Having sealed me in, the seer wasted no more time, its next barrage of attacks heading straight towards me. The very moment the inky arms burst from the monster, I was moving, a Spatial Step carrying me forward. Its aim fouled, the forsaken shrieked as all five arms slammed into the ground. Not deterred in the slightest, it sent out another wave, and another, and another after that.
With enough warning, though, I was untouchable. At least for the time being. Spatial Step, if slightly more expensive, was a massive upgrade from Jet Step, and all it took was a single step for me to dodge almost anything. The puddles were still a concern, and every time I reappeared somewhere, a new tendril would reach up from my blind spot to tie me down. Though it had fallen behind a number of my other stats since its glory days, my Perception served me well here, allowing me to react in time now that I knew what to expect.
Sadly, it was a state of affairs that couldn’t last forever. As I neared the lake and the monster within, I was left with less and less time to react. Worse, the forsaken seemed to be growing wise to my skills. Right as I was about to teleport forward, one of the dark tendrils broke off from the rest and crashed down exactly where I’d been planning to step to. For the briefest of instants, I froze, picking a new location to teleport to, but even that moment of hesitation was enough. An arm from the nearest puddle lashed out, splashing over my feet, and it was all I could do not to trip and fall.
Just as before, the rest of the attacks quickly followed.
My body tensed, the pain from the last time I’d been caught already etched into it. This time, however, things would be different.
Mana Sink has absorbed mana from a magic-based attack.
Dozens of battle notifications rolled in as my newest class skill went to work, siphoning off the mana from the potent attack attempting to consume me. With every inch of me covered, it had plenty of material to work with, and a good chunk of the mana I’d consumed with my wanton Spatial Steps started to return.
Which was good. I’d be needing it.
Light mana rushed into my armor, almost instantly reaching the max I’d been able to push into it before the upgrade. The liquid darkness bubbled but stayed put, seeming to gloat at my inability to do anything more.
As the light in my armor evolved past a gentle radiance, though, the darkness began to take note. Still bubbling, it began to writhe and buck, undulating around me like a swarm of agitated leeches.
Sometimes I miss Trauma Suppression, I decided. I could live with shoving this memory down somewhere and not thinking about it ever again.
The light intensified once more, until I was outputting enough lumens to rival a stadium floodlight. In response, the sludge began to vibrate, each patch of it seeming to let off its own cry that tried to burrow into my body. In fact, I was convinced this did count as a sonic attack, with only my Force Dispersal saving me from the worst of its effects. Had I been able to move a single step, I would have staggered.
It was fast growing clear that the darkness directly under the control of the seer was made of sterner stuff than the variants on the walls, and for a moment, I worried that, even with my armor skill fully upgraded, it wouldn’t be enough. Right before the skill reached its maximum, however, it happened.
First my feet, then my hands. My head came last, as all the moldy muck fled my body. Not seeming to be able to settle on a single manner of egress, some of it dramatically boiled off while other sections flaked away or gently dissolved. The end effect was the same. I was bright enough to blind a star, and I was free.
Light Vision was the only thing that allowed me to see, and I relied on it to show me the way as I pushed forward. Already bleeding mana at a horrifying rate, I didn’t bother to use any more Spatial Steps, instead just charging forward. The forsaken answered with more of the same, but its attacks could no longer stop me, most of their bulk erased by the time they pushed through the light.
Seeming to understand the score, the creature responded with a wider variety of attacks. A dark ring of energy oozed its way out of the monster’s flesh before bursting out in all directions. I tried to teleport through the attack, but when I reappeared, its effects still hit me anyway.
You have entered the Unseeing Eye of the Storm!
-15 Perception
You are blinded!
You take 30 dark damage per second.
It was a horrifying trio of effects, and I felt the world around me shrink as my Perception sank back to near-standard levels. My vision blacked out for a moment, and I feared for the worst until more notifications assaulted me.
Light Vision has negated blind effect. Sight restored.
Light Armor and Resist Magic have partially negated damage effect. You are taking 2 damage per second.
Despite myself, and with barely the energy required to move, I started to laugh. Was this it? Was this the best the beast could do? I knew the question was tempting fate — the flat damage reduction on Resist Magic was perfectly suited to handle damage over time effects, and I’d have fared much worse from a single, massive strike — but I didn’t care.
This was what I’d been after for so long. Power. Not to go wage wars or slay gods. Power enough to stop being so afraid all the time. Power enough not to feel like a hunted animal, constantly shoving down my thoughts of Antagonists so I could pretend to live a normal life. Power enough not to fear whatever horrifying monstrosities lurked in the dark.
Despite my lowered Perception, I had no difficulty reaching the lake. While I’d expected to need to activate Waterwalking, the liquid darkness reacted to the light streaming off from my armor, dissipating even as it fled me. Parting like the red sea, it cleared a path for me to run forth as the water level began to sink.
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Not questioning my luck, I made a beeline for the seer, ignoring as it used our proximity to launch all sorts of new attacks at me. The only ones that seemed to stick were sensory related, and my world shrank down as the corners of my vision blackened. I summoned a long spear and began channeling fire and light mana into it, watching as my mana plummeted past the halfway point. Still enough.
When the water before me parted to reveal the bulbous underside of the forsaken, I wasted no time. With all my Strength, I shoved the spear into the surprisingly tender flesh. The physical blow itself did next to nothing, but the firestorm of mana within was explosive. In a wide radius around the spear, the monster’s body crumbled into dust, and at the edges of the gaping wound, flames licked its innards, eager to consume the rest of it.
In that moment, I was glad for the water surrounding me and my lowered Perception. They acted as insulators to the horrid, ear-splitting cries that followed. Eager to put the creature out of its misery, I wanted nothing more than to follow up with a second attack, but a look at my mana made me have second thoughts.
