Jace Thorne knocked the black-clad human fighter back with the hilt of his weapon, smashing his nose and sending him tumbling down the steep rise. The orc shaman watched the human topple several other enemies scrambling up toward the keep’s fortified perimeter, buying him precious seconds as he raced to his left to deal with a serpentine foe who had reached the top level.
Jace saw the magical purple outline around the snake-like humanoid and was relieved to find he could kill this one. As hideous as the creature was, with its long tongue, hooded neck, and scaled appendages, it was only level 9, and Jace made short work of it. He deflected the monster’s initial sword thrust with a critical parry, earning him a +10 to his following attack. He didn’t need it, but the bonus meant that the next strike did not only enough damage to exceed half the snake-man’s health, but he killed it outright. It fell back down the slope, taking out a bugbear that had almost reached the top, but the armored knight beside them effectively dodged the dead creature and jumped up the last few feet to meet Jace.
This was the fourth time he had faced this particular black knight, and he wished he could just kill him. But he didn’t have a purple outline, so Jace knew he had to keep him alive. He blocked a few well-executed strikes before he earned a perfect 20 parry, yielding him the two bonus criticals needed for the Parry Bash maneuver he had recently discovered. Instead of using the critical advantage as part of a following attack, he could thrust the hilt of his weapon forward, smashing his opponent’s face and giving him the Dazed condition for the rest of the round. But with two criticals, he could choose to send his opponent flying backward.
Jace winced on the knight’s behalf as his already dented helm received another crushing blow from the Diamond Etcher’s crosspiece, and the blank knight soared backward, taking out half a dozen other enemies attempting the climb.
“Why did I agree to this?” Sir Wallace Wilhelm shouted.
Jace turned to regard the paladin and saw her dealing with two vampires. One had purple haze, and she used her divine vorpal blade to take off its head, but the second wasn’t to be killed, and she raised her shield toward it, receiving a critical block and could Shield Bash the foe down the hill as Jace had done.
“Because you need another Constitution point,” Jace replied. When they had last fought together, Wallace had unexpectedly leveled to 10. It had been a module that players didn’t usually get much experience from, but she and Jace had combined to kill three powerful guardians, and they split the experience. Getting to level 10 ahead of schedule meant she could no longer attempt the Ability Trials, six modules designed for lower-level players to help raise their stats.
Since then, she had advanced to level 15 and had quickly forgotten that she had missed out on a chance to raise her Constitution. But when Jace reached out to her and asked if she wanted to do the level anyway, she quickly agreed. With the help of Esther, Jace’s vampire companion, the two players had been level-drained down to 9 and could enter the module.
Wallace had insisted they visit a temple as soon as possible to restore their levels, but Jace was hesitant, worried that advancing beyond nine might get them kicked out, but it didn’t. So, they were levels 15 and 17, respectively, and absolutely demolishing the level 9 opponents the game threw at them. But the difficulty settings made up for it by sending dozens of foes.
“If I had known it would be this hard,” Wallace said, her character taking deep breaths of exhaustion between each word. “I would have turned you down.”
“Oh, come on,” Jace chided. “You know this is fun.”
Currently, the two fighters had a few seconds to catch their breath as the enemy’s front line was still struggling against the steep hill before the keep wall. Jace took a moment to regard the battlefield. Over a hundred enemies were scattered across the slope to the seashore below. Every two rounds, another enemy ship arrived and unloaded its cargo of horrific creatures. Humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs comprised most of the fighters, but the game sprinkled in hobgoblins, kobolds, gnolls, lizardfolk, and many more. Once the sun went down behind them, a ship of undead emptied on shore.
But it wasn’t just the two of them. In the keep towers behind them, Psycho and Draya rained down attacks on the horde. The elven ranger could only target one enemy at a time with his bow if he wanted to use his Kill Shot ability, but he never missed, ensuring a dead enemy every six seconds.
The mage threw a fireball each round, usually taking three or more enemies at a time. Since they only wanted to kill the attackers outlined in purple, she couldn’t always find a safe target and occasionally had to resort to single-fire attacks, but she was still highly effective.
