[Bloodsiphon] = Essence (Sanguine, 75-750mL) + Essence (Vitus, 10-100mL) + Nightshade (0.05-0.5kg) + Blood (Monster, level 16+, 10-100mL) + [Cauldron] (Any, 2L, 350-375°K)
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Level Up! Bows 7 → 8
New Skill available.
Level Up! Bows 8 → 9
Crafted bow damage increased.
This had been a long time coming. Jay flipped through the Guide to see his skills. Because he’d reached level 8, there were no new choices.
[Quickdraw, Basic] – Draw and fire an arrow, faster than normal.
[Double Shot, Basic] – Fire two arrows at once, packing twice the punch.
[Richochet, Basic] – Deflect an arrow against an otherwise hard target, hitting enemies behind cover.
He selected [Quickdraw] without another thought. His instincts had always been against [Double Shot] for the extra resources it would inevitably burn, and [Ricochet] was nothing more than party trick masquerading as a skill. What mattered was what came after, and Jay had researched Investigate Skills+1 to see where it would go.
[Volley] and [Triple Shot] were at the next level, and neither were particularly interesting. Not compared to whatever weapon art would come next. That much Jay looked forward to including.
In the meantime, he’d either need to get to the island’s center, or spend time splitting off again. His treated bow worked as the gateway into this tier of bows, but just like his sword, there were alternatives that could be made from softwood and hardwood, and additional Sub-Crafts to examine for shortbows, longbows, hand crossbows, and long crossbows.
However, all of those required more Copper Age research, and Jay was averse to wasting more time or resources than necessary. Even though his elemental bow damage was lower without investing in more advanced softwood gear, he’d made up for it by researching easier Alchemy recipes. Now, he had access to chillgrease and bloodsiphon, two more oils he could apply to his gear that synergized with the gemstones he socketed into his bow and rings. It wasn’t the most efficient means to manufacture elemental effects, but it would serve for the immediate future.
His bow would never be his main weapon, anyway. It was only another tool in the kit on his road to more power.
And that road had led to somewhere near today.
Jay peered out from his camp, into the harbor beneath. Black magical essence rose into the sky on the other end, just beyond where Ben had once kept his old base. Where the rest of the land burst into vibrant glory, this part of the island was gray and dead, a corrupted blemish on an otherwise verdant landscape.
That was where he would have to go next.
Jay sighed. He’d been ignoring cairns lately. On top of the dangers found within, the risk of Viktor showing up and claiming the rewards for himself had made the prospect even less appealing than normal. Even in locations where Naomi’s crew didn’t go in search of high-quality food and meds, so few lasted for more than a couple hours, and as Jay put the pieces together, he finally understood why.
Cairns could contain anything.
Including modern weapons strong enough to bring Viktor down.
Was it any surprise that the most powerful man on the island never, ever let a cairn become looted without him snooping first? If Jay was in his position, he’d be doing the same thing.
But today’s prospect was more unique than normal, and only Jay was in a good position to capitalize. Viktor’s base stood proudly inland, and with the angle of the mountain on the eastern edge of the harbor, he wouldn’t be able to see the rising cairn’s magic from his home. It had also appeared last night, so hours would come and go before he’d even have the chance to know it was there during his daily patrol.
More than enough time to get whatever’s inside, Jay considered.
There was still a chance that Naomi or Sayid might go for this place first, but that gave Jay all the more reason to move quickly.
He wasn’t about to put his fate in the hands of someone else, regardless of what Kevin might think.
With his gear at the ready, he started to descend down the hill.
Into another maddening dungeon dive.
* * *
Can’t believe I’ve never been here before, Jay thought, jaw dropped at the surreal image in front.
Unlike his half of the island, the coast had a more abrupt slant into the cliffs beyond, with pillars made of sandstone weathered against hollow caverns, and cerulean streams slipping from aquifers within. These combined with others and split at random junctures, bringing the entire mountainside alive with waterfalls.
Even with the thick, exposed caves, the sun still shone bright here, with no shortage of holes in the landscape exposing the subterranean world below. Ore veins and gemstones glittered under this subdued light of day, though even at a distance, Jay suspected they could not have been more than the most basic tiers of metals and gems, much smaller than normal in volume.
No, the real treasure lay deeper inside this place, and only after Jay scaled the first level of pillars could he see this destination.
