Elsewhere

Duke continued to precede the group with an expanding path of RESTOREs. They still had several kilometers to cross before they got to the beacon, and they occasionally came upon stray undead that joined their group as soldiers rather quickly. Those that didn’t manage to get caught in a RESTORE, were quickly dispatched.

After the first kilometer, they started to move through burned-out villages. Here, the RESTORE Ability’s effects were more pronounced as buildings were reconstructed and made anew in a full 100-meter radius around Duke. He was tempted to expand his radius to incorporate the first village fully but decided to stick to the plan.

The second village they came to was filled with desiccated corpses. Duke’s RESTORE Ability had no effect on them and he suffered great disappointment for the first time in their return to the fourth level. He pushed more Mana into the Ability, hoping it would bring the corpses back to life, but the only effect was to bring the structures of the entire village back into fresh repair. It seemed that the corpses were just that and beyond the scope of his Ability.

It was not long after that village that the group was attacked by a wave of flying undead. Baslin was the first to notice them coming and alerted the rest of the group.

“Flyers approach!” It was a simple statement, but it got the group’s attention effectively. All eyes turned to the sky to see the approaching creatures. They flew in a ragged formation that came as a murmuration, moving in strange and mesmerizing patterns.

It only took a moment for Duke to remember his encounter with the lesser vampire over the valley and the strange sensation he had gotten from the creature’s stare. The dozens of soldiers that had joined him (and had refused to leave as well) had halted their movement, staring at the clouds of flyers.

“They are hypnotic. If you can’t resist, close your eyes and don’t watch.” Duke commanded. The soldiers did not react at all. He received acknowledgement from his companions that they all were fine. Duke wasn’t going to take any chances. He lifted into the air, heading for the clouds of flying creatures.

He approached the cloud of creatures and flashed an IDENTIFY at one.

*** You have encountered a Lesser Vampire. This is the minion of a Greater Vampire and does not have full control over its own actions. It is nonetheless a deadly opponent.

Level: 246

Health: 36,321

Mana: 9,117

***

This confirmed that these were similar creatures to what he had faced over the valley. It also set the cloud into motion towards him. He held his position as hundreds of them flowed above him in the air, dimming the remaining light to almost nothing. Duke decided to flash them with RESTORE to see if it had any effect, pumping 10,000 Mana into the Ability. The Ability did, indeed, have an effect. The tattered clothing that the vampires were wearing was immediately repaired and restored. Beyond that, he was greeted with howls and the cloud of vampires descended upon him.

The vampires came with slashing claws, attempting to shred him to pieces in mid-air. With that many claws coming at him from so many different directions, it was a distinct possibility. If not for his Ghoulskin Armor providing a 10% reduction in physical damage before the claws reached his ARMOR SKIN which provided an additional 260 points of damage reduction, Duke might have been subjected to the death by thousand cuts treatment. In this case, he was still receiving nearly 500 damage a pop even with his armor and reductions. Duke could withstand this level of damage for a while, but certainly not indefinitely. He responded.

LIGHT Suffused Duke’s body, 20,000 Mana worth of the Ability flowed throughout and around him. With the amount of Mana he had infused the Ability with, he glowed like a miniature sun, radiating intense light all around him. As vampires approached him, they burned in the light. Dozens of them flew too close and burst into flames, plummeting to the ground below.

The rest of the cloud of vampires stopped approaching closer and instead surrounded Duke at a distance of several meters. It seemed that they had determined how close they could get without being harmed by the LIGHT Ability. They turned their intense gazes fully upon Duke.

The pressure on his mind was immense. He felt his MENTAL FORTITUDE Ability flare up to defend him, but it was simply overwhelmed by the volume of wills forcing their way into his mind. The voices urged him to lower his defenses, to join them, to just let go of this pointless struggle. Duke’s willpower fought valiantly, holding the pressure back, if just barely. The pressure increased and he could feel his defenses starting to slip. His LIGHT winked out.

The next thing Duke knew, he was falling, and he was on fire. Everything around him was on fire. The very air around him burned and the scent of burning flesh filled his nostrils as the pain of the fire washed over him. He slammed into the ground hard. So hard, that the cloud of dust and ash that covered him extinguished the flames that had not been snuffed out by the impact.

Duke rolled over to find Grat rolling him over onto his back, poised to pour a healing potion down his throat. A flash of his stats told Duke that he was down to 60% of his Health and 71% of his Mana. He waved the potion away. “I’ll be OK in a few minutes. What happened?”

