As predicted, sickening purple and black energy spread up around the Lodyte, and it soon became shriveled and looked dehydrated before it collapsed to the ground like a dry husk of emaciated flesh. With two enemies down, that left two unaccounted four and Tyler looked around. He spotted Desha, her poisoned blades repeatedly stabbing into her target. Dugin was with his sister, Agha for her part was bashing in a Lodyte's skull with her weapon to the side. A golden glow from next to Tyler showed that Oren was doing his best, healing the minor cuts and lessening bruises with his magic. That just left one enemy. It took a few seconds but he finally spotted it.
It was a different type of Lodyte. The ones he'd seen so far were stupid, slow and used clubs of various hard materials in an attempt to bash heads in. This one looked mostly similar aside from having what looked to be a headdress made from bones and mushroom parts atop its head. Instead of a club however, it held a gnarled staff in its hand. So a caster type then. Seeing as everyone else was currently busy, Tyler rushed forward to take it out. Just in time too.
The caster, he guessed some sort of shaman, was casting a spell of some kind, blue swirling energy glowing in both its hands as it raised its staff. Thankfully it was slow to react to Tyler sprintinging towards it, and only had a split second chance to react to a fist flying towards its stubby, warped face. Said fist met its face, the creature's neck snapping and causing its head to jerk back, the body nearly collapsing to the floor. The Lodyte swung its staff at him and Tyler was forced to block it with his forearms, causing him to wince at the pain, but he pushed back and drew on his power. He slammed his palm onto the creature's face and growled out the words needed to activate his card.
"Mind Sear."
There was some resistance, maybe because the spell was meant to be activated from range or there was something else he was missing. But either way Tyler pushed forward with his willpower and forced the spell card to listen to him. Something clicked mentally and it happened. The point blank blast of dark energy drilled through the shaman's head, splattering the area behind it with gore, viscera, and gray matter. Some also managed to get on Tyler and he stepped back at the sudden explosion of meat that partially hit him. Luckily none had gotten in his mouth, or he would definitely be puking. Instead he focused on clearing his face so he could see and feel his passive class ability activate. Something in the shaman glowed slightly and it entered his mouth as he opened it, letting the effect of his class card take full effect as system prompts popped up in his vision.
You and your party have slain:
Cavern Lodyte x5
Bonus experience is awarded for killing an enemy above your level.
You have slain:
Cavern Lodyte x1
Cavern Lodyte Shaman x1
Bonus experience is awarded for killing an enemy above your level.
You have reached Level 20. You have five unused stat points.
Combat Casting is Level 3.
…
Combat Casting is Level 5.
Unarmed Combat is Level 6.
Congratulations. Your Spell Card, Mind Sear has reached Level 2. Damage increased. Cost increased to 25 Mana Per Second.
You gain:
+5 WIS
+5 INT
You have absorbed the power of an enemy, Scion. The Spell Card [Geyser] has been added to your Card Catalog.
[Geyser]
Level 1
Type: Spell Card
Rarity: Common
Description: Summon a spout of pressurized water around an area, dealing blunt damage, soaking the affected targets, and lifting them up slightly.
Enemies affected take extra damage for lightning until they dry off.
Effect increases with INT and Level.
Cost: 50 Mana
Tyler grunted. While a new spell card in his Catalog, the place the System apparently stored cards, was nice he wished it wasn't another damn AoE spell. He needed a single target attack or ability otherwise he'd just be gimping his build. Speaking of his build, he noticed he was severely lacking in his physical attributes. If he was going to be up close and personal with enemies, he needed to increase those as well. So with that in mind, he dumped his five new points into Dexterity and shuddered slightly as the system energy entered his body. It was weaker than the last time he had leveled up so that was nice at least.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Looking over his shoulder, he spotted the party giving him approving nods. Dugin walked up to him, the engineer peering down at the mangled corpse of the shaman and wrinkling his nose at the gorey scene. Tyler couldn’t blame him,
"Och, nasty bit o' magic that. Ye should invest in a cleansing rune of some kind when we get back tae town or yer goin' tae smell like shite soon enough."
That made Tyler snort, but it did give him an idea. He did have an assignment to create a rune for his profession. So why not incest in making a cleansing rune that would clean his clothes when they got dirty and splattered like they were now. It shouldn't be too hard. The book he had said he needed to feel the patterns of skills and apply them to the stone slate the best he could, use the right materials as sacrifices, and then imbue the mana into the slate to get his desired effect. Still, it was irrelevant for the time being.
"I'll be sure to look into it when we get back, yeah. I for one don't want to have to manually wash my clothes after every fight."
The rest of the party soon walked forward to them, having looted the corpses. Or rather, they did a half-hearted check through the bodies, but given Lodyres were practically naked humanoids there wasn't anything of note to loot. The five stood before an entrance to a cave a short while later. Apparently, according to Oren who was somewhat of the loremaster of the group, these were the Smokesong Caverns. They were notable for being the closest source of purified water in the area, and if the Lodytes had set up some kind of base here, they need to be eliminated or at best pushed out.