Mana: 95/500
The goal, I had to remind myself, was not mutual destruction, and I had little desire to run out and have the water rush back in to swallow me. Dismissing my weapon, I ran off, not stopping until I was well clear of the lake.
With my Perception so low, it took me a second just to orient myself and bring the seer back into my field of view. When I did, however, I quickly activated God’s Eye to see my progress.
The Forsaken Seer: Level 28, 6421/8300hp
I cursed. Even as I watched, its health ticked down as it dealt with the fire mana eating away at it, but it was clear it wouldn’t be enough. It was, unfortunately, equally clear that I wouldn’t be able to repeat that strategy again.
Or, not immediately.
For once, the monster was too preoccupied to pepper me with its usual attacks, and I took my moment of peace to search for the nearest puddle. I began walking towards it, sighing as the tendril within started to stir.
Where did my life go wrong that I have to do this? I regretted the thought immediately as twenty thousand answers came to mind, at least half of them preventable. All right. Fair enough.
The black tar slammed into me, and rather than try to free myself, I let it go to work.
Mana Sink has absorbed mana from a magic-based attack.
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Half an hour. Maybe a bit more. Possibly a tad less. Regardless, while it was barely any time under normal circumstances, it was an eternity in battle. Nonetheless, that was how long I’d been forced to keep at my brutal on-and-off-again assault on the seer. Despite all the attacks I’d weathered and all the spears of fiery light I’d conjured, there were only a handful of visible differences from the start of the fight.
For one, the puddles littering the room were now half cleared out. Burning them away after using them as mana recharging stations had done a number on their numbers, so to speak. On the one hand, it meant less looking behind my back. On the other, it was getting harder to regain some fast mana.
The second was the water level. At first, I’d thought my light magic was draining it at an unbelievable rate. As I watched it sink even from afar, though, I eventually came to the horrifying realization that I wasn’t the only one with a means of healing myself. Apparently swimming in some sort of healing fluid from hell, the forsaken consumed massive quantities of its lake whenever I struck it, drawing out the fight for far longer than I’d anticipated.
That, however, was a thing of the past. The lake now completely dried up save for a piddling, pitiful puddle, the monster had nothing else to heal itself with. Its body now fully revealed, I could finally see that it was actually attached to the ground below it, like some sort of deformed skin tag. With eyes that had progressively lost more and more vision, I hit it with God’s Eye for what I hoped would be the last time.
The Forsaken Seer: Level 28, 828/8300hp
Riddled with gaping wounds, the creature was clearly on its last legs, and even its painful wails had tapered off.
With a full pool of mana once more, I began my charge. Making no effort to spare my resources, I flared armor and weapon alike as high as I could.
And as I began my descent into the crater that had started as a lake, it was a good thing I did, too. As hurt as it was, the forsaken was hardly out of the fight. As if sensing the score, it used every skill in its arsenal to keep me away. All of them were rebuffed without fail, until I found myself only meters away from the horrid, hateful creature.
Right as I geared up to end things for good, though, I was treated to one final skill. Before I’d even touched the beast, a solid fourth of its body exploded into solid darkness, cannibalizing itself to take me out with it.
In the end, I never discovered if its last-ditch attempt would have been enough. I’d been trapped in darkness enough for several lifetimes now, and one quick Spatial Step was enough to teleport to the side, away from its suicidal strike. With so much of its body already liquified, I wasn’t even sure if I needed to land the final blow anymore.
Naturally, this did not stop me from doing so.
In went my long spear as I shoved it into one of the existing holes I’d taken out of the creature. It pierced deep, close to the center of the massive lump.
Its entire body lit up with a murky gray light as my mana went to work, with the seer crumbling away from the inside. If that wasn’t enough, the flames followed a moment later, shooting mounds of flesh outwards even as those that remained blackened to a crisp. A piteous final cry sounded from the warped monster before it went silent. Though I prepared myself for some resurrection skill or death curse, I needn’t have worried.
You have killed The Forsaken Seer!
With all manners of exhaustion setting in, all I wanted to do was collapse in that very spot. If there was one place I didn’t want to fall asleep though, it was in the center of the seer’s decaying corpse.
With one last surge of will, I scoured the room for whatever sort of loot I was sure had to exist. While I didn’t find a treasure chest, I eventually stumbled across a large, black gem, shaped into a cube. God’s Eye
Lightless Heart
The heart of a being warped by powerful darkness magic. When activated, creates a zone of potent darkness mana which weakens light magic and blocks all forms of external perception and scrying. Can possibly be worked into various manners of obfuscation and darkness-enhancing equipment.
It went into my storage before I was halfway done reading it, too spent to think about what I might use it for. For good measure, I did one more sweep of the room and grabbed a sample of what little of the dark puddle remained before calling it quits.
“Now where’s the damned portal…” Unlike in the desert crypt, no portal appeared to help me escape. With no small amount of cursing, I backtracked to the pit, relieved to see that it was no longer blocked off on top.
A few jet steps later, and I was out.
I considered going straight back to Cal and Verin, but as soon as I escaped, I recalled just how this had all begun in the first place. Only a few steps away was a wall of gray, normally signifying a hidden cache.
What is it? What could have possibly been worth all that?
As my final act of the day, I swiped through the fog to reveal what lay behind it.
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Three days later, I left the labyrinth, aiming directly for the tall sand dune that marked our camp. As soon as I came into view, Cal and Verin swarmed me with all manner of questions, demanding to know what had taken me so much longer this time. If perhaps I omitted some large details, I decided to skip ahead to the important part.
“Hi guys. Sorry to worry you. But I found us a safe room.”