Age of Victoria, page 15
Both of Annie’s new spells were large area affecting spells. The wall spell could be useful to control the movements of monsters by blocking off hallways with flames.
“Vick?” Annie said while looking at her feet, “I’m sorry. I was just hurting and upset. I didn’t mean it,”
I was trying not to cry while I fiddled with the leather strap on my shield, my eyes never leaving the rough wrapping as I answered her.
“I know sis. I’m sorry, I’ll do better from now on. I promise,” I said before facing away from the party and back up the tunnel.
Raising my voice, I said, “Everyone ready to continue?” at the sound of assent; I stepped forward and said, “Then let’s get out of here!”
I tried to sound strong and confident, I wasn’t sure how well I managed, but we continued up the tunnel we had been trooping through. These new tunnels seemed to narrow and didn’t open into large rooms as they had before. Odder still, these tunnels were starting to edge upwards while until now they had been slowly dipping further into the earth. The walls had been a mix of rough-cut stone, and stone slabs crudely formed together into dark grey and grungy tunnels. Now, they were being replaced almost entirely by well-formed grey tiles.
While I took note of the change in the tunnel, most of my attention was for our enemies. No longer was I considering a battle at face value. Each goblin we approached I would first inspect to see if they were higher level or of a kind we hadn’t seen before. So far we were only seeing Beast Lords and Worgs, and their level's remained the same at six.
It was getting towards the end of the day, and I was starting to worry that it was getting close to the time to find a place to hole up for the night when the cavern we entered opened up into a large area lined with wooden stalls filled with animals. Some of the pens had Worgs which stared through the loose fitting wooden gates, while other stalls had small bunnies with red glowing eyes and blood caked faces. Standing in the center of the room was a fat goblin, his bulk even greater than the Arena Master. Unlike the Arena Master, who showed the signs of battle, this goblin looked like he had never done a day of work in his life. His leather armor was stained and bulging where his fat pressed around the straps. The only part of his gear which appeared to be well cared for was the whip he carried coiled in his right hand.
When he noticed us at the entrance, he grinned a rotten and gapped tooth smile and stood proudly with his gut hanging forward, and both hands pressed to his hips. His thin, gangly arms and legs were an odd contrast to the almost round body that flowed into a wide layered neck and bulbous head. The only delicate looking part of his body was his ears which formed a sharp point on either side of his head.
Behind the goblin was a swirling portal of darkness like the one we had entered the dungeon through. Focusing on the tunnel, I tried to bring up the window describing the portal, but it failed. We might have been too far away, or exits might not provide similar information that entrances did. Either way, we would need to kill the goblin before we could reach the portal as I doubted he would just let us through.
Focusing on the goblin, I tried to inspect the ugly green brute.
Shan-Dar Clan
Muck, the Stable Keeper - Boss
Beastlord - Lvl 6
This opponent appears to be beneath you.
Right, ‘appears to be beneath you,’ which of course doesn’t actually mean he was easy to kill. The logic for the new world still escaped me, but it always seemed to make some kind of consistent sense if you looked at it sideways. That could have been the efforts of these ‘Old Ones’ which had brought so much death and destruction.
Looking around the cavern, I checked to see if there were other goblins in hiding or traps which could surprise us. Muck, the goblin 'Stable Keeper' didn’t seem to have a Worg pet like the rest of the Beastlords we had fought on the way here, but given the pens were full of animals, I would be surprised if he didn’t call on them during the fight.
“I think this will be like the Arena Master fight. Lots of additional enemies at set percentages of the bosses’ health. I don’t see any other hints at what could go wrong. Any other clues?” I asked.
Annie smiled at me before she answered, “The whip; They are weapons designed to cause pain, not death. We should watch out for it.”
Nodding in agreement, I turned to Robert, “Robert, after you provide your buffs we will rest until full mana, then I will start by gaining his focus. Everyone wait a bit before jumping in. If you see anything, call out. All right?”
