Joe felt like he was ‘more’ in every possible way. Even though he was still disconnected from his body, his spiritual self felt more alert, more powerful, more agile, more durable. His spirit was picking up on the changes that Fell Bane Hunter had invoked in his body.
Before he went to his profile to see what those changes were, Joe wanted to figure out why he was still trapped in his mind. Reshaping the plinth and plaque again, he had it bring up his status conditions.
Conditions: Corruption {Greater Lycanthropy, incubation 42 minutes}, Impaired {55%}, Possessed {Empowered Spirit}, Structural damage {Torso, R.Soulder, R.Leg, L.Leg}, Stunned, Unconscious
‘Well, that’s not good.’
It was strange to read that many things were wrong with him but at the same time to feel so amazing. Joe drove back the shadow-beasts one more time and opened his sheet to take stock of what he had to work with.
PLAYER PROFILE: Joseph (Joe) Morris
Race: Changeling
Level: 12
Experience: 21,596 / 24,160
SKILLS (Slots / Filled)
STRENGTH SKILLS: (3 / 3)
· [Savage Claws] (U) rank 0
· [Steadfast] (C) rank 9
VIGOR SKILLS: (10 / 10)
· [Deaden Flesh] (U) rank 8
· [Efferous Endurance] (U) rank 29
· [Healer's Ward] (U) rank 3
· [Morphic Form] (U) rank 0
· [Stun Block] (U) rank 4
DEXTERITY SKILLS: (5 / 5)
· [Hunter's Pursuit] (U) rank 0
· [Melee Defense] (C) rank 16
· [Staff Expertise] (C) rank 14
· [Stealth] (C) rank 2
PERCEPTION SKILLS: (5 / 5)
· [Assess Creatures] (C) rank 23
· [Eyes of the Healer] (C) rank 25
· [Helpful Hand] (C) rank 6
· [Night Eyes] (C) rank 0
· [Tracker] (C) rank 0
SPIRIT SKILLS: (9 / 12)
· [Dispel Rot] (C) rank 6
· [Healing Touch] (C) rank 29
· [Healing Wave] (C) rank 0
· [Heart Fire] (C) rank 11
· [Pack Master] (U) rank 0
· [Purge] (U) rank 5
· [Warding Heal] (C) rank 0
RESOURCES
· Health: 281 / 625
· Stamina: 960 / 1,573
· Mana: 846 / 2,458
ATTRIBUTES
· Strength: 3
· Vigor: 10
· Dexterity: 5
· Perception: 5
· Spirit: 12
Available Attribute Points Unspent: 0
CLASSES
· Primary Class: Healer
· Secondary Class: Fell Bane Hunter
· Tertiary Class: None
TRAITS
· [Anyone] (Racial)
· [No one] (Racial)
· [Iron Mind] (Hereditary)
· [Beastmaster] (Achievement)
· [Dancer] (Achievement)
· [Mystic] (Achievement)
· [Overachiever] (Achievement)
· [Punching-Bag] (Achievement)
· · [Glutton for Punishment] (Achievement)
· · [Death's Door] (Achievement)
· [Survivalist] (Achievement)
· [The Seal of Passing] (Prophetic)
The first thing he noticed was his health. Even with 55% impairment, it was higher now than it had been at full health at the beginning of the fight.
As far as the new converted skills went, they had a strange feel to them. He didn’t get that extra something from his old stand-by skills like [Healing Touch] and [Efferous Endurance]. They were just his spells. The new ones had a vibrancy emanating from them that Joe had a hard time putting his finger on. When he focused on them a wildness seemed to fill his spirit. It was a urging feeling, one that was trying to incite him to move and act. It was as if the skills themselves wanted him to run and hunt.
Joe had too much going on to delve into those feelings further at the moment. He guessed that until he broke free of Sogath’s possession, he was not going to wake up. If he did not wake up soon then the corruption would consume him.
It dawned on Joe why Sougath had not changed his tactics this whole time. He was playing the waiting game. By keeping him barricaded up in his own mind, the beast was running out the clock. The Night Haunt did not have to overrun him. It just had to wait.
Joe, on the other hand, knew he had to swap things up. It was time to stop hiding behind his envisioned walls and take the fight to Sougath.
His new claws seemed like they would be his best offense. Unfortunately, try as he might, Joe could not imagine himself with furry taloned fingers. Since this was his self-image, he decided he could make them into whatever he wanted them to be. He instinctively knew that as long as the skill could synchronize with his mental image, he could use the skill here in this shadowed realm of thought and spirit. He focused on the [Savage Claws] talent and imagined a pair of curved bone daggers. The weapons manifested in his fists, looking wicked and deadly.
For defense, he would stick with the dwarven trait that had been working extremely well so far. He pulled his iron walls towards himself and wrapped the morphing metal around himself. He envisioned a suit of mithril armor. The bright silver metal covered his body in a weightless shell of scales, chains, and plates.
