Book 1: Chapter 18
I need to take out the archers then figure out the champion. It seems too slow to put up any kind of fight, but there has to be some kind of trick to it because there is no way that thing will just let me kite circles around it, not at that level. I am pretty sure I now how they can see me though, they only have heat vision, or sense. It makes the most sense because they only turned when I cast Flame Thrower even though I was right behind them. I guess it makes sense they can't hear without ear drums or see without eyes, but I wonder how they can sense heat. Heat vision for humans, in thermal cameras, is just infrared light. Probably just a spell or some other magic… or System fuckery.
Regardless of how, if it's true, I should be able to make it harder for them to see me with a Gust spell.
Felix cast a low powered Gust in front of him blowing on him. Then he carefully walked to the roof of the building next to where he heard foot steps. He made sure as he walked to approach it from the front as much as possible, so that hopefully, the Gust could keep them from seeing him as long as possible. He peered over the top of a building and saw only three skeletons, with one being the champion. None of them had noticed him yet and he targeted two over powered Fire Bolts, one just in front of either archer before ducking back behind the lip of the roof and firing. He heard clattering as his spells hit but didn't want to risk an arrow to confirm anything. He ran over the roof tops, away from the skeletons and reversed the direction of the Gust spell he kept channeled to cool him down.
As he jumped just two buildings away from the skeletons, he heard a loud crash and peeking over his shoulder, the building he had fired his Fire Bolts from collapsed. Felix kept running as more buildings behind him collapsed. After he gained enough distance to be comfortable he looked back and saw the rubble of dozens of buildings. Just past the rubble he saw two piles of bones on the ground.
I guess the other two died from the Flame Throwers since they are nowhere to be found. Seems like I got all the archers then, and luckily it seems like the champion doesn't know where I am, yet. It seems to just be destroying everything and hoping. I guess I should try hitting it and see what happens.
Felix walked hopped over to the roof of a building where he could see the Skeleton Champion and fired an over powered Fire Bolt. The ball of fire arced through the air and hit the champion right in the side of the chest just as it was turning towards the new source of heat it sensed. The Fire Bolt seemed to have no effect, other than to alert the champion of Felix's location. As soon as it saw Felix, it charged through the ruins of buildings standing between it and it's prey. Felix ran towards the edge of the building he was standing on but didn't quite make it before the building started to collapse below his feet. He cast multiple bursts of Gust under himself to push him to the next building over and barely managed to grab the edge and scamper onto the roof.
He immediately dove forwards again as the champion threw his axe into the wall just below and between Felix's legs. The axe buried itself into the wall of the ruins, which miraculously managed not to collapse. Felix ran as fast as he could, with the help of Gust, across the roof tops and even switched directions after a few houses. The Skeleton Champion retrieved it's axe and kept destroying buildings around where it last saw Felix as it seemed to have lost his trail, for now.
How the hell am I supposed to kill that thing, my Fire Bolt didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. It's wearing full plate armor, maybe I need to break that first before hitting the champion itself? Maybe fire just isn't effective against him at all? I feel like it would take forever to rip through his armor with a Mana Bolt. Even then, I might make it through the armor, but then what if the Mana Bolt doesn't hit him, he is a skeleton, so what if it just passes between his bones?
I think I need to try and hit it with a Flame Thrower for a few seconds. How the hell do I get and stay in range long enough for it to have an effect? The other possibility is to try and crush it with rubble, but seeing how easily it's throwing around and tearing apart the buildings, I would need a lot of rubble. Traditionally, skeletons are weak to bludgeoning, I do have a maul but I don't know if I can get enough power to do much with that, unless…
With an idea in mind, Felix found himself the perfect location and pulled the maul out of his inventory. The Skeleton Champion had stopped it's rampage after a couple of hours and was now prowling the town, randomly destroying ruins along the way. Felix waited atop a building along the path the champion was currently moving and made sure to keep himself relatively hidden to the champion's heat sense using Gust. Felix waited patiently for the Champion to move into position just below him.
Well this might be the dumbest thing I have ever done. Hopefully, if this doesn't work, I can escape with my life so I can try something else later.
As soon as the champion walked just below Felix, he jumped off the building as high as he could with an assist from an instant Gust. With the maul hefted above his head he prepared a Fire Bolt with no outer ring, and a concentrated and severely over powered instant Gust and a Feather Fall spell, just in case.
The champion looked upwards too late as Felix swung down with the maul as hard as he could manage. At the same time, he cast the instant Gust behind and the stationary Fire Bolt in front of the hammer head just before it connected with the Skeleton Champion's head. The Fire Bolt burst, showering the champion in flames just before the head of the maul smashed into the top of it's helm with a loud crack.
The Skeleton Champion collapsed under the hit and Felix immediately cast his Feather Fall under himself. Felix jumped to his feet and starting casting two Flame Throwers into the Skeleton Champion along with a Gust behind himself so he could gain as much distance as possible. He was running low on mana at this point so if the Skeleton Champion wasn't dead yet, he was going to have to run away and try again later.
Sure enough the Skeleton Champion rose to it's feet as Felix began running. Risking a look over his shoulder, Felix saw only a small fragment of the champion's helmet remained and it sported a deep web of cracks along it's bare skull. Some shards of bone had even begun falling from it's skull leaving holes in it's ivory visage. There were also char marks sprayed over the exposed bones and the ones making up it's armor.
