The view from the top of the hill sucks, objectively. The only notable feature Vey can spot from it is the path leading through the forest, which Vey presumes leads to a road or maybe a stream or something. When Vey turns to the direction his dungeon would, in theory, be in, the only thing he can glean from even his most intense scrutiny is that yes, the mountain the dungeon is built into is about where Vey would expect it to be, but that’s about it. No notable geographical features beyond trees, trees, and more trees. Vey does think that perhaps, since this hill seems unnatural, as does the mountain range, that maybe they were created with magic, like the dungeon was. The thought intrigues Vey for the sole reason that one day, Vey himself might get to wield that tantalizing amount of power. To move mountains with my mind… Vey gets lost in the fantasy of building the perfect domain for himself and Sera for a moment, before he starts returning to the cave. The fact that there is no hostile presence here yet is good, but the fact that he still has no idea where this hill is relative to anywhere other than near the start of the mountain range is bad. Climbing the mountain to get a look at where the village is might be a good idea… If I do it at night I wouldn’t be seen, but Sera…
Sera is the one consistent thorn in Vey’s side. He continuously finds himself making all of his decisions for her or around her, but struggles to find ways to actually include her in the process of making them. He really does wish that he could just magically give himself the understandings, emotions, and instincts necessary to start going about their relationship the way a mortal would, but pretty much the only gestures that come naturally to Vey are ‘giving stuff’ and ‘collecting stuff’. She’s reminded him that both of those things could be construed as innuendo, but that’s part of the problem, Vey needs to be told that, which-
What is that? Vey spots something moving in the trees by the path at the base of the hill. He spots what looks like metal glinting in the sun, and something flesh colored, and immediately drops into a slide down the hill towards the cave entrance. He manages to reach it just in time for the first humanoid to exit the woods, and start looking around.
First one, then another, then three, ten, thirteen, seventeen, twenty four total by the time all of the men and women have exited the woods and started looking around in pairs while climbing the hill. Vey considers his options, operating under the assumption that these people are here for the bandits, or maybe just to rescue the long-dead girls down in the cavern, not for himself and Sera. He could try and kill them all, and looking at them with arcane sight, none of them have an ‘aura’ that is stronger than the way Sera’s looks, so actually, he could probably kill them all pretty easily. But they might send more next time, or send stronger… and what if some run? Vey makes ‘kill them all’ Plan C. In a desperate attempt to find plans A and B, he checks what spells he currently has prepared.
Spells Available for Casting: 13(Wzd Lvl + IntMod + 5)
Spell Mana Costs
Bonefiddle
4
Identify
4
Cutting Hand
2
Fist of Stone
2
Web
4
Mage Armor
2
Fog
4
False Aura
4
Ghoul Touch
2
Mirror Image
4
Light
1
Sadism
4
Flameburst
4
That’s another point for Plan C, but it doesn’t give Vey many options that don’t involve either a fight now or a fight later. [Bonefiddle] is a spell Vey hasn’t actually tested yet, but at least in theory, if he rains down the magical arrows from the mouth of the cave, he can try and scare them off, right? That’s Plan B. Vey decides, and tries to come up with something better by activating Alacritous Cogitation. Raw calculative abilities may not be very useful in a strategic setting, but stuff like calculating spell ranges, projectile trajectories, and estimated rotation times are. Vey remembers idly that these are likely from Sera’s village, meaning he could(in a purely technical sense) try talking to them, but that is a terrible idea, and he makes that Plan D. He settles on Plan A immediately after this, but unfortunately it’s probably unfeasible with how spread out all of the militiamen are. Plan A is to use [Fog] and [Mirror Image] to make it look like there are a lot of foes stacked up against the militiamen, fear tactics, essentially. Vey might even be able to just scare them all off, and even if he can’t, it would definitely give him enough time to sprint back down, grab Sera, and run back to the dungeon. Vey turns around, and prepares himself, readying Layered Augmentation with the last dregs of his Alacritous Cogitation. [Cutting Hand], [Fists of Stone], [False Aura], [Mirror Image], [Mage Armor], and [Sadism] all apply instantly on completion, and Vey twists his skull around his neck for a moment to get used to [Sadism]’s urges, before he sits back up to check where the militiamens’ positions are after his momentary concentration. He pops his head up out of the cave, and meets the gaze of a burly looking half-orc man with a spear just a few feet away from the cave’s mouth.
“Plan C. Overcast [Bonefiddle].”
