I wasn’t just standing around, either though. Tossing on all my shields and dashing to the foot of the hill, I responded on the fly with a ram, lightning and ten ice arrows.
But alas, neither the lightning nor the ram worked as expected. The ice arrows, though, the beasts did not appreciate. Every blow made the invisible magic shroud defending the Mothers light up with a bright spark, eliciting a furious hiss. Every icicle landed a formidable critical blow. Looks like dark mages don’t get along well with ice magic.
Despite my attacks, the mothers responded only with fruitless attempts at mental magic. Even a fool could see that they didn’t want to ruin their future plaything.
I had to take advantage of that. Tossing on a canopy of invisibility and unsheathing my blades, I dashed forward, weaving desperately. My disappearance did not surprise the dark mothers though.
With a quick whip of the hand from one of them, my canopy flew away. Furthermore, the spell came under a two-hour block.
“I see you’re using our sister’s spell to the utmost!” the first brute hissed out. “So, that means Rat wasn’t lying!”
I’d bet my right hand she was talking about Nimble.
The canopy vanished just as I was about to reach the top of the hill.
“Not so fast, worm!” the second brute shouted with glee. “We’re not done with you yet!”
The mental attack notifications started piling in again. I wonder what they are hoping to achieve. Still, this is only playing into my hand. Every such attack costs mana. Let them run themselves ragged.
Once atop the hill, I turned around. Much to my surprise, the brutes were not rushing after me. The vile smiles on their faces seemed to indicate they knew I would not be going anywhere. And as a matter of fact, I wasn’t planning to. I didn’t just spend so much time getting here to turn chicken and run.
Dismissing yet another mental attack notification, I got ready to blast all the blackbloods with something a bit more dramatic. But just then, the portal gave a slight shudder and the slimy liquid bubbled in the very middle of the lake. The grins on the mothers’ faces turned even more bloodthirsty.
Meanwhile, a big wave ran over the surface of the portal and, when it reached the edge, immediately rolled back, leaving a human-like entity on the land, its skin entirely covered in black bony growths. The monster’s slightly flattened foxlike head was crowned with a sharp ridge of bone running from forehead to nape. It had broad shoulders, long clawed paws, a lipless maw packed full of sharp crooked teeth and its level was hidden ― I was now cursing myself for the umpteenth time for not moving faster and throwing lots of crystals straight into the portal.
“Don’t waste your strength on him!” the newly arrived ugly bastard hissed. “You two won’t be able to get through his will.”
I could hear the monster’s vile voice, but I couldn’t see it moving its lips. I got the feeling its voice had come to dwell in my head. The mothers bowed their heads respectfully and took a step back.
I was in no rush to attack the monster that just crawled out of the portal. Its body started to quickly transform. The black growths disappeared at first, then the ugly ridge. Its teeth grew smaller, and its lips plumped up with blood. A few moments later, there was a fairly young black-haired man standing on the edge of the lake. He looked to be thirty to thirty-five years old. There was a white-toothed smile playing on his aristocratic pale face. His melancholy nobleman look was spoiled only by his entirely black sloping eyes.
“So does that mean you are the Steel King’s emissary?” he asked derisively. “You hunt those like us?”
The mothers broke down into human-like booming laughter. I kept silent.
The man sucked in air loudly through his nose like an animal and exhaled sharply.
“I can smell blood on you from one of my wives and hundreds of my children! You really are the one Rat was talking about.”
If you wanna talk, I say let’s talk. In fact, it will give a couple of my spells time to cool down.
“I assume you’re talking about Nimble? He’s dead.”
The man chuckled.
“So, his formidable plan failed? He wanted to snatch a bit of power for himself, but he bit off more than he could chew?”
If not for the revolting eyes, I might have thought I was talking to a nobleman. Crisp speech. Demeanor. Perhaps this entity was once a baron or count of some kind, but Darkness had transformed him into a bloodthirsty beast.
“Am I to understand you had a hand in his demise?” the man asked, tilting his head. “Curious. I wonder what came between you. After all, you both serve the same master. Actually, just a second…”
I tried to keep calm, but the blackblood overlord, or perhaps rather patriarch had no trouble reading the answer he was looking for on my face.
“You do not serve the Steel King!” the patriarch guessed. His brows shot upward. “You’re running your own game! Nimble told us you were a gullible moron, unsuspecting of the King’s true nature. But you actually know everything! Ha-ha! Rat underestimated you from the very start. Bravo!”
The man gave a few slow claps.
“Your children died as well!” I shot out challengingly. “Your master’s designs have flopped yet again!”
“My master?” the patriarch chortled. The Mothers instantly joined in with vile cackling. “Are you referring to the Steel King?”
