image [https://i.imgur.com/xYKGk35.jpg]
The early morning hour made the phantoms and binding ribbons easy to see. The glowing line lassoing my chest gave a Grappled debuff, and its icon appeared in my peripheral vision.
In my experiments with runes, I learned how some metals had more conductivity than others. The alchemy set I purchased held vials of mercury, which I never used, and it surprised me that Magnetize showed it less conductive than lead, which I used as a resistor in my runes. Mercury was also valuable, so if this witch used it to separate runes on the ground, it probably served me to toss a wrench in the works.
I pulled out a handful of silver pieces dug from my inventory and tossed them at the grooves of mercury surrounding the triangular rune—the one anchored to the spectral strand.
When the coins landed, they shorted the pulling function. The tether remained, but it drew me no closer to the ominous rune. Luckily, silver conducted magic better than any metal I’d tested. Boldly displaying her runes invited savvy magic readers to foil her mechanics. She hadn’t designed this room for combat. The souls trapped by her runes didn’t know how to Inscribe Runes, or they’d been bound and brought to her.
I tossed more coins under the crimson ghost, which broke the ribbon of light binding it. The phantasm broke free and disappeared.
The crone cast a Wall of Force horizontally across the floor, preventing further interference with her runes. My subsequent volley of coins skittered across the translucent plane and came to rest on its surface.
I swung Gladius Cognitus at the crone but missed.
The crone twirled her finger at the sky, and the mobile turned. Four orc skulls dangling from the mobile emitted beams of soft lavender light. The twine holding the skulls hung from long bones that slowly spun in clockwise and counterclockwise directions. Four purple spotlights panned across the floor in unpredictable patterns. Even with the ghostly lasso holding me, I dodged them, but I couldn’t avoid her swinging staff.
Item
Brass Dragon Bone
Rarity
Rare (yellow)
Description
Level 25 bludgeoning weapon
+10 agility
+25 damage
Item use—Delivers knockdown to opponents once every 10 hits.
The thin, hollow bone swung as quickly as a plastic wiffle ball bat, making a dull whistle. But it landed blows far heavier than it should have, clocking me hard enough to pitch me off my feet—something that hadn’t happened since Dino taught me proper footwork.
I activated my Charm of Protection against dark magic, but it didn’t weaken the spectral bindings.
Even though the Hardwood Girdle absorbed 10 damage, my health dropped by 48 points from the impact. Even without Dazed or Stunned icons debuffs, I recovered too slowly to avoid the purple spotlight from a dangling skull. When the pale light struck me, my vision blackened, but my interface remained, displaying a Blinded icon next to one showing my Grappled status.
Casting Magnetize produced a recreation of the scene, drawing the world with arrows. The interface showed the contours of the mobile, and I rolled outside of the skull’s range, returning my vision.
The crone nailed me with another blow for 50 damage.
I cast Rejuvenate and dismissed Magnetize. I cast Presence, hoping a stronger light source might weaken the mobile’s powers. Nothing happened. An icon appeared as another spotlight moved past me—Silenced. Luckily, the magic had only a 10-second cooldown. If I hadn’t known, I might have wasted one of my daily cooldowns.
The crone hit me for another 50 points of damage before I regained my feet and sought ground free from spotlights.
My opponent cast Subjugate, and for a second, the idea of tossing down my weapon and devoting myself to her glory occurred to me. I shook off the effect, noticing in the combat log that I’d resisted the spell.
Before I gave her a taste of darksteel, my vision blurred, and I dropped my guard out of an inexplicable feeling of terror. A Fear debuff appeared briefly at the edge of my interface. The feelings went away with the icons, but long enough for her to land two more hits, bringing me nearly to half of my health.
After reeling away from her, I dodged the spotlights and recovered. The mobile’s skulls radiated fear, blindness, silence, and something I hadn’t yet experienced.
My opponent moved through the lights without concern. The glowing line tethering me to the floor maintained the Grappled debuff, foiling my escape mechanics. While dodging spotlights, I moved to trip her up, but the line holding me passed through her as if immaterial.
After she Counterspelled my Restore, she swung the bone club. Blocking her with Gladius shook the weapon, but my loose grasp avoided hurting my hand.
Every time I focused on my melee skills, she withdrew into the beams of the mobile. When the leather cords holding its arms wound to a certain tightness, the component reversed their direction, making it impossible to predict patterns.
If I could reach the macabre decoration, I could cut its leather cords, but it was too high, and Hot Air didn’t work with the Grappled effect. I considered trying to damage the giant mobile with a Compression Sphere, but if it survived the spell, the skulls would spin so fast that all four lights would hit me. No, I didn’t need that and dismissed the idea.
Her next spell, Curse, dropped my agility by 15 and the mobility loss felt strange. It forced me to give the spotlights a wider birth. I drank an agility potion to mitigate Curse’s effect. The +10 wasn’t something I normally needed in combat, but hitting the beams would cost me more health than I could regain from a potion.
