Dan’s vision in his one good eye kept blurring and threatening to stop working. Things would get dark for a moment. He’d think that was it, and he was blind, but then his eye would start working again. Mostly.
Ever since he took that hit to the temple, he had felt really nauseous, shaky, and weak. He couldn’t afford that. His limbs were refusing to listen to him. He couldn’t afford that either. He made them listen.
His mind wasn’t working so well, and that was something he definitely couldn’t afford.
Except his mind was how he got the other parts of himself to listen and do what they needed to do. He had no way of getting his mind to do what he wanted if it decided not to.
After expending far too great of an effort, Dan managed to get back on his feet. He looked at the corpse of Xie Xu and wanted to spit on or kick it. He didn’t have it in him at the moment to do either.
In another life, Xie Xu was a great man. A true hero. It just hadn’t worked out that way this time.
Dan looked at the wound in his belly. It hurt badly. Then he checked out his chest wound. He was able to breathe okay despite there being two holes in one of his lungs.
Broken ribs hurt a lot, but he had taken stomach and chest injuries thousands of times. He was surprised Xie Xu wasn’t sturdier and more capable of continuing to fight despite injuries.
Learning to do so really was a necessity to remain in the Game. He would’ve figured Xie Xu was the exact type capable of doing that. But he wasn’t.
Dan tried to clear his mind. He knew he had something else important to do.
Max Zamotin, he thought. I still got to kill him.
With his mind so muddled and foggy, Dan had forgotten about the infernals chasing him. He only remembered as one turned the corner and attacked. He barely managed to avoid its fist as the thing blew past him.
Dan turned to face his enemy. He sensed danger from behind and dove. A different infernal slammed its arms down where Dan had just been. Instead of getting Dan, it got a sneaker.
Those shouldn’t appear until much later, thought Dan. Shit! I forgot about the two flashers too. There’ll be more Sortilege creatures coming for me.
Dan forced himself back on his feet. The first infernal swung its arm at him, and he sidestepped and cut its arm through at the elbow. Or tried to. It didn’t work out as it should’ve. He spun behind that infernal to avoid an attack by the other. Then a third rounded the corner.
Dan shook his head to clear it. He wrapped a strand of lava around the leg of the infernal he was hiding behind and pulled with all he had within him. The infernal fell, but Dan didn’t get the opportunity to get in a killing blow. Another infernal appeared, and he focused on not getting crushed.
Then he finally caught a break as he moved past the infernal getting to its feet and jabbed a blade of lava into its eye. He moved away a distance and turned to face the three others.
Just as he did, locusts covered him. A huge swarm. Molten Armor gave him some protection against those, but not enough. He covered himself in a thin layer of lava, but only after he had taken a ton of painful bites.
One STORM wouldn’t kill the infernals, and he didn’t have time to play it safe and chip away at his enemies while keeping a safe distance.
He invoked Lava Stomp. It wouldn’t hurt the infernals, but it got them to stop moving for a second. And in that second, one of them lost a leg at the knee. And shortly after Lava Stomp expired, so did another.
The third infernal brought both of its arms down in an attempt to smash Dan, but he skittered backwards and that infernal smashed one of the other two on the ground.
It didn’t kill the grounded infernal, but it did cause it significant injury. Dan would take all the help he could get.
He turned to look over his shoulder. A huge group of strange monsters were coming for him.
Well, shit, he thought.
He tried forcing his mind to clear, but his mind didn’t care what he wanted.
Situations like this weren’t an issue last time after he got the Bind and Recall Orbment, Teleport, and the Traveler Class.
He had promised himself he wouldn’t rely on tricks to remain this time. Still, he wished he had his old Class right then.
His best chance of getting out of this mess wasn’t looking so feasible. The Trial of War was way on the other side of the Crucible. He’d have to go through that huge group of monsters to get to it. There wasn’t much chance of that happening.
He’d do the best he could. He wouldn’t stop. Not until he was stopped. He’d try right up until his last breath and take as many enemies as he could with him.
And when he died, he only hoped he will have done enough to finally make his daughter proud of him.
He imagined her in Heaven, turning to her friends, and saying, “You guys see that? What my daddy done? All those corpses of bad guys piled up around him. He didn’t quit. He never once quit. In the end, he was still a piece of shit and a loser and failed in this too, but not for lack of trying. I’m real proud of my daddy for never quitting.”
