One could be forgiven for thinking a long, protracted battle would come with all sorts of visible signs. As Cal neared a full half hour of fighting, however, nothing could be farther from the truth.
It was a mercy, she knew. In a region specifically designed to be a punishment, the bizarre cleanliness of it all was undeniably a boon. A dozen heads fell, and then a dozen more, the many bloodless bodies leaving not a single stain upon the earth. Whenever Cal managed to hastily kick the corpses towards the altar, their shadowy flesh disappeared without a trace. And even when she failed, the remaining hyenas were just as thorough at cleaning up the mess.
For the most part, Cal, too, was unchanged since the start of her fight. More than anything else, the battle so far had been an unending wave of three, repeated notifications.
You have gained a stack of Rising Tenacity. Stamina recovery enhanced.
You have gained a stack of Wellspring’s Renewal. Mana recovery enhanced.
You have gained a stack of Surging Vitality. Health recovery enhanced.
With her recovery boosted far beyond its baseline, she was still in nearly perfect condition after all this time.
Of course, there were minor changes, if one was truly looking for them. While the hyenas lacked any blood, they were very generous with their acidic spittle, and everywhere Cal fought, the ground was littered in tiny pits and grooves.
As for Cal herself, while her stats might have been topped off, her gear had taken some cursory damage, teeth and claws impaling and cutting through whenever she hadn’t been careful enough. The gashes in her armor offered windows to perfectly unblemished skin below, already fully healed. Small trickles of already-drying blood were the only proof that her skin had been pierced in the first place.
That, and the curses. Had the average person gotten a chance to look at her status, they would have been appalled, with multiple stacks of different curses piling up. In addition to her initial slumbering curse, Cal had been afflicted with a few newcomers.
Curse of Gluttony - Increases your body’s natural metabolic rate, magnifying your caloric requirements.
Curse of Lethargy - Increases the stamina cost of all actions and reduces stamina recovery rates, causing you to be easy to tire and slow to recover.
Arcane Hatred - Increases the mana cost of all actions and reduces mana recovery rates.
Hemophiliac’s Curse - Your blood flows more freely. Each stack negates a level of Bleed Resistance. Additional stacks thin blood and the rate of bleeding from all external wounds.
Curse of Paper Skin - Decreases your body’s natural defenses. Bruises will appear more easily, and your skin will part with less resistance.
Curse of Persistent Wounds - Increases your resistance to all healing magic.
On paper, the assortment of maladies looked rather dire. In actuality, they were anything but.
Much like her original slumbering curse, the gluttony curse had absolutely no effect on her, Cal’s standard immunity from starvation saving her. If anything, she was hoping that curse lingered, as it might help her pack away more of Tess’s cooking before her stomach filled up.
Not that I have too much nice to say about her, but I suppose my mother did leave me with some positives.
The other curses were nuisances, but with proper use of her Apex Shroud, Cal had managed to keep all their stacks fairly low, easily offset by her recovery and existing resistances. Better yet, none of them were permanent, either, stacks periodically falling off. With none of the effects tied to a cursed object and the original casters having died, the low-leveled curses didn’t have the juice to maintain themselves. That was doubly true, courtesy of her newest skill.
You have learned a new skill: Curse Resistance
Makes it more difficult for curses to affect you, offering you a chance to outright resist them. For curses that do take hold, lowers their potency and lessens their duration.
Prerequisites: 25 Constitution, 25 Endurance, 25 Wisdom
Bolstered by the new resistance, Cal stormed across the battlefield, her feathered blade tearing through foe after foe. Each cut, backed by Empowered Strike, bit deep into the slavering beasts, separating them from their limbs. Their heavy panting and rancid breaths washed over her, along with the pervasive scent of dust and acid.
Already having fought longer than she ever had before, Cal could barely control herself as a torrent of energy coursed through her. She pushed more and more of her strength into each blow, nothing she could do managing to make even the smallest dent in her stamina.
Under normal circumstances, the ever unchanging battlefield might have been demoralizing, but as the notifications kept rolling in, Cal could only react with a manic grin.
Swords has reached level 12!
Bleed Resistance has reached level 5!
Pain Resistance has reached level 3!
Curse Resistance has reached level 2!
Apex Shroud has reached level 7!
“Hells yeah! Keep ‘em coming! I need the levels.” Her existing resistances were somewhat pitiful, given that she hadn’t met the prerequisites for them until after changing her class. On top of that, Cal still almost never got hit in most of her fights, giving them little room to grow. For different reasons, the same was true of Apex Shroud, the Legendary skill leveling glacially even after months of constant use.
