“That’s good,” I nodded. “The more chaos the better.”
“Less chance they will notice us,” Cavey agreed.
“What’s it like there?”
“The Plaguelands are flat and filled with high-level mobs,” Og replied. “Waste Witches, Magnascar, Plague Wasps and Giants, and packs of Ilizak.”
“Ilizak,” I replied bitterly, instantly taken back to the Crimson Catacombs.
“The fort’s safe once you’re inside, but it’s surrounded on all sides by groups of monsters,” Og went on. “And on the other side is a cliff that must go down like 50 stories—”
“A cliff?” I asked excitedly. “How close to the fort?”
“Almost right up to the wall, why?”
I grinned like a skull as I drew my sword. “Well then, I know exactly how we’re going to get them out of there. Let’s go. Summon the portal.”
58
The Plaguelands
Og was right. The Plaguelands were complete chaos.
His portal dropped us off halfway up a hill that looked out over the flatlands that were absolutely swarming with packs of monsters. In the distance was Fort Keth.
It was aptly named—a fort was what it was and gave the impression of a place that was making a stand and only just barely being able to hold its ground against the horde of beasts that were swarming around it.
I could barely make out the archers on the walls, just out of reach, firing down at a group of Ilizak swinging helplessly up at them. They all wore the Bleed tabard and were lined up shoulder to shoulder across the entire length of the wall. Every time they fired, it was like a massive black shadow spreading out across the monsters beneath them. They quickly dropped and vanished but were instantly replaced by more.
“Jesus,” I said slowly. “The respawn rate must be instant.”
“Pretty much,” Og replied.
We were crouched together in a group of sickly purple-grey trees. They had countless branches, like long skeletal fingers, but no leaves. The whole place just felt dead.
Across the expanse to our right, was another massive group of Bleed players. It was impossible to tell, but I would have bet there were at least two hundred of them. They were fighting an enormous monster, not quite as big as the Stone Giant we’d run into before, but still quite formidable.
It was like a bizarre cross between a cat and a gorilla. Its fur was a rotten orange color, patched with brown spots like mold on an apple. It stood on four legs but had massive clubbed paws that it used to swing through the crowd of players that were attacking it.
“That’s the Magnascar.” Og pointed. It howled like a werewolf, raised its front legs into the air and slammed them down with such force that half of the Bleed force went tumbling backwards. It swung out and scattered them like matchsticks.
But the group was back on their feet, swinging their swords, firing arrows and spells, and sure enough, the Magnascar’s health was dropping. I inspected it.
Deadly Magnascar—level 98.
“It’s almost level 100!” I gasped.
“Told you it was nuts here,” Og replied.
Cavey was 63 and Og was 61. If the three of us went up against that thing, there was a good chance it would slaughter us all. Bleed had the right idea. Swarm down the biggest, baddest monsters you can find, then share the experience across the group.
With a howl, the Magnascar collapsed and a primal roar sounded from the players as it burst from existence.
“So, how do we get to the fort?” Cavey asked.
“I was about to ask the same question.” I chuckled as I gazed across the expanse, looking for a path through the madness, but I just couldn’t see a way to do it. The groups of different monsters were clustered so closely to one another that it didn’t seem possible to find a path through them without aggroing something.
The Ilizak group closest to us were level 77. The Plague Wasps beside it were only 70, but there were seven of them and I would have put money on them having some sort of nasty toxic debuff that we wouldn’t know how to deal with. A level 80 Waste Witch floated aimlessly in front of them, and another Magnascar prowled to our left.
“We could try to blend in with the rest of them,” Cavey suggested. I shook my head.
“We don’t have any tabards,” I replied. “Look at them. They’re all wearing them. They’ll spot us instantly.”
“You know, boys. I think we’re in luck,” Og said, tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around and looked up the slope behind us and saw instantly what he meant.
Four Bleed players were headed our way, and they’d yet to spot us. I quickly inspected them and saw they were all below level 60. I could probably take them all on my own. With Cavey and Og at my side they wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Okay,” I said with excitement. “We jump them, get them low and take their tabards, but we don’t kill them. Got it?”
“Hey, no arguments here,” Cavey replied.
“Got it,” Og said with a nod.
“You have heal spells right, Cavey?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think you’ll need them,” I told him. “But hang back a little bit just in case. There might be more of them on the way.”
“Got it.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Gripping my sword tightly, I dashed out from the cover of the trees, my sword held at the ready.
The one in the lead, a mage in a green robe, saw me and his eyes went wide.
“Oh, shit!” he shouted, fumbling for his wand. But before he could raise it at me and start to cast, I slammed into him with Warrior’s Charge, sending him crashing back into his group, toppling them over like a set of bowling pins.
The first one to his feet lifted an enormous spiked club above his head.
“Hey, that’s Jack!” he screamed. “The one The Ripper’s after! Get him!”
He swung at me like a lumberjack trying to cut down a tree. I dodged nimbly to the side and deflected the blow. I didn’t strike back though, I was waiting for something.
His other comrades scrambled to their feet and leapt towards me. I heard Og behind me about to dash in to help and raised my hand to warn him to stay back. He took the warning and slid to a halt as the Bleed group charged.
