Chapter 11

A Crypt to the Woods

“Fuck” This was not good… 4 massive figures crawled out of the stone caskets, even as oversized as they were there shouldn’t have been enough room in the coffins for those monsters. The things were Bone Knights, skeletons with thick plate armor, and large swords standing 15 feet tall. Blue flames filled the sockets of their skulls and the air was heavy with their presence. If I could remember who the fuck told me about this place, I would kick them out a window, low-level dungeon my ass. Bone Knights were Elite creatures, and pretty much counted as one and a half times their level. I’m not sure this was a fight I could win.

I really should stop by the adventurers guild and learn the Identify skill so that I can tell what level things are without killing them… although my gut says these things are a good bit higher than me, the small wisps of darkness leaking out of their armor may have also been a good clue.

As they turned towards me, I hit them all with Grasp, and piled on Rot and Shrooms to all four. As the four skeletons started snapping the roots and breaking free, I cast the last two buffs I had learned, Armor of Earth and Tenacity of Life, to give myself a boost to Con and a layer of rock armor that would reduce that damage I took. I quickly made a series of pillars in the room so that I could have cover, and started shaping life energy into a spell. Life wasn’t quite as good as holy or light magic for killing undead, but it did pack a bit more punch than most things. The old gamer trick about healing undead to damage them was unreliable in AoA, some types were vulnerable like that and some weren’t. Skeletons happened to be vulnerable to healing.

Combining the life energy with my water magic got me some water glowing with a faint green light, I added bits of the spellform from Armor of Earth to give it shape and cast the spell at all four bone knights. “Mantle of Healing Waters” I called, solidifying the spell behind an idea. Glowing water enveloped all four and cloaked them, pulsing as it sent vibrant life energy into the walking towers of bone. They managed to break free of the roots and rush me, slowed by the pillars, but black steam came off their forms as the water seeped around their armor, attempting to burn out the darkness animating them.

I collapsed two pillars on the bony bastards to slow them down, it didn’t do much damage but did knock them over. If I want to get out of this, I’m gonna have to use some of my old skills, with a slash of a conjured ice knife I slash open my arm. I start chanting in Bloodmark a spell used to restrain prey by vampires, as it completes, chains of blood fly from my wound and bind the rising skeletons with my vitality. Now that I was connected to them, I sent growth aspect mana down the chains to spur on the rot and shrooms, and a pulse of weak holy energy just for kicks. Katenip would come in real handy right now.

One of the skeletons flares the flames of its right eye and the left extinguishes, a shockwave of darkness blasts my chains apart and shatters the pillars in the room as it slumps down, accepting the tide of rot and fungus that finally take it down. The other three encircle me, they are too big to really attack me at once without getting in each other’s way, so they alternate attacks. I duck under a horizontal slice just to have a vertical one bearing down on me after the blade passes. I dash between the legs of the one attacking me and leap onto its back. My spells were all wiped away by the dark wave, so I won’t be killing my own rot by filling the damn thing’s armor with lava. I leap off the now smoking armor to avoid a massive blade aiming to cut me in two, and land on the new attacker’s shoulder. Its attack cuts deeply into its fellow, spilling lava out of its armor and all over the floor.

My arm is still bleeding, blood magic wounds are like that, they take longer to heal. In this case, it’s a benefit, I take my hand and use my wound as a painter's pallet, fingerpainting a few rather disturbing runes in a quick and dirty ritual circle right on the monstrous skull in front of me. I finish just in time to leap to the ground and avoid its huge hand shrouded in necrotic energy. I have to use earth manipulation to throw myself out of the way of a few attacks as I position the skeleton just right.

When the ritual circle is facing the slowly moving smoking skeleton, I activated it, “Sacrifice of the Tallest Pine”. The blood burst into red light and burned through the skull as a large blast of lightning launched out of it obliterating the skull of its wounded brethren. The ritual destabilized and blew up like an evil red flashbang, taking half the skull and the shoulder of the bone knight with it.

