We all started walking down the sewer. There were no more words between us as we walked, lost in our own thoughts. Dawn’s light hovered out in front of us, illuminating the path.
We soon came to a sort of crossroads, where another sewer path cut across ours. Arven used his dagger to mark one of the stones, showing where we came from, and it occurred to me that they didn’t have a mental map like I did. I’d been walking in the back, but when I saw this I made my way up to him to let him know.
“I just realized you wouldn’t know this, but I have a mental map of everywhere we go. When I look at it, the dungeon entrance is marked, so I’ll always be able to get back to it. You should probably keep marking the path in case we get separated, but if we have to move fast don’t worry about getting lost.” I told him.
He grunted in response. “Good to know. Anything else you’ve forgotten to tell us?”
“Not that I know of… I’ll let you know if I think of anything.”
He just nodded and took the left-hand path. “Watch your step there,” he said, motioning to the center of the intersection where a pile of debris had collected. “The hole is blocked up but that’s a passage to the surface. Step on that and odds are good you’ll be falling into the sky before you know it.”
“What do you mean by ‘falling into the sky?’” Lucus asked, being careful to step clear of the debris.
Dorian chuckled, “We’re upside-down, what do you think is beneath us? Don’t worry though, you’ll see it soon enough.”
We walked further into the sewers, and after a few minutes something started tickling at the back of my mind. I kept my eyes open, and my crossbow loaded, but nothing presented itself. Eventually Arven stopped us, then he motioned for Lucus and me to come forward.
He pointed down at the floor in front of him. “Move carefully but have a look down there. Don’t fall in.”
The two of us edged forward and peered over the side of the hole in the floor, a tingling sense of wariness going off in the back of my mind.
Below us, close enough for me to reach out and touch, was an iron grate set into the stone. Through it we could see a pale featureless emptiness. Soft gray light shined up from the hole in the floor. I shifted around a bit, trying to see anything else though the hole. When the angle was right, I could make out the roofs of nearby buildings, or at least the ruins of them. It didn’t seem like anything was in good condition.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, suddenly aware that less than a meter of stone separated me from a bottomless pit the size of the entire world. Intellectually I’d known what to expect, but seeing it was a different thing entirely.
Arven spoke again, “People who’ve had party members fall in got to watch them die of exposure, lack of air, or in one case I know of, dehydration. They never stop falling.”
I took a step back from the edge and inhaled sharply as the sense of wrongness I’d been feeling suddenly intensified.
Danger Sense has activated.
I spun around looking for the threat, finally thinking to look up. Scuttling along the ceiling like a monster in a Japanese horror movie was an empty eyed animated corpse. Darkness clung to it like a cloak, but my darkvision cut through it.
I shouted something unintelligible and raised my crossbow even as the thing peeled its upper body away from the ceiling and reached for Savas’ head with long taloned fingers.
Shockingly, my crossbow bolt took it in the chest, and the force of it made its grab for Savas miss its mark. Barely. Suddenly it was off the ceiling and in the middle of us, claws raking in every direction. Practically before I could blink Arven met its claws with his swords, and the two of them moved with blinding speed as we all scrambled to clear a space.
Lucus got behind the creature and hammered it on the back of the head with his mace. The force of the blow sent the thing crashing to the ground and Savas took the opportunity to stab it with his daggers over and over while it struggled to rise.
It eventually managed to pull itself away from the rogue and scuttled up the wall, latching onto the ceiling once again. It hissed at us, and my second crossbow bolt, which I’d been struggling to load while all this took place, took it right through its empty eye socket, pinning its head to the ceiling and causing it to lose its grip.
Its own weight ripped its head off its rotting shoulders as the head remained attached to the ceiling by the bolt and the body clattered to the floor, continuing to spasm for several seconds before falling still.
Souleater: You have captured the spirit of Nightstalker Ghoul.
I could now feel something dark and slimy swimming around in my soul-space, looking for a way out, yet it found none. There were no borders to the soul-space, nothing for it to pound on or claw at, there hadn’t been since I ate the reality seed. It floated in a vast nothingness much like the sky below us, and I shuddered a bit at the comparison between that pale sky and my own soul.
Souleater apparently bypassed the need for me to conceptually grasp the thing I was putting into my soul-space, but I found that now that it was there I could examine it the same way I could as if I had identified it.