Draya had to be extra careful because amidst the foes ran several friends. Esther, Thursa, and Snowy attacked the charging enemy from the sides, finding the outlined creatures with raised tower shields or fire protection. The fighters were scripted to assault the keep at the top of the hill, so they didn’t give attention to the flanking attackers and died because of it.
Once it got dark, Esther could hide in the shadows and move unseen in the crowd to find the short dwarf or fire-resistant alchemist goblin that might escape the ranged attacks.
Thursa, Wallace’s druid companion, was fully transformed into a grizzly bear at first, jumping out of the adjacent tree line, ripping valid targets out of the charging ranks, and mauling them. But when the sun went down, he took a stealthier approach and shape-shifted into a black bear to attack from the darkness.
Snowy didn’t care about tactics, and the winter wolf sprinted through enemy lines, killing anyone she wanted. None of the level nine characters could handle the 600lb canine.
Few purple-outlined enemies made it to the top of the hill, but Jace and Wallace were waiting for them. At the beginning of the battle, they had the help of a dozen other fighters, but most of them had died already. Only the captain, whose survival was necessary to close out the module, had stayed alive, but he was critically injured and hiding behind the crumpled wall.
The first part of the module was supposed to entail the players helping to rebuild the barrier before the arrival of the enemy, but the game's AI punished them for going to the temple first by not giving them that opportunity. So, when they arrived at the keep, the attack was already underway, and they had to defend a perimeter of scattered stone blocks.
The seven fighters were already one more than a module usually allowed, but Snowy was considered a familiar and didn’t count against their total. Jace had also brought Gromphy along, smuggled inside his bottomless storage chest. Currently, he was sitting atop his adamantium golem, Adam, moving carefully through the enemies. The master crafter was the one constantly casting the spell that outlined the foes in purple.
The plan was to wait until the final boss appeared, and then Jace would cast his Righteous Judgement spell. It did extra damage against enemies that were oppositely aligned to him. The lighting attack would jump from target to target, often doubling or quadrupling in strength as it moved through the horde. But if it ever struck a character with the same alignment as Jace (Honest, Ordered, or Traditional), the spell would be reduced to 0. So, all of those enemies needed to be removed first. As a crafter, it was often necessary for Gromphy to know the alignment of the characters he made items for, so as each new ship unloaded its attackers, he picked out the ones that would defeat the spell.
Everyone agreed it was a good plan. Even Gracie, Jace’s operator and biggest critic, felt it was sound. If it were just a matter of dealing with the enemies as they poured out of the boats and onto the beach, the eight powerful fighters would have had no problem. The module restricted the horde to level 9 characters, but the final boss was level-adjusted to the party's strength. Jace expected a level 40+ monster, which they would struggle to handle.
While the module only gave them level 9 characters, there was no limit to how many. As Jace prepared to face off against three more enemies that crested the rise before him, two of which he had already bashed down the slope a few times, another boat pulled up on shore and unloaded 15 screaming dwarves that raced along the beach. The vessel had been little bigger than an outboard fishing boat, possibly capable of holding four adult humans. But the computer game didn’t care about spatial reality. It was like watching a host of circus clowns pouring out of a Volkswagen Bug.
Gromphy navigated Adam between the dwarves, casting two Identify spells to encompass all of them. The golem looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger wading through a crowd of kindergarteners. Upon the spell’s completion, 11 of the 15 dwarves glowed purple, and the golem smashed one of them to a pulp with his massive adamantium fist. Another took an arrow to the forehead, and three cried out as a fireball consumed them. A black bear jumped out of the shadows to tackle one while Snowy bit the face of another of the red-bearded warriors. Esther wasn’t left out of the mix and secured a dwarf who had narrowly missed the fireball and snapped his neck. They killed eight of the eleven targets in one round, and the next one started with an arrow dropping a ninth.
Esther and Thursa turned to chase down the remaining two purple fighters while Gromphy directed his mount back to the shoreline to await the next ship. The last one had faded into nothing, and a Viking longboat took its place, half its length sliding smoothly onto the sand. The open boat appeared empty, but five 10-foot-tall hill giants magically stepped over the sides and onto the beach.
