Domort shouted something at Hawke as the laboratory vanished and was replaced by the familiar and infinitely nicer surroundings of his secret respawn point and Mana Node. Hawke even had time to breathe a sigh of relief before the death spell the Necromancer had cast before he teleported away hit him for over four hundred and fifty points of damage, which, in his currently naked state, were not mitigated at all. He was dead before he hit the floor.
* * *
“Why is he naked?” Desmond asked as Hawke opened his eyes.
“I don’t know. Just stand back, okay? Everybody except Tava. If he needs healing, we’ll let you know.”
Tava and Nadia were kneeling by his side. He was still naked. Whatever spell Domort – Gregory Ballantine – had cast on him hadn’t hurt much. He’d just felt the light go out, and poof. But he had Reincarnated in the Lair, the way he was supposed. The Ranger and the Elven magician were hugging him.
“You died twice?” Nadia said. “Oh, God, Hawke. What happened?”
I see you already spilled the beans, he told Saturnyx.
Hawke told them of his experience and double demise while he put on his clothes. All his stuff had been sent to his inventory when Domort had hijacked his respawn. After he was done, he checked his Identity: it had gone from 23 to 17, which sucked. His Experience Point total sucked even worse.
Current XP/Next Level: -1,000/16,000
Not only had he lost his stored thirteenth level, dying at 0 XP had cost him an extra thousand experience penalty. Which meant he would need to accumulate seventeen thousand XP to reach level thirteen. He wanted to scream and break stuff, but he composed himself. Throwing a tantrum wouldn’t fix anything. He could come back from all that crap.
“The Necromancer is an Eternal,” he concluded his story. “From Earth. His name is Gregory Ballantine. And he was saying some stuff from an old movie. My guess is, he’s been here a few decades before we arrived.”
“The Necromancer has haunted the Sunset Range for close to fifty years,” Tava said.
“Okay. We all knew that people have been taken from Earth before Eternal Journey Online. Besides the original humans, I mean. The guy who invented pizza, for example. He must have been one of them.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Desmond said. “Our main problem is that we can’t just kill him once. This guy is going to respawn a bunch of times before he’s done.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Speaking of respawns,” the Warrior continued. “I don’t understand why he let you come back to the Lair after he killed you.”
“Maybe I scared him when I woke up in his lab and tried to kill him. He doesn’t know how I was able to break free, both times.”
“In any case, maybe we can cut down on the dying?” Nadia said. “I almost had a heart attack when you weren’t at the Lair’s entrance.”
“Not dying sounds like a good plan.”
“So stick to it,” the Elf told him.
“Now, let’s get back to the Lair. What happened when I triggered the trap, anyway?”
“I was closest to you when it happened,” Alba said. “You were struck by a burst of lightning so intense Gosto had to heal my eyes, for its shape was burned into them. We returned to the entrance, but you weren’t there. We were debating what to do next when you reappeared.”
Hawke checked on his gear and discovered that all his armor and even Saturnyx had taken a lot of Durability damage from the attack that killed him. The day kept getting better and better.
“I’ll be more careful, I promise. I’m still casting Gift of the Martyr on all the squishies. Let’s go. We have a Lair to clear. And a Sleeping Prince to save.”
Eighteen
For slaying your foes, you have earned: 504 Experience (56 diverted towards Leadership).
Congratulations! Your Leadership has increased to Level Three!
(Leadership Abilities cannot be purchased until completing or abandoning a Lair)
Current XP/Next Level: -496/16,000. Leadership XP: 2,290/4,000
Quest Completed: Cleanse the Lair
You have earned 540 Experience (60 diverted towards Leadership).
Current XP/Next Level: 64/16,000. Leadership XP: 2,330/4,000
You have found: 8 gold denars.
You have found: Belt of the Ogre Slayer (Enchanted Quality).
