by Oliver Mayes
“Stealth enemies are particularly dangerous to me, a mage, so I make it my business to know as much about their mechanics as possible.”
“Come to think of it, you also have an ability that uses stealth.”
“That’s also a factor, but it’s a different mechanic. It’s much more flexible and less delicate than remaining in stealth, otherwise I wouldn’t get much use out of it at all with low agility.”
“What do you suppose I should do if I try your rock-throwing strategy and I get torn to pieces?”
“It’s up to you whether you want to try it, but I’m telling you this in good faith. If it doesn’t work, sue me.”
“I think I’ll try it. Thanks. Is that everything?”
“Yeah, I think that covers it. I’ll send you a message if I have any further thoughts.”
“Please don’t do that while I’m in the room. When Lillian sent me that message I nearly died.”
“You’re tempting me, Damien.”
Damien knew Andrew was playing this up for his audience, but that was a bit close to the bone.
“Do I need to block you again? This is important to me, but I prefer not having your name permanently grayed out on my friends list.”
There was a pause. The first time Andrew had paused during their whole exchange.
“Alright, I’ll be good. I also prefer not being grayed out on your friends list.”
Their conversation was cut across by a loud cry. Damien hadn’t heard the voice’s source speak often, but the irreverent tone of voice coupled with the silly sense of humor allowed him to discern the point of origin as Mr. Healy, who’d been unable to contain himself.
“Now kiss!”
Damien and Andrew groaned in unison. Damien hurried to conclude as the laughter of Lillian’s party came over the call from afar.
“Okay. Thanks for your help. I’ll try it out.”
“Good luck in there. We’re all rooting for you. Hashtag if-you-die-it’s-totally-not-my-fault, Aetherius out.”
Andrew hung up before Damien could reply. Could’ve been much worse. The real test would be to see whether or not his advice worked. Damien palmed a stone in his hand and crouched back into the room. Just as before, he was fast enough at first but each step made him less eager to take the next. The reference picture was still inadequate, even following his break. He thought about what Andrew had told him, carefully, then tossed the stone in a lazy arc forward toward the next room, high overhead.
The stone was shredded to atoms before any of the Cave Urchins had even become visible. They all appeared simultaneously at once, the majority of his field of vision becoming black with spikes. Damien remained exactly where he was and made sure he didn’t move. He’d put the rock somewhere where none of the ground-launched missiles would hit him by mistake. This was the moment of truth. If throwing the rock had taken him out of stealth, he’d be looking at the death screen in about two seconds’ time.
His HUD said Shadow Walker was still active. But Shadow Walker had still been active when he got shot for saying “Yesss” in the last room. He held his breath. Five seconds later, all the Cave Urchins simultaneously disappeared. They weren’t firing on him. He wouldn’t have to sue Andrew after all.
Now he knew he could get away with this behavior, Damien decided he’d do what he did with all mechanics that worked out in his favor in games. He’d abuse it. He wasted no time in chucking the next stone into the air, and started moving the moment the urchins became visible. Five seconds of safe movement per stone, twenty-two stones left, just under two minutes of movement. Plus whatever Damien felt he could get away with. That was more than enough to get to the first chest.
The next part he’d done before, only not with so many enemies. The angle they were at would make it easier, the volume harder. Not so much ‘harder’, as more intense. He flipped the latch on the front of the chest. Gently. Moved around the back of it. Carefully. Then lifted it from either side. Gingerly.
The number of spines launched into the lid was so great, it was thrown open without Damien’s continued input. Which would’ve been fine, if he wasn’t standing underneath it. It tipped over and smacked him on the head, knocking him onto his back. He only took a few points of damage. It was a few points too many. Damien was out of stealth. He had three seconds.
3
Damien crouched to hide behind the chest, then gave up. There were two Cave Urchins, one on either side of it, that had clear firing lines from each direction. Only they would fire, because he was only in their line of sight. He could survive two spines, but not two spines every three seconds.
