Jace knew they were approaching the next trial when his vision flashed red, indicating he was now in combat mode. “What’s that?” Jace asked, pausing for a moment in the empty tunnel. He and Esther could see in the dark, so it wasn’t always easy to discern faint amounts of light from their natural ability. But as Jace concentrated, he did see a dim glow thirty feet ahead. “I thought there was no combat in this module?”
{If you play it right, there isn’t,} Gracie confirmed. {Go ahead and take a look.}
Jace obeyed, and the light grew brighter as they approached. Slits were cut into the thick tunnel wall on their left, and he could look through them to see a vast audience chamber below. An area half the size of a football field and fifty feet high was lit by over a dozen lanterns hanging from chains secured to the ceiling. The room wasn’t cut out of rock but constructed from large blocks with a cobblestone floor. It was enclosed on three sides, with the familiar chasm bordering the fourth. A narrow stone bridge arched over the inky expanse reminding Jace of the bridge of Khazad-dum from the Fellowship of the Ring. However, instead of orcs, Jace saw over a hundred slow-moving creatures dressed in tattered rags milling about.
“What are they?” he asked.
{Mummies,} Gracie replied. {Lots and lots of mummies.}
In the center of the arch, hundreds of feet away from their position, a totem stood, and every six seconds, another mummy was summoned and meandered across the bridge to join its brothers in the hall. Esther was beside Jace, looked down at the horde, and gasped. “There are so many of them.”
Jace (and the rest of the realm) had watched the dynamic rogue take on six half-orc guards at once without breaking a sweat, but this was much different. “And how are we supposed to fight them?” Jace asked.
{As I said, if you do this right, you don’t. You just sit and wait. The tunnel you are in will descend and curl around to the hall’s entry below. The door is barred on your side, and the mummies won’t break it down. It usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour, but the room will become so congested with the creatures that there isn’t space for them, and they start backing up on the bridge. Once a dozen creatures are on the arch, the weight will be too much, and it collapses. The totem, which is powered by the mana stone, falls into the abyss. Once the totem-reach limit is exceeded, all the mummies disappear.}
“How do you cross the chasm if the bridge is down?”
{A lantern is suspended before the bridge, and you can swing across. Only the front half of the bridge breaks.}
“If I want to get that stone, I have to find a way through the hoard before they collapse the bridge.”
{Sure,} Gracie agreed. She wanted to tell him it was impossible but decided to hold that judgment in reserve. {What do you want to know about them?}
“Everything. I want to know their strengths and weaknesses. What have other people tried that didn’t work?”
{They each have 500 HP. They only have the natural AC of 10, so they are easy to hit, but they are entirely immune to all critical weapon strikes, so you can only do normal damage to them. They have a physical Damage Reduction of 30. At level nine, I believe your damage per attack with Etcher is 48, so you would do 18 per hit. I’ll let you do the math on how many attacks you would need to kill one 500 HP monster.”
Jace didn’t bother, knowing it was way too high, and with the frequency that new mummies were being generated, it was a losing bet.
Gracie continued. {Their attack bonus is +10, but they have Swarm. Because they are so tightly packed, it is impossible to attack one without being in the range of three others. Once eight of them surround you, they each have +45 to attack. Even if you can tank yourself to 65 AC, which you can’t, they will roll 20s against you. They do 30 damage per hit. If they get a critical, they give you the diseased condition, which randomly lowers one of your abilities by one. No one – and I mean no one – has come close to killing even a few mummies before they were slaughtered or had to run.}
Jace understood the math and agreed that a frontal assault wouldn’t work.
{From where you are standing,} Gracie continued, {you are about 150 feet from the center of the room where most of the mummies are. This is the closest you can get without going downstairs and opening the front door. Throwing a spell this far costs 150 mana. Their Magic Defense is 30, so you need to get the spell difficulty up to 50 to be sure they won’t save. Assuming a level 9 mage could get up to 40 on their own, they still need to spend another 50 mana to raise it by 10. The mummies have 20 magic damage reduction, so you need to spend another 100 mana just to overcome that. That is 300 mana, and you haven’t done any damage yet. You only have 225 mana. Also, since they are undead, they are immune to level drain, so Esther won’t be able to do any of her shenanigans.}
“Seems pretty hopeless,” Jace agreed. “What about the life stone I have? Most people don’t have that with them.”
