The Lost Sun Revamp - Ch 4: Dawes Caverns

Sun woke up from his sleep unusually tired. He was starting to show effects from everything that had happened the other day. He had been traveling a long distance on foot, placed in mortal peril, and shocked from the situation in the town. Needless to say, he was exhausted both physically and mentally on several levels. He left his room to go to the main hall, where he saw someone he recognized.

Sitting down on one of the pews, talking to a serious looking paladin, was a young man dressed entirely in white robes.

Glancing over in Sun’s direction, he called out and waved his hand.

“Hey Sun! Come over here!”

Sun recognized that cheery attitude and that appearance immediately. The priest sitting before him was Calvin, the leader of the church in the Citadel of Serabourg.

“Calvin, what are you doing here?” Sun asked him curiously. Calvin had dispatched him to assist in the expedition to clear away the undead.

“Obviously I’m here to take part in the mission.” He stated matter-of-factly.

“Then why was I sent ahead of the group?” Since Calvin was coming to assist in the expedition with his group of paladins, Sun wondered why he didn’t just stay with the group and then come along with them.

“Well, by sending you ahead, we were able to inform the expedition that reinforcements were on their way and stop them from hastily taking action and risk being annihilated.”

“Now I see what you mean.” Sun said after thinking about it. “But wouldn’t have been faster to send a messenger instead?”

Sun had traveled the entire distance on foot. A messenger on horseback would have surely reached the destination approximately 10 times faster since Sun took so many breaks.

“I thought it would be interesting to see how far you could get on your own.” Calvin then began to drink from a little teacup he had just picked up.

“It was fun wasn’t it?” Calvin looked at him, smiling.

Snap.

‘Why this little…’ Sun was enraged as he recalled all the horrible things that happened to him during his trip. Just as he was ready to smack Calvin’s head with the back of his hand, the paladin spoke up.

“Captain, we will be awaiting your orders in the afternoon.” The paladin addressed Calvin respectfully.

“Alright then. For now return to your group of paladins and start war time preparation.” Calvin left with the other paladin.

Sun stood there for a bit but then he remembered that he had to go start his war time preparations for his platoon.

He went outside the building to the church’s yard. In the yard were the several squads of paladins practicing formations and packing supplies.

After asking one of the squads, he was able to find where his group was.

‘What kind of horrible set-up is this?’

Though during his time as a Sun Knight he had never even reached a beginner level of swordsmanship in his world, he associated himself with enough master swordsmen to tell that this group of paladins was no good.

The paladins in his platoon were obviously fresh recruits that joined only recently to repel the undead from the city. Many of which were very young, their ages ranging from 14 to 18 year old. Even their equipment was very shabby in comparison to the other groups.

Seeing that he had no other choice, he decided to speak up to them.

“Listen up. I am the captain of 8th platoon so the 20 of you are under my command.”

Some of the paladins started to complain after he told them who he was.

“Why is a priest our captain? Priest can’t fight.”

“That’s right! What use is a priest in the battlefield? I could probably lead better than some scrawny priest.”

The common prejudice against the support class has resurfaced time and time again. That and his non-existent fame and leadership stats led the paladins to question his authority.

However, Sun was already fed up with this foolishness. Having always been treated as a priest despite being a holy knight his whole life, and now that he was actually a priest, he was no longer going to let it slide especially since he no longer had to put up the facade of the Sun Knight.

“You think I want to lead a bunch of amateurs into a battle? If you don’t want me to lead, then that’s fine. You can rush into battle like a bunch of idiots and die.”

The paladins were aggravated by his words.

“Who the hell do you think you are?! It’s not like having you there is going to make any difference!”

Sun sharply rebutted their opposition.

“Can any of you use blessing skills and recover health like I can? Paladin healing and buff skills are pitiful if anything. Since there’s such a huge shortage of priests in the Order, did you think that you can have a priest to follow you around like some sort of loyal lapdog?”

The paladin could not respond and could only glare at him. They were more than aware of the pitiful support skills of the paladin class. The shortage of priests was the reason that they had been placed in a platoon since several other groups of paladins had already perished from healing deficiency. If the captain was annoyed with one of the paladins, then that paladin would conveniently be out of the healing range.

“Tell me everything you know about the undead situation in this town.”

Though they didn’t like him very much, they had no choice but to comply with his commands.

