PART 3 - THE UPPER LEVELS

“And that was it. We thought the worst was behind us. We should’ve known better…” - Anonymous delver, human DPS, ex-Climber, The Lusty Quam, S894SDAF72L71Y, popular establishment amongst ex-Climbers, known for its many services and offerings.

Excerpt from “Life in the Depths – A Study of the Life Conditions in the Between-Nexus”

Status: Unpublished. Censored by the authority of Truth Praetor Alastor Ghabn

Notation: Level 4 Breach of The Tenets for Scholarly Conduct, Education and Enlightenment

Scholar Kuon Feeir, KUO274021097334283LDX – 2nd strike

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Things were not going well.

They hadn’t for almost two weeks now, ever since they had stepped foot onto that massive corridor.

Easily over 300-feet wide, according to Jul’s scouting, the walls and ceiling were hidden in pitch darkness, too far away for the meager light of the path to reveal.

The path itself guided them right through the middle of that massive empty space. And with no other choice, the party had stuck to their source of light, even though it meant being out in the open.

And that was when the waves of guardians had started besieging them.

“Hang on, Nar! Almost there!” Kur shouted.

Nar barely had the processing power to hear and decode the meaning of the sounds in the air into words and meanings.

His sword blurred in his hands, and he fought through a throbbing headache of raging [Instinct] and searing [NPC].

Blood dripped down his nose, and probably his ears too. Somewhere deep inside his mind, there was a split-second stray thought that popped above the chaos, to briefly wonder if that was a sign of his brain finally melting. But then the thought was gone, and it was just Nar and the three Guardian Soldier 2 that he kept from advancing towards the ranged DPS.

Luckily, it was the fourth time he found himself in such a situation. The first time, he had been forced to block the path of two of the massive things, who had surprised the party from the back, emerging almost silently from the darkness behind them. Then, he had not only to fight the soldiers, but also his disbelief at what his attributes now allowed him to achieve.

Well, at least enough to just barely stay alive. And had he not been forced into such a desperate situation, he would’ve never even considered it possible.

Lines of fire burned across his arms and legs, marking where he had been too slow, or forced to sacrifice a little HP to avoid a worse blow. The three guardians melded into a blurry whirlwind of death, and he was doing all he could to keep them from getting him. Or the others behind him.

“Ready!” Gad shouted.

“Do it!” Kur shouted back, above the chaos.

The sound of Gad’s newest skill, [Shield Call], rang across the wide, open space, reverberating against the hidden walls around them.

A wave of sound erupted from her shield, and when it reached Nar and the soldiers trying to eradicate him, the effect was immediate. The three guardians stopped dead for a half-second, then, as one, they turned on Gad instead.

Sagging from the sudden pressure release, both mental and physical, Nar let them go.

Attracted by Gad’s wide AOE aggro, all the enemies within a 20-feet radius turned towards her. The soldier she had been battling, the three that Nar had scarcely managed to hold, and the six Guardian Soldiers of rank 1, that had been running amok trying to kill Mul, Viy and Jul, all rushed towards their tank.

Gad hunkered behind her glowing, hazy gray shield, and prepared to receive the additional blows.

The nine guardians tripped and staggered against one another in their mad rush to attack her. The longer blades of the Guardian Soldier 1’s and the thicker, heavier limbs of the Guardian Soldier 2’s, flayed and crashed and stabbed indiscriminately. They ended up doing much more damage to themselves and the one guardian that Gad had already been fighting, than to her.

For a split moment, Nar felt a pang of jealousy for her glowing shield and her taunts, though he quickly pushed it away. Her path was not his path.

“Nar!” Kur shouted. “The ranged!”

Not wasting another second, Nar pushed through the pain and dashed towards the ranged fighters. Tuk, Rel and Cen stood nearby, in the center of their formation.

Cen was on the floor, obviously downed by one of the innumerable bolts flying at the three Climbers.

Rel was on top of her, and she was doing her best to keep the caster safe, while at the same time, occasionally shooting an arrow at their elusive, hidden enemies in the dark.

Tuk though, he stood amidst the pelting volleys, shifting and twisting in awkward attempts to keep from being a static target.