I jabbed her with a Thrust, but once she learned its range, she stayed outside its reach.
I cast Scorch, but the spell only caused a quarter of its normal 48 damage. It seemed she also had high willpower.
The crone followed the beams of light as cover to my attacks, and I withdrew to avoid their effects. Our dance in this grisly discotheque wouldn’t end well for me if I couldn’t figure out how to cut it short.
She timed her attacks and maneuvered through the beams whenever she struck. I blocked many of her hits, but her coordination in the lights prevented parrying.
Besides the beams, I avoided getting close to specters. It wasn’t clear whether they were her guests, decorations, or part of her strategy, but I didn’t want to find out.
Even though we both moved across a Wall of Force, I channeled Dig beneath her feet, hoping to dislodge the runes, but the magic did nothing against the hardened clay.
In an open-air dungeon, Earthquake could be the cure-all for predicaments. I focused the effect in the room’s center, but the supports bearing the mobile stood outside the area of effect. Since we danced across a Wall of Force, neither of us lost our footing from the tremors, but they destroyed the runes, including the ones imprisoning the ghosts and tethering me to the floor.
She howled with rage at the affront and Charged me. We exchanged critical hits, though I was much worse off than she, with only 90 health remaining. She still had over half of her original 2100 health pool.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
When the Grappled debuff disappeared, I Slipstreamed on top of the mobile. In the distance, the Grenspur roc dropped into a dive, but a few seconds of exposure wouldn’t give the beast enough time to strike.
I hacked the leather straps holding it together, but my efforts hadn’t even scratched them. I needed structural damage. Since I wasted Earthquake, I needed another ten minutes before I could cast it again, which was far too long for this fight. I used my robe’s ability to reset the spell and Earthquaked the wooden supports on one side of the room.
The magic loosened the walls, and dirt collapsed into the room. Instead of destroying the supports, the magic only surrounded them with more dirt—making them more stable, not less. The loose soil spilling across the wall of force slowed my footing.
Worse still, the Earthquake shook the mobile, and the lights emanating from two skulls struck me with purple light. One beam blinded me again, while another produced a debuff called Withered.
Debuff
Withered
-30 strength, -20 agility
Duration
Until effect leaves
The icon solved the mystery of the fourth beam. While it disrupted me, I recovered soon enough. The magic nearly loosened my grip on Gladius, but I dodged the purple light beam because Earthquake shook the mobile.
When my sight returned, the dirt spilling into the room from the Earthquake gave me an idea. Dig didn’t affect clay, but it could remove the topsoil holding down the arches. I abandoned my attack and channeled Dig while avoiding taking any more damage from the crone or her bony chandelier.
The witch didn’t pay any notice to my channel while I deflected her attacks. When the first buttress dislodged from the loss of topsoil, she faltered in her attack, letting me land a Thrust. The strike drew her attention, allowing me to upend the support next to it. Their weight pulled the mobile enough to shake it, and beams struck me—but the disturbance preoccupied her enough that she never took advantage. I cast a second Rejuvenate, edging my health past the 50-point mark.
With a 2100 health pool, she didn’t waste time with measly effects like Restore or Rejuvenate. Instead, she tried to figure out the cause of the structure’s collapse.
It bought me enough time to loosen the third and final support. When it tipped inward, the combined weight brought the mobile crashing onto us. It fell slowly, so neither of us got caught beneath the wood, but the skulls stopped spraying light when the timber hit the floor. We crawled out to finish our fight.
She didn’t have many tricks left without her contraption. She’d grown complacent beneath her toys and offered only poor resistance to my superior skills. I’d brought her down within a minute.
I rolled my eyes at the meager gain she gave me—only 43 experience points. Barely double more for killing a regular bugbear, but that was life at the top of the level curve. I needed a lot to level, and most monsters didn’t give very many. The orcs Yula and I slew at the Orga River with Boulder Bullets gave only a few points each. I needed around 200 more to reach level 31.
I didn’t hear bugbears pursuing me, so I admired the surrounding devastation.
The crone carried a small white orb. It felt plastic.
Item
Opal Apple
Rarity
Rare (yellow)
Description
Level 40 trinket slot
Separates potion cooldowns by category.
At first, the item’s description made little sense. Did this mean I could drink multiple potions? Was it possible this trinket was so powerful? This item warranted immediate experimentation, and I had many potions.
I scrolled through my void bag interface to my potions. Their colorful stacks stood out from the other inventory slots. I’d had an alchemy set since my Grayton visit. I had unused stacks of minor stat boosts, giving +5 to any of my stats. When my alchemy reached rank 15, I made batches of +10 stat boosts, but I rarely used them in combat in favor of the all-important health and mana potions. And so they remained in my inventory, unused.
