Ambush

As Jason began to walk towards the gate to cross the river, Leviticus piped up saying "Hold on a moment!"

Jason looked back at him quizzically, "What is it?"

"You see… I'm actually not that great with swords…" He scratched the back of his head, embarrassed to be bringing this up. "I'm a level two ranger and a level one rogue. By chance do you have a bow, arrows and daggers so I can be of more help?" He continued looking down at the ground, not a hint of his previous arrogance displayed. Jason could tell he had taken a hit to his pride by asking Jason for gear.

Jason knew that a level three fighter would be of immense help if they got into anything that he couldn't handle. Without a second’s hesitation he took out the bow, arrows and dagger that he had obtained from the Whiplash guild out of his inventory and passed them to Leviticus.

"This is the crappiest bow I've ever seen." Mumbled Leviticus as he began to pull at the string.

Since Leviticus was mumbling Jason had a hard time hearing him. "What was that?" He asked.

Leviticus looked up and said "Thanks! Best bow ever!" Flashing a salesman like smile at Jason.

Jason shook his head, flabbergasted at how shameless the elf seemed to be and walked through the gate, striding across the field and re-entering the catacombs gate with the ex-prisoners following him.

They hadn’t encountered any problems and so while they were walking Jason started handing out the loaves of bread, splitting it first among those who held weapons so that they would have enough energy to fight and then those who could hardly walk. It would take several days if not weeks for these people to recover.

Jason had lit some torches for those behind him so they could see where they were going, not everyone had night eyes like him. Thankfully his mana regeneration was high enough to where he could keep it active without worrying about consuming all his mana.

Mana regeneration was normally one percent of the total mana pool. Different boosts from skills, equipment or passive skills would be able to increase this to higher rates; at the moment Jason could only rely on his own passive mana regeneration.

With his mana pool at three-hundred and forty points his regeneration was at three and four tenths mana points per second; since he had the title of Mana Guru all of his mana consumption was halved, and he was only spending half a mana point each second with his Night Eyes skill.

After giving orders to yell for him if anything strange happened, he went ahead of the group to make sure there was no danger. He had destroyed several undead minions, so there was no way their masters hadn't noticed their disappearance by now.

As he got closer to the junction, he heard voices ahead.

"The i-i-i-i-intruders should be d-d-d-d-own that tunnel over there, d-d-d-do we go after them?" A nasally sounding voice asked.

"No. We wait here." A deep raspy voice responded. "They have to come down this way anyway to get out."

"Mmmm, b-b-b-b-but what if they b-b-b-b-bring the p-p-p-p-p-prisoners too?"

"They're prisoners, what are you scared of? We just need to kill them all, then throw them to the wretches. We can always get new prisoners."

They continued talking about how great it was to hear people scream as they were eaten slowly by the wretches. Wretches were a low-level demon that were relatively easy to summon and control. A low-level summoner could control them easily depending on if the right summoning ritual was done; a summoning ritual which required gallons of blood to summon.

Wretches were imp-like creatures about 3 feet tall, had grey motley skin with a head and jaw similar to a bristle jaw worm. They also had three sickle like arms that were sharper than katanas. They were fearsome, and when summoned wretches were difficult for anyone under level two to deal with. However, when compared to the other forces of the Demon Horde, they weren't even worthy to be called cannon fodder.

Jason suddenly realized that this quest was going to be a lot more complicated than he had originally thought.

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'First I need to deal with these two before the ex-prisoners arrive.'

Jason prepared himself knowing that he was most likely running into a prepared ambush, but he had no choice but to power through it.

He crept forward until he could barely see the original corridor he had come through, and he did his best to see what he could until he finally saw the individuals who were speaking before. Alongside them were a dozen skeletal warriors and one other skeletal warrior that looked slightly different than the others.

This skeletal warrior was larger by a full foot and was decked out in partial plate armor. It had a helmet with horns going off to the sides and held the claymore in one hand with a tower shield in the other.

'D*mn, I wish I had bought an appraisal skill to see the levels and skills of these guys. I would guess that the knight is at least a level three. The two dudes should be around level two or level three and the rest of the skeletons are probably still level zero to level one. Unfortunately, I can only guess their levels and abilities.'

