Chapter 13

Trial's End

What the fuck!? I am a living mass of stone, with a weight to match, and I just got yoinked into the air like a prize in a damn claw machine…..

Examining my captor revealed a massive wooden hawk, a quick Identify gave me

Level 78 Rotwood Hawk Guardian (Boss)

One of the three Guardians of the Emberwood Dungeon, this creature has less in common with a hawk than it does a wooden golem. Nevertheless, it retains the vicious cunning of a bird of prey and has the cruel habit of infecting all it touches with rot. Coupled with its affinity for wind and poison this is not a foe to be taken lightly.

On the one hand, yay, my Identify skill has finally gotten high enough to be worth a damn. On the other, shit this isn’t good. For one I can feel the rot trying to invade my stone body. Although it doesn’t work well on me, it would be devastating for any of my companions. These birds sound like Area Of Effect specialists with high single target damage. This is one thing our party is not suited for. Kate is still fairly new to healing and Dave’s tanking will be useless against the area attacks. Angel is good at crowds but doesn’t have any ways to burn down a single target fast, her channeled skills should help though.

“Watch out there are three of them! Angel, slow them down and ground them! Kate be ready to cleanse or blast as needed. Dave, block and counter what you can.” I shouted as I heated my stone body to the point that woodsmoke started wafting off the talons keeping me prisoner.

While I couldn’t quite see my party from my trapped position the now audible flapping of the hawk gave me a clue that at least Angel had targeted the hawk with her spells.

I started infusing oil aspected mana into the porous wood of my captor, after I felt us change directions, I flipped to using lava mana. The reaction between the two types of mana was explosive and blew the entire claw I was trapped in apart.

This had the unfortunate side effect of blasting me face-first into one of the wooden pillars. If It were normal wood that would be fine, but whatever they were was a hell of a lot tougher than normal wood, touching them felt like touching a branding iron to your soul. I would bet anything that these pillars are the heart of this dungeon, and possibly a sign of something very wrong.

Freed of my prison I bounced off the overgrown hellstick and onto the ground. I got up just in time to see EpicDave block a wooden beak the size of Kate with his shield. The ground around them was covered in puddles of bright purple sludge. Both the ground and my companions had thin slices all over, likely from some kind of wind attack. Angel was holding her staff up and sparkling a bit and her wounds were slowly closing, and Kate was blasting at a hawk in the sky that was sending gusts of cutting wind in her direction.

As I charged closer the hawk that had grabbed me hit the pillar closest to my friends, it’s stump was on fire and it looked dazed and confused. It shook itself and dived at Dave, neatly evading the bolt of lava I sent its way.

I used an earth stomp to catapult myself at the bird that Dave blocked, it was trying to get back in the air. I managed to nail it in the wing and cast Grasp on it to try to keep it grounded. The roots couldn’t trap all of it but they managed to snag the other half of its body before they started pumping out decay.

Dave was now fighting the wounded hawk and I bounded over to help him out, the damn bird had lit the pools of toxic sludge on fire.

“Dave I’ll take this one, take the heat off Kate. We need her to clean this goo up or we all get gassed!” I shouted. He nodded and disengaged, intercepting a blast of razor wind for Kate before shouting a taunt. It’s a shame Angel’s skill was based on the difference in charisma because these were some very detailed and impressive carvings.

The slightly burning hawk tried to go after him, but I managed to get onto its back and started beating it with lava-infused punches. That got its attention. I needed to finish this as fast as possible, so I buffed myself between punches, increasing my strength and speed. I should have buffed the whole group at the start, but I still wasn’t used to having these sorts of buffs.

I formed my right arm into a large blade of lava and rock and drove it repeatedly into the neck of the damn bird. At the same time, I called the stone beneath its foot up and around its head, heating it so that it set in place. Using my Focused Cut skill with my sword arm let me carve large chunks out of its neck.

I managed to do enough damage that I fully removed its head before it broke free. The whole time it had been infecting me with minor rot and spraying poison gunk around. The occasional cleansing bubble that emanated from Kate’s direction helped keep the damaging substances at bay.

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The movements of the bird stilled when I finally removed its head, although it had taken all of my KI and a good half of my mana. The magical wood was way too damn tough. Just as I was feeling better about this fight, I heard Angel scream.

I whipped around towards their fight and say that the hawk I had caught in a Grasp had gotten free and was harrying them. Its entire left side was rotten, and it wasn’t airborne, but it could still spew poison and blades of wind as it attacked physically.

Both birds had been grounded by Angel and were doing their best to tear my party to shreds, Kate had been reduced to cleansing and healing nearly constantly. Although I could tell she had gotten some good hits in from the pockmarks in the other hawk, the fire had spread and most of the poison was on fire, all she could do was keep the air somewhat clean.

