I discovered that I really didn’t want to fight another skeleton, and this new discovery was annoying my companion greatly. Gronnex and I had come up with a plan of attack after we had stared at our new target for a few minutes. The problem was we were stuck on step one of the new plan, the step where I was supposed to summon my obelisk. I had my summon obelisk skill ready, the purple indicator showing where the obelisk would appear, with the outline of its area of influence gently glowing on the ground. I just couldn’t make myself imbue it with lightning. I wanted to, at least, I told myself I wanted to, my mind would just not complete the action of imbuing the obelisk.
According to Gronnex it was perfectly natural for me to be terrified and not want to re-engage the manifested corruption after being hurt. Also, according to Gronnex, he’d never heard of someone being mauled by a level one anything to the point where they couldn’t continue to fight. He was now explaining how I needed to stop being so lazy and get the show on the road. While he continued to lecture me on how laziness was not a trait that sentients should cultivate when trying to defend a Prism, my mind and eyes were wandering across the landscape.
It had only been around 20 minutes since we had killed the first skeleton, and already the barren land around us was filling up with more and more of them. The one that Gronnex had selected for us to kill was about 25 feet away, pacing back and forth, acting oblivious to our presence. Behind and to the right of our current target, I watched as another skeleton appeared. I didn’t know what it was at first, the ground seemed to heave up into a small mound about 80 feet away from us. My initial thought was that roots had been exposed by the grounds upheaval, then the roots started to move. What I had thought of as roots, were the arms of a skeleton. It took about 15 seconds for it to pull itself from the earth, then start to meander around the area it had come up from.
While the rest of the area was flat, the ground where the skeleton had unearthed itself from remained an uneven mound of dirt. I did another quick scan of the horizon and found there were similar mounds close to where all the skeletons were wandering. I shuffled my weight from leg to leg as I looked down at my bare feet, still covered in layers of red dirt. Was there a skeleton resting under me right now, just waiting to reach up and grab hold of me?
Gronnex noticed that I had started to fidget. “What are you doing now? I understand you’re a know nothing, but you really do need to hurry.” He gave a long sigh, “I’d really like for you to prove the others wrong, in that only a moron would pick a Gnome Shadow Knight as their companion.”
That got my attention, “What others?”, I asked, then quickly added “Also, I really didn’t pick you, the ant did, I’ve had very few choices since waking up.”
Gronnex ignored my question, “Well you’ve got a choice now. Start killing skeletons before more and more spawn and your prism gets over run with level ones.” He shook his head, “I’ve really never heard of anyone choosing to let the corruption run rampant in their Prism.”
The reply, that I’m sure was going to be extremely witty, never made it past my lips. In its place was a yelp, as both Gronnex and myself jumped away from the mound of dirt that started to rise up in front of us. I was surprised to see that my obelisk appeared right next to the mound, it’s black surface breaking through the ground just as the skeletons arms broke through the mound. Neither Gronnex or I stopped backing away from the skeleton as it raised itself out of the earth. With this one so close, I could see that pulling itself out of the ground wasn’t a very easy task. When my obelisk struck out the first time, the skeleton only had only just begun to clack its jaws together. The lightning struck it in the chest while the skeleton struggled to free the rest of its body.
The mound the skeleton was exhuming itself from was definitely softer earth than what I was standing on, the earth was still not making the process easy for the skeleton. It was wiggling its body back and forth as it pushed and pulled itself out of the ground. We had made it to the edge of my obelisks range when the skeleton was getting itself to its feet. The obelisk struck out for a second time, as the skeletons head fixed in my direction and took its first step. The skeleton covered the 16 feet rather quickly, or at least a lot quicker than I wanted it to. Just like the last one, this one’s teeth were chattering as it held both arms in front of it while it shambled forward.
The skeleton made it over 10 feet away from the obelisk before it struck out for the third time, and as the lightning connected I enacted the second phase our plan. I turned to my left and started running, following the outline of my obelisks range. I could still see the skeleton coming at me from my right as I ran, hoping that I was fast enough to missing being gouged by its sharp fingers. There were two parts to this new plan that Gronnex had come up with. The first involved me summoning my obelisk, and the second involved me running around in circles.
