by G. Akella
"This is a dungeon, like those I told you about on the way here. I need to clear it."
"I’m clearing it with you!" she exclaimed without a second’s hesitation.
I wasn’t about to argue. "Very well. You’re a healer, right?"
"Were you even listening to me when I spoke?" Linara put her hands akimbo and gave me a reproachful look.
I held her gaze and replied calmly.
"Are we going to spend the day talking?"
"Nature! I wield Nature and Light Magic." She sighed. "That means a lot more than just healing."
I silently scolded myself for my idiocy. "Tell me exactly what you can do."
When I had seen the color of her magic, I had for some reason decided that she must be a healer. Her dimensions had added to that impression... It was difficult to think of someone as a good fighter when they were so much smaller than you were. All my accumulated experience suggested the unlikelihood of that possibility. But this girl would actually be a decent mini boss for a party of five level 300 players with her 370 and a hundred and ten million HP.
"We’re all trained in a dozen or so combat spells." Linara explained after a pause. "My strongest ones are in the Poison school of magic: Thorn and Poison Rain."
"How strong?"
"Assuming maximum protection from Nature Magic, Thorn will kill an enemy like me in about six seconds. Poison Rain will kill in ten." The girl looked up and shrugged. "But I can also heal."
Hmm... It seemed like Thorn was a single-target spell and Poison Rain was an AoE. She couldn’t see the numbers for her spells, but if "maximum" meant seventy five percent, then Thorn dealt about seventy million damage per second to NPCs, and Rain dealt about forty four million. Not accounting for resistances. The Poison effect itself started dealing damage on the third tick, if I remembered correctly, though it was easy to remove. Plus, undead creatures were immune to it. So her abilities were strong, but most likely useless here.
After these simple calculations, I sighed.
"So you heal, and I fight. And we can’t go in there until you promise to control your emotions as much as possible and to do everything I say. No matter how stupid my orders may seem."
"Heal..." Linara sounded offended, but then she exhaled and hung her head. "Very well. I agree.
"So, in we go?" I shifted into my combat form and headed for the gate. It was funny that even among NPCs, not many were eager to play the role of healer.
Brown circles flashed before my eyes, and a heavy smell of decay and death enveloped me. Small stones crackled under my soles, and a second later, I raised my shield to block a blow from the hefty pincer of a twelve-foot-tall gray creature. I immediately responded with Ice Blade.
A second pincer appeared a moment later and clanged against the gate, in the spot where my head had just been. Tongue of Flame! I checked another blow with a shield, countered to the creature’s chest, and rolled away so that the boss attacking me would not hurt Linara as she appeared in the dungeon. It was some kind of cross between a dog, a man and a crab, with a curved chest covered in bony plates, an elongated canine muzzle, crooked three-fingered paws, and powerful, long arms adorned with claws. Level 420, with two billion HP. I had taken a tenth of that already. His name was Magister G’Nalt. The abbot of this wretched monastery, perhaps?
The boss leaped at me, but I easily dodged. Ruination swished through the air and into one of the bone plates on his shoulder. The sword again blazed with white light, and I felt like I was beginning to understand the causes of these Jedi tricks. This boss’ soul could be devoured, and my blade apparently had a hankering for it.
G’Nalt missed me again, growling in irritation, then abruptly hurled a backhand at me, his claw striking my shield. Trying to trick me, beast?!
I kicked him in the thigh, knocking off his balance, and Tongue of Flame slammed into his shoulder blade, knocking him to the ground. Linara blinked as she took in the situation, then flew off to the side, unperturbed. I nodded, pleased at her escape, and dodged the monster’s kick at my midsection, then Jumped fifty yards towards the temple. Catch me if you can, you freak!
I quickly looked around and grunted in surprise - the temple area was much larger than it had seemed from the outside. The main building still looked like a wreck, but between the gate and the temple stood a circular stone platform with some kind of geometric pattern on it, like a mandala. Right in the center stood a silver spike with a blue square at its height. It was a large platform, at least a hundred yards across, a full two thirds of the distance from the gate to the building. The entrance was covered with blue film. Another dungeon. A dozen collapsed smaller buildings lay along the walls, with two wells and countless corpses.