Dan maneuvered around the sole standing infernal and turned so he could see all that was coming at him. When the infernal next attacked, he took its leg off. As it fell, it got a blade through the mouth. The other two on the ground got the same.
He panted as he looked to see what he was up against. There were a lot of monsters that didn’t scale he hadn’t seen in a very long time and hardly remembered. And there was some stuff he didn’t remember ever seeing before either.
He didn’t have enough time to summon Ashen Ruin. That would’ve helped a lot.
It is what it is. No sense putting it off. Let’s get to it.
And with that thought, Dan began to charge forward, but another group of infernals rounded the corner and halted his progress as soon as it started. Some of the Sortilege creatures reached him as he was fighting the rest of the infernals.
Once the infernals were down, he invoked STORM, and that gave him a moment of peace before the bulk of the monsters reached him.
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He did the best he could. He did better than he thought he would’ve. He killed a bunch of them before he got put in a situation there was no getting out of.
A burrower got hold of him and started dragging Dan underground. He could feel the acid eating away at his legs.
He wished he got to feel anger one more time before it was over, but it never came. He just felt confused. Everything was all muddled.
As he was being dragged underground, the abaddon went to smash Dan’s head. Without thinking, he instinctively tried recalling to one of his bind points. Then he remembered he didn’t have his old Class. He couldn’t recall anymore.
He wondered why it was taking so long for the burrower to finish dragging him underground or for the abaddon to smash his head into a pile of mush.
After some moments, he noticed his legs weren’t being burnt by acid any longer. He opened his eyes.
He was inside the Trial of the Scouring. At his old bind point. The glitched one. The one that made a whole new instance of the Boneyard.
What the hell? How’d I get here, he wondered.
After half a minute of trying to figure out what was going on and coming up empty, he thought, Well, shit. No sense looking a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll take it.
The bind point was set to the middle of the Trial, to the left side of the demon work crew, high up on a statue near the site they were destroying. The statue was placed there to force people to go around the right side where the majority of demons were working.
The bind points of Bind and Recall couldn’t be set in Trials. Most Trials. Open ones like the Class Trial or the lobby of Exhibit: History of the Game could have bind points set inside them.
The smart thing to do would be to wait until the door opened and try to slink away far enough the demons never spotted him.
Except Dan wasn’t in good shape. He had a bunch of wounds that were bleeding badly. Unlike last time, he couldn’t use his Teleport Orbment to heal from major injuries. He didn’t know how much time he had but he knew he wouldn’t last until the door opened.
He had to sneak far enough away from the demons so that they didn’t detect him. If they did spot him, he was dead. That was a given. He couldn’t fight the demons and all the undead at the same time.
He had two choices – head back towards the door or forward towards the safe zone and complete the Trial.
He didn’t know how he got to his old bind point, but he knew this was his best chance of completing this Trial before he ascended to much higher tiers, so he decided to head towards the safe zone.
There were a lot less undead around that side of the statue anyway. Most of them were on the right side of the Trial, crowding the path around the demon crew leading towards the safe zone.
Dan held in all the winces and grunts as he looped a length of lava over the statue’s head and lowered himself down slowly.
----------------------------------------
Can you believe that bullshit? I put a ticket in, of course. And everyone was clamoring to find out what happened. Guess what they told us?
[No.]
Sorry, I forgot about your guessing disability. They said it was an advanced mana technique.
[What? That’s incorrect. With magma as a mana-type? I don’t think so. How could anyone say magma could possibly result in a teleport or portal function?]
I completely and 100% agree with you. It can’t be. Some secret knowledge he learned of in Carnegie Hall or some such. It can’t be what they said. If it was, then everything I know about mana-type and techniques is wrong.
[No. You’re correct. Magma can’t result in a portal or teleport ability. Outside of Orbments, only very specific mana-types can create travel effects such as portals and blinks.]
Yeah. And don’t forget, portaling or blinking into a Trial is another impossibility. It can’t be done. There’re a couple exceptions, but they’re well known.
[What about an Invocation Gem or scroll? That would explain it.]
Those aren’t in the Game. And even if they were, no one can portal or teleport into a Trial.
[Leonard did.]
He sure did, Boss, but Leonard’s in the high pantheon. The normal rules don’t apply to them. If even a fraction of the stories are true, they do impossible shit all the time.
[True. There must be some reasonable explanation.]
Know how I go back and forth between time travel and Carnegie Hall? This put me a little more in the Carnegie Hall camp. I just can’t figure out how time travel would account for this.
