The Vampire Lord dissolved into mist again. It obviously had a set of attacks and defenses that it used in a pathetic round of actions. Once we understood the round, the Vampire Lord was a very easy foe to defeat. Repeating these dungeons was a lot like repeating using the checkpoint. Dom and I were on our second run through the dungeon and ready to call it a night. Dissolving might have been a good defense against most magic users, but I could bend mana itself to my will. The fact that the Vampire Lord was so far above our levels made it very good for leveling up our spells. When the mist surrounded me, I cast Stone Skin on it. Stone Skin was the upgrade to my Cast Stone spell. We’d gotten into a rhythm this second time through and could play around with the elemental spells we’d neglected in the previous dungeons.
Health -42 (17,468/17,510) – Blood Cursed (-20 health/5 seconds)
Vampire Lord – Level 22 (Health 157/1188) (Mana 540/1100) – Cheerful, Poisoned, and Heavy (-97/5 seconds)
Stone Skin +1
Exp +10 (280/350,315)
The Vampire Lord’s water molecules turned to stone, dropping them harmlessly to the floor around us. This guy was a boss mob though, so he wasn’t going to give up until his last health point was exhausted. He’d already risen a second time, so this was his final incarnation for this fight. It took a full round for the dapperly dressed gothic vampire to reconstitute himself from the pebbles we’d turned him into. I cast Cure Poison and Soften Curse, which I’d gotten back for this incarnation by accidently casting it from memory and then realizing I hadn’t had it before. The two of those spells cleared the debuff. Both of those spells had leveled up due to this guy and his minions.
We’d both leveled up a bit. It was only two levels, but the class levels were getting harder to increase. Thing is, I knew that my spells wouldn’t matter once I got to the capital, but I’d decided to take a gamble and let Fizzbarren think he had the upper hand. My spells would matter again in my final Nemesis battle, and I wouldn’t have a better chance to get them up than I did right here and now. Again, I was thinking two moves ahead instead of just to the next fight. It had worked so well with Beau, I figured my favorite strategies would work as well in this world as they had in the past. Dom and I hadn’t had a chance for me to tell him about what was coming for fear of alerting Fizzbarren, but he trusted me enough to follow my lead. I barely dared to fleetingly think about the battle to come. I’d already done all that thinking on previous incarnations, so I was okay with that.
Vampire Lord – Level 22 (Health 60/1188) (Mana 540/1100) – Cheerful, Poisoned, and Heavy (-97/5 seconds)
The master’s bedchamber was deep within the bowels of the Victorian mansion. I cast a longing glance at the amazing four poster bed with the purple velvet draperies. This time we were sleeping in that bed until we woke up completely refreshed. Last time, we’d celebrated with, um, crazy monkey sex (which I’m going to shorten to CMS because I’m shy and that doesn’t sound as dirty or weird), but this time I wanted sleep. I cast my Preservation spell, which did just enough damage to the undead creature of yummy handsomeness to cause its final demise. The Vampire Lord was eye candy enough to almost make me want CMS again, but then again, Dom was morphing into some crazy eye candy all by himself, so I didn’t need the help. Maybe if Dom dressed up in the Vampire Lord’s outfit, but then again, that’s getting too weird again so I’m going to shut up.
Health -19 (17,449,/17,510)
You have killed The Vampire Lord – Exp +1188 (1468/350,315)
You have killed the boss of Castle Eroomtsim. There are no monsters left to kill. Do you wish to exit the dungeon? (Y/N)
No, we did not want to leave yet. Terra had not found the vampires, ghouls, and other undead creatures of this dungeon as fun as the dogs from the previous one. Once we’d cleared the kitchen, she’d curled up on the cook’s bed and taken a nap. I knew she’d been content to stay the night there, so it was just Dom and me with a closet full of fancy costumes and, well.
Since our mana would completely recharge with sleep, we liked to use it up before bed.
I can feel you prodding for more CMS details, but stop. I’m not doing it. I will say that the Vampire Lord’s attire looked very good on Dom. I believe he also liked the way some of the harem’s nightgowns looked on me. And afterward, we slept. I’m not blushing. Stop. Huff.
