Age of Victoria, page 10
“Hmm, I liked how you kept hitting Gid’gow. Served the stupid shaman right, he would never give me stomach medicine after feasts, said I had to eat less instead!” Mel’tar shouted as he rolled his corpulent body around to lean on his throne from the other side.
“Next, next, um…you!” The fat goblin shouted as he pointed at an unusually large goblin near one of the gates.
This goblin approached in a carefully balanced movement. This creature was wearing an outfit made from bits of metal scrap and chains. The metal was all cast-off; horse bits, a pot crudely hammered flat, but despite its makeshift nature, on this large goblin it was still frightening.
Shan-Dar Clan
Mid, The Wild - Elite
Berserker - Lvl 3
This would be an even fight.
When I noticed his class, I had a flashback of the overly large fists and the horrific damage that Philip had done.
“Watch out! He’s a berserker. If he starts screaming, don’t let him hit you,” I shouted.
“I’m low on mana, I’m not sure we are going to make it,” Robert said.
Looking at the group window, I saw what he meant. His mana was at around thirty percent. We had discovered earlier that just like low life had a debuff, low mana had one as well. Annie had tested it and described it as the worst headache combined with flu-like symptoms. Our situation was grim, and it was getting worse. We were surrounded, all of us had wounds and were mentally exhausted from the constant fighting as well as the stress, and our healer was now running low on mana.
“I think I’ve got an idea,” Emma said with a wicked smile.
Chapter 13
“How is this possibly working?” I asked.
Emma’s idea was simple, but should never have worked. If the goblins had even the slightest bit of intellect, it wouldn’t have worked. I watched as the large goblin with makeshift armor slowly trudged around the outside edge of the arena, Emma carefully walking the circumference while Robert rested with us in the middle.
The goblin audience just placidly watched the slow, plodding circles. None seemed to be bored or even upset by the weird foot race. Our opponent should have switched to trying to kill Robert or even Annie but seemed fixated on Emma. Emma’s idea had rested on two things. The oddly mechanical nature of our enemies thinking, always attacking whoever annoyed them the most, and her latest spell.
Spell: Creeping Shadows
Necromancer Spell: Level 3
Target: Single
Mana: 10 mana
Effect: Calling forth the shades of the unjustly killed to torment and slow the movements of the living. Reduces movement speed for 3 minutes, does 10 damage per 6 seconds.
Altog the Shade was the mastermind behind the creeping shadows spell series. His refinement of the spell over his many decades of research has produced the definitive work on the use of shades against the living. It is regrettable that his research was cut short because of his lack of experimental rigor. - Necromancy, the Masterwork. Volume 2, 3rd Edition.
Annie had a spell that also slowed the movement of her target. Both of them could use this strategy, but only Emma’s spell caused damage. Annie’s spell slowed the creature more, but that was a smaller concern. Emma just kept running in circles and reapplying her Creeping Shadows as needed while Robert sat and recovered mana. His recovery would be faster outside of combat, but it was still better than nothing. Emma being low on mana at the end of the fight wasn’t as big a deal as Robert being unable to heal. Each round had left me with lower life, and if one of the other girls were suddenly attacked, they would need healing as fast as he was able.
While this strategy was working -Robert was at eighty-five percent mana and rising quickly- it felt weird to me. My new instincts thought this was perfectly fine, but it hurt my sensibilities. We were supposed to be in a battle arena fighting to the death, not taking a walk around a park. I was happy that we would be able to survive this. It just seemed so very odd.
Finally, the goblin fell over. The corpse faded away quickly like each of the goblins during this event. I was a little concerned that we had found no loot during this quest. We had killed a large number of enemies and found nothing. We had never killed this many before without seeing something, usually something worthless, but something none the less.
While I was fretting, the large goblin rose from his throne and began his usual quip before combat. The pattern was clear, but I didn’t know what it meant if it meant anything at all.
“Very strong. Very capable. Now they fight you. Try to live. I’m bored,” Mel'tar said as he plopped onto his throne while pointing to two smaller goblins who huddled together and began to chant.
