A high-tier devil had gotten involved with the Dan issue. Or what we consider a very high tier hotshot in my layer. Rumor has it he’s a Chief. No idea if that’s true. I never even heard of that tier before this. His name’s Mystozagan.
It’s also rumored he found the Key the traitor hid, the reason Earth went hundreds of years past the full cycle, and that he had a lot invested in this Game.
Mystozagan had been involved since Gabrodyl messaged. I just didn’t know it until the day before since his orders didn’t affect me. But every other tech was ordered to hold off on using their Sortilege for the second area, nicknamed the Boneyard since the majority of participants die there. And die immediately upon entering.
Game spawns dissipate after a little while. Mortal corpses don’t. They pile up.
We don’t name the area the Boneyard. Participants always do. After a while, the amount of well-gnawed corpses strewn about make it the obvious choice.
The official name of the second area is Learn. The official name of the starting or tutorial area is Birth. But no one ever calls areas by that dumb shit, neither techs nor participants.
Just like the tutorial area, there’re a shitload of different instances of the Boneyard. On average, about 20 tutorials feed into a Boneyard instance. It could be a lot more or less depending on the size of the teams feeding into it.
Every time a participant enters the Boneyard a creature spawns and attacks them. For Hell difficulty, it’s an aberration 10 levels above their own. There’re three types that could spawn – rokgulas, ort’onks, or druubers, all of which are terrible and bloodthirsty.
If a spawned aberration kills the participant, it sticks around and waits for the next one and attacks along with its newly spawned brethren.
After a couple hours of waiting near an entrance, they usually wander off somewhere. The Boneyard is a lot bigger than the tutorial, but the aberrations always come running when they hear combat or smell new blood.
It was the fourth day of the Game. Four days isn’t much time, but it’s plenty of time for the competent to have reached the second area. Most of the good participants did so on the second or third day.
An aberration only spawns for the same participant twice per day on entering the Boneyard. If things weren’t toyed with, Dan’s Boneyard would’ve probably had over 10 monsters besides the new one he spawned waiting for him. Instead, I’d guess there were well over a hundred creatures.
Mystozagan was somehow able to merge eight Hell-difficulty Boneyards from other regions with this one. I’ve never seen that before, or knew it was possible. He…
[That’s preposterous! This Mystozagan risks losing this Game by so flagrantly disregarding the rules. If the…]
Hold on, Boss. Sorry to interrupt, but he didn’t break the rules. Remember, lawyers never go to Heaven. We have an endless supply of them among the legions of the damned. Our side excels at this sort of stuff.
This was all on the up and up. Some nerd messaged us the specific section of the Game rules and broke down the wordage. It wasn’t supposed to be used this way or for this reason, but how it’s worded allows for it.
[I see.]
The instances being merged meant there were a lot of techs with their Sortilege available. I don’t know exactly how many. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were well above 50 or close to a hundred.
Mystozagan was coordinating everything. We all got the word and activated our Sortilege at the same time. Az’ga hit it twice – once for the Boneyard, and once for our tutorial.
There was no chance fat Dan could face everything arrayed against him and live. He was a dead man walking.
I was ready to bet every fragment I had that he’d turn tail and run like a coward back to the tutorial. Neither Bob nor Az’ga would take the bet. They knew he’d run too. Only an idiot wouldn’t.
Except we forgot that Dan is an idiot. He didn’t run. Was he a fat, a crazy, and at least half a stupid? Yes. Definitely. But he certainly wasn’t a coward. Not on that day.
Actually, I’m going to go ahead and retroactively downgrade him from half a stupid to a full-blown stupid for not knowing when running isn’t cowardice, when running’s the only smart and sensible move.
But independent of how I’m rating his level of stupidity, my Dan problem was finally at its end.
I switched my view to my other team members. Without Dan there to save them, as long as she got a decent one, Az’ga’s Sortilege would turn them into mincemeat.
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Dan exited the tutorial area. As soon as he saw what the forces of Hell had waiting for him in the Boneyard, he said, “Shit.”
That was a bad habit he had formed after spending so much time alone. Talking to himself.
I shouldn’t say alone, he thought. Besides the ghosts of loved ones, the demons often appeared to antagonize him.
Can’t say I was expecting all this so soon. Guess my chances ain’t looking so good, he thought, quickly placing the camera down. The backpack he borrowed from his brother was nearly empty and stayed on. Don’t matter none. It is what it is.
Well, let’s get to it.
Pit-things had a long-range beam invocation, so Dan sent his infernal to attack a large group of them off in the distance. He needed room to work. He didn’t need to worry about the infernal getting in his way.
