Harb continued towards the caster, who signaled to his second guard for protection before beginning another spell. This spell was hurled directly at him, and he had no time to dodge. The spell struck him in the chest, and he felt like he had been hit with a stun gun, but he was bolstered by his blood rage spell, which helped him resist stun effects. The caster and the guard both looked shocked that he wasn’t incapacitated by the spell. The caster began another incantation, and the guard attempted a special move of his own.
He raised his arms to strike and activated cleave. Before he could bring his greataxe down, however, the guard managed to damage him with a sword that sliced across his chest. Harb ignored the pain and continued his attack, nearly bisecting the man with his strike. One follow-up strike was all that he needed to finish him, leaving nothing between him and the caster.
The caster hurled one more ball of energy towards him, but this time he dodged to the side. The caster’s eyes went wide in fear before he turned and fled.
Harb gave chase, and he caught up to him a short distance outside of the camp and away from the rest of the fighting. His increased strength from the blood rage spell had faded, but Harb was still much stronger than the caster. Without the strength boost, Harb again needed two hands to effectively wield the greataxe, but he was easily able to cut down the fleeing caster. He kneeled down to check the man for items, and when he touched him, a text box under his status bars appeared. Would you like to loot Sorcerer? Yes/No? He mentally accepted. Four items appeared on the ground next to him: a book, a potion, a small crystal, and a coin pouch.
He quickly stashed the items in his inventory and fully activated his HUD. There were several notifications, but he minimized those. He was currently interested in the loot options, and at the thought the relevant information appeared. The loot screen changed to ask him if he wanted to extract the essence of the Sorcerer. He mentally accepted this as well, and he began to see a glowing light within the corpse lying before him. He focused on the light and willed it to come to him. The essence began to move towards him, but it fought to stay within the man. It was like grabbing a small wriggling fish in the water, and he struggled to make any progress.
Harb noticed that his mana was dropping, and it was now below half. The essence was slowly moving towards him, but his concentration was disrupted at one point when he heard the sounds from behind him growing louder. He mentally let go of the essence, and it snapped back into the Human. He turned to see two men riding horses away from the camp, with three Orcs trying to give chase. Giving up on the essence for now, Harb ran back to the camp.
The defenders had either been killed or run off. The Orcs who had survived were busy going through the carts. Harb went over to one of the guards that he had killed and accessed the loot options. The longsword and its sheath disappeared and then reappeared on the ground in front of him. The sword, which had been lying on the ground next to the fallen guard, was now sheathed in its scabbard. His HUD also gave him the option to extract the essence of the fallen man. He declined that option and went over to the other guard and received another sword. He placed the two swords in his inventory and went to look for other people to loot. He came across a fallen Dwarf next, but nothing happened when he attempted to loot that corpse. There was a coin pouch attached to the Dwarf’s belt, and Harb took the pouch and opened it. There were coins in it, so he inventoried that pouch as well.
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Harb was unable to access the next few bodies, but he stored their weapons and any coins that they had on them in his inventory. When he arrived at the Human that he had beheaded, Harb was able to successfully bring up his loot options for that corpse. He received a battle axe and a coin pouch, and he quickly inventoried these. He was then given the option to extract the essence of the man. He again declined and went about seeing what he could get from the rest of the bodies.
Harb came across an Orc lying on the ground, gravely wounded but alive. He looked around for the three people in charge. He found the two women, each standing over a different fallen Dwarf. He called out to them as he approached, but Vultag stepped between him and the women. “They are busy.”
Harb could see that they were extracting the essences of the downed men. “I found an Orc who is gravely wounded,” he said to the captain. “Can one of them heal him, or do you have any healing potions that I can give him?”
The captain looked over at the women and then back at Harb. “We have no one in the clan who has the potions skill,” he said. “The chief and Shendis are busy gathering magical resources. When one of them finishes, I will ask, but from what I know of what they are doing, this is very mana intensive for them.”
Harb nodded. He knew the mana issue from his own attempt to extract an essence, and he hadn’t even finished. He started to walk around the captain, who immediately put an arm out to bar his way. “I’m not going to bother them,” Harb assured him. “I’ll wait until one is done. I just want to watch what they’re doing.” Vultag gave him a quizzical look but lowered his arm.
Shendis was closer, so Harb watched as she struggled to pull an essence out of the Dwarf at her feet. When he focused his attention on her, status bars suddenly became visible in a transparent box next to his own. The red health bar was at 100%, but the purple and green bars that represented her mana and energy, respectively, were both below 25%. As Harb watched, her mana bar lowered at a steady pace. The essence slowly moved towards Shendis, and she shook with exertion. After two minutes, a small red vial appeared in her outstretched palm. She slumped over, exhausted by the effort. Harb assumed that the vial, which resembled a test tube, contained the essence of the Dwarf, but the vial didn’t glow as the essence had when it was in the body. Shendis had nearly run out of mana and had only 5% left when she completed the process. Her energy had lowered as well, but not significantly.
“There’s an Orc who needs healing,” Harb said to Shendis, “one of the soldiers. Can you heal him?”
The woman looked up at Harb, then over at Vultag, then back at Harb. “This is a more pressing matter. I need to recover my mana and perform this task on all the dead that I can before the essences are gone.”
“This is more important than the life of one of your soldiers,” he asked, pointing at a body.
“The soldier will keep.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Harb asked accusingly.
“Then he was not strong enough to be in the clan,” she said. “You appear to have taken a significant amount of damage yourself. How is it that you are still standing?”
“I’ve got a lot of HP.”
“Apparently,” she said, musing. “You are very large, and your coloring is strange. Where did you come from?”
“Clan Dire Bear. I’ll let you get back to work,” he said and hurried off before she could question him further. Vultag looked at him and shrugged but said nothing.