The goblin crafter squealed in dismay and moved Adam to a safe distance while he cast his spell. Sitting atop the 8-foot golem kept him safe from most of the enemies that appeared, but any of these giants could take a swing at him. Only two of them glowed purple after his spell, but Jace, always keeping an eye on the new fodder that came ashore, called up to his archer. “Take them all out, Psycho,” Jace said. He bashed his fifth enemy back down the hill in two rounds. “I can’t juggle anymore, and I definitely can’t throw them about.”
Draya didn’t hear the message and only used a single fire attack to target one. It dropped, and Psycho’s arrow took the other down. “You might not have to,” Psycho said. “I think we have finally reached the end.”
Over five dozen enemies had been collected in a constant cycle of charging up the hill and being bashed back down by Wallace and Jace. The goal was not to kill them, but they had taken damage, and some were slow to climb back up after several failed attempts. Another three dozen lay stunned or too injured to attempt the ascent. One or two more purple creatures were spread throughout the mix, but Thursa and Snowy were picking them out.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Jace lifted his eyes back to the shore to see what Psycho meant and saw an enormous three-masted ship crashing into the shore. This must be the end. The orc went through the motions of parrying four more attacks the next round and bashing two foes back down the hill as he focused on the distant ship. A standard-sized door opened on the vessel's side, and a level 53 45-foot-tall mountain giant stepped out.
Wallace swore. “I’ve never seen . . .” but her voice trailed off as three more enemies demanded her attention.
{He’s over twelve thousand hit points,} Gracie said in Jace’s ear. {I’ve never heard of a Balrog in the Basement that powerful.}
Jace cursed Gandhi, the game’s AI. “Is this going to work?” he asked, sending his remaining two enemies back down the hill, knocking two more with them. He wasted a round in his inventory to look at the spell he had prepared. Since his dumb character knew -5 spells, he could only cast his bonus spells and memorize one version of each. He had programmed the Righteous Judgement spell for maximum difficulty but wondered if it would be enough.
He had an impressive 765 mana and was using 600 to increase his difficulty from 63 to 183, leaving 165 mana for damage, which would result in 33. Jace heard Wallace screaming for help and had to leave his inventory to assist. Six more creatures had made it to the base of their crumpled wall, and Jace helped knock them back, but not before Wallace took damage from two of them.
“Cast your stupid spell!” she cried.
Jace looked back to his vacated position and saw four more creatures scramble up. Psycho leaped from his perch in the tower to beat the enemies back down. “Yes,” the elf cried. “Now would be good.”
Jace looked down to the distant beach to see Gromphy running away from the massive giant before turning and casting his spell one last time. If the giant shared any of his alignments, this would not work. Thankfully, the huge boss didn’t turn purple.
The shaman looked down to find the three characters working among the enemy and saw that Esther, Snowy, and Thursa were running away from the edges of the horde. His eyes found Gromphy, who had dismounted from the golem and sent him back into the fray. The adamantium construct had a weakness for lightning attacks, and since he had been in play for over 30 rounds, he would multiply the spell by at least eight if it hit him. The goal was to have him stand directly before the boss so he could increase the attack before it hit the final enemy.
Jace moved to his far left, turned back right, and chose a heavily damaged ghoul struggling back to the upper ledge for what must have been the fifth time.
“Clear!” he shouted, reached forward to touch the creature, and cast his spell. Lightning jumped from the shaman and jolted the already injured monster. As Jace expected, the evil creature was precisely opposite his alignment and doubled the damage three times, bringing it to over 200 before passing half that to the next enemy in line. The lightning traveled fast, and Wallace and Psycho jumped over the fallen wall to avoid it. It moved back and forth through the ranks, always jumping to the next closest creature in line. Jace noticed it branched down sooner than he expected, and two enemies escaped the chain reaction and continued up the slope. He jumped over to them and bashed one into the danger zone while dropping his sword to pick up the other and toss him further down the slope.