--
Sera finishes a brief mental break of drawing her idea of what a [Mage Armor] would look like, and stretches her arms above her head. The first skeleton is finally back for its second trip, and Sera helps it by lifting the crate of food into its arms, before walking back over to her sitting spot by the tunnel entrance, when she gets a notification.
Your Tamed Monster[Evolved Skeleton] has earned you enough experience to level up!
Congratulations Sera!
You have leveled up, your available class options are: Barbarian(BRB), Bard(BRD), Fighter(FTR), Hexblade(HEX), Rogue(ROG), Ranger(RGR), Spellblade(SPB). Some of your options have been overwritten by statuses: Non-Chaotic, Evil, Str<14, Int<13. You have (2) level ups available. Would you like to level up?
She blinks in confusion at them for a moment, then freezes. She reads over the words ‘Your Tamed Monster’ and ‘has earned you’ twice, then registers what must be happening. Sera’s eyes lock on the only longsword in the pile of spare weapons yet to be taken down to the dungeon, and she immediately sprints over and grabs it, before starting to run up the tunnel towards the surface as fast as she can. Sera hears sounds of battle above, getting louder the higher she gets, and shivers when she hears the sound of someone screaming, but she doesn’t stop.
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“VEY!” She shouts, finally able to see the mouth of the cave just a couple feet away. “What’s going on!? How many!?”
She doesn’t get a response, but when she makes it out of the entrance, all she can see is fog. Fog to her left, fog to her right, fog everywhere. She can hear the now familiar sounds of metal on bone to her right, and shouts again.
“VEY! WHERE ARE YOU!?” She tries to force her way through the fog, but without knowledge of the terrain, she almost trips on the cracks and faults in the rocky hill. She manages to get her footing when she hears a response, though not the one she wanted.
“Sera!? Sera! We’re here to rescue anyone we can, run to me! We’ll fight off the monster!” Her father’s voice calls through the fog from down the hill, and she freezes. She looks ahead at the sounds of battle, where she knows Vey must be, and down towards that familiar voice, and makes her choice by drawing her sword.
“Dad! That monster is...” She shouts at first, but trails off, and the sounds of battle stop for a moment, but continue when she hears someone scream from in front of her. Vey’s one consistent strategy it seems, executing people while they’re distracted. “Tell them to back off!”
Sera rushes forward without waiting for a response, and finally gets close enough to see Vey. Or one of the Veys, at least, because she quickly spots another, all dashing around looking as confusing as possible.
“Sera, there’s more of them than I expected, but they’re all weak. You don’t need to be here, run!” Vey’s voice calls out to her through the fog, and she takes another cautious step forward, drawing her sword.
“No, I’m not leaving you! Call out their positions to-”
“Sera?” Another familiar voice, and Sera turns to see its source, but can’t make out much more than a figure through the fog. “It’s me, Donal! Come to me, I’ll kill this basta-”
Sera rushes forwards as quickly as she can manage, and runs her sword through his throat as quickly and cleanly as she can, the only thoughts her mind that had registered from the instant she had turned was that he had been holding a spear, and it had been pointed in Vey’s direction. That was enough for her. She twists the blade out from his gagging, spurting neck, and twists her body around, looking for any signs of any more of her former villag-any enemies that might try to kill Vey.
--
Vey sees Sera cut down one of the militamen, and mentally sighs as he scans through the fog with his arcane sight. Two on the bottom of the hill, one elf, one human, both archers. Six more to the right of himself and Sera, spearmen, struggling to make their way to Vey and Sera’s location through both the fog and uneven terrain. Three to the left, in similar straits, and four behind them, higher up the hill. He rushes to her side, giving her a moment to lower her sword after she turns it towards him in surprise.
“Sera, three in front of you, spearmen. I’ll take the other side. That exchange earlier, is it really-”
“Shut up Vey. I know my dad is here, and I don’t care… Just… No. Later.” Sera cuts him off with a look of anger and passion she hasn’t displayed since Vey’s antics before they forged the pact, and he takes that as the clearest possible sign that even if she’ll regret this later, she’ll do it now.
“I only count about three quarters of the total number, even including what I’ve killed. Some of them are out of sight or have ran.” Vey explains the situation, and points out the direction of the three spearmen through the fog. “Fog goes down in one minute, Two archers at the base of the hill, two above, with guards. One of the ones below is-”
“Shut up Vey.”
“Right.” Vey spins away from her, and starts climbing up the hill towards the group on the hilltop. He points his arm out at Sera, and gives her the briefest of over-the-shoulder glances, just barely enough to cast two spells. “Overcast [Mage Armor], [Fists of Stone].”
