Dan wished he could get a moment to catch his breath. His enemies wouldn’t give him one. They just kept coming and coming as he kept moving slowly westward.
His left leg wouldn’t bear much of his weight anymore, and he had a cut on his head bleeding bad enough that he gave up on keeping blood from getting in his eyes. With less sight, he was taking more hits.
SIXTH SENSE was great, but when danger was everywhere and it kept warning him of it all, it wasn’t so helpful.
Some enemies charged him. He charged back as best he could. One lava-dagger entered under the chin of a hungerer, the other into the chest of some strange thing he had only seen a handful of times before. He assumed it was a rare Sortilege. It died the same as less strange things regardless of how rare it was.
Dan ripped his daggers free and spun to attack two new targets. Something hit the back of his head hard enough that it almost caused his knees to buckle. Anger flared in his heart. He loved to feel it. He staggered on his feet for a moment before his daggers found new enemies.
He had been in many battles like this one over the years, but he wasn’t prepared enough for something like this yet. Not as he was now. He needed more time.
Then Dan felt the infernal, his summons, off somewhere in the distance, die. Even if he had 20 seconds to summon a new one, he didn’t have the mana.
He did have the mana for STORM as it came off cooldown, so invoked that when he found a good grouping of enemies to use it on. He now had fewer enemies to face. But there were still far too many of them.
He felt for the cooldown on Lava Stomp. It had a little over 30 seconds left.
Dan dove left to avoid a boulder that was thrown at him. He rolled leftward again. There were no enemies that way. His lungs burned as he sucked in hot gulps of air. He jumped at a wrecker to avoid its giant claws, bringing both daggers down into its neck and twisting. He rode the corpse to the ground and threw a lava-dagger at a pit-thing.
He was too out of steam and made the throw a moment too late. The pit-thing got its beam attack off. Though Dan thought he dodged it, the beam bit deep into his already injured left leg as something else hit his right elbow.
Whatever hit his elbow sent waves of pain coursing through his whole body, causing his other lava-dagger to drip away from his hand. It also caused him to feel anger again for too brief of a moment. He wished the anger would stay longer.
Dan was right-handed, so having his dominant arm injured wasn’t good. He felt the ground tremble and rolled away from the spike attack. He wished he had sent his summons to kill the yeller.
Whatever was throwing the boulders threw another one he rolled away from. The ranged attacks were picking up, so he rolled backwards and quickly scooted behind the boulder where it had landed.
Now having a second to do so, Dan pulled some sort of spike or thorn or tooth from his right elbow. It felt good getting that free of his arm, and the pain subsided some, but his arm was still in bad shape. He had a hard time moving it and his fingers weren’t complying.
He noticed something was different. SIXTH SENSE was quiet. He thought it must’ve been overwhelmed for too long and had given up.
An orekun rounded the boulder he sprayed lava at before it could swipe its tail at him, then more kept coming. A full pack. They all died by another long spray of lava. He was wasting mana he couldn’t afford to waste, but he had little choice in the matter.
A hungerer flew by the other side of the boulder, quickly skittered as it slowed to turn, and lunged at him. He gave it his already injured right arm to chew on as he formed a new lava-dagger with his left hand to stick in its temple.
A new hungerer flashed by, skittered, turned, and lunged. A dagger entered its brow.
Dan peeked around the boulder. More were coming and getting too close. He took a deep breath, prayed his legs would comply, got up, and sprinted for a few seconds before diving down a small slope. It was steep enough to prevent his enemies from seeing him and ranged attacks from reaching him.
Crouching, he moved as quickly as he could, skirting the incline until a ton of different beasts crested the slope, looked or sniffed around, and barreled down towards him.
Dan was hurting. He didn’t have much left in him. It would be so easy to quit. To just let it all end. Finally.
He may not have had much left in him, but he had enough to keep going for a bit. He’d keep going until he absolutely couldn’t.
Just push through and stop being a little bitch. A few injuries ain’t nothing. A little combat ain’t nothing. There’s no quitting. It’s all on you. You won’t fail again.
Last time, with his old build, he was far more equipped to handle situations like this. Getting away was easy. Not this time. He made sure of that.
Molten Armor’s off cooldown, he thought. Lava Stomp too. STORM will be up soon. I can squeeze off maybe two of them depending on how this goes. But which two?
His enemies reached him before he could decide. He saw another creature he had only seen a handful of times before. A real killer. He sprayed lava at all the beasts to avoid that creature.
Scratch that. Only got enough mana for one of them invocations now.