The patriarch shook his head and proudly stated:
“You’re confused, worm! I have no master, and never will!” After that, he gave a gloating chuckle and added: “You may be surprised, but you and I are pursuing the very same goal. I am just as committed as you are to making sure the Steel King can never reach the tomb of your order’s founder. But alas, that is the full extent of our, he-he, alliance. You did just what I wanted. You brought yourself to me. Today when I kill you, I will also be taking the Steel King’s last hope of achieving greatness.”
Well, that still remains to be seen. Clenching my fists, I got ready to move.
“I see skepticism in your face,” the patriarch smiled acridly. “Before we get started, I have a surprise I wanted to give to you.”
After saying that, the patriarch gave a short hand-wave and a familiar message appeared before my eyes to say that my shield of will had deflected several thousand points of mental damage. That could mean just one thing ― the patriarch’s Will was higher than mine.
I quickly skimmed the notifications and stopped on a new message. When I grasped what it said, my heart seemed to stop.
A slight rustling behind me made me whip all the way around.
A few steps away from me, Gorgie was standing perfectly still. Every scale on his powerful body was standing on end. There was a thick foam dripping from his mouth, while his animal eyes sloshed with fury and urge to kill.
“Brother…” I whispered, taking a step back.
Then an instant later, my own pet was attacking me.
Chapter 28
GORGIE DEALT his first blow with his tail. The bone spike clove through the air with a faint clicking sound, racing straight for my heart. So this is what the harn’s victims hear before they die. It felt like I got whacked in the chest with a hammer.
The harn landed a crit, whisking away Muckwalker’s Defensive Aura. The Ysh also took a hit. Another couple blows like this and Gorgie would be through to my Chaos Shield. And from there, it wouldn’t take much to trip the first confinement crystal.
The powerful force sent me flying back, and like a rag doll. First, I flew up into the air, then rolled down the slope in a somersault.
My disgraceful flight quickly earned me some acrid commentary from the blackbloods.
“Hey, hunter!” the patriarch shouted out acerbically. “What’s it like to realize you’re being dragged through the mud by your own pet? Because you must admit he did quite a good job. You’ve raised quite the monster. If I could get my hands on twenty creatures like that, this whole continent would be mine!”
Meanwhile, before I’d even come to a complete stop, Gorgie’s big hefty scaled torso had landed on me yet again. Gorgie’s second strongest blow critted again, and the ghostly snake body of the Ysh gave a few fevered flickers.
“Sic ‘em!” the vile wives of the patriarch shouted, clapping in delight. They were standing twenty steps away from me and giving light elbow jabs to each other, nodding at the enraged harn. “Nice little kitty. Tear him to bits!”
That “nice little kitty,” meanwhile, was on a no-holds-barred rampage. The blows rained down one after the next, as if I had fallen into a giant thresher. The Ysh was long gone. Gorgie had moved on to the chaos shield. The points of defense were melting away like a snowman in the sun. My teeth chattered a few times, I saw rainbow circles before my eyes. My bones seemed to fracture in a few places. To tell the truth, I didn’t particularly feel in pain. I must have broken a few of the bones lying around the lake with my body.
Gorgie’s final blow sent me flying a few steps forward. Almost over to the portal. That gave me a short breather, which I instantly took advantage of.
I already knew what the harn would do next. And so I quickly took out a few of the large Blots I’d bought from the Foreston arsenal. These traps, unlike the Enhanced ones, drained the energy supply by fifty percent in one go.
The sweat was pouring down off my brow, flooding into my eyes. My arms were shivering in overexertion. Seemingly, every little part of my body was pulsating in pain, but nevertheless I did it. Tossing a couple of the spheres behind me, I watched in satisfaction as the harn disappeared into thin air and, an instant later, appeared behind me only to get stuck in the pulsating magical energy of the traps.
As I assumed, Gorgie tried to close the gap using Thorntail’s Jump. Landing in a few Blots at once instantly took down all his energy. The invisibility effect was also disabled after his Jump. All the harn could do at that point was splay out helplessly on the ground as his animal eyes flickered with fury.
“Forgive me, brother,” I whispered and tossed another few Blots under his belly as well as a few Mites to sap all his mana. “Be patient. It’ll all be over soon.”
“Bravo!” I heard applause to the right.
“And what now?” the patriarch asked with derision.
“Give him to us!” hissed one of the Mothers.
“I want to taste his blood!” the second one added, taking a step in my direction.
“Now is not the time!” the patriarch stopped them calmly. “I am curious to see what a present-day hunter is capable of.”
You really should not have said that. Tossing on Forest’s Blessing, I summoned a Crusher spirit. The giant ghostly beetle soared upward, distracting the blackbloods for an instant and giving me time to make my next move.
After using every elixir in my inventory, I dashed forward. Before the impenetrable magic fog swallowed me up, I heard the patriarch’s mocking voice:
“Pf, a farce! If you think this cheap trick is gonna let you run away from us, you are sorely mistaken! To be honest, I was expecting you to be a bit more fun.”