{No one does,} Gracie agreed. {I don’t think you can cast spells through it, but if you held it against one of the mummies, it would probably kill them faster than attacking, but you would be flat-footed against all its friends, who would pummel you senseless. They are programmed to attack anything living, so holding the life stone would make you a big target. You could let Esther wield the undead stone and see if they ignore . . .}
“No!” Jace shouted. Esther turned in surprise, knowing he was talking with Gracie, but the two rarely argued in her presence. Jace faked a smile at her, and she turned back to look at the mummies below. “No,” Jace said again under control. “I will find another way.” He paused for a few moments. “What about their alignment? They have to be chaotic, right?”
{No,} Gracie replied confidently, though Jace could hear the tell-tale sounds of mouse-clicking that signified the operator was actually looking something up for a change. {It says they don’t have an alignment. Any benefit or penalty you would get for attacking or defending against monsters of a specific alignment won’t trigger.}
Jace smiled. “I think I have a plan.” He turned to Esther and called her away from the narrow windows. “Come on, let’s go. I’m going to need your help.”
The woman left the slits and followed her leader. “What else is new.”
“What kind of Haste spells do you have memorized?” he asked as they moved down the tunnel. It descended dramatically now and turned sharply to their left once they had traveled the depth of the vast room on the other side of the wall.
“Two,” she replied. “One that lasts thirty seconds and another that lasts a minute. I need to touch the target.”
“I need you to cast one at range, about 30 feet. And you need to crank the difficulty way up.” Jace always had concerns talking in game terms with Esther, but Gracie assured him that discussions of mana, difficulty, and range were no different from talking to someone in the real world about sports statistics.
“How high?” she asked.
“Fifty,” Jace answered.
Esther was quiet for a while, trying to work through the unexplained strategy. She hadn’t heard anything of what Gracie had said, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew that if Jace wanted her to Haste him, she wouldn’t need to increase the difficulty. Party members always failed spells cast against each other. “You want me to haste a mummy?”
“Yes,” Jace replied. He knew she wouldn’t be able to reprogram a spell without going into her inventory, and she didn’t know the game tricks to let her do that while moving, so he was quiet until they made it to the end of the corridor and found the massive doors. The iron-bound portal stood fifteen feet high. The hinges were on their side, meaning the double doors would swing toward them. Jace knew they wouldn’t be quick to open or close. Any strategy that involved opening a door, throwing an area damage spell inside, and then closing it again would only work once. If the mummies pressed against the doors, they would come pouring into the tunnel if you tried to open it a second time.
After examining the doors, Jace watched Esther roll her eyes into her inventory. He prepared a spell too, and cast his Mana Bank totem using all 225 of his magic. Since they were in combat mode and surrounded by stone, he would recover it in just over a minute. However, as soon as he had at least 90 restored, he also cast his Armor totem.
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“Okay,” Esther said, “I’ve got it. That spell will drain half my mana, so I hope you don’t need any more magic from me.”
“I need you to cast invisibility on me,” Jace said. “It can be a burst spell, so it shouldn’t cost that much.”
She frowned at him. “I thought you would remember,” she said. “I forgot that spell once I got this.” She adjusted the wide-brimmed, feathered hat she had stolen from Gweniffer. The design was somewhere between cowboy and pirate with an anime flair. She tugged on the brim with her fingers as if she were doffing it in greeting and disappeared from view. Jace blinked twice and saw that she wasn’t actually invisible, just very hard to see. The effect lasted for six seconds, and then she was back in the regular low light of the cavern.
Esther assumed the demonstration was enough to explain what it did, but the former accountant needed numbers. Gracie helped out. {It reduces the light level for the wearer to 0,} she said. {It is a level 12 item and has 120 mana in it. It has a blue phoenix feather, which generates five mana a turn, so the wearer rarely has to spend any of their own unless they use it repeatedly in a well-lit area. It is efficient too. The gemstones on the headband detect the light level, so if it is already at three, which it is now, the hat only uses 15 mana to get down to 0.}
“I thought a level 12 item could hold 324 mana?” Jace asked, having done his research.