Shadows congealed at the center of a sinkhole, bound only by a rusted chain-link fence. A two-story metallic structure sat within, with an antenna poking proudly up the ravine, and cables running along its length before disappearing into the cavern floor.
Was this cairn supposed to be a power plant?
Jay closed in. Water flowed beside, but as his shoes splattered through their surface, he realized it went everywhere but where the cairn lay. Like two magnets pressed together, the water broke against an invisible wall before being forced back and changing direction, creating a clear boundary between the outside world and the cairn’s corrupted essence. Conveniently, this was where the darkness took shape.
It wasn’t just light that the cairns rejected, but the entirety of the Annwyn dream. He gulped, the implication clear.
These dungeons were the antithesis of everything else here.
Jay swapped out of his climbing shoes for his copperplated gear. The chain-link fence screeched as Jay shoved it aside, his sword tight in hand.
Time for prep work.
His potion buff came first. He popped night owl, the darkness and light blending together into a motley of grays, though the cairn still held a blackened outline.
Greases next. Jay slathered his nightmarish copper scimitar with his newly discovered bloodsiphon. Like tar turned to blood, the substance was viscous and gave off a corpse-like odor. But the moment it touched the metallic blade, the copper seemed to come to life, with the gelatinous, scarlet syrup spreading hungrily onto the metal until it held an even coat, followed by pushing into his gloves beneath. Jay had swapped in spinels into his rings for this raid, compounding with the life leech benefit of this grease, and with both his silver rings glittering with a purplish red flecked with spots of black, his blade and hands seemed more thirsty to kill than ever before.
He swallowed his perception-boosting tea last. His ear twitched to the sound of distant cavern monsters, even as the dungeon remained silent and still, like a vacuum had formed.
Normally, he would follow this with a meal. Perhaps to buff his strength temporarily, or perhaps to enhance his movement speed for the fights to come. But after losing his pemmican+25 cheat, he had to be more careful about what he’d consume. The slightest dip below his 99 vitality would be near-impossible to recover from.
So instead of playing with fire, he merely popped one of his three vitaberries for the day, capping twenty-four hours worth of hunger recovery.
With his preparations complete, he wrenched open the cairn door.
And immediately saw what else was missing. Though his sight pierced the magical darkness more than usual, that only extended by mere feet. He graced upon the inner workings of what appeared to be a broadcast station in a state of decay, with dozens of servers stacked along the walls, and wires crisscrossing through mechanical equipment. But he could not even see the other end of the building, less than twenty feet away, before the room was swallowed by darkness.
Not even night owl could overcome the unholy magic of the cairn’s shadows.
Luckily, Jay had feared as much and made more preparations just in case.
He quickly took a coal torch from his backpack and a pair of flint. After so much practice, it was almost elementary to light it, and after upscaling the coal beforehand, it would burn for hours more. The strength of the fire compounded with his enhanced vision, and the shadows wriggled back.
Enough to make this work.
Jay glanced over his shoulder one last time. The caverns were a maze that slunk deeper under the mountain, and there were plenty of hiding places above, but between the tea and night owl, the world never held more clarity. He peered into these dark chasms, hoping for nothing, but fearing the worst.
Viktor was nowhere to be seen.
Gonna have to move quickly. Between the burn time of the torch and the potions in his veins, he was on the clock to clear this out.
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He stepped into the shadows and braced for impact.
* * *
The giant spider hissed, fangs clattering beneath mandibles as an array of opaque, black eyes glared forth. With a hiss, it vomited another glob of acidic bile, aiming for its target’s face.
…Only for Jay to [Quickstep] behind. Before it could turn around, his sword swiped through its bulbous sac, not even bothering to use a skill.
A noxious cloud burst from the monster’s rear where the blade easily cleaved through. It whirred in agony one last time before falling.
Jay started to check the injury he’d sustained, but true to form, the pain lessened and the burns healed over, right in front of his eyes. The acid spider had landed a cheap shot early in the encounter that damaged his armor and singed his exposed flesh, but the moment he delivered the killing blow, his bloodsiphon grease absorbed its life force, transmitting a percentage of its vitality into his own.
I could get used to this. Though life leech alone could not clear Wounds, using bloodsiphon coupled with spinels was doing wonders against these minor injuries.
Jay had encountered a dozen monsters in this place, and not a single point of vitality had been lost by the end.