His rings of bright [Aura], up to six now, darted in all directions, spreading devastation amidst the mass of bolters hiding in the darkness around the group.

These were a new type of enemy.

These bolters were smaller and slower than the poisoners, and they could only shoot one bolt at a time. However, they made up for it in sheer numbers and by the ability to shoot an endless stream of bolts without needing an army of adjutants to keep re-stocking them.

This meant that dozens of bolts were flying at the ranged DPS without pause. And that made Tuk all the braver for his daring stand.

Kur’s order had been ambiguous. All he had meant was that Nar should take this opportunity, while Gad’s aggro lasted, to do something, anything, to help the besieged ranged DPS.

That could’ve meant wading into the darkness with his superior senses and [Speed], and directly destroying the bolters. However, as fast as he was, he knew he could not compete with Tuk’s rings and Rel’s arrows in terms of ranged combat. So instead, he ran towards the two of them.

“Tuk! Rel!” he shouted in warning, letting them know he was coming.

“Cover our left side!” Rel asked him. “Tuk, let’s focus on the right. One side at a time!”

“Got it!” the trugger replied.

Nar took position right behind them, blocking with ease all the bolts now heading in his direction. And for their part, Tuk and Rel worked quickly to clear up the left side of the party. Tuk’s [Sight] had improved tremendously, and Rel’s was still good enough to penetrate the darkness around her, so they made quick and short work of the bolters with shining rings and glowing arrow tips.

“Turn left!” Rel said, once they were done.

Glowing rings and arrows flew into the darkness, wrecking and destroying everything in their path.

The guardians' strategy had not changed once in the two weeks since they had found themselves in that enormous corridor.

The soldier 1’s focused on the melee DPS, and the bolters on the ranged DPS. As for the soldier 2’s, they just ran amok through the party unless Nar and Gad kept them occupied. Fortunately, no matter what happened, the soldiers seemed unwilling to use the anti-aggro skill they had previously displayed.

All in all, it was a very strange tactic.

More than once, they had commented on how much more effective the enemy could have been, if only they’d allowed themselves to be more flexible with their targets. And they knew that the guardians were, at least to some degree, intelligent enough to do it. It was a mystery, but one they were happy to see continued. Things were hard enough as they were…

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“Nar!” Gad shouted. “Almost time!”

Nar risked a glimpse to where the melee fight was raging. Mul, Viy and Jul had managed to bring down four of the soldier 1’s and one of the soldier 2’s. But Gad’s taunt effect was nearly over, and it had a damned cooldown of nearly three whole minutes!

Her shout had not been a call for help, nor for him to drop what he was doing. It was a warning to pay attention to the soon to be freed soldier 2’s again!

“Guys?” Nar asked of the two ranged DPS.

“Going as fast as we can!” Tuk shouted. “They move so fast!”

“Let’s try to wrap it up!” Kur shouted. “I’m triggering my boon… Now!”

Nar felt a surge of energy spread from his mind and down his whole body. Suddenly, the bolts flying his way seemed to slow down, and he had to adjust his sword mid swing to not overshoot the projectile he had been about to intercept.

Kur’s new skill, [Fighter’s Boon], was an interesting, and incredible second addition to the party leader’s boon set.

It granted the party a significant 15% increase to the attribute that most helped them in the moment, and it lasted for a full seven seconds. And if that wasn’t good enough, the skill only had a five-minute cooldown, meaning that it usually saw plenty of usage in the new, and much more drawn-out battles they now faced on the Upper Levels.

For Nar, it seemed to target [Reflex] most of the time, as he was still pretty much focused on the tanking side of things, but the System gave them all different boosts.

The already blazingly fast rings and arrows whistling past him shot out even faster. Rel and Tuk performed a semicircle of destruction, wrecking the bolters whose projectiles Nar intercepted.

“5 seconds!” Gad shouted.

Damn… Nar thought, glancing at the bigger Guardian Soldier 2. There were still four of them remaining!

Already he was starting to sense the first whispers of danger from his [Instinct].

One of the four must be planning to head straight for him, but what was he supposed to do? Tuk and Rel were still reliant on his protection, and he had learned the hard way what happened if he simply withdrew it.