> Nightstalker Ghoul
>
> Level 33 Nightstalker (Tier 2 Undead, Ghoul)
>
> The Nightstalker Ghoul is known to stalk its prey for hours or even days, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Like all ghouls its claws secrete a paralytic poison that can incapacitate victims, and the Nightstalker takes this to the extreme by inflicting devastating surprise attacks on the unsuspecting. It gets its name from the cloak of shadows that clings to it, concealing it and allowing it to close in on its victims unaware.
“I hate those things,” Savas said. He was leaning against the wall catching his breath and compulsively rubbing his neck where the ghoul had nearly taken his head off.
Dawn was going around healing wounds and cleansing the ghoul’s poison. Arven had locked up near the end of the fight as he’d take the most direct hits, and he was now shaking off the lingering numbness.
I sat against the wall opposite Savas and rubbed my lower back, which was sore from loading the crossbow in a hurry. I was actually shocked I’d managed to hit the thing not once but twice. I’d never fired a crossbow in my life, and I’d been expecting to practice on a few slow moving zombies or the like, not whatever that thing was.
I opened up my character sheet and looked at my stats. The only thing I could think of was that my stats had compensated for my personal lack of experience. How much impact did stats actually have on what I could do?
Checking the descriptions of the stats in the Help menu told me that the relevant bits here were Dexterity and Perception, two of my highest stats. Dexterity contributed to ranged weapon damage, while Perception affected physical accuracy. Agility was also important, as it was related to physical speed, including attack speed, and it being high is likely why I managed to get my shots off in time.
In the process of examining this, I also learned that I could put progression points directly into my stats at a two-to-one ratio, where 2 points would get me one stat point of my choice. Cross-path limits still applied, and only classes had attributes associated with them, so all species points would end up being cross-path.
Fortunately one of the perks of Trailblazer was that all stats were on its path list. Thief on the other hand only had Agility, Dexterity, and Perception on its path attributes list. That potentially made Trailblazer points more valuable than I’d originally thought.
Lucus saw me leaning against the wall rubbing my back and came over to check on me. He hadn’t gotten a single scratch from the ghoul, and had just spent the past minute or so trying to scrape ghoul-gore off his mace from the one big hit he’d gotten against the thing.
“How are you doing? That was good shooting there.”
“I’m fine, my back is just sore from pulling the draw on that crossbow… I kinda surprised myself there.”
“If you’re sore from just one pull you need to exercise those muscles more.” He winked one of his soft purple eyes at me as he said it, letting me know he was kidding.
I pulled out the devil-foot lever mechanism and used it to reset the crossbow. It was much more awkward to do, but also much easier. I let myself sink into Tavi’s mindset, taking the opportunity to banter with him while I could.
Now that I better understood what was happening I found this both easy to do and more obviously something beyond just roleplaying. It was almost like I was moving my consciousness more into Tavi’s body and relying more on it for my senses and thought processes.
“I keep asking for an exercise partner but you never seem to be up for it. If I didn’t know better I might be worried about the state of your muscles… At least one of them never seems to get any exercise.” I joked.
He flushed and looked away, muttering something as he did. “What was that?” I asked him, grinning my many-toothed grin and wiggling my ears at him. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”
“I said I thought Ryke was your exercise partner for that sort of thing.”
I looked at Lucus, puzzled by this comment. What did Ryke have to do with this? Was he… was he jealous of Ryke? Maybe he hadn’t understood my joke? No, he was blushing… He must have understood my implication. What was the problem then? He must know Ryke wouldn’t mind…
I forcibly broke off that train of thought, flailing in my own head, trying to separate myself from Tavi again. Fuck, I was so worked up all of sudden. What was wrong with me? This was like going through puberty again. We’d just killed a ghoul and were in some hellscape of a dungeon.
I couldn’t think of a worse time for this.
Thankfully Arven chose that moment to bail me out. “I can walk again so break’s over. Come on, I want to make it to the wall within the hour.”
We started out again, picking up the pace a bit, and I forced myself to focus. We passed more holes in the floor and more intersections. Arven led us, but it was clear the others all knew where we were going.
I figured it out when I saw the outline of it on my minimap, but as it turned out Lucus had figured it out on his own before we even saw the entrance. In retrospect it was the only obvious way to get where we were going.
“I’d heard these had sewer entrances,” Lucus mused. “Do guards really patrol the sewer system?”