As I woke, I had a moment when I was back in my own bed in my own world. I kept my eyes closed and enjoyed the sensation for a few minutes. I could pretend for that set of moments between sleep and wakefulness that I was going to open my eyes and see my daughter sitting by my bed reading a book in that cozy little reading nook we’d built into the corner just for that. My mind unkindly flashed visions of her death over the top of that so I opened my eyes.
“You okay?” Dom asked as I clawed my way out of sleep. He was reading a book that he’d probably picked up in the library upstairs.
“I’m okay,” I lied, stretching and reaching out in my mind to pet Terra, who had stayed in the kitchen for the night.
“Uh, huh,” he let me know that he didn’t believe me but left it at that.
“Right,” Terra gave her input on my statement, but I got the feeling that she was heading down to us.
“Another book by Fizzbarren?” I asked, reading the spine of Dom’s book.
“All the books here are by him,” Dom gave a frowny shrug. “It’s not totally awful but it’s not good either. The cottage, here, even the books in Chester’s shop. They’re all by Fizzbarren and they are all mashups of fables.” Dom was an avid reader. We both were. I generally read at night before sleep and he read in the morning before I woke up. I had been falling into an exhausted sleep more often, so I hadn’t had a chance to read the books yet.
“Arrogance,” I muttered, plucking the book out of Dom’s hand and tossing it into my inventory. Dom had the right idea. I needed to read the books. Later.
Once we’d cleaned the place and Terra joined us, we got down to the business of looting. I took down the painting of the master with his harem of women that was mounted over the mantle. I knew where the jewels were. My Mana Vision had upgraded to Dark Vision, and I could layer the two. It was like having x-ray vision that could see through walls even in the dark. I took out a small chest that I’d looted from this spot before, about the size of my palm, and dumped the gems from the new box into the one I’d looted the first time through. I considered it our travelling money.
“Aren’t you worried about the time you’re giving your next foe?” Terra prodded carefully, finally sauntering into the room. I did a little doubletake. Had she grown again? Now that we were doing so many dungeons, she seemed to be growing a lot.
I paused in front of the elaborate vanity, casting Create Water a dozen times into the corner of the room. I needed to spend mana all the time and I knew that the elemental spells were going to level up into some very interesting things, so I was casting them every chance I got.
Terra hopped up next to me on the padded seat. I sprinkled some water onto my hair and styled it with the ivory brush. Dom shuffled through the huge wardrobe, tossing a few outfits onto the floor in a mess. I’d looted it the first time, so I had a copy of it in my inventory. This round was his turn to get a wardrobe full of outfits.
I looted the ivory brush when I was done with it. I had a second one for Lily. I brushed my hair and put it up with a set of ivory combs. I also wore jewelry now. That’s how my Beauty score had increased. I’d gotten quite a few lovely but subtle pieces off the vampire’s harem. I had a delicate heart necklace, two pinky rings that increased my speed, and an anklet that had a light spell attached to it that I could turn on and off. Each piece was lovely enough to increase my Beauty score, which increased the effectiveness of my Lighten Emotions spell, which had leveled up to a Lesser Charm that Dom envied. He’d been casting Lighten Emotions on everything since I’d told him. The beauty boost was the only reason I took the time to get dolled up. I found the whole concept misguidedly misogynistic, but I did it for the stats. I sat at the stool, but Dom stepped up behind me to do his own version of it, decked out his own Vampiric rings that sucked life from targets and wrist cuff that added a few points to his Constitution.
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“Not worried at all,” I finally answered Terra. “We’re leveling faster than the status quo, and getting spells up in levels. Whatever we’re fighting next will have to deal with a powerful spellcaster.” The last part was a lie, but I knew that Terra would know the difference between the two statements. Dom didn’t, but he couldn’t hear this conversation, so that was okay.
I knew that the next nemesis had the ability to strip me of my magical powers altogether. It wasn’t a single person. It was an institution. I wasn’t working on my spells for that purpose, but I didn’t even dare think about that. I had to convince myself to believe that I was preparing for the next nemesis so that the engine wouldn’t write my feelings and thoughts in a way that would tip off Fizzbarren to my real motives.