Just as I was thinking this was going well a giant armored boot impacted my back and sent me flying. I blacked out for a second when I hit the wall and experienced mutual breakage. Pulling myself out of the wall I rolled under a thrust from the now one-armed knight. I cast Grasp on it to keep it occupied for a moment while I checked my health, shit, down 800. I activate my Primal Form and launch myself at the damaged knight even as I transform. I hit him like a wrecking ball of elemental fury and punch right through his armor as my weight knocked him on his back. The concentrated dark mana and necrotic energy doesn’t bother me a bit in this form and I tear its spine in half, causing it to de-animate. Tearing my way out I intercept a large blade with a wall of earth, slowing it enough that it lodges in my raised arm. My new strength and lava heated hands lets me shatter the end of the blade with a couple of punches, leaving a large piece stuck in my arm.

With a roar, I launch myself at the last knight’s knee joint, a weak spot in the armor, and I use my now bladed arm as an improvised axe. With my weight and strength, I sheer right through the leg and land in a roll behind it as it falls. The timer on my skill is almost up so I use the last of my mana to form a huge spike of stone below the fallen knight’s skull and thrust it up into the ceiling, taking the knight with it. As they hit the ceiling the skull shatters and the body crashes to the floor, right as I transform back into my fleshy self.

Level 68 Bone Knight (Elite) Killed!

+12625 EXP

I collapsed as well, my stamina near zero, if another thing popped out, I would die, and there was nothing I could do about it. My mana was at zero, my health was down to 300 after exposing myself to the horrible insides of the bone knight, I was done. As I looked over my notifications, I noticed my Blood of the Stone class had mutated when it hit 10, adding an extra 6 strength per level and a bit to its description.

Blood of the Stone

The stone is your kin, its blood is yours. Lava and Oil heed your call. Blood calls to blood, and the Blood is strong…

+8 Str, +4 Con, +8 Int, +4 Wis per Level

My new status was amazing.

Lazarus

Level 51

Classes

Fist of the Primordial [3] (14250/16000)

Blood of the Stone [13]

(5000/7000)

Professions

Teacher [21] (873/2200)

Miner [8] (321/900)

HP:3300

Stamina: 900

MP:8300 (940/min)

KI: 5

Strength

89

Constitution

165

Endurance

5

Dexterity

53

Intellect

415

Wisdom

470

Charisma

52

Will

5

Free

87

The sheer power of my spells now was impressive, my elemental manipulation didn’t benefit from the high Int score nearly as much but it did benefit. If I actually train a bolt spell to use as a main attack it could become monstrous pretty quickly, this was the problem of the mage path. For a warrior you got skills but you largely fought with skill in your chosen weapon, with fewer skills to manage you could train them up to high levels, greatly increasing their effectiveness. For a mage, you can develop new spells on your own, learn new elements, and generally accumulate so many skills and spells that it's hard to keep track. Generally, mages only have high skill levels in a few skills, the skill for their magic type, mana manipulation, and a few core spells that they use all the time. The rest are only powerful by leaning on the magic school skill levels and high int stats, but they never reach the level they could if they were seriously trained.

Druids had a similar problem; they gain a lot of skills and learn a lot of spells. When you have a class that combines the two it gets even worse, or one of the mage classes like Elementalist that requires using a bunch of different elements and not blending them. My class is leaning towards having access to all the elements that make up the natural world, that’s a lot to manage, and I haven’t been managing it well. As cool as getting an affinity to crude oil is, will focusing on it help me? Not really, I am going to need a plan for my elements and to pick just a few to work on for the time being.

I levered myself off the ground and started breaking down the remains, once I stored away everything salvageable, I searched the room and coffins carefully. I managed to find a staff made of black bone, adorned with a large purple crystal. That might be a decent thing to pass on to Angel. I also found a Ring of Retribution in one of the coffins, a good thing for Dave to have. With nothing left to find I got the hell out of the dungeon, time to write up a build plan, instead of this indecisiveness I have been fucking around with. Fuck, I’m behaving like a damn noob, but less shitty. Thinking about it now, I’ve been having a lot of problems with my mindset, maybe it’s a symptom of the time travel. I’ll have to ask Violet and Santa if they noticed anything.

I reserved another night at an inn and spent the rest of the evening brainstorming ideas. Looking at my new skills gave me some thoughts on directions to steer my growth.