We had arrived at an upside down staircase leading downwards, and Arven motioned Lucus up beside him. “Not very frequently, but it does happen. It’s mostly used for maintenance. Normally we’d hammer a piton into the wall here so we use a rope to get up and down easier, but that makes a lot of noise. I think you might be able to do it better?”
Lucus nodded and took a single piton from his pack, then with a smooth motion pressed it into the stone wall as though it were made of thick syrup and not solid stone. When he was done, he ran the rope through the still exposed end of the piton and tied it off, giving the whole thing a good yank to be sure it was secure.
I tried not to show how impressed I was by this. I knew Lucus was something called a Scion of Stone but nothing I’d seen from him so far told me what that was exactly, and the memories of Tavi’s I’d viewed hadn’t had any additional details. Now wasn’t the time to ask about it, but I fully intended to later.
Savas led the way down, taking the rope and walking himself down the curved stairwell ceiling. We waited a moment for him to give the all clear sign, then we each followed. I took up the rear as usual and in the few moments I had alone after everyone else went down I activated Devour Essence for the first time, targeting the Nightstalker Ghoul trapped in my inventory.
I was surprised this thing even had a soul, and it was clearly super evil so I didn’t feel bad about eating it. The thing I wasn’t sure about was what this would look like when I activated it and I didn’t want to risk freaking everybody out if I didn’t have to.
New skill unlocked: “Undeath”
New skill unlocked: “Paralytic Claws”
New skill unlocked: “Lifesense”
New skill unlocked: “Embrace of Shadows”
New skill unlocked: “Spiderclimb”
As soon as I activated the skill several things happened. My natural claws elongated and sharpened, and I could feel poison almost dripping off them. My ability to see in the dark expanded considerably, and I found that I could sense my friends' warm bodies just around the corner from me.
Some were too far away, or behind too much stone, but the two who had gone down last were still in range. Finally the shadows in the area seemed to press themselves up against me, and even though I could see through them I could almost feel them as an extension of myself.
I looked at my character sheet avatar and shuddered. For the first time since waking up in this body I looked like a true monster. My eyes had gone completely black, and my face had become gaunt. Shadows swirled around me, seeming to flow out from my long black hair, which of course was now moving of its own volition.
I cut off the skill after only a few seconds. Thankfully the effects faded immediately, and I returned to normal almost instantly. I quickly checked my unlocked skills list and sure enough all the skills I’d just unlocked were still there, but no longer artificially active.
I didn’t have time to read through them right now, but this was a fantastic development. I’d be able to learn at least some of the skills of anything I killed, I’d just need to take a little nibble of its soul before releasing it.
It belatedly occurred to me that my party could see my mana bar, and I hoped nobody was paying close attention. It was my turn to descend the stairs, and I grabbed a hold of the rope and used it to walk myself down the inverted staircase.
Below was a fairly featureless small room with an upside-down iron door in the far wall. Lucus was holding Savas up while the rogue went at the door with a set of lockpicks. He got the door unlocked as I hopped out of the stairway and onto the ceiling of this room.
Arven called him up short before he could fully open the door however. “Hold up a moment.” Then he looked at me and Lucus.
“Most don’t make it where we’re going now, and most that do don’t survive. The sewers have some nasty stuff but not a lot of it, that changes here. Below us is one of the interior wall’s guard stations. It’s built into the wall itself, and there are hallways running along the entire length of the wall in both directions. Moving through these is one of the few ways we can travel outside of the sewer system. The problem is the guards.”
“What are we dealing with?” Lucus asked him. “More things like that shadow monster?”
“We may see some of those, they tend to be where you least expect them. Tavi I’ll be counting on you to keep an eye out and shoot if you see one coming. Mostly though we’ll be fighting skeletal guardsmen. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that there’s an undead version here of everyone living in Altria who wasn’t outside the day the dungeon opened. Everyone that was outside likely fell into the sky.” Arven told him.
“We’re going to be moving quickly and quietly. If you have stealth skills, use them. Dorian will be assisting us so do what you can even if you aren’t great at sneaking. Our goal is to clear out this guard post as silently as possible so that we don’t get swarmed. If we can do that then this becomes our safehouse for this area of the dungeon. It’s one of the few places that can be truly secured around here.”