The smell of death hung heavy in the air. I was no doctor, but it seemed they had died a couple of weeks ago, max. Most of them are were clad in gray robes, and a couple of them in armor. Bodies lay everywhere, as if they had been fleeing something terrible before their deaths. From their crazed magister, perhaps?
All of these thoughts flew through my head in less than a second, before G’Nalt finally realized I was no longer in his vicinity and proceeded to rectify the situation. Once the distance between us had been reduced to a few dozen yards, I Shackled his legs and sent four Spears of Chaos at him in a row, burning my mana supply. I could have used an AoE, but Spears were more reliable against a single target, regardless of the situation. They dealt more damage, and in real battle it was best not to experiment.
Once he was Shackled, G’Nalt roared indignantly, hurling two gray discs at me. I dodged them without any problem. But my fourth Spear, which struck the boss in the chest, crit for a hundred and fifty million HP. I paused in surprise. I almost paid for the pause as G’Nalt took an immense leap towards me, slamming into a pile of gray rubble. Somehow, I dodged the gray circle that appeared under my feet.
Blocking a pincer with my shield, I popped Infernal Rage, then Dispersion, then Ice Blade. Crit! Sidestep, Tongue of Flame! Crit! The creature roared violently, splashing sticky saliva in all directions, but that wasn't going to help it. Ice Blade! Crit! A roll away, then Spear of Chaos. Crit! My mana regen was doing fine. A circular impact zone appeared again under my feet. I leaped back as G’Nalt’s blow missed, but his pincer unleashed three gray discs, one of which caught me in the shoulder, taking out fifteen percent HP in one hit. A hot wave of healing rolled over my body, and a second later, Linara removed the debuff that was on me.
Bastard! I stepped forward and hit with Tongue of Flame, blocked, then circled behind the disavowed, breaking another plate on his back with Tongue of Flame.
Our dance of death had been going for three minutes now. During his next special attack, I Stepped behind G’Nalt, letting his discs swish through the empty air where I had just been. Two of my crits hit for half a billion HP! Clearly, the bonus damage was scaling from the weapon's damage multiplier. And he was just too slow for me. By the end of our fourth minute of the fight, the boss had less than two hundred million HP remaining. But the final fight was still ahead. This creature was just a pawn that the System had apparently felt it needed to place in my way.
Linara was suspiciously silent, even though we could safely communicate over the channel. The girl hung in the air at the edge of the square, across from the gate, watching the fight with grim concentration. And that was fine. As long as she didn’t mess up.
Ice Blade! Tongue of Flame! Crit! Step through the Darkness away from his special attack...
"Die!" G’Nalt roared, whirling towards me.
So, the ape could speak? I hesitated. And missed his next attack. Without even trying to reach me first, the boss hurled a spell under his feet. An AoE spell.
…
Flare of Darkness hits you for 35,179 damage.
You are stunned!
The monster’s eyes filled with triumph. G’Nalt spread his pincers, and two barely perceptible rays of gray struck me in the chest.
Ruinous Embrace of Darkness has si
phoned 3,015 HP from you! 160,202/198,396.
You are paralyzed!
Ruinous Embrace of Darkness has siphoned 3,015 HP from you! 157,187/198,396.
You are paralyzed!
Easy peasy! With buffs and potions, I had nearly two hundred thousand HP. Twenty seconds till Step through Darkness reset. I'd pull through even on my own. And with a healer, this was a piece of…
Ruinous Embrace of Darkness has siphoned 3,015 HP from you! 137,037/198,396
You are paralyzed!
"Hang on, demon!" I heard Linara yell over the channel as the warm flame of healing washed over my shoulders.
The next second, the girl appeared in front of the monster and struck him in the face with her staff. For some reason, she had less than half of her HP remaining. The world disappeared for a moment in a bright-green flash. My Paralysis fell off, and the boss retreated a step to the side. Flailing her arms, Linara fell lifeless to the slabs. Rage overwhelmed me. As G’Nalt rose, his bar displaying a little over a hundred million HP, Ruination punched through his throat and his spine gave a loud crunch. Fatality, bitch!
