Taking a deep breath, I activated Mana Sight, my only lifeline. The mob’s body was enclosed in that same transparent shell, but unlike the bat’s mana, the Crawler’s was bound up tight, much more like that in the enchanted pickaxe. A magical monster? Or maybe that’s just how mana looked in armor. I shrugged the thought away. I didn’t have time for studious reflections. I needed an angle, any angle, and I needed it now.
There!
Of course. There was one spot where the mana threads parted enough to allow fluid movement and free space; exactly one vulnerable place on the whole body.
Right between the mandibles.
Channeling my mana into my hand again, I took it a step further and tried to push it into my weapon. I felt a wave of dizziness pass over me, threatening to deactivate Mana Sight, but I pushed on, steadying myself with another breath, and willed the M&M to buzz with the glowing, pulsing light. Then, with a barbaric cry, I shoved the tip as hard as I could up into the creature’s mouth.
You Scored a Critical Hit!
-10HP from your enemy.
I guess that’s what constituted the elusive “Power Up” I’d been seeing in the stats. The creature shrieked, the sound like a wave of icicles breaking on a sheet of metal, and pushed itself off of me, crawling back in pain. I sat up, woozy and still dizzy. I was down to 24HP, but I was out from under the disgusting mob. A pop-up appeared notifying me of a new skill development but I swept it away. It could wait till after the battle.
“Gah!” Angie stomped and stabbed her monster simultaneously, taking the life out of it. It looked a little smaller than mine, I thought. But still. My sister was pretty freaking awesome. Looking around, I saw she’d already dispatched the third Crawler. So there was just the big one left, but it still had 150HP. And I was still bleeding.
“Aim for the pincers!” I yelled as Angie whirled to face the big fucker.
She frowned. “That seems counter-intuitive!”
I shrugged. “Ok! Well, it’s what works, so do it anyway!”
She huffed and raised her M&M as the Crawler sprang for her legs. She tried to stomp its head, but it was too quick.
“Shit!”
Somehow she managed to shake it off before it got her as bad as it got me, but I could tell she was hurting.
“-15HP!” she yelled. “This thing sucks!”
Tell me about it, I thought, but I didn’t say anything out loud. A strategy was forming in my mind.
Angie attacked next, trying to stab behind the head, but it dodged. She dodged the counterattack, but wasn’t able to get a hit in on the back swing. Instead she backed up.
That’s it, I thought. Keep it busy just a little longer. Every inch felt like alternating fire and ice in my injured leg, but slowly, surely, I was crawling up behind the engaged mob. But the time I reached it my mana had regenerated, and I activated Mana Sight, channeling power into my weapon once more.
“HEY!” I yelled. “Over here, ugly!”
The mob spun on a dime, but I was ready. I thrust my mana-charged M&M in between the mandibles again, pushing even harder this time and scoring another easy crit. More importantly, the Crawler had opened up its entire body to my big, beefy sister. She did not waste any time, but jumped with all her might up onto the middle of the thing and began to stomp and stab, grunting with the effort.
The mob tried to twist and turn, but she held it steady. Distracted, it didn’t have the resources to prepare for my second attack. A third crit scored, and then I was tapped for mana. But I kept stabbing my uncharged weapon into the creature’s mouth for damage of -2HP here, -5HP there, all the while admiring my sister’s ability to wreak total carnage.
It took about a minute to grind him down to death’s door.
“Go ahead,” Angie said, holding the weakened Crawler in place with her feet. “This one’s yours, Gid.”
I nodded and activated Mana Sight once more. I had just enough juice for a few seconds of mana use. Just enough to charge my M&M and land the killing blow.
Congratulations! You have defeated 1 enemy!
+1 Mana
+1 Spirit
+8 XP
+2 Elder Cave Crawler Mandibles (to be collected)
Passive Skill Leveled Up: Mana Manipulation
My, you’re a quick study, aren’t you? It seems like only yesterday you were learning about mana for the very first time. Now you have begun to explore how it can be shaped and weilded as a tool and weapon. It will take a long time for you to be a true master of mana, but everyone starts somewhere. Mana Manipulation is a passive skill that can only be leveled through use.