When I had asked what Gronnex would be doing, he advised “I’ll be supervising the whole endeavor.”. I had started to protest, then thought better of it. What could he really do, standing half as tall as the skeletons were, he’d just get trampled. Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing him get trampled. It would be better to expect him to do nothing, than rely on him. That also had got me thinking, what good was a shield going to be?
The obelisk struck out a fourth time as the skeleton aligned directly behind me. I could hear Gronnex cheering somewhere behind me, at least he was giving me moral support.
I was counting as I ran, eagerly waiting for the next pulse of the obelisk. I stopped running and smiled as the lighting connected behind me as I finished my five count. It turned out killing the skeletons was going to be easy, this one went down without a problem and it had surprised us.
Even as I finished the thought, I knew something was wrong. Gronnex was screaming what sounded like “Stupid!”, I just couldn’t be sure due to the sound of chattering teeth as the skeleton connected with my back. As my face connected with the ground and slid forward, I decided this should be considered a learning experience, in that not all skeletons attack the same way. The first one just raked both hands down my chest when got within range, while this one had sunk its fingers into both of my shoulders while it continued running, slamming into the back of me while knocking both of us to the ground. For the third time since waking up, my face was firmly planted in the dirt.
I gave a muffled yell. It was muffled because I had kept my jaw clamped tight, sealing my lips so that none of the horrendous red dirt could make me choke again. The skeletal fingers removed themselves from my shoulders and I scrambled to push myself up. When I got both under me I felt the skeletons fists connect with my back, first one, then the other. The second strike knocked me back into the ground. I looked to see how much health I had and panicked. With my face in the dirt, yet again, I couldn’t see the screen that held displayed my health.
I pushed myself forward with my legs, while at the same time desperately crawling with my arms. As I moved my arms forward, the areas on my shoulders where the skeletons fingers had entered burned. I could also distinctly feel where the skeletons fists had connected with my back as my neck arched back so that I was looking straight ahead of me. The screens showing my partner and my health appeared as I did so, the red bar was lower than halfway full, and flashing the numbers 44 in the middle of it.
I saw the flash as my obelisk struck out for the sixth time, silencing the chattering of teeth that had been coming from behind me. As I lay there, looking at my health, I noticed that all 3 bars on the screen with the name Charles were flashing wildly. The green stamina bar displayed a 12, while the mana bar displayed a 6. I understood why both the mana and health bars were low, I could even do the math for why my mana was sitting at 6, and if I read through the combat log, I’m sure it would show exactly why my health was 44. What I was shocked by was that my stamina had gotten so low. Looking at it the almost empty green bar, I knew it was used up from the running I had done. I really just didn’t expect it, what would have happened if I used all of it?
As I thought, I watched all 3 bars on my screen slowly fill every five seconds. I still hadn’t placed my extra 2 points. I didn’t trust what Gronnex had said, about that I’d want to have my obelisk up forever. Then the thought of sleeping occurred. I couldn’t ever remember sleeping myself, I just knew that sleeping was something that was done. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have the obelisk up while I was sleeping. I pulled up my character sheet and focused on my wisdom, increasing it from 12 to 14, then willed my sheet to close.
This change would allow my obelisk pulse 7 times before I’d run out of mana, and it was what sold me on adding my points into wisdom. I groaned when I realized I could have just put one point into intelligence and my obelisk would have pulsed and additional time also. I wasn’t sure if I’d made the best decision, or even the most educated one, but I couldn’t change it now. How did I get more attributes? The thought occurred as Gronnex got into talking distance of me.
“Why Charles? Why would you just stop? You were doing so good, and then you just stopped running. I don’t understand.” I was still laying on the ground when the gnome finished speaking and stared down at me. I decided I wasn’t going to answer his question, instead I’d ask my own.
“Gronnex, how do I get more attributes, and what happens if I use all of my stamina?” As I asked, I pushed myself to my feet, rotated my shoulders and winced. My health was at 84, and while I couldn’t feel any bruising from being punched into the ground, I could still feel where the skeletons fingers and gone into my shoulders. “And don’t call me that.”, I added as an afterthought.