Lucus and I both nodded our understanding, and for the second time I activated my Hide skill. I was standing in plain sight when I did it, and wasn’t really expecting anything to happen when I did it, but I got an effect none-the-less.
There was no visible change, but I suddenly became very aware of who could see me, and how much attention they were paying to me. It was like a pressure emanating from each of my party members, and as they each turned to face the door and prepared themselves for what lay behind it, I felt that pressure wane and even completely fall away in some cases.
Dorian raised both his hands and made a gesture like a composer calling for quiet. “Hush…” He said, and as he spoke the end of the word seemed to trail away into almost silence. Savas took that as his cue to open the door, and I just barely heard the squeal of rusty hinges. It sounded muted and far away.
Inside the door was another room, and Dawn’s light illuminated it enough to see three skeletal figures getting to their feet at the far end. They didn’t seem unnaturally fast like the ghoul had been, but they wore tattered armor and drew weapons as we piled into the room. Lucus went in first, shield up as two of the skeleton’s came at him.
I found myself stymied by the ledge created by the top of the doorway, which was over half my height. I ended up waiting for everyone else to get inside, then just propped my elbows up on the door frame and used it to steady my first shot.
I still wasn’t sure how well I could shoot, so I made damn sure nobody was in the way before I opened fire on the last skeleton. It had taken out a bow and arrow and was launching them heedlessly into the melee.
My bolt took the skeleton in between the ribs, which would have been great if he had a lung there to pierce or something, but of course he was a skeleton. Cursing to myself, I pulled back behind the wall and stuck my foot in the harness to reset the crossbow.
As I pulled, pain tore through my abdomen and I nearly dropped the weapon in surprise. It hadn’t been that bad, but I hadn’t been expecting it.
I managed to complete the action and took a quick look at my status to try and figure out what was up. I’d lost a single point of health, and had a bane icon in the corner of my vision. I examined it and swore loudly enough to just barely penetrate the silence. Lucus apparently heard me and glanced back, nearly taking a sword to the face in the process.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
> Menstrual Cramps
>
> Physical Bane (Tier 1)
>
> Duration: 8 hours
>
> You are undergoing the process of shedding your uterine lining. You may experience cramps and bleeding during this time.
I continued cursing silently under my breath while I loaded a new bolt onto the crossbow. I saw that the others had taken care of the skeletons and so I focused on getting into the stupid room. I considered and then discarded several options in rapid order, afraid that I might trigger something unfortunate if I tried anything requiring lower body flexibility.
I ended up just lifting myself up using one hand on the door frame, and planting a foot on the top of the frame and then just stepping up and over. This worked, and I managed to avoid making a scene as I clambered into the room. Being short was annoying.
Arven was already at the next door, motioning us to follow. Waves of silence still radiated from Dorian, though he appeared to be speaking or singing. Lucus walked up beside Arven and reached up to open the door.
As soon as the door opened a crack, I noticed that on my minimap I could see the shape of the next room. It was a pair of short intersecting hallways, and for the first time I noticed red dots appear on the map as my danger sense ticked the back of my head.
I tried to shout a warning at Lucus but nothing came out. He was flung backwards as the door crashed open, making a hollow boom that was barely audible even over whatever Dorian was doing. A hulking figure in the tattered remnants of armor stepped through the door, taking Lucus’s place.
It was huge, well over two meters tall, and every part of it was covered in bulging muscles. It lacked most of its skin, and where its entrails should have been was a cancerous looking mass of flesh that beat like a vile mockery of a heart, black ooze leaked from torn flesh with each pulse. It looked at each of us with burning red eyes, and though its face lacked a jaw it let out a gargling roar from the back of its throat.
The roar seemed to break Dorian’s veil of silence, shattering it like glass. We all flinched as the sound returned to the room in a rush. Then I noticed something that I might not have if not for my recent visit to the Exchange.
The creature in front of us seemed more present than anyone else in the room. I could see a slight distortion in the air around it almost like it was displacing light. When I glanced down at its feet, I could see that the part of the ceiling it was standing on looked deeper and more vibrant than elsewhere. The effect was so subtle that if I hadn’t seen this exact effect on a larger and more intense scale with the reality seed I wouldn’t have spotted it.
“Elite!” Arven yelled, giving up all pretense of stealth.
I didn’t need to be told what to do, and immediately shot the bulky bastard square in the chest right where his heart should have been. The force of the shot barely registered on him as the bolt buried itself in his chest. He glanced down, then ripped the bolt out in apparent annoyance, taking a chunk of flesh with it.
