now maneuvering behind a set of trees; if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was trying to sneak up behind me.
The other one, though, was missing. Maybe gone. I wheeled in a circle, searching for that final threat, when something slimy and viscous slammed into my chest and splattered onto my cheek. My skin immediately began to burn as though I’d just been splashed with hot oil. I swore, reaching up tentative fingers, and wiped away a thick coat of green sludge. A notification promptly informed me that I’d just been burned by Mantis Venom, causing 5 points of corrosive damage per second over thirty seconds.
I still didn’t know where the stuff had come from, though.
I spun again, a grimace plastered on my face as the acid chewed into my flesh. After a beat, I caught a streak of movement overhead. I looked up and spotted the fourth mantis hovering in the air, held aloft by glittering wings as it prepared another acid ball. I stole a look over my shoulder. The other mantis was almost within striking range, so it was distinctly possible these things were coordinating their assault, working to flank me.
Thankfully, I still had a few other new tricks up my sleeve.
I threw out my left hand, summoning the Umbra Bog spell below the feet of the land-bound mantis. A huge swath of ground, thirty feet in diameter, instantly morphed into a withering mass of jet-black goop, thick as prehistoric tar. The creature yowled as fat tendrils of Umbra wrapped around its legs, slithered up its torso, and stretched for its scythe-like arms. Though it didn’t stop the creature completely, it drastically slowed it down. This was obviously a powerful crowd control technique, especially considering speed was my number one advantage.
I swiveled back toward the flying mantis, and another incoming acid attack cannonballed straight at me. I flung myself right, rolled back to my feet, then called up my last new spell, Dark Shield, as yet another acid glob sailed toward me. A shimmering violet dome sprang to life around me, burning through my Spirit like a wildfire in a dry forest—45 Spirit per second was an awfully steep price to pay. With that said, the acid blob splattered uselessly against the shield, saving me from another painful round of skin-melting burns.
Quickly, I chugged a Health Regen potion and chased it with a Spirit Regen potion for good measure, then dismissed the shield and unleashed a flurry of Umbra Bolts at the creature hovering overhead. The giant, buzzing menace was awfully quick, evading several of my attacks, but eventually I landed a major hit, shearing off one of its wings, causing massive damage that sent the creature into a death spiral. It careened into a nearby tree and splatted like a bug against a windshield. Killed itself, really.
Only one left.
I turned on my heel, grip straining against the haft of my hammer, and stalked toward the last mantis, still stranded in my conjured bog. True, I could slip into Stealth or use one of my other fancy new abilities, but at this point, I was ready to bury these things. Besides, with the creature hopelessly mired in the shadow bog for another fifteen seconds, I figured a good ole fashioned face pounding would do the trick. The creature struggled, shaking and squealing as I approached. One swift strike, coupled with Savage Blow, cut the sound off in an instant. Silence suddenly reigned.
Yep. I could definitely get used to this. Time to go find a few more critters to experiment on.
THIRTY-TWO:
Moss Hag
I surveyed the yawning cave mouth set into the face of a sloping hill dotted with weeping willows sporting purple foliage. I pulled up my map, checking the quest marker one last time: this was it alright, the Moss Hag’s Burrow. It’d taken me over four hours of hard hiking to get here, the trip made much longer by the countless mob battles fought on the way. I’d killed lots of stray Spiderkin, a platoon of the Storme Marsh Mantises, and a host of Feral Bog Wolves—mean, mangy creatures that hunted and fought in well-coordinated packs.
Despite my exhausting grind session, I hadn’t managed to gain even a single level and the loot had been mediocre at best—a few common items and a handful of coppers or silvers from each of the various creatures. No more easy points now that I was back in the real world instead of tromping through a loot-rich restricted area. That was okay, though, because I’d really been more concerned about getting a handle on my abilities than strictly grinding out EXP, and I’d been provided with lots of opportunities to do that.
Although I knew there was still a lot to learn about my class—especially as I unlocked new skills—I felt as prepared as I was going to get for this battle with the Moss Hag. I double-checked my belt, ensuring it was stocked with an appropriate mix of potions, then pulled out a chunk of bread, which I downed in a few quick bites. I wasn’t actually hungry, but the hasty meal earned me the well-fed buff, and I needed every edge I could get:
Buff Added:
Well-Fed: Base Constitution increased by (2) points; duration 20 minutes.
Next, I cast Night Armor—feeling the reassuring cold swirl over my body as shimmering darkness coalesced around me—then downed a Spirit Regen potion. I patiently waited for my Spirit bar to climb back to 100% before dropping into Stealth. Time to do this thing.
I crept forward, my warhammer light and ready in my hands.
The interior of the cave was huge, a rough cavity gouged from the earth, the walls all ragged rock. The ground, however, was covered in soft grass speckled with strange purple flowers, and boasted fifteen or twenty hot springs—tendrils of steam rising and curling into the air. A variety of bugs flitted from flower to flower while others zipped and zoomed around me, seeming to sense my presence even though I was still in Stealth mode. I treaded further into the cave, searching for the Moss Hag I’d come to kill.