An appraisal skill would allow the User to see basic information of the individual or item that the appraiser was viewing. The higher the level the proficiency of this skill was the more information was given to the User. Some people would even level up their appraisal skill solely so they could be paid enormous amounts of money to identify high level items.

The two cultists were arguing about if a wretch could taste what it eats or not, and so they hadn't noticed that Jason had been spying on them this whole time and Jason slipped back to the group of prisoners he had freed.

He explained the situation to them and decided to leave the human warriors behind who couldn't see without the torches to guard the group while the rest of them would move forward and sneak attack the prepared ambush.

Jason and Leviticus slowly crept forward and inch by inch they got closer to the two arguing cultists.

Jason pointed at himself then the taller one on the left, and Leviticus nodded and pointed towards the right.

Jason then held up five fingers, put down one, and another in the same amount of time; Leviticus nodded and pulled his bow taught with an arrow nocked.

On the count of five Jason fired an ice bolt at his target while at the exact same moment Leviticus released his arrow.

The plan was that Jason and Leviticus would ambush the two cultists, and then the two of them would battle the skeletal knight while the rest took care of the other skeletons.

A simple plan that should've worked out without too much difficulty, but sometimes things don't go according to plan.

The ice spike and the arrow flew side by side; both aimed expertly, but with different targets in mind.

The arrow arrived at it's destination, piercing through the eye of the right cultist, the nasally voiced one with the stutter. The arrow sunk deep into the skull and lay there quivering as all movements of this man ceased and he began to fall over backwards.

The ice spike fired by Jason flew steady and true but shattered against a tall black shield before it could reach its target.

The skeletal knight had stepped forward at the last minute to block the attack, and now stood between Jason and the cultist.

The cultist looked surprised to see the knight move of its own accord, then noticed ice fragments flying through the air and lastly saw a man in armor with a sword and shield running towards him and the knight as an elf to the side pulled another arrow out of his quiver.

When Jason saw the knight step in front of the ice spike at the last second he cursed, then began to sprint forward with all his might to reach the duo before the cultist could cast any spells.

The cultist began to chant at this time, and a large green flame began to condense into his hand.

Jason heard the roars of the few prisoners he had brought with him to fight as they rushed to the other skeletal warriors and saw another arrow fly past his shoulder only to crash against the knights shield as it shifted position to defend the cultist.

As Jason neared the knight, he saw mana rush into the knight as it put its shoulder against its shield and with uncanny speed unbefitting of it's size charged towards Jason.

Knowing that he didn't have time to dodge Jason slammed the ground with his shield, and activated Spike Growth, causing six-inch earthen spikes to erupt from the ground angled towards the knight and the cultist.

The knight was within seven feet of Jason and slowed down considerably while charging through the spikes. Jason could see the knights speed slow while it's vitality gauge over it's head was quickly shrinking. He also saw the spikes arrive before the cultist and saw that the spikes growing beneath his feet had interrupted the cultists spell making him have to restart it.

As the knight charged forward Jason braced himself behind his shield and activated stalwart to increase his own defense and flame-throw on his shield as the knight crashed into him.

More arrows quickly flew over Jason's head towards the cultist who now didn't have a guard in front of him.

"F*ck!" Yelled the cultist as he began casting barriers and dodging the arrows flying at him. He began to cast small bullet looking green flames towards Leviticus who also began dodging the flames.

Jason braced behind his shield as the knight crashed into him which now only had about a quarter of its health bar left. The flames quickly dug into the knight, chipping away at it's vitality bar which began to shrink slowly and surely.

As the knight charged into Jason, he felt like he was standing before a fully loaded truck. The knights charge hadn't finished yet and was still pushing Jason back causing his feet to dig deep ruts in the ground behind him. By the time he felt the momentum of the charge end Jason saw that a quarter of his hit points had been devastated.

With a mighty roar Jason pushed back with all of his strength. He refused to admit defeat even though the knight was clearly stronger.

As the knights charge ended, it raised it's sword high in the air where green energy began gathering around its edge, coating it in the sickly energy of necromancy.