Then Arven hit it from the side, lightning fast strikes cutting new pathways for the black ichor to spray out. He was instantly covered in the stuff, but he didn’t stop cutting as he whirled out of the way of the creature’s attempt to backhand him.
Lucus had managed to stand back up with Dawn’s help, and I watched as his health bar shot up even as her mana drained. Then Lucus was moving, and the stone roof at his feet seemed to flow and merge with his legs with each step. A coating of solid stone rising up to coat his entire body by the time he’d made it back to the creature.
As he arrived he called out, using one of his skills, and I saw a boon icon appear on each of us. “Arven, duck out left, take the skeletons!”
You have gained a stack of Stratagem (Tier 1, Boon, Agility).
> Stratagem
>
> Mental Boon (Tier 1)
>
> Duration: 1 minute
>
> Stacks: 1
>
> Follow the plan and victory awaits. Stratagem stacks up to 5 times, for each stack of Stratagem you gain a +3 bonus to a different stat.
>
> Current Bonuses: Agility
I didn’t know what Arven’s story was beyond the little he’d told us at breakfast, but it was clear that he’d once been a soldier. At Lucus’ command he threw himself backwards and out of the way of his charge.
The large stone-covered man crashed into the elite hard enough to knock him back a step. The creature rained blows on Lucus, his fists cracking stone with every blow. Lucus had his shield take the majority of the hits, and even as his stone shell cracked it seemed to flow back into place and re-solidify.
Skeletons were climbing in through the door the elite had just come through, and Arven met them with his swords. Savas looked to be waiting for an opening, and Lucus started giving ground to the elite, drawing him into the room and facing him away from the waiting rogue. Dorian finally seemed to get over his shock, he backed away from the combat and began… talking?
No, I realized a moment later, he was chanting. Something very similar to Gregorian chant came from Dorian, and his every word seemed to echo around the small room. As he sang, new boon symbols appeared on each of us and I saw our depleted resource pools slowly beginning to recover.
Using the opening Lucus had provided Savas ran in and I watched his entire stamina bar drain away in seconds as he stabbed his daggers into the monster’s back over and over, so fast I could barely see it. The creature whirled and caught him with a glancing backhand blow that nonetheless sent him flying, his health dropping to a third of its maximum instantly.
Dawn rushed over to him, and I finally finished reloading my crossbow. I had no idea how long Lucus’s stone-flesh ability would hold out, but it was clear that as soon as it dropped we were screwed.
Seeing how effective my last bolt had been, I’d taken a moment to improvise, wrapping my next bolt in cloth and dipping it into the grease I’d gotten from the kitchens. I then armed the crossbow, gritting through the pain as my back and stomach protested the effort. Last, I took out my tinderbox and feverishly struck flint and steel together until the bolt caught fire.
When Savas went down I was lining up my shot and trying not to blind myself by looking straight into the firelight. Lucus saw what I was doing and shouted, “Aim for the head!” and I got a timely new boon.
You have gained a stack of Stratagem (Tier 1, Boon, Dexterity).
I shot the hulking brute in his rotten head. It didn’t explode like an overripe pumpkin like I was hoping, but it did impact the side of his head with a meaty thunk and the distinct sound of bones cracking.
The monster’s head jerked to the side as the bolt crashed into it. It screamed a weirdly high-pitched wail as its head first vented smoke, then went up in flames as the grease fire I’d started in its skull spread to its desiccated flesh.
New Skill Unlocked: “Burning Bolts”
Unfortunately it didn’t really seem to slow him down. What it did do was piss him off. It turned to look at me once again, and this time it wasn’t going to be so easily distracted. It ran at me, and only Lucus grabbing it from behind and gluing his feet to the floor with stone gave me enough time to move out of the way before a fist the size of my head punched straight through the wall behind me.
I dropped the crossbow and ran, but I had the presence of mind to slap my hand against the creature’s leg as I ran past, using Identify in the brief moment we were in contact with each other.
> Watch Sergeant Farakas
>
> Level 25 Bonecrusher (Tier 4 Undead, Ghoul, Elite, Rare)
>
> Sergeant Farakas patrols the inner walls of the city in death just as he did in life. Formerly a stern but well liked commander, he is now a mockery of his former self that exists only to crush the life out of any adventurers that dare to cross his patrol.
