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Volcano Slopes
Deep in the Land of Fire lies the great volcano. Those hardy enough to approach it will find tribes of lizard- and wyrmkin who worship the great dragons rumored to live on top.
From the heat of the smithy to the heat of a volcano. It wasn’t as bad as the heat he’d felt in the lava lake Space, but it was definitely not a pleasant environment.
After leaving Kevin’s smithy, Will found himself standing on a fairly gentle mountain slope. Far less perilous than the mountain he’d fought the cloud goats on. But what it lacked in steepness, it more than made up for in rivers of molten lava.
What really caught Will’s attention though, was that the rivers of lava had bridges spanning them, made of black basalt and obsidian. Obvious signs of civilization, even in such an inhospitable Space.
Main quest
Slay 10 Lizardkin.
Reward:
Space rank-up
100 XP
1 skill shard
Assuming this is like the tundra Space, I’ll be taking environmental damage from the heat, but the monsters should drop something to prevent it. It’s kind of a risk to fight here, especially with all of my skills still crippled. On the other hand, it’s a rank zero zone, which means no elites or harder enemies. And I really need to get my XP above zero. I think I’ll risk a fight or two to see how things look, and then decide if I want to keep fighting here or move on instead.
Will started moving higher into the mountain. Stepping on the ground was almost painfully hot. The air was dry, hot, and smelled of sulfur. Faster than Will was expecting, he got a message screen, informing him of the ongoing environmental damage.
Environmental hazard!
Due to the extreme heat of your environment, and your lack of appropriate defensive measures, you will suffer least heat damage for every 15 minutes spent in this space.
Twice as fast as the tundra. But the tundra was first in its set, and this Space is second. So it makes sense for the hazard to be worse, I guess? This is going to seriously limit my time here, unless I can find something to mitigate it.
Not long after, Will finally saw the first resident of the Space. The monster looked like a large monitor lizard given an anthropomorphic form. It stood about a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, but was broad shouldered, and covered with bright red scales. Sharp claws decorated its fingers and toes, and sharp fangs peeked from its reptilian maw. Long spikes followed the line of its spine from forehead to tail.
The Lizardkin was dressed in a loin cloth made out of undyed wool, and was holding a spear as long as it was tall.
When Will first saw the monster, it was across a lava river from him. A perfect opportunity to start the fight with a Thunder Ball. The skill launched over the lava, striking the Lizardkin before the monster knew it was even under attack.
In response, the monster headed directly to the nearest bridge, intending to get at its marsupial attacker before another spell could strike it.
Not that Will intended to use the skill again. He could only cast it seven times before needing to rest, and the ticking clock of the environmental hazard prevented him from using his standard tactic of resting after every fight.
Instead, the wombat waited until the Lizardkin reached his side of the lava river, and charged. The monster, which was just coming down from the bridge, didn’t have anywhere to go to dodge the attack. It tried setting its spear down like a pike, but Will was too low to the ground and passed right underneath the blade, ramming his new nose horn into the Lizardkin’s leg.
Before leaving Kevin’s Smithy, Will used his new Lance Charge skill, since the new helmet changed his charge attack to piercing damage, letting it work with the skill. As he’d hoped, the new skill merged with his old Unstoppable Force skill, creating the new, advanced tier, Unstoppable Lance Charge skill.
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Skill shard: Unstoppable Lance Charge
Tier: Advanced
Type: cavalry
Cost: 10 stamina/attack
Level 1 (2)
XP 100/400
When performing a charge attack at an enemy, increase chance of knockdown to 100%.
If the enemy is knocked down, perform an extra trample/claw attack, and continue moving.
Can continue to charge at enemies in a straight line until enemy resists the knockdown.
When performing a charge attack at an enemy with a piercing weapon equipped, ignore 1 level of armor per level.
Be careful. Even unstoppable charges can be declined.
Aspect: Slow
Tier: Basic
Level 2
XP 0/100
When performing a charge attack, any attempt by the target to block, evade, or counter is slowed.
Intensity: Lesser.
Between the Horned Wombat Helmet of the Heavy Assault Unicorn and the armor piercing from the skill, Will’s nose horn was more than equal to the task of piercing the Lizardkin’s scales, and Will’s attack opened a nasty gash on the monster’s thigh. The impact from the heavy and heavily armored wombat was more than enough to knock the monster down, pulling Will’s nose horn free in the process.