The Gnome was now staring up at me, his face holding an expression of concern. “Were you scared to run out of stamina? Is that why you stopped and let the skeleton get to you?” Even though I he was staring up at me, he was speaking to me as if I were a small child.
“What? No, I stopped because I thought the 5th shock would have killed it, it obviously didn’t. Why is that by the way? The last one died after 5, why didn’t this one? Also, answer my questions. How do I get more attributes? And what happens if I run out of stamina?” The gnome’s expression didn’t change at my explanation.
“Uh hu, so stamina. If you run out, when you run out, you just can’t do anything that requires stamina. No more running, or swinging weapons, if we had weapons. And abominations are going to have different levels of attributes Charles, not every undead is made equal, why would you think they were? You won’t be able to do it for a while yet, but the more essence you absorb from the same type of abomination, the more information you’ll be able to access about that abomination. After a few hundred skeletons you’ll be able to tell exactly how much health they have, a few hundred after that you might be able to see what types of damage they are resistant to.”
The gnome’s eyes flicked from staring up at my face to something only he could see, then he continued to speak, “Okay, your full health, stamina, and mana, time to get to work.” He pointed off at the skeleton we had originally been targeting.
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“You didn’t answer my question. How do I get more attributes?” My voice held a little heat to it, the gnome was just so frustrating. I was beginning to understand why the ant had been so pleased that I had gotten a gnome for a companion. The ant must have really disliked me.
“No, no more talking. Go kill the skeleton.” He pointed at the skeleton again, “You’ve wasted so much time already, we’re really very behind.”
Great, now he was just refusing to answer questions, and he was giving me orders. “Stop saying lumping us together, I’m the one doing all the work. The least you could do is answer questions while you stand round doing nothing!”.
The gnome turned to me, placing both of his fists on his hips, “I told you, I don’t have a shield! And that is your fault, I should have one by now!” He huffed a few times, making his chest puff in and out as he glared up at me “If you go kill that skeleton I’ll answer your question.”.
Now he was bartering with me? “Fine!” I shouted, turning to where he had pointed earlier. “I kill the skeleton, you answer me.”
The skeleton was now a bit too far away for me to summon my obelisk where I stood, I needed to move closer so that the skeleton and myself were each within the obelisks area of influence. With the obelisks 16-foot range, I could be 32 feet from the skeleton when the first pulse dealt damage. I watched as the small black obelisk broke through the ground, then five seconds later shot out a bolt to strike the skeleton. Just like the last two, the skeleton turned to face me, raising its hands as it started to chomp its teeth together and move forward.
With the second pulse of my obelisk I realized I had just engaged with another skeleton, I hadn’t even hesitated. I had been so angry at the gnome that I hadn’t even been thinking about the pain that the past two skeletons had caused me. Granted, it was pain that I got over in less than 2 minutes, but it was still a great deal of pain. Maybe this was what the gnome had planned, to get me worked up to the point where I’d rather fight a skeleton than speak with him. No, I refuse to think he’s that devious.
The third pulse and ensuing bright lightning arcing from my obelisk into the charging skeleton brought me back from my thoughts. The skeleton was 6 feet away, and I needed to start running. I turned and started the tour around the outskirts of the obelisks range, the skeleton right on my heels. I watched the green stamina bar on the screen in front of me as it started to drain away. It was at 72when the fourth arc of lighting struck the skeleton behind me. I mentally started counting down from five, hoping that this skeleton only took the 5 pulses instead of 6, the entire time I watched the green bar empty. I ended my 5 count with my stamina at 41, the lighting striking at the chattering teeth behind me.
Even though I couldn’t hear the teeth beating against each other any longer, I continued to run. I carefully glanced behind me, focusing on not tripping. The skeleton was gone, in its place was a small pile of gray dust. I squinted at the pile, neither of the other two skeletons left anything behind when they died, though I really didn’t look and see if they did, I was too busy with my face in the dirt. I scowled at the memories.