The mage fired a lightning bolt that hit me, but the damage wasn’t enough to worry about. The group was closing in on me, and just as they were about to strike, I activated Battle Cry.
“Yaaaah!” I shouted as the AoE went off, knocking the entire party back and stunning them briefly.
Og leapt into action, slashing at the mage with his nekode. A fireball sizzled over my head to slam into one of them who was holding an enormous double-headed axe. The spell took off a ton of health and before the stun wore off, I lashed out with a series of blows that dropped him to critical.
Og already had the mage well below half and as the stun wore off, I whirled around and slashed out at the remaining two with a Broad Strike that hit hard.
I followed up with basic attacks, stabbing and cleaving as they tried to fend me off, but I was just too fast and too high level for them. It wasn’t long before they were approaching critical themselves.
“Wait!” one of them stammered as I bashed his club aside and struck him in the chest. “Don’t kill me!”
I stopped midswing. We’d won. There was no need to go any farther.
“Don’t worry,” I told him with a smile as Og and Cavey came up and took their places on either side of me. “We’re not going to kill you. We just need a little… favor from you.”
59
Witch’s Blood
“It feels wrong to be wearing these,” Cavey said with disgust as we walked back down the slope in our fresh new Bleed tabards we’d taken off the group we’d just defeated. We hadn’t let them heal and had made them climb to the top of a few massive trees on the hill to make sure they didn’t have a chance to chase after us while our backs were turned. Not that I could imagine t
hem doing that after the beating we’d given them.
“A means to an end,” I told Cavey as we stopped at the open expanse in front of Fort Keth. The massive Bleed horde had found another Magnascar to swarm and were ganging up on it again like they had the last one. Its health was dropping steadily.
“Do we go join them?” Cavey asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “D is an archer. He’ll be inside on one of the walls.”
“What about Baltos and Xavier?” he asked. “They’re melee, right? They’ll definitely be out there with the rest of them.”
“The fort is closer,” I said after thinking a moment. “We’ll pick up D first, and then head out to the group. If we can.”
“Just stay away from the Plague Wasps,” Og reminded us.
Together, we started to run. There was at least a football field’s worth of distance between us and the fort, filled with groups of monsters we had to try our best to avoid.
The first of them was a group of Ilizak. I didn’t even bother trying to inspect them. There was no time for that. They hissed and spit at me as I passed. I used Battle Cry to get them away from me, and the brief stun gave Cavey and Xavier enough time to pass them without being attacked. They didn’t stop there though and raced after us in pursuit.
“If we can reach the gate we can lose them!” Cavey shouted.
A pincer scraped across my back, chipping away at my health. It looked like they’d aggro’d on me, which was a good thing. I’d be able to take more damage than the rest of my party. Of course, Vayde wasn’t here to heal me if things got really bad.
I swung back with my sword, clashing all three of the Ilizak that were still hot on my heels. The blow knocked them back slightly, and I used Warrior’s Charge to get some distance between us. However, there was a group of Plague Wasps right in front of us, and I had to cut hard to the right to avoid them.
“Look out!” I shouted behind me. “Plague Wasps!”
We’d crossed about a quarter of the ground between us and the keep, but there was a big problem in front of us—an enormous Magnascar, just like the one Bleed was still trying to take down on the opposite end of the plateau. It spotted me and raised its enormous leg to strike.
I threw myself out of the way, but I’d misjudged just how fast the hulking beast was. Its clubbed paw smashed the ground behind me like a meteor crashing to earth. The force of the attack was enough to send me sprawling head over heels—right into the cluster of Plague Wasps.
They hissed like roaches and stabbed at me with stingers at least half the size of my sword. Each attack wasn’t too much damage, but Og was right—instantly I had three poison debuffs ticking down in my peripheral.
Shit!
Without an antidote in my inventory, and without Vayde around to remove them with a spell, I was going to have to keep using Health Kits and hope that I was able to out heal the damage. And of course, I had to do that while trying to survive the run to the fort.
“I got you, Jack!” Og shouted as he leapt into the fray of wasps, slashing at them with his clawed hands. One of them went down, and I leapt to my feet and lashed out with my sword.
Thankfully, the wasps didn’t have much health, but there were tons of them. One of Cavey’s fireballs exploded in their midst, torching them out of existence. I backed up to swing again when I heard him shout.
“Look out!”
A shadow crossed over me, and I looked up to see the Magnascar’s gigantic foot coming straight down at me.
I threw myself out of the way, narrowly dodging the attack. It slammed into the ground like a bomb going off. It had just missed me, but the Plague Wasps hadn’t been so lucky. As the Magnascar raised its leg again, the entire group of deadly insects exploded into smoke and fire.
“Hey, thanks, buddy!” Og joked as I grabbed a Health Kit from my inventory and used a charge. My health had been approaching the halfway point, and the kit helped get me back to full, but the debuffs were still there, and my health pool was still draining.
“We’ve got to move!” Cavey roared, racing up behind me. I looked back to see the Ilizak were on us again. Or was it another group? It was mayhem.
