The vampire’s manor house stood on a low hill to the east of the village. It was a large, elegant building of thin windows set in black stone, with towers at its center and at the end of each wide wing. Gardens of carefully tended topiary bushes surrounded it, and there were several fountains set along between the bushes. The grass beneath Nanoc’s feet was lush, green, and flat in that way that suggested a lot of ghoul gardeners worked very hard on it. There was a long, shallow, and perfectly rectangular reflection pool fed by an elegant white fountain carved from marble and set with shining gold leaf. It was all quite beautiful. Vampires have style – the kind of style that requires a lot of work by other people.
There was nobody around – the sun was high in the sky, and the vampire and his minions had gone back to bed. Even the ghouls had retreated in the cool darkness of the crypts beneath the manor house.
“Right,” Nanoc said uncertainly.
It felt wrong trying to break in during the day. It was too exposed, too open. How could he sneak without shadows? On the other hand, vampires could probably see in the dark anyway. Nanoc crept from bush to bush, racing the last few yards to the side of the manor house. The windows on the ground floor were narrow, but not too narrow for a gnome. Nanoc slammed his elbow into one, smashing it, and he slipped inside the vampire’s mansion.
It was dark inside. Every window was covered in a thick curtain that blocked out the sun. Nanoc flailed around for a few moments until his eyes adapted to the dark. A ghost the size of an orc was floating by the wall beside him, leering. It hissed at him.
Nanoc jumped in surprise, then punched the ghost. His fist passed right through the ghost and hit the wall behind it with a thunk that made Nanoc gasp in pain. He tried a roundhouse kick, but his foot flew through the ghost’s head without harming it. Nanoc shouted in anger but his blows went right through the specter, leaving him unbalanced and deeply unsatisfied. It was pretty hard to fight a flying monster with no actual body.
“You're very annoying, aren't you?,” Nanoc said as the ghastly specter floated over his head, laughing at him. “So I can’t hit you. Fine. That means you can’t hit me, either, right?”
The ghost lunged at him, biting a chunk off his neck. Red gnome blood trickled out, dripping on the floor. Nanoc was more annoyed than angry.
“Dammit!” Nanoc shouted. “That’s not fair!”
The ghost bit him again, on the arm this time. Its teeth were icy cold. Nanoc could feel his blood boiling over with anger at this pesky monster. He wanted to rage, he wanted to go berserk, he wanted to kick the ghost over the moon, but he couldn’t. He swatted it a few more times just in case, but to no affect. He was so annoyed that he stopped fighting to think for a moment, which went against everything a barbarian believed in.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“How do I hurt you?” he hissed, activating his identify enemy skill.
----------------------------------------
Ghastly ghost
It’s a ghost that can bite people. Nasty. These mean-spirited spirits haunt dark corners of the world Below in and get their kicks by jumping out at any mortal unlikely to get lost in the dark.
Immune to physical attacks. Do you have any magical attacks? No? Then run.
----------------------------------------
“Not helpful,” Nanoc hissed, ducking as the ghost tried to bite him again. “Not helpful at all.”
Except it was, of course. There was only one option: Nanoc ran for it.
“I wish Dren were here,” he panted as he sprinted away. “He’d have a spell or something to deal with this, or to enchant an axe, or to burn the building down at least! Ah, good times.”
He ran past old oil paintings of vampires hung on the walls, past dusty suits of armor, past crumbling tapestries hung on the wall, and all the while the ghost swooped down on him, taking the occasional bite from his shoulders and head. Nanoc cursed as he ran, his legs growing tired. He couldn’t outrun the phantom, he realized. He stopped suddenly and the ghost flew past him.
“It’s completely ridiculous that you can hurt me but I can’t hurt you,” he snapped at it. “It’s not a fair fight at all! Can’t you manifest a body so I can punch you or something?”
The ghost leered at him with glowing eyes and opened a mouth of sharp white teeth. They were translucent, too, yet somehow real enough to hurt. It did not manifest a physical body just so that Nanoc could punch it – it liked being untouchable. The ghost had been a door-to-door salesorc in its former life, and was having a lot more fun spending its days flying through doors rather than knocking on them.
It chased Nanoc down the corridor, swooping and gigglings, unwilling to kill the gnome too soon. It was like a cat playing with its food, and knowing this made Nanoc angrier than ever. He reached a locked down leading out of the corridor and grabbed the handle. The handle did not move; the door did not open. He peered through the keyhole but saw nothing. The specter was getting closer, licking its white teeth with a translucent red tongue. Nanoc sighed, wiggling the door handle a few more times without any success.
“I wish Rotcel was here,” he muttered. “She’d get through this lock with ease… as long as she thought there was treasure on the other side. I miss that greedy lizard. Ah well…”
He took a run at the door, leaping into the air and ramming it with his shoulder while activating his incredible strength skill. He hit the door so hard that it crashed open. He raced inside and slammed it shut.
“Ha! I don’t need your help at all, Rotcel!” Nanoc said triumphantly. “I’m a one-gnome vampire slaying, revolutionary-rescuing gnome and I don’t care what the banana has to say about it! I—”
But he relied on Rotcel ‘Loc for far more than just unlocking doors. She was a natural for finding and deactivating traps. Nanoc was only a natural at finding them. There was a tiny click beneath his left foot. The large stone tile he was standing on shifted just slightly. Nanoc froze. The stone was silent. It did not move again.
“Ha!” Nanoc said, “I must be getting jumpy. I almost thought I’d—"
The specter floated through the door. It gave Nanoc a sarcastic little wave of greeting, then floated through the door a few times to make its point. There was no escape.
“Damn,” Nanoc admitted. “I forgot you could do that. Wait a moment, though, I—"
There was a louder click from under his foot. The tile dropped down away, and Nanoc fell into the darkness below the manor house.