Stone Shift: Morph into a stone form that grows more powerful as you grow your earth-related affinities. Channeled spell.

Blood and Oil: You gain a grasp of the basic magics of blood and oil.

Molten Strength: Your stone is harder and can be imbued with the heat of magma without melting. Your stone form has lava and oil for blood.

This class was definitely moving in the direction of a stone-formed earth-beast with deep earth powers. It would be great for my strength and conjuring, but I wasn’t really sure how it would fit into a narrower theme. My main theme was obviously powerful, and if I had infinite time then it would be great, but I don’t. I tossed a bunch of ideas around, from focusing on earth variants to sticking to the four basic elements, nothing really fit. I thought about maybe picking a variant element for each of the four and sticking to that, but even if I picked the most primal ones I could think of it didn’t really feel right. I still wrote out a plan for it though, since it was the first half-decent idea I had.

Fire- Lightning or Lava

Water- Ice or Sea

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Wind- Storm or Gale

Earth- Metal or Lava

It seemed like a decent idea, limiting my focused elements, but it felt incomplete. My Blood of the Stone class was pushing me towards personifying an element, and Fist was about drawing power from Primordial forces…..

I got it! Disasters. Embodiment of natural disasters. I jot down a new list.

Fire – Volcano

Water – Tsunami

Earth – Earthquake

Wind – Hurricane

If I use those as a guide, I could limit myself to certain archetypes and maintain flexibility, that would be a long-term goal though. If I go this route there will be a shit load of communing with nature in my future and meditation, I’ll feel like a damn cultivator from one of those eastern novels, whatever they're called. But it would fit, and it would be powerful with the influence of the Primordials. Normally I would say it was too varied, lacking focus, but the primordial influence should shore up the weaknesses, and firm up the idea. If it doesn’t work, I would have room to tweak it later and wouldn’t be in a terrible spot for whatever I decide to do. Well, it’s the best I’ve got after hours of brainstorming. I can’t waste my time and not do anything out of fear of failure. With that done I exit the game.

After logging out I left some queries for Santa and Violet and collected the changed document to add to my new info pack that I would release tomorrow morning. I had added a few more classes to the list, mostly cultist ones that I qualified for after my dungeon adventure.

With that I headed to bed, I was just done with this day, and I had a scouting expedition to lead in the morning.

Hours later found me leading a small group through the somewhat creepy trees of the Shiverwoods, introductions had gone fine when we all met up in the plaza and we headed out right away after I bought us all the skill crystal for Identify. Not all skills could be turned into skill crystals, and to do so required high level enchanting and mastery of a skill. The crystal would also only give you level 1 of whatever skill it was for. While they sound great they tended to be too expensive and not useful enough to see widespread use, with a few exceptions like the Identify skill. The guild even subsidized the creation of them so it could sell them cheaper. Even then, they still cost 5 gold apiece.

The outskirts of the woods just had boars and wolves, we let the tanks take care of them, with Angel demonstrating her skills. Since she still didn’t have a ton of speed Dave defended her while she cursed everything to death, it was fairly relaxing. I didn’t form a party yet since the shared exp wouldn’t be as helpful for Kate and I, and Angel could use it. I spent the time playing with bits of lava to get skill xp.

Deeper in we found the creatures Dave had heard about, Young Shellback Wolves. A blend between turtle and wolf that was fast and vicious. At level 30 they would have been too much for most noobs to handle, and without Dave to protect her Angel wouldn’t be able to take them either. Since we did have a Dave he took all the hits and shrugged them off, as Angel took all the attention and cursed the hell out of the things. As she gained levels she got access to some potent curses from her Cursed Idol class, it functioned differently from the regular magics that Kate used where she needed to create spells and tended to get passive effects or knowledge as class skills. This was actually odd for a curse magic class, it didn’t focus on learning new curses, it just gave a boost to them and several powerful ones. The affliction class did gear itself somewhat to learning true curse magic though, so she was just getting an immediate boost in functionality instead of sacrificing future potential. I could also teach her a good bit of curse theory as we traveled so that would help.

