Age of Victoria, page 16
“I’ve got you Sir Oinker! I’m going to knight you!” I hollered as I reversed direction after coming out of my roll.
The banter was silly, and I knew it even as I said it, but I just couldn’t resist my whimsy while slamming my blade down into the pig's shoulder between his front leg and neck. Instead of pulling the sword back out and in for another slice, I followed my offensive stance's instincts and continued my motion. Turning away from the sliced pig, I stepped to the side of the downed hog as I pulled my blade free and returned the blood-drenched weapon into the side of the monster. While defensive stance had me huddling up and holding the line against attacks, offensive stance had me swinging, whirling, and chaining attacks together. Sometimes this more aggressive style was able to reduce the damage I took merely by ending the enemy faster or by causing so many debuffs in such a short time that the enemy was laid out too quickly to retaliate.
Learning the details of these abilities was where the real skill lay. When I was fighting another weapon user, and especially a skilled and armored one, then defensive stance was likely to be more useful. On the other hand, brute damage dealing enemies with little defense or skill could be quickly ended with an offensive stance as long as I managed to avoid a major blow which disrupted my rhythm.
When the pig finally died, the battle taking only a few more blows while in his downed and crippled state, I turned back to the primary fight. Annie’s flame wall was still burning strong, but her mana in the party menu said this was likely not the first one she had used. The other two were just watching as the bunnies would throw themselves through the flames and die shortly after. A few managed to make it through the conflagration, but even Emma’s minion was able to end the severely burned animals quickly.
“When these are done, I’m going to have to regain some mana. These walls of fire take a lot of me,” Annie said.
Another thirty seconds was all we had to wait for the swarm of bunnies to end their attack, though Annie’s flames continued to burn. With no further pets attacking, we moved towards the stable master. Before I could attack the boss, he snapped his whip out again and opened another pen. This stable was next to Annie’s fire, and the four-foot tall mantis which exited the pen was not amused. It rushed towards Annie in a flurry of green leg blades and flapping wings.
The sight of a goblin-sized insect caused Annie to scream and flail her arm as she tried to run behind Robert. Annie had never liked bugs and a large one, mouthparts slavering and poking around, as it rushed towards her was sure to worsen her fears. Triggering my taunt skill induced a new way to annoy an enemy. This time I scraped my blade along my shield setting out a screech of metal, but somehow I could internally tell that my skill was not a full success. I had never had a skill fail before, but its failure was as evident to me as when it succeeded.
The lessons learned from fighting the pig and how it related to my stance now came back to confuse me. This creature was probably like a bug in most ways, its armored form was most likely strong against cuts and slicing, but would take extra damage from any type of crushing attack. My weapon was heavy enough that it would probably count as a crushing weapon. But it was also a bladed opponent with agile movements. A more defensive approach would perhaps allow me to defend against its attacks while still dealing some damage. Ultimately I decided to switch to my defensive stance. If I were able to protect against the mantis easily, then I would switch to my neutral stance or offensive stance. It would be easier to build up an attack and reduce defense as needed rather then starting with a strong attack and realizing too late that the monster’s offense was overwhelming.
Before the mantis reached me, I pulled up its information to see what I was fighting.
Shan-Dar Clan
Snicker-Snack - Elite
Rogue - Lvl 5
This opponent is beneath you.
“It’s a rogue! Don’t let it get behind you!” I shouted the moment I saw the monster's class.
Snicker-Snack was a level less than Sir Oinker, but I wasn’t going to underestimate this creature, and it was good that I didn’t. The mantis drew back it’s left claw in a telegraphed overhead swipe while it seemed to be too far away to attack. The swipe seemed to explode out of nowhere as its bladed forearm snapped out and extended its reach by at least half a meter, the bladed arm screeching as it dragged down my shield. Before I could counter-attack the mantis hopped back and spread its limbs as if welcoming me into a hug.
There was no way I would enter into the range of those bladed arms. Stepping forward would just leave me open to a scissor-like attack from both sides. Instead of stepping directly into the middle of the pincer attack, I stepped diagonally to keep my family further away from the mantis and to leave it only one real attack direction. I was worried the beast would ignore the obvious attack vector of my shieldless side, but it understood the protection a large slab of metal would provide. The beast's forearms were bladed, but the upper arms were not. I needed to get in closer and leaving my sword side apparently unprotected was what would get me within reach.
Abandoning the attack on the shield side the mantis reared up and swung in an overhead attack at my right side. The mantis was trying to cleave down on my shoulder like I had Sir Oinker. Blocking with my blade, I stepped inside the creatures reach and pulled my sword in close, attacking its arm on that same side. The attack worked, the bug spewed green and black blood from its almost cleaved shoulder joint, but it didn’t save me from the mantises' retaliation with a bite to my cheek. I screamed shrilly as the mantis drove it’s bladed face pincers into my cheek and lip, the tugging on my face still less disturbing than the feeling my eye burst.