>
> Special:
> - This monster is an elite, it is substantially more powerful than monsters of a similar tier and level, but defeating it may yield greater rewards.
> - This monster is a rare dungeon spawn. It is more powerful than a standard elite, and defeating it will result in increased rewards.
That wasn’t quite what I was hoping to learn, some information on weakness would have been nice. The thing was lower level than the other ghoul we’d fought, but between its tier and its rare elite status it was obviously nothing to take lightly.
I managed to free my dagger as I ran and noticed that I wasn’t being pursued. I turned to see Lucus shoulder check the elite into the wall it had just punched through, breaking its arm with a sickening crack.
I saw my chance and darted back in, dagger in hand, and started spamming Shank like my life depended on it. The skill had no cooldown, so it took effect as quickly as I could move, and under the Stratagem boon Lucus had given us my Agility had hit 20. I’d seen Savas use this skill to empty his stamina bar in seconds, but I didn’t have two weapons to use it with, so I only got through half of my bar before Farakas punted me across the room.
I got lucky. Instead of hitting a wall, I hit Dawn, which sent us both sprawling.
The kick had taken off a third of my HP even with the cushioned impact, but the bigger issue was the pain. I’d only ever felt pain like this once or twice in my life, the kick caught me between the legs, and for the first time since I’d gotten this body I was glad to not be male. I was pretty sure that kick had cracked some bones, and I didn’t know how I was going to stand up after that.
Then I felt Dawn’s hand on me, and the pain melted away as my health bar shot back up. Her healing was much different than Narani’s–both faster and less pleasant–and I felt something deep inside me lurch back into place in a nauseating fashion. The reduction in pain was worth it though, and I scrambled back to my feet.
What I saw gave me pause. Lucus was pressing the bonecrusher into the stone wall, which was slowly flowing over him, and Savas was taking the opportunity to stab him repeatedly. Everywhere Savas stabbed steam or even open flames shot out of the hole left by his daggers, and I realized the elite was burning from the inside out like a hollow rotten log.
I had no idea where my dagger had gone, but I saw my crossbow on the ground not far from where I’d dropped it. I ran over to it and grabbed a bolt from the ground nearby. Slamming my foot into the stirrup and hooking the belt to the stock. I pulled back with all my strength, bracing myself for more pain… but there was none.
I glanced over at my status icons and saw that my Menstrual Cramps bane was gone. Dawn’s healing must have removed it. Magic was really just the best.
The bonecrusher’s entire head was just a blackened burning skull at this point, and it didn’t seem to care. So I started looking for something to shoot on it that it might care about.
Dawn stopped me before I could fire. “Wait, let me try something!”
She put her hand on the crossbow bolt and after a moment it began to glow with a golden light. “Try that!”
I knew a holy weapon when I saw one, so I thought about it for a moment, then shot Farakas right in the crotch.
My thought process here was pretty simple. Lucus had its arms almost entirely out of commission, but the damn thing was still kicking him with the force of a jackhammer. Its upper body was burning and stabbed full of so many holes it almost wasn’t a coherent mass anymore. Its lower body was basically undamaged though, and I wanted to change that. Also it had just kicked me in the crotch and I wanted to return the favor.
The bonecrusher’s pelvis disintegrated in a flash of light and golden flame. Two legs fell to the floor independently of each other, they kicked wildly for a moment before going still. The elite was now held aloft only by the arms it had embedded in the stone wall. It gave one last roar and heaved against its restraints, then finally went slack.
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 5 Valerian!
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 6 Thief!
New Achievement! “A Rare Treat”
Souleater: The essence of Watch Sergeant Farakas was not captured, your soul-space is full.
We weren’t done yet, not by half, but the danger was effectively passed. Lucus took over from Arven fighting the skeletons and in his stone form they couldn’t so much as scratch him. He walked through the guard outpost literally punching them to death with a stone fist, his mace having been bent and ruined by his fight with the bonecrusher. Within a few minutes he’d nearly single-handedly cleared the place out.
The rest of us caught our breath, and looted the bodies. That was an interesting one, not every corpse could be looted but the ones that could began to glow slightly shortly after death. Placing your hand against a glowing corpse would cause it to flash and convert into items.