Dan made up his mind. Even if he had no injuries, this would be a rough sprint. As he was, he gave himself a 50/50 shot at making it. Molten Armor surrounded him as he half sprinted, half hobbled up the other side of the incline, back into the open. Back into view of all the monsters with ranged attacks and invocations.
A boulder screeched at him, the ground under him trembled, beams of darkness and what looked like big thorns or fangs flew towards him. He did better at avoiding them all than he thought he would. He still took some hits. Something was lodged in his back. He took small comfort in knowing the Retribution status effect was returning 9% of all damage he took back at whatever managed to hit him now.
He sucked in hot gasps of air as he hobbled along as quickly as he could, dodging what he could, as best he could. He hid behind a lone tree for a couple seconds to wipe his forehead and face clean of sweat and blood. He spit out some blood and tried getting his breathing under control, knowing it was futile.
Dan had one long sprint left. Besides his stamina, his core was also running on fumes. His body wanted to quit on him. He wouldn’t allow it.
He forced his body to get up and move away from the tree a moment before a few creatures would reach it and a boulder smashed it. No one would call what he was doing sprinting, but he was making progress. He felt rumbling beneath his feet.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
He wondered just how much mana the yeller could possibly have as he cleared the spikey area it created in the spot he had just occupied.
The next 30 seconds or so were truly hell for him as he kept pushing himself forward, step by step, trying to suck in enough air but never getting enough, his enemies hard on his heels. He turned and slashed his dagger at any creature getting close but kept going, kept moving.
He was almost there.
----------------------------------------
When I began to think Dan was heading to the Trial of the Scouring, I first thought that there was no way he was going to make it. My second thought was that it wouldn’t matter. His vitals were saying that without significant medical intervention, he’d bleed out. I was surprised he could move at all.
When he was a couple meters from the door and looked like he was teetering on the brink of collapse, l sent a bunch of images to crowd him. He jumped and slashed at one then dove through the door.
If anything, I think the adrenaline spike might’ve helped that prick make it inside the Trial. It didn’t matter though. He was surely dead now. If he thought he was going to find peace and safety by entering the Trial of the Scouring, he was stupider than Luke. And just to be clear, Luke’s extremely stupid.
When participants enter the Boneyard and see all the aberrations waiting for them, they almost always turn tail and go back to the tutorial area, leaving one extra aberration for the next participant that enters.
If they enter the Boneyard again during the same day and try to turn tail once more, they find the way back to the tutorial area closed to them for a few minutes.
Because of this, an absolute shitload of participants run and try to hide in Trials. And as I said before, the aberrations wait a couple hours outside the Trial before wandering off.
Starting in the Boneyard, once a Trial is entered, it locks the participant in and forces them to do it.
The Trial of the Scouring is one of a few that can be exited without completing it successfully. The door unlocks after about 40 minutes for single participants, but the time goes up when parties enter. For a full party of six, it’s a couple of hours.
So, Dan barely managed to make it into the Trial of the Scouring alive. And I mean barely. Sometimes I exaggerate a little, sure, but not this time. He was really on his last leg, just covered in injuries from head to toe.
Since he was trapped and definitely going to die, and since he was bleeding out of so many new exciting orifices, I was super turned on and just going to town on Bob like there was no tomorrow.
I don’t even know how that came to be. The original plan was to make an Az’ga sandwich, with her the meat, and Bob and I the bread.
I took no pleasure from my purely platonic actions at all. It was strictly business on Ace Blacky’s end, so I was still able to monitor things.
Once the Trial’s door locked, instead of seeing to his wounds, Dan slapped on an anti-toxin patch and began to meditate like a fool.
Meditation would do nothing to help him. Not with the short time he had remaining. Unless a participant starts it early, the Trial automatically initiates less than five minutes after the door locks. Five minutes of meditation does nothing.
There are seven buildings in the Boneyard. We’ve already discussed the Sanctuary of Revelations. The others are the Trial of the Shining One, Exhibit: History of the Game, Trial of the Rapture, Trial of the Scouring, Mausoleum of Bak'ung, and Trial of the Savages.
The Sanctuary of Revelations would’ve been a great place to hide out and heal up in. The exhibit about the history of the game would be too. The Mausoleum of Bak'ung wouldn’t have been a terrible choice. Not so much any of the other ones.
Technically, the Trial of the Scouring should be completed without combat, but it requires certain Orbments to do so. You know the specifics of what happens when a world loses a Game, right?
[I know it’s Raptured, but not the specifics of what happens.]
Well, you’re in luck. Ace Blacky was part of a Scourge crew before switching over to being a Game tech, so I know how it works better than most.
