Bloody Crucible- Lone Wolf

by E C Chii

  Current selections are: Warrior, Scout, Thief, Mage (Pre-requisites met), Berserker (Pre-requisites met), Factotum (!@%$#)

  The remaining hour was a painful exercise as Wolf’s already exhaustion addled brain. He found it difficult to focus and make an informed decision. The benefits of one class didn’t meet his preferences as it would make one or more of his abilities all but ineffective. Choosing the mage class would greatly improve his magical capabilities at the cost of a severe reduction in his physical. Warrior was similar as it improved his physical while tripling the cost of magical abilities. Thief and scout had their allures, but they both restricted the types of weapons he could use effectively. This left Berserker and the wildcard Factotum. For the life of him he couldn’t figure what abilities he had that enabled him to select Berserker.

  Examining the details of Berserker showed that it improved total damage output by an amazing 30% while in the enraged state but gave a permanent increase in damage taken by 15%. With the number of times he had been on death’s door due to sheer amount of damage he had taken during a long fight like recently. It was that reason alone he wouldn’t choose it.

  When he viewed the information about Factotum there was conspicuously little information. What he did understand was that a Factotum did not have any positive or negative effects alone but was not restricted in any way. The real deciding factor was that by choosing Factotum he would not need to choose a class to see the Tier 2 choices as he would be specializing in everything. Essentially a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ class.

  Additionally, a Factotum could use other class specific gear without penalty. Selecting Factotum, he settled in for some much-needed rest.

  Chapter 28 – Nightmares of the Past

  Waking up refreshed Wolf gathered up a weeks’ worth of supplies and leaving enough of the supplies that wouldn’t spoil over the next six months next to the various colored cocoons. Writing a note to them which way he went, he bid his once pupils and pack good bye thinking that with is long life he would more than likely either meet them or their descendants. Opening his character screen Wolf tossed 2 points into STR, 1 point into CON, and 1 point into CHA. Wolf wasn’t a vain person but several remarks by members of his squad, about him being uglier than goblin shit grated on him.

  Looking over his abilities he decided to bring Combat Grace to level 2 and add a point into Naturally Gifted as well.

  Combat Grace Level 2 (Passive, Common) – You can use objects around you to dodge or out maneuver your enemies and their attacks. You move 11% faster through, around, and over obstacles. Able to use objects in your surroundings to move around the battlefield or run on walls for 3 seconds.

  Naturally Gifted Level 2 (Passive, Racial) – 10% chance to learn a skills and spells through observation, automatically at level 2. Can occur once every week.

  Wolf’s Eyes bulged a bit when he saw that type of increase. Surely, he would have dropped more points into it earlier if he had known it would automatically upgrade any spell, skill or ability he managed to learn from it. While ‘Combat Grace’ was about as expected ‘Naturally Gifted’ seemed almost over-powered. He wondered if ‘Ghost Warrior’ would be similar if he considered it more.

  Finishing with his character screen and looking over his gear one last time, he facepalmed as he remembered the ring and boots he was holding onto. Placing the ring on his finger he instantly felt as though a haze of fog he didn’t know was there had been removed. Vision cleared, and mental acuity was much sharper.

  Would you like to accept the quest ‘Life is Study’?

  YN

  Learn 4 Progressive skills, abilities, or spells and raise them to Master grade. (3/4 Progressive Skills, abilities, or spells learned, 0/4 Master grade skills, spells, or abilities.)

  There is no time limit or punishment for declining this quest.

  Selecting yes, he moved on to the boots. Now that he was level 10 and not restricted by the class requirement he put on the boots that seemed to resize themselves to fit his lupine style legs.

  Would you like to embark on the Faction quest “Raiders’ Nation” part 1?

  YN

  Seek out the hidden den of any Raider’s group.

  There is no time limit or punishment for declining this quest.

  He wished them good luck in their endeavors hoping that they met again soon.

  Picking up his backpack, rechecking his gear and ensuring that his last remaining uchigatana that was still in decent enough shape was attached to his hip at the ready was secured he proceeded to the ruined gate. Crossing its threshold, he noticed for the first time that the tunnel for it was slightly declined leading deeper into the ground with smooth polished marble stone floors, ceiling, and walls. If it wasn’t for the thick layers of dust and dirt on the floor and being so dark, it would be an incredibly beautiful. Every ten to fifteen feet he would find an empty sconce or torch mount. The path continued for another twenty minutes until he reached another large cavernous room with the entrance to what looked like a large temple off in the distance. The statues of the grotesque figures were lining the outside of the structure looking foreboding and angry. While the others were made of stone and plainly dressed. These were intricately carved, decorated and even showed signs of fading paint.

  As he approached the temple entrance he felt like the eyes of the statues were watching and judging him with each step. Unconsciously his left hand was sitting on the scabbard of his sword ready in case he needed to quickly draw it. The actual entrance of the temple proper looked to have a shade of mist covering it, obscuring the interior from view. As he approached the opening the four statues’ eyes lit up and spoke in a screeching, guttural language. As soon as he the first sound, Wolf’s hypervigilance kicked in causing him to grasp this handle of his sword and dart to the left.