You could get a hint of what had dropped based on the glow the body gave off. Eventually the bodies would disintegrate, both the glowing ones and the ones that hadn’t dropped anything, but it took over twenty minutes, and even longer for ones that had drops.
The body of Watch Sergeant Farakas was glowing a dim shade of red. We’d looted everything else already, finding some gold, jewels, and even a potion which I’d identified as a basic healing potion.
Nominally we were supposed to turn in any loot we found in here, but for stuff like potions that only applied if we didn’t use it before we got out of here. Most of the stuff we’d looted had come from simple white glowing skeletons, while the potion had come from a zombie who’d been locked in a holding cell. Its body had glowed green after I shot it through the bars.
“So what’s red mean?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Savas grunted. “It means trouble.” He looked over at the glowing body half embedded in the wall. “Red’s for special stuff, weird things usually.”
“Why would that be trouble?”
“It has a tendency to be stuff you can use, skill book, enhancement potions, things like that. Sometimes crafting components. If it’s anything we can use while we’re in here we’ll have to decide if one of us uses it or if we turn it in for a reduced sentence…”
He glanced at Arven. “Some of us are in here for a long time. Something like this could mean years of time off.”
“Ah, you’re worried about fighting over loot. Makes sense. For what it’s worth I think I have enough stuff going on for me right now, so I’m going to let you guys sort this one out amongst yourselves. Least I can do to pay you back for dragging you into my problems.”
Lucus finally rejoined us, he stepped into the room and with barely a glance at the glowing corpse, he walked over to the door we’d come in through. He made sure the door was firmly shut, then placed a hand against the wall beside it and shaped the stone of the doorway over the edges of the door, effectively sealing it shut.
He turned to see the rest of us staring at him. “I just did that to the other doors out of here too. Nothing’s getting in until we’re ready to leave.”
“Just don’t go and die on us before you unseal that door,” Dorian told him. “That’s our only way back and I’d hate to starve to death in here.”
“I’d heard what Scions can do of course, but seeing it in person is something else. If you hadn’t been here that would have gone badly for us.” Dawn said.
Lucus grimaced, he’d shed most of his stone armor at some point but seemed to have replaced his broken mace with a new one made out of solid rock.
He turned to us and said, “Just don’t count on that again any time soon. I had to use Might of Mountains to pull it off, it will be three days before I can do it again.”
I eyed Dawn. “What about you? Whatever you did to that last bolt I fired blew his legs clean off. Can you do that to all our weapons?”
“Smite? Yes, but I have to touch the weapon shortly before it’s used, and it only lasts for one hit. Unfortunately it’s also an execute style finisher, so it can’t be used until an enemy is under a third of their maximum health. It also has a cooldown. I typically save my mana for healing, but Smite does work well against elites, given how much health they have.”
New Skill Unlocked: “Smite!”
“Ah, I see. Well good thinking there. I didn’t feel like my crossbow was doing much.”
Arven finally stood. “Everyone did well, but it bothers me that there’s never been an elite in here before. I worry that it may be related to the quest, and if so we might have a much harder time of things this time around. Still, no point in putting this off any further…”
He reached out and put his hand on the glowing corpse, which instantly vanished in a flash of light, leaving behind some very odd holes in the wall.
Arven was now holding a glass vial containing a small blue pill. The pill glowed softly, and Arven held it up for our inspection. I tried using Identify on it, but got a message back telling me that it was a higher tier than I could identify at range, so I’d need to touch it.
“Cool. What is it?” I asked.
“No idea. Some sort of pill?” Arven said, turning it about as he looked at it.
“It might be a stat pill, I’ve heard of those. They are fairly rare but not too valuable.” Savas suggested.
“I have an examination skill, I’ll use it if you want but I’ll need to touch it. Not sure if the vial counts or not.” I told them.
Arven hesitated, then handed me the vial. “I have one too but it works best on creatures, give yours a try. See if it works through the vial first. There’s no telling what will happen if you touch the pill. It might be in there for a reason.”
I was way ahead of him and had activated Identify the moment the vial touched my fingers, but unfortunately all it gave me was the information for a generic glass vial. “No luck, the vial is just normal glass, not even magical.”
I wiggled the cork out of the vial, then tilted the vial over my hand, letting it slide softly into my hand. Before I even had a chance to identify it, I was presented with a prompt.
> System Message
>
> Wild Infusion
>
> Would you like to absorb this infusion?
