Isla had gotten up but had removed her shield, and her shield arm hung limply at her side as she cautiously approached the burning mummy. Maroftis disengaged from the two remaining skeletons that he’d been fighting to put himself between Vultressant and the mummy. Vanya could see Ewtain and Taloc slashing at the other mummy in the other part of the room, so she moved to position herself so that her warding radius would affect all of the undead.
Maroftis was hacking at the mummy with his sword as if he were chopping wood; there was not really much elegance or skill in the moves, but they did appear to be having some good results. That was until the mummy struck him in the chest, tossing Maroftis backwards into Vultressant. The impact with the Wizard knocked the sword from his hand. Vultressant was laid out by his reptilian friend, but Maroftis somehow maintained his feet. Vanya couldn’t tell if his tail had kept him up or something else, but she was amazed by his agility.
The remaining two skeletons went towards Ewtain and Taloc, who were doing their best to bring down the other mummy. Ewtain was dodging attacks, and Taloc followed up by striking when the mummy was exposed. When the skeletons arrived, Taloc turned his focus on them, leaving Ewtain alone with the mummy. While Ewtain wasn’t a tank, he was able to dodge sufficiently to avoid attacks. There were actually classes of characters in games that were essentially dodge tanks, but Ewtain wasn’t that skilled yet.
The battle with the other mummy was going much less smoothly. Vanya had only been able to get one arrow shot off since she feared hitting an ally. Maroftis had charged the thing and was clawing at it since he had not retrieved his sword.
Isla was able to get behind the mummy that Maroftis was fighting. Vultressant got up and cast another shield around himself; he appeared to be trying to get into a flanking position for some reason. Taloc thought about telling the Wizard to stay away but decided that he might know what he’s doing. The mummy was hammering down blows on Maroftis, who didn’t seem to be making any attempt to avoid them. Maroftis was battered badly, but his claws appeared to be having an effect on the mummy. It changed its tactic by swinging at Maroftis’ side; the strike landed, and Maroftis was hurled into the wall about five feet away. The mummy then began to turn around to face Isla, but as it did, Vultressant sent another fire bolt into it, and it dropped to its knees and made a keening noise. This allowed Isla to make two quick strikes to the neck area, and as the head went rolling, the mummy finally collapsed in a smoldering heap.
Taloc had destroyed the skeletons, and he was back in his role of striking when Ewtain dodged. Isla moved over to engage the second mummy, and Maroftis went to track down his sword before he followed suit. Vultressant looked to be trying to position himself to get in another fire bolt attack, and Vanya decided that she would not be able to shoot her bow at the mummy without chancing friendly fire, so she just stayed close enough to have the warding spell still be effective. For lack of anything better to do, she recast the warding to reset the timer. With all of them focused on just one mummy, they were able to end the battle without any further injuries.
Vanya checked on Isla while Taloc leaned over the body of the fallen mummy. “Is your arm broken?” she asked.
Isla shook her head. “No. It hurts to move it, and it’ll certainly be bruised, but I don’t think that there’ll be any lasting damage. I dropped the shield because my arm hurt too much, and I was having problems holding it.” Vanya took Isla’s arm by the wrist and elbow and gently moved it to get a better look at the damage it had received. There was a line about the length and width of two of her fingers that had already begun to bruise, but Isla was not in significant pain, so she let her be for the moment. She would examine the wound more fully later.
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Taloc was able to loot the bodies by accessing their corpses with his UI. He was party leader, so only he had the ability to do so; he could probably give permissions out, but Vanya didn’t care to bother him with that. One by one, the corpses disappeared; the skeletons only provided a combined 20 copper coins, but the mummies each had two silver coins and two enchanted rubies. Vanya willed her appraise ability to work, and she was able to appraise the rubies at a gold coin each.
“The rubies aren’t herbalism components,” Vanya said, “but they might be components for other crafting types. We should keep them until we can find out more about them.”
Maroftis announced that he had increased in level; he was now level two. He had been able to increase four of his skills by one level as well. Vanya looked at her notifications and found that she too had gained a level, but the only skills that had increased were her two magic fields, body and divine. The rest of the group reported similar results, and it seemed that only the combat-related abilities had gone up for all of them. Vanya remembered that her potions skill had gone up last night, so she announced that as well. Her last notification directed her to her abilities page, and she found that a point had already been added to her Dexterity attribute, bringing that stat to 15. There was a bonus point added to Intuition, so she had four more to allocate. Each character level that she achieved would give her the same number of points to distribute to her attributes, but she didn’t know how often she would be leveling. She decided to add two points to Intellect since that stat gave her mana. Psyche would help her healing and defensive spells as well as boost mana regen, but she wanted to try to see what the hybrid ability could do, so she added two more points to Intuition. This brought her Intellect to 14 and her Intuition to 17, and her mana points had risen to 210. She saved the remaining two points to add later.
They arrived back at the entry room, and Vultressant took stock of their situation. They did have a couple of healing potions, but otherwise had no way to heal in battle. Vanya could create more if they found more herbs, since they had more skeleton dust now, but there was no guarantee that the plants grew in this area or were harvestable at this time of year. “I think we need to leave this place and find a village or something,” he said.
Maroftis understood enough of what the Wizard had said, and he looked towards him and spread his claws. “Those mummies hit like a freight train, but we took care of business!” he said in Koraken. “Why do you want to leave now? We might just have one more room left, and I want to try it.”
Vultressant shook his head and replied in Koraken. “You seem pretty indestructible, but the rest of us are a bit more mortal. What if there’s a boss in the next room, or whatever we find is much tougher than what we’ve faced thus far? I would rather not have anyone lose a life at all, let alone on the second day we’re here. Also, we need practice to safely level our skills, and I need to learn more spells so that I can cast more during combat. I only have the one offensive spell, and I need to wait 20 seconds between casting attempts.” He then gave the others the rundown in Common.
Maroftis was about to respond, but Taloc interrupted. “I can’t argue with Vult’s logic. Frankly, I want to see the next room, but it’s probably not worth the risk. Are there any other objections to leaving?”
Isla said a bit glumly, “I for one am tired of constantly getting injured. Ewt never seems to get hit at all, and I feel like the punching bag for every encounter. I put three points into Vitality for more HP and two into Dex, but I really want to increase my skills without the risk of dying.”
“We might get surrounded by Hill Giants or something outside,” Maroftis countered. “At least here we have some control over things.” Vultressant translated for him.
“We could find some lich lord or worse down here and be paralyzed with fear and enslaved or killed,” Taloc said. “Both options are potentially dangerous, but the surface gives us a better chance of finding other people.”
“We should extinguish the lights in all three rooms so that the fuel doesn’t run out in case we come back,” Vultressant said. Ewtain and Taloc went to do just that, and the rest of them exited the crypt. Maroftis might have been upset, but it was hard to tell since the strange facial features that the Korak now possessed were hard to read. Ewtain exited last and closed the door behind him, and they made their way back to the stream to continue following it.