The situation with the undead was that a number of necromancers from the Embinyu Church had set up a stronghold near the village. After amassing a large undead army, they began to invade the village and increase the size of their forces. It seemed possible that the enemy planned to increase their numbers and attack the capital. Though the Order was able to repel the undead for now, another attack seemed imminent since the necromancers were capable of reanimating the dead. The Order managed to find the location of the stronghold, but it was inside a cave known as the Dawes Caverns.

The Dawes Caverns were known to be a large maze so the plan was to split into various platoons and search for the necromancers. Their orders were to capture the necromancers, but if necessary lethal force could be used.

‘This quest could be more difficult than I thought.’

Sun’s reasoning was correct. The mission was a rank E quest, but in reality it was closer to a level E+ quest. Killing the necromancers was a simple task, thus reflecting the quest level. However, the Order was attacking the stronghold; the difficulty was far higher since it was crawling with the undead.

‘Hopefully we won’t get wiped out.’

There wasn’t much that his platoon could get ready for. Since most of the members were recruits, they had poor gear and little gold. They’re levels ranged mainly between 10 to 20 and little combat experience so their skills were very low. The paladin class was a basic class offered by the church so the stat bonuses were minor compared to a more specialized class, such as Sun’s. So Sun told them to pack up whatever supplies were available and get ready to depart with the rest of the expedition.

The expedition numbered around 25 platoons each with roughly 20 to 30 paladins each. There were around 550 paladins and 15 priests in total.

Jacob, the paladin commander of the task force, pulled his horse up to the front of the cave and addressed the expedition.

“My fellow brothers, this cave is the Dawes Cavern and the location of our mission.”

The tension amongst the expedition intensified. For a good number of them, it was their first real battle. Many of the more seasoned paladins from the church had perished in the undead scourge earlier in the month. Even for the mid-leveled paladins, fighting the undead was never an easy task.

“Many of you will feel frightened and weak before our foes. That much I can understand. But we cannot let fear make us forget our goal! For a long time now, the dreaded necromancers have defiled our lands and killed our people! We will fight to reclaim the town’s freedom and vanquish the undead enemy from our lands! The grace of the Goddess is with us!”

‘As expected of a paladin commander.’

From the moment we saw Jacob, he knew that the paladin commander was quite powerful. Not on the level of masters such Lesus or Roland, but good enough to be considered a skilled swordsman.

The morale of the expedition soared with Jacob’s speech. Many of the paladins that looked as if they were ready for death a moment ago were shouting praises to the goddess.

“Many of you are wondering why we have formed 25 platoons for this expedition rather than a single unified army. The Dawes Caverns consists of a number of individual tunnels that are independent of each other. In total, there are 25 different routes that the enemy could be hiding. The goal for this mission is simple: defeat any undead that you see and capture or, if necessary, kill the necromancers that are hiding in any one of the tunnels.”

The group broke off into individual platoons and entered the caves. Sun’s platoon was the only one left after the rest of the paladins had entered the caves. Unlike the rest of the paladins, Jacob’s speech had failed to inspire this group of rejects. Sun could only sigh at their incompetence.

“Get into the cave or I’ll get all of you court-martialed for disobeying orders.”

The paladins had no choice but to comply. If a paladin fails to follow orders, then the church would blacklist him. Being blacklisted meant a number of things: banned from all major cities under the church, a large drop of reputation, and they get stripped of their class and become unable to convert to any other class.

The inside of the cave was pitch-black. The other groups had enough sense to bring torches with them, but his group had only brought basic supplies.

“Illuminate.”

Sun cast a basic light spell to illuminate the cave. With his power over holy light as a priest, he was able to manipulate holy magic according to his will. Sometimes a skill would be generated in response to his actions. However, the spell he had used was not a skill but rather an application of holy light so it was not registered as a skill. The priest class had the special benefit of randomly generating skills once certain requirements were met.

The spell illuminate did not cost much mana and since he did not use it for any particular purpose, it remained lit for a considerable amount of time until the holy light dissipated.

The paladins in his group still did not like him, but they had to admit that he was very useful.

They walked on through their tunnel for an hour. Every now and then one of the paladins would complain about being tired. After around the fifth complaint, Sun yelled that they shouldn’t be whining if the priest was still fine. From there on, the rest of the platoon stayed quiet. If the weak, frail priest could walk without complaining, then what does that make a paladin that starts whining constantly?

The group began to get bored from the unending path, when suddenly a strange smell began to drift towards them.

Out from the shadows came a number of undeads. From the looks of their low rate of deterioration and the aura of darkness they emitted, they were a low class undead that was recently killed.