  As he reached the wall on the far left his speed was simply too much to arrest by merely stopping, deciding to try out his improved ‘Combat Grace’ skill he started to arch around to being parallel with the wall. As soon as he could see the path he had taken, he saw large metal spear-like objects had silently fallen along his path. The entire time he was focusing on running the sounds of the statues talking continued. Changing from the screeching, guttural language to a raspy humming language. Leaving the ground, placing one foot on the wall he narrowly missed being impaled on a strange spear coming from the ground. The next few steps carried him further up the wall up and away from the spikes coming from the ground.

  When three seconds had elapsed, Wolf lost all traction he had on the wall was suddenly gone. Kicking off with as much force as he could he sailed over the next spike tucking into a tight ball where he rolled onto his feet. With each spike he realized he was being corralled into entering the temple. Around that moment he noticed that the statues were speaking Chinese now. Not the common tongue that was customary to this world, but a dialect of Chinese from his old life. As part of the Special Forces training he was required to become fluent in s. The statues spoke in the Jin dialect.

  “Language comprehension detected. Loading unknown empire’s language ‘Chinese’ in ‘Jin’ dialect…The path to freedom must be opened by sacrificing a person to the Longyou Labyrinth, the path will remain open until the sacrifice perishes, or discovers a means of escape. Average time spent in the Longyou Labyrinth is eight months, nine days, twenty hours, sixteen minutes. The sacrificed must confirm their status or all entities in the entrance will be terminated.”

  Seeing no other option, Wolf tried to speak in the Jin Chinese dialect. With each word he tried to enunciate it was as if there was cotton, molasses, and even some rocks in his mouth. He struggled to speak the words, as though his mouth and tongue were never meant to make these sounds. Struggling to speak while dodging spears is not an easy task. On one such occasion when he was struggling to simply say “I am sacrifice” he lost focus on the spears for a split second and his foot was impaled. The spear after having successfully hit its target deployed several barbed flanges
to make it nearly impossible to escape once caught.

  The pain of being impaled was only a drop in the bucket to what happened next. The spear retracted pinning his foot to the floor with its flanges. Unable to stop his momentum but also not able to free himself he fell forward. The dull crunch of his canine and draconic snout as it hit the floor echoed off the entrance walls. Wolf’s eyes were filled with stars, tear, and pain. Dazed as he was from the floor suddenly reaching up and punching him in the face.

  “The sacrifice has been chosen. Number of entities that have completed the Longyou Labyrinth, three out of four hundred million.”

  Wolf’s blood ran cold and an intense foreboding shot up his spine. A tug on his foot distracted him from his internal feelings as the spear impaling his foot was suddenly jerked toward the misty veil covering the Labyrinth entrance. If he didn’t know what a fish stuck on a fishing hook felt like before, he knew it now. In absolute agonizing detail.

  Several choice and creative strings of profanity spewed from his mouth, had anyone been present they would have been impressed that you could string that many together without repeating them each. It was in moments like this that his time spent drinking and partying with the Force Recon jarheads really showed its fruits of labor. Eventually the pain of being dragged around, over, and even through several series of spears, up several flights of stairs, through other obstacles, and thrown through the entrance caused him to pass out.

  Wolf woke up to wracking pain throbbing and coursing through his left leg that had been impaled and then subsequently used to drag him into the labyrinth. After being thrown into the veil he recalled tumbling for quite a long time before landing incredibly hard and feeling several bones break in the process. A series of braziers lining the walls providing mediocre light, but it was enough to see everything around him. The first thing Wolf did was examine for threats. While there was little to nothing he could really do against a determined foe. Even if there was a threat here he was determined to at least put up some form of fight.

  His luck which hadn’t been too stellar threw him a bone. H was lucky to spot no threats and what is more he saw that much of his gear was nearby. Albeit in much worse condition, but nearby. Next order of business was to take care of his wounds as best he could. Another bout of agony and searing pain later his leg was set, and shoulder was now no longer dislocated. To keep the broken leg stabilized he used the scabbard of the broken sword to create a makeshift splint and began to work on the other miscellaneous injuries. His satchel that contained much of the essential supplies was several dozens of meters away forcing him to crawl to it. Once there he retrieved a canteen to clean the wounds that were at risk of infection.

  Forcing so much pain on himself had him exhausted from the grunting, cursing, and all-around misery that he was inflicting on himself. Finished for now with all the basic things needed to properly heal he sat back and let his natural regenerative abilities start to mend the wounds at an accelerated pace. Once again, he found himself thanking this world’s regeneration principle as just setting the bones, staunching the bleeding and cleaning the wounds would be enough to survive and allow him to recover in a much, much shorter time than in his home world. Pulling out some travel bread, trail mix, and smoked meat he ate quickly. Placing several knives in easy to reach places he fell into a troubled sleep.