A grassy hill near the back of the chamber sloped gently upward, toward a gash in the rock wall that might’ve been a passageway of some sort. Since there didn’t seem to be any other way to go, I pressed on, crossing over a scalding, ankle-deep hot spring, then dashing up the hill, legs churning as I made for the opening. I was near the top when the ground beneath my feet started to rumble, shift, and shake. Dammit. Not again, I thought, recalling my battle with the Greater Corrupt Valdgeist.
I fought to keep upright, but a sudden jerk tossed me to the ground and before I knew it, I was rolling down the slope, flop, flop, flop, flop, eventually landing in a tepid pool of water near the base of the grassy mound.
I quickly scrambled to my feet, somehow still in Stealth, and watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as the hill stood, transforming into a horrible hunched-back giantess, twenty-five feet tall and half as wide across the shoulders. I could tell it was a her from the drooping, moss-green boobs hanging down like a pair of elephant ears, but everything else about her was wrong. Disproportional and misshapen.
Her head was bulbous, with beady, red, deeply recessed eyes and a jutting lower jaw filled with blunt yellow
teeth. A mop of ratty moss hair hung down in sheets, framing her disgusting face. Her body was likewise malformed. Shoulders lopsided, left arm enormous and muscular while the right was a stunted thing, though still far bigger than mine, grasping an odd wand, fashioned from human bones. Her skin was a patchwork of greens in a hundred different hues—forest, jade, split-pea, vomit—and covered liberally in thick patches of hanging moss, lush grass, and sprawling colonies of brown-capped mushrooms.
She sniffed at the air with a huge, flat nose the size of a dinner plate.
“Ah, there you be,” she crooned, her voice muddy, as her beady eyes narrowed in on my position. I was in Stealth, but somehow, she saw through my technique with ease. “If it isn’t a Shadow Child come to call on the poor old Moss Hag. It isn’t often I have company, so you’ll have to forgive me for not tidying up in preparation for dinner.” She took another deep sniff, lips pulling back from her tombstone teeth. “And speaking of dinner, I’m hungry.” The last word was a low rumble that reverberated in my chest.
I gulped, trying to tame the slight tremor in my hands.
“I do so enjoy the flesh of the Shadow Children,” she commented idly, flexing her oversized hand, then casually inspecting the wicked black talons jutting from her fingertips. Each of those nails was large enough to impale me clean through. “So succulent,” she murmured. “Fatty. Rich. I’ll break all of your bones first—releases the marrow and gives the meat more flavor—then I’ll cook you alive. Sear the outside, just so. Done right, the flesh practically melts like butter on the tongue. Delicious.” She smacked her enormous lips, the sound wet and disgusting.
“Or mayhap,” she said after a second, fixing me with a hard glare, “you could turn around and scurry back to that village of yours. Child-flesh is more to my taste anyway, less stringy and tough. I might allow you to leave here alive, if you go now and swear to never return. Be a mite bit easier on both of us, I think. Or”—she seesawed her head back and forth, mossy hair flapping and bobbing—“you could do something foolish like the other Maa-Tál your chieftain has sent after me.
“I’ve murdered six before you, Shadow Child. Six. Powerful warriors. Arcane Shadowmancers. Deadly Necromancers. All perished by my hand. Their shattered bones decorate the bottom of these pools.” She swept her gimp arm toward the cavern. “They were brave.” She nodded her gigantic head in solemn agreement. “Very brave.” She paused, a huge brown tongue flashing out, running over her crackled lips. “Brave, but stupid. Mayhap you will see the wisdom in cowardice, Shadow Child.”
It wasn’t a question.
I’d never considered myself a coward—a guy who runs toward a burning car to save a life certainly isn’t a coward—but this hideous creature scared me. And, giving her a quick once-over, I had a sinking feeling her boasts about the other Maa-Tál she’d killed were probably true. Obviously, this beastly woman was massive, cunning, and dangerous. She wouldn’t be a good test otherwise. For a long beat, I seriously entertained the notion of turning back, but then I sighed deeply and dismissed the idea. There’s no going back, I reminded myself—I had too much on the line.
If I didn’t win this battle, my new life in V.G.O. would be hopelessly doomed before I ever really got out of the gate. Not to mention Cutter would end up as hog food.
I clenched my weapon, muscles flexing, tightening, preparing.
A small part of me felt like I should say something clever—an action movie hero, delivering a laugh-out-loud one-liner—but fear clouded my brain. So, instead of throwing down some snarky comment, I simply called on the freezing power of shadow and lobbed a fat bolt of dark energy at her while she grinned stupidly, awaiting my retort. The blast didn’t do any perceptible damage—and I immediately received a notification that she’d resisted blindness—but it did catch her off guard.
She let out a thunderous roar, ropy strands of spittle flying free as she jabbed at me with her strange bone wand, unleashing a beam of cancer-green light, thick as a redwood. I scrambled right, narrowly avoiding the attack, and ran from the death-beam slashing through the air behind me like a gigantic lightsaber. I hurled another Umbra Bolt at her as I moved, hoping to interrupt her spell, but it splashed uselessly against her like water on a raincoat. No obvious damage. No blindness. No nothing.