2
Damien made a run for the door back to the chamber he’d already cleared, preparing to leap over the urchins on his way to safety. He’d reached the side of the chest when the hopelessness of that plan hit home. There was no time. He’d still be in midair when the next volley came, with absolutely zero chance of changing direction. There was only one place left to go.
1
Damien turned, ducked and rolled, straight into the open chest. It was not designed for a person, but the chest was not conservative. It was large. Everybody loves large chests. Right then and there, Damien loved them much more than anyone else. He flopped into it, landing on his back, and tucked his legs in as the number of spines sticking out of the inside of the concave lid doubled. All of them had passed through the space where his knees had been, the last parts of his body he’d withdrawn in time. Damien counted to three. The chamber was completely silent once more. It had worked. He was out of line of sight and wasn’t making any noise.
This raised some interesting questions. If he had a Bag of Holding attached to a chest and climbed into it, would he be in his own inventory? He’d never been compelled to climb into a chest before. It was a shame he didn’t still have Andrew’s bag, or else he could’ve tried it then and there. He doubted the result would’ve removed him from this predicament. Unless of course it opened a rift in space and time, which might be the only end more violent than poking his head out of the box and turning his face into an instant reverse Cave Urchin. The inside of the lid was not looking pretty after absorbing two volleys.
First things first. He’d managed to get into the chest, first figuratively, then literally. He could feel the item it contained digging into his back. If he made sure to take it before trying anything more ambitious, at least he wouldn’t have to go through this again. If it was more knives, he’d be very disappointed. Damien awkwardly reached underneath himself and transferred the item into his inventory for inspection.
Darkstriders
Description: A pair of demon-hide boots once worn by the Sunset Emperor: Bartholomew, Scourge of the World. They carried him far and wide, all the way to his ignominious end.
Level Requirement: 50
Stat Requirement: 200 Agility
Stats: +30 Agility, +30 Endurance
Special Abilities: Soul-bound
Set Bonus: Sunset Emperor – +30 Agility, +30 Constitution, +30 Endurance, +30 Wisdom (1/5 pieces): Shadow Walker functions in broad daylight
“WHAT THE F—”
‘plinkplinkplinkplinkpli-’
Another round of spines smashed into the lid of the chest serving as Damien’s temporary lodgings. The implications of what he’d read were so unexpected he hardly cared. The boots constituted an exceptional piece of equipment which was soul-bound so he’d never run the risk of losing it along with a truly wonderful set piece bonus if he could attain all five pieces. That was less than half of what prompted his outburst.
Bartholomew had once been the ‘Sunset Emperor’, an agility-based occultist, just as he was. Bartholomew had mocked him for pursuing this route, had urged him to play with intelligence as his primary stat, yet he’d been the perfect candidate to provide him with tutelage all along. Instead of mentoring Damien, Bartholomew had withheld his knowledge and mocked him for insisting on following what was now, canonically, a potential chosen path.
&nbs
p; They’d have words, assuming Damien ever got out of the Dark Tower. Well, getting out of the Dark Tower would be easy enough if Damien chose to turn back. They’d definitely have words sooner or later. For the moment, Damien was not pleased. He was dedicated to finishing what he’d started, so he’d have to put a pin in the argument that was already building inside him. After that, his vampiric mentor was gonna get it. ‘Let me just rifle through my Bag of Holding and see if I have any occultist tomes on the lost art of stabbing people.’ From Mr. Stab the World, himself. What a duplicitous scumbag.
Damien contained himself, his breath coming in short bursts through his nostrils. He couldn’t yet equip the new boots since he was still five levels away from the level requirement for doing so, but he was glad to have them. He could now focus on how to get out of this box without dying.
If he could kill the two Cave Urchins with line of sight to the back of the chest, he’d be able to get there, reenter Shadow Walker and leave. Now he had a goal, he could start working toward it.
