Quest Completed: A Mage’s Purpose
Objective: Help Torick reach the top of the tower.
Reward: Receive the perk [Dialog Prompt]
Technically they had reached the top of the tower according to the quest’s objective, but they had yet to complete Tempering the Tower.
And with the tower’s owner awaiting, the Dialog Prompt perk wasn’t going to be a whole lot of use to Jack right now.
The final level of the magical study awaited upon the third floor, scattered with papers, desks and decaying bookshelves.
A lone, cloaked figure stood on the opposite side of the room, unworking; all it did was breathe deeply, its whole torso rising and falling with each heaving breath.
The figure turned slowly and pulled back the hood of its cloak. Jack had gotten plenty used to killing and dealing with new monsters over the past hour since leaving Silverward, but his breath still caught in his throat at the sight of the being’s head.
A rotting humanoid face stared back at him, eyeless and peeling. Its mouth opened as if to speak, but its jaw simply hung open loosely before snapping off on one side, swinging loosely on a single joint.
Being: Skeletal Warlock
Type: Undead
HP: 128/128
Nature: Aggressive
Consumes: Souls
‘Do not falter, Jack,’ Torick said, sticking impressively to his guns. ‘These things can smell fear.’
‘… But it doesn’t have a nose.’
‘That is not the smell I speak of, Jack.’
‘Any idea what undead weaknesses are?’
‘Fire, which we do not have at this moment.’
And it’s got 128HP.
‘So we chip away at it piecemeal and hope that we manage to take it down without it taking us down first,’ Jack said. ‘What kind of attacks are we dealing with?’
‘That depends entirely on the nature of its magic, and considering the undead that swarmed us on the floor below…’
The skeletal warlock suddenly grabbed its left arm with its right hand and pulled it free from its socket without the blink of a missing eye.
The skeletal arm went rigid in its joints, forming a stiff, straight line.
A staff.
The open, skeletal hand at its end suddenly swelled with a ball of black, jagged energy that swiftly hurtled at Jack.
Jack leaped to the side and crashed to his front before pushing up from the ground.
The wall behind him rotted suddenly, its wooden surface peeling away like flesh from the bone.
‘Necromancy,’ Torick groaned. ‘We must attack quickly and deftly!’
Torick dashed fearlessly towards the warlock with his daggers raised, swiping at its ankles fast.
Undead Warlock loses 1HP.
Undead Warlock loses 1HP.
Undead Warlock loses 1HP.
The skeletal warlock barely noticed each of the swiping attacks from Torick’s daggers, even with the gnome’s 11 proficiency.
There was no point in even attempting an attack with his own proficiency sitting at a lowly 3. The same went for his bow, but he couldn't just stand there and do nothing.
He sheathed his dagger and kept a distance as Torick kept moving in for attacks, barely dodging the warlock’s swipes.
Jack readied his bow and fired off an arrow. It struck the warlock in the back but barely gained its attention.
Ineffective.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Torick tried to gain another window to attack the warlock, but it had grown accustomed to the gnome’s strategy. Neither of them could gain an opening to attack any further.
Frustrated and bored, the undead warlock wheezed and turned its attention to Jack. It stamped its skeletal arm-turned-staff into the ground, tilted it forwards and launched a series of seven balls of jagged black energy in his general direction.
Jack tried to dodge the warlock’s attack, but their reach was too narrow for him to slide through one of their gaps. The edge of a ball struck him straight in the arm, immediately igniting his sleeve with a black fire that caught his skin.
Jack loses 6HP.
Jack loses 8HP.
Jack loses 11HP.
‘AGH!’
Jack has been struck with Rotten Affliction.
He barely had time view the description of its effects as he regained himself:
Rotten Affliction: Causes loss of 1HP every 5 seconds until foe is defeated.
The pain pushed him to rip the sleeve free and toss it aside, leaving him with a stabbing pain in his arm that steadily began to drop his health.
At the sight of Jack’s injury, Torick yelled out in a high battle-yell and rushed towards the warlock, swiping at its ankles and taking more shreds of its health away.
Jack hurried at his foe, dagger at the ready, and swiped like a man possessed.