Rushing forward, I was almost able to attack one before he completed his spell. With a flick of his wrist, a glowing blue shield appeared around the two goblins. The goblin I tried to attack paused and hissed at me through the bubble of magic then gave me a broad smile and returned to his chanting. The cheeky look had distracted me, but not enough to stop me from bashing away at the shield. My focus on the smiling monster in front of me allowed the other goblin to attack me without me being aware and I suffered because of it. The blast of flame looked like a mirror image of the one my sister was casting. The small ball of fire impacted me under my right arm and then expanded into a billow of force that threw me at least four meters.
Crawling back to my feet I charged back to the goblin pair driving an overhead strike into the glowing shield with all my strength. The shield flickered for a brief moment, and I could feel the grin stretching across my face, but it was short lived as the goblin started the chant from before. I swung wildly at the wizard's spell shield but was unable to stop him from recasting the glowing protection.
My stamina was draining quickly, rarely had our battles lasted so long that there hadn’t been brief pauses between fights. Even just moving around to reposition myself had been enough to allow some stamina to recover. In this case, I was just standing there and beating against the shield. The goblin pair just chanted and cast at me repeatedly.
Total exhaustion weighed upon me like lead weights. My body felt like I was covered by hot wet blankets, the press and strain of my body aching along every muscle. Swaying in front of the shield, my body almost unable to remain upright, I tried to drag my sword through the dirt to lift it to deliver another strike but failed. The goblin in front of me grinned at my struggles, the smirk flashing to horror as Emma’s skeleton tackled him. During my efforts, I had failed to notice that the spell shield had faded due to the bombardment from Annie and Emma. Struggling to breathe, I waited until my stamina had returned some before I waded into battle.
The two goblin wizards died seconds after the shield went down. The high damage output but low health was a concern. If Annie followed in the same vein as these goblins, I would need always to keep myself between her and any melee opponents. Each time they had tried to enact a spell, a kick or blow to the head had stopped their casting. Spells were powerful, but in close combat, they could be negated with a strike to the mouth. For most, if you can’t speak, you can’t cast.
The different debuffs were starting to take on an importance in my mind. Snares to control enemies, stuns to stop casting, and I’m sure a myriad of others. Each had a use, and each could turn the tide of battle. It wasn’t always about the amount of damage or health you had. I needed to keep that in mind since my instincts screamed that I just needed to attack every foe head-on. More importantly, these debuffs could affect me as well. A snare could stop me from saving my family, or a stun could leave me standing around while enemies slaughter them. I needed to do better, be better, then just heading straight in and attacking. Before, I wanted to level to be free, now I had a new reason. I was going to keep my family safe.
Clapping his hands Mel’tar climbed to his feet.
“Yes, yes, you won. Now you fight me!” the boss yelled to the excitement of the few goblins left around the arena.
The event list flashed in the corner of my vision. All we needed to do was beat Mel’tar, and we would win the event. I wasn’t sure if we would have to fight the last of the goblins, but compared to their leader, they shouldn’t be that hard.
Roaring like a lion, Mel’tar started to lumber forward, the fat of his belly swinging back and forth as he strode forth. His sight was locked onto Annie, so I pulled his attention to me with my taunt skill. This time I made every effort to contain my voice. If I could stay silent, then I could have the benefits of the ability without the embarrassment. To my chagrin, I remained silent, but I still performed a rude gesture. My gesture was successful in turning the goblins charge in my direction, but to my surprise, his steps kept accelerating. By the time the goblin arena master had crossed half of the field of battle, he was moving so fast his legs were a blur beneath him. Clipping me across my left side, I was flung away in a twirl, my health dipping dangerously.
I was trying to climb to my feet when I heard Emma scream. Some instinct took hold, and I rolled across the ground, the dirt on the stone floor rubbing across my face. My instincts saved me from being flattened by Mel’tar’s flying fat. His body was laying across the ground with arms and legs spread with ducks and stars floating around his head.