Chapter 21
“Maybe we should think about resting for the night,” Robert said.
Robert's suggestion caused me to stutter in confusion for a moment. We were right in front of a boss and the exit. We had only been awake for what had felt like half a day. While we never got physically tired, we could still suffer from the mental strain from fighting and being active. None of us were at that limit, and even Annie gave Robert a confused look at his suggestion.
Seeing the looks, Robert became flustered.
“I just mean, it has been a difficult day, we should be fully prepared for this fight,” he said before looking away.
I could see it on his face: strain, and guilt, and when he looked to Annie, I understood.
“Robert, are you all right?” I asked.
The moment the words left my mouth I knew that I had made a mistake. I had gotten used to thinking that the world had changed and that the old social rules were gone, but they were as much there as we let them, and Robert did not take kindly to an insinuation of weakness. An implication of weakness from a woman was even worse. It didn’t matter that we had been friends since childhood, it might have made it worse since he had suffered teasing for his bookish ways and willingness to be friends with women. Robert became stone-faced and reserved, he pulled up his walls that only Emma seemed able to surpass.
The others noticed Robert's retreat into silence, though I think he thought they were fooled, and Annie sent me a look of recrimination. Emma gave me a half smile and a shake of the head. She would talk to him later and help him recover. I had only seen this same reaction once before when he had discussed the potential of being required to work for the military as a doctor. His uncle’s stories had not skimped on the horrors of wartime medical practice and how a tincture of laudanum and the bone saw were the most common solution for severe ailments.
Robert was a gentle soul, and these were not gentle times.
“No, you're right. We should push on,” Robert said while looking at his mace.
Biting my lip, I looked to the others, but Emma gave a small head shake to let me know to let it go. She would talk to him later and see how he was handling things.
“Very well, we are in agreement. Robert, lead off with the buffs and tell us when you have recovered your mana, then wait for me to grab the bosses attention,” I said.
While Robert used his group buffs, I made sure to be in my neutral stance. I needed to keep the different trade-offs in mind when it came to the stances. Forgetting the mobility limitation of the defensive stance had been the main cause of Annie’s injury, the rest had been bad timing. When Robert signaled that his mana had recovered, we moved in formation into the room and towards the grinning goblin boss. I was leading with Robert behind me and Annie and Emma to either side, Emma’s newly summoned minion standing slightly behind me and to my left.
Once we had moved towards the center of the room, the goblin pulled his right arm back letting the coiled whip unwind behind him. Before I could taunt the boss, a massive clang sound came from a grate closing over the entranceway. This was becoming another repeating pattern in our new world, boss fights had locked in areas that couldn’t be escaped from.
The goblin stable master snorted and spat a green phlegmy mess in front of himself and then hollered at us and snapped his whip to the side.
The leftmost stall opened at the sound of the whip, and the largest worg yet stepped forward from his pen. Light blue eyes and grey-furred the beast stepped forward menacingly before it’s scruff raised in a deep-throated growl. The monster’s lips pulling back along yellowed teeth as it eyed us. Yanking back its head it howled in a ferocious roar and a buff appeared above both the goblin and worg’s head. The buff over the worg was of two people connected by a chain while the goblin had a picture of a person with a shield over them. Before I could work out what the buffs meant the worg was rushing forward into my own taunting growl.
The worg's head was at the same height as my shoulder, and when it tried to bite at my face, I was only barely able to move my shield between us. When the worg pulled its head back to attempt another bite, I clipped it on the side of the jaw with a forehand swing of my sword. It was an awkward swing, a stab or overhand slice would have been better, but the speed of the animal had left me with only instinctual reactions. To my surprise the goblin was just standing at the back of the room and watching the fight with his hands resting on his hips.
Why the goblin was just watching I couldn’t guess, but it made the fight a great deal simpler. Our party excelled at fighting single targets. With me ‘tanking’ and Robert healing, it left Emma and Annie to decimate the target. With multiple foes, I had found it difficult to pull the various enemies attention to me, though the difficulty had increased when Emma or Annie had attacked the wrong opponent.