Will almost lost his balance when his horn was pulled free, but recovered fast and immediately started slashing the fallen Lizardkin with his claws. The claws had a far harder time against the monster’s scales, and Will once again lamented the lack of both the damage and the armor piercing he should have had from his Claw Proficiency.
The Lizardkin tried to strike back, but his spear was too long to hit Will, who was literally sitting on the monster’s chest and clawing at it. The Lizardkin’s claws, on the other hand, could reach Will but lacked the leverage and power to penetrate his heavier armor.
It took almost another minute before Will managed to deal enough damage to finish his enemy off, but the wombat got out of the fight completely unharmed. The spoils of the fight included the expected ten XP from a tier one monster, and harvesting the corpse got Will a pile of Red Reptile Scales.
There was, unfortunately, nothing to shield Will from the heat.
Will moved deeper into the mountain’s slope, looking for the next enemy. The Lizardkin weren’t hard to locate, and Will averaged two hits from the environmental hazard for each one he found and killed. And another hit for the time spent on harvesting them afterwards. By the time he’d finished harvesting the fifth monster, Will had to stop and rethink his strategy.
Still nothing to protect against the environment. I’m going to assume this isn’t working the same way the tundra did, and that there isn’t anything here to help. I’m now halfway through the quest, and down thirty health from the hazard.
I could stop harvesting them, since there doesn’t seem to be any special drop here. On the other hand, that only saves me a third of the damage, give or take. And I still have those health potions to fall back on. Wish I knew if the drops were covering the cost on the health potions though. I should have asked when I was at the alchemist’s.
To hell with it. I’m not leaving loot behind. Onwards and upwards.
Will’s sixth fight was a Crankscout. As usual, it looked like a clockwork version of the Space’s standard enemies. In this case, a mechanical anthropomorphic lizard, holding a spear. For an inexplicable reason, the spear’s blade had a cog at its base.
The Crankscout wasn’t much harder to defeat than the regular Lizardkin. It did have somewhat differently jointed limbs, which meant that it could hurt Will even after it got knocked down. On the other hand, it seemed to be less hardy than the regular Lizardkin, and went down faster under the wombat’s claws.
The only other hitch Will ran into was that the last two Lizardkin he needed to defeat happened to be in the same place, forcing him to fight both at once.
Two enemies meant that Will couldn’t just knock one down and concentrate on it, because that would have left the other free to attack him. On the other hand, with those being the last two he needed to fight, Will could afford to spend his resources a lot more freely than on the earlier fights.
He opened the fight by launching a Thunder Ball at one of the Lizardkin. Not sparing even a second to bemoan the stun effect he still couldn’t activate, Will immediately charged at the same monster he’d hit with the spell. The charge knocked the monster down, and Will kept moving past it. The second Lizardkin had enough time to hit Will with its spear before the wombat got out of range.
The spear’s tip didn’t penetrate very deeply into Will’s padded backside, but the wound immediately started to burn.
Will ran far enough to be safe from another attack and twisted around to look at the wound, and swore when he saw that his butt was quite literally on fire. Rolling around on the ground, the wombat managed to put off the fire, but a quick glance at his status screen showed that he lost ten more health points from that single attack, bringing him down to less than fifty health.
Cursing again, Will took out a health potion and drank it, bringing himself up to eighty-five health. A quick Least Cure spell reduced the wound on his backside from slight to lesser, healing another five health in the process.
Rather than charge and get speared again, Will stayed at range and launched some more Thunder Balls on the wounded Lizardkin. The monster, already wounded from Will’s first Thunder Ball and subsequent charge, went down quickly.
And once the first Lizardkin was down, Will was free to charge at the other and finish it off with his claws.
Quest complete!
10/10 Lizardkin slain.
Reward:
100 XP.
Resistance skill shard
Between the last fight and the quest reward, Will was now back to a respectable plus one hundred and fifteen XP, which meant that his skills should be back to working properly.
Without pausing to check on his new skill shard, Will harvested the two dead Lizardkin, and then went to do his business and get the hell away from the volcano.