Ch.32
In the end, I went back to the Black Spirits dungeon and tried the ogre skeleton champions on the steps leading up to the evil temple again. Those things were still higher level than me, after all, and even if it was only the first 4 of them, each one was worth a bunch of exp...
Crap! I did it again! I’ve tried making a point to use the correct term, but my brain is just too damned wired towards thinking of it as experience! From now on, I hereby nickname Records as exp!
That’ll totally make a difference! Fighting the first four twelve-foot-tall undead one at a time like this was a ton better exp than I’d been making before, since I could now kill them much more quickly, and I focused on using the time to practice with all of my new skills and abilities.
It was a simple process, kill the first four of the ten big undead, then go back to the Hearthflame and reset the stuff in the dungeon, then fight them again. Rinse and repeat.
The last time I’d fought the undead ogres, doing this would have been incredibly dangerous. Killing even one of the big undead guards had taken four or five minutes of careful kiting. Now, killing all four of them took less time than that!
I was definitely a LOT stronger than before overall, but a few things really stood out among the improvements.
First things first, my mind blade, set to +3 undead bane by using Metaphysical Blade, one of my 1st level Psionic Powers, made the fight a LOT easier all by itself! That combo made the Mind Blade +5 to hit and damage and +2d6 extra damage per hit; on average an extra 12 points more damage per hit than I was doing before.
Huh? If I’m using the Bane enchantment, I can now hit a +5 enhancement bonus! I need to tell Sanderson and Riggins that I actually CAN handle the Federov’s succubus, now!
Second, my mind armor’s DR 7/Adamantine definitely stacked with my base DR 7/-. These guys had magical weapons, for sure, but a 14 point reduction in damage was a LOT of damage resistance, and none of them had anything to penetrate DR/adamantine. I could also change one of the +1’s to Defiant, which is the armor equivalent of Bane. It gives +2 armor enhancement bonus and DR 2/- versus a particular enemy, like Undead, Dragons, Evil Outsiders, and so on.
With that, I could have DR 17!
Next up was Qi Resilience.
Qi Resilience – as a full round action, spend 1 Qi to gain Temporary h.p.’s equal to 1d6 plus current number of Qi points in your pool for 1 hour. This doubles at lvl 10. Adds +1 Ki.
This wasn’t something I’d probably ever use in the middle of a fight, it took a full round action to activate it, after all. Turning it on before I pulled one of these giant undead, though? Yeah, 1 Qi spent ahead of time for about 24 Temporary HP was a no-brainer, particularly since Qi Leech was giving me the Qi back after I killed each of the undead!
You always lose temp HP first, after all, so they were another layer of protection, made more valuable the more DR I managed to stack up.
Combine that with my DR and only a crit from most of the things I’d faced even touched my HP! It even brought that damned ghoul half-ogre werewolf’s damage down to a point where I could have taken a hit and still been ok!
It took me less than two hours to make enough exp to replace what I had spent to reach 5th level! I ground for four more hours after that, just becoming more efficient at what I was doing, teaching myself how to leverage my speed and mobility versus their strength and reach.
It was made a lot easier that they were undead, and not intelligent ones, which meant that they reacted in certain pre-programmed ways when I did stuff. There was some variation, but not much, making them almost perfect target dummies!
Finally, I knew I had maybe an hour left before I needed to wake up and so I decided to give the last big group a try.
Trying to fight these guys by myself is definitely not smart... but I wanna see if I can do it!
The moment I engaged, the six big skeletons all repeated the same pattern they had the first time, the two ogre skeleton champions took up a defensive position between me and the casters, and the four casters started raining buffs on them. Enlarge took them from Large sized, about twelve feet tall, to Huge sized, twenty-four feet tall! Buffs were added to their weapons and to the now Huge skeletons.
Worst of all, I was going to have to fight them on the unhallowed AND desecrated grounds of the evil temple, which all by itself gave them bonuses and me penalties; it felt beyond gross, too! It’s a sensation that’s impossible to describe, and it made me want to either kill these things or get the heck away from this feeling!