Rolling further away from the downed goblin I stood and rushed to the now recovering boss monster. My kick hit the goblin across his jaw but failed to induce the stun debuff as I had hoped. Unfortunately, my blow left me unbalanced, and Mel’tar took advantage of this by grabbing me by my ankle and throwing me away as he stood. It shouldn’t have been possible for the fat goblin to throw me five meters with a single hand, but little in this world seemed to make sense. I managed to land on my feet though I did stumble to my knees from the impact.
While I had been thrown through the air, Emma had been casting her life draining purple bolt as Annie continued to use her favored fireball spell. Robert’s heals caught me whenever I dropped below fifty percent life. I spent most of the fight flipping through the air mostly when the goblin used his charge attack. Even so, the fight itself was not particularly dangerous. We were steadily beating him down, Emma’s skeleton doing almost as much damage as I was. Most of my effort was just spent in using my body as a shield for my friends. I used war cry as it was fading and taunted the goblin any time it looked like he was turning to one of the others. At seventy-five percent of his life, things changed.
Slamming me into one of the walls, Mel’Tar raised his arms and shouted, “I need a timeout, you fight him!”
Pointing at one of the goblins around the edge, he jumped backward, his body flying through the air until he landed before his throne. The jump was more than ten meters, it shouldn’t have been possible, but he did it in an almost casual way. I had just used my taunt skill had just been used, so I was caught without it. This was a problem since the goblin who was taking Mel’tar’s place was running directly for Robert.
“Watch out Rob!” I shouted.
With a panicked look, Robert turned and hefted his mace in preparation for the new goblin’s attack. Annie demonstrated her version of the snare spell with a pulsing golden glow. The golden lights surrounded the goblin’s legs, his movements seeming normal above the hips but below them, his legs slowed as if he was running through syrup. In the group window, Annie’s mana plummeted. Her spell might slow the monster to a greater degree, but it was also far more expensive. The tradeoff was worth it. With the goblin slowed to nearly a standstill I was able to rush past Robert and intercept the goblin. This monster was a warrior, and we were able to kill him quickly once we had him restricted and only aiming for me.
“Good now. Time in!” Mel’tar shouted before his flying body tackled me to the ground.
The next few minutes were filled with yelling as my head swam under the effects of the stun. The only thing in the room I could see was the duck quacking in a circle past my head, the light of the stars hurting my eyes too much to see. When I returned to myself, Robert was being pummeled by the boss, his life all ready below a quarter. Using my taunt failed to drag the goblin off him, but my running tackle seemed to work. While it left me on the ground next to the goblin, a fact he took advantage of by slamming his fists into me, it also let Robert move away.
Scrambling upright I used my war cry since its effect had faded. To my horror, the goblin had only lost five percent from when the boss had called for a time out while the rest of us were suffering from low mana or health. Robert used up some of his precious mana to recover his own health, the act of healing drawing the goblin's attention once again. Crawling up onto his hands and knees the goblin lunged into a staggered run towards Robert which turned into his full speed sprint attack. Unlike me, Robert was able to dodge out of the way. To my surprise, Mel’tar ran past Robert and into the wall at full speed. The stun timer over his head was double the duration of any stun I had seen before.
“Lay into him while he is stunned!” I shouted as I rushed to the boss.
Emma’s skeleton reached the goblin before I did; her minion's bony hands clamped onto the boss. The skeletons weird glowing eyes met mine and Emma’s words came from its skull.
“Be careful, use your taunt only when you need it. He could try and pull more goblins into the fight,” the skull said in its disturbing tones.
I agreed with Emma. If he were willing to cheat once, he would do it again. Though we had fought less than fairly with Emma’s snare, we had at least battled instead of calling a timeout!
