by Kyle Johnson
“Huh, I wonder why I never got part 1 of that quest?” he wondered aloud, examining his notifications. “Probably had to ask that old elf about it. Damn, I need to ask his name when I see him!”
Jeff turned back to leave the room, examining the fiery passage. Just as he assumed, the flame pattern had shifted when he touched the orb, but not in the way he imagined. The searing gouts of flame were no longer turning on and off in a pattern, or indeed at all. Instead, every jet was ignited, burning white-hot, filling the entire passage with flames. Jeff waited for a minute, hoping a new pattern would begin, but he soon realized that wasn’t going to happen.
“What the hell?” he sputtered. “There’s no way to get through that! It’s like the AI’s want you to die…” He trailed off as he realized the implication. The elf said only a Traveler could complete the Trial, he thought as comprehension dawned. This is what he meant: you have to die to get out of here. An NPC would be trapped in here.
Jeff’s joy at his new spell faded as the full impact hit him. He doubted this was the only challenge that would require this of him; doubtlessly, he was going to have to die to escape from each room. While death by the scorching flames was swift and painless, he doubted he was lucky enough for that to the case every time. Especially since Lythienne had advised him to practice his attack spell before the next challenge…
Jeff sighed and squared his shoulders. No point in delaying, he told himself grimly. Might as well get it over with. He decided the best way to handle the fire was to simply run into it. Walking into it would just prolong the inevitable. Steeling his determination, he backed up as far as the room allowed and pushed off the wall, running at a dead sprint for the flames. Before he got too close, he decided to close his eyes – no point in watching his death, after all – and promptly tripped over his own foot, plummeting to the stone. He reached his hands out to catch his fall and screamed as one hand landed in a gout of flame.
A red dot flickered to life in his vision, but he was far too much pain to care. Jeff looked down at the charred stump of his left arm: the fire had literally turned his freaking hand into ash! He moaned in agony and used his other hand to push himself to his feet before diving headfirst into the flames. The pain vanished in a flash of white light, followed by cool darkness as he slowly reformed before the obelisk.
“That freaking sucked!” he yelled, glancing down to see that at least his hand had regrown when he respawned. Losing the limb permanently would have been a lot worse! He took several deep breaths, allowing the memory of the pain to fade from his mind, before checking the red notifications:
“Seriously, unable to clap?” he exclaimed, dismissing the notifications. “What the hell, Veronica?” He heard her chuckle in his head and ground his teeth in frustration. After a moment, he set his anger aside and took a deep breath. “So much for fire being an easy death,” he muttered. “I’ve gotta stop saying stuff like that: I think it’s giving Veronica ideas. Okay, so gotta practice my new spell and then go see what the next part of the Trial is.
He walked to the just before the edge of the lava river and looked around for a target for the spell. The most obvious one was the large door, and he shrugged. He doubted he could hurt it, or the whole point of the Trial would be moot. He held his hand up and charged the spell, pulling SP up from his stomach and gathering it above his palm before willing it to launch at the door. The tiny ball flew unerringly at the door and exploded in a flash of light, leaving the door completely unmarked and a blinking dot in his vision. He called it up to his sight:
He almost told Veronica to withhold showing him zero-damage notifications, but he supposed knowing that you weren’t causing damage was useful, too. He ignored the blinking dots that accumulated as he continued to bombard the door. The spell took about 3 seconds and 10 SP to cast, so each minute he was using 200 SP but regenerating 180 SP. At that rate, he could cast the spell continuously for about two and a half hours before running out of SP.
He started getting creative with his shots, trying to hit only the latches on the distant door or targeting a specific rune, but he missed as often as he hit at that point. The problem, he realized, is that once he held his hand up, it blocked his view of whatever he was targeting, so he was more or less just firing in the right direction and hoping. He tried to call the bolt up to just the tip of his finger, but it wouldn’t work: the spell was designed to launch from his palm, and that’s all it could do. I could probably change that in the mindscape, he mused. Or, maybe I could add a homing feature to the spell. Heck, I could probably adjust it to keep firing bolts as long as I supply SP to it! He calmed himself down as he realized that those were things to be dealt with later. Now, he needed to move to the next part of the Trial.