On and on, she fought, for the first time, truly embodying her class. As the umpteenth hyena fell, she honestly felt like an onslaught, and there was no denying that she was indefatigable after all this time. Perhaps, then, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when the first class-related notification rolled in.
Class Quest Completed: Slay 100 worthy foes in a single, uninterrupted fight.
+ 2 Class Points
+5000xp
“Wait, already? One hundred more!” In that moment, Cal genuinely felt like she could fight a full thousand, if she was allowed to.
As fortunate as it was unfortunate, the dungeon seemed to have its own attachment to the number 100. With how many hyenas Cal had failed to properly sacrifice, it still took another few minutes, but shortly after completing her quest, something changed.
For the first time, the altar, which up till then had continued to absorb her tributes with nary a squeak, began to audibly rumble.
Even the hyenas were taken aback by this development, a pregnant pause settling over the battlefield.
The rumbling slowly intensified, until it extended well past the small crater containing the altar, first vibrating the ground directly beneath Cal’s feet before expanding to shake the entire region.
Just when she thought the sudden earthquake would rattle the very brains out the remaining hyenas’ skulls, prematurely ending the fight, everything settled in a single second. Save for a thick layer of dust getting kicked up into the air, the quake left the region entirely unchanged, making Cal wonder if the worst of it was now over.
CRACK. Just as she had that thought, a single, sharp sound exploded through the air. Already fearing what she would find, Cal turned to the altar, discovering that it was now split down the middle, her sacrifices having done what her sword could not.
“So. Cursed object broken. Is that… is that it?” Somehow it really didn’t feel like that was it.
As if to mock her naive optimism, a foul, roiling, inky black smoke began to billow up from the sundered stone. Rather than disperse, it hung there, menacingly, coalescing and condensing.
By this point, Cal had seen enough. “All right, yes. I’ve unleashed some horrible monstrosity by praying at its altar. We get it.” At the very least, she wasn’t going to stand there with her mouth agape, waiting for it to fully form. Bidding farewell to her cursed companions, Cal dashed over to the altar under the cover of Apex Shroud, funneling as much mana and stamina into her weapon as it could take.
In the end, she wasn’t quite fast enough, but that was all for the better. Right before she swung her blade, the newly freed abomination took shape from the smoke, giving Cal a sense of what she was up against.
A wizened, gray face hovered in the air, its features somehow locked into what was at once a pained rictus and a mask of gleeful menace. Black teeth filled her mouth, matching the thin, oily hair that sprouted from her head. As for the rest of her, thick leathery skin seamlessly faded into long, tattered gray robes, making it impossible to know where one started and the other ended.
Par for the course by now, the entirety of her form was slightly see-through, marking her as some form of only partially physical entity. Cal managed to get off a single Identify as the crone let loose a blood-curdling shriek, letting her know what she was up against.
Vengeful Hag
And then, that same shriek was very abruptly cut off, as an Epic sword fueled by hundreds of points of mana and stamina ripped the hag in two.
Fastest boss fight ever. Hells, she doubted even Tess could pull something like that off.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It wasn’t until a deluge of new debuffs slammed into her that Cal realized something had gone very, very wrong.
You have dealt 453 damage to a Vengeful Hag!
The aborted cry returned in full force as the hag materialized far in the distance, a brutal tear running through her torso, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Instinctively, Cal tried to fade away, slipping into the comforting safety of her perfect invisibility.
For the first time, the skill refused to answer.
With a panicked spike of dread, Cal read through the remainder of her notifications at a feverish pace.
You have triggered a retaliatory curse!
All existing curses intensified.
You have been afflicted with a Skill Lock Curse!
Your most used active skill in the past hour has been locked away until the curse expires.
Locked Skill: Apex Shroud
Before she could even process what she’d read, her vision began to dim, shrouding her surroundings in darkness.
Vengeful Hag has hit you with the Curse of Blindness (stacking).
In that moment, Cal realized that without her Apex Shroud, she was no longer immune to targeted spells. From a distance, the hag was entirely free to rain down all manner of afflictions on her, and there was nothing Cal could do about it.
Just as she was about to race out of the crater and dart after the hag, the region’s other occupants made themselves known.
With unbridled hunger, a dozen hyenas gazed down at her, ringing the pit where once the intact altar had stood.
Staring up at them, riddled with curses and locked out of her most powerful skill, Cal had only two words to offer.