The rest of his gear continued to hold strong too. The “Nightmarish” buffs more than made up for the loss of his skill affinity, and with the monsters all flirting between levels 11 and 20, he could roll through each without incident. Only if his armor broke might Jay run into problems, but his gear was barely scratched.
His mind also held a greater clarity inside this place than ever before. Each cairn came with a maddening discomfort that he could not quite place, slowly sapping his sanity as he absorbed its horrors. But today was not so unlucky. His Nightrealm cores staved off this madness. So powerful were they that for all his time here, he’d barely lost five points total, perhaps as little as one-third his usual drop during the same time.
Yes, this might have been his easiest cairn run yet.
He turned a corner, and his heart sank a beat. I just had to think that…
The corridor opened into a large chamber, stretching well beyond where his sight could reach. Stairwells cascaded against walls without pause, with some flipped across the ceiling while others went diagonally through open space at unnatural angles. Pillars rose and bent along these crossings, defying logic and reason with how they intersected and split.
What troubled him so wasn’t the architecture, but what else lay beyond. Lava bubbled everywhere. On the floor, the ceiling, the walls. At each place where there wasn’t a path running through, molten earth swirled around, their faint glow a rejection of the gravity that should have tethered them below.
And more than that, Jay could also see eyeballs painted at different junctures, just at the cusp of sight, where the shadows grew strongest. They peered in front, watching for anything near.
Exactly the same type of eyes as he’d seen before, back when he’d been trapped on a ladder by hundreds of painted eyes…
Jay approached the nearest one. Even with a bridge clearly extending through the main chasm and no change in direction or elevation, a set of stairs winded below, with the lava mere feet beneath, heatwaves resonating. He squinted hard at the eyeball on a nearby pillar, barely visible from a distance, along with the lava pit twenty feet sideways on the opposing end. With a scratch of his head, he drew some loose chitin from his backpack and tossed it in front.
The chitin flew in front of the eyeball and immediately shot right. It sizzled for half a heartbeat before evaporating altogether, shooting right into the lava pit on the wall beside.
But then Jay tiptoed onto the downward stairwell, and the world immediately contorted to match. The bridge he just came from became the wall, and the lava pit where the chitin fell became the ceiling.
Jay rubbed his head, vertigo mixed with a growing headache as he struggled to reorient himself.
Great. Gravity traps now. How was he going to clear this one?
Slowly, carefully, and with no shortage of mats burned, it seemed. This room operated by forming a three-dimensional maze, with hundreds of paths seemingly correct, but only one able to be passed without incident. The eyeballs were scattered everywhere, angled precisely to run across each of their affected paths. Whatever passed directly in front would have their gravity changed, always leading straight into lava pits.
If only I had [Wallfoot], Jay considered. That would make this a breeze. Even if he wanted to use his climbing gear and rope, his pitons could find no purchase inside the cairn, and he dared not risk getting yanked from the ground.
Instead, Jay was forced to walk at a snail’s pace, his head on a swivel as he sought out the murderous eyes. Even with the power of his perception-boosting tea and his coal torch still burning hot, identifying where all the eyes were staring was no easy feat. It did not help that each time he reached a new juncture, gravity adjusted to the floor, and the entire maze shifted with it.
In the end, Jay emptied his backpack by throwing mats whenever he wasn’t certain if the path in front was safe. If they got sucked into a lava pit, he knew it was time to double back.
But despite the delay, Jay was still protected from the cairn’s aura, and when he reached the other side, his body was thankfully unscorched.
The stone corridor narrowed again, with runes running along the walls and a ceiling and floor made again of concrete. Cracks erupted this way and that, as if reality itself was breaking down.
Which it was.
One such fissure opened into a hole wide enough to fit a body through. Even with his Nightmarish armor equipped, he could feel a more maddening power leaking out. The kind that could never be understood, much less contained.
He knew this sense at once. This was another portal between Annwyn and the Nightrealm. A place that he’d only come across a few times before.
A Seam.
Jay gave it a real wide berth. Sword pointed, lest something else pass through. Thankfully, he lucked out again, for the Seam remained still.
Another computer room lay beyond this final stretch, with the strange symbols on the keyboards in place of letters, and wires running through the walls and ceiling. The screens were as cracked and dusty as every other cairn, and the equipment appeared nonfunctional.
But all of this was a cover for the plastic cobalt-colored box in a corner, with a rim worn and cracked, and light leaking out from within.
The cache.