I was saved when Emma’s minion began beating on the mantis from behind using Robert’s mace. I don’t know when Robert gave Emma’s minion his mace, but the skeleton was swinging it like a mad machine, raising the weapon and slamming it down into the limbs of the mantis in a drumbeat of damage. The insect's life plummeted after every strike, and it was doing far more damage then my attack had. When the mantis released my face and tried to turn to the skeleton, I decided to switch to the role the minion had so often played before. Screaming at the insect, I looped my arms around its neck and tucked my skull in under the monsters angular head. My shield and sword made it hard to hold on, but the bug's neck and shoulders were thin, and all I was doing was trying to become a weight around its neck.
At the ten percent mark, the insect went into a wild flailing, its arms almost whistling as they cut through the air behind my back. The insect was unable to turn to attack Emma’s minion, and it was unable to slice me or even bite me with my close in position, though it tried desperately to chew through what tiny bit of the back of my chain mail tunic it could reach. Emma’s minion made a rattling cackle sound as it brought the mace down on the insects back, a spot that I could barely feel through the insect as a dull thump in my own chest.
“Oh…my minion can’t laugh,” Emma said in a very calm voice as I tried to untangle myself from the insect corpse.
Robert’s intermittent healing had landed during my body tackle and had removed the ‘disfigured’ debuff that I had been suffering under, something I was grateful for. I may have acted like a boy from time to time, but that didn’t mean I was opposed to remaining pretty. A hole in the cheek was not attractive.
“Was that what your minion was doing when it made that weird sound?” I asked, while never taking my eye of the stable master who was looking distinctly uncomfortable now that he was out of pens.
“Yeah, I was trying to think of something witty like you did, but I just ended up yelling as I kept hitting it,” she said with an embarrassed look.
Robert took back his mace from the skeleton and said, “focus girls, the boss is still alive.”
I was a bit annoyed by Robert’s tone, but only a bit. We could banter and discuss after the fight. He was right that we still had the stable master to kill.
Chapter 23
Roberts rebuke had me spinning to face the expected onslaught of the stablekeeper but instead he was just standing where he had been, imperiously with hands on hip and whip laying behind him. His small body puffed up in pride and arrogance, his jagged teeth leering in a lopsided grin.
The blood pulsed through my body. The sound of my heart thumping so loudly it should have drowned out everything in the room, but I could still hear my family breathing quickly. We were paused in a nearly silent tableau. My family behind me, prepared to cast spells or heal, me in front with weapon and shield held ready, and the goblin stablekeeper was standing there seeming unconcerned with the force arrayed against him.
All my new instincts screamed to rush forward and attack, and everything told me that I needed to place my body between the enemy and my party. My anger, pain, and frustration agreed, saying that this was a wall I could drive myself against and so burn away my frustrations with the flames of violence. But I held myself back. I resisted my urges. I mastered my instincts and my anger, and I looked.
I looked for traps. I looked for new surprises, and I looked at my opponent. I watched for the twitch of muscle that said he was preparing to strike. I scanned over his form for the subtle shift of stance that said he was cradling an injury, I stared him in the eyes and watched for the sign of an opening.
And I found it.
When it came to me, all the anger I had been holding in, at the world and my own mistakes, urged me to scream forward and cleave the goblin in two. I had never tasted bile in anger before, but I did then. It made no sense, it shouldn’t have triggered such rage, but it did.
The goblin was sweating. He was afraid and bluffing.
I couldn’t sweat. It was refused to me in this new world. I would assume that in a similar situation I might be able to sweat as well, but under the normal circumstances of exercise, it wouldn’t come. Sweating wasn’t even a good thing; it was unpleasant, smelly, and only tolerated as the price of the freedom of movement and adventure. But it had been denied to me in this world, and now this goblin had it, and I raged in my heart because of it. The illogic of it never even occurred to me, but it told me what I could do about it. I could kill this creature. I could hurt it, and so, provide some relief to the injustice the world had done to me.
“It’s sweating in fear,” I growled.
Two beats of my heart. One. Two. That was the entire delay between my words before we collectively lunged at the stable keeper.
I had done more than speak at that moment. I had used my taunt skill to force the disdain I felt into my words. The goblin cracked his arm forward driving the whip towards me as I charged, my shield catching the side of the whip before the tip at the end could crack. To my surprise, the end of the whip was impregnated with fish hooks. Only a couple of pinpricks of metal penetrated, the red threes and fours barely registering to my new understanding on the scale of pain. Heaving backward the goblin tore the hooks free and induced a new debuff.
Debuff - Muck’s Draining Bleed
Bleed damage increases over time.
10% of Bleed damage heals Muck.
Specials:
Effect Stacks.
May only affect one target.
If anyone should be the target of this debuff, it should be me. But this meant we had a deadline. The longer the fight took, the worse the damage would be and the more it would heal Muck. The whip’s initial damage was almost insignificant, even Emma or Annie would be able to weather its blow, but the debuff was another story.
The goblin’s heave caused me to lurch to the side for a moment, but it hadn’t broken my charge. While the boss was off balance from its attack, I slammed my oversized blade down on the goblin’s head aiming for a stun.