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The paladins were willing to fight the undead enemies. Then more and more undead began to show up. The two groups were soon evenly matched in number.

The paladins’ confidence began to drop from the large number of enemies. The path that they were walking in was rather large, so instead of undeads advancing one at a time, the undeads were fully capable of evenly spreading out.

The mentality of the 8th platoon’s paladins towards battle was pitiful. Their method of battling consisted mainly of outnumbering the enemy and beating them down. They never had fought a battle with an even number of enemies and had only learned the mob approach of fighting.

The undeads that they were fighting were not especially amazing and were only around level 25 to 30.

‘For the God of Light's sake, what are they doing?’

Sun face palmed when he looked over at the paladins shaking in their greaves. It was quite obvious that they didn’t have any idea about what to do. At this rate, it seemed that they were all going to die.

Obviously Sun was not going to let that happen. It would be such an inelegant death if the Sun Knight killed by the undead that he was supposed to be the most skilled at handling. Even if he hated the paladins for being stupid, he couldn’t afford to let them die. After all, if the meat shield falls then the combat inept priest would be next.

Using four vials of holy water that Calvin had given him, he used a large AoE cast of Sacred Blessing and Divine Blessing. His Divine Blessing was intermediate level and could increase health and mana by 15%, stats by 10%, faith by an additional 10%, and health/mana regeneration by 25%. His Sacred Blessing was at beginner level 5 so it could reduce incoming damage by 7.5%. With the effects of the holy water, the buffs lasted for 12 hours and with double the effects of the buff.

The paladins were stunned after receiving the buff, as they could feel the sudden surge in their strength.

However, that was not all that Sun had prepared to use.

Since he had used holy water to cast the buffs, his mana was still at a maximum. Since he had buffed himself as well, his total mana had increased considerably.

Using every bit of his mana, he cast a large AoE holy spell.

“Holy Burst!”

Holy magic began to shoot down onto the undeads. Upon being hit, the undead burst into flames. The holy spell had dealt 2x damage to the undeads with a special effect of igniting the enemies.

None of the undeads were killed by the attack, but their health was lowered by over 60% and slowly lost health over time to burn damage. This level of damage was extraordinarily high for Sun’s level. He was only level 7 with a beginner level 1 Holy Burst. The monsters were roughly 20 levels higher than him. The reason for the large amount of damage was due mainly to his priest gear that increased holy abilities, the effects of the holy enchanted blessings, the special option his class granted, his high base stats, his large pool of mana, and the fact that the enemies were undead.

“The enemy is weakened! Now is the time to strike!”

Sun casually tossed out some motivation to the confused paladins. After they snapped out of their confusion, they charged into battle against the undeads.

Sun sat down and began to use Meditation to recover his mana. The paladins were doing fairly well against the undead as they were weakened by the initial blast.

Spirit has increased by 3.

Charisma has increased by 2.

After they finished off the undead, he managed to level up five times. Since he was a priest, he gained experience whenever someone that he used support skills on killed something. He gained a considerable amount of experience because of the high level difference between him and the monster as well as he was the one that dealt a majority of the damage.

The paladins walked up to Sun.

‘What do they want now?’

“Captain, we will follow your orders. Please command us.”

Sun was surprised by their sudden change in attitude.

A moment ago they hated him and now they were addressing him respectfully.

The reason for this was because Sun had displayed his extraordinary skill in dispatching the undead. They could see that the undead were greatly weakened by his attack and his support skills had strengthened their physical attack and defense. Many of them were unwilling to take orders from a priest at first but, now that he had basically saved their lives, they saw him as the most suitable person to be the leader.

“Captain, what is our course of action?” the paladins asked him.

Sun checked how much mana he had recovered. Since the battle dragged on for some time, he had managed to recover about 50% of his mana. Seeing that it was not enough, he decided to take a break.

“What is the status of our troop?” Sun asked the most prominent looking paladin.

“We have sustained minor injuries and the group’s average health is around 70%.”

Despite the paladin’s claim of minor injuries, losing 30% health was a considerable amount.

“Set up a camp and bandage up the injured. Have the person with the most experience cooking make meals for the platoon.”

“Yes sir!” the paladins began to start setting up various supplies within the cave. Sun tended to some of them with bandages.

Skill: You learned Bandage Skill.

Enables you to stop bleeding.

Increases the life of the wounded when tended.