Jace’s eyes skipped the carnage his spell produced and looked to the beach where the mountain giant was plodding through the sand carrying a spear the size of a telephone pole. This better work.
----------------------------------------
Esther was huddling in the forest with Thursa and Snowy. The huge man had transformed back into a human, and the woman’s infatuation with him was hard to miss. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his muscular form when they had first met, but Jace had stressed the seriousness of the upcoming fight, and she quelled her desire for the druid. Now that the fight appeared to be over, she wondered if there would be time to “socialize” afterward.
Thursa didn’t return her look, his eyes focused on the electrifying display working its way down the hill. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Esther had, but she followed his gaze anyway, watching as the lightning zig-zagged through the crowd of enemies, at first killing but eventually evaporating each creature it hit. Her eyes skipped to the beach and saw Adam facing off against the mountain giant, trying to keep his distance from the long spear. She didn’t think anything could make the golem look small, but the . . .
Her thoughts froze as she saw the tiny purple figure hiding behind one of the giant’s feet.
A gnome!
Somehow, they had missed that enemy, or maybe it had gotten off the last ship with the giant. Something had to be done. If Jace’s spell hit the gnome first, the massive lightning bolt would be reduced to nothing.
“I have to . . .” Esther started, stepping forward out of the cover of the trees to deal with the problem.
“No!” Thursa said; he reached out and grabbed her arm. His warm touch sent shivers through her, but she easily escaped his grasp. “The golem sees it,” he continued, also noticing the purple gnome. “You will be killed.”
Esther hesitated and realized the druid was right. It was hard to read facial expressions on the silver humanoid, but she could see Adam’s head tilt toward the gnome standing between the feet of the final enemy. The golem was supposed to stay out of range of the boss, only drawing close when the lighting made its way down the hill, but his rudimentary intelligence also understood the danger the tiny creature posed, and he ran forward.
“No!”
Esther heard Gromphy’s tiny voice cry out at his companion’s actions, but the goblin likely couldn’t see the gnome. Adam didn’t stop. He was five strides from his target when the giant swept a powerful arm to the ground and snatched the golem into the air like he was a toy figure. The boss tried to crush the magical construct, but he did not have enough strength. Instead, he turned to the beach, reached his arm back, and threw the golem far out over the water.
“No!” Gromphy cried out in agony again.
Esther watched in horror as the silver figure diminished in size until a tiny splash could barely be seen on the horizon. Now, she had to act and took a few running steps forward again.
“No,” Thursa said again, but he didn’t have the same conviction.
Esther wasted a second to look at him, determination in her eyes.
“You will be disintegrated,” he said.
Esther knew that if she took damage over 5x her hit points, she and all her equipment would be annihilated. She looked down at her level 20 shadow scale armer, her level 12 swords, and all the rest of her valuable items. “You’re right,” she said and chose to drop all her items and clothing in one action.
Thursa looked shocked at the beautiful naked woman and took a step back. Esther winked at him. “Maybe next time.” She turned and sprinted toward the feet of the giant.
----------------------------------------
Losing the golem was an unexpected tragedy. Jace guessed the construct wasn’t dead but didn’t have time to think about it, as the lighting kept its quick path, killing half a dozen enemies every round. Gracie was calling out the numbers in his head, and when she got over 6,000, Jace was confident he wouldn’t need the boosting power of the golem.
“Oh my,” Wallace said, drawing Jace’s attention. She and Psycho had moved to stand beside the orc to watch the lightning show.
Jace wondered if she was talking about the spell but then saw the streak of pale, naked skin racing over the rocky ground toward the giant. What was Esther doing?
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” the paladin added.
“I do,” Draya said, approaching the group. “She spends most of her time like that.”
“I concur,” Psycho said, rolling his eyes. “She’s going to get herself killed.”
Before Jace could add his input, Gracie reported to him. {Problems boss. Your spell is losing steam. Too many neutral enemies.}
Jace understood what she meant. If the target had at least one trait opposite Jace, the spell damage would be doubled. It would be cut in half again when passed on to the next target, but at least it wouldn’t lose any strength. But if the enemy was in the middle on all their alignments, the attack would not increase in strength, so when half was passed to the next enemy, it would lose power.