He gave the summons a mental command to go after the highest level of whatever was out there if it managed to defeat that group of pit-things.
Of the three kinds of the normal boneyard spawns coming at him, the devil-dogs were the fastest and the first to react to his presence. They looked like giant red bulldogs except they had humanish arms and legs with giant claws, still ran on all fours despite their humanish arms and legs, had a giant maw dripping venom, two horns, and their whole body was armored and prickly.
When a devil-dog saw prey, it pounced without a thought and fought viciously until it or its prey was dead.
A big group of them bore down on Dan. He tried running westward, maneuvering so ranged attacks would hit them instead of him. Just as the leaders were about to pounce, Dan invoked Lava Stomp.
The devil-dogs caught in the invocation’s area of effect that weren’t killed outright were injured enough that they wouldn’t be much of a problem.
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What was a problem were all the ranged attacks, and he dodged and rolled further to the left, thankful the SIXTH SENSE effect of Seismic Sense was warning him of so much.
A few dogs made it to Dan, and he speared the first in the eye. The second pounced high, so after ripping his spear free, he set the butt of it on the ground and let the beast impale itself on it. He didn’t think he had the physical strength yet to penetrate the prickly and tough hide of the devil-dogs with a mundane weapon, so he appreciated that one helping him out. It needed a spear through the eye to finally die.
There were a lot more coming. A lot more besides devil-dogs too. He ripped his spear free from the eye socket it was lodged deeply in and avoided a ranged attack from something.
Dan felt into himself to check his core. It was a good bit under half full. He wished he had meditated for a while after leveling up. There was nothing he could do about that now. It was what it was. He’d make do. He’d do his damnedest to remain. Remain as long as he could. Same as always. No different than any other day.
When a ton more devil-dogs were almost on him, he invoked STORM. Little images of spears punctured each dog in a wide area, killing them outright. A lot of them. He was glad he had that Orbment.
He threw his spear at the closest pit-thing as the less ranged attacks coming at him, the better. The spear punctured its body but didn’t take it out.
Lava exited his hand as he dodged around. He whipped the long and thick cord of lava at his encroaching enemies, cutting deeply into each it touched. He dove away from some spikes shooting out of the ground. Those spikes let him know a Sortilege spawned a yeller. A lot of people called them screechers, back when there were other people, but he had always stuck to calling them yellers.
He barely made it away from the spikes. This was why he put the max of two Stat points per level into Reaction and Speed. Even though he put the max amount he could into each, he needed more. A lot more.
Speed was obvious. Dan had learned the hard way how important Reaction was. He had learned everything the hard way.
SIXTH SENSE continued to prove its worth, warning him of danger he didn’t know was coming. He was getting the benefit of three ranks of its effect from the Slot Bonus his Class gave, Seismic Sense.
Once he hit tier 3, Iron, at level 21, his SIXTH SENSE Orbment would become active, and he’d get another rank added to the three he was already getting. And at tier 3, he could increase his Orbments to Second Rank, so he’d have five ranks of SIXTH SENSE once it was ranked up.
After diving away from the spikes, Dan had to dive a couple more times to avoid all the beams the pit-things were sending at him. Between and during each dive, his lava-whip lashed out at devil-dogs and the few hungerers that had gotten closer.
His dives and rolls had taken him deep into the ranks of boneyard spawns. He was hoping that would make him a little safer from ranged attacks. He had already taken some hits. He was going to take some more. That was unavoidable. Molten Armor surrounded him.
The mana return of the Inevitability of Magma passive was returning more than expected so his left hand came up and sprayed lava as his right hand lashed the whip in a wide arc.
Spraying lava was the best he could do with all his Orbments and invocations on cooldown. He could shoot little balls of lava too, but that took too much focus and time to aim. If he ever had excessive time to practice, he hoped to learn better ways to manipulate his mana. He had to live through this battle for that to happen.
Something hit his left shoulder and bit into it deeply, causing his lava spray to sputter out. Rage flared inside his heart as he lashed his whip madly around him.
He loved to feel it. Rage. Anger. It wasn’t a bad emotion to feel in battle. At first, he thought having a permanent Enraged status effect would be hard to handle. It had done nothing to him until just then.
He went so long without feeling anything besides the terrifying and crushing weight of responsibility and duty, he had thought feeling anything else would be wonderful.
With people around again, he felt something new, but whatever horrible emotion that was, he’d prefer to avoid it. It was terrible.
Out of necessity, Dan had tested that emotion with his new permanent Enraged status effect. He talked to the whole group, wondering if Enraged would kick in and do something. It didn’t. It was the same exact level of horrible that it was before the status effect. He hated it.
