I examined the crafting area that we’d just cleared out and became even more excited. I’m a crafter at heart so all the tools were priceless to me. I cast Cure Poison and Freshen on the pot of food in the middle, making it almost palatable. If I was desperate, I’d come back for some before I left the dungeon. I found a blacksmithing toolkit and a tanning one. I wanted to spend an hour or two here learning the skills, but I didn’t feel like that would be such a great idea until I’d cleared the dungeon.
My half hour of poking around the large crafting cavern had been more than enough for me to get my breath back. I could feel that my body was getting tired, but I wasn’t going to sleep until the dungeon was complete. I marveled that I wasn’t collapsed in a corner and that I almost took for granted how I could move and keep going in this world. I would never forget that I’d lived almost forty years in a body so broken that just my half hour of exploring would have exhausted me for hours.
It was also weird how fighting seemed to slow down time. I had almost no idea how much time had passed. If I did the math, I could figure it out. Maybe five seconds per round, with an average of fifteen damage per round. Add on that there were eleven gnoblins with an average health of two hundred and twenty? That worked out to almost twenty-five hundred total health at damage of three health per second. One little division problem and we had around eight hundred and twenty-ish seconds of time passed. Divide that by sixty and we had between thirteen and fourteen minutes of combat with all those gnoblins.
Intelligence +2
And that was why I did the math. I smiled at Terra, who was too busy napping on a bedroll near the fire to notice me.
“Ready?” I called out to her.
“Sure,” Terra gave a big stretch, and I wondered if she was getting bigger.
“I’m getting stronger too,” she answered my unspoken question. “Let Damon tackle me now.” And I could hear a smug chuckle in her tone.
We sneaked down the next main path until we came to another larger group of gnoblins. They were in a room with a door, and it was the first real door we’d seen in the dungeon so far. It was cracked open just enough for Terra to poke first her whiskers and then her head through the narrow opening. As Terra peeked carefully around the corner, she relayed information back to me.
“It has a bunch of beds on both sides of the chamber,” she told me. “These gnoblins are higher level. It says they are elite guards. These guys have over four hundred health each and there are more than there were in the last big area. These swords laying around don’t look like they’re rusty.”
I sat back and thought about it. The hallways had widened, so this doorway was the only real choke point. I wasn’t sure I could keep them from surrounding me. I was staring at the door that stood open on our side of the room. I found it odd that it opened outward, but as I was considering the oddity, I wondered if I could block it shut somehow.
I let myself do the math, since none of them seemed to be heading for the door anytime soon and I was well hidden behind it. Terra described four of them playing poker, three wrestling, and more than five asleep. If there were twelve with four hundred and fifty health each, that was about fifty-four hundred health. That was over twice what the last large combat had entailed. The last combat had only taken me down by around two hundred health, and while the elite guards probably hit harder with their new weapons, my spells and skills had upgraded too. It wasn’t out of the question that I could take them on and win.
Intelligence +2
I took a look inside my inventory. Inventory didn’t add anything to my weight, something I found too easy about this game. I’d stuck the gnoblin smith’s stupid anvil in the backpack on a lark, finding it absurd that it not only fit, but it was weightless once in there. If the game mechanics were going to give me such an easy transport option, I was going to use it, so I’d stuck the whole anvil in there.
It just seemed to me that I’d rather be the Indy that shot the master sword-smith, than the one that spent twenty takes trying to fight through it with a whip. Did I have a gun though? I had better than a gun. I had a poison spell that I really wanted to play with. At eight damage per five seconds, it would pessimistically take about fifty-five rounds to kill an elite. That was less than five minutes, and they could all be dead, give or take whatever time it took for the poison to permeate the room.
Intelligence +2
I eased the door shut with my foot while casting my poison spell. There wasn’t a latch to click and give us away. It also meant that we couldn’t lock it even if I knew enough about smithing or locks to do it. Kat might have known how to do it, but I shoved that thought away before it could be born. The anvil gave a deep clunk as I took it out of my inventory, but I was able to silently slide it against the door, as my poisoned mana spread out into the room beyond.
Mild Poison +1
Exp +10 (1221/4050)
As I sat there with my mind stretching out with my mana, I felt like I could see into the room. I couldn’t see with my eyes, but I could feel the mana. Even fighters had mana. I could feel their mana as a thickening set of clumps. They started coughing first. Terra had missed another two gnoblins propped up in chairs near a door on the back wall.
Mild Poison +1
Exp +10 (1231/4050)
I sat on the floor of the hallway and braced my back against the anvil. I could feel several blobs moving toward the door we’d blocked. Would it take more than five minutes to beat down a thick wooden door? I didn’t think they’d have the strength in another two minutes, but that was only for the ones that were closest to the door. The poison seemed to dissipate as it spread back away from me.
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Mild Poison +1
Exp +10 (1241/4050)
I couldn’t track the damage since I had to see them to use Identify, and it didn’t do any good to try to figure out the math on figures that I didn’t have, so I concentrated on the mana. If a person could manipulate a fight through physical strength, then a person could manipulate mana out of sheer force of will. I took the mana and I immersed myself in it, blind to my surroundings in a way that was stupid. Terra was there to wake me if anything sneaked up on us, so maybe not totally stupid. By now though, you know my mind and it took most of my will just to ignore all the bad situations that could be happening while I was blind. I trusted Terra.
Mild Poison +1
Will +2
Exp +10 (1251/4050)
As the ones near the door coughed, others came to investigate, slowly at first, but enough that they got caught in the effect. I flexed my will and deepened the light grey my poison exuded. It resisted my will, but that only made me more stubborn. There was something in this. I’d come close to it in my previous loop, but never had the time or mental clarity to pursue it. This time I knew it was the very key to defeating my final foe.