Skill: Mana Manipulation
Type: Passive
Level: 2 (scalable)
Effect: 7% increase in ability to manipulate mana from user’s body; 3% increase in ability to manipulate mana from environment
“That’s better,” I grunted, noting the 8XP. I was happy to see the new skill level up too, though I was disappointed that I hadn’t leveled Mana Sight or Outside the Box. I mentally opened the hidden stats and saw that I was about halfway to the next level in each. Well, I guess the easy skill leveling had to slow down eventually.
“Hell yeah!” Angie said. “That was awesome! Let’s keep going! We’ve got nothing but time, right?”
I sighed. “Actually I think we’d better get back. I’ve got a bleed and my HP is pretty low, and it doesn’t look like we have the Cave of Wonder buff down here.” That sucked. It would have made our impromptu mob mops a lot easier.
“Oh man.” Angie knelt beside me, looking at my leg. “Does it hurt?”
I looked at her, deadpan. “Does an ogre shit in the woods?”
“Actually, it hasn’t come up.” She shrugged. “Not that I mind. More convenient this way, less to worry about.”
I snorted but I wasn’t able to rally much. It did hurt, badly, and the lower my HP got from the bleed, the weaker I felt and the foggier my mind got. “Gotta patch me soon, sis,” I mumbled, “or I’m toast.”
“Shit. Ok. I’m gonna pick you up.” She pulled my arms up over her shoulder and hefted me into the air, grunting as she shifted my weight. Then she turned and trotted back to the dungeon entrance.
The trip up the winding stair was… a trip. I slipped in and out of consciousness, and I’m sure I was sick at least once. Angie did her best to run up the stairs and get me back into the cavern in time, but there was probably never even a chance it would happen. Not with by bleed debuff. Sometime before we reached the top I blacked out for one final time.
___
Another hour spent in the frigid nothingness with Sophia the AI calling to me in her muted voice, deaf to my replies. I didn’t even try anymore. What was the point? I started walking, grousing to myself about how much I hated snow. There’d been a time when I’d loved snow. Winter had been my favorite season as a kid. Why not? Our parents took care of us, bundled us up and got us sleds, even if they were from thrift shops and had a few chips and cracks, and we’d play in the snow for hours. After, we’d run inside, our cheeks red as merlot, and sip hot cocoa with marshmallows. Sometimes we’d watch old episodes of TMNT. I was always Donnie. Angie was always Raphael. I’d teased her that she shouldn’t be him because he had such a bad temper, but I think that’s what she’d liked about him in the first place.
Snow was ruined for me now.
I padded along, barefoot, breathing out steam. No matter how exciting, even fun, the dungeon visits were, they were pointless if they only ever ended in this. Being trapped. Coming back to their little prison. I spat in anger and picked up the pace, jogging in a line. Where to? Who cared. The snow stretched on forever.
I thought wistfully about the Crawler mandibles we’d managed to weaponize. Great, awesome, only we could never bring them with us out of the dungeon. They’d be discovered almost immediately, and we’d probably be tortured until we gave up the secret location.
What we needed was some way to store weapons. I supposed we could just start stockp
iling whatever we could gather in the tunnel to the dungeon. Would it last there? But it would still be there, not in the prison, so it wouldn’t help us fight back. What would be ideal would be some way to secretly store and move weapons and other items around the prison camp, so we could easily arm ourselves and try to spring the runestone trap. But we didn’t have any—
Dumbass!
I stopped running and literally slapped myself in the face.
The Shadow Bag! My own private, invisible inventory, basically a super-stealthy “bag of holding.” I bent down to catch my breath, shaking my head.
And I knew just where the damned thing was.
Eventually I was resurrected, spewed out of the whirling light on the runestone’s face and left on my hands and knees to enjoy my debuffs. I knew what I had to do.