{You’re hovering around 3,000 right now. It won’t be enough.}
Jace looked back toward Esther, who was only a few seconds from the giant. She couldn’t know that, could she? The vampire rogue was exactly opposite Jace and would multiply the lightning by eight if it hit her. She would make a nice stand-in for Adam, but he would have never suggested it. Then he saw it – a tiny spec of purple at the giant’s feet.
“What is that . . .” Jace started.
{A gnome!} Gracie shouted. {We missed it.}
The giant swept his arm down to snag the naked woman, but even without her equipment, Esther was agile enough to evade the attempt. She rolled over the rocky ground and dove for the gnome. The small adversary didn’t have a chance, and she Grappled him into submission. She spun around and watched the lightning zap between the last three hill giants. Esther snapped the gnome’s neck and dropped the body to the ground as the lightning coursed into her.
“Esther!” Jace cried. The woman vanished in a puff of smoke.
The giant was looking down at her as the lighting jumped from her last position up through him. It did almost 12k damage before fizzling into the air with no valid targets within range. The giant’s eyes rolled into his head, and he fell back with a crash.
Jace was already jumping down the hill as the boss hit the ground, leaping over rocks and around dead bodies. Snowy also tore from the cover of the woods to investigate the disappearance of her friend. Gromphy, too, sprinted with his stubby legs toward the final scene, calling out Adam’s name. Jace arrived first and stood transfixed on the last spot he had seen Esther. The sandy ground had been turned to glass from the intensity of the lightning.
{Don’t worry,} Gracie assured him. {Esther will be fine. She was smart to remove all her equipment, as it would have been destroyed, but she will be fine. She will wake up in her bed in a little while with a headache, but in a few hours, she will be good as new. She won’t blame you for this.}
Jace knew keeping the volatile woman happy was a challenge since they did not see the world the same, but he felt he gave her a pretty big leash and wasn’t too worried about her leaving him. Hopefully, this event wouldn’t leave her scarred.
To his left, Snowy bounded to his side, sniffed the charred mark on the ground, and then jumped toward the dying giant to gnaw on his leg. On Jace’s right, his goblin crafter continued to run past his position along the length of the fallen enemy. The giant’s head was almost back on the beach, and Gromphy ran all the way to the shore. Jace was sure the goblin couldn’t swim, but he didn’t want to risk losing three companions. He hurried over to the crafter’s side.
“Can he make his way back to us?” Jace asked.
“He hath not the mana,” Gromphy said, his eyes focused on the watery horizon. “Aye, he could traverse the bottom, but he hath not the time until . . .”
“Until he turns back into a figurine,” Jace finished for him. “You sit and wait. Maybe he can run.” The shaman turned back to the rest of his crew. Psycho, Draya, Wallace, and Thursa were standing over the burn mark on the ground between the fallen giant’s feet. He walked up to them.
“Do you think she felt anything?” Draya asked sorrowfully.
Jace shook his head. “I doubt it. Gracie assures me she will be fine.”
Draya looked up at him with a tear in her eye. “Promise?”
“I promise,” Jace said. “You should go collect all the items she dropped. She will want those back.”
Draya wiped her face and obeyed.
“We still need to finish the module,” Wallace said, returning to business.
Jace nodded. The paladin didn’t share the same connection with Esther. The Orc expected her to be sympathetic to their unique situation, but he needed to be considerate as to why she was here too. He looked over his shoulder at Gromphy, who was still sitting in the sand staring out to sea. It would be hard to tear him away from this module, but Jace didn’t know how to dive into the water to search for a metal object the size of an action figure. The orc promised himself he would think of something. They could always return, but Wallace was right; they needed to finish this module, or all these sacrifices would be for naught.
They had already stolen the three magical items you could earn from this mission, and Jace let Wallace and Thursa have them. But there was still the issue of getting the increase to their Constitution. And if he wanted to return later to fish for Adam, they needed to heal the captain of the guards who lay dying just behind the crumpled wall. With reluctance, Jace led his crew back up to the keep.