“We have to kill him as fast as possible. Use everything!” I screamed, hoping my family had noticed my debuff and its danger.
Triggering my offensive stance, I began to follow the bold lines of violence in my mind.
I had no time to focus on making my reasoning clear. It took all I could to dodge the stable keeper’s blows as I pushed my attacks. He never used his whip in close range, except in using his exper use of the handle like a bobbies’ billy club. Contrary to what I had expected of a whip user, he refused to let me attack with the full length of my weapon. Each time I stepped aside or moved to bring my weapon closer, he would step in and strike at my forearm or even block with his arms directly.
Each of my blows was cutting into the leather arm guards the goblin wore, the thin bar of metal hidden under the cover nicking and pinging at each of my blows. After a few strikes, the goblin started taking minor damage from each of his blocks. Though he took damage, each blocked blow opened me up to his counter-attack; a kick, or a strike to the wrist, and even once my hip. My shield mitigated most of his attacks, the left side of my body effectively a plate of metal that he couldn’t strike through, but he tried to counter this by continually turning to my right side leaving me almost spinning around him as he steadily advanced.
His life was plummeting, and his damage was minimal, but his whip debuff and the corresponding life transfered to him was growing. Soon we would see the tide shift. Just as I felt small pricks of sweat form on my brow, the irony bright and shining in my mind even through the haze of combat, the goblin stable keeper was drilled through by a white-hot ribbon of fire.
The flash of the fire was not bright enough to disrupt my vision, thanks to the limits one human could do to another, but the fist-sized hole drilled through the shoulder of the goblin dropped his life to below twenty percent. Crippled, burning, and blinded debuffs all flashed up above the goblin bosses head, though the blinded debuff lasted for only moments before it faded.
“I used my scarves' effect, but I missed his head,” Annie said.
Somehow Annie was able to make the pout audible in her voice. The sound of my sister pouting because she failed to drill a white-hot flame through a monster’s head and only managing to hit his shoulder suddenly rung out in my mind. This sentence drilled home for me that just as I had changed, so had everyone else. The world was new, the rules had changed, and we were not as we were and never would be again.
I let my existential thoughts flicker past. My motions never hesitating even as the epiphany rode my mind I continued to follow the brilliant lines and the blows that my offensive stance offered. When the bosses eyes flickered to my sister and his arm bunched in preparation to strike Annie with his whip I took a note from the stable keeper and prepared to strike.
As the monster's arm drew back and he shifted his stance to aim for my sister I dropped my arm down and then raised my blade in time with his movements. At the apex of his arm’s retreat to begin his swing, the edge of my blade met his armpit, and the critical strike drove it through, up, and out.
With his weapon arm gone and his other crippled from my sister's lance of flame, the stablekeeper more resembled a practice dummy than an enemy. Almost every strike became a critical and his dodging was clumsy and off balance. Only the fact that he was a boss and had a large amount of health had him lasting for even a few minutes more. Soon though, it was over, the stable keeper was dead.
Glancing at my log, I frowned upon seeing that I was still level seven, though my status screen said I was but a breath from level eight. Since everyone else trailed me in experience, none of them had leveled either. Just like the copper rifle’s before this, I was unable to grasp the whip of the goblin boss. Frowning I shrugged. I had expected it, but I had hoped otherwise. Such a weapon while distasteful would have been immensely useful against slow enemies with large amounts of life. I couldn’t imagine there would be many such creatures, but I wouldn’t pass up such an advantage even if I found it unseemly.
After everyone had healed up, Robert having spent much of his mana keeping me healed towards the end of the fight, I rushed to the newly appeared treasure chest. Even as I tried to get to it first, Annie, giggling, reached it before me. When she reached for the chest, and only one arm won the race to touch it, her giggles faded. The lack of pain from her amputation was a mixed blessing; seeing her realize her amputation after forgetting caused a different pain entirely. But her quickly straightening shoulders said that she would carry through.
The skin on the back of my neck crawled at the sight of her actions. Not because they seemed disingenuous, but because they didn’t. Annie had never had this kind of resilience before. She had never been able to recover from the blows of the world this easily. My sister had inner strength, but she bent with the winds of the world and endured yet remained miserable inside. Now she was like a reed that bent and rebounded, refusing to conform to the shape pressed upon her. This was more of the new world’s subtle mind control, and it was both useful and sickening.
When Annie opened the chest a new window appeared with two options and by the movement and distant gaze of my family, they had a similar window.
Select Final Boss Reward.
Four Rare items or one Heroic item?
Vote Tally: 0 / 4
The word Rare was in a dark red script while Heroic was in a shimmering gold. It seemed reasonable to assume that the Heroic item was better than the four Rare items, but four items together would do more for us as a team than any one item alone could offer. When I voiced my opinion, I was surprised to find that Emma agreed with me, but Robert and Annie opposed!
“With my scarf, I was able to make a huge contribution to that fight, with your ring you were able to take on that Worg, a single Heroic item will make a bigger difference than anything else,” Annie argued.