“Oh fuck.”
----------------------------------------
Cal had thought this region was a godsend for her. The hyenas were practically tailor-made to suit her skills! She would finish her class quests, head home, and give the dungeon an earnest thanks for the unexpected boon.
How terribly stupid she’d been.
Of course the previous fight had been easy. It was nothing more than a tutorial.
Panting like a dog and bleeding like a freshly slaughtered calf, Cal brought her sword down with all her might, hoping to disable the hyena that was even now trying to disembowel her.
Rather than cleanly cutting through, the feathered blade sank halfway through the beast’s haunches before getting lodged there. Cursing, Cal wasted precious moments attempting to rest the blade from the hyena’s faux flesh.
Cursed Hyena has clawed you for 20 damage!
Holding back a cry and ignoring the fresh wave of curses applied to her, Cal had a single, bitter thought.
I miss the altar.
In the distance, the hag still hovered menacingly, but as Cal was slowly coming to understand, the boss was the least of her worries. Without a means to easily bypass the hyenas and lacking a place to sacrifice their corpses, the beleaguered warrior was caught between a rock and a hard place.
With every body she dropped, the scavengers fed.
Bit by bit, they grew stronger. And tougher. And larger.
More and more, her attempts to hobble them proved ineffectual, their wounds healing just as fast as hers and their inky, ethereal hides too thick to casually pierce.
Naturally, her steadily worsening blindness was not helping either.
“Go away! Aren’t you supposed to be carrion feeders or something? Wait until I’m dead!” With a perturbed grunt, Cal channeled some extra mana into her blade and plunged it into the beast’s neck, the brutal blow nearly severing its head. She was gone before it even hit the floor, not waiting to see if she’d killed it.
Robbed of her invisibility, Cal was forced to truly embrace her new class for the first time. Every inch forward was hard won, and the only reason she was still on her feet was the massive recovery granted to her by her class skills. That, and a few healing spells -- though her Light Magic was no longer class aligned, that hardly stopped her from casting it. Her Curse of Persistent Wounds hadn’t yet stacked up enough to entirely negate her spells.
It was here that she thanked her father for forcing her to keep up her ruse for so long. Without him, she doubted she’d have learned any light spells in the first place. Her boosted recovery could handle whatever wounds she took, but the timely healing spells kept too much of her blood from escaping her.
Neck. She slashed in a clumsy, two-handed strike, biting deep into a hyena’s neck. Foreleg. A swift cut to the scavenger coming in from her side, making it jerk back in pain. Head. She snapped her leg backwards, her foot connecting hard with the snout of a lunging beast.
And at last, she was through. Had there not been a long, bloody trail stretched out behind her, Cal would have scarcely believed it. Though she was truly starting to flag, she’d finally caught up to the hag.
Whether through arrogance or some limitation of her powers, the gray crone made no effort to move or run away. She simply hung there, silent, even as her eyes seemed to laugh at Cal.
One more big strike. Nothing had survived a fully empowered strike from Cal in a long time, save for the hag. Certainly, she couldn’t take two, right?
Even as the hyenas closed in on her again, Cal charged her weapon, ready to end the fight once and for all.
Down she swung her feathery blade, shining bright with the glow of empowering mana. Meeting no resistance, it cleaved through the foul hag, splitting her from navel to groin. Having put her all into the blow, Cal nearly slumped to the ground, but she knew she couldn’t.
Still have to deal with all the hyenas, but as long as she’s not around, then-
You have triggered a retaliatory curse!
Every fiber of her being protested as Cal’s curses were magnified once again, and with mounting horror, she scanned her surroundings, only to find her worst nightmare.
There, a solid hundred meters away, was the hag. Far from fresh, she sported new wounds, looking as haggard as her name would imply, but it didn’t matter.
Because she was there. And still alive.
With a groan more fit for a zombie than a princess, Cal pivoted and began shambling forth.
Just. Once more. One more time. I can do it. Just one more time.
----------------------------------------
For all of her confidence, Cal had been wrong. Really wrong, truth be told.
It hadn’t been just one more time. Or two.
Three more times, she endured the grueling gauntlet, delivering her mightiest blow to the hag who silently taunted her.
And three more times, the hag vanished, only to reappear in the distance.
Huh. I think I’m dead. Cal took a single step forward, but even the small act nearly sent her crashing to the ground. Every limb felt as though it was filled with lead, and she was already dizzy and disoriented from blood loss. Hells, without her… unique constitution -- along with Hex’s meddling with her body -- Cal would have already passed out thrice over by now.