Mild Poison +1
Will +1
Exp +10 (1261/4050)
I doubled my pressure and felt some unknowable barrier give way just a little. It was like a door had been opened and not the one at my back. I ignored the trickle of liquid from my nose. I was pretty sure it was blood and that I’d done damage to myself, but I didn’t care. That crack wouldn’t last forever, and I pushed into it.
Health -75 (932/1007)
Mild Poison +10… Error…
Will +2…4…Error
Exp +100 (1351/4050)
I knew it. I could feel the game stutter around me. It was all made out of mana. It had rules that it had to obey, but when you pressed outside of what it knew to be normal, it had to try to make judgment calls. It wasn’t programmed to do that. It bucked, but I knew from experience that it would then settle. I let it adjust, keeping my foot in that crack.
Poisoned Mana +1
Spell Learned: Mana Sight
Skill Learned: Mana Manipulation
Will +1
Experience +60 (1411/4050)
And the mana from my poison turned a shade darker. The stutter of the world settled too. Now it flowed further as well. It had been doing eight damage every round before and it would be doing double that now. I wiped at my nose impatiently, probably smearing it all over my face. It wasn’t like I was going to cast Clean now.
Poisoned Mana +1
Will +1
Exp +10 (1421/4050)
It was time to dial it back and pretend I was just accidentally discovering something new. I needed to pretend shock and feel lucky. Part of me didn’t want to play the part. I wanted to summon my final foe right now and rip him limb from limb, but this incarnation of me wasn’t strong enough yet so I buried the thought deep in my psyche.
Poisoned Mana +1
Will +1
Exp +10 (1431/4050)
I felt a shuffle and pressure at my back as the first gnoblins reached the door. It had only been a minute of confusion for them, so they’d only lost about a fifth of their health so far, although with the higher damage over the last three rounds that could be higher. I focused harder on getting the poison to penetrate deeper into their room and nearly laughed as the ones farthest from the door ran to help me. Whether they were trying to help their buddies or just starting to get alarmed by the commotion at the door, the gnoblins were slowly converging right in the middle of my lovely poison.
Poisoned Mana +1
Exp +10 (1441/4050)
Now that they were lining up like lambs to the slaughter, I could stop trying to deepen the poison and consider my physical circumstances. The irony of having done almost as much damage to myself than half the gnoblins in the dungeon combined didn’t escape my notice. I still had to keep half my attention on keeping the poison active, so I couldn’t cast any heals or a clean, but I could let my eyes focus on my physical surroundings enough to realize that no alarm had gotten far enough to cause me any worries. Once my poison hit everybody, I might let up to cast some other spells, but until I was sure they were all struck, I kept that poison spell active.
Poisoned Mana +1
Will +1
Exp +10 (1451/4050)
The door didn’t budge. They could have pushed it open if I’d just left the anvil there, but with my added strength, I was able to keep the door closed. Thinking ahead, I pulled a sword and the smith’s hammer out of my pack. By bracing my shoulder against the anvil, I could use the hammer to wedge the rusty sword under the door.
Strength +1
I heard a yip from the other side that let me know I might have gotten a paw, but I doubted it did much damage. I had another sword, so I wedged it under there too. I still had to keep my weight pushed against the anvil, but I was sure it wasn’t going to budge as long as I could keep standing there.
That thought had me sending nervous glances down the hallway. Luckily it was pretty straight and still had all those very helpful torches on the walls. Now that I wasn’t focused on the poison, all I could do was wait. I kept half my mind on the poison cloud behind me and half on whether the door would give way, or someone would come to investigate first.
Poisoned Mana +1
Will +1
Luck +3
Exp +10 (1461/4050)
For about a minute, the pounding got harder, but then it tapered off. I couldn’t believe my luck. There were several sounds that made me want to cast Clean almost more than I wanted them to die from the poison. The sounds were followed by growls, howls and thumps, and my imagination filled in the blanks as it wanted to do. I imagined that they were throwing up, slipping in their own mess and then growling at each other as they hit the floor. In reality, the door was starting to splinter, but I had no clue what was really happening until they all died.
Poisoned Mana +6
Will +4
Strength +3
Luck +2
Exp +60 (1541/4050)
The first kill notification came another minute later and then they streamed in like a broken dam. There had been a total of fifteen elite guards ranging from level twelve to level fourteen. I let the cloud of poison remain for an extra minute while I swiped away message after message. It was a nice chunk of over six thousand experience taking me to level eight and halfway to level nine. The poison was OP, but I wasn’t going to complain. I had a good fistful of spells that currently did about a tenth of the damage I wanted them to do.
I cast Clean a dozen times before I even opened the door. I didn’t have enough space in my packs for all the loot of fifteen elite gnoblins. That was okay because each bed had a twenty-slot trunk at the end of it. With fifteen trunks and one backpack in my inventory, I had room for it all. I found myself wanting to get to the rest of the dungeon. If these were the elite guards, then the boss mob couldn’t be too much farther.
The door at the back of the chamber was locked. I figured the boss had the key. I cast my new spell of Mana Sight and could only really make out that there was nothing living behind the door. I could wait to get into that room.
Who was I kidding? You know that I didn’t want to face a lock because it would remind me of her. I’d been trying not to think of her. I ached half to death in wanting her back but the idea of bringing her here to die again made me… I shut down the thinking. He was watching. I knew it. The machine and the maker of this hellish existence was not only watching but also doing everything in his power to make my life hell. Again, I shut down my thoughts and tried to focus on the next step. And the next. And then the next. How was I supposed to think of a way to not lose my daughter if I couldn’t think anything private?