Leo never thought he’d fear the sight of such a beautiful sunset.
Minutes went by, time passed from sunset to twilight and twilight to night, and Leo spotted several flashes of light coming from the nearest city wall. Afterward, a single horn sounded throughout the city, the first warning that darklings had been spotted around the walls.
Leo glanced down at Rize, who nodded up to him from her position in the middle of the street, and Leo took out one of the stone skin potions and held it in his hand until he heard the second warning. Two horns in harmony, signaling that the darklings themselves started swarming the walls. Soldiers and guards were likely firing down at them from high positions on the wall, or dropping boiling tar or other things to keep them at bay. Hearing the horns, Leo uncorked and drank the potion. Shuddering at the taste, like liquid tree bark, then watching as his skin took on a bark like texture.
Soon after, the third warning sounded. Three horns this time, which meant darklings were breaching the walls. The walls hadn’t exactly fallen, but the darklings were speedy and adept climbers, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume a fair amount of them would manage to bypass the walls entirely, either without issue or only taking minor injuries. With that, Leo pulled out a Metal bomb, holding it out but waiting to light it. Around him, he could hear the sound of battle starting from others beginning to come into contact with darklings who’d breached the walls. He looked around, but kept his attention mostly focused on the direction to the nearest wall.
As he watched for any signs of darklings jumping out, a notification appeared.
Quest
Defend - Normouth (Heroic)
Objective
Defend the City from the Darkling Horde!
Reward
B-Rank Unrestricted Karma (5)
He willed it to close immediately, trying not to think about the fact that the quest was B rank based on the reward. As he expected, a horde of them came rounding the corner, lit by the light of the magical streetlights that kept the area from being pitch black. “Are you ready, Leo?” Rize asked, finally drawing her sword.
“As I’ll ever be.” He called back. He watched as she got into a stance, taking a deep breath. Around her, fire started to flicker and swirl, first the orange that he’d gotten used to from her magic, and then a pale white. As the darklings approached, the fire shifted and seemed to wrap around her sword as she held it up in the air. Once they were about 20 feet away from her, she swung down, and the fire surged forward in response. It washed over the darklings, singing all of them near instantly in a burst of flame that he could feel the heat of even on the roof of the building.
Leo watched, eyes wide, but another group of them drew both his and Rize’s attention. Leo spotted wisps of energy rising up from the slain darklings and flowing into Rize as she conjured up more white fire. He hadn’t thought to Appraise Rize since the first time he did, but he remembered from her list of skills. That must have been Mana Siphon. As long as she kept killing darklings, she could continuously regenerate mana. She’d explained his part of this arrangement to him at the very least. She’d learned how to use a sword to direct her incredibly volatile magic, which also happened to ignore element based resistances to Fire. If she wasn’t using the sword, she couldn’t control the direction, but as she was now, it was either or. She could only send the flames out in one direction, or all around her. She wanted to avoid just blasting out the flames all around her since that would destroy all of the buildings and probably set the city on fire if she did so continuously.
The darklings rushing around them rapidly increased in number, coming at them from both sides of the street they chose to minimize the number of directions they had to worry about.. Leo needed to keep Rize safe by blasting them with bombs to keep them at bay so they didn’t come for her from multiple directions at once. To that end, he cast his spell, lighting a small flickering flame on the tip of his finger and lighting the fuse to the bomb. They’d designed them to give about ten seconds before they exploded, so Leo had a moment to aim before chucking the bomb toward another oncoming crowd of darklings. It flew through the air, landing about 30 feet away from Rize as the darklings rushed over it, and then it burst, sending shrapnel flying. It killed the darklings that were closest and sent plenty more staggering and slowed down enough for Rize to direct her fiery wrath toward them.
Just like that, a cycle began. Leo lit and tossed 20 more bombs in the span of a few minutes to keep the darklings at bay, blasting them with metal, ice shards, and bright light to give Rize time to turn toward them with her ghost flame. While around him, he could see bright flashes and pillars of light elsewhere in the city, and feel tremors in the ground from other magic going off. Although he was rapidly running out of bombs, and had used about a quarter of his mana just from keeping the flame lit to light them, he almost felt like he had it easy here, since the darlings hadn’t even spotted him over the glowing, blazing beacon that was Rize.
Soon enough, a creeping feeling crawled its way up Leo’s spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He looked around, not seeing darklings climbing up the walls, but a cracking and scraping sound from behind him told him that he didn’t want to be where he stood at that moment. So, logically, he jumped off the roof. He reached for a branch from the tree he climbed up on, grabbing it but almost immediately slipping from it and hitting the ground with a terribly executed roll. He might have broken or sprained something if he didn’t have the bark skin potion, but for the moment, he only had to deal with a dull ache as he scrambled to his feet.
“Leo!” Rize called.