The next room had been identical, down to the number of Spriggan defenders. The party had cleared them out easily enough, producing enough experience for Tava to reach ninth level and pushing Desmond to eight. They were achieving their primary goal, to help people advance and get ready to take on the Necromancer’s Stronghold. Hawke’s experience situation still sucked, of course. The loot he got was also underwhelming; seven gold, a handful of potions, and a Good Quality short sword that went into the ‘future handout’ section of his inventory. The rest of the party didn’t do much better in the random loot department: Tava found a quiver of arrows that did extra Fire damage and Nadia a ring that increased her Mana regeneration. That was about it.
The Quest benefits, on the other hand, were a lot nicer. Hawke’s new belt increased his Strength and Constitution by 3 each, which raised his Health Pool to a respectable 363. Tava got a 10-slot Pouch of Holding and a set of bracers that increased her critical hit chance by 25%, Gosto a Mana storage ring, and Nadia a necklace that cut casting times by one second or ten percent. Big score there. Alba replaced her old weapons with a brand-new set of paired daggers that did quite a bit more damage and raised her Dexterity and Constitution. Desmond got a nice helmet, except it wasn’t as good as the one he already owned. He grumbled but put it away in his inventory as an emergency replacement or to sell. All in all, it was a good haul.
Once again, there was one darkness-filled corridor, filled with traps, leading to the next area. Hawke decided to play it safe and cast Animate Shadow. A weird two-dimensional figure stood in front of him, becoming nothing but a thin black line if you looked at it from the sides. Hawke sent it down the corridor. Some traps were activated by the Shadowling’s presence; others required the creature to stomp of them. The shadow was destroyed after triggering three traps. Hawke waited until the cooldown expired and redid the spell.
“Why didn’t you do that before?” Desmond asked him.
“I was worried about alerting the critters at the other end. Sort of wanted to surprise them. But after getting blown up, I’m done taking chances.”
The second Shadowling lasted until it crossed one of the full-corridor traps; the lightning burst did over a thousand points of damage to the poor Darkness elemental, obliterating it. The third one lived to reach the end, until it purposely kicked a wall-mounted trap and got bathed in acid for more than enough damage to destroy it.
“My turn,” Hawke said.
Hawke turned on his defenses and walked up. At the halfway point, he spotted a trap the shadow hadn’t triggered. It must be designed to ignore summoned creatures. He examined it with his Mana senses. Magical, of course; he saw Mana filaments running across the wall at neck, waist, and knee height. The energy trail led somewhere inside the left wall and stopped. He couldn’t see any Mana concentrations inside the wall. A magical trigger for a mechanical trap, maybe? Alba came on over to examine the wall.
“There are three slits on the wall,” she said after a minute. “Barely visible. I think a trio of very thin blades will come out when triggered.”
Congratulations! Your Detect Traps Skill has been raised to 3!
Watching someone skilled at work paid off once again. Hawke had her go back to the room, produced one of the naginatas the Spriggans had been carrying, and waved it up and down, touching all the Mana filaments. Nothing happened. They must be attuned to be triggered by a living target. The animated shadow hadn’t counted. Hawke thought about it for a moment and headed back to the room. Once he was safely away, he tried to project his Mana outside his body, not in a s
pell, but as an extension of himself. He sent a trickle of energy through his central Chakra and concentrated on keeping it attached to himself; he pictured it like sticking his tongue out of his mouth. After a few misses that cost two dozen Mana, he got it right, creating a 20-Mana extension with the same ‘signature’ as the magical energy inside him. He started elongating it like a tentacle, feeding it more Mana through a pipeline copied from his Martyr spell. It cost over a hundred points to reach all the way to the trap, but it was worth it: three incredibly-thin blades struck at the empty air, and the trap became inert.
You learned a new Mana Channeler Discipline: Tulpa Creation (Level I)
You can project a portion of your Mana Pool out of your body while retaining a connection to it. Tulpas are thought-forms, creations of pure Mana whose shapes and abilities are only limited by your willpower and imagination. At your current level, your Tulpas have a maximum Strength and Dexterity of 10, at the cost of one Mana point per level, and Health equal to the total Mana you invest into them. Maximum range of the projection is equal to 100 feet per Tulpa Creation Level.