As the walls came down the horde of shadow beasts pounced on top of him, trying to overwhelm him and drive him to the ground. New instincts filled Joe. He rolled and cut his way out of the swarm.
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You have escaped a Night Giest’s attempt to grapple you.
Your skill [Hunter’s Pursuit] has increased to rank 2.
Instead of just batting away the smoky ghosts as he had been doing with his weapons of manifested spirit, the bone blades ripped open wolfen wraiths, scattering them into motes of fluttering ash.
Your skill [Savage Claws] has increased to rank 1.
Joe reveled in the freedom his new strength and agility gave him. He was no longer just a passive healer. He was now a hunter of dark fell creatures. Joe dove back into the black vortex of talons and teeth and showed them his claws. The ghost wolves' sole drive was to possess and delay Joe but they could not breach his [Iron Mind]. Nor could they withstand his relentless assault. Every shadow he struck disintegrated.
The deeper into the mass of shadowy wolves he pushed the closer he could feel Sougath’s aura of dread. He took another step and he seemed to pass some sort of threshold. Fear filled him. Joe could feel his heart start to race and his muscles tense up.
The scene around him changed. Instead of a storm of twisting shapes and hinted lupine forms, Joe found himself standing in a dark forest. It would have been pitch black, save for a beam of bright moonlight that speared through an opening in the canopy, lighting the center of a clearing. Joe could see even in the far shadows large feral wolves stalking among the twisted trunks.
Your skill [Night Eyes] has increased to rank 2.
The spotlight from the full moon landed on the massive form of Sougath. The specter stood about twelve feet tall, its edges blurring and twisting, showing it was more haunt than beast now.
“Have you come to give yourself to me?” its hollow voice hissed and reverberated around the glade. “Have you accepted the inevitable?”
“No. I’ve come to finish what I started. You’re done,” Joe declared, with a surprisingly true feeling of confidence. “Whatever fearful tricks you come up with, I’ll keep changing the rules to beat you.”
The mark on Joe’s arm ignited under the armor, letting loose a stream of golden motes.
“So that is how you did it? You cheated me with another mark,” the were-wraith growled at Joe. A palatable anger filled the air, almost overriding the beast's constant aura of terror. Which one?”
“Why would I tell you?” Joe answered with a shrug, continuing to step closer with every word.
“It matters not. Be it Fool or Death, to face me here you are the first and so I shall reward you with the second,” Sougath’s spectral voice uttered. “Kill him,” he commanded.
The forest exploded into motion. The closest of the giant wolves tried to bowl Joe over but he dodged the attack and ripped his bone knife down the creature's side. The blade met no resistance from hide or bone, it just tore the creature open, causing it to discorporate into clouds of shadows and soot.
Joe punched the next attacker straight in the face with his left-hand dagger, unraveling it as well.
The next two spectral beasts slammed into him but Joe leaned into his skills and they ricocheted off him, leaving him still standing on his feet.
Your skill [Steadfast] has increased to rank 10.
Joe cut down a couple more but it seemed for every beast he beat, another was there to take its place. Joe realized he had to stop being distracted by the geists Sougath was summoning and find a way to reach the monster itself. The problem was there were lines of lesser haunts between Joe and their master. Joe would just waste his precious minutes trying to cut his way through them all.
Lost in this thought, Joe missed with his daggers, and a sharp pain lanced into his side. One of the ghost wolves had bit into his hip.
Exaggeratedly, Joe loudly rebuked the creature. “OW! Stop that!” He said the word as if he was speaking to a puppy that had not yet learned limits. It was an instinctive reprimand from years and years of training, more than any conscious thought. Yet the response to the command was immediate. The spectral wolf recoiled and flattened itself against the ground.
Your skill [Pack Master] has increased to rank 1.
A wolfish grin spread across Joe’s face this time. The ghost wolves might fear Sougath but Joe had usurped the abomination’s role as the alpha dog when he had taken that skill from the curse.
“My turn,” Joe growled. “DOWN!” he shouted locking eyes with each of the wolves in front of him, one after another.
Your skill [Pack Master] has increased to rank 2.
The pack of shadowy lupines parted in front of Joe. The beasts cringed and either laid down or slunk away to the edges of the horde. In either case, the cowed shades opened a path between him and the Night Haunt.
“You think I need these,” the towering shadow wolf scoffed. “I tested your mettle upon the stairs and you were no match for me. Nothing has changed.”
Sougath rolled his shoulders back and arched his long long arms outwards while flaring open his taloned hands. He stepped over the cowering geists and advanced on Joe.
“Everything has changed. I am twice what I was then and you are a shadowy scrap of the beast I already killed. It’s over for you, Sougath.”
Joe settled into the fighting stance Hah’roo and Valloc has taught him. He shifted the position a bit to accommodate the daggers instead of his staff but he was ready for the creature when it came.
Or he thought he was.
Sougath's inhumanly long arm whipped low, just an inch above the ground, and hooked Joe’s ankle. With a tremendous pull, Joe was yanked off the ground and sent cartwheeling through the air. He landed in a heap but he bound back up using the athleticism provided by Hunter’s Pursuit.