“Oh, god,” I muttered, inflecting my voice to sound even sicker than I felt as I wandered in an aimless circle on all fours. Well, it would have looked aimless to the casual observer, I hoped. In reality I was sweeping the ground with my palms, searching desperately for a feel of leather. “Ugh. Oh, man.”
“Cup it up, suck-cake,” the wood-elf said. He spared me a glance, then looked again more closely at me. “You’ve been dying a lot lately. Having roommate trouble?”
I didn’t like the way his shrewd eyes were watching me, but I didn’t have any choice. I had to keep up my search if I was to have any chance of finding it; it wasn’t as if I could sneak out into the resurrection cavern anytime I liked. The traps kept it well protected.
I shook my head, then nodded. “Something like that,” I mumbled.
He sneered. “You piece of shit. C’mon, get up. I know the buff’s working. Time to get back to work.”
“Ohhhh, god,” I said, trying to fake nausea. “I think… I think I’m gonna—ohhh!”
It worked for a moment. He looked away, his face an image of disgust. “Just get it over with,” he said quietly.
What’s the matter, I thought, hot date? Whatever. I wasn’t finding the stupid thing. Any second I’d run out of tricks and he’d come grab me by the hair and drag me down the tunnel. I knew, because I’d been escorted just that way at least once now. These people were seriously sick. Maybe it had started as a way to make money, but I saw the way they enjoyed torturing us. They liked being our wardens. Maybe even loved it. It’s like they were—
There!
Finally, my hand swept across the telltale feel of worn leather.
Fuck yes!
I snatched the invisible object up. I wouldn’t lose it again. Not ever.
Recovered Item: Shadow Bag
Keep your friends close, but your loot closer. A shadow bag is an undetectable supplemental inventory. Be careful where you set it down—it’s totally invisible!
Would you like to add this item to your inventory?
YES. Yes, yes, yes! If I could have yelled the selection I would have. I looked up to find the wood-elf studying me carefully.
“Feeling better, are we?”
I shrugged, trying to maintain some of the facade. “A little.” I coughed into my arm.
“Uh-huh. Well, let’s go.”
I fell into a slow march in front of him till he led me back to the mine, where I counted the seconds till I’d be back in my cage and could explore my new toy.
CHAPTER 10:
INTERLUDE: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
_________________
“Gemma! GEMMA!”
Terra screamed her sister’s name as she ran. She was more agile than John, and he wheezed as he tried to keep up. They crested the last hill and came upon a sight of horror.
Every tent in the players’ camp was burning. Dark smoke billowed into the air over the lake, blotting out the sun and casting the wooded valley in an ominous shadow. John squinted, trying to pick out players between the tents, but he didn’t see anyone. It was like the place had been abandoned.
Or raided, he realized.
“Gemma!”
“Terra, slow down!” He didn’t want them to rush headlong into an ambush. Or to lose their only edge—the fact that, for better or for worse, they hadn’t been here when it had happened, and whoever had raided them likely didn’t know they were out there. But Terra was halfway down to the tents now. Before John reached the bottom she had already reached her sister’s tent, but it was empty. Just a burning shell of wool and wood.
Then John spotted someone.
“Brandon…?”
He ran to the cabin on the other side of the tents. When he reached it, he covered his mouth with a hand, staring in shock. The NPC had been nailed to the building with wicked-looking iron spikes. Like a crucifixion.
“Brandon,” John muttered. The NPC opened his eyes. “Shit!” John backed up a step.
“MMMMnnnnngh,” Brandon groaned. “Water, John. Water!”
“Yeah, water! Yes. Ok.” He fumbled through his inventory until he found his waterskin, then equipped it and lifted it to Brandon’s lips. The NPC struggled to take a drink. “Who did this?”
Brandon coughed, choking on water, and shook his head. “They came… a whole horde of them… vile, stinking, evil…”
John nodded, growing impatient. “Who?”