“I’m alive, but we’ve got a problem.” In the light of Rize’s ghostflame, he could see a dark figure standing on the roof where Leo had been a moment earlier. As he went to appraise it, it leapt down from the roof to join Leo on the street.
Name
Darkling Stalker (Outsider)
Element
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Dark, Earth
Total Rank
C
It stood on two legs, with a vaguely humanoid form aside from a long tail and large claws on its hands. Its entire body had an odd, black smoky haze covering it, with only its glowing white eyes breaking through.
Leo drew his sword, just as Rize slashed a vertical wave of fire between him and the stalker. The stalker scrambled back to avoid the fire, and so did Leo. “Keep torching the darklings.” Leo called back. Though he did use the opportunity to pull on one of the vials of Oil of Sharpness, pop the cork with his teeth, and rapidly pour it onto his sword. He’d probably need her help to deal with this thing eventually, but if she stopped burning the darklings to focus on it then both of them were going to be overrun, so Leo needed to distract it until Rize cleared away another group currently running toward her.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted another screen pop up.
Quest
Defeat - Darkling Stalker
Objective
Defeat City the Outsider Agent from the Darkling Horde!
Reward
C-Rank Unrestricted Karma
He barely got to glance before he saw the stalker rushing for him, claws outstretched, and started swinging. Leo dodged, and deflected where he could, seeing sparks fly out where his sword connected with claws. Too fast for Leo to get a hit in himself, he kept backing away and dodging out of the way to keep it busy while Rize burned away at approaching darklings on her side.
Perilous as it felt, Leo actually managed to keep up with it. He thought back to his time training, Sir Verakith wanted him sparring as soon as possible, and put him up against Rize and Layne. Rize, he could manage, but Layne was a nightmare of feints, counterattacks, and battering Leo with a wooden sword. Even as Leo fought the stalker, knowing he was fighting for his life at this moment, he felt that sparring with Layne had a higher intensity to it. The stalker’s attacks were obvious and predictable, while Layne’s were full of feints and counters that Leo only got slightly better at dealing with at the end of those two weeks.
Still, Leo could hardly consider himself a trained fighter. He could keep up with it for the moment and defend against it, but it wasn’t slowing down, and Leo was bound to slip up at some point. Not to mention, he could see another crowd of darklings rushing over toward him as well.
“Leo! Get down!” He heard Rize shout, and immediately got a terrible idea. He did as he was told, jumping back and letting himself hit the ground away from the stalker and oncoming darklings. Barely two seconds later, a wave of fire flew above his head, and with a flick of his wrist, he brought a light bomb in his hand and held it up to light the fuse off the passing flame. Pain shot down his arm, almost making him drop the bomb. It felt like sticking his hand into a roaring campfire, but he did manage to light the bomb.
He tossed it before getting back to his feet. The stalker, only sporting slight burns on its right side from Rize’s fire, avoided it as it came back for Leo, but as Leo continued to dodge, appreciating the short reprieve, the blast from its explosion cleared away the oncoming darklings that hadn’t been instantly killed by Rize’s fire, and distracted the stalker enough for Leo to finally swing and land a cut across its shoulder, causing it to jump back.
He didn’t land a killing blow by any means, but the cut was deep enough that Leo felt like he could seriously harm this thing, probably in part due to oil of sharpness still coating his sword. Once more, the two of them seized each other up, Leo waiting for it to come running at him with a flurry of claws again. As he blinked, though, something odd happened. He felt his vision shift, and it became harder for him to tell how far away he was from the stalker. A second to process, and he realized that he’d completely lost the vision in his right eye.
“My my, you’re really in the thick of it, aren’t you?” A familiar voice rang in Leo’s head. The woman from before, the one who possessed him when he had originally found the darklings. “I suppose my hunch was correct, though I am surprised to see someone like you out during all this.”
“This is the worst possible time for you to do something like this!” Leo said quickly, holding out his sword. Fighting the stalker was already a challenge in itself, doing it with no depth perception would probably cause him to be hit or misjudge his angle for blocking. The stalker seemed to pick up on something -either whatever skill magic used or Leo’s desperation, because it ran at him with renewed vigor.
“I’m well aware, dear boy. I would like to keep your sight, so I need you to stay alive.” The woman said. Leo felt an odd, tingling sensation spread across his body. The feeling of magic working through him, perhaps? Whatever the case, the stalker approach slowed, its reaching claws flying through the air like they were trying to push through water.
“Now. Kill it, and then get somewhere high for me to survey.”
Name:
Leonell Bolden
Stats
Title
-
Fortitude: E (0/10)
Class
Mixer
Reflex: E (0/10)
Element
-
Intellect: E (0/10)
Total Rank
E
Intuition: D- (0/10)
Status
Health 90% Mana 60%
Possessed Right Eye, Barkskin (D Rank)
Will: E (0/10)
Skills
Combine, Auto-Loot, Appraise, Storage
Luck: D (0/10)