Her first couple skills she shared with us, from Affliction of Attention she got [All Eyes On Me], [Center of Attention], and [Curse of Fame].

All Eyes On Me: Gives awareness of when you are the focus of attention, skill level determines how detailed your awareness is, including location and distance.

Center of Attention: Draws the attention of foes; strength, and difficulty to resist based on the difference between your Charisma scores.

Curse of Fame: You can apply curses to all whose attention you hold. Curse magic applied is weakened, inversely based on skill level. Split casts are inherently weaker and cost more mana per target. Mana cost to split curses between multiple targets decreases with skill level. Maximum number of targets determined by Cha.

From her Cursed Idol class, she got interesting ones.

Weight of Expectations: Increases weight felt by target the longer they suffer under the curse. Starting weight and rate of increase determined by skill and Int. Enough weight will cause damage. Channeled.

Growing Pains: A steadily growing affliction. Damage dependent on skill, Int, and Curse affinity. The damage grows each second, growth dependent on skill level. Duration based on Int and affinity. Channeled.

Press of the Crowd: Slows speed and restricts movement, strength grows over time and distance traveled by the target while cursed. Effect based on Int, and skill level. Channeled.

Angel was able to shut down a group really well, but her mana cost was insane, and she had to meditate after every battle. This would change as she got her skills up and showed the sheer potential of the build. Without Dave, her stamina and speed would be an issue as well, but her stat gains were slowly fixing that.

Kate took the next group of six to show off her training, she cast a small mist of tiny razor-sharp bubbles over the area with a wave of her mop. The Shellbacks couldn’t move without hurting themselves, eventually, they got angry enough to ignore the small wounds and rush through the mist. Kate just fired golden bubbles from her mop that dissolved chunks out of wherever they hit. As their charge stalled Kate waved her mop and the mist started to swirl, turning a hazard field into a blender. The wolves didn’t make it within ten feet of her.

The spells were good, and while they wouldn’t have done much to higher leveled foes, she still had them at very low skill levels. Once she practiced them enough that would change.

We managed to forge our way fairly deep into the outer layer of the Shiverwoods. These woods were interesting in that they had distinct zones, the woods got much more dangerous the further in you went, and the most populous monsters changed with each zone. The outskirts of the true Shiverwoods started at the Shellback territory, solid pack hunters with tough shells. There were other things in the area, but they were the main threat, for any player below level 35 or so they would be a challenge. At this point, most players were either killing monsters solo, which was slow but gave better exp, or they were partying up and splitting the exp of a faster kill rate. The best groups in the area were probably only around level 30, although some were undoubtedly higher. The next zone of the Shiverwoods was home to Frost Chimps, nasty monkeys with natural ice magic and ambush tactics. The damn things were also fast, and although weak for their level, made up for it with large numbers.

The woods also changed as you delved deeper into them, the temperature decreased, and the trees became twisted and strange, often radiating odd energies or moving. Cold mists appeared as you went further until at the heart it was just a solid icy fog full of dark and dangerous trees. We wouldn’t be going to the heart yet, the things there were too strong, but we needed to find its general location. I hadn’t been to the heart when the Shiverwoods were intact before, when I was there the place was mostly destroyed and twisted with death and shadow magic, the trees were thinned and the fog all but gone. Hence the need for this expedition, to find the edges of the zones so I could figure out where the ruins of Sha’Olir were. Sha’Olir was a town in the forest ages ago, home to a strange breed of ice-touched dryads, we don’t know what they called themselves, but the rest of the world called them Shimburrs.

The small village thrived in the cold forest, although it was less foreboding then, eventually one of their elders decided they should rule the vale, instead of tolerating the growing human presence as adventurers searched for herbs, monsters, and a suitable location to found a settlement in the area. To drive them away he did something, something dark and evil, the rest of the Shimburr tried to stop him but he had corrupted himself by that time and was mad, he bound them to his will and magic by corrupting the tree-bonds and binding them in shadows. After waging a small war on the humans, he was defeated by the adventurers that would go on to found Cloudburn. What they didn’t realize is that since he was originally a dryad of sorts his tree-bond kept him from a full death. His defeat poisoned the woods and warped it, and over the years his form was reborn from the Heart-Tree of the forest.