>
> Yes / No
My eyes went wide as I carefully selected no. I then used Identify on the pill, slipping it back into the glass vial as I did so.
> Wild Infusion
>
> Consumable (Tier 3, Infusion)
>
> Infusions are a method of advancing your species. Consuming an infusion will unlock at least one hidden species skill which you meet the prerequisites for and which has a tier no higher than that of the infusion. If no hidden skills exist for your species which match these requirements, and your current species is of a tier lower than the infusion, you will trigger a species evolution, allowing you to select a more advanced version of your species up to the tier of the infusion.
>
> Wild Infusions are one of several types of infusions. The “Wild” subtype has a higher chance of unlocking an elemental skill, and is a prerequisite for some elemental skills.
I let out a whistle, “I don’t know for sure, but I think this might be better than any stat pill.”
I held out the vial for Arven to take back and started to read it off to them, but Dorian stopped me three words in. “Just share it with us, like you did with the quest.”
I willed them to be able to see the message I’d gotten when using the skill, and after a moment I saw them all blink and then start reading. While they did, I went and checked my missed notifications. In addition to all the new skill unlocks I had one new achievement.
> New Achievement
>
> A Rare Treat
>
> You are the first traveler to slay a rare dungeon monster. Better than being the first to die to one, but there's still time for that… This achievement replaces the standard “I’ll Take it Rare” for defeating your first rare monster and adds an additional reward.
>
> Rewards:
> Title Unlocked (“Lucky”)
> Item Upgrade Script
The hell was an item upgrade script? I wondered, even as a rolled up piece of parchment appeared in my hands. Swearing internally, I quickly dropped another rank into my soul-space and identified, then stored the paper, shielding it from view with my body as I pretended to go through my pack.
> Item Upgrade Script
>
> Consumable (Tier 10, Script, Scroll)
>
> This scroll contains words written in the divine language of the gods, which can be used to alter aspects of reality itself. Using this scroll will upgrade an item of your choice by one tier, to a maximum of tier 10, consuming the scroll in the process.
My mouth watered reading that description, I wasn’t entirely sure what increasing the tier of an item would do, but it had to make it better, right? My impulse was to hoard this and use it on the highest tier item I could.
Curious, I looked at the party screen. Sure enough most of my party members now sported some form of “Lucky” as part of their primary title. That had apparently been their first non-required title and they’d all equipped it for lack of anything better. Arven hadn’t, but he’d already had a title so might not have any space for it. I started to check it myself but he interrupted my train of thought before I could.
Arven looked at the pill in his hands, contemplating it. “This is probably pretty valuable, but I’m worried it might be fragile. We’ll need to leave it here and pick it up on our way back. Using it probably isn’t an option, changes to your species tend to be noticeable even without inspection.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Usually, at least.”
“You and I can’t use it, sure.” Dorian said, “We have no species penalties to pay off. Something like this is the only way we’ll ever get a species upgrade, but our non-human friends here could say they paid off a penalty and get away with it.”
“I’ve been wondering about that. Does paying off a penalty always grant a species upgrade?” I asked.
Dawn shook her head. “No, only penalties that have a higher tier than your species can get you a natural upgrade, and it’s not guaranteed. Anything else is considered a minor enough change as to not require a whole new species or subspecies - they are more adaptations than an entirely different type of creature.”
She leaned against the wall looking thoughtful. “As an example, with that Nilbog subspecies of yours, if you had kids and the father’s species was at least the same tier as yours there would be a chance that your kids could inherit your subspecies instead of the base species, skipping the need to pay off the penalty themselves. However, they would still have the more minor penalties not directly associated with that subspecies even if you had paid them off.”
That raised even more questions in my mind, but I choked them back for the moment. “Well, like I said, I’m sitting this one out. You guys decide amongst yourselves what to do with it.”
The others continued talking through the options, and I decided to leave them to it.
I wasn’t giving up my chance at the pill for entirely altruistic reasons. I knew that there was some resentment towards me in the party, and I was hoping that showing I was willing to share the rewards as well as the danger would improve my standing somewhat. My recusal also made it more palatable for Lucus to stay in the running.
I wandered off to explore the watchpost, wanting to make sure Lucus hadn’t missed anything during his rampage. I also wanted to be alone for a bit. I needed to take care of a few necessities, and I had some more notifications to review.