The first thing that happens is the Rapture. The few mortals of the world that are big enough sissies and prudes to qualify get snatched up and sent to Heaven. We get there after that.
The damned enter corpses and rise as the undead and are just everywhere eating fools left and right. Demons, devils, Scourge crews, and some other Hell creatures go too. We purge most of the population. Oh, it’s a wonderful slaughter.
Next comes the Scouring. That’s when the hard work begins. A few safe areas are set up around the world. The mortals that survived the Rapture will be and remain safe if they make it to and stay in one of those areas.
Then the Scourge crews get to work tearing down everything. And I mean everything. If it was made by the mortals of the world, it’s the Scourge crew’s job to destroy it.
Sometimes we’d miss stuff or get lazy and bury something instead of wrecking it, but what do you expect? Destroying everything seems like it’d be fun, but it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes way too long.
So, the theme of the Boneyard is history. What’s at stake. What happened the first time their world lost the Game.
I’m guessing this area was the other side’s idea. Why would we give a shit if participants know the history of anything? The less they know, the better, I say.
In this Trial, participants are supposed to be Rapture survivors. They sneak past all the undead, a Scourge crew, then more undead before making it to a safe area. Time dictates rating. If they’re seen, they get attacked, and the damned are endless in this Trial. Kill one and another spawns.
The demon crew doesn’t scale. It’s always made up of Jades led by a handful of Silvers.
The damned scale to participants, but that doesn’t matter since they’re the damned. They only get a little tougher and faster with levels. For Dan, the damned would all be between level 3 and 23.
Much higher tier parties can fight their way through, but the damned don’t give much XP and barely drop anything. And the demon crew is no joke until participants way out-tier them.
Grinding the damned just isn’t smart for this Trial. Weak or not, the damned just don’t stop coming. Once the participants’ cores are tapped, they’re shit out of luck. The risk isn’t worth the little reward.
Dan's mana return wouldn't be enough. He'd get worn down and overwhelmed by undead before the door opened.
He didn’t have the stamina to keep lashing his whip long enough and fast enough without the damned eventually swarming over him and eating his brains.
Spraying lava from both hands could work, but there’s no way in Heaven the mana return would give him nearly enough to keep that up for very long.
This Trial would be his death sentence.
Stealth is the way to go for a good rating. Stealth coupled with flying is the best and easiest way to get SS.
This is one of the most farmed Trials for XP since it’s such an easy SS with the right Orbments. But what happens when Orbments are replaced by ones that don’t fit the Class or build? Or when someone switches to a Class with a utility Orbment slot from one with all power Orbments? Or they put a stealth ability into a prior Missiles slot?
[It hurts their long-term growth, of course. Mana is harder to control. Invocations cost more. Qi is harder to gather and refine into mana.]
Exactly, Boss. Now I know it’s because of those pathways we spoke about earlier. Most of the Trials are like this one where specific Orbments or build-types make them much, much easier. And the stupids don’t know that switching out disparate Orbments or switching to Classes with different layouts is so harmful, so they do. Many times, and often.
Okay, back to Dan meditating like a fat idiot, somehow keeping his lava-dagger in his left hand the whole time. I’d still love to know how he meditates with mentals in the red. It’s really weird.
The Trial automatically started, the big door slid upwards, and Dan didn’t even try to hide. It only took a minute for the damned to spot him. Or smell him. I’m not sure how they operate.
When the undead started shuffling over to him, he stood, barely able to put weight on his legs.
The lava-dagger grew a lot longer and thinner. I would’ve bet he didn’t have the mana for that. He was still running on fumes. Then he stood in the doorway lashing all the damned approaching until the door started to close. He crawled up the pile of undead corpses as the door began crunching all the bodies in its way and slammed shut behind him.
And that’s what he did for a while. Lash the heads of the damned in half.
The best way to put an undead down is significant head trauma. He’d stomp on the heads of any that crawled near him as he whipped their hale brethren behind them. Not hale, since they’re undead, but you know what I mean.
After a while, his injuries stopped bleeding, and his core steadily filled.
When he could, he went wild clearing a little space. With his right arm healed up a little, a new and much thicker lava-whip extended from it as the one in his left hand fell away.
Then he rushed to set the whip in a big circle on the ground and merged two pieces of it, so they’d stick together.
I don’t even know what to call what he did next. His whip only went out a handful of feet until it became the circle-thing. He jerked it up into the air and began spinning it. Once it was going, he somehow managed to lower it over his body a little, about neck level, as he continued to spin it in circles around himself very quickly.
Then he walked right into the hordes of the damned.