“What did you do?” Desmond asked.
“He sent a Mana construct that fooled the trap into thinking it was him,” Nadia explained, sounding a bit shocked. “You don’t have any spells that let you do that. That’s not Elemental magic.”
“I’ve picked up a few tricks, here or there.”
“Teach me!”
“I’m still learning, but I will share what I’ve got. Gotta warn you, it involves a lot of meditation stuff. Sort of like Yoga without the ridiculous positions.”
“Yoga isn’t ridiculous,” Nadia said. “I’m in.”
And I will show you just how non-ridiculous Yoga is, next time we have some quality time together, she sent via Saturnyx. I took lessons when I was younger, and now I am much more limber.
“Sounds good,” Hawke said. “Okay, it looks like I’ve figured out a way to trigger traps at a distance. We can save trap disarming for a safer situation, and just press on.”
After clearing the corridor, Hawke turned off his auras, activated Shroud of Twilight, and poked his invisible head into the next room.
It was bigger than the last two chambers, a near-circle with who knew how many sides; twenty-four or thirty-six, easily. Like before, there was an exit at the opposite end. In the center of the room, a three-headed dragon was taking a nap.
Triune Drake (Unseelie Sidhe)
Level 12 Drakeling (Elite)
Health 1200 Mana 720 Endurance 1200
The creature checked all the draconic boxes. Its reptilian four-legged body was curled up, but it had to be at least eight feet long, not counting a tail that extended for about the same length. It was covered by greenish-blue scales, although it also had ridges of feathers in bright green, yellow and red. The pair of wings on its back were also feathered, but its heads resembled the fire lizards Hawke had grown to know and hate, except the back of their skulls was larger, indicating a bigger brain, perhaps. As they snored, little puffs of smoke came from the three massive mouths, each big enough to bite a man in two.
And a second after he saw them, one of the heads reared up and looked directly at him.
Hawke turned around and started running, turning on every aura he had as fast as he could.
“Move away from the door!” he yelled as he heard the deep inhale that he knew would be followed by a torrent of flames.
Nineteen
He almost made it to the room. Almost.
Fire washed over him, a continuous stream that lasted three seconds. During the first second, his Bulwark of Light absorbed most of the flames, and he only took only fifteen points of damage. The next second, the flames burned him for… twenty-six Health? That was it? And over the last second he suffered a whole thirteen points. His HOTs healed the minor burns as fast as they were inflicted. The bottom of his feet hurt the worst, being in the direct path of the flames, but even they didn’t feel any worse than when his family had vacationed in Florida one summer and he had learned that walking on hot sand wasn’t smart.
That fire lizard padding really paid off. Screw dragons!
“Stay back!” Hawke called out as he got roasted twice more.
Once again, he hurt a little but was back to full Health the second the jets of flame were over. He looked back and saw one of the heads peering angrily down the tunnel. He gave it the finger and walked back to the rest of the group. The Party Interface showed him nobody had taken damage.
“Well, that was interesting,” he said.
Desmond sounded almost jealous: “What do you have under that suit? Asbestos underwear? I saw the damage numbers: twenty-four hundred points of damage over three seconds!”
“Better than asbestos. Fire lizard hide. Ninety-five percent fireproof, baby!”
“Good for you. My fire resistance is thirty percent, and my armor can stop the first thirty points of damage. Not good enough. I get hit by one of those jets, I die.”
“Well, there is that.”
“And they have three heads. Can you hold aggro on all three heads?”
“Okay, we need a plan. Plan A, I can try to Tame it. Being a Monster Trainer and all.”
“Can you tame dragons?” Nadia asked, sounding doubtful.