The Magnascar was winding up for another attack, and we were being swarmed from all sides. My health was dropping, and my kit was on cooldown. There was nothing to do but keep running.
I dashed forward as the Magnascar swiped at us. His thick leg cut through the air just above us, narrowly missing my head. I heard the sound of the Ilizak attacking Og, or maybe Cavey, but there was no time to do anything about it.
A Waste Witch was right in front of me, and I couldn’t see a way around her. To her left were two huge groups of Plague Wasps, and to her right was a massive group of Ilizak, a kind I’d never seen before but looked considerably more dangerous, with longer pincers, and more savage looking claws.
She was like a phantom, clad in a tattered robe that did little to hide her skeletal frame. In one hand she held a wand of black stone, and in the other, a knife stained with blood. It was such an unassuming weapon that it actually scared me more than whatever spells she was capable of.
I tried to charge her and stun her with Warrior’s Charge, but as I brought my shoulder down to slam into her, she simply vanished.
There was a sound behind me, like something popping, followed by a scream.
“Gah!” It was Og. I turned around just in time to see the witch lash out at him with her bloody knife and gasped as half of his health instantly vanished. “Holy shit, help!”
He was sprinting full force as the witch lowered her wand at his back.
“Og, duck!” I shouted as she fired. A bolt of sickly red goop spattered out from the black rock of her wand and spat through the air at him. Og managed to duck just in time, letting the spell sail harmlessly past him, but what I hadn’t realized was that I was standing right in front of him.
Uh oh…
The spell slammed into me, enveloping me and encasing me in the blood-colored substance that stuck to my limbs like some sort of glue.
“What the Hell?” I gasped, trying to keep up my run, but it was impossible. The slime hardened as I struggled to move. My arms stuck to my sides and as I tried to take another step, my leg froze midstride, and I collapsed onto the ground.
“Help!” I managed to shout as I lay there completely immobile, helpless beneath the witch’s curse. I glanced over at the ever growing stack of debuffs.
Plague Venom—Deals 4-9 Acid Damage per second.
It didn’t seem like a lot, but with three of them stacked on me, that was more than significant.
Witch’s Blood—Reduce target’s mobility by 90% for 6 seconds.
Again, 6 seconds didn’t seem like a lot, but out in the Plague Lands, surrounded by high-level mobs on all sides, it was a lifetime.
My health ticked down to below half and kept falling. The Plague Venom debuff weren’t blinking, meaning they still had a lot of time left on them. I struggled as hard as I could, but I simply could not move. It was like being encased in resin, like a mosquito trapped in the amber of a tree.
All while my health steadily ticked down.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could barely make out the shape of an Ilizak group heading towards me. My health was approaching 25 percent.
This is bad, I thought as I flexed my muscles with all my might, trying to fight against the Witch’s Blood curse that had me lying there helpless like a piece of meat ready to be devoured.
Come on! I tried activating Warrior’s Charge, which had just come off cooldown. But nothing happened. I tried every other one of my abilities, but the curse seemed to just completely override them.
I could see the Ilizak racing towards me. Closing in, like the horde in the Catacombs.
Shorros’ death flashed through my mind.
This is it, I thought as the first of the deadly insects raised its pincers to attack. I failed them. I failed them all.
I closed my eyes.
60
Fort Keth
“I got you, buddy!”
It was Og’s voice beside me. My eyes snapped open just in time to see him slam his fist into the charging Ilizak. There was the sound of a bass drop. A red light pulsed around the creature, and it froze in place, dropping its pincers that had stopped a mere inches from my face.
A stun attack!
Og dropped to his feet beside me and used a charge from one of his Health Kits on me, restoring my health to well beyond half.
“Hate those bastards,” he growled as he chipped away at the red resin imprisoning me. “Can’t get this shit off!”
“Allow me,” Cavey said boldly from behind me. I couldn’t turn to look, but I knew what was coming and braced myself for it.
A fireball spilled over me like I was standing in a burning building. I could feel the heat and watched as my health dropped from the damage. But at the same time, the red sap-like substance I was trapped in, began to sizzle and burn away.
My arms were free. And then my legs, and I was back on my feet with my sword in my hand as the Ilizak charged into us like a swarm of ants.
I activated Battle Cry instantly, sending most of them staggering back, then lashed out at the closest ones. Og swung at them with blinding speed, chipping away at them with his nekode. Another one of Cavey’s fireballs exploded in the middle of their group, knocking them back further.
Seizing the opportunity, I bent down and used another charge from my Health Kit, bringing my health back to just above 75 percent or so. The debuffs were still ticking down and showed no time of stopping soon.
A sound behind me like a banshee howling, and I whipped around to see the Wastes Witch aiming her wand at us again. Before I had time to react, she cast.
This time, a row of blades expanded instantly from her wand and chattered through the air towards us like a line of invisible soldiers. I opened my mouth to warn my party, but the blades slammed into us one by one, decimating our health pools.
My Health Kit was still on cooldown, and even if it wasn’t, the Ilizak were right on me. I blocked the first attack and dodged the next, then slashed out at the closest one’s legs.
Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1) Page 25