Chapter 5
Jeff’s SP regenerated fully as he walked across the bridge that had apparently risen when he touched the last globe. The next passage was blessedly void of the flames that filled the previous one and was smooth dark, and somewhat narrower than the last. A strange, musty smell filled his nostrils as he moved forward: a scent that reminded him of wet concrete or bricks. The orange glow behind him faded as he moved farther down the passage, replaced with an eerie, green light that pulsed against the walls rhythmically.
The passage ended in a room that was much larger than the last one, with a ceiling that was barely visible at the edge of his sight. The walls were made of rough stone, filled with holes and crevices, and moisture seeped down them to drip onto the floor. A pedestal identical to the one in the previous Trial room rose at the far end of the room, this one sporting a green, glowing crystal orb that bathed the room in an eldritch light. It was the ceiling, though, that caught his attention.
Jeff squinted at the shadowed surface overhead. His Perception wasn’t great, but he was sure that the ceiling was shifting around. To him, it resembled a roiling mass of shadows hanging above him, ready to drop on him if he entered. Yeah, sounds fun, he thought silently. Let’s see what this does, instead. Raising his hand to the ceiling, he unleashed a single Mana Bolt. The ball of energy streaked to the ceiling, where it exploded with an illuminating flash. In that brief radiance, Jeff saw that what he thought was a mass of shadows was instead a horde of bat-like creatures, clinging to the surface.
As one, the monsters dropped from their perch and swooped into the air, shrieking in anger. It only took them a moment to home in on Jeff, and the horde descended upon him from all sides, their small fangs and talons slashing at him. Panicking, Jeff began to swing wildly about with his staff, his blows completely untargeted, but the creatures swarmed him so closely that every blow cracked into at least one with the sound of wood striking stone. Wings shattered, heads cracked open, and several of the small creatures tumbled lifelessly to the floor.
They’re made of stone, Jeff realized as he kept swinging wildly, trying to drive the swarm off. They’re some kind of golem. The realization didn’t help him much as the earthen monsters swirled about him, steadily bleeding him until suddenly, the world went dark and he found himself slowly reforming in front of the main obelisk.
“Well, that could have gone better,” he sighed, checking his clothing and equipment, which fortunately was repaired with his respawn. He sat down heavily, going back over the encounter in his head. “What could I have done better?”
He realized that his first mistake was walking all the way into the room. Doing so gave the creatures access to him from all sides. It would have been better to retreat to the passage, where the bats could only come at him from the front. Then, he could slowly retreat down the passage, killing the creatures as he went; hopefully, they wouldn’t follow him into the main chamber. If they were normal monsters, he’d be less confident of that, but if they were golems, then they were bound to follow whatever orders they had been given. Since he hadn’t encountered any of them out here in the main chamber, he presumed those orders forbid the creatures from entering.
Resolved, he rose to his feet and hefted his staff. It t
ook him another few minutes to trek back to the room, where he discovered that, while the surviving bats had returned to the roost, the handful he crushed still lay on the floor. Maybe it’s a battle of attrition? he guessed silently. Maybe I just need to keep at it until they’re all gone?
Taking a deep breath, he leaned out of the passage just enough to catch a glimpse of the ceiling and hurled a Mana Bolt at it. The bats reacted as before, dropping from their perch and swooping down to attack him. This time, though, he took several steps back into the passage, forcing the creatures to attack from but a single direction.
As they swarmed him, he realized his mistake. He hefted his staff to knock the creatures out of the air as they approached, but his sweeping strike bounced off the nearest wall and deflected to the floor. He moved to readjust, but the swarm was already upon him, clinging to his arms, back, and shoulders, tearing and biting. Pain erupted as he tried desperately to brush the creatures off, but in a short time, he was overcome by darkness and found himself standing once again before the obelisk.
