One by one, the monsters fell. Hawke used another Burning Light to finish off four wounded critters, then more Hammers and Bolts of Darkness to wipe out the last enemies. Being a tank mage was great. The Spriggans didn’t run away but fought to the last. A few minutes after it had begun, the fight was over. Fourteen misshapen bodies littered the room, most of them piled up in a semicircle around the two fighters and the Dire Bear.
For slaying your foes, you have earned: 630 Experience (70 diverted towards Leadership).
Congratulations! Your Leadership has increased to Level Two!
(Leadership Abilities cannot be purchased until completing or abandoning a Lair)
Current XP/Next Level: 16,833/18,000. Leadership XP: 1,747/2,000
“Sumbitch,” Hawke muttered. “What’s the point of gaining abilities you could really use in a Lair when you can’t buy them until you’re off the damn Lair?”
You keep saying that.
Desmond downed an Endurance potion; his combat moves, not to mention plain fighting in heavy armor, drained him at a high rate, and so far nobody had learned a healing spell that undid physical fatigue. Hawke reached into his inventory and handed the Warrior a couple more potions. His Transference spell took care of his own Endurance needs quickly enough; the battle had made him spend a lot of Mana but he still had over three hundred left and was regaining it at the rate of one point every four seconds or so.
For loot, he found three gold, nine silver and six copper denars, and three Lesser Potions for each of his pools that restored twenty points immediately and another sixty over the next minute. Useful stuff. There were also a couple of Good Quality items that he stored away to sell off or maybe hand over to the Town Guards, not to mention fourteen Enchanted Quality naginatas that he split among the Eternals’ inventories. And his first magic ring, a Minor Warrior’s Ring that added 1-5 points of physical damage to his melee attacks.
And while his own experience gains had been low, the rest of the party was doing great. Gosto had hit level eight; his new spell, Nature’s Guardian, created a pet with four hundred health and decent defense stats. It only lasted two minutes and had a cooldown of five minutes, but it would be a big help in forming a defensive line. Nadia and Alba had both reached sixth level; the Sorceress now had the beloved classic spell Fireball, which inflicted 1-10 points of damage per level to anybody in a 20-foot radius. Its only drawback was that friendlies caught in the area of effect would be burned as well. Alba’s new spell, Shadow Shard, gave her a ranged attack with relatively low damage (1-6 points per level) but which could come in handy if she needed to hang back. Everybody had gotten a good amount of money, but no extraordinary loot. Hawke expected that would change as they went deeper into the Lair.
“One room down, out of who knows how many,” he said. “Let’s search for hidden treasure, take a break, and move on.”
Sixteen
“Only one way in,” Hawke said after the party spend half an hour searching the room and coming up empty. Nobody had found a secret passage or compartment anywhere in the sixteen-sided cube.
The corridor at the opposite end of the room was also filled with solid darkness that blocked all forms of vision. Hawke went first, with all his shields up, abandoning stealth in favor of protection and trusting that his Enlightenment would spot any traps before he stepped on them. He only wished he had put more points into his Perception Attribute.
You don’t use a reserve until you need it, Hawke replied as he slowly made his way forward. He already had seen a red square up ahead. That’s why it’s called a reserve.
I remember. I also remember thinking that is completely unfair.
“No freaking respect,” Hawke muttered as he stopped and hurriedly spent his twelfth level’s Attribute points, dumping them all on Perception. He kept level thirteenth in reserve. If he lost that, it would suck, but having the opportunity to come back from near death or a crippling debuff seemed too important to abandon completely. He soon spotted half a dozen traps and carefully moved around them, only to reach a section of corridor that was red through and through. Not just the floor, either: a red ‘wall’ blocked the corridor, indicating that passing through the area in any way would trigger the trap.
Hawke might be able to bypass it with one of his short-range teleports, but that would leave the rest of the group exposed. He tried to peer past the blocking trap, and found only two other red spots beyond that one. It wasn’t great, but it could be worse.
I think I’ve got to disarm the traps.
“Well, first, I’ll try a couple of the small ones I bypassed. See how good I am.”
“I’ll respawn, then. Be a little more positive.”
Hawke went back to one of the traps, wishing his sword could be more supportive. He knelt near a small square on the ground marked in red and examined it carefully. At first, he didn’t notice anything, but eventually he was sure that the highlighted section was slightly higher than the surrounding tiles. Pressure trap?
Congratulations! Your Detect Traps Skill has been raised to 2!