Jack has achieved Dagger Proficiency – Level 5
Jack has achieved Dagger Proficiency – Level 6
Jack has achieved Dagger Proficiency – Level 7
He managed three swipes until every additional swipe resulted in a single-point drop to the warlock’s health.
The tiny victory was short-lived, though. No sooner had he brought the warlock’s health down to 119/128 did it turn, raise it’s bone-staff into the air and unleash a trio of ghastly faces his way.
Jack swept out with his dagger once more, but it was no use; the ghouls phased straight through his blade and through his body, unleashing a terrible sickness through him.
Jack has been struck with Nauseous Affliction.
Nauseous Affliction: Causes increasing nausea until foe is defeated.
The strategy was pointless; his HP was dropping too fast. A few more strikes on top of the Rotten Affliction and he would be done for.
We can’t keep going like this. We need to adjust our strategy.
Fire… Where the hell do I get fire?
If they made it out of the previous challenge a little faster, there was an off-chance that they could have brought the purple and green flames of the lanterns with them and used the fire to take a decent chunk out of the undead warlock’s health.
But that was in the past. This was now, and Jack needed a solution.
He moved swiftly, ignoring the pain in his arm as he scoured the room for anything they could use against the attacks.
‘Keep him busy!’ Jack shouted.
‘While you do what?’
‘Adjust our strategy!’
Something, anything fire-related, come on…
Then he saw it.
Infernal Capturani
Jack wrenched the book off the nearby shelf and flipped it open. The whole thing was in another language that he couldn’t even begin to interpret, but fortunately there were plenty of illustrations.
All I need is one that I can craft via mixing and brewing like that Levitation potion… There!
The name was unclear, but the illustration of flames within the vial and the simple ingredients and recipe had him sold, turning him immediately towards the dozens of nearby ingredients in search of what he needed.
‘Are you actually brewing a potion right now?!’ Torick shouted.
‘Fire works against the undead, right? So fire is exactly what we need.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You’re faster than me – don’t risk taking any hits, just keep him distracted!’
Jack scrambled through the mess of ingredients scattering the desk and nearby containers, ignoring the steadily-escalating pain resonating through his body and the HP alerts that appeared every five seconds.
He tossed the first two into the cauldron and scrambled madly for the third.
‘Cinderpods, come on,’ Jack growled. ‘There’s got to be some around here somewhere…’
He found the pods tucked into the folds of a cloak hooked on a nearby rack.
There.
Jack tossed the pods into the cauldron and watched it quickly turn a fiery, infernal orange. The moment it boiled, he poured it with steady hands into a vial and pushed the stopper, watching the empty space at its top fill with smoke.
‘What the hell do I do now?’
‘Jack, what are we doing?!’ Torick yelled in a panic, barely dodging the warlock’s enraged attack.
Jack glanced back at the book and tried to decode the means for activation.
There was nothing in a language he could recognize – except a crude depiction of the vial bouncing up and down with shudder-lines either side of it.
Shake to activate.
With no other course of action, Jack shook the vial.
The orange contents suddenly turned a brutal, violent red. A crazed, devilish face appeared through the glass, setting its mad eyes on Jack.
‘TORICK, MOVE!!!’
‘Oh, SHIT!’
Torick ran clear as Jack turned and hurled the vial at the undead warlock. The cloaked skeleton turned its scowling skull just as the vial came within reach, striking it in the center of its rotting face.
The undead foe scrambled from side to side in dazed silence, completely engulfed in flame. Jack felt the heat from the fire as it swarmed over the being.
Undead Warlock loses 21HP.
Undead Warlock loses 22HP.
Undead Warlock loses 25HP.
Undead Warlock loses 21HP
A few lingering hit points remained as the skeleton’s frame began to collapse.
When it had only 5HP left and the flames had receded, its cloak simmering with smoke, Torick calculated his approach, moved up and slashes his twin daggers at the warlock’s skull in quick succession, wiping away the last of its hit points one by one until it went still and the flames covering its body immediately vanished.
Jack caught his breath as the feeling of sickness in his gut suddenly subsided, and his HP counter stabilized.
'How about those Potions of Basic Healing?’ Jack panted, managing a smile as Torick grinned back at him in happy disbelief at their victory.