The first, and the only time he had suddenly left the ranged unprotected to deal with the bulky, armored soldiers, had resulted in both Rel and Cen getting shot and going under the sleeping poison for the remainder of the fight.

It had made for a nightmare of a long, drawn-out battle from there on. No one had escaped it with their HP intact, and there had been more than a few close calls.

Even now, three fights later, the party was still having trouble adjusting to the new, open, multi-enemy fights that they now faced, so Nar was at a loss as to what to do. Fortunately, he wasn’t the same stuttering dumbass that had left the cubeplant…

“Kur!” Nar shouted in between bolts. “The soldiers are coming!”

Getting his party leader’s attention was about the best he could do, though he doubted Kur wasn't already aware of the impending disaster and planning for it. Still, he had by now learned the value of proper communication. They all had, and it showed in their fights.

“I know!” Kur shouted predictably.

Gad’s aggro ran out just as Mul managed to bring down one of the soldiers 2.

He was immediately forced to back-pedal as the soldier 1’s lashed back at the melee DPS once more, freed of the taunt. And the soldier 2’s went straight for the ranged.

Gad, torn between which group to help, made the decision of trying to help both groups at once, and taunted one soldier 1 and one of the soldier 2’s with her two individual charges of [Shield Call]. Unfortunately, that still left two soldier 2’s on the loose, and they kept going straight for Rel and Tuk.

Nar, tied down by the unceasing volleys of bolts, had his hands tied.

“Rel, get those 2’s heading your way!” Kur shouted, taking charge of the situation.

Then, he threw himself valiantly into their path, hoping to at least be enough of a distraction to slow them down. But the two guardians ignored his weak scepter blows, shining with [Aura] as they were, and pushed past him without even registering his presence

Rel got an arrow up and filled it with [Aura], and shot at one of the incoming guardians. The projectile went through the plated armor as though it were made out of jell-o. However, the other soldier still advanced, and grew before her.

With her eyes going wide, the archer backed away from the approaching, growling, hulking machine, and her second arrow went astray.

Nar’s [Instinct] didn’t tell him anything about the danger Rel was in, but he didn’t need it to know that she was about to die.

At the same time, he couldn’t just leave those bolts alone to take down Tuk.

Outside of his control, his [NPC] kicked into overdrive.

It was like someone grabbed a fistful of sharp aetherium and scrubbed them all over his brains. All the information from his [Hearing], [Sight], [Smell] and [Instinct] flooded and raged into his mind, and his [NPC] and [Reflex] exploded in agony to help him make sense of it all. And in that one, painful, slowed moment, he knew what he had to do.

The perceived time slowness of his [NPC] faded away, and the fight resumed its actual speed, and with it, Nar moved.

He caught three more bolts, the ones his senses identified that had been accurately aimed at Tuk. Then, he spun on the balls of his feet, and darted forward, towards Rel and the soldier wrapping its bladed limbs around her.

Unfortunately, his plan took him right through the path of one of Tuk’s rings. It was not the trugger's fault, and it was unavoidable…

The glowing ring tore a line across his left side, and Nar faltered. For a moment, the pain was almost too great, his body shrieking from the [Aura] infused cut, but then he pushed through.

He had underestimated the pain, however.

He managed to turn away the one blade that would’ve speared Rel through the spine, but the guardian had reacted to his approach, and a surprise blow caught him across the side. The same side that Tuk’s ring had just teared open.

His [Instinct] warned him of it, of course. But it was too late, and he was too hurt, to do anything else but instinctively brace for impact.

He was sent stumbling a couple of feet back, reeling and blinded by pain. It was a testament to all that he had endured and his attribute-enhanced body that he managed to stay standing. But he had to lean heavily on his sword to do so.

And before the guardian could do any more damage, Rel managed to put an arrow through it, and the thing’s limbs dropped heavily on the floor.

With only time to spare him a pale look of worry, Rel re-joined Tuk in finishing the last of the bolters.

Nar couldn’t pay much attention to the rest of the fight after that, but it was thankfully brief.

And soon enough, Jul was at his side, making him sit down.

“I’m okay,” Nar said, holding onto his side, even as his HP got to work. “Don’t worry.”