“What happened?” Elaine’s voice rose above the sound of fires all around them. “I’ll tell you what happened! You went off on your own and very nearly got yourself killed! Without so much as a thought about the rest of us, you ran off again. You are just lucky that Baslin was ready for this foolishness.”

“Yes, Duke. You ran off thinking that you both could and needed to handle everything yourself. Just because your RESTORE Ability could convert the lesser undead you assumed it would work on those vampires, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. I guess I did.” Duke admitted.

“It didn’t work.” Grat deadpanned.

“I noticed that.” Duke responded. “I was going to fry them with my LIGHT Ability though.”

“Great plan right up until you put yourself in clear and unobstructed line of sight to the gaze of hundreds of the things. Idiot. You are lucky you have any consciousness left at all.” Baslin scolded Duke, his stare hard and uncomfortable for Duke to endure. It wasn’t magical manipulation; it was more the emotion behind it that hurt.

Duke started to get to his feet when he realized that his outfit was rather more than just singed. He activated RESTORE again and his outfit repaired as well as the area around him. “I didn’t expect that to go that way. Sorry about that and thanks for the…fireball?”

“Close enough. Firestorm is the actual spell. You took around 40,000 damage from it, right?” Baslin continued.

“Yeah, about that. Nasty spell. Why didn’t you use it earlier when we were fighting the undead?” Duke asked.

“It would have killed both Grat and I.” Elaine posited.

“Quite so. Would still do so, I expect.” Baslin clarified. She nodded.

“Glad it didn’t kill me.” Duke added.

“Would have been a shame.” Baslin responded deadpan.

“OK, asshole. Let’s rest a few minutes and then continue on. There’s still a lot of ground to cover and I doubt those Lesser Vampires are the worst of what we will be facing. In fact…” Duke peered at the soldiers still around them. “Soldiers, I need a rear-guard. With all these stray undead about, we can’t afford to have any sneaking up on us. Keep back 500 meters and intercept any coming at us from there.”

To his eternal surprise, it worked. The soldiers accepted the order and held back, covering their rear. Two minutes later, they were back on their way with RESTORE still being activated to create a path. They travelled through two more destroyed villages before they got close to the beacon.

The area around the beacon appeared to have at one time been a castle. Now, all that stood was a few crumbling walls, the stones themselves seemed to have their vitality sucked from them, leaving them barely holding their shape. Many had already turned to oily piles of ash. There still was a cobbled path leading into what had once been the castle’s grand foyer and halls. The Umbral darkness grew deeper with each step they took until Baslin cast a spell of light to push the darkness back.

Hisses echoed from the crumbled walls, even causing some to collapse into ash. With a flare of power, the darkness began to push Baslin’s light back. He, in turn, poured more power into his own spell and an escalating struggle began as light strained against darkness.

“This darkness is stunningly powerful.” Baslin declared. “I can push it back but as we get closer to its source, I will have to apply more force and concentration to do so. I fear that I will not be able to split my concentration enough to aid you in whatever coming battle lies ahead of us.”

“Hopefully, the source of the darkness is equally invested in the struggle, and we can eliminate it while it’s focused on fighting you.” Elaine said.

“Don’t count on it.” The voice came from ahead of them as a figure emerged from the gloom. The figure was a winged man, standing a head taller than Duke. His wings were furled behind him but appeared to be leathery rather than feathery. The winged man had sharp and angular features right down to his sharply pointed, closely shorn beard. He had raven-dark hair that flowed past his shoulders and blew in the wind, strangely always blowing behind him regardless of the wind direction. The most distinguishing feature, however, was the man’s glowing lavender eyes.

He stepped closer and Baslin stumbled as the strain on his face became intense. He groaned and redoubled his efforts but was clearly approaching his limit. Alarm flashed through the group as no one could believe the Grand Archmage was struggling in a contest of magic. Yet the evidence of it was clearly before their eyes.

Elaine was the first to act, charging forward in her dire bear form and hitting the winged man full-on with her massive paw and claws. It was like she struck a battleship. Her paw rebounded with the awful sound of splintering bone. She rolled aside, shocked back into her human form cradling her horribly broken arm. Grat was instantly at her side with a healing potion to supplement his healing magic.

Duke was a bit slower to act as he was focused on observing the winged man’s reaction to the strike and he was able to see the slightest decrease in the darkness around them when he was defending. This gave Duke an idea which he didn’t hesitate to implement. He hit the winged man with an IDENTIFY followed by a continuously OVERCHANNELED beam of LIGHT putting 1,000 Mana a second into it. The IDENTIFY gave him some insight.

