The adrenaline rush of battle dissipated over the next several minutes as our small force continued traveling south through the seemingly endless forest. With everyone’s ability to easily see in the dark, the space between the giant redwood trees was lit up in our vision as if we were treading under a cloudy sky. With the dense canopy overhead, everything above our heads was entirely blocked from view. My imagination played tricks on me for the first few minutes as the thought of gargantuan spiders jumping down on us seemed a real possibility.
With the sheer number of building-sized trees blocking all sightlines, anxiety prickled the back of my neck as if some other horrifyingly disconcerting threat was just out of view. Though we barely knew our lead guide, his unconcerned demeanor as he rode beside me helped squash my imaginative thoughts from expanding further. There was something below the surface, though, with our guide, and it didn’t take a genius to understand what that was. We had been outside Quarris only two hours before stumbling into a damnable nest of gigantic spiders, after all. Man, was everything in this forest oversized? I’d hate to run into a bear, considering it could literally be the size of a bus if the same tendency held true.
The other issue that could be bothering our newest friend was, if I suspected correctly, that the spiders we defeated were likely atrocious versions of High Thicket elves. I contemplated asking Stedious if this was true or not but initially hesitated, fearing tearing a wound open further. Instead, I focused on the less driven pace at which we were pushing our mounts than before the fateful ambush. Our horses' enchanted shoes still worked wonders even though we were moving perhaps half to three-quarters as fast compared to before. Our observant guide had also called for the other wardens to keep closer positions so I could occasion see one here and there. Before I only knew of their existence with the occasion whistle marking their position, whereas now their billowing cloaks and well-disciplined steeds appeared semi-regularly.
Our inner formation also changed slightly with Stedious riding beside us instead of a lead position. Mustering up the nerve to ask a question, I unintentionally cleared my throat, which promptly grabbed our warden’s attention. His green eyes held a previously unseen intensity to them I was not expecting. It gave me further pause as if I should hold my tongue. Yet, I quickly realized, Stedious’s face did not hold a look of rebuke. Instead, it was a determination to do better after so nearly losing a dear friend to enemies of the forest.
Stedious spoke up before I could, dispelling the notion we would be traveling in silence. “I can see you have something in mind, Xaz. Please feel free to speak. We’ve certainly already roused every possible creature’s attention with the ruckus we created back there. I doubt we’ll need to reconsider moving with more care until we’re a great deal farther away from that nest. I did want to mention we will stop in a few hours to rest. Normally, even with enchanted horseshoes, we stop every four hours to give our kindly steeds time to replenish their stamina. While we’re not moving as fast as before, they still need time to recover. After we stop for a short half hour, we’ll take another look at the benefits of moving quietly.”
“Sounds good,” I replied before swallowing a nagging feeling, tugging at my emotions. I was referring, of course, to a rising guilt and sense of responsibility I held for what almost happened to Kali. “I’m sorry for what happened back there. Kali’s life wouldn’t have been put at risk if I hadn’t desired to head out immediately after meeting with the Quarris elders. It’s our fault she almost perished to those dreadful beasts. It’s tearing me up that if we had arrived a few seconds later than we did, those spiders could have easily taken her strung-up body up into the forest above. We may never have seen her again, let alone consider trying to rescue her if we had.”
Stella was striding atop Dutch’s saddle horn, an odd thing considering it was nowhere near wide enough to allow her to rest comfortably. She made it work though, likely from her ability to hover in the air with incredible ease. Stella wore an equally apologetic look on her face as she, too, turned to face the tall warden riding stoically beside us. “We’re grateful we were able to help rescue her, of course, but this would never have happened if not for us…” She didn’t finish the thought, instead shaking her head from side to side in shame.
Before responding, Stedious tilted his head upwards as if looking towards the hidden stars far about the forest’s crown. The expression on his face was one I could not immediately place. “You have nothing to apologize for. As wardens, we know the risk taken anytime we leave the safety of the city. Tallos understands this, but I can appreciate why the two of you feel you bear responsibility for what happened. Trust me when I say you do not.”