The party entered the cave and Tyler could immediately feel the temperature start to increase as they walked. Small dark green lichen gew on the walls of the entrance tunnel, the small plants giving off enough light so that he didn't have to squint too much. The push downwards was relatively safe, only fighting a few Lodytes that didn't amount to much in the way of danger given the party's current composition. So during one of their rest periods to regain mana and stamina, he had to ask a question that had been bothering him.
"What exactly are Lodytes anyway?"
He had directed the question at the cleric, Oren. The man in mixed plate and chain armor raised an eyebrow, then looked at Agha who gave a small shrug before he harrumphed and turned back to answer.
"Well, Agha did mention ye were a bit out of the loop. Not goin' tae go into tae much detail but...well long time ago, back when we, the Duergar, were still normal Dwarves we got a bit too greedy and dug tae far down. Ancestors stumbled upon an Abyssal Portal and summoned a demon. We got enslaved, and experimented on and shite. Lodytes are the experimental failures from those ages ago and we are the successes. Lodytes are barely sapient, always attack on sight and act more like rabies-induced beasts than anything. Trust us, we've tried fixin' things in the past but they just seem tae be flawed on a fundamental level."
"I see, that's...kind heavy. We won't have to worry about demons though, this far down?"
That made Dugin laugh a bit, his eyes never leaving the focus of a small gizmo he was tinkering with.
"Nae lad, trust me. It would take an insubordinate amount of shite tier luck fer demons tae show up around here. Our ancestors dug hundreds of miles down and were lured by an open portal that some demonologist left layin' around. Nothin' to worry about here! If there were actual demons or shite about, we’d have known about it and smelled the sulfuric scent they tend to give off."
That was good to know at the very least. While Tyler could hold his own against a Lodyte around his level, maybe a higher level one if he was clever, he did not feel the same about facing a demon. Maybe if it was a weak demon like an imp? But that was assuming imps, if they were a type of demon here, were weak. For all he knew imps could be extremely strong. Either way, at least he only had to worry about these experimental rejects for enemies. All he had to do was do his part and finish the quest.
After that, he could grab his reward, clean up, and focus on Runesmithing. He wished he had bought a staff though, that way he could bring up his skill levels in Staff Fighting. Still, he had a plan and wanted to get his skills and cards leveled up. It was only a matter of time, and time was what he had. With Oren healing him, Agha drawing the enemy's aggro most of the time, and his own skill it shouldn't take too long for him to level up his abilities, right?
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, in another part of the planet Aurelia, Renara paced across.her study. She had had a bad feeling about the mission she had sent Daren on. And while it seemed to have worked out just fine, she had a sinking feeling that somehow, the man she had summoned as a tool was still alive. Perhaps she was just being paranoid, it wouldn’t be the first time she had overthinked something if you asked people who knew her. Still, she had to be sure.
While ideally, she could have simply asked her goddess, she had neither the divine treasures necessary, nor the current divine power needed to attempt to communicate with Tavera. So she was forced to do some scrying. Sitting down at her desk, she pulled out a magic orb, dusting it off with a simple application of wind-attuned ambient mana, or, Ambia, as most people called it. Once the sphere was nice and clean enough, she placed her hands along the sides and poured out her energy into it.
She knew vaguely where the physical location of Lambda’s Pride was but had never really researched it personally, as it was above her paygrade. Once enough mana was input, she felt her consciousness temporarily leave her body. She was somewhere else, invisible to all but the divine as she hovered above a dilapidated ruin which sat destroyed in the far northern mountains, some few miles away from one of the many disgusting goblin villages that ran through this part of the continent. The ruin was once, according to researchers, a temple to a dark god before the Uprising. Needing to enter the ruin itself was what she needed to do though, so she pushed forward and began to move downward.
Or at least she tried to. When she was a few feet from entering the general location of the ruin, she was rebounded as a system message popped up in her vision and a barely visible purple and black dome of energy could be seen for a split second before it returned .
ERROR: Unauthorized personnel are not allowed. Nice try.
That was odd, and it just reaffirmed her fears that the Transmigrator was alive. Whenever anything odd was afoot, nine times out of ten it was because one of THEM was involved. Pulling her conscience back into her body, she panted with exertion. Thinking about what to do, she hummed for a few minutes before getting an idea. She could send a group of squires and some grunts to enter the destroyed temple and find the man’s body. The fact that the temple sat next to a goblin village just made the decision all that much sweeter.
Pulling out a token, she spoke into it and waited for the headmaster of their Martial Order to answer.
“Master Griffith, I’d like to initiate a Purge mission. There’s some goblins I need wiped out to the north, and I am sure your men need some experience.”