Terra gave her whiskers a twitch as Dom stroked her, but she didn’t press right away. Terra also sported a bit of jewelry. I’d turned a bracelet into a collar that she liked. It wasn’t bulky enough to get caught up on anything, but it gave her a boost in stats. It was a gold chain with just a tiny, puffed heart charm on it. I know that I haven’t mentioned her stats much, but I didn’t like to go into her tab. I felt like it was an invasion of her privacy. She was more than a mana battery, but that was also something I didn’t want to have foremost in my mind.
Terra and Dom were our secret weapons. Fizzbarren would underestimate us all as long as we acted like we were underestimating him. Dom played into that with the books. We played house more than anything else. I hoped that Fizzbarren thought I was stalling because I was afraid. I shoved the thoughts away to gather what loot I didn’t have or could use in quantity.
I’d found corsets and gaudier jewelry, makeup, dress clothes and shoes, tiaras, and well, enough to deck out an army of harlots. I tucked them all into a huge wardrobe that just barely fit in an inventory slot. I now had an outfit for any occasion or class from the cook’s chest of possessions to the master’s black and blood-red velvet tailcoat complete with fine black leggings that laced up the side. I had ball gowns and night gowns and all their accoutrements. I had everything in between and for both sexes. Dom had a similar set in his own inventory. These were my real reason for farming this dungeon. It was my very own costume department and it all fit into a single inventory slot.
I sat at the top of the stairs to the Vampire Lord’s chamber and cast Create Water until it changed into separate Rain and Fog spells. It wasn’t the sleet I’d been hoping for, but I was still looking for something that would give me ice, if only for the very petty reason that I wanted to make things like ice cream and mud slides. Dom had gone up to the Master Vampire’s study on the first floor to pry open the safe up there for his share of jewels. If I knew Dom, and I knew Dom, he'd stopped in the Torturer’s Chamber to pick up another set of toys.
“They are already twelve days away,” she persisted, and I didn’t quite understand why. We couldn’t discuss our real strategy with Fizzbarren reading the pages of my story as it unfolded. The only thing I could do was let my bubbling hatred of Fizzbarren soak into me. Let him read that. “That is a long journey, and you know how you hate the coaches.”
“We’re not taking the coaches,” I asserted, climbing the stairs on my way out of the dungeon.
“Then it’s almost a month away!”
“Maybe,” I replied, “but I doubt it.” Honestly, I didn’t think Fizzbarren was that patient. He’d set us up in the Capital and it was one week away by coach. Terra knew all this, but I tried not to wonder if she had a point to the conversation.
As we headed through the basement floors of the house, I cast Breeze, Rain, and Fog to use my mana and get the spells up. I was really hoping these spells would turn into something more useful this time around. While I couldn’t use them in the next big battle, I wouldn’t have a chance between that battle and the one after it to increase them at all. I deposited a whole bookcase full of Fizzbarren’s books into a back corner of a trunk in another inventory slot.
“My compass is pointing toward the capital,” I reasoned out loud as we stopped in the kitchen to add to my kitchen cabinet’s store of food. I had traded out one of those gnoblin trunks for a hutch and then tucked that trunk into another one. It’s not my fault that it fit in my pocket. Fizzbarren was not a great world creator, but if he was going to leave gaping exploitable holes in his world, then I was going to abuse those exploits to the very extent that it would let me.
“But we could be to the capital in three, maybe four days of coach travel.” The kitchen here was far greater than the one at Mabel’s tavern because it was in a Victorian house. The idiot couldn’t even stay in a single time period with his dungeons. The inn had been medieval, but this place had a wood-burning stove that allowed me to cook up everything in the pantry. It even had a bag of coffee which excited Dom. That was now three bags of coffee in my inventory. My cooking and Preserve spell got a good workout, but I didn’t bother to clean up before I left. Why? It would just reset. That compulsive I wasn’t.