{They can, but 200 of that space is filled with a permanent critical success, so it can break ties with True Sight spells and other items that banish shadows. It doesn’t actually hide her in the shadows or make her invisible; it just makes her hard to see so that she can initiate her own abilities. If you use it, the mummies will have a -5 to hit you.}
Jace smiled as he guessed that Gracie already knew what he was going to do. The fact she wasn’t telling him it was a stupid plan gave him hope that it might work. “Can I borrow the hat?”
Esther looked hesitant. “You aren’t going to get it dirty, are you?”
“I’ll do my best,” he replied.
Reluctantly she removed the hat and handed it over to the orc. The item doubled in size when Jace took it, allowing it to fit snuggly on his bald head, his pointed orc ears just touching the bottom of the brim. Esther snickered when she looked at him, and he imagined he looked ridiculous. He reached up and tugged on it as Esther had. Nothing changed from his perspective, but Esther gave him a thumbs up, and he assumed it had worked.
Jace went into his inventory and got his shield out. It was the large +3 shield that Drescher had brought back for him. He couldn’t hold it when using his two-handed weapon, but he decided to carry it around because he never knew when he might need to tank up. Just equipping the item increased his AC by 7. If he took the Raise Shield action, it would go up to 14.
Jace had been monitoring his mana and was back to full. He turned to Snowy. “You stay here, girl. I don’t want you to get hurt.” The wolf could feel the impressive presence of the hundreds of mummies in the other room and didn’t need to be told twice.
He turned to Esther. “We are going to open one of these doors and then walk through. I think most of the mummies should be crowded around the bridge, but there will be a lot of them. Once they see us, they will lumber in our direction. When they are close enough for your Haste spell, I need you to target the closest one in the middle and then run. Get back here and close the door.”
“You’re going to cast your ‘spell,’ aren’t you?” Esther asked, adding verbal air quotes around the keyword. Jace had told her that his Righteous Judgement spell did additional damage to people with the opposite alignment as himself. Esther and Jace couldn’t be more different. If she were ever in the path of that spell, it would increase by a factor of eight, and she would be annihilated.
Jace nodded. “Don’t bar it in case this goes wrong and I have to get out. Also, don’t open it unless you hear my voice. Understood?”
Esther was usually keen on helping out in a fight, but she wanted nothing to do with what was behind those doors. She nodded. “Okay,” Jace said. “Let’s do this.”
The massive timber that barred the door was so heavy that Jace needed help from Esther to lift it. He wondered how a bunch of wimpy mages were supposed to open the door, but he guessed another fire spell would have burned through the dry wood. The equally heavy doors hung on oiled hinges and swung open with little effort. Jace froze.
Mentally he was preparing for the mass of undead he was about to see, but he hadn’t been ready. They had been far enough away from their earlier vantage point that the creatures looked like painted miniatures on a dungeon map. Now they were life-sized monsters that wanted to crush him. The closest ones were only 40 feet away, and the collective moan of 237 mummies recognizing his presence was deafening. Esther panicked too, but she remembered her job, followed her boss into the room, and released her spell. The lead mummy shivered as the magic took hold and moaned again, this time at a higher pitch. He broke away from the pack and double-timed it toward the pair. Esther eagerly left Jace to face the throng alone, and he heard the metal door clang shut behind him. When the mummy was only a few feet away and getting ready to swing his massive arm, Jace reached up, tugged on the rim of his hat, and Stood his Ground.
With the shield, Armor totem, his Armor skill, his boots, the hat, and now his improved Intimidation score, Jace’s AC was at an impressive 41. With only +10 to attack, and no swarm benefits from its slower friends, the mummy had no chance to hit him, but Jace really needed a critical miss. With an attack roll of 16, that was exactly what he got.
This triggered Jace’s Convict ability, and his vision was transported to the mummy’s character sheet. He searched for the alignment section, and, as Gracie had told him, the three choices were labeled N/A. With the critical miss, Jace could change two things. When he had first used this ability against Esther, he had promised himself that he would never change an NPC’s alignment. That felt too invasive. But this was a mummy. He was about to adjust them when he saw another tab. Looking at the creature’s name, he saw it was Mummy 142. Next to that name was a tab that said “Mummy Totem.” Jace navigated there and saw the powers of the construct that had summoned the creature. He didn’t want to adjust this one mummy; he wanted to change all of them. Now he changed the first section to Guile and the second to Chaotic.