The elf let his words hang in the air before continuing. “While I am glad the attack did not claim our friend’s life, we know every day could reveal itself as our last. It’s a risk we assume simply because we are guardians of the forest. Put your fears to rest. For all we know, we could have easily been ambushed during the day had we decided to wait. Considering the creations we’ve seen from Cicero before, it would be a safe bet we would have found them regardless of the time of day.”
“So, you believe the Hunter is responsible for creating those hybrid monstrosities?” I questioned, already suspecting the answer.
“I believe so, yes. As you heard me mention before, those specific spiders we have never seen before,” Stedious replied confidently. A soft whistle sounded ahead, a note I was becoming familiar with as an all-clear of sorts. Matching whistles soon followed from the sides and our rear, though the imitation bird calls were slightly different.
“Did you know them? I mean, before they were… elves and not those vile things?”
“No, we did not recognize their faces, but it’s no less a tragic loss for the forest. Hybrid creatures, as you called them, have been appearing at a frightening regularity, though I am quite worried this latest incursion was so close to the borders outside Quarris. Up to this point, we have never seen Cicero’s mad creations so far into the forest before, which is why I risked us moving with as much haste as we did before.”
Stedious paused before looking me straight in the eyes. “We have been entirely unable to untrench Cicero from his wicked tower. All we can do is slay the poor souls who have become twisted into gross caricatures of themselves. Every day, the abhorrent orc is free to do as he pleases, and more lives are lost as a result. Again, I urge you not to bear a weight that is not yours to carry. We understand the importance of your quest, so we will gladly risk ourselves as you work to end the threat he poses.”
Stedious glanced my way to see if his words had the desired effect. I let out a deep breath while ordering my thoughts. He was right, of course. Our guides understood the inherent risk of traveling through a forest teeming each day with more unholy amalgamations of beast and man. Nothing would change until Cicero was removed from the board. Closing my eyes, I ran through several mental exercises to regulate my emotions. As if dispelling unhelpful thoughts, I shook my upper torso and arms. My fears and pent-up guilt all gradually resided as I became grounded in reality. Opening my eyes, I locked gazes with the admirable elf, nodding my understanding of the truth of his words.
“Thank you,” I added simply, receiving a respectful nod in response.
Reorienting on our path ahead, the blinking notification from after the battle caught my attention. Mentally selecting the prompt, several materialized in front of me. Stella glanced up from her spot and straightened her back. We both knew what came next.
Experience Awarded: Miscreant Arachne Marauder x 3 (level 40)
Notice! Experience has been split among party and non-party members.
Level Up! You have earned enough experience to advance to level 26. Tier 3 class characteristic attributes have been applied. You have 7 attribute points to distribute.
Unlike every other time, after reading the notification of a level advancement, only a soft glow emanated around my body. This caught me as odd since it was wholly unlike the radiant beam of energy falling down upon me from above. Looking around in apparent confusion, Stella’s cheeky half-smile smile caught my attention.
“I proactively tuned down the normal level up,” my poodle friend promptly said when I glanced her way. “You’ve been fully restored like normal, but I figured we didn’t want to give away our position any more than we already did. A blazing spotlight in the middle of the night would certainly be a dead giveaway, after all.”
“Good thinking. Thanks, Stell.” While I didn’t feel the usual rush of euphoria as heavenly light bathed upon me, I still suddenly felt in peak condition as all my resource pools were refilled. Returning to my notifications, I eagerly rubbed my mental hands together. As soon as the next message appeared, our gazes locked on the floating wall of text. We had new spells to consider!
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Congratulations on reaching level 26. As a Wraith, you are able to choose one of the following class-appropriate skills or spells. Please know that it is possible any skill or spell not selected may be found elsewhere in the World. Additionally, another set of skills or spells will be selectable at level 28. When level 30 is reached, a tier 4 class will be available. Choose wisely.
Option 1: Spell [Corpse Rend] – Summon a chaotic mix of destructive arcane energy to infect a nearby deceased enemy. Upon use, the corpse will detonate causing considerable damage to any nearby hostile target. Additionally, impacted targets will be afflicted with the debuff, “Rending Flesh,” which causes moderate damage over time as the ruptured body parts attempt to writhe into their body. Further, any other nearby corpse within the area of effect has a significantly high chance of detonating.
Note – Hostile targets impacted by multiple corpse explosions will have the debuff, “Rending Flesh,” proportionally strengthened with each new instance of the effect.