That completed, Sera dashes off as well, and Vey doesn’t spare the time of looking back at her anymore. With those spells active, and her swordskill, as long as she fights to kill, Vey knows she can beat those three spearmen. The four at the top of the hill are outside the fog, so Vey switches tactics as he approaches. He casts another [Bonefiddle], a spell he’s come to like a lot through this fight, and watches in satisfaction as the conjured bone bow launches arrow after arrow up the hill towards his targets as he runs. Only two of them actually hit, but it does pin the archers down behind the guards for the most part.
He clears the fog, and spots both spearmen switch position to guard the archers against Vey’s apparent charge, a smart decision, if not for [Bonefiddle] and Vey’s complete lack of intention to fight them in melee. Vey closes to just outside of the reach of their spears, letting a pair of arrows each from the archers bounce of his [Mage Armor], and he spends 4 of his remaining 20 mp, plus 5 more of Overcast, on another spell he hasn’t used before.
“[Flameburst]!” Vey shouts the spell, and immediately receives the confirmation that it was a very good idea not to use this indoors, as the eruption of flame emanates out from the space just around his body, spraying out for ten feet in all directions. As it instantly incinerates both of the guards, Vey feels both justified and very glad he clearly had not intended to care about such things as ‘collateral damage’ when designing it. This was more to do with the fact that ‘collateral damage’ is one of the best types of damage, when it’s not happening to you, in Vey’s opinion at least. Vey notes that the two dead guards were the lucky one, as he can see the flesh melting off of the two archers in a way that is probably very, very painful. Thankfully the last two shots of [Bonefiddle] neatly… extinguish the situation. Vey thinks Sera would be proud of that one, under different circumstances.
He turns to face the direction he’d sent Sera in, and catches an arrow through his left eye socket for his trouble. Vey checks his status and sees that it only deals three damage, but the startling accuracy it takes to hit a headshot at what must be 90 ft or more is something incredible. Incredibly annoying, because Vey immediately sees the elf at the very bottom of the hill, Sera’s father, probably, knock another arrow and take aim again. Breaking off the arrow with his left hand, he spots Sera through the fading fog, two more corpses in her wake. No, on close examination, and with one more arrow flying harmlessly through his ribcage for the trouble, he sees that it is one corpse and one man suffering from his internal guts becoming external guts. She’s not reached the third, mostly because the woman has moved, closing in on the position Sera and Vey last spoke in. Vey starts a jog down to Sera, and stops on a dime to let an arrow pass in front of his face harmlessly before continuing.
“Sera, I’m taking the ones on the right. Hide in the cave from the arrow fire.” Vey hopes he didn’t sound too commanding, but she responds immediately either way.
“Vey… The archer is my dad… He won’t shoot me, I could go down and-” Vey cuts her off before she can suggest something he knows he shouldn’t let her do.
“I’ll be the one to do that, if required. You go hide. I’ll-” Vey turns when he hears a womanly warcry of ‘You bastard!’ to which he counters with a far more sensible battle cry. “Die.”
Vey allows the spear to hit him, and he then splits it in two between his own ribs, before bringing his right hand down at the militiawoman's neck in a chopping arc, which does exactly what the look on her face in her final moment suggests she thinks it is going to do. He absently crushes the severed head under his foot as he turns.
“As I said, you-” Vey tries to finish, but finds Sera is gone. He turns again, and sees her running down towards the base of the hill as gracefully as she can through the remaining fog, with a girly cry of ‘I’m coming, dad!’ juxtaposed very awkwardly by the bloodied sword in her hands. Vey breaks off in a sprint to try and race her down there. Whether it's worse if he does it or she does, how that man dies feels like the most important thing in the world to Vey right now.
--
Level and Hit Die:
0, 1
Current HP/MHP
8/8
Armor Class
12
MP
N/A(Non-caster)
Class:
None
Name:
Aeirt Eclir Luvil
Race:
Elf
Subrace:
High Elf
Age:
213
Alignment:
True Neutral
Height
5’7 ft
Attributes:
MHP
STR
CON
DEX
INT
WIS
CHA
SPD
LCK
NAC
Base:
8
10
12
13
10
10
13
30ft
1
10
Race:
0
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
Training:
0
2
2
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
Study:
0
NA
NA
NA
1
1
0
NA
NA
NA
Total:
8
12
14
20
11
11
13
30ft
1
10
Proficiencies
Skills(Passive)
Skills(Active)
Magic Effects
Pacts and Curses
Simple and Advanced Tool Proficiency
Elven Dexterity
Simple and Martial Weapon Proficiency
Hunter’s Aim
Longbow Mastery