This wouldn’t have been a problem if some players hadn’t accidentally woken him up while exploring the ruins. Merging with the forest as it mutated turned him into a creature of wood, ice, and shadow, able to create powerful minions in the forms of his former tribe out of shadow and spite. After growing his power, he led an all-out assault on Cloudburn that nearly destroyed it, and the Shadelings that escaped to Earth were a disaster since without magic nothing could hurt them or track them down. Colorado was badly hit and much of the population of Denver died from the US incursion before people started to have their powers leach over from the game. I never knew all the places that Shadelings emerged, but I know Russia lost a lot to them, and I think China was hit as well. If they hit the Amazon no one knew, a lot of things hit the Amazon, it was fairly hard to tell which disaster caused what.

I had taken some mapmaking supplies with me and was making a rough map as we traveled, enough to unlock Cartographer as a profession. I also was pointing out and collecting useful herbs as we went, getting experience for Herbalist and Teacher.

When we hit the Frost Chimp area it was no longer safe to let Dave and Angel do most of the fighting, so we partied up. Our first encounter with them was an ambush, we only got a warning because of Angel’s [Eyes on Me] skill. My life sense was fairly useless in the forest, life was everywhere, and it wasn’t detailed enough for me to make out anything specific.

“Ambush!” Angel yelled, throwing herself sideways and rolling on the ground, barely avoiding a barrage of ice chunks the size of her head.

A bunch of angry chattering came from the trees as 27 monkeys the size of a large dog dropped down. The Frost Chimp has green and brown fur, giving them a camouflage pattern, with shards of ice poking through the skin on their heads and arms. Black eyes and a chilling aura made them unsettling to be near, and the six-inch jagged claws and large fangs gave them a fearsome look. As one they formed foot-long icicles and threw them at us, only some of them targeting Angel, most of them having the willpower and charisma to resist her skill. Dave blocked as many as he could, and I pulled stone walls from the earth to block the rest.

“Dave protect Angel and Kate! Angel slow them down! Kate, blast them! I’ll take the fight up close and immobilize those I can.” I yelled while dashing forward, casting [Stone Shift] as I ran.

I managed to catch a group of three standing close together in stone slabs that erupted from the earth, making a pyramid, I turned it into an oven by heating it with [Molten Strength]. I hit a duo of monkeys as a significantly heavier stone beast. My stone form was only six feet tall but gave me significantly more bulk and strength. With glowing lines visible under my stone flesh and patches of crude oil shimmering on my skin, my hunched and jagged rocky form was mostly suited for wrecking ball tactics. I proved this by ignoring the ice that bounced off of me and clotheslining the two chimps. With my mass, this had a significant impact, and I wrapped my arms around their necks as I landed, then flexed. Their heads popped right off. While the Frost Chimps were dangerous with strong projectiles and claws, their bodies were weak. I let the corpses fall and launched myself toward another on a pillar of stone.

As I flew I tossed Lavabolts at chimps that were distracted by the barrage of bubbles from Kate, managing to nail a few in the back. A dozen had closed with the small group and were trying to get past Dave to get to the squishy casters. He was bashing and slashing as many as he could, but he could only be in one place at a time and the things were encircling them. Angel and Kate were dodging and the chimps around them were slowing down, this many enemies were still too many for Angel to manage at the moment. Attacks were still getting through though, as I used a massive fist to cave in the chest of another monkey Kate took an icicle to the side, she kept dodging and casting but she slowed down, getting clipped by more and more ice in the process. Angel was trying to avoid three Frost Chimps at once and had several cuts on her arms and legs, although they seemed to be healing quickly, she must have gotten a life drain curse or something.

As I continued killing the ones firing ice at my friends the monkeys started to take more notice of me. Soon I was wading through a hail of ice, this severely hampered my progress and was chipping away at my health, but at least it took some pressure off the others.