“According to the rules, I have a base 65% chance to use Stop Monster, which will keep it from attacking me, except that if I attack it while it’s helpless, it pretty much destroys my entire class. If it works, I have one minute to try to Tame it. Same chance of success, except that this monster has a higher than normal resistance to mind control. But if I fail, maybe I can kill it by myself.”
“I’m betting you don’t have ninety-five percent resistance to physical damage,” Desmond told him.
The Warrior had a point. Three biting heads would probably whittle him down quickly enough. Hawke checked on everybody’s Fire Resistance. Tava and Gosto had the highest after his; they had gotten fire lizard padding during their trip to Akila, and they were at fifty and thirty-five percent, respectively. Still not good enough to survive a full dose of fire breath. Alba, Nadia, and Rabbit were tied for worst at fifteen percent.
“I can cast Bark Skin on everyone,” Gosto offered. “It raises all elemental resistances by forty percent, as well as adding twenty-four points of armor.” He hung his head down. “I got it when I last advanced on the Path, and I keep forgetting to use it.”
That was one drawback of advancing too rapidly in levels, Hawke realized. From what Kinto and Korgam had told him, most Adventurers spent weeks or months training their new abilities after going up a level, learning to use their abilities before they went on new Quests. Rushing things was putting everyone at risk, but the longer he waited, the more Eternals would die at the Necromancer’s hands.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“Okay, that helps a lot,” he said out loud. “Anyone else got another mitigation source or ability?”
He kept forgetting how lucky he had been. His Artifact sword gave him better Resistance numbers than most Adventurers at his level. He still couldn’t do everything by himself; without his friends’ help, he wouldn’t have made it past the first Lair encounter. But he had to make sure they didn’t end up paying with their lives or Identities because they didn’t have his gear.
“I just learned Elemental Shield,” Nadia said. “It’s a Water and Fire spell that will stop up to twenty-five points of Elemental damage per level. A hundred and fifty, in my case. And it protects an area of fifteen feet for up to a minute. It doesn’t move with you, though, so we hav
e to stay behind it.”
“Okay, I think that gets us to survivable territory, at least with Gift of the Martyr thrown in. Guess I’m giving it to Desmond and Rabbit as well.”
The Dire Bear grunted when he heard his name, earning some petting and a snack from Tava. The big critter still reminded Hawke too much of the beast that had killed him on his second day in the Realms for him to feel comfortable around him. But he couldn’t let it die.
Desmond shook his head. “That’s suicide, man. I have more Health than you. Leave me out.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. With Gosto’s spell, I’m up to seventy percent resistance. I can handle one second of flame, maybe two if I’m getting heals.”
“All right, then,” Hawke told the group. “Plan A, I tame it. Plan B, we kill it. Let’s get our spells and moves coordinated, and then it’s go time. Let’s own a dragon.”
Whatever.
* * *
Hawke headed down the corridor towards the three-headed drake.
One good thing about the unnatural darkness was that the critter couldn’t see into it, so it wouldn’t know he was coming until he came out. The bad thing was that he couldn’t see them until then, either. But he was fine with that. He had Bark Skin on top of all his other buffs, and he was ready to dance with a dragon.
He came out running and, as expected, the three-headed monster was right outside, waiting for him. He tried Stop Beast on the critter, locking eyes with the central head and sending a tendril of Mana that hit the critter right between the eyes. For one second, nothing happened; he pushed with his mind, and felt the Drakeling shrug it off.
Stop Beast has failed.
A moment later, three streams of flame washed over him, but he cast Twilight Step for his first backstab of the day. The creature’s armor was as tough as the heaviest plate armor, and despite getting a critical hit on one of his sword attacks, he inflicted a measly 184 points of damage. Less than a sixth the monster’s total Health, and its long necks easily reached behind its body to snap at him. Before any of the three sets of massive jaws could bite down on him, Hawke used Dark Step to teleport to the only patch of darkness in range, namely the corridor. He took a moment to heal himself, another to recast Bulwark of Light, and then came out running while the monster spun in a circle, looking for him.
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 11