“I’m going to take that as confirmation,” he said, backing away and summoning one of the last Shoddy Tridents he’d taken from the Murk Arachnoids after his first fight. He’d only gotten two of them back after he’d lent them out to the townsfolk who helped take the town. He grabbed the long-handled weapon, backed as far back as he could, and used it to push on the square. Just as he’d expected, he felt it give in under the weapon; he pushed a little harder and three spikes pierced the tile; they were arranged so that they would perforate someone’s foot at three different spots and he would bet good money they were coated with some nasty poison.
“Well, that worked. My Disarm Traps Skill didn’t go up, though.”
“Great. How do you even disarm a trap? My brother was infantry, not ordnance disposal. He never said anything about disarming IEDs.”
Tava joined the telepathic conversation: Perhaps, my darling intended, you could ask the Shadow Assassin in our party. Alba has all the basic skills of a Rogue, as well as the tools of the trade. And one of her spells lets her see in the dark.
“Doh. And don’t you dare say it, Saturnyx!”
* * *
Congratulations! Your Disarm Traps Skill has been raised to 2!
With Alba lending him the tools and talking him through it from a safe distance, Hawke disarmed his first trap. He would have felt prouder of himself if he had ever cared about the drudgery Rogues went through in so many games. Sneak, sneak, disarm, unlock, sneak again; who needs that crap? He liked being a Paladin Ninja, but he figured he could leave the boring stuff to the thief types. The next trap, he let Alba handle while he looked over her shoulder, since she was protected from harm by his Gift of the Martyr. The hands-on lesson and another trap raised his skill to level three.
He tried it again on his own, and this time the little square on the floor exploded on him for over five hundred points of damage! His defensive spells, armor and other resistances reduced that to ‘only’ a hundred and eleven, but it was still very painful. On the other hand, being a tank who could disarm traps and survive the occasional ‘oopsie’ was very convenient. Some healing and resetting of spells later, he tried another one, succeeded, and raised his Skill to four. Time to try the tough one.
He and Alba walked up to the solid red barrier and ex
amined it carefully. “I don’t see any mechanisms,” he said after several fruitless minutes.
“Neither do I,” the Shadow Assassin admitted. “It must be magical in nature.”
“Okay, then. You should go back to the other room. I’m going to try something, and if it fails, I only want it to damage me.”
“You are so kind,” she whispered. “My valiant and handsome teacher.”
He pointedly did not watch her as she walked away. She is with Desmond. Don’t freaking add to the drama.
I’m not doing anything!
“I’m working, I’m working,” he muttered, forcing himself to relax and let his Mana Channeling senses wake up. He ‘saw’ the Mana flowing through his body first: the intricate network now included four ‘pipelines’ reaching behind him towards the people he was protecting. Next, he focused on the trapped area. It took him a few seconds before he sensed the flow of Mana there; it was shaped like an intricate web, with thin energy filaments woven closely together. Nothing larger than a hummingbird could move through the web without touching it. And then? He saw the filaments were connected to a Mana cluster gathered above the web. It was similar to the Chakras in his body, a place where energy was gathered and concentrated.
“So that’s what a spell looks like,” he said as he looked closer and saw something like a clockwork mechanism, a complex network of forces coiled and held back by ‘gates’ that would open when certain conditions were met. He inspected the components and the trigger of the magical bomb. He didn’t know what the spell was, but he knew that over a hundred Mana units were stored there, waiting to be activated.
Congratulations! You have picked up a new Ability: Spellcraft Level One.
As you begin to understand the Mana flows inside yourself, you have turned your senses to the way those energies manipulate reality through spells and enchantments. At level one, you can discern the Mana spent on a spell or ongoing effect.
“Not bad for a dumbass, if I do say so myself.”
Sighing, Hawke turned back to the trap. He still didn’t know how to deactivate it. If he disturbed the Mana network, it would go boom. Or would it? What if he reshaped the web of Mana the way he had controlled the flow of Mana through his body? He took a few steps back and reached out towards the web. Nice and gentle. Nice and…
The world flashed in a bright burst of the purest red before everything turned black.
Seventeen
A bright light tore through the darkness surrounding him.
Hawke tried to turn away from it. Its intensity was painful, like staring into the sun. He suddenly realized he didn’t have eyes to close, or a head to turn away. He was seeing things but had no sense of his body. Which, come to think of it, was the definition of an out of body experience.
“My sister and Tenebra were both right. You are something of a dumbass.”
The light changed and became a woman. Lumina Gloriana stood before him in all her glory. He was humbled, shamed, and, he was forced to admit, a little turned on.
“You know, you ladies are going to destroy my self-esteem if you keep insulting my intelligence.”
“Your self-esteem is in little danger, Hawke Lightseeker. But your life, on the other hand, is in peril.”
“What’s going on? Shouldn’t I be respawning?”