Upon seeing the first option, my mind whirled back to a spell I wanted to ensure I used more often. I was, of course, thinking of Undeath. It was the spell I specialized in when I upgraded to my current tier three Hunter class. Brushing the thought away, at least for now, I returned my attention to the next two options. Dwelling on regretful thoughts of forgetting to reanimate elf-spider hybrids was a bad idea considering the company we currently had. Nope, there was no way I was using Undeath until we were well clear of the forest.
Option 2: Spell [Vivisection] – Upon casting, an ethereal wall of twisting blades surrounds a hostile target within range, causing extremely high damage over time. The target is afflicted with the debuff, “Cantankerous Cacophony,” which has a moderate chance of causing the target to uncontrollably flee to a nearby friendly companion at random. Further, any additional hostile targets coming into contact with the swirling blades will cause an additional copy of the spell to manifest upon them.
Note – The number of additional ethereal blades created per instance is dependent on spell level. Additionally, hostile targets may only be affected by one spell effect at a time, but the duration is reset if contact is made with another afflicted entity.
Option 3: Skill [Summon Skeletal Wraith] – Summon a short-lived wraith minion capable of casting every damage over time spell in its master’s spell repertoire. This minion is fully autonomous, though it will follow any verbal commands to the best of its ability. Utilizing the caster’s proficiency with the dual cast skill, this highly intelligent undead creature will continuously cast lesser versions of spells against any hostile target within range.
Note – The skeletal wraith taps into the caster’s mana pool to cast spells but at a significantly reduced percentage. This rate can be manually adjusted via your Accelerator up to a set maximum.
Note – The caster’s dual casting skill will level an additional 50% faster through the use of Summon Skeletal Wraith.
“So, we’ve got a corpse explosion, interesting, a contagious blade barrier which sounds interesting as hell, and a lesser version of me, I guess?” I commented after reading through the descriptions an additional time. “Any immediate standouts to you, Stell?”
“Hmm,” she replied noncommittally as a toe tapped against her lower lip. Several seconds later, she tilted her head and added, “I know what I’m less thrilled with, the corpse rend. It's only useful once something has died meaning, if we look at this spell through the lens of our last fight against the three ginormous spiders, it would have been pretty much useless. Still, I don’t want to eliminate it entirely as I’m sure we could find some creative ways to use the spell unconventionally. Like, say, setting an ambush of our own, perhaps?”
“Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines,” I added after biting my lower lip. “Remember back in the Silvern tunnels when we knew a patrol of dwarves was coming to investigate the explosions in the giant mushroom cavern? We could have piled all the slain warriors in a pile and, when they went to investigate, boom!”
“True, but I doubt you’ll be motivated enough to go around man-handling dead bodies, right? Or, more likely, you’d have poor Ripley do it for you,” she joked. “I am disappointed the spell is may essentially be useless against a single boss mob.”
“Like our impending confrontation against Duke,” I commented before scratching the back of my neck. “Wait, maybe not. He is coordinating an approaching army, is he not? This could jump the spell’s usefulness up a few levels. Think of it. Imagine him standing tall against our best spells, shrugging off the worst we can do, but his friends around him are far less fortunate or fortified. One use of this spell, and like that he’s feeling a whole lot worse.”
“Ah, I like the imagery,” Stella said appreciatively. “Not only would something like ten bodies detonating do quite a bit of damage, but also one wickedly powerful DoT to boot!”
“While I’m not too fond of the first option, let’s not dismiss it out of hand since we’re going to be waging a war soon. Alright, how about option number two, Vivisection?”
“You mentioned something about a blade barrier before. What’s that?” Stella asked with a side glance up at me.
“Oh, never mind. It’s a type of wizard spell from a role-playing game I used to play with friends. It created a static wall of whirling blades which would punish anyone foolish enough to try to run through it,” I replied.
“Seems odd,” Stella commented. “What kind of idiot would willingly run through something like that?”
“No kidding. This version, though, is not static at all, as it surrounds one enemy and looks to cause some pretty significant damage. Better yet, there’s a substantial chance the spell causes the enemy to run screaming to nearby allies, creating even more vortexes on those new fools. I wonder how many new sets of blades can be created with just one cast.”