Okay, that didn’t work at all, he fumed silently, tossing his staff to the ground in a huff. I don’t think I even got one of them, that time! If it’s a battle of attrition, I think I’m losing!
Jeff went back over the scene in his head and decided that he needed to use the passage to protect his back, but he needed to keep his weapon in the room where he could use it more freely. He made the trek back to the room and repeated his earlier strategy, only this time he simply moved to the very edge of the passage. This tactic was much more effective: although he still received innumerable cuts, having the creatures only in front of him allowed him to make more careful, aimed strikes, felling ten or more creatures quickly.
Suddenly, the swarm, as if realizing that their attack wasn’t working, retreated out of staff range, clinging to the walls around him. The bats all turned their heads toward him and opened their mouths, emitting a piercing howl that stabbed into the sides of Jeff’s head in a spike of agony. He dropped his staff, clutching his skull and falling to his knees, not even really aware when the swarm descended upon him and shredded his prone body once more.
His senses returned as he respawned before the obelisk once again. “What the hell was that?” he exclaimed, rising shakily to his feet. A number of notifications were blinking in his vision, and he scrolled through them, ignoring the myriad damage notifications and focusing on the important ones:
Well, that explains that, he grimaced. This challenge was going to be more difficult than just wearing the bats down a little at a time, he realized. If he went into the room fully, he could destroy a small number of them before dying. If he was too effective at taking them out, though, they would retreat and hit him with a scream. He supposed covering his ears might help, but he doubted it would be that easy, and he didn’t know how many times the creatures could scream or if it even had a cooldown.
What I need, he realized, is a better way to hit them before they can swarm me. I can take one, maybe two out with a Mana Bolt, but then we’re in hand-to-hand combat, and I’m getting my butt handed to me. I guess I need to either modify Mana Bolt or make a new spell, entirely.
Decided, Jeff sat down and leaned against the obelisk, descending into his mindscape. He took some time to practice his staff forms, still feeling unsettled in the aftermath of the bats’ sonic attack. He let his frustration and fear flow into his attacks, pummeling the target dummy until he felt his mind and nerves settle.
He racked the mental construct and settled to the floor, deciding that the next time he went to modify the space, he would add something like a recliner or even a beanbag to facilitate sitting quietly in the future. Putting that thought aside, he let his mind drift, trying to envision what he needed.
As I see it, I have two choices, he analyzed. Well, I have a lot, but two practical ones that I think I can pull off in short order. First, I can create a rapid-fire sort of attack: I could keep drawing SP and fire multiple bolts quickly. The problem with that is that I don’t know how fast a rate-of-fire I can get: if I can fire one bolt per second, I might get 4 or 5 shots off before I’m swarmed.
My other option, he continued internally, is to create a bolt with a burst effect. I could probably double my SP draw if I channeled it through both hands, and I could have it explode for a much bigger blast radius. The issue there is that I would probably need to spend a lot more time channeling enough SP, so I’d probably only get one shot. If it didn’t take out whole lot of them at once, it wouldn’t be worth it.
He was completely torn. Both options were useful without being a real solution, and he was sure that at some point, he’d develop both of them, but he doubted he had the time and SP to develop both right now. The quest didn’t have a time limit, but he couldn’t go forever without food and, especially, water.
As his frustration built, he forced himself to step back from the problem and allowed his mind to drift. Rather than focusing on the challenge at hand, he went back over the tale Lythienne had told him. He knew that the story was just lore created by the AI’s to add flavor and history to the game, but he still felt a stab of empathy for the woman. He imagined what it would be like to watch your former students and colleagues fall around you, fighting to save them but unable to stop the horde from claiming their lives. He wondered how it would have felt to realize you were the last of your kind, with no one to give a lifetime of knowledge. He could almost picture the old woman, standing alone in the rubble of some ruined city, as explosions rained around her…
His eyes shot open. Grenades! he suddenly realized. That’s what I need: a grenade launcher! The best of both worlds!