But since I don’t know shit about time travel, I can’t rule out there’s something about it I don’t know. Maybe time travel is like a travel ability. Say it’s similar to Bind and Recall, and Dan binds to not just a spot, but a time too.
[Interesting hypothesis.]
Thanks. I don’t know how that would explain why whatever happened created a whole new instance of the Boneyard when Dan portaled in. There’re some other theories too.
[Hypotheses.]
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Az’ga thought it might have to do with the Trait Dan got from Kharahel. That’s crazy though, right?
[I don’t see how the two could be connected.]
Me either. She’s smart, but she’s also a dumb broad. She could’ve been on her period when she thought of that. Wait, are you a dumb broad?
[No. I doubt you’d say such things around Lilith though.]
Of course not! I’m not suicidal. That is unless I somehow manage to get my hands on a flying vehicle I’m able to fly myself and there’s a building with Zixy and Gabrodyl in it. Then all bets are off.
[Let’s just move on.]
You got it, Boss.
Dan was hurting. He had a zillion new and exciting orifices he was bleeding out of. He was practically naked again too. He lowered himself down with a strand of lava all quiet like. There weren’t too many of the damned close to the spot he lowered himself too.
Still, there was no way that fat prick was going to get out of the aggro range of the Scourge crew before the damned noticed him. And he didn’t, but he got lucky again and the crew never noticed him fighting the damned.
It’s a shame he didn’t need two hands for the lasso. Then he would’ve been screwed. Stupid one-handed crippled gimp fatso. We were so close! We had him! Stupid, bullshit portal thing.
And stupid undead. They just kept walking right into the lasso like huge idiots. How can they be that dumb? They saw what happened to all their friends and they still rushed in to get a lava-lasso right to the face. It’s infuriating.
He was still a good distance away from the safe zone when Dan asked, “Time?” He only had a couple more minutes left if he wanted SS. Since the damned spawn over on that side, he wasn’t making fast progress.
And there was no way he’d be fully healed in a couple more minutes. His arm was still badly broken, and his hand was still missing. He was still bleeding out of some of his new orifices. His eye was still missing too.
But the fat prick just pushed forward and made it in time for SS, but he was still all beat up and broken. The SS reward wasn’t a good one, just three Stat points. He…
[Three extra Stat points is an amazing reward. Such would cost a fortune even in the higher planes.]
Again, I meant for the Game, not real life, Boss. Last time Dan leveled up he got 147 Stat points. Three Stat points were nothing in comparison. Two other Trials have this reward. Well, the last one gives four instead of three. In total, 10 extra Stat points.
[It all adds up.]
I can’t argue there, Boss. Especially knowing the secret method cores can be improved by leveling up and ascending a certain way without the Class Obelisk. If…
[It isn’t a secret. It’s well known.]
Maybe in your fancy layer, but it isn’t known at all in mine. We didn’t even know we could level up outside of a Class Obelisk. All this fancy highfalutin stuff was new to Bob, Az’ga, and me.
Anyway, Dan exited the Trial. Remember, this was a new and empty instance of the Boneyard, so only Dan was in it. He summoned Ashen Ruin, meditated until the Trial reset, commanded his summon to wait, and entered again.
He just grinded on the damned until he healed up and the door opened. I should mention his hide armor had been repaired by then too, so we could no longer laugh at his tiny groin.
He started running back to the tutorial area, changed course, and ran to Exhibit: History of the Game. The one in his other Boneyard instance was always crowded. Participants get a weapon when they run it, and it can be initiated regardless of how many people are inside it.
The participant selects a religion of their world and watches some footage of what it says about shit and what it left out or got wrong. It runs for about 15 or 20 minutes.
Then they get to select a weapon. There’re thousands of different types they can pick from among.
Dan selected a glaive and put it in his belt. The weapons from the exhibit barely cost anything to store. I think just a fragment. Maybe two. But I’m almost positive it’s just one.
Dan didn’t seem surprised at all that he was the only participant in that Boneyard. He seemed a little hesitant to leave. He ran to the tutorial then went right back to the Boneyard. That got him back to his old instance of it. The correct one. The only one he should’ve been able to enter.
A few minutes later, he saw Dotty, Andrew, Ace, Leena, the new Luke, and Hector all headed to the tutorial area.
Dan looked pissed as he ran up to them and angrily asked, “What the hell y’all doing?”