You've earned a unique achievement, Magister G’Nalt’s Slayer. Magister G'Nalt is a unique boss that can only be killed once. You and your allies have been granted a permanent 5% increase to your physical and magic damage.
I turned around and walked quickly to the girl lying on the slabs - and cursed. Seven percent HP left! What the hell?! That monster hadn’t even done anything to her! What was going on?! I With a sigh, I took one of the three remaining vials of Greater Healing from my belt, pulled the stopper out, and poured a few drops into her mouth. The battle was over, bur it would take her six months to regenerate that much HP. I had to use some of the potion.
The dead boss had level 400 epic necromancer pants, but there was no way Vaessa would ever wear them. She had something similar, but better - a scalable piece from Celphata’s set. And that one would never wear boring gray rags. Four thousand gold, a dozen recipes, and a bunch of unnecessary junk I didn’t bother looting. Had I gotten too picky? Yeah, sure, but I much preferred not to carry unnecessary stuff on me. I considered that the fight had been a strange one. At two billion HP, this was a normal raid boss for a couple of hundred level 200+ players. He should have had adds and a bunch of different forms or phases, but all he had were his pincers and a couple of special attacks. On the other hand, his strikes could have one-shot any level 200 tank. Was this some kind of personal boss just for me? Or did the System now consider me an NPC like itself, and calculated HP as a percentage? I turned to check on Linara, but she was still out. And why did those healing spells feel so hot? Did all NPCs feel them that way? Yet another mystery to wonder over.
I picked up the girl’s small crooked staff from the slabs, placed in it her hands, and set to waiting.
Chapter 14
Behind a collapsed shed, I saw a gorkhy emerge, look around, and steal over to a nearby corpse. It was about as big as a sheepdog. A naked, hairless body with a wrinkled, flat muzzle. According to Vaessa, the disavowed kept these beasts in place of guard dogs, feeding them the corpses of the poor souls sacrificed on the altars. Freaking monsters, they were. But the beasts just ate what they were given. Even pigs could eat old corpses, if fed them. But just you try feeding that Gloom - ha! I would pay to see that. Now, maybe my old self from six months back would be outraged by such a thing, but I was no longer who I had been. There was nothing evil about one beast devouring another for food.
The corpses still stank, though. I pulled out a potion Reece had made and slathered some of it under my nose. I had had enough of the stench. The entrance arch to the three-story building was still covered by the blue film of the dungeon, but now the top of the spike in the center glowed with a soft blue color. With the boss slain, was the key now active? Perhaps. There were still a lot of things I didn’t know. For the fourth time in my memory now, a mob had attacked me right at the entrance to the dungeon. At the Tomb of Erast, in the final hall of the University of Necromancy, and in the Tomb of Arkam. Although, in the Tomb of Erast at least, the undead had been roused before we got there. And the dead masters at the university had attacked only once all paths of retreat had been cut off. Finally, the Tomb of Arkam I had entered after a second century of players, without seeing the situation on the inside. But this made no sense. Had this enraged magister killed all of his own and then waited for me to enter? That didn't make much sense, but I figured I’d never know. As soon as Linara quit the sleeping beauty act, we would press on.
After another minute, the girl finally took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She sat up, looked around for a moment and at the carcass of the dead boss - yet, to my surprise, she paid no attention to the gorhy, nor to the rats scampering near the corpses.
"You’re a monster, demon... You alone have more rage within than a hundred of our warriors. I sensed it, and it nearly drove me mad. I would never have believed that anyone other than the gods or their companions could defeat a disavowed possessed by the altar, right next to the temple of their god... But your rage flooded into everything. Your mental shield is still holding, but if your rage breaks through... I shudder to imagine..."
"Here." The girl was shaking, so I placed a blue elixir next to her, and gestured what to do.
"Now, let's take a step back. Tell me, what does ‘possessed by the altar’ mean? And what would happen if my rage were to break through this shield you speak of?"