He closed his eyes and began imagining the spell. He felt mana rising into his center, splitting to course down both arms at once, gathering a large ball between his open palms. As he felt the warmth and light bathing his hands, he continued to pull mana into his arms. He felt the first bolt fly and began forming a second as the first exploded against an imaginary bat swarm, but he could sense that it was forming too slowly. He abandoned the image and started over, trying to pull more mana into his hands, but the draw wouldn’t increase, no matter how hard he pulled.
He stopped and analyzed the problem. I need a big power discharge when my power draw is too low, he thought carefully. What I need is a capacitor: I need to store a bunch of power in someplace it’s easy to discharge. Someplace like my arms…
He started the vision again, this time feeling the mana draw from his center, but rather than pooling between his hands, he imagined the power gathering in his arms, compressing and packing it until his arms trembled and burned. Only then did he allow a sliver of that energy to gather between his palms, firing it at soon as it formed and forming another. The first struck an imaginary swarm of bats, exploding and taking out several; the second streaked out a second later, followed by a third and a fourth. With each blast, he could almost feel the energy dissipating in his arms, until it was finally exhausted.
Excited, he restarted the image, trying to make it even more realistic: he pictured himself huddled in the passageway, gathering power into his arms, then leaping into the bat-filled room, blasting the ceiling. He could see himself running along the walls, kiting the creatures while firing blasts over his shoulder, watching the swarm get whittled down by the small explosions until the power was exhausted. Once he was certain he had the image as perfect as he could make it, he began feeding SP into it, slowly, imbuing the vision with energy. The scene reran in his mind repeatedly as he poured magical energy into it, until suddenly he felt it coalesce within him.
Excited, he rose to his feet and began the spell. He felt the energy filling his arms for several seconds, until they trembled and burned under the force of the energy filling them. He raised his hands and pointed them at the glass dome, unleashing blast after blast of energy at the walls until, after 7 blasts, the energy was spent and his arms were left exhausted and shaking.
“Yes!” he crowed, jumping into t
he air and pumping his tired arms. He noticed a blinking notification icon and pulled up the message:
So, if I dedicate 20% of my SP to the spell, he thought excitedly, I can fire 6 or 7 shots and do about 6 or 7 LP blast damage per shot! This is a major upgrade. Of course, the Strength debuff afterward sucks a bit, but…
He willed himself to exit his mindscape and rose to his feet. He spent the next 30 minutes practicing his new spell. He could only cast the spell once per 5 minutes, since he discovered that he couldn’t summon enough mana to his arms while they were debuffed, although he did discover he could fire Mana Bolts while he was recovering. Still, that gave him ample time to recover his SP in between barrages.
He hefted his staff once more and trudged across the bridges, pausing at last at the entrance to the room. He glanced up at the ceiling and realized that he had seriously underestimated the number of bats remaining when he was in his mindscape. Even if every one of his blasts took out an optimal number of enemies, he would probably only be destroying 30 or 40 with his spell. Even if he ran around the edge of the room, kiting the creatures into following him, he would be overwhelmed immediately once the spell ended, unless he timed the run perfectly to end back at the entrance to the room, where he could attempt to hold them off with his staff…with arms weakened by the debuff from the spell.
He leaned against the wall, studying the room, trying to determine how he could use the environment to his advantage. The room’s not really big enough for me to kite them well, he realized grimly. I’ll have to run around the perimeter, while they can fly across and intercept me. Even if I’m firing blasts at them, I can only take out a 5-foot radius at a time, which means that they might overwhelm me in the middle of the spell. What I need is to get them all to bunch up… His face lit as an idea came to him. It wasn’t perfect, and it relied on a couple of assumptions, but it was the most likely chance he had to succeed so far. And, even if he failed, it promised to destroy the maximum number of enemies, which meant he could eventually win the battle of attrition.