*** You have encountered Elder Nocturne, a Champion Greater Vampire. This Vampire Boss is the force behind all the Lesser Vampires on this level. It is a being of terrible darkness and power. Beware!

Level: 346

Health: 136,321

Mana: 59,117

***

Duke kept his Ability running as the Greater Vampire began to laugh at him. “Is that all you have, mortal? That is the extent of your power? I thought that perhaps you four would make for decent minions but perhaps not. Truly a shame.” Nocturne started to advance through Duke’s LIGHT, giving no indication that it was affecting him. Duke activated IDENTIFY again to see if his guess was right.

*** You have encountered Elder Nocturne, a Champion Greater Vampire. This Vampire Boss is the force behind all the Lesser Vampires on this level. It is a being of terrible darkness and power. Beware!

Level: 346

Health: 135,318

Mana: 57,117

***

Duke smiled as he saw that his Ability was affecting Nocturne. It just wasn’t doing enough but that was OK with Duke. He had plenty more to give. “No, Nocky. I have plenty more power, but I didn’t think you were worth the expenditure. Now is where you either run away or be destroyed. Your choice.” He could see the strain on Baslin’s face starting to lessen as the vampire’s focus shifted to Duke.

Seeing no attempt on the vampire’s behalf to run, Duke kept the Ability channeled and began to infuse his body with LIGHT. It was time to get physical and break Nocturne’s concentration. He charged the vampire, rocketing his glowing right fist at its jaw.

The vampire caught it, stopping him cold, Duke’s fist scant centimeters from its face. Nocturne smiled at Duke, his eyes and attention now fully on him. It was clear that the LIGHT flowing through Duke’s fist was at a minimum unpleasant to the vampire but likely was causing harm. “Did you really think that was going to work, mortal? Your mind is not your own. What makes you think your body is any different?” He continued at Duke’s confused look. “Oh, you didn’t even know your thoughts are being altered? How delicious. I am going to enjoy breaking you. Now, come with me.” With that, Nocturne pulled Duke close to him preparing to twist him into position and bite down on Duke’s neck.

“Thanks for letting your guard down and pulling me close, asshole.” Duke unleashed a full 50,000-point LIGHT blast right through his fist, the vampire’s own hand, and straight into Nocturne’s face. The vampire’s defenses were monstrous, absorbing and negating more than 500,000 points of LIGHT damage. Duke’s stats and the 500x multiplier from the 50,000 Mana OVERCHANNELING pushed the total damage over 1.2 million. Nocturne’s entire head vaporized and the area was flooded with light, Baslin’s spell no longer having anything to resist against.

“By the Twelve, that was intense! I haven’t had to struggle against a spellform like that since I was an apprentice myself. The control and willpower behind that working was truly frightening.” Baslin was gasping for air but still managed to express himself. He held his head as if sporting a massive headache.

Duke pulled the vampire’s body into his INVENTORY as he began to rest and recover his Mana. He had not known whether his ploy would work but he was overjoyed to see that his gamble paid off. Still, he felt oddly uncomfortable, as if something was tickling the back of his brain but he could not locate the thought that kept slipping away.

“Duke, what was that about your thoughts being altered?” Elaine asked, concern etched on her face now that her shattered arm was healing and causing her significantly less pain.

“What are you talking about? My thoughts are my own.” Duke replied shortly.

“The vampire said that your thoughts were being altered.” Grat added, stepping closer to Duke.

“That’s bullshit. Nobody said anything like that.” Duke responded angrily.

“All three of us witnessed the vampire’s speech, Duke. That is what the creature said. He said that that your mind was not your own and that you didn’t even know your thoughts were being altered.” Baslin added, still holding his head.

“That’s not what he said at all. He said that he was going to make me his minion.” Duke insisted.

“Is it possible that we heard a different message?” Elaine asked.

“That would take a rather sophisticated Spell and uncanny timing.” Baslin explained. “But it is in some way possible. Magics of the mind could do it as well as magics of sound and some forms of illusions could also do it. Of them all, the magics of sound are the most easily accomplished. If that is the case, which was the true message?”

“Doesn’t fucking matter. Mr. Pointy teeth is dead. Let’s rest up and move on.” Duke snapped. The other three exchanged a worried look but ultimately agreed. They all set down for a rest.