Jay paused. Where’s th–
He heard a shuffle and ducked instinctively, an axe suddenly materializing overheard. Before it could swing a second time, he [Quickstepped] to the other side of the room and raised his sword in defense.
A rusted scaled ringmail fell across a lithe form, with tattered pieces of cloth hanging loosely over exposed bones and ribs. More armor covered the bony arms and legs, with only the tiniest sliver of rotted flesh surrounding this monster. The eyes were the most intense, burning bright like two miniature torches inside an open skull, exposed jaw bent into a grin as it readied its battle axe again.
Jay had learned how to gauge enemy difficulty in part by the sense of dread that his opponent emitted. Like their soul was pressing into his merely by approaching him threateningly, he’d learned when it was time to run from a monster he could not beat.
But as Jay stared into this skeleton Guardian and all its ferocity, he didn’t feel a sense of unease or a power that would be hard to contain.
He felt nothing at all.
With a wide grin, Jay gripped his sword and rushed forth.
The fight was over in less than a minute.
Jay wiped the sweat from his brow, his enemy handily defeated. The downed Guardian rolled on the ground, arms and legs shattered from where his sword had cleaved through. Its teeth clattered helplessly, unable to do much else.
But Jay still held off from the killing blow. The moment this creature died, the cairn would start to collapse, and he did not want to high-tail it into that trap room again without first knowing the way through.
Besides, Jay still had his loot to uncover, and all the time in the world.
Skittering erupted nearby, a cacophony of feet clattering maniacally against the concrete floor behind. Jay turned and gaped, unable to identify the source until it was too late. That inescapable aura of dread was coming for him, not just from raw power, but through a chaotic fanaticism that grated against his own understanding of existence. Through the Seam left behind, this pressure was greatest.
Out from a maddening world, a new challenger came…
Vitality – 99/99
Hunger – 60/72
Thirst – 21/24
Fatigue – 44/48
Sanity – ??/100
Main Crafts: Alchemy 2, Armor Crafting 2, Base Building 3, Cooking 2, Jewelry 2, Medicine 2, Tailoring 2, Tool Crafting 3, Vehicles 1, Weapon Crafting 2.
Weapon Crafts: Axes 5, Bows 9, Clubs 5, Daggers 5, Spears 5, Swords 11.
Armor Crafts: Heavy Armor 5, Light Armor 5, Medium Armor 8, Shields 6.
Sub-Crafts: Curved Swords 5.
Character Skills:
[Forbidden Knowledge]
Armor Skills:
Heavy Armor: [Push], [Stampede]
Medium Armor: [Recover], [Leap], [Waterform], [Quickstep]
Light Armor: [Dash], [Feather Fall]
Shield: [Brace], [Track], [Break]
Weapon Skills:
Axes: [Chop], [Whirlwind]
Bows: [Sharpshooter], [Longshot], [Scattershot Arrow]
Clubs: [Bash], [Paralyze]
Daggers: [Slice], [Flourish]
Spears: [Thrust], [Sweep]
Swords: [Power Attack], [Slash], [Rend], [Shirk], [Violent Storm]
Armor:
[Copperplated Hat+3] (Nightmarish+5), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+1)
[Copperplated Coat+4] (Nightmarish+6), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+1)
[Copperplated Leggings+3] (Nightmarish+6), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+2), (Reinforced+1)
[Copperplated Shoes+2] (Nightmarish+3), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+1), (Reinforced)
[Copperplated Gloves+1] (Nightmarish+2), (Buttressed+2), (Hardened+1), (Reinforced)
[Silver Amulet]: Socketed with [Chipped Tourmaline] (Tempus)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Spinel] (Vitus)
[Silver Ring]: Socketed with [Chipped Spinel] (Vitus)
Weapons:
[Copper Scimitar+6] (Nightmarish+8), (Sharpened+4), (Hardened+4), (Reinforced+2), (Stable+2): Coated with [Bloodsiphon]
[Treated Bow+1] (Hardened+1): Socketed with [Chipped Ruby] (Ignis)
[Basic Leather Quiver]: Contains 17 [Silver-tipped Arrows] (Elemental+2), (Stability+3) and 3 [Scattershot Arrows] (Elemental+2), (Stability+4)
Tools:
[Copper Knife+3]
[Copper Axe+3]
[Copper Hammer+3]
Boons:
[Minor (Speed)] (x3)