Either/or, as long as it happened FAST!
It took me about two seconds to realize that the two fighter types, once they’d been grown to Huge size once again, had a reach of 30’! That was, unfortunately, the distance I tried to fire an Energy Spark at them from!
Only the fact that I had a Counter skill ready let me survive the two attacks of opportunity I provoked the moment I fired those rays! +1 Unholy, Human Bane halberds taller than two-story buildings lashed out at me and I desperately countered the first champion’s swing with Arcane Shield, its sapphire energy and auric symbols letting me deflect that hit!
I may have made a slight miscalculation, here! Was all I had time to think as the second enormous halberd was still coming.
I had nothing left to stop that one, though.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even a critical hit; just a brutal one! After the 25 temporary HP I had, and DR 16, because I had up Mind Armor and Barkskin, I still took 49 points of damage!
Yeah, that was a 90 point, non-critical hit!
Halberds have a x3 critical multiplier, too!
Yeah, a critical hit from that thing totally could have one-shot me, just like that damned ghoulish half-ogre werewolf!
Yeah, I am noping the fuck outta here! Screw THAT shit!
And just like Brave, Brave Sir Robin, I bravely ran the hell away! Just like the first time I engaged them, the undead stopped following me once I left the cave they were in.
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After cursing myself out for a little while for being a dumbass to even try fighting those things, I went back to the former Skraven town and considered taking out some of my frustrations on that last group of Skraven that had been the town’s guards before. They were still there, and they still gave some exp, just not enough to really be worth killing repeatedly.
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It felt too much like bullying the weak, though. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’d jokingly started calling the now empty town Rayville in my own mind. I mean, who was even around to complain about my naming sense, after all?
I spent the last hour or so before it would be time for me to wake up in the smithy I’d completely renovated, pounding out the finishing touches on a combat knife I’d been working on. I’d forged and reforged that same chunk of steel into five different weapons now, just practicing and getting ready for a few months from now when I’d be doing this on Earth.
I’d decided to try making a bowie knife and was happy with how it had come out. It had a 14” blade, with a 6” full tang, and a 3” x 3/8” cross guard. I hadn’t put a pommel on it, and I probably wouldn’t... I was practicing my metal craft, after all, not making something to use or sell.
Not bad! Not bad at all. It's well balanced, sharper than hell, and as tough as ordinary steel can get! It was hard not to be happy about making something that I knew very few people back on Earth would be able to match!
I could already easily hit QL 30, the best that plain steel, unalloyed with some magical super-metal could become, on weapons and metal armor. With my current skills, I could technically do it with leather armor, too, but I needed more and better hides and tanning agents before I could do something at that QL in leather.
More powerful beasts would do it, but the toughest thing like that I had access to was the momma spider... and chitin isn’t leather. Sure, I could have made armor out of giant spider chitin, but my Mind Armor was way better than anything I could make; in fact, it was likely better than anyone could make for me, since it wasn’t possible for me to normally wear armor at all.
Improved Mind Armor just let me cheese it, so wasting time on making objectively inferior crap was just too much of a waste for me to even consider it.
I DID think about making some spider chitin armor to sell, but I really didn’t need money, and I didn’t want to give anyone yet another reason to pay attention to me... yet.
I guess that I could have used the Skraven’s hides, too, but even if they were evil monsters, they were still too close to human for me to feel comfortable with skinning them... plus, my Lore skills were telling me that their hides weren’t going to be of sufficient quality to be useful.
A little later, it was time for me to go to sleep here and wake up back on Earth. After putting my tools in the smithy away and banking the fire in the furnace, I went into the Hearthflame’s safe room and crashed.
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The video of the Federovs had been a real wake up call for me, but I had no idea what to actually do about it. Confronting Vlad or his wife would be just silly, my Lore skills were screaming at me that either of them was probably AT LEAST a match for me, and on top of that, I’d be risking giving myself away as the person who’d been the attacker at the warehouse and the Panda Palace.