I chuckled ravenously. Who told you I was planning to run?
― Attention! You have come under the effect of the legendary spell Charm Dispersal (12).
The magic fog started to thin.
To hell with it! I got what I was after. I was again close enough to activate my next attack spell.
When I appeared twenty steps from the side-by-side Mothers, the Patriarch was caught by surprise. And when he saw a handful of dark orbs in my hand, I read incomprehension in his eyes accompanied by a simultaneous realization of what was about to happen.
“No-o-ooo!” for the first time I heard notes of panic in his voice.
We attacked at the same time. A set of black tentacles erupted from his pale hand, instantly taking half my shield and sending me flying a few steps back. I then in my turn activated Stone Spikes. Keeping in mind the unusual resilience of dark magic against other kinds of sorcery, I was using dark orbs just like in the explorer village, which I had more than enough of after the recent blackblood hunt.
Ghastly stone spikes, altered by twenty orbs, sprung up from underground, cracking through the mothers’ shields in the blink of an eye and sticking them through like pins through defenseless butterflies.
The first Mother died instantly, in my opinion having yet to even realize what happened. The stone skewer impaled her through the back, tearing her whole energy structure along the ridge of her spine and emerging from her right eye socket, transforming her skull into a shapeless clot of blood.
The second Mother had even less luck. Choking on her own scream, she wiggled like a black leech, stuck through by several stone spears at once.
“No!” the patriarch howled again and raced over to her, but immediately stopped short. The blackblood mother had fallen silent. May her black soul land with a bang in the abyss.
The patriarch, breathing heavily, quickly turned around. His black eyes were smoldering with hate.
“You!” he barked at me, initiating his transformation. “You can forget about dying, worm! You won’t be dying any time soon!”
“Well, that still remains to be seen!” I spat out a wad of bloodstained saliva. I must have bit my tongue in the fall. “Your little wives talked a big game, too!”
I heard rustling behind me. Quickly turning, I cast a lightning at Gorgie before he came around, gaining myself another minute.
“Sorry, little bro,” I whispered. “When this is all over, I owe you a mountain of treats.”
The patriarch meanwhile had moved from words to action.
— Attention! You have been subjected to mental magic!
― You have been dealt 2500 damage (blocked by Shield of Will)!
“You’ll be out of mana soon, worm! And then you’ll regret that your mother ever brought you into this world!” he barked.
Taking another ten orbs out of my backpack, I distantly estimated how many more iridescent tablets I would need to be completely immune to mental attacks.
― Attention! Would you like to power up the spell Gulper’s Shattering Ram?
― Considering the level of your spell, the maximum number of Orbs of Darkness you may use is: 3.
― Attention! Using the maximum possible number of dark elements will cause a significant reduction of your reputation with the Order of Monster Hunters!
Let’s go already! I’ll think about the consequences later. Frustratedly waving away the messages, I activated the spell.
The now markedly larger patriarch didn’t even notice my ram. And that was at the fact I had fed the spell dark energy. Looks like I just brought down my reputation with the order for nothing.
The chief blackblood didn’t wait around to respond. A double blow from his dark tentacles practically cracked my shield, while a surge of mental energy took around another two thousand mana.
Abyss! How does he have this much energy?! Afraid I was too late, I feverishly clenched a confinement crystal with a new Chaos Shield in my fist. A notification jumped before my eyes:
― Attention! You are attempting to activate the spell Chaos Shield without using up the remainder of your defense points (853 remaining). You will lose them upon activation.
― Continue action?
Yes! Make it snappy!
As soon as the system told me I was protected again, I breathed a sigh of relief. If my adversary were to find out that I was just practically defenseless, and that one more flick of his black tentacles could have brought our stand-off to a close, he’d probably be choking in malice. Actually though, based on what he’s been saying, he wants to take me alive.
Meanwhile, the patriarch’s body continued to change. Now he bore little resemblance to a fit young man with aristocratic facial features. He didn’t have much in common with his initial form either. The monster had gained four extra appendages and a long snake tail. He doubled in size before my very eyes and seemingly was not going to stop there.
&n
bsp; The larger he became, the faster he moved. I must have been witnessing the activation of an avatar of darkness. Long snake-shaped whips appeared in each of the beast’s hands.
All that time, I was scurrying around the lakeshore like a rabid squirrel, casting dark ice arrows and lightning at the monster. At first, my attacks hit their target with varying success, ripping away a bit of the monster’s defenses. But a few moments later, everything changed. The avatar of darkness completed his transformation and shifted from defense to offense.
Four black whips came at my shield with a loud whistle. In a matter of seconds I had to hurriedly activate another two crystals, mentally praising myself for the foresight. If I hadn’t filled the stones before this, I would currently be lying in tatters on the shore of that vile lake.
Labyrinth of Fright (Underdog Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 30