I walked over to the small pile, it was only a little larger than my fist. Squatting down about a foot from the pile, I reached out a hand to take a pinch of the pile. It was a fine powder, moving it between my fingers caused the dust to absorb into my skin, turning them a light gray. What was this stuff? As the thought ended, blue lettering appeared above the pile [Corpse Dust]. “Wonderful”, I cringed. I had just rubbed corpse dust into my skin.
I turned to the approaching Gronnex, “This stuff isn’t going to kill me because I touched it, is it? What’s it good for anyway?”.
He glanced down at the pile in front of me, then returned his eyes to me, grinning widely. I did not like his grin. “No, won’t kill you. Not good for anything you or I could do with it, needs an alchemist.”
He continued to grin at me as I straightened, “Right, well I killed the skeleton, now tell me how to get more attributes.”.
He folded his small arms over his chest, “No. I just answered two questions. I told you I’d answer one, so you should feel lucky. Before you argue, I answered that grave dust won’t kill you, and it is useless without an alchemist. Go kill another skeleton and I’ll answer another question.”. He had not stopped grinning.
I hated him. I didn’t remember if I’d ever hated someone before, if I had, I doubt I hated that person as much as I hated this gnome. Yelling incoherently as loud as I could, I summoned my obelisk right next to Gronnex. I was willing it to strike out at him with every fiber of my being, waiting for the first pulse to happen. I eventually had to stop screaming, not because I was any less furious, but because I had run out of air. I glared at him, breathing heavily. It had been a good 10 seconds now and the obelisk had not struck out at him. I was very disappointed.
Gronnex glanced down at the black obelisk, then back at me. He repeated the action a few times, his head bobbing back and forth, before he asked, “Did you just try to attack me?” From his tone I couldn’t tell if he was shocked or impressed, maybe a bit of both.
I folded my arms on my chest, imitating his posture, “That’s a question, go kill a skeleton and I’ll answer.”.
“What is wrong with you!? If you don’t go cull down the aberrations you are going to be destroyed, how is that so difficult to understand? Why would you want to become corrupted, to be destroyed?” He had uncrossed his arms, they were now straight at his sides, hands balled into fists.
“Well,” Even as I was saying it, I knew it wasn’t the most mature of responses, “you’ll be destroyed too!”
Gronnex just shook his head sadly, “No. No I won’t.”. He gave a long sigh, “I’m also not going give you a history lesson, we don’t have time. Stuff like that, you really should already know all that stuff. It’s strange you don’t know anything.” He wasn’t yelling any longer. I decided he should not be able to change moods so quickly, and just because he could go from being smug, to angry, to being sad and mopey didn’t mean I was going to stop being angry.
“Answer my question then. You should be helping me, right?”, I quickly added, “That wasn’t a question, more a statement. You really should be helping me.”
He gave off another over exaggerated sigh causing my hatred boiled up again, no one should sigh as much as this gnome did. “You get attributes by leveling, or by obtaining equipment imbued with whatever attribute you want.”
I opened my mouth to ask follow up questions, but was quickly cut off by the gnome, “You level by obtaining essence, focus on Level, or even just essence, in your head. Something should pop up, and we’ll talk about equipment later. For right now, every time your health, stamina, and mana are full, you’re wasting time. Your mana is going to be full in a few more moments, go find a skeleton to kill.”
I started to protest, and again was cut off by the gnome, “I will answer questions when your health, stamina, and mana are regenerating. I will also be happier to answer questions once I have a shield.” Gronnex took a deep breath, “Have I mentioned that I’d like a shield?”
I resigned myself to doing what the gnome wanted. While I scanned around us for the closest skeleton, I focused on level. A small screen appeared in front of me.
Level 1
Essence:
30/100
It gave almost no useful information, other than that I’d probably hit level 2 when I got 100 essence. I wanted to know how many attribute points I would get once I got to level 2, also how much essence was going to be needed to get from level 2 to level 3. I was frustrated that the person next to me probably had those answers but wasn’t going to tell me if I asked. I mentally willed the level screen to vanish as I made my way to the closest skeleton.