I drank a minor willpower potion, a potion that I never thought I’d drink. The minor and regular willpower potions showed the normal 10-minute cooldown, but the others appeared as if I had drunk nothing.
Assuming I could keep up my alchemy supplies, I could instantly increase all my stats by ten—and still be able to drink both a health and a mana potion. A strength potion delivered +10 extra damage with every hit. A stamina potion bumped up my health to 500. Coupled with a willpower potion and my charm of protection against dark magic, I could inflate my willpower against dark spells to 101. It pleased me to utilize the stockpiles of stat potions that I thought to be otherwise worthless.
If the crone wore this trinket, it made sense for the other bugbears to let her alone.
Strolling merrily through Bugbear City had paid off.
A sack dangling from the bones bore an item description.
Item
Portable Target Dummy
Rarity
Common (green)
Description
Level 30 item
May be used to practice bludgeoning attacks.
Dangling from the mobile, the crone must have used the thing like a piñata. Unlike the targeting dummies in Belden’s academy, no rank limit prevented spamming. Unfortunately, I didn’t particularly care about blunt weapons, although acquiring the dragon bone staff changed my mind.
I tossed the dummy into the air and smacked it a few times to see if the dragon bone broke it, but the bag of stuffing held admirably. It probably could take a lot of damage before bursting. Ranking up my bludgeoning attacks could be a project for another time. I stowed the target dummy in my inventory.
The feathered airplane cruised above me. With so many obstructions protecting me, it couldn’t perform a proper dive.
After dropping to the ground, I performed a Rest and Mend while turning her weapon over in my hand. The dragon bone felt light, but when I tapped it against the ground, it shook with resonance, as if it possessed more mass. It pleased me to know that Miros had dragons.
Before retrieving the crone’s core, I stopped. What worth would her core have? I suppose I could sell it, but I still had leftover gold that I hadn’t surrendered to Hawkhurst’s economy, and gold seemed not to have relevance to the contestants. We’d already bought everything in magic shops, so what more would a measly core bring?
Judging by her distance from the inhabited trenches, the other bugbears respected or feared her. If they’d gone through the trouble of erecting the pinnacle of wooden beams, they obviously obeyed her. It might do to have her on my side—even if she was a little dead.
I treated her corpse with the mummy wraps.
I topped myself off with health and mana, in case it turned on me. The crone already looked so withered and ghastly that she didn’t look any different, but I doubted she could fool their nose. Perhaps an undead version of her would scare them more.
When I finished the job, a nameplate appeared over her head.
Name
Undead Bugbear
Level
17
Difficulty
Easy (green)
Health
1050/1050
The crone sat with slumped arms hanging listlessly at her side. Her lack of life struck me as a bit sad. This was dark magic, and controlling even a dead thing gave me the creeps.
“Can you talk?” After waiting for a response, I issued instructions. “Can you stand up?”
The corpse regained its footing, although it stood with her same slumped posture.
“Lead me out of here. Let’s go north.”
Without a nod of acknowledgment, she turned and left her home without a second glance.
We walked at a slow pace. My request to move faster barely made a difference to her hunched-over gait.
“If we encounter bugbears, wave them away and lead me forward like you own the place.”
The sky lightened as I ran, but the intersections grew less frequent, and no more canopied areas barred my passage.
When the trench straightened, the temperature rose—and not just from the rising sun. My spirits lifted after catching another sight of the forest less than a mile away. Upon running into a trio of bugbears, I acted like it was only natural to follow the crone. I carried my sword just in case they didn’t buy it.
They backed away, deferential to the undead thing leading me out of the labyrinth.
They may have guarded trenches against intruders, but how many humans left the meadow? Among the fishy things about us, chief among them was our direction. Why would they permit a human to leave town?
They barked and growled amongst themselves. “They smell like death and dead flowers.”
“Don’t let her hear you.”
“This is not a deep elf. It is human.”
“Do we let them pass?”
“I’m not stopping them.”
It amused me they described the spices I used to distract pursuers as dead flowers.
The guards stepped aside.
Slipstreaming past monsters wasn’t as nearly satisfying as them yielding the right of way.
I walked past without giving them the satisfaction of a backward glance. I didn’t need to—I wore a Helm of Peripheral Vision.
We passed pairs and lone bugbears with similar reactions. Her smell bothered them, but none raised their voice loud enough for me to overhear.
Our trench crossed others, but we entered no dead ends. Greenery appeared on the skyline until the trench grew shallow, depositing us on the northern treeline. The Grenspur roc maintained its altitude over the vast meadow, and we lost sight of it beneath the trees.
After putting behind us earthy smells, the sweet, thin, springtime mountain air greeted us, though my companion hardly noticed.
“That only begs the question. What am I going to do with you?”
The mummy didn’t respond but stood with her arms hanging limp.