When the stun effect faded, the goblin stood and turned to Annie. Her fireballs had done the most amount of damage out of all of us. Every few fireballs had exploded with a more massive explosion and had twice induced a burning debuff on the boss. Leaning forward the boss began his windup run, his legs starting to pump faster as he charged. I couldn’t see Annie being able to dodge out of the goblins way as Robert had. Trying to keep the goblin from stampeding my sister I kicked the side of his knee, and the results were spectacular. Flopping forward, his face sliding across the ground, I watched a broken leg debuff appear over the goblin.
I couldn’t contain my excitement at this development, with the goblin’s leg broken, he wouldn’t be able to flee, and we could kill him with little effort!
“No. Time for timeout, need water. You play with them!” Mel’tar said, his debuffs instantly disappearing as he jumped into the air.
Landing next to his throne he pointed to another goblin who obligingly strode forward only to be snared by Emma. My taunt flew moments later. The crude guttersnipe language coming from my mouth was partly the skill and partly the fact that Mel’tar was suddenly free of debilitating injury. There was nothing fair about this battle, and the entire thing was beyond acceptable. We were running a gauntlet of an arena battle, and he was taking timeouts!
Roaring my rage, I slammed my weapon with a two-handed grip into the goblins head. I was focusing on his bulbous noggin in the hopes of stunning him, but also to release some of my anger. These weaker goblins were not that difficult to fight. They were slightly more fragile than the ones we had fought on the way here. The real issue is that we shouldn’t have to fight them at all. Before the goblin died, I looked around and realized that besides Mel’tar, there was only one goblin left. I had a feeling that sometime before the end of the battle, another timeout would be called.
When the last goblin died, Mel’tar spat some water on the ground and screamed, “Time in now!”
The last time he had done this I had been unprepared. This time I was ready for the jumping green menace. Watching his overweight body flying through the air, I sidestepped and swatted him with my sword as he passed. The impact on the ground left him with another stun debuff, though this was far shorter than his run and slam version.
With him laying there stunned, those of us beating on him were able to deal significant damage. There was a difference between the damage done when a monster could move and when they couldn’t, and the difference was substantial. Beyond being unable to dodge attacks while lying helpless, the damage the boss received was increased as well.
When the bosses' stun faded, his eyes focused on Annie again, and he started his stomp-run routine. It had worked so well before that I decided to see if I could break his knee again. I was unsuccessful, but my follow up taunt had him trying to swing around in a wide turn, his body already halfway to full speed. In a weird display of athleticism and buffoonery, the goblin launched himself into his high-speed sprint, only to slam into the wall.
His life was around twenty-five percent, and when Annie’s fireball knocked him down to twenty-five exactly, he launched himself to his throne again.
“Again?!” Emma shouted, just as frustrated as the rest of us.
Wobbling near his throne Mel’tar pointed at the last goblin and gestured him into the fight.
“Um…fight…yeah…um,” he said, his body swaying uncertainly.
The last goblin was snared by Annie using up the rest of her mana. She started running around the arena, though she stepped wide around Mel’tar. After a few minutes of Emma’s skeleton beating on it, the goblin turned to attack the calcified minion. I jumped in at that point and attacked as Emma pulled her skeleton back. We couldn’t let her pet die. We would need every bit of damage to finish off Mel’tar. Once the goblin was focused on me, I started to walk backward keeping it at range.
“I’ve got as much mana back as I’m going to, let’s do this,” Robert said.
Slamming my sword into the goblin, I attacked while Emma’s goblin paired up with me.
“Watch out for the boss jumping in when this guy dies!” Emma shouted.
Emma’s warning was timely since a particularly precise strike from my sword killed the goblin, forcing Mel’tar back into the fight.
While airborne the boss shouted, “now time in!”
Robert was the target of this particular impact, and he dodged the blubbery goblin handily. Letting lose my war cry and then my taunt I walked forward, trying to conserve as much stamina as possible. We were all on edge as we slowly chipped away at the bosses' health. Without other goblins to call on for help, we were concerned with what Mel’tar would do instead. His running charge was easy enough to handle when I was able to use my taunt to pull him away from my friends. When he slammed into the wall at ten percent life, and the stun appeared, we attacked with every last bit of our stamina and mana.