He equipped a rock and threw it out of the chest. At the exact point it started to hover, the spines struck. Three seconds. Damien rose on his knees and threw three knives in rapid succession. The first urchin he needed to kill was near, and he didn’t miss. Damien was down again before it had finished screeching. One more flick, closely followed by one more Damien-in-the-box performance and both urchins were dead.
Now would be the worst time to mess this up. It was also the part he was most likely to mess up. With only one second left before the next volley, Damien threw the final rock high overhead, toward the opposite corner of the room. Then he crouched down, making sure the projectile was the only visible target.
His timing was adequate. The noise suggested all the urchins had fired, not just those in his vicinity. He was free! He clambered out of the chest as fast as he could and scurried behind it, accidentally scraping himself on some of the spines that had penetrated the lid of the chest in the process. But he was out of line of sight of all remaining urchins. He waited for five seconds, just to be certain he was back in Shadow Walker.
He started by collecting the knives, urchin meat and soul energy from the two urchins he’d painstakingly slain. In the cleared room, when he’d killed them at level 44, they’d dropped 2.5 souls each. That was now down to 2 souls each. It was just as well his Soul Reserve couldn’t contain any more than that. Everything had to be done in complete silence. His rocks were running low. He made his way back to the already cleared urchin chamber, slowly and carefully, then set his back to the wall.
“So, that sucked.”
Damien produced a new building block and reduced it to twenty-six brand-new chips of rubble as he kept talking.
“Sorry that took so long, and sorry I spent so much of it with my head buried in the bottom of that chest. It wasn’t my first choice, believe me. I’d like to get this room out of the way now, so after I’ve finished making more stones I’ll get on with it.”
He finished off the block, granting him a grand total of twenty-nine stones to keep him alive, before checking his messages. He’d received three, one each from Lillian, Legolias and Aetherius:
Lillian: You’re an idiot. A clever idiot, but definitely an idiot. I have no idea how you get yourself into these messes, let alone get yourself out of them.
Legolias: Okay. I can’t do that.
Aetherius: Nice job.
He read each of them out in turn, heavily intoning Aetherius’s reply. That was high praise, coming from him.
“Alright, all that’s left is to get through the room. I promise I’ll make it as boring as possible.”
He did. It took twelve stones to weave his way through the death maze, but Damien got all the way to the end without incident. It was only as he reached the far doorway that he stopped and examined the second chest, placed in the opposite corner from the one he’d been stuck in for so long. It was completely surrounded by Cave Urchins. There was no way he could remove them without being attacked, the chest was simply unreachable. Was it there as bait, to tempt players into walking straight into the urchins guarding it? If that was the case, why was it on the far side of the room? Anyone approaching it would be well aware of the danger posed by the urchins before then.
There was another strange feature, clearly intentional but completely inscrutable: a wooden beam, set diagonally into the corner of the room high above the chest, with a black ‘X’ over the middle. Was he supposed to throw a knife at it? What would that accomplish, besides possibly getting him killed for making an attack with intent? It seemed like a cruel trick, to prompt the greedy or careless into triggering their own demise.
He’d spent far too much time in that room already and had promised his viewers he’d make it as boring as possible. He could come back to it later. He gave it a last wistful look before exiting the room.
There was a longer corridor here, granting a degree of separation from the room that had come before. No sooner had Damien crossed the threshold than he leveled up again. The EXP for clearing the second stage of the quest carried him into level 46, and halfway to level 47. There was the gratification he’d been searching for. As far as Damien was concerned he deserved level 50 for the trouble.
The new room was small. Barely larger than Damien’s own bedroom. There was no point in taking any chances. Damien threw a stone up into the air, but it landed without anything happening. There were no urchins in here. He could do with a chance to relax after the endless tension of the room before.
