“We’ve got a little under three hours to farm until we need to make camp,” I said as we started up the rockier slopes toward the sheer faces of the mountain. “That’s probably not enough time to get inside and finish the dungeon, so we should try to find a place we can make camp while we go—one with a good vantage on the road from Veleth’s Rest.”

“It needs to be high,” Cuby said. “Really, I’d prefer to be just under that cloud. If we can fly out over any group that appears, you can use another Audible Illusion to potentially attract these spirefiends—who knows how many there are within earshot.”

We were practically jogging, our feet scuffing the gravel beneath us as we clambored with our hands on the steeper inclines. Nothing I’d done in the system thus far had illustrated to me just how inhumanly strong I was becoming—I could comfortably leap across gaps of several meters without using my abilities, leap to grab a ledge that was fifteen feet above me and then pull myself up over it with ease, and grip the smallest of crevices with enough strength to use them as handholds. Soon we were making a breakneck pace over terrain that I wouldn’t have been capable of traversing back on Earth, and we both understood that our sense of urgency came from more than the race to beat Haroshi.

We were eager to try our new toys.

“Drawing the wyverns again might not work,” I said. “A lot of them might be under the control of demons, but worse—Haroshi has had plenty of time to think about our air superiority. He was prepared last time—we got two passes in before I was brought down.”

“That’s why we need to go higher,” Cuby said. “Get so far above him that they can’t bring us down—we need to be high enough that we can turn around and make it back to a safe position. Hundreds of meters.”

Well, it wasn’t like Mount Mirrak wasn’t tall enough. And while I was worried that some vice ability that Haroshi could have would resemble our rank 4 flight ability, even that ability might not get us that high into the air—and anyone who did try to get that high would be vulnerable to a crowd-control spell that could make them fall to their death.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll focus on climbing as we go. The only other thing I can think of is loot.”

I opened my inventory. Even with the Pack Mule skill, I had 8 slots left after looting various items and demon parts from our kills.

“The mountain is big,” Cuby said, perhaps unnecessarily. “I hate to say it, but we ought to find a place to dump stuff so we can pick it up later. Especially small items that take up lots of slots, like the demonstones and the crystallized hearts.”

I laughed.

“What?”

“I don’t know—I guess I’m amused by the fact that I didn’t think of that.” Dropping items on the ground in an MMO? Of course I hadn’t thought of it—but Cuby was right. The mountain was huge: we could easily find a rock to hide things under.

“Be better if we could find one of those sixty slot chests that Karrol Stir had back in Oromar’s Bastion,” she said.

“Yeah.”

We leapt over a particularly sheer rock face, then climbed up a craggy slope before running through a small copse of pines. Thinking that I had just gotten the Hasty Memorization skill, I opened my character sheet and my abilities pane to commit to memory what I saw there.

It was the first time I’d taken a full look at either of them in… well, since Oromar’s Bastion:

Character Sheet

Alatar

Hit Points: 1130 / 1130

Energy: 1900 / 1900

Stamina: [250 / 250]

Mana: [1250 / 1250]

Base Energy: [400 / 400]

Active Affinity: Divine [2]

Primary Stats

Agility 25

Strength 25

Focus 25

Spirit 45

Secondary Stats

Precision: 28

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Spellcraft: 60

Haste: 25

Might: 25

Celerity: 31

Power: 48

Defenses

Defense Rating: 32

Divine Resistance: 79

Physical Resistance: 41

Psychic Resistance: 35

Magic Resistance: 55

Fire Resistance: 42

Frost Resistance: 36

Lightning Resistance: 21

Nature Resistance: 21

Ability Slots and Abilities

Fixed Iconic Passives [2]

Mage Class

Psychic Class

Iconic Passive Slots [2]

Mind Link

Unbroken Barrier

Passive Slots [2]

Evasive Insights

Farcaster

Iconic Spell Slots [4]

Devour Magic

Mana Shield

Moment of Mastery

Psychic Parasite

Spell Slots [10]

Auditory Illusion

Elemental Weaponry

False Identity

Elemental Aegis

Reactive Armor

Mighty Leap

Haste

Rousing Command

Hardlight Tether

Telekinetic Hammer

Spell / Spell Augment Slots [3]

Unnatural Terror

Hardlight Construct

Charm of Gliding

Iconic Spell Augment Slots [2]

Supercharged Spell

Fragmented Spell

Spell Augment Slots [2]

Intuitive Spell

Rune Trap Spell

Virtue Boons [4]

Gift of Mercy

Gift of Resistance

Gift of Empyreal Might

Gift of Empyreal Flight

Granted Spells [4]

Implosive Missile

Healing Light

Empyreal Aegis

Purging Radiance

I’d come a long way from level 1, but my abilities pane was practically a desert—it was obvious that I needed to learn way, way more spells. A good wizard is a prepared wizard, and the best way to be prepared is to know everything.

I had stored a strong fear spell with my Fragmented Spell—it was a better response to an emergency if something went wrong than just a typical nuke. Because of this, when we scrambled up a ledge to find ourselves in the middle of a worn road, looking at a nearby demon cultist, it didn’t get the chance to attack us before I threw my spell.

The cultist fell dead a few moments later, slain by a barrage of melee attacks and purifying spells. I noticed that it was wearing a chain hauberk, not robes, and used my demonology skill:

Lore – Demonology – Machine Brute

A citizen of Mirrakatetz who didn’t escape the activation of the machine and was subsequently corrupted into a demonic servant. This brute is an aggressive, unthinking killer that combines savage weapon attacks with demonic power to destroy its enemies.

A machine brute has low psychic and acid resistance and high fire and physical resistance. It is fairly unintelligent, and will follow the commands of more powerful demons without regard for self-preservation.

Cuby looted, and as she stood, we heard howls coming from further up the road.

Through the mind link we made a simple determination: that the road likely led to what had once been the settlement, and that because it was very likely we were headed toward the main entrance of the dungeon, it would likely be heavily guarded—which I interpreted to mean “saturated with experience points”.

Because we had our instant heals and flight in case things went really wrong, and because even without them we could just leap from the mountainside and glide away, we took the road, hoping to find the front door.

Two morthoths met us first, barreling down the mountain with a speed that matched our own. Cuby threw her weapon at one as I cast my strong fear at the other, and Cuby used her acrobatics to dodge all the demon’s crowd-control as I hit hers with a Psychic Parasite—whose buff affected her, not me—before turning to mine and chasing it as it fled me, erasing its Hit Points with my Purging Radiance.

As I did this, I watched Cuby fight the other morthoth through the mind link. Psychic Parasite gave her more than enough Defense Rating to simply evade almost all its attacks, the Mana Shield more than enough to take the remaining damage. She dodged with efficient precognizance, moving with impossible grace through sword blows, shield bashes, fireballs and lashes from its chain, making a deadly fight look for all the world like a choreographed dance—and her sword struck again and again, bright fire searing the morthoth’s bulging gray muscles and causing it to scream in pain.

I dispatched my enemy, then helped finished hers, and we got another few dozen meters up the road before a squad of the corrupted—four cultists, three brutes, and a massive saurshrike—came barrelling toward us from around the nearest bend: howling, screeching, hissing.

I looked at the horde and grinned.

Just steadfast crusader things.