I really should have paid more attention to my choice of fighting style. [Knife-fighting] sucked at frontal assaults—a lesson that got reinforced within the first few seconds of the scuffle.
The three rogues attacked with alarming blood thirst, darting in and out of my guard. Their strikes tore into my health meter, glancing off my arms and sides. A vicious kick slammed into my midsection. I barely had time to grunt before I went sailing . . . through a shelf. And then, another.
I landed in a heap of dust.
Crap. This was not my kind of fight. Notification boxes crowded the corners of my vision, battling each other for prominence. My health meter had dropped by over fifty percent. My stamina bar had also taken a dip.
One message hovered atop all of the others:
You have been [Poisoned].
You have been struck with the ability, [Toxic Blade]. Health and stamina now take continuous damage over time.
Max: Five stacks.
Oh, god. Poison?!
The sounds of running feet knocked me back to my senses. The last attack had launched me closer to the exit, though I still stood about ten meters away. If I stayed in this room, I would die. Which meant . . .
I vaulted off the ground, dodging the knives thrown at my back. The two Assassins flanked me, hot in pursuit. Their swift strikes found openings beneath my guard. One such blow added another stack of poison.
But, I didn’t care. Not when I’d retrieved my saving grace. The Night Scout Armor came with a few pouches attached to its belt, and I’d taken to storing handy weapons in them. I parried two more strikes, and then, I threw a smoke bomb onto my ground.
The Assassins gagged.
Acrid Smoke Bomb [Common]
An alchemical concoction. Releases a cloud of smoke laced with capsaicin.
The smoke cloud expanded to an impressive radius. I surged through it, one arm held up in front of my nose. Despite my precautions, I mistakenly inhaled a whiff.
It burned. Dear lord, it burned. Pain, like hot needles, rammed into my throat. I raced out of the cloud in a blind daze. A pair of thrown knives bounced off my back.
But, I made it. My gosh, I made it. The door to the item room parted with a push of my shoulder, allowing me to tumble out into fresh air and the safety of the corridor.
Mana! Need mana now!
I popped a mana potion and chugged down its content. A vital potion followed immediately after that. My fingers had just closed around a health potion when sinister energy whipped up around me.
“[Throw]!”
A psychic grip flung me into a wall. The inventory system collapsed, forcing my hand out of its window. I managed to extract a dagger at the last instant, one of many nondescript weapons I’d looted in the Labyrinth.
The Trickster emerged from the item room, hacking and spitting. “Give up, elf.”
I rolled into a crouch. The action hurt my arms, which had borne the impact of the last attack. With my VP and MP values topped off, I wasn’t as defenseless as before. Nevertheless, the poison I’d been afflicted with gnawed worryingly at my health.
I was down to ten percent HP and would have died at some point during the fight were it not for the sturdiness of the Night Scout Armor.
Thank you, Kajal! I would send her flowers if I survived this. But, that was a pretty big if.
You have equipped a melee weapon in your off-hand.
The Dual Wielding perk has now been activated.
The two Assassins blurred past the doorway, silent as death. They glared at me from beneath their cowls.
I smirked and raised a dagger in a mock salute. “Hurts, doesn't it?” And then, I took off at full speed down the corridor.
All four of us vanished into [Stealth].
I couldn’t outrun them, not that I planned to. But, out here in the corridor, I had removed the one advantage they’d possessed in the item room: control over the battlefield.
The Trickster reached me first. Sparks flew as we clashed at high speed in a deadly dance of blades. I didn’t stop running. The corridors here were wide enough to accommodate twenty men, spread out from wall to wall.
I kept my undefended side close to the wall, forcing my attackers to come at me from two directions. It worked for the most part. The rogues couldn’t swing properly without getting in the way of each other’s attacks.
However, one Assassin, the one with the [Toxic Blade], pointed his fingers at me. His cronies drew backward, heightening my suspicion. A spray of poison, noxious even to look at, spurted out of his fingertips.
I dropped another bomb at that same moment, a concussive one this time, and allowed the force to propel me down the corridor. The combined attacks of bomb and poison spray gave the rogues pause, allowing me to reactivate [Stealth].
“Futile,” the Trickster spat. “I know where you are.”
Right. He had a psychic affinity, one that granted him the ability to detect thoughts or something of the sort. The first Assassin manipulated poison, which left the second as the one behind the illusions.
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All three had affinities built for killing, but mine was better, even though it wasn’t as flashy. I still had [Fear Aura] to use in a pinch. But, timing was important if I intended to capitalize on the debuff.
The rogues surged unerringly toward me, true to the Trickster’s words. I raised my knives in defense and sensed the accumulation of sinister energy.
[Throw]!
I activated [Dark Stalker] and switched places with [Decoy] before the attack could complete. The fake me crashed into a wall and dispelled, though not before the Assassins descended on it in a flurry of blades.
This was the reason I had prioritized MP and VP over health. As long as I had my techniques, I could always find a breather. In the time that the killers reoriented themselves, I opened my inventory and downed a health option.
“[Decoy],” one of the Assassins said. “Classic rogue skill. Though, I’ll admit. I'm surprised he managed to unlock it this early.” He glanced at the Trickster. “You can sense him, can’t you?”
The Trickster raised two fingers to his temple. “I know what to look for now. It’s harder when he pulls that disappearing trick of his, but if I focus enough—”
I threw a long knife at him.
He caught it between his fingers, without even looking—“Nice try”—And then, he noticed the spherical object that dangled from its hilt.