And even so, it wasn’t enough.
A wet cough escaped her, tinged with red, the sound serving as a trigger for one of the hyenas to lunge at her. Lacking the energy for a real attack, she instead formed a pittance of mana into a spell, a bright burst of light interposing itself between her and the beast. With a pitiful whimper, the massive scavenger backed off.
Kind of a bummer. All that time stuck with Hex just to go out like this. Lame. Very lame.
Another step, wrenching more stamina from her than an entire marathon normally would.
She was close. Or at least she thought she was. The curse of blindness had long since stolen away the bulk of her vision. Even so, she could barely make out a stationary, shapeless gray blob up ahead.
How far is that? Ten steps? Twenty?
Too many.
Even if the hyenas did not wise up and push past her harmless magic tricks, it was too many.
Maybe, maybe, she could if she really truly pushed herself. But what was the point? She would hit it one more time, and then it would just reappear somewhere else again. Cal liked to think she could do just about anything if she really put her mind to it, but there was no way in all the hells that she could chase after the hag again.
Well. Even if I’m about to die, my mother didn’t raise a quitter. She internally chuckled at her own joke. Her mother hadn’t raised her at all, after all.
That thought, more than most, should have given her some extra strength. Cal had goals. Small ones. Big ones. She wanted to sit down and have a real conversation with her father. Force him to tell her more about the circumstances of her birth. She wanted to change Ftheran for the better and lift it up from its humble backwater status. She wanted to live long enough to see Hex again, both to thank her and to curse her out again.
Most of all, though, Cal just wanted a break. And some fun.
Over two decades being locked in a palace, playing the part of a dutiful daughter. Another year trapped in an endless expanse of darkness. And after all that, she’d been confined to this dungeon. Was this really how she died? Years and years of traveling from one trap to another, just to kick it before she ever got to enjoy herself?
It was too sad to be true, and yet, for all that, it wasn’t enough.
Cal tried to force one more step out of her ailing body, but her legs buckled beneath her. Crashing down to the dusty earth, she tried to right herself, to push her body back up, but it was no use. Drained of blood and stamina and will, she lay there, only barely conscious at all.
Man. This sucks.
Her vision faded from gray to black, and the only thing that stopped her from passing out altogether was a nagging pull from the system.
A new notification. Cal was half convinced it would be telling her that she’d died.
But no. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As the barest hint of vitality flooded her sore and tired body, Cal read through her messages, incredulously.
Class Quest Completed: Fight uninterrupted for over an hour
+ 2 Class Points
+5000xp
And with one more class quest finished, the true notification she’d been waiting for appeared directly afterwards.
Congratulations! You have reached level 18!
+1 Constitution
+1 Strength
+1 Wisdom
+2 Endurance
+2 Free points
Need. Energy. Need. Health.
Without a second thought, Cal dumped one of her free points into Constitution, the other going into Endurance. Instant relief washed through her, even if it was only a drop in the bucket.
Small though the change might have been, it was enough. With shaky arms, Cal pushed herself back up, and she stepped forward.
It was an unwieldy, jerky motion, and for a moment, Cal thought her Dexterity had gone down until her dazed nerves finally pushed through their near-death adrenaline.
There were teeth. In her leg.
Pain Resistance has reached level 4!
Shaking its head back and forth, an entire hyena maintained a death grip on her calf, continually pumping her full of curses.
It didn’t matter. She was running on fumes, and she lacked the energy to even try fending it off. Besides, its presence was probably the only reason the rest of the pack hadn’t descended on her yet.
So instead, Cal kept moving forward. With her already superhuman Strength, she dragged her legs ahead, hyena and all.
One more stack of blindness joined her steadily growing curses, and Cal’s vision entirely winked out.
No matter. She remembered. One step. Two. Just a few more. And then.
Up she raised her blade, offering it every last drop of both stamina and mana. If this didn’t work, there was no point in keeping any of her resources in reserve.
With a great sense of finality, one way or another, Cal brought her blade down, throwing her entire body into the motion. She slammed into the ground, face first, barely noticing as the weight on her leg disappeared.
By the time the notifications rolled in, she was already out cold. Even so, they waited there to be read, a testament to her long, bloody battle.
Hidden Class Quest Completed: Fight to the point of passing out
+3 Class Points
+7500xp
You have slain a Vengeful Hag!
Quest Completed: Transgressor
+1000xp
Your Curse of Confinement has been lifted.