But anger – anger was an old companion that had abandoned him far too long ago. Anger and hate had kept him alive, kept him going, when it counted. Especially anger. Especially in the early years.
He was happy to feel some anger again, even if it wasn’t all that strong, a little too dull, and far too brief. It was something. He hoped to feel more of it.
He ducked a pouncing devil-dog while creating a dagger of lava with his left hand as it passed overhead, gutting the beast. He lashed at a group of enemies, stabbed a hungerer creeping up on him, let the dagger flow away, and started spraying lava again. He sidestepped beams from pit-things, dove away from the spikes the yeller sent under his feet, and other ranged attacks from whatever else was out there.
And there was a lot out there. Less now though, he thought. And I felt a little anger. That ain’t nothing. Let all of them sons of bitches waste their Sortileges on me. I can take it.
But that had proven false in the past. In all ways. With his life. With his marriage. With his child.
Lava sprayed. The whip lashed. Inevitability of Magma returned mana as Dan waded through his enemies. STORM came off cooldown and many creatures of nightmare died at once.
He fought. He did what he had done for a very long time.
When Molten Armor ran out, the hits he took started to hurt more and whittle him down. The pain was easy to deal with. That type of it. His shirt became as bloody as it was sweaty. He sucked in desperate gasps of air, but it was never enough. His limbs trembled with effort.
He dropped the whip to spray lava with both hands. He was expending far more mana than was coming in now.
The mana return was the main reason he had taken his Class. Dan had figured his mana-type of magma would change DISCIPLE OF STONE a good bit, but even if it hadn’t, that mana return would’ve been worth the grade hit to Agility, Reaction, and Speed from Aspect of Rock, and even the lesser Mind-Fog effect.
A group of seven or eight hungerers arrived and attacked at the same time. He had to start conserving mana. A dagger appeared in each hand. A few ranged attacks landed, eating into him, one to his back and one to his belly.
He dove at the hungerers and killed three before SIXTH SENSE warned him of danger coming from below, as he was too engrossed in battle to notice the rumbles. He dove as spikes came out of the ground, impaling two of the hungerers.
More enemies surrounded him, including some of the faster Sortilege creatures that fought up close and personal.
All the Sortilege creatures spawned a good distance away, near the Sanctuary of Revelations in the middle of the Boneyard. He knew there’d be a lot more coming.
Out of his peripheral vision, off in the distance, Dan saw someone enter the Boneyard. He couldn’t tell if the person was able to return to the tutorial in time or was killed by all the Hell creatures. He hoped the person got out safely.
The second time someone entered the Boneyard in a day, they couldn’t exit back to the tutorial immediately. They’d be stuck in the Boneyard for a couple minutes. There were already far too many corpses around the entrance. There was no way anyone could make a run for it and survive. Not through this.
Dan could’ve exited back to the tutorial and waited for all the the Sortilege creatures to despawn. If he came back tomorrow after they were gone, his chances of surviving would drastically increase.
But he knew this was all happening because of him. He wouldn’t leave his mess for others to deal with. And he’d be condemning a lot of people to death if he did that. He already had plenty enough weighing down his conscience. He didn’t need to add to it.
So, he fought. His knives easily pierced flesh. He avoided what attacks he could. Inevitability of Magma returned mana as Dan waded through his enemies. He checked for his infernal. It was still going strong against the pit-things. That thing’s a beast, he thought. He was glad to have that Orbment.
Dan really needed a moment to catch his breath. Lava Stomp came off cooldown. STORM would again soon. And he continued to fight.
He dove, stabbed a creature on the way past, got hit by something heavy, and rolled in front of a big grouping of monsters. Little images of lava daggers stabbed all of them as he invoked STORM. Everything in front of him died.
After maneuvering to a new group, Lava Stomp put more enemies down or out of commission.
He had killed many of the creatures arrayed against him, but not nearly enough. He was taking too much damage. The more damage he took, the less able he’d be to react in time to avoid taking more.
And as he slowed down further and further, many different types of horrifying creatures surrounded him.
Dan stumbled to a knee as something hit his leg. The world spun for a moment. He wouldn’t let it. He couldn’t allow it.
He had fought far worse battles against far worse enemies while being far more injured. His brows furrowed as he got his feet back under him. He wouldn’t go down this easily.
If this were to be the day he died, he wouldn’t let that happen until there were a lot more corpses piled up around him. Enough to make Heaven notice. Enough to finally make his daughter proud.
Dan stood tall and yelled out a challenge. His enemies went in for the kill.