Felix ran as he fired Fire Bolts randomly behind him with his third spell, using his other two to keep himself running as fast as he could. The Skeleton Champion managed to rise to it's feet and hurled it's axe straight at Felix with it's entire body. Felix dropped all his spells and immediately and used three instant Gusts to slam himself out of the way of the axe and right into a wall.
Felix fell to the ground and scrambled to regain his footing as the Skeleton Champion charged at him. Felix cast one instant Gust knocking himself over and two over powered Fire Bolts into the charging skeleton. They left charring on the armor where they hit, but otherwise seemed to have no effect whatsoever. Felix ended up knocking himself onto the ground but managed to just get out of the way of the charge. Felix slammed as many Fire Bolts as he could into the champion as he tried to scramble to his feet once again.
The champion managed to recover from barreling into a wall and began stumbling in Felix's direction.
I really hope charging into a stone wall is actually hurting it. Quick aside, please die.
Felix made it to his feet and began running with the help of Gust and continued to volley Fire Bolt's behind him.
Ding You have slain 4 [E - Common] Skeleton Archer (Lvl 32)
Ding You have slain a [E - Common] Skeleton Champion (Lvl 35)
Ding You have gained 5 levels in [E - Common] Caster
Combat Dungeon C
Round 3 will begin in 30 minutes.
Start now?
Yes
No
No.
Felix sat down and dumped a small pile of mana batteries into his lap then began pulling from them sequentially as he meditated. His health was about 30% full having taken hits from slamming himself into the wall and the shots from the archers. With no better way to regenerate his health Felix meditated.
I wish I could find health potions or something, do those even exist? or maybe a healing spell. That would be nice.
After a half an hour, Felix's wounds were closed, but still vulnerable. If he got hit near either of them, they would definitely open back up. At least his mana was full thanks to draining mana batteries the whole time.
I've gotten marginally faster at pulling mana from the batteries, but I know I can be much faster. As it stands, how could someone with ten or even a hundred times my mana pool pull any useable amount of mana out of batteries? I've been thinking about this for a little bit now, I think it might be time to try it soon. I wanted to wait till I got my hands on a mana primer, which will likely happen in the next puzzle dungeon, I hope, but I might need to start the planning in case that doesn't happen. Basically, I've read about mana cores and channels in fantasy, I should be able to pull off something similar. Issue is, I don't want to screw myself in the future by planning out a shitty arrangement of channels or misplacing my core or something like that.
Felix stood up and Gust jumped on top of one of the last few buildings with an intact roof in the area. He made his way across the roof tops around the town looking for his next opponent. He looked out to the field, expecting them to spawn there just like the last two did. He spent a half hour looking for anything but didn't manage to find anyone or anything anywhere. Eventually he decided to head back to the fountain in the middle of the town.
On his way over he jumped onto a roof top which collapsed immediately. He managed to catch himself with a Gust spell and grabbed onto the top of the wall. In doing so, he reopened the wound on his shoulder which immediately started bleeding. He pulled himself back onto the top of the building and kept moving in the same direction, this time with more care where he stepped.
Felix made it across just two buildings before he heard the scratching of a fast moving animal approaching from just a few buildings away.
Oh how lucky, you only show up just after I injure myself. Either you are really lucky, or-
[E - Common] Vampire's Thrall (Lvl 35)
Ah shit. There are probably more than one of them, which means they are all gonna be able to track me down. Which means, if I don't get rid of this one quickly, they are going to swarm me.
Felix ran at the enemy that appeared before him, sped with the help of Gust, while he cast two Flame Throwers directed at the thrall from either side. As soon as he was within range the thrall jumped forwards and Felix jumped backwards to maintain distance while the thrall was soaked in flames from both sides. Just over a second later, the thrall hit the ground, rolled like a rag-doll then lay unmoving, having left a trail of black charred skin in it's wake.
Felix ran as fast as he could manage across the tops of the ruined buildings towards the city center. He encountered two other thralls on the way, both of which ended in similar fashion to the first he had encountered. At the center of the town with the fountain, two more thralls rapidly scrambled through the streets clawing their way towards the scent of fresh blood. One of them was currently on Felix's left and the other was slightly farther away, across the courtyard in front of him.
Felix charged at the one on his left with three Flame Throwers, intent on finishing this one off as quickly as possible before having to deal with the other. As soon as he confirmed the kill, Felix turned to meet the other thrall as it jumped over the fountain and dove for Felix with a crazed expression plastered on it's face.
Felix dove to the side while casting two instant Gusts to shove the thrall down, out of the air and in the opposite direction of Felix's dive. Then, he cast three Flame Throwers drenching the thrall in flames.
Once Felix was certain it was dead he dragged himself to his feet and carefully looked around before cauterizing his wounds and washing off the remaining blood in the fountain.
I am pretty sure they only went crazy because of the open wound. They would probably have been much smarter if it weren't for that, lucky me I guess. Normally I would leave it open for the rest of the encounter to keep them all crazed but, I was losing way too much health from the bleeding. I lost a fifth of my health and they didn't do a single point of damage to me.
Judging from the previous rounds, there may be more of those, but more likely all that's left is the boss. If they were the thralls, it's probably the vampire that turned them. A full blown vampire probably isn't going to go crazy over a little blood and they're probably much stronger. Hopefully they burn just the same though. . . . . .