I didn’t take offense at the "monster" bit, because Linara hadn’t meant anything offensive by it. And so what if she had? But all of this about my mysterious mental shield was very interesting. Shields, as a rule, kept negative things out, but apparently mine kept them in. So this wasn’t really a shield, but more like a bubble? Funny...
Linara knew what to do with the elixir without my help. She consumed its contents, then nodded her thanks.
"As a rule, all of a temple’s power is kept in the altar. Each servant of the temple has access to this power - access limited by that servant’s rank. Even the prior of the temple can access only a trickle of the altar’s power."
"But this one had a whole bucket of this power, I’m guessing," I nodded at G’Nalt’s corpse.
She shook her head. "Not exactly. When the altar lost contact with its god, it reached out to the strongest of the temple’s servants. A being who was not ready for such power. Something has happened to Vill. Either that or the Cursed God has decided to sever his connection to the temple, for some reason."
"It’s because Vill is no more," I grunted, and immediately cursed my tongue.
"Vill is no more?" Linare gaped at me in surprise. "You knew and remained silent?!"
"I’m just assuming," I shrugged. "I heard he ran into deep trouble on the border to the Steppe. The combined forces of the orcs defeated his army, and after what you said, I made conclusions. But that’s not what’s important now. What about me? What would happen?"
"I don’t know." Linara sighed, her unfocused eyes directed at the top of her staff. "You have too much rage. You’re bursting at the seams. If you fail to contain your rage, you will cease to be who you are now."
Was she talking about another combat form?
I waved her off. "That’s not a concern, but what happened to you?" I was genuinely worried. "That beast didn’t even hit you."
"You don’t understand," she said, hanging her head in embarrassment.
"So explain..."
"I can only heal beings like you by sacrificing my own health, and the proportions aren’t very good. The spells I told you about, though, I can cast without any harm to me. But Thorn had no effect on him. I thought that you were finished, so I struck out with raw power, and those attacks consume life force, too... Thank you for healing me, by the way."
"So, wait, you came here to die?"
"Would you have taken me with you otherwise? if you knew that was the only way?" she challenged me.
Hart! How sick I was getting of all these selfless t
ypes! From Max and his bloody gardening efforts all the way to this dragonfly! These elves were truly sick in the head! Between them all, Bonbon and Donut more the most reasonable, and that was saying something...
"I still would have. But I would not have counted on your healing, or would have only counted on it as a last resort. You should have told me, for both our sakes, miss ata kari of the second circle! I should send you back, but now you can’t even leave the dungeon."
"I... I’m..." Linara sobbed, turning her face away.
"More crying. Great!" I snapped as my rage blocked the incoming wave of mourning and despair. "Now that you understand, don’t do it again."
"I... I wasn’t thinking. It’s very important to me that I go with you." The girl pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away her tears.
"Next time, make sure you’re thinking." I rose to my feet and stretched my neck and shoulders. "Attack and heal only on my command!"
Linara nodded and sniffed away the last of her tears.
"Now do we go inside the temple?"
She looked ready to die from grief just a moment ago. Now, it was as if nothing had happened. I wished I could switch moods like that.
"I’m not sure what to do," I shook my head, nodding at the spike in the center of the square. "We can’t just walk in. I’ll try to activate that thing. You sit here. Don’t move!"
What I assumed was the key was like a Rubik’s Cube somehow attached to the metal rod. Each side was divided into nine equal parts. Thankfully, I wouldn't need to twist and turn them into a solution. At least I hoped not. Each side of it was blue and lit from within. Nothing seemed particularly special or dangerous about it.
I considered the spike sticking out of the stone for a few seconds, then mentally pressed the "Use" button.
Nothing happened for about ten seconds. Then, just as I was trying to figure out what went wrong, the glow disappeared. With a metallic screech, the spike turned clockwise, then plunged down into the stone, falling completely out of view. A loud bang followed, and a gray cloud formed above the platform. In it, I saw an old acquaintance. He was, sadly, far from an old friend. My nostrils smelled the scent of blood freshly spilled, and my ears heard Linara’s fearful squeak from behind me...