He oriented just in time to see the haunt’s claws descending for his throat. Joe swayed to the side and intercepted the beast’s wrist with one of his bone blades. Sougath screeched as the dagger sliced deeply down to the bone. It responded by lashing out with its foot again in the move that had hammered Azbekt and the Count more than once. The maneuver was just as effective on Joe. The wind was slammed out of Joe’s spirit body and again he was tossed away to land prone.
Joe healed and leapt in under the creature's claws, counting on Healer’s Ward to shield him long enough to deliver a deep gouge to the monster's gut. It worked but Sougath punished him again for it a moment later.
He was fighting better than he ever had before but it was not enough. Joe needed more time and training. Some sort of edge that would counter the fiend’s reach and the fact Sougath was so much stronger than he was. The more the Night Haunt tossed him around like a rag doll the more Joe felt his control of the geist start slipping away.
Your skill [Hunter’s Pursuit] has increased to rank 5.
For the sixth time, Joe rolled back up onto his feet. He could feel his lips pull back from his teeth as a growl rumbled out of his chest. He could feel the wildness of the cursed-changed skills pushing at him. Almost begging him to let them loose. Joe was pretty sure that even if he managed to stay alive, Sougath would be able to fight him to a standstill. A drawn out fight was a loss for Joe no matter who won.
The next time Sougath attacked, Joe embraced the stolen talents.
Your skill [Morphic Form] has increased to rank 1.
Your skill [Steadfast] has increased to rank 11.
Joe could feel muscles stack up on his back, thighs, and arms. The haunt’s arm slammed into his side but this time Joe was the rock. He jammed both daggers into the beast’s forearm, on both sides of the limb, and yanked the blades back toward himself.
Your skill [Savage Claws] has increased to rank 6.
Gouts of black ichor sprayed from the foot-long tears in the monster’s arm. The creature screamed and for the first time, it looked at Joe with wariness.
Joe flared Pack Master and locked eyes with Souagth. “I am going to kill you again, Sougath.”
The Night Haunt leapt backwards swirling black shadows around itself. The blurring darkness shot away from him, slipping through the trees. Joe immediately saw its plan. Once again, it just needed to outlast Joe. While his eyes could not separate the natural shadows from the false ones, his nose told him exactly where Souagth was. Joe hadn’t even realized he knew that the specter smelled like dead meat and blood but he had no trouble tracking the fleeing monster.
Your skill [Tracking] has increased to rank 2.
Joe launched himself on an intercept course. ‘No more games.’ He had to end it now while he still had time to reach a cure.
Locked onto the monster’s scent, Joe could tell the haunt was looping around a large black tree. He dashed the other way and launched himself into the air as they met on the far side. Joe slammed both daggers straight into Sougath’s chest and pulled down as hard as he possibly could. The bone edges split open the monster’s hide almost effortlessly. Joe only stopped pulling down when the blades slammed into the fiend’s pelvis bone.
He was coated in oily ebon juices, while dissected organs splattered on the ground. Sougath tipped his head up towards the sky, gazing at his totem of the moon, before bursting apart into coils of twisted flesh and pools of black blood. The creature unraveled in a completely unnatural manner.
The last thing to vanish was the star-filled blot on the monster’s hand. It seem to shrink in on itself for a second before bursting apart into thousands of golden motes that drifted away.
----------------------------------------
Joe finally opened his eyes. In the sky, he saw a black wraith-like form of the demon wolf. It hovered in the air, a black cloud of venomous hatred and impotent rage. It seemed to be trying to gather itself back together but as quickly as it gained any density, its edges unraveled into tattered wisps of ash and grit. When the soot landed on the old holy ground, it fizzled and popped, burning completely away. The ebon feral blot grew smaller and smaller until finally the last of it fell to pieces.
As the ground seared the last scraps away, Joe sat up and opened the windows Hawking was pushing at him.
You have slain Sougath the Night Haunt.
You have reached level 13. You do not gain an attribute point on this level.
Achievement: You have defeated an empowered elite enemy. Your conduct has awarded you the following choice of Traits:
[Undaunted]: Fear not even fear. You have Major Resistance against Fear effects.
[Underdog]: Out of the belly of the beast. +25% health when fighting enemies with 5 or more levels higher than your own. This trait synergizes with Overachiever.
Joe had had more than enough of fear for the moment. Even though he was passing on a synergy, he picked [Undaunted].
He sat up and, with a feeling of dread, looked at his hands. Sure enough, they looked like they belonged to some feral demonic creature. A shaggy coarse fur covered the back of his hand and ran halfway up his forearm towards his elbow. The fingers were each a few inches longer than they had been. And of course, there were claws. His nails were long black talons that looked wickedly sharp.
Joe sighed but honestly, he was too overloaded to worry too much about them. If this ended up being the worst of his transformation, then something had finally gone right for him.
Now he just had to beat the clock.