The worg was quick, and it attacked in ways I was not comfortable with. When you thought of a giant wolf, the thought of being scratched wasn’t the first concern. The wolf's yellow teeth and its agile assault was a slightly more prominent worry. That being the case, a wolf -or in this case a worg- was more suitable to pack hunting. Pack tactics dictated attacking from multiple angles until a pack member was able to slice an ankle, break a limb, or latch onto a neck. Cripple then kill was the preferred strategy for pack animals. A single wolf-like creature, even a large and fast one, was far less effective against a prepared shield, a sword, and a well-placed kick.
After a few seconds of battle, I used my warcry skill, and this was the signal for Annie and Emma to begin casting at the well-angered worg.
Annie and Emma were extremely effective with their spell damage, the worg’s health quickly chipping away. Annie would cast a spell, and a large red number would appear above the worg’s head while Emma’s spells were clicking away with a small amounts every few seconds. Emma’s minion and I were doing small but steady damage. While I was having difficulties hitting the worg, it was having problems hitting me in turn. The skeleton was trying to attack the worg, but mostly it was hanging off the worg’s back and annoying it. Emma once explained that it was easy to control her minion but she felt strangely disconnected from reality while doing so. She had only the dimmest sense of touch through her minion, and she didn’t experience any pain from it being injured. I had been worried that continually throwing herself at enemies while controling her pet would lead to her forgetting and attacking as herself, but she found that almost laughable. Her response had been ‘do you confuse your feet for your hands?’ which didn’t completely remove my fears but did reduce them.
Only Robert had little to do in this fight. He spent most of it just spot healing me for the rare few times the worg managed to avoid my shield.
This fight was going well and paradoxically, that was concerning me. I was waiting for the goblin to do something. Its casual stance, and watching of the fight was worrying.
Eventually, we managed to end the worg’s life. Before we could turn our aggression to the goblin, he snapped his whip out, and another pen door opened.
Instead of the first pen which contained the worg, this time the third pen opened. From within a wild boar like animal stepped out. This wasn’t a boar despite its superficial appearance. Boars didn’t usually have three pairs of legs and bright green moss-like hair. The double set of tusks were also a concern. Ducking its head and focusing it’s small black eyes on me the pig-like creature snorted three times. Above the beast and the stable master the pair of buffs from before appeared, the goblin boss resumed his normal arrogant stance, and the pig decided to aim for me. His preference for me might have had something to do with me using my taunt skill and screaming out ‘come here breakfast bacon!’
When the pig glowed with a yellow halo for a moment, I should have dodged. My mistake was to duck behind my shield and brace for the charge. A pig that large, so large its head was even with my chin, was a lot of ham moving at high speed. The pig contemptuously used its tusks to shove my shield aside at the same time it began to stomp my lower body before it passed over me. One of its piggy feet stomped down on my shin bone as I fell to the side and snapped it with a horrific sound. The oinker slowed as it reached the far wall near the entrance then ponderously turned and lined up with me again. By the time it had managed to turn around, I was on one knee and trying to get back to my feet even though I knew that my trailing leg wouldn’t support my weight. In the lull, I focused and asked for the information on the tusked beast.
Shan-Dar Clan
Sir Oinker - Pet - Elite
Warrior - Lvl 6
This opponent is beneath you.
Sir Oinker!
I was almost apoplectic at this. Attacking our world was bad enough, but to mock our empire by claiming knighthood for a pig? Roaring my anger at the disrespect, I held my shield and sword out, widening my stance and trying to make myself look as big as possible. The mutated pig snorted at my display and pawed at the ground before charging. At this point I didn’t care about an injury, I cared about causing pain. When the pig reached me, I didn’t try to dodge or to block with the shield. Instead, I aimed the sword tip for the beady little eyes and drove forward with the entire weight of my body. My sword drove into the pig's bulbous skull through the eye socket causing a sickening sound of squealing and pain. Unfortunately, moments afterward the sword was twisted out of my hands and a pig was stomping over my body, its hooves impacting on my chest and legs as it passed over me. I could taste blood in my lungs, and my health was blinking in my vision before Robert’s large heal hit me and returned me to almost half of my health. While my health was half full, I was still suffering from a bleeding debuff and two debuffs for my broken leg bones.