I figured that, at least for now, the moron with the Red Skull Helmet had neatly volunteered to get all of the credit for those little parties. Me drawing attention back to myself would be silly, right?
In whatever future time, when most of the people on Earth had already become Awakeners, it getting out that I was one would be no big deal. Probably.
I did meet Sanderson and Riggins every day for a few days to make sure they hadn’t been mind-fucked again.
They were both really creeped out by the fact that their FBI contacts had completely forgotten about the video, and it had apparently erased itself from all government databases, gone like it had never been there in the first place!
The three of us agreed that either of them trying to do something about that would cause more problems than it would fix, and we agreed to wait until there was a chance to do something useful...especially since we now had no evidence of what had happened.
Even if my new computer skills would let me retrieve a copy of the video, exposing more people to Demonic magic seemed like a poor idea!
Now, though, especially now that it was obvious that magic and the supernatural were already HERE, revealing myself just felt dumb as hell. I was even regretting revealing myself to Riggins and Sanderson, at least a little bit; not because I thought they were untrustworthy, but once mind magic had entered the game, expecting a normal person to be able to keep a secret was just silly.
No matter how determined a normal human is, even a simple 1st Circle Charm spell would get many people to ignore promises of secrecy. When you add in mind reading and true mind control spells, a normal human doesn’t have a chance. I need to be able to get Sanderson and Riggins something to help with mental defenses, and soon, or I’ll end up screwed if a Mind Mage or Psi decides to go poking around in their heads!
And if Victoria Federov was any of the things that my Lore skills were suggesting that she was, she definitely had access to mind magic... plus a lot of other really nasty shit. Like Divination magic, for instance.
Divination magic was the school of figuring stuff out, of supernatural senses and collecting information. From basic Detect spells like Detect Magic, to scrying spells that let you see and hear people from miles away, to spells that let you see the future and everything in between. In L&L, there was a 3rd level spell that would let you find out a crazy amount of information about someone... just from a few drops of their blood! Called Bloody Biography, it would tell them a person’s name, what they did, as in their gender, race/species, and job/class. Plus, it would tell them when, where, and how the blood was shed!
Blood could also let you scry out a person’s location and simply watch them. Once a powerful enough caster can see where someone is, teleporting themselves or someone else there is super simple.
I’m pointing this out because that poor bastard who’d gone to attack the Federovs? Yeah, they’d managed to cut him. They had his blood.
He was really fucked.
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Georgy paused to look around and try to catch his breath, and then groaned.
I am so fucked. Like totally screwed. I can’t believe I got tricked by that Bride of Virtue bitch, dammit!
When Georgy really thought about it, he was forced to admit that the Bride had never said there were no supernatural beings on Earth, merely that the amount of energy was too low for Awakened to make external manifestations.
But he was pissed, because he felt like he’d been intentionally misled!
Werewolves? Demons? Magic in the real world? What the fuck! SHIT! I assumed the Man in Black was an Awakener! But now, I’ve got no way to know, dammit!
When the twelve-foot-tall werewolf had climbed out of the pool, sniffed the air, then chortled and told him, “I’m disappointed, Georgy. If I’d known you had THIS kind of talent, I wouldn’t have told Maxie to kill you! This is too much disrespect for me to forgive, though. Sad.”
All of that while the holes he’d blasted through his chest were visibly closing themselves!
Georgy had then put three more holes through Vlad’s chest with Combat Art and Qi enhanced bullets, but even though it made Vlad stagger back from him, he was again shocked to be able to see the holes closing while he watched.
Just as he was trying to decide if he should run or not, Victoria had climbed out of the pool!
Lore: Religion and Lore: Arcane told me that she was either a high enough level spellcaster to be able to cast a spell to shapeshift herself into the form of a succubus or was Possessed by one and it had manifested itself physically! A spell to let her shift into a Sinbound like that is REALLY high level, and if she’s possessed, that’s even worse! I KNEW that I wanted nothing to do with the kind of mind games those things can play, so I booked it!