Stella didn’t respond to my question, instead seeming to swipe a paw through the empty air. She was using an invisible Accelerator screen which I wished far too often I could see. I was hopeful Stella could see the spell's ‘r-naught’ value. Or, in simpler terms, how contagious the spell effect was. If the spell caused, at most, a single additional effect to propagate, its r-naught value was one. Only one person, on average, would be ‘infected,’ so to speak, and would be only slightly worse than a common cold and not too impressive. However, it had an r-naught value similar to the measles, somewhere between twelve and eighteen, the spell would be incredibly powerful. I would likely want to pick it up for the sheer dominance it could have on any battlefield, ranging from a few to a few hundred. Anything that contagious was quite a few levels above epidemic proportions.
“While the System doesn’t allow me to see precise figures…” Stella stated as she narrowed her eyes in concentration. “I can confidently say the spell can spread to four or five new targets while at first level. From what I see, that number increases pretty regularly after that with perhaps one additional target for every two or three spell levels.”
“Not bad, worse than the mean transition rate of covid,” I commented under my breath.
“Of what?” Stella asked sternly, not understanding my reference. Of course, she wouldn’t.
“Never mind, it was simply something of interest to me once upon a time. Suffice it to say, this Vivisection spell is great. Not only does it have some serious damage against both single targets and small groups, but it only grows even better in large-scale engagements. Just like the one we’re approaching. Not only Duke’s army but potentially Cicero’s too, if we can call them that.”
“Very likely with Cicero’s, yeah. Sounds like he will have quite a few of those abominations running around.” Stella was clearly not happy with how much of a surprise the last ones we came across were.
“Indeed. Alright, on to the last choice. Mini-wraith,” I said uncertainly as I once more reviewed the spell’s description. “My first question, well, questions. Can I have more than one? And, how long it will last?”
“Checking… So, that’ll be a no on the first. You can’t have more than one of the little buggers standing around,” Stella responded after reviewing her hidden interface screens. “As far as the duration of mini-Xaz, it is long enough for most battles. Plus, you can recast it mid-fight if you need to reset its duration to whatever the maximum will be. As long as you don’t forget to recast the spell, you should be able to keep it up in perpetuity for the most part. Though, from the look of it, it will have quite the mana consumption.”
“Care to elaborate?” I questioned, hoping she could find more information to help us narrow down the best of our three options.
“The part in the description, there,” she replied with a point of a paw. “Where it talks about working with me to set the ratio? From what I see here, you’ll be able to designate the ‘clone’ of you to something around a tenth to a third efficiency.”
Stella noticed me squinting in confusion, so she immediately expounded on the explanation. “Each spell the wraith casts can be set to between ten percent and thirty-three percent of the spell’s normal mana cost. More mana allocated means more damage it can dish out.”
“Got it, but it seems rather weak,” I said with a slight grimace. “Ten to thirty percent? It has to be better than that, right? Seems pitiful and hardly worth considering.”
“You’re right. It would be quite pitiful as long as you ignored the part of the description talking about how your little friend always casts your spells with dual cast,” Stella stated leadingly. With a devilish grin, she pressed forward. “Let’s take a look at good ol’ Blood Boil, will we? When you cast it normally, at its current level and with your total intelligence stat, the spell’s doling out a little over nineteen hundred damage per tick. The same spell, even when only at a third of the power, combined with dual cast, the damage blooms to seventeen hundred! Pretty damn close to the original”
“Oh, wow,” I uttered in amazement. “Even if it was one hell of a mana sink, nearly matching the raw damage I would normally do is not something to ignore. Hot damn, that’s similar to doubling my damage output!”
“I know, right?” Stella responded cheerily, quite proud of herself.
Feeling good about our ecstatic choices, I quickly dumped all seven attribute points gained from the level up into intelligence. The separate notification icon blinked away in the corner of my vision, and I opened it on instinct. Nothing was about to quell my excitement.
Notice! Spell: [Stinging Swarm] has increased to level 2.
Notice! Spell: [Lightning Bolt] has increased to level 2.
Boy, was I wrong.
“Now that is simply impressive,” I commented with as much sarcasm as possible.
Stella only giggled.