Rolling over onto my stomach I shifted to watch the pig who was shaking its head around trying to dislodge the sword from its face. While it was suffering from a blinded debuff, its life was still far higher than my own. Before I raised myself up into a crawling position -what I was planning to do from there I didn’t know- I heard the sound of a whip snap out and another pen door opening.
Chapter 22
The pig was injured, not fatally, but it was mostly out of the fight while trying to remove my sword from its eye. The just-opened pen would release a new enemy, one that would focus on my family, and that would be the end of them. Triggering my ring I used its healing effect. The initial burst of healing brought my health up nicely and the regeneration that would land every few seconds would get me closer to full life and reduce Robert’s need to heal me. I still needed my sword in order to draw the attention of the new enemy.
“I’ve got this, kill the pig!” screamed Annie behind me.
Before I could question her, I heard the sound of expanding gasses and a burst of heat washed over my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I watched the goblin stable master scramble away from a wall of flame that sat in front of the pen's opening. From within the fire, white rabbits with faces red with gore tried to jump through the flames. Focusing on a burning rabbit, I grabbed its information and turned back to the pig.
Shan-Dar Clan
Vorpal Bunny - Pet - Elite
Warrior - Lvl 1
This opponent is beneath you.
With them being level one, Annie should be able to destroy those bunnies as long as the fire lasts. Somehow, I had a sense that we had been very fortunate. I needed to keep my ego and anger in check, the naming of the pig was almost a taunt for me all on its own. The stable master was again standing with his hands on hips and looking around proudly, but the appearance was somewhat marred when the leather armor he was wearing was charred and smoking. What concerned me was that his health was still full, his walk through the flames had been painful but hadn’t damaged him.
With a crunching noise my leg healed, the bone violently rearranging itself inside my leg and leaving me gasping. Robert’s heal and my ring had been enough to fix the broken bone debuff. With a wobble, I stood. I strode up to the pig, which was still violently whipping itself around while blood sprayed from its thrashing head. I waited until the sword was near and then yanked it free. The resulting piggy squeal was upsetting in multiple ways, from the fact I was causing it pain, to the idea that I was going to cause even more. Without the distraction of the impromptu sword-horn, the pig was now focused on getting revenge on me.
The bleeding debuff had done a lot of damage, but Emma’s poison debuff had taken the bulk of the pig’s life. I seemed to have angered the six-legged creature enough that it wasn’t worrying about the others, but I used my taunt just in case. With my sword hand pulling my nostril up and a loud oinking sound, the pig's attention was solidly locked onto me.
The pig squinted its ruined eye, the lid barely closing around the gaping hole before it started to paw at the ground again in preparation to charge. Giving the pig another chance to stomp my body into the ground seemed ill-advised, so I charged towards the pig. Instead of aiming for the thick-boned skull, a spot which was usually an easy critical strike, I went for the dainty piggy hoofs.
Switching to the offensive stance, I rolled to the side of the pig and sliced at the three legs as they stampeded by. The front leg collapsed as my sword cleaved through it, but the middle and back leg took up the weight. The middle leg was deeply gashed, but the hind limb was only lightly injured from my swipe. My roll had reminded me of doing cartwheels as a little girl and had me laughing over the sounds of Annie’s firewall. I was starting to understand Annie’s enjoyment of her new abilities. Being able to do amazing things, physically perform actions I never could have done before, was freeing. I had always lacked strength. I had always been small and dainty, though I played rough and tried to be like the boys, now I felt like I was a burly strongman swinging a slab of metal through the air to defeat my foes.