I was ahead of the sweeping beam, but I was also quickly running out of room—the cavern wall was ten feet away and getting closer with every footfall. In seconds, I found myself pinned against craggy stone with nowhere left to go as the beam closed in on me. I glanced back. No time to make it to the back of the cave, but maybe I could get inside her guard, where I’d be safe from the attack. With few other options available to me, I spun and sprinted forward, straight at the roaring Moss Hag—
A knobby fist, as big as a wrecking ball, flashed out like a snake strike and smashed into me. The blow, a wicked uppercut, knocked off half my HP and hurled me high into the air. I cartwheeled, spun, and flipped, before finally crash-landing in a pool of hot water, which thankfully muted the impact of the fall. The water was deeper than I’d thought, and I suddenly found myself kicking frantically against the dragging weight of my armor, fighting my way to the surface of the pool. A combat notification flashed on the edge of my vision as my head broke the waterline:
Debuff Added:
Blunt Trauma: You have sustained severe Blunt Trauma damage! Stamina Regeneration reduced by 30%; duration 2 minutes.
Wow. She hit hard. Really hard.
Apparently, hard enough to leaving lasting damage. That thought was fleeting, though, as I noticed the green death beam sweeping back toward me, only feet away. On panicked instinct, I stole a breath and dove back into the watery depths, dropping just below the surface as I kicked and paddled, battling desperately to stay afloat. I watched, lungs burning, stamina dropping, arms exhausted as the green beam skimmed right over the top of the water, sending down a pulsing wave of terrible heat which knocked off a handful of HP without ever actually touching me.
When the beam finally disappeared, I emerged from the water, gasping, and climbed onto the lush green grass lining the pool’s edge.
Thankfully, the beam was truly gone. Unfortunately, despite two successful hits with my Umbra Bolt, the Moss Hag sat virtually unaffected.
I needed to figure out a different solution for defeating her. I lobbed another ball of shadow at her face, hoping to distract her if I couldn’t hurt her, then downed a Health Regen potion before triggering my Shadow Stride ability. The world exploded into monochrome shades of gray splashed with purple as time screeched to a halt. I took a deep, calming breath, then hustled toward the Moss Hag, now locked motionless in time. Carefully, I maneuvered around her bulky torso so I could take a cheap, Stealth shot at her back when I emerged from the Shadowverse.
If magic damage wasn’t effective, maybe physical damage would do the trick.
It took me a few seconds to get inside her guard, but I immediately realized she was too tall, too big, to find an effective target.
I really wanted to blast her in the teeth or in the back of the skull, but I didn’t even come close to reaching her head—the best I could do at this point was whack her in the ass with my hammer. So instead, I reevaluated, shifted left, dropped into Stealth, and prepared to lay into her undersized arm. The one clasping the odd bone wand. Maybe I could shatter her elbow and force her to drop her weapon. A slim chance, but better than nothing. I planted my feet, brought my warhammer into position, and emerged from Shadow Stride, back into the real world.
Time resumed in a rush as I swung, aiming for her knobby joint.
The hit connected with a crunch of breaking bone and tearing cartilage, earning both a Critical Hit and a Backstab bonus as her limb contorted under the strain. She let loose a howl of indignant rage, but she didn’t drop her wand and her HP remained virtually unaffected. No noticeable movement at all. She reared back again and lashed out with her crippled arm, aiming for my head. With my superior movement bonus, I evaded the atta
ck, ducking under the swing, only to be met by an incoming, misshapen club-foot flying toward me.
I dove over her leg a second before impact, rolling back to my feet just as a fat fist slammed into the ground behind me, leaving a devastating crater in the loamy earth.
I pivoted in a blink and swung again, sinking the hooked spike of my weapon into one of her wobbling tits; my gorge rose as an oozing discharge spurted out around the wound, spraying my gloved hands. Really, really gross, and still no movement in the HP needle. This lady was tougher than old nails, and apparently, she was virtually impenetrable to both shadow damage and physical damage. Very, very, very bad news since I had nothing else to work with. I was sorely wishing Abby was with me right now: I’d wager all the gold I owned this horrible monster was susceptible to fire damage.
How could she not be? She was fifty percent plant, after all.
“You’ll pay for entering my cavern,” the Hag screamed, spittle raining down on me from above.
I fought to pull my spike out—I couldn’t afford to stay in one place for long—but wiggle it as I might, I couldn’t pry the weapon free. Finally, after another few seconds of fighting and heaving, the hammer came away, its head covered in gore, but I’d wasted too much time: a giant hand wrapped around my torso and snatched me into the air as huge fingers constricted like pythons, crushing me like an empty Styrofoam cup. Stars exploded across my eyes while my ribs cracked under the strain and my health bar plunged.
“I’m gonna tear you limb from limb, you meddlesome ant,” the Moss Hag snarled, raising me toward her yawning mouth, ready to bite off my uselessly flailing arms. I grimaced and grunted as I stabbed at her fingers with the serrated spike on the back of my hammer, but her leathery skin was thicker and more durable than chainmail and I couldn’t get through. My health bar was flashing like a police siren, warning me that I had a handful of seconds left before certain death set in.