I cast Grasp on four of them and trapped two more in burning stone. That slowed the barrage considerably. I quickly went to help the girls, but four chimps fell over dead before I was halfway there, Angel’s curses having finally taken their toll. Now that she wasn’t being directly pressured Kate held up her mop and four bubbles flew from it, homing in on the ice-flinging monkeys, when they hit they blew bits of limbs off and threw them to the ground. She followed that up with a flurry of bubble darts and finished them off. With the burden lessened Dave was able to crush the remaining Chimps, with blade and shield he smashed and cut. All three just sat down to rest, although Kate started releasing a shower of tiny golden bubbles that healed whatever they hit. Walking into the shower I pulled a stone bench out of the ground as I let my stone shift end. “Well done people, that was quite a fight.”

Dave groaned and replied, “Now I know what those guys were talking about, this forest be a damn menace.”

Kate sighed, “At least the experience is decent.”

“Decent? You call this only decent? Darling, what have you been doing to have such standards?” Angel asked, with wide eyes.

“Well…. we have had a couple of unusual experiences lately. These things were only level 43 and had weak bodies. Really these guys give pretty bad exp for their level. There are a lot of them though so that somewhat makes up for it.” I explained. With all of us here we each only got about 500 exp per monkey.

I got up, “Well, time to loot the corpses.”, I used my mana and will to drag all the bodies over, it was a waste, but I was too lazy at the moment to get up. It also unlocked [Minor Telekinesis] as a skill, useful for picking up small objects. I took out a knife and started butchering a monkey, taking the claws, the scalp, and skinning them for the hide. As I did, I explained what I was doing to the others. I then took out three more knives, stabbed them each into a corpse, and tossed one to each of my companions. “Here, your turn, it’s good to unlock the butcher and skinner professions, it can give you access to great materials later on.” They each gave me a disgusted look, although Dave picked up his chimp and started cutting. “They can also combine into [Harvester] or [Dismantler] and at higher levels, you can get a skill that will let you turn a corpse into neat, clean, wrapped bundles of parts." The girls’ eyes widened, and they immediately got to work.

We continued our exploring and found a bunch of interesting landmarks, a small lake in the forest, a few caves, a hill with a solitary tree that was pure white, a couple of streams, and even an odd stone monolith carved with tiny blue runes. Our most interesting find happened when Dave tried one of the mushrooms growing on a tree we were passing by, and with a ‘pop’ of displaced air, he disappeared. As the girls panicked, I went over and examined the mushrooms, they seemed to be a harmless common edible fungus called Breadshroom. As I took another step forward, I heard a tiny shrill scream coming from the ground. Looking down I saw a tiny Dave, maybe half an inch tall at most, right next to my foot, I had almost crushed him.

I called the girls over and showed them Tiny-Dave, who was gesticulating and trying to say something, but his voice was too small to understand. Heck, he was sometimes hard to understand under normal circumstances. He seemed to be pointing at one of the roots beside him. Eventually, he threw up his hands and walked over to it, then he opened an invisible door in the root. Aha, a hidden dungeon, that would explain things, dungeons can have hidden entrance conditions, like an otherwise normal fungus that shrinks you and lets you see the entrance. This would be one of the stranger entrance conditions I had heard of though, other than that one where you had to dance naked in the moonlight with an audience of goats in front of the entrance, I have no idea how someone found that one in the first place. This dungeon was likely never found last time, and probably got destroyed by the Shadow King.

I turned on my recording app, this should make for a good intro for my stream.

Intrigued I ripped off three bits of fungus and offered two to the girls. “Want to explore a dungeon?” I asked. Being gamers they said yes.

We nibbled our fungus and appeared in miniature near Dave. “Finally, I was about to go in by myself if you all had taken any longer. Look at the quest.” He said.

Hidden Quest: Secret of the Emberwood

Find the antidote in the Emberwood tree before the Insidious Breadshroom takes you over.

You have 2 hours.

Well, shit, that’s annoying, I wanted to introduce everyone to dungeons in a nice safe manner. Kill some monsters, get some loot, see cool sights, the usual. Now it was all a race to the goal, and if we failed, we died. Luckily this wasn’t soul damage, and we would respawn, but it still would suck. Oh well, time to murder whatever this tree has in store.

Poking our heads inside the door elicited a popup.

You have entered the Emberwood Trials Dungeon.