“The Necromancer has captured your essence as it traveled toward your Reincarnation site. Every time your body has been destroyed, he sensed it, for he has forged a link to all those he trapped and is using as an energy source. He was not able to capture you before, but has been refining his techniques, improving them every time you died.
“More recently, he tried to take one of your friends, but her Reincarnation place was sacred to Shining Father and he is jealous of his prerogatives. Domort found much grief and little joy in that attempt.”
“So what happens now?” Hawke asked.
He was angry at himself, for trying to be the big hero and playing with deadly traps when he suspected the Necromancer had been sniffing around Nadia’s respawn. He truly was an idiot.
“I interceded for you before. I cannot do the same twice. But my sister Sophia, goddess of Wisdom, can grant you a small boon. It is not without a price, however.”
“What is the boon, Your Exalted Divinity?”
“The boon is simple. You will Reincarnate in the Necromancer’s laboratory, the place where he syphons the souls of Eternals. Unlike his regular victims, however, you will be awake. Awake, and able to act. What you do after that is up to you.”
“Okay. I can work with that. What is the price?”
A second goddess appeared. She was also impossibly beautiful and intimidating, but beyond that, she saw right through Hawke’s posturing, bravado and dumbassery, straight into the real him. He felt her peel every layer of his self until she had examined it all, and it took less time than the blink of an eye. It was disturbing in a way that Saturnyx’s ability to read his every thought was not. Sophia scared the crap out of him.
“As well I should. Wisdom is rarely a source of comfort. The least aware among you mortals tend to be the happiest.”
“How may I help you, Your Exalted Divinity?” Hawke said formally. No way he was bantering with the Goddess of Wisdom.
“In return for awakening you upon your Reincarnation, I ask of you but one thing: spare the Sidhe Prince and release him from his prison. He once performed a great service for me, although he knows it not. Returning him to the board of the Great Game will allow him to play an even greater role in the struggles to follow.”
“Sounds fair. I agree. I swear upon my power, life, and soul, to do everything in my power to release the Sidhe Prince whose Lair I have invaded. I do so swear. I will do as you ask, I swear again, and may the Arbiters punish me and the Makers destroy me if I break this vow. Sworn thrice, I have.”
“Then we are finished here, but I will leave you with a small piece of advice: sometimes it is better to listen before you act.”
“Okay, but…”
Darkness.
* * *
“Igor! Igor, you miserable hunchback! Where did you put my carving knife?”
Hawke’s eyes were closed; he was naked and lying on a cold, flat surface. Like a sacrificial altar or a morgue’s autopsy table. More like the latter, he realized after a second; the surface was made of some metal. He kept his eyes closed and his breathing shallow; this had to be what the goddess meant about listening before acting. Somebody was walking around, rummaging through a bunch of objects. A glass item hit the ground and shattered.
“Damn you, Igor!”
“My… name… is… Eee-gor!”
There was a dry chuckle, the kind you get from an old joke you keep bringing up like a favorite song, something you never tire of hearing. Hawke was sure he had heard those lines before, in some old movie. And they were speaking in English. The Necromancer was an Eternal!
I can. I’m listening to the Necromancer. Where are you?
Stand by. A goddess sort of saved me. I may be using you momentarily.
“Come here, you big galoot,” the speaker – had to be Domort – said. “Here it is. Good. Now be a good boy and get ready to collect all the spinal fluid after I make the incisions. That’s where most of the soul stuff collects, you know.”
“I know, Master.”
I could kill him now, Hawke thought. But then he would respawn. Still, that gives m
e a few hours inside his laboratory. I could do a lot of damage there. Maybe find his spawn point and camp the bastard, kill him until he’s gone for good!
Gotta try, Hawke thought as he heard the footsteps getting closer.
The voice was right over his face now. “All right, you asshole. Let’s see exactly what you’re made off.”
Hawke opened his eyes and saw a man with sparse black hair, a clean-shaven face, and annoyingly normal features. Domort could have been anybody. Hawke had time to notice he was inside a Doctor Frankenstein-style laboratory and glance at Domort’s stats before he acted.
Gregory ‘Domort’ Ballantine (Human, Eternal)
Level 14 Necromancer, Homunculist
Health 846 Mana 1,580, Endurance n/a
A split-second later, he had used Twilight Step to appear behind Domort with the Saturnyx Twins in his hands. He delivered a double backstab, realizing as he did that the Necromancer’s body was hideously deformed. His face looked normal, but his back was twisted and covered with layers of fat, gristle and bone under the simple white robe he wore. And he had a bunch of magical defenses that blunted his attacks. Hawke barely inflicted ninety-eight damage total, and he realized there was no way he could win that fight. He activated Node Recall.
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 10