Brandon met his eyes and seethed hatred with the word. “Travelers.”
John took a step back, eyes wide open. “Players did this?”
The sound and smell of burning kindling reached his senses. He stole a glance back to the tents, now smoldering. Terra had fallen to her knees beside her sister’s empty tent, crying. The cracking of wood heating came to him from much closer than that.
“Brandon!” John’s stomach lurched with realization. The cabin to which his guide and friend was nailed was burning.
Brandon shook his head sadly. “Too late,” he muttered. “Too late for me. Want it to end, anyway. Let me die, traveler.”
Coming from him, the epithet now felt like a dirty word. John grimaced.
No. He couldn’t let the man burn to death.
He pulled the door open to a hellscape of crackling timber. On the far wall hung Brandon’s tools. He spotted a long, wide-headed hammer, and raced across the room with no thought for his own safety. He needed something—anything—to pry the iron spikes from the wood and free his friend.
But he was too late. The integrity of the building was completely compromised, and when he grunted with the effort of lifting the long tool from the wall, wood groaned and cracked all around him. He looked up to see the central ceiling beam buckling in the heat.
“Shit,” he spat between clenched teeth.
With a mighty crack, the beam split.
It was over quickly after that. The timbers fell, the cabin collapsed, and John the Bard was crushed beneath the burning wreck. His HP dropped nearly to zero on impact. It would bottom out in less than a minute. But before it did, he managed to crawl just free enough to see a group of scouts run in among the tents and seize Terra. He opened his mouth to scream her name but his throat was ash and his mouth full of blood.
“Let me go! Let me GO!”
They dragged her, kicking and screaming to be free, from the settlement, laughing as they went. Players? Were these the ones who had come before? There must have been more of them, though, if they took or killed everyone. And now they had Terra.
With his dying gasp, John vowed to chase them down and exact his vengeance when he respawned.
No matter what it took.
CHAPTER 11:
ALL ABOUT THE CRAFT
_________________
April 30, 2049
THE CITY HERALD OBITUARIES
AARON SARTEN, 53, of Rochester, NY, died in an automobile accident Wednesday when his vehicle hopped a guardrail and fell into the Hudson River. Mr. Sarten was a coding engineer. He is survived by his two daughters, Gemma and Terra Sarten.
___
With the bag we had a real edge. Angie and I kept going to the dungeon, kept mopping up low-level mobs, and kept colle
cting the items they left behind. Only now we could keep them, and we didn’t have to start over every time we came down here. It increased our progress and XP gains exponentially.
It was just a couple of visits later that I proposed we try something new in the Dungeon of Thrannick.
“A crafting session?” Angie asked, wrinkling her half-ogre nose at me as if I’d suggested we split a boxed wine at her wedding.
“Yeah.” We were heading down the winding stair, already in the time freeze. “I mean, think about it. We’re getting drops from the mobs, but it’s all really… eh, rustic, you know?”
She bobbed her head in thought. “Yeah no, I know what you’re saying. It’s just… I mean, I don’t have a crafting skill. Do you?”
“No. But skills are gained organically in here, we’ve seen that time and again. And we have nothing but time when we’re down here. I mean, dude. We could stay down here for a week if we wanted, doing nothing but crafting and mopping, and we’d still go back to the same time we’d left upstairs.”
“What’re you gonna eat?”
I hadn’t thought about that. I raised my eyebrows. “Think any of the monsters are edible?”
She chuffed. “Maybe for me. I’m part-ogre. Not sure about you though.”
“You’re joking.”
She hitched a shoulder. We’d reached the bottom and were standing outside the door, our faces illuminated in the arcane torchlight. “Nah. I mean I don’t know how it works in here, but in other games, yeah, diet can be determined by race.”
“I ate piss-bread.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I want to hear that story sometime.”
“No you don’t. My point is, I think there’s some flexibility. And I can live without luxury for a while. God knows they’re not feeding us four-course five-star meals up there anyway.”
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