Most of the time, Georgy would laugh at people who invested in things like Lore, Crafting, Perform, and Professional skills when he played RPGs; the exception being people who needed them to use specific combat abilities.
After all, none of them really helped him do what he normally wanted to do in RPGs, which was kill shit!
He’d had so many skill points, with how levels worked in the Dream, that he’d thrown a few points into a couple of Lore skills.
It had definitely, beyond any possible doubt, saved his life.
The way the skills just PUT knowledge into his head honestly freaked him out a little... but it had never led him wrong, as far as he could tell. There had been times when he didn’t KNOW an answer, but that was very different from the Lore skills being wrong!
So, here he was, on the run from his former employers. He didn’t even have the option of going to the Feds for protection, because what the FUCK were the Feds gonna do about werewolves and demons?!
The only good thing that had happened today was he’d been able to buy some silver bullets chambered in 9mm for his Glock 19’s. Frankly, he preferred his replica Colt Peacemakers, chambered for .44-40, or .44 Largo if you wanted to be old school, but the only way for him to get silver bullets for that was probably going to be to make them himself.
At one point in time, 125 years ago, or so, .44-40 had been the most common ammo in the U.S. Not so much anymore. That had actually been one of the attractions for him, because it was easy and cheap to get ahold of reloading equipment for it.
I can’t believe that I actually NEED silver bullets, FFS!
The Peacemakers were higher QL to begin with, and their mechanisms were so much simpler than modern firearms that he could make replacement parts himself, upgrading them to a high enough QL to enchant them.
Which he totally could do, he had Craft: Blacksmith, Gunsmith, and Alchemy specifically so he could repair and modify his own weapons and make his own ammo... not that he really needed to since he could make bullets, three at a time, out of Pneuma... the only drawback was they only lasted one minute/level.
Those didn’t count as silver OR magic bullets, though. Yet. His Combat Arts could already do it, somewhat, but really, he needed to enchant his Colts in order to really fix the issue... and he just hadn’t been high enough level to do that, before.
Of course, he could enchant them now that his Shadow Stalker class had reached 5th level, but he’d need to make the weapons himself, or get them custom made by a real master craftsman. He needed them to hit at least +3 to bypass DR/silver, which meant at the very least QL 26 pistols... and really, the higher the better. QL 30 would be great, but he’d need to focus on buying crafting Feats for a few days to reach that QL, and get his hands on at least masterwork tools...
Which I’ll probably have to make myself! Shit!
He also needed the Craft Magical Arms and Armor Feat, on top of everything else.
Georgy was still trying to figure out who the Man in Black had been, too, of course. On the one hand, it seemed perfectly possible that he was an Awakener, but the presence of the supernatural having nothing to do with Dreamers or Awakeners really muddled things.
It just seems weird, what are the odds that the same night Brucie and Tark go to whack the Ramirez kid some freaking Goku wannabe chops his way through Dimi and the rest of his guys while rescuing Jojo? It has to be the same guy at Panda Palace as hit the warehouse and axed Dimi and the rest of them, right? Its either that or there’s a freaking Clan of Kung Fu Wizards pissed at the Federovs!
Georgy knew that wasn’t necessarily true, but it felt like he was close to the truth. His instincts had always kept him alive in a violent and dangerous business, and ever since that night at the warehouse, they’d spoken to him even more loudly; of course, he knew now that was simply a combination of nearly superhuman senses and a bunch of special abilities giving him answers to questions he hadn’t always even asked yet.
He heard a rattle outside, and his literal ninja senses told him it was time to move again.
When I first decided to be a Gun-Fu ninja, it was because that seemed freaking cool! I mean, heck, who DOESN’T want to be John Wick!? It was certainly NOT because I thought having all these crazy bonuses to Stealth would be the only thing keeping me alive while I’m being hunted by a pack of Russian gangster werewolves!
Georgy faded into the shadows and disappeared less than two minutes before the damp, dark alcove storage space in the alley he’d been hiding in was surrounded by Federov soldiers, hunting a traitor.
But by the time they’d silently searched the alleyway, Georgy was already long gone.