This fourth skeleton was as easy as the third, meaning that I didn’t get mauled. It did take 6 pulses from my obelisk before its teeth stopped chattering, and I was down to 8 stamina. I waited for Gronnex to catch up to me and then fired questions off at him as my bars refilled. He did have answers, though his answers usually caused me to have even more questions. For starters, each level required double the essence of the last level. So, level 2 to 3 was 200 essence, 3 to 4 was 400 essence. Each level would also give 5 attributes, though some of those attributes would be automatically assigned. It was usually the same every level, though would change sometimes, when question about what sometimes meant, he said there were too many variables and he couldn’t go over them all.
When I asked what the maximum level was, he said no one knows. He said there was always talk of the greatest prism bonded being in their thousands, though the highest he had ever seen was in their low 300’s. I balked at that, then realized if the essence requirements doubled every level, they would need trillions upon trillions of essence even before you reached 100, and I was only getting 10 from these skeletons.
“How do they earn so much essence? It seems like too great an amount?” My mana had just finished refilling, and we my stamina only had a few more to go.
I could see the gnome’s eyes flick up to a screen before he answered, I would have bet he was checking to see if my pools had filled back up, “Ermmm, well the essence requirement only doubles up until level 10. Then it just adds on ten thousand more each level, so less than doubling, by a good deal, but it’s still a hefty sum. Okay, your full, enough questions.”
Gronnex stomped forward, bringing us closer to the base of my hill for our next skeleton. As we approached, I realized this aberration was the closest one I had seen to the hill. I quickly glanced around and realized there were a LOT more skeletons now, and it had gotten darker, I couldn’t see as far into the distance. I started counting the skeletons, getting to 27 when Gronnex interrupted me.
“Let’s do this Charles! This is the last one for my shield!”, I hated him.
Piercing my lips together, I summoned my obelisk to begin working on the fifth skeleton. The engagement, if you can call me running away from a monster an engagement, was as simple as the last two. I turned, expecting to be waiting a few moments for Gronnex to catch up with me, like I had the last few times. I was startled to have him already at my side, a little too close for comfort. He must have been running right behind the skeleton.
“Where’s my shield?”, his words came out a bit too fast, making him sound manic.
I took a step back while I replied, “How would I know? You do remember I don’t know anything, right? How do I get you your shield?”
“Uhhhhg, think about shopping, a bit screen should pop up.”, he was still talking a bit faster than he normally did.
I thought about shopping, and to his credit, the gnome was right. A very big screen appeared din front of me. There were four tabs all along the top, and then a bunch of different ways to filter things on the left-hand side. Along the top I read [Equipment], [Supplies], [Mercenaries], and [Buildings]. The first three tabs were glowing in a soft blue, while the buildings tab was a dull gray color.
I was focusing on the buildings tab, trying to select it, when I was interrupted. “Stop browsing! Go to the Equipment section, then there is a filter on the left-hand side. Think weapons, no, no, think one handed weapon. NO! Just think Shields.” All I could think while he rambled off commands was that he was the absolute worst. Even while thinking about bad things I’d like to happen to Gronnex, I was following his orders. Each time I adjusted my thoughts the list of items on the screen would shift, until finally there was a large list of shields, with their subsequent price tags, in front of me.
There were a lot, and they were all a lot more than 50 essence. I started to panic, Gronnex was insufferable now, what would happen if he found out he wasn’t going to get a shield because they were all a great deal more than he expected. “Ummmm…”
“Stop talking! Just think about filtering by what you can afford.”, okay, I still hated him.
The list shifted, there were still loads of shields, but the images next to their names all seemed rather bland. Even all the new names were boring, just [Round Shield], or [Raw Hide Shield]. As I focused on each different shield, I realized they were all of Poor quality. I don’t know what I should have expected, but I had literally bled to get this 50 essence to purchase a shield, and the only ones that were available were the a quality called Poor. I was annoyed.
“What’s wrong? Are there no shields? Tell me, what’s there?”, I don’t even think Gronnex was breathing any more, just firing off questions.
“No, there are a bunch here… and,” I paused, examining what I had just noticed again. I then adjusted the filter once more. “Gronnex, there are a lot of shields on here for less than 50 essence.”
Gronnex didn’t reply for a few moments, then quietly said “Oh? That’s strange.”.