  The nightmare that night was one of when they were stuck in the Kalimantan Mountains hunting down several teams of a new type of Chinese Special Forces that had managed to kill an entire platoon of Green Berets. During this mission they found that the Chinese were taking a page out of their playbook and started using groups of extremely specialized hunter-killer teams. These groups’ sole purpose in life was to start taking out the US Special forces teams.

  During this mission Athena had been captured. Throughout the two years they were together him and Athena had really become close. Not in a romantic way as some in the team thought. More like little brother looking up to his big sister. When he found out that she had been captured when she and Jonjon had gone out to follow some tracks they were ambushed. Jonjon had been fatally wounded but still managed to fall back to where the rest of the team was. Jonjon had passed a few hours later from his wounds but after telling them that the Chinese teams seemed to have some form of advanced optical camouflage that they had never seen before. This had been the first time any military had been able to create something like this.

  Wolf felt the same dread as when they came to his door to tell them that his father who was previously believed to have been killed in action was found alive. He knew instinctually that he wasn’t the same man. His grandfather had been a career military man. He stayed until the Army would keep him. When he turned 62, the Army had finally decided that they couldn’t use him in uniform anymore. They did however have uses for him in other areas. Being fluent in both Tagalog and Thai he was sent act as a ‘defector’ and run a safe house for the miscellaneous Special Forces teams that would be operating in the areas. For operational security they were never told this until much later in their lives. His father had joined the Army in his mid-30s because he felt that his grandfather had betrayed his country and needed to make up for that betrayal. Not wanting to follow his grandfather’s footsteps by joining the Army, he joined the Marines. Throughout his career he was not associated with the Special Forces community, he still saw extensive combat in the Pacific theater.

  On the fourth invasion of Guam, the Chinese Fleet had managed to starve out much of the American forces into either surrender or outright slaughtered them. The battles were so fierce, and the Marines held out for so long that they included the battle of Guam into a new verse of the Marine Corps song. It was reported that when many of the marines had run out of ammunition they asked the Guamanian people to assist them with getting armed. The Guamanian people helped them make traditional Chamorro spears and clubs.

  At first when the Guamanian people brandished weapons made from the bones of the Chinese the Marines were appalled and horrified at it. As the siege continued desperation on both the Chinese and US Marines continued to mount and forced both sides to resort to some of the war’s most unspeakable atrocities. To the US Marine’s and the little remaining Army, Navy and Air force. They had turned the island of Guam into a meat grinder. From that day forward Guam was synonymous with its nickname ‘the bog’. Of the seventy thousand military and militia that stayed to defend the island only three hundred had managed to survive and be taken as prisoners of war when they finally took the island.

  His father had come home carrying a bag, and when asked he told them, “Your grandfather has finally come home” with tears in his eyes. This drastic contrast in how he spoke of his grandfather before to how he referred to him now was confusing. From that day forward his father spoke about him with only reverence and respect in his voice. Many years later when he graduated the TRF basic course and was about to attend a co-opt course with the Green Berets did he find out why.

  He was sitting on his cot surrounded by several others, from his class. The scene was one he had seen many times in the past, and each time one or more would no longer be in color but in shades of grey. A stark reminder that they no longer walked amongst their brothers and sisters. In this dream an old crusty officer by the name Colonel Sandra ‘Vixy’ Imhu walked in, the running joke amongst the candidates was that she was older than the US Army and drank more than the whole military put together. As she approached the barracks door the conversation died down.

  “Sergeant Mikall, come to my office in approximately twenty minutes.” She said tersely indicating that she was in one of her famously foul moods and walked away.

  Luke who was shaded in grey, pipped up laughing, “Looks like you about to get a spanking she keeps going on about.”

  Jean, one of the few that was still in color spoke up in his French accent all the while giggling, “Everyone knows she prefers to be spanked, rather than taking it.”

  Not sure how to feel about
seeing the Commandant of the TRF Basic course right before leaving. Rumors had circulated that one more person would be failed and need to repeat the course out of tradition and respect to the men left behind. Additionally, it was theorized that it was also to help the newcomers. No one knew for sure as they would rarely see each other again due to being broken up to the four winds and the high death rate in the field.

  After dressing in his uniform, he was directed to walk through the courtyard or ‘graveyard’ as most called it. Except for when they first came to the school they were absolutely forbidden from walking this area. With each step the pit in his stomach grew deeper and colder taking him toward the main schoolhouse building. He passed monuments commemorating the final stands and valiant battles of countless graduates. Names that he recognized from history books, movies, and even a few fiction books, seemed an odd touch he thought. All the statues, monuments and memorials had the names of the fallen written on them except for one. This one had a single inscription. “To the nameless men and women who provided sanctuary to ours and our own, we salute you and your sacrifice.”

  As I walk away from those I love

  Heavy is the load that we bear

  Knowingly reviled by our own blood

  Bringing darkness to those without care