The way to the next chamber hinted at why he was being granted a temporary reprieve. There was a large cast-iron door, with a silver demon skull split across the opening. A mini-boss door. Not all dungeons had them, but those that did ensured any who entered would not leave until either they or the boss was defeated. They existed not so much to keep adventurers out as to keep whatever the boss was in.
A side table, carved of the same impenetrable stone as the rest of the dungeon, had a single health potion and a brand-new sling of knives on top of it. Games only ever gave away good stuff so liberally when something bad was about to happen.
Before that, Damien had made a promise. He’d told Noigel he’d summon him and a succubus back as soon as he made it through the room, in exchange for his sacrifice in providing Damien with the room’s layout. It wasn’t Noigel’s fault his efforts had proven insufficient. Nor would Damien have made that promise if he’d known there was a boss chamber up next. But he’d given his word. It was time to uphold his end of the bargain.
Damien summoned Noigel, then immediately summoned a succubus. This brought him back down to just 2 souls. Needs must. Hopefully the succubus would prove herself useful in the fight ahead, since the cost of summoning her was so dear. It was what came next that Damien really dreaded.
“Alright, Noigel. As promised. “Special time”. Make it snappy, boss room in five minutes.”
Noigel did not complain about the time constraint. He could work under pressure. He saluted smartly then leapt through the air toward the succubus, who had her arms outstretched and a toothy smile spreading over her monstrous face. Damien quickly turned on his heel and examined the wall, then went into his menu. He wouldn’t have made this arrangement if he’d known how small the space they’d be stuck in would turn out to be. This deal was getting worse all the time.
No matter. He’d made good progress already. His sensibilities would suffer a little but at least he wasn’t in mortal peril. Just moral peril. He went into his menu and spoke to his followers, trying to explain his minion’s behavior away in hushed tones.
“Noigel is...smarter than you think, even without his ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ active. He’s fiercely loyal, although that took a lot of work to get out of him. And...he’s a bit of a horn dog. He’s been acting up recently, following his urges out in the field and getting us in trouble, so I took his “special time” privileges with the succubus away. It’s best to think of him as...a devious pet. If you establish clear
boundaries and good rewards, he’ll be responsive. This seems to be the most effective reward, unfortunately, so we’re just gonna have to deal with it for a few minutes while I take stock.”
Whatever Noigel and the succubus were doing, they were being quiet about it. Thankfully. Damien may have been forced to cut the sound if it had gotten too raunchy. He went into his stat page and examined it intently.
Class: Occultist
Level: 46
Health: 1,200/1,200Stamina: 1,350/1,350 Mana: 3,060/3,060
Strength: 55Agility: 174 Intelligence: 55
Constitution: 120 Endurance: 135 Wisdom: 306
Stat points: 5
Experience: 28,940/46,000
Soul Summon Limit: 8/30 Soul Reserve: 2/10 (+0/1)
Good progress. He put the 5 stat points he’d attained for his last two levels into agility, bringing it up to 179. He’d have over 200 agility by the time he was level 50, factoring in the single point granted to each stat with each level. That would be enough to equip Bart’s gear, assuming he found the rest of it. That was pretty much a given. Damien would tear this place apart before he left without acquiring every last scrap. Good gear for occultists was hard to come by, let alone a gear set with a passive bonus that applied to one of his best skills.
He nodded in satisfaction and turned around, ready to move onward. Noigel and the succubus had been so quiet that he’d forgotten they were there. Or what they were doing. They’d appropriated the stone carved table for their “special time”, moving the health potion and the Throwing Knife Sling off to one side while they lay over the rest of the table. Noigel was on top.
It wasn’t what Damien had expected. They weren’t doing anything untoward. Damien had never lingered over what they did in private, since he’d only imagined one scenario that did not bear lingering on. Noigel was...cleaning her. He was using his tongue, granted, but if anything he resembled an affectionate cat rather than a miniature adult movie star. Noigel was busily lapping away at the succubus’s hoof hair while she stroked his head. Now he was facing toward them, Damien could just about make out a low purr.