That double whammy had only blasted apart half of his remaining HP. That he was at 37/220 HP was no big deal at all. Not at all…

“Just sit down!” she ordered him. “And don’t do anything!”

“I won’t… I won’t…” he muttered tiredly.

His heartbeat was like a guardian hammering at his brain, his skull doing the best it could to keep everything together in the face of the ravaging wrecked by his [NPC]. That blessed but damned attribute had damaged him. It was probably even responsible for a good chunk of his nearly depleted HP bar!

Fuck… Nar thought, lost as to whether to hold onto his head, or his bleeding side.

He had to compromise with one hand for each.

Waves of nausea blasted him, threatening to spill the cracker and a half and all the jell-o he had drunk that day onto his lap. His ears rang with a high-pitched tinnitus, and his vision faded in and out, blurry and with more dark spots than sight. And as a final touch, blood still leaked down his nose and ears, and he tasted it on his tongue.

What in the pile am I doing wrong? He asked himself, for the thousandth time.

Every time his [NPC] triggered, he was left absolutely shredded by it.

He didn’t know what he was doing wrong, or if his body was just physically incapable of sustaining the burden of such an accelerated thought process for so long.

After talking it out, their current theory was that he was just using [NPC] too much, in a way that he somehow wasn’t ready to handle just yet. However, the guardians weren’t giving him much other choice.

The fights of the Upper Levels had so far proven to be beyond any encounter they had survived with the machines thus far. Everyone was stretched thin, and everyone was forced to use their [Aura] just so they could survive. Except for him, of course, as he was still struggling to get his to work.

Nar had expected the difficulty of their Climb to continue increasing, but this had been a massive, unexpected leap to everyone.

A sudden stab of pain made him clench his jaw.

Crystal dammit! Can’t use [Aura] without shredding myself to bits! Can’t use [NPC] without having my brain turn to fucking goo! What the fuck do You want from me? Uh? Do You me to just roll over and die? Uh? Is that what You…

“Ugh…” he muttered, pressing his eyes tightly shut.

With everything swaying around him, Nar let all thought slip from his grasp, allowing himself to go blank. That earned him some relief at least.

His side still radiated pain, but his HP was hard at work there, and all the rest were mere scratches and bruises. He didn’t even consider them injuries anymore.

“You’re using it too much!” Jul chastised him.

Nar scoffed and winced in pain. “No… Choice?”

One soldier of rank 2? Sure, he could handle it without his [NPC] triggering. No problem.

Two soldier 2’s? That was already pushing it a bit, and he needed help from the attribute, but it was still within manageable limits.

But with three of them, and bolts, and having to decide his next move in order to keep the party alive in the interval between seconds? Sometimes even split-seconds? No! That was something much beyond him!

He had no choice but to be increasingly reliant on his [NPC], even as it greedily drank from his HP.

Without it, even if he had the [Speed], the [Agility], the [Reflex], the [Instinct] and everything else, he just couldn’t make full use of the attributes. It was too much. His brain just couldn’t keep up with his attribute enhanced body, and speed focused fighting style anymore… And it had quickly become apparent that his [NPC] was at the core of his path. Without it, Nar just couldn’t bring it to its full capabilities and promise. And so, he bled.

So far, neither Kur nor Gad had come up with a solution for it either, and the guardians showed no signs of slowing down, or decreasing in number.

By now, he had long let go of the hesitations and regrets about his path and choices that had plagued him earlier in his Climb. He was fully committed to his path, and into figuring the way forward. The way to make it all work. But as of now, he still didn’t quite fully see it yet…

Jul dropped next to him with a heavy sigh. He could tell she was staring at him with her big and unhappy eyes, but her silence was evidence enough that she knew he was right. Until he, or they, figured it out, or he got stronger and better able to handle his attributes, he had no choice but to just keep doing what he was doing and paying its cost.

But he was trying to keep a positive attitude about things.

His party had accepted him. His path was starting to take some kind of shape. And there was the fact that they were already on the Upper Levels…

Yeah, he should see things from the bright side.

Hopefully, all that pain and bleeding from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth would get him some really good [Constitution] gains. Hopefully!