Jace was yanked out of the screen in time to see the mummy take its second attack. It missed, and Jace wondered if he would get to use the Convict feat again, but it didn’t trigger. Instead, he waited for the round to end and then reached out with his free hand to touch the cold wrappings of the creature before him.
He cast his Righteous Judgment spell.
The difficulty of his divine spells was tied to his mana generation. Since he was connected to his mana bank totem, that was doubled to 42. With his level at nine, the spell’s difficulty was 51, and the mummy had a 1 in 20 chance of saving against it. It didn’t. Jace’s 225 mana converted into 45 damage. The mummy reduced it to 25, and its two opposed alignments quadrupled it to 100. This was only a fifth of its HP and didn’t even faze it. As it prepared to attack back, half the damage (50) shot into the next closest mummy. It went through the same process, taking 120 damage and sending 60 on to the next in line. Four mummies later, the damage was finally enough to kill one. Four mummies after that, the damage was in the five digits, and the creature was vaporized. With over two hundred mummies in the room, a few of them would roll a 20 in defense, but once the damage got high enough, cutting it in half didn’t matter. The spell raced through the room faster than the sound of the deafening thunder left in its wake. The damage output quickly reached into the millions and then billions. At no time in the game’s history had a single spell done even close to this kind of damage.
Within seconds, all but the first five mummies were dead. Jace ignored the remaining creatures and ran into the room, chasing after the impossibly fast chain reaction, confident the spell would never jump to him as the source. He was glad his Environment settings were down because the smell of burnt dead flesh must have been oppressive in the room. He wondered if there was even any oxygen left and hoped the game wouldn’t account for that. None of the surviving mummies were quick enough to catch him. Even the hasted one was only as fast as a regular enemy and not up to tracking down a sprinting orc.
{Jace . . .} Gracie started, {I have no words. I have never seen anything like that. Ever. Remind me to show you the Leader Board when this is over.}
“Leader Board? What Leader Board?”
{THE Leader Board,} Gracie clarified, as if that should be enough.
Jace ignored her for now. Besides two dead mummies on the floor, the room was empty before him, with no scrap of mummy wrappings remaining. However, another mummy was summoned before he got to the narrow bridge. Jace still held his shield and raised it in defense as he rushed the creature. He was out of range of his armor totem but still had more than enough AC to block the strike from the lone monster. He used his size and strength to bullrush the mummy off the bridge, giving him a clear path to the totem.
The mana stone glowed bright blue, set in the center of the coffin-shaped pillar. Jace reached for it and plucked it clean, careful not to fumble it over the edge of the narrow bridge. Instead, he opened his inventory and stored it and his shield inside. When he returned to the game, he turned to see the five mummies he had left behind tracking him down. Those monsters still had enough power to kill him, but he pulled Diamond Etcher and began to attack the totem. He figured something this powerful would have a lot of Hit Points and possibly a significant Damage Reduction, but his sword was enchanted to ignore the defense stone and metal constructs usually had against bladed weapons, and each of Jace’s attacks did full damage. The hasted mummy was the first to make it to the bridge, and the walkway was narrow enough to prevent the others from flanking Jace.
The orc shifted to the other side of the totem so it and the mummy were on the same side, allowing him to parry the undead strikes between his attacks on the stone structure. The creature landed a couple of hits, but none of them critical. Jace was worried that the combined weight of five mummies and one orc might bring the bridge down anyway, but it stayed intact long enough for him to finally reduce the totem to rubble, and the undead swarm vanished. It turned out the totem had at least 1,000 HP, and it took over ten rounds for Jace to finally destroy it.
Jace dropped to one knee, out of breath. He heard the metal door open, and Esther and Snowy peered into the room. They complained about the smell but eventually made their way over to him. “Did you get it?” Esther asked, having understood enough of the one-sided conversation between Jace and Gracie earlier. He nodded, not bothering to retrieve the mana stone from his inventory.
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s keep going. This is fun. I wonder what’s next.”
The slender, agile woman slipped past the orc blocking the bridge, swiped her hat from his head, and continued toward the other side. Jace was still exhausted and rolled his eyes at his boisterous companion. Snowy had a little more empathy for her master and gave him 50 points of healing. Jace took a deep breath, feeling slightly renewed, and followed after Esther.