The concussive bomb exploded without warning. I rushed after the disoriented Trickster and jammed my blades into his neck. His eyes bulged as his health meter swung downward. Psychic energy rose from his fingertips—
[Fear Aura]!
The Trickster froze. Whatever he saw in the aura was enough to stun him for one second and allowed me to shove a concussion bomb into his mouth.
Flesh and bone fragments painted the corridor and splashed up at me.
You have defeated enemy Trickster LVL 24.
You have leveled up!
You are now level 20.
You have leveled up!
You are now level 21.
Visit your status screen to allocate your free stat points.
The two Assassins gaped at me in shock, unable to process the visceral murder of their companion. They slammed back to their senses shortly after, but I’d already gained some distance.
“Bastard!” one of them screamed.
We blurred down the corridor. Poison sprays and a similar technique created from pure color missed me by scant inches. I ducked through them all, swinging my blades.
The illusion user scared me the most, but I couldn’t focus on him. The poison user proved more persistent, and it was all I could do to avoid gaining a fresh stack of [Poisoned].
I still had about seven bombs left in my inventory, but all of those were of the sticky type. Two concussion bombs occupied pouches on my belt. If I could just reach them—
You have been afflicted with [Confusion].
All stats have been reduced by [2]!
[Confusion]?
The walls of the corridor undulated like a snake. I swung my daggers in reaction and missed the knife that raked across my thigh.
You have been [Poisoned].
You have been struck with the ability [Toxic Blade].
Current stacks: 3/5.
A bend appeared in the corridor, a short distance ahead of us. I’d probably misjudged the length in my [Confusion], but none of that mattered. Muffled growls reached my ears, emanating from a point just beyond the bend.
Waiting for us.
What did the growls mean again? Enemies?
A second strike glanced off my ribs.
Aargh, dammit!
I rounded the bend and slipped into [Dark Stalker]. The shadows responded sluggishly, as though hampered by my inability to concentrate.
The Assassins followed me around the bend—
—and fell into the ambush of a quartet of Cynocephali which had been waiting.
The chimeras ignored me, cloaked as I was in shadows, but it was only a matter of time.
My vision slipped with each passing second as I failed to wrangle my concentration back under my control. Any moment now, I would reemerge in their midst, in prime position to take a bone sword through the head.
Just hold on, Damien!
The Assassins fought back with poison and illusion. They did a better job than I expected, killing two chimeras in the time it took me to recover my bearings. They didn’t escape unscathed, however, and the poison user withdrew to drink a health potion.
It left his companion on his lonesome, who tried creating an image to befuddle the surviving chimeras. The illusion shattered the instant he finished, thanks to a swift strike from a massive Cynocephalus. A second strike dropped the man's health by magnitudes and threw him onto my path.
Screw this. I stepped out of the shadows before the chimeras could reach us and grabbed the disoriented Assassin by the throat. The poison user screamed in warning, but the deed had already been done. I committed the cruelest kill in the history of kills. Warm blood gushed down my hand.
The chimeras didn’t take kindly to the intrusion. They launched at me with those earth-shattering swords of theirs, but a last-minute switch with [Decoy] ensured they succeeded only in tearing into the dead. I took a glancing kick as I escaped which forced vomit out of my mouth.
The vomit helped clear the last vestiges of [Confusion]. And then, I was off, nursing a stinging arm and the bottom half of my health meter. The Cynocephali should keep the Assassin occupied, what with their ability to locate stealthy enemies by their scent.
I consulted my [Map] as I ran, harried by the poison sapping away at my health. The Traveler’s room waited far off in the east, about four corridors away. Another blinking sign in my vision caught my attention: the near-empty stamina bar. It had taken a hit during the chase and had suffered further debilitation from the poison.
I couldn't afford to consume a green potion if I intended to live. I had one more potion slot and priority went to poison—
A dark shape leaped with a drawn dagger at my face. I parried the blow and skidded backward from the momentum.
Two thrown knives followed in a beeline for my chest. A quick duck and weave sent them sailing past, though not before one knife raked past my hair. I regarded the final Assassin who glared at me with enough vitriol to poison an ocean. His cowl had come loose sometime during the fight, revealing a scarred face beneath a mop of grey.
“And so, three becomes one,” I mocked.
The Assassin scowled. “You’ll eat your words, elf.”
“Like the way your comrade ate the bomb?” I mimicked the explosion of a skull, pleased to see the Assassin flinch at the display.
And, to think I’d once given up trash-talking.
The Assassin smirked. “How many stacks of poison do you have now?”
“Four,” I lied.
“You realize I can see the number from my notifications, don’t you?” He twirled his blades. “You don’t want to know what happens when you get to five stacks.”
“Come on. I love surprises.”
Somewhere within my inventory sat a Cure Ailments Potion, but I couldn’t risk using it until I was certain I wouldn’t be poisoned again.
The Assassin and I circled each other with dual blades raised in front of our torsos. Howls emanated from far behind us, proving that he hadn’t soloed the chimeras. From the faint traces of smoke on his clothes, I could guess how he’d made his escape.
However, he had suffered for it. His HP had fallen by a quarter, and from the way his eyes flickered, he was also looking at the health meter that hung above my head.
“I don’t suppose,” I said, “that I could convince you to make peace and let bygones be bygones? Whatever Byron pays you won't suffice to revive your friends.”
“They were my brothers,” the man snapped.
A moment later, he vanished into [Stealth].