Dave was dashing between the two birds, bashing them with his shield and blocking what he could. The girls were still getting sliced up pretty badly, and Angel had just lost an arm. Presumably, that is why she screamed. Katenip looked exhausted and the damn birds kept coming. The hawks were losing small bits of wood but nothing major, at this point only Dave was getting any hits in as he fended them off with his oversized sword and shield.

I used the earth to launch myself like a cannonball and broke completely through the rotten wood of the first hawk, knocking it away from my friends into one of the burning pools of poison. Then I covered myself in lava and started punching. The wooden bird didn’t make a sound, but it started thrashing, covering itself in more burning sticky poison. I added to this by letting out a wave of oil to soak the damn thing. I then cast the only Oil spell I had figured out, [Accelerant], the flames caught the oil and the whole bird became wreathed in blue flames as the temperature spiked. My form gave me a large degree of fire resistance, but it was still getting uncomfortable as I formed burning stone claws and started to dig through the healthier wood.

I was looking for an animating core, if these were golems then that would be the kill switch. If they were just animated and enchanted wood, then at least I was doing damage. When I had burrowed far enough, I let out a wave of oil and lava mana that I carefully kept from mixing, once I had built up 500 mana I let them mix. The explosion blew me past my friends and embedded me into the wall of wood and burning vines. Ow. At least the hawk had fared much worse, it was now only a pair of talons in a crater.

Even with all my defenses that brought me down to 831 health points, and my stone form was heavily cracked and leaking oil.

With the mana upkeep of my stone form, I was down to a mere 1523 mana, so I had to let it drop. My decrease in size made me fall out of the hole and onto the ground, further aggravating my wounds and mixing blood with the oil that had pooled on the floor. At least three ribs were shattered, my right arm was broken, and my left leg was somewhat…mangled. Not to mention the hundreds of cuts all over my body. My breastplate was only intact because it was automatically inventoried by the [Stone Form] transformation, along with the rest of my clothes.

Getting to my feet was excruciating, but I’ve had worse. Seeing my new friends in trouble was painful in a different way.

Kate was glowing weakly with holy light, and Angel was on the ground with a faint nimbus of light around her. Kate’s healing was probably the only thing keeping her alive. Dave looked like a rabid dog had used him as a chew toy, his armor was dented and torn, his shield was cracked, and blood leaked from him like a sieve.

The bird didn’t look so hot either, Dave had managed to break a wing off to keep it grounded. Which turned out to be a good plan since it was anyone’s guess if Angel was even conscious let alone keeping up her spell. The pockmarks from Kate and the splintered patches from Angel just added to Dave’s damage. As a construct, the damn thing just didn’t care.

I used some of my remaining mana to move the stone beneath my feet, carrying me towards our final foe. Along the way I tossed a Lavabolt in its face, getting its attention.

As it turned and started awkwardly wobbling towards me Dave managed to send a flying slash into one of its legs, creating a deep gouge. Then he was done and out of stamina as he collapsed to the ground.

This was definitely not a fight they were ready for. I got cocky. We should never have tried scouting as a group, I should have gone on my own. The happy attitude of the players had gotten to me, along with whatever fucked up shit was going on with my head. I blame the time travel. If my head were screwed on right this would never have happened.

I tossed a few more bolts at the bird and then raised a wall of stone in front of the hawk just in time to block its razor-wind attack. I stopped so I didn’t hit my barrier, the hawk wasn’t able to manage its odd momentum due to the weakened leg and missing wing and crashed into the hardened stone.

With a pulse of mana, I molded long spikes out of the wall with barbed ends that bit into the wood of the guardian, trapping it. For good measure, I cast Grasp of the Rotten Tree on it and much of its body was engulfed.

I shuffled over to it and used the last of my mana to pull a large stone axe out of the ground, a trick I used to do with bones. I then just beat on it until it died. Small gouts of sludge would slip through the roots that had ensnared its head and wing, poisoning me as I chopped. When it died, we had four minutes on the clock, and I was at 83 health and falling. My stamina was at 17 and my mana was at 0, I was using all of my regen just to keep up my roots and axe, I had to stop reinforcing the spiked wall and it broke from the bird’s struggles. I was so tired I didn’t notice it was dead at first, I just kept whacking away at it, getting flashbacks of the battle that broke me, until a hand shoved a potion vial in my face.

I was so surprised I opened my mouth to say something and the entire vial was shoved in, glass and all. Then a large hand forced my mouth closed, the whole time I had kept chopping. The burst of healing energy knocked me back to the present and I saw a bunch of notifications waiting for me. Most importantly the one from the vial I had just…consumed.

Breadshroom Cure taken

Invasive Breadshroom has been killed and you have regained 500 hp. HP recovery boosted by 150% for the next hour. All poison effects cured.

-27 hp from enchanted glass shards

I looked around. Dave was the one that force-fed me the potion, Kate and Angel were leaning against a gold-trimmed pedestal in the center of the room, that had three empty vials on it.