“If Beau could cheat, then so can I,” I gave her the opposite of the truth and she paused in her scarfing of a bowl of stew. That entire pot of stew would take up a single slot in the pantry hutch. I could fit ten cauldrons of stew inside another cauldron which was, in a cascade of Mary Poppins bags, in another cauldron that was full of meals. My inventory was turning into a miniature house with the wardrobe and pantry. I could have kicked myself when I realized that I hadn’t tried to take the wonderful bed that was now half submerged in the water I’d summoned. While I had that thought in mind, I took the stove into my new furniture chest. When it worked, I quickly took it back out, cleaned it, repaired it and put it back into the nested chest. Then I put everything else in there too. Yes, I ran down and picked up the bed, taking it to a dry room to repair it and put it away again. What? It was a very comfortable bed.
As I pretended to prepare for a long trip, I was doing the things that would really matter. Terra knew that I wasn’t into cheating. It had cost me everything. This wasn’t about cheating; it was about stalling. If I didn’t stall here, the system would stall me on my way to the capital anyway. But I couldn’t know about the stalling part or the cheating balance because I hadn’t asked Beau about it in this loop. I soothed my nerves by looting an entire Victorian parlor of furniture and tucked it into another nested chest.
“Why do you think it’ll be in the capital?”
“For all I know, it could be in Siff,” I argued, my temper flaring a bit at the line of questioning. What was wrong with Terra? She knew I couldn’t feel or think about strategy like this, not honestly. “Maybe if I stay here, it won’t happen at all.”
I brought up my character sheet, trying to ignore Terra’s needling.
Name: Karma
Class: Mage-ish
Level: 18 (1,468/350,315)
Profession: Cook (Level 8: 3,330/6,075), Teacher (Level 7: 350/4,050), Alchemist (Level 6: 500/2,700), Blacksmith (Level 6: 350/2,700), Carpenter (Level 6: 220/2,700), Leatherworker (Level 6: 100/2,700), Mercenary (Level 5: 1,000/1,800), Merchant (Level 5: 800/1,800), Storyteller (Level 5: 200/1,800), Maid (Level 4: 450/1,200), Seamstress (Level 4: 300/1,200), Singer (Level 4: 240/1,200), Tanner (Level 4: 200/1,200), Bartender (Level 3: 350/800), Stablehand (Level 3: 200/800), Waitress (Level 3: 100/800), Woodsman (Level 3: 20/800), Butcher (Level 2: 20/500), Dancer (Level 1: 50/300)
Health: 17,510/17,510
Mana: 15,656/15,656
Intelligence: 79
Will: 73
Strength: 84
Constitution: 86
Charm: 77
Beauty: 20
Perception: 88
Dexterity: 98
Luck: 84
Skills: Identify (84), Knife Fighting (83), Dodge (80), Blacksmithing (70), Duel Wielding (66), Cooking (65), Grapple (62), Piercing (61), Disarm (50), Multiple Foe Combat (50), Meditation (48), Leatherworking (47), Kick (43), Bartering (40), Flirting (40), Sneak (40), Woodworking (38), Barricade (32), Storytelling (32), Poison Resistance (29), Alcohol Tolerance (28), Backstab (26), Bashing (26), Intimidation (26), Slashing (26), Mana Manipulation (25), Sewing (25), Singing (25), Teaching (25), Unarmed Combat (25), Hide (23), Comedy (20), Dancing (20), Manic Charge (13), Swordplay (11), Tanning (7), Skinning (6), Mana Infusion (5), Disarm Traps (3), Milking (3),
Spells: Super Heal (95), Fix It (94), Fireball (87), Bleach (84), Poison Cloud (82), Silence (70), Dark Vision (64), Mental Vision (60), Preserve (49), Cure Poison (47), Summon Familiar (45), Create Spellbook (43), Buffer (42), Fog (41), Lesser Charm (41), Rain (41), Breeze (39), Stone Skin (30), Disguise (29), Glamour (21), Soften Curse (10)
Yeah, add it up. That’s eighty-five levels in professions, all of which counted toward calculating my health and mana. I’d once thought that the engine would nerf my exploits. It’s what a normal game developer would do when something broke the game, but I should have known that Fizzbarren was too arrogant to admit I’d broken his creation. Fizzbarren probably saw this as a no-lose scenario.
Hmmm. A narcissist who was too sure of his cleverness? And he’d thought I would be a classic villain?