After the paladins were patched up, they ate their meals. Since most of the paladins were from the countryside, and only recently joined the Order to repel the undead, they were able to cook a little decently. As soon as they finished their meal, Sun had recovered the rest of his mana.

Throwing a few minor Healing Hands on the paladins that were still injured, they started down the path again.

Since the buff lasted for a considerable amount of time, and the paladins have gained experience and skill proficiency from fighting the undead earlier, they were able to clear the undead with ease. The deeper they went into the cave, the higher level the undead became and the more numerous they became. Thanks to Sun's buffs, the group was able to take down each group without any casualties.

However, seeing that he could not constantly be using Holy Burst, because it would slow them down too much since he needed to recover mana, he messed around with his holy energy until a suitable skill was created to combat the undead.

Divine Light Arrow [1]

An arcane magic used by priests. In the series of arcane magic, these skills were commonly used by high priest during the warring period. In the arcane magic series, a total of 20 holy spells are in existence. There is no way to learn the spells except through self-discovery. The skill works as an arrow against enemies and is unaffected by outside forces. It is capable of passing through objects to attack the enemy. Damage towards the undead is doubled. If an undead is struck with the arrow, then it will be converted into piercing damage and slowly damage the undead over time.

Cost: 25 mana per arrow

As skill level increases, more arrows can be shot at once.

Sun casually sat back during the battle firing off arrows here and there. Since they were magical arrows, he didn’t need to aim because they locked onto their target. With this method he leveled up slowly while leeching experience from the monsters that the paladins killed.

A sound of metal clashing could be heard from deeper within the cave. Curious to its nature, Sun continued the paladins’ advance into the cave. The source of the sound was interesting. There was a lone paladin fighting against a large number of undead. However, this paladin did not look like he was part of the expedition because each of the platoons was sent into tunnels that did not intersect one another. Sun’s group was the only unit assigned to this tunnel. Though he was interested about the reason the paladin was in the cave, he felt that the paladin probably needed help first.

“Give support to that paladin in clearing away the undead.”

A large amount of their growth had been due entirely to Sun’s holy abilities, so the paladins were now loyal to him. At the beginning of the expedition they had been low level noobs, but now it was evident that they have reached levels in the mid-thirties and were now seasoned fighters.

They charged forward towards the undead and swung their swords. With their increase in skill and character levels, they now had better combat skills. Using their skills, they broke through the enemies’ guard with their shields and slashed deep into the undead with a holy attributed sword skill. Though paladin was not a special class, their skills were still good enough to consider one of the most popular classes for players.

In a few minutes, the undead were destroyed and the paladins began to give aid to the other paladin. Sun walked over and cast a higher tier healing spell on the paladin to recover his health. Waving his hand off to the platoon, they immediately began to set up camp for the night. They had been traveling along the cave for 13 hours now so they began preparations for dinner and sleep. A few paladins were ordered to take care of night watch and would switch off every few hours. After the paladin had finally healed enough health, he looked over to Sun.

“What is this division of paladins doing in the cave?” the paladin asked him.

“What are you doing in the cave?” Sun asked instead. “The Order has begun its purge of the undead from this region. Since you are not part of the expedition, then who are you and why are you in the cave?”

“Oh, yea that’s right.” The paladin suddenly remembered. “My name is Alexander and I was commissioned by the Church to investigate the undead activity in the church one month ago. However, I got stuck in the cave and these undead keep attacking me. Who are you?”

Alexander gave a look over Sun, seeing that it was pretty obvious that he was a healing class.

“I am Sun, a priest of the Order and the commander of this platoon in the expedition to defeat the necromancers.” Sun made it especially clear to the paladin that he was not just a priest.

“A commander?” Alexander was surprised. “I thought priests usually stuck in the back and healed while a paladin commander led. That’s pretty amazing. Nobody in my guild is going to believe this!”

Sun turned around to leave since he wasn’t interested in Alexander saying random stuff. However, before he could go, Alexander called out to him.

“Is it alright if I come along with the expedition?” he asked. “It’ll be difficult for me to get out of the cave alone and having another person along is always useful.”

Sun weighed the pros and cons of taking him along. Then he finally decided on what he was going to do.

“You can come along on the expedition; however you are to follow my orders. You are not allowed to act without my command.”

“That’s fine with me.” Alexander shrugged at Sun’s demands.

“We are setting up for the night. Eat some food and then go sleep in one of the tents.” Sun told him before going off to get his own dinner.