“Let’s eat some rations before we head out.” I said, gently shaking Inkler. He cracked an eye at me at the mention of rations, and got off his back so that I could pull out the food. It was more of those compressed bars of food that we had during our initial trip into the Underdark, but that was fine. Stone sculpting let me create a bowl for Inkler to have some water, and I gave him a healing potion in it as well. He seemed a little leery of it at first, but once he lapped up a bit and felt the healing in his paws, drank the rest rather rapidly.
“While we rested I heard at least one drow group hunting nearby, so we will have to be careful. If they find us, throw caution to the wind and run, got it?” Inkler gave me a stare as if he didn’t think I could keep up with him. “Ok, let’s get going then.” I said, opening up our shelter and closing it again after we exited. We headed off in our original direction, travelling parallel to the road for a while. Nearly an hour of boring travel later, and we came across a forest.
The trees that grew looked like weeping willows that never evolved leaves. Instead they had some of the same glowing algae that the pillars had, giving the entire forest a creepy blue glow. The oddest part was that the branches were swaying back and forth, though there was no breeze whatsoever.
“Creepy trees. Inkler, keep close. I don’t think those branches are going to support you.” I mentioned as we entered. There was very little undergrowth, but we still altered course so that we would intersect the road before too long. Something about this forest just gave me the heebie jeebies. Like we were being watched. I think Inkler felt it too, as he was nearly plastered to my side, eyes constantly on the move. A sudden crunch from the left confirmed what we were feeling. We both turned to see a beetle being eaten by one of the oddest bugs I’ve ever seen. The body was arched, with the tail and head in the air. Behind the head, it resembled a caterpillar, with a bulbous black body covered with glowing spots that did a fantastic job mimicking the algae. The head was narrow, and it had a long, slightly curved proboscis that it was repeatedly punching through the armor at the top of the beetle’s head. The legs were long and thin, blending in perfectly with the hanging branches.
“That road’s looking better and better.” I muttered to Inkler who chuffed in agreement. “At least we know there was something watching us.” Ten agonizing minutes later and we were back on the road, breathing a sigh of relief. We kept our guard up, but it was much easier since there was a wide path with no cover for the assassin bugs. As we moved closer to where we hoped Lucifer’s territory was, the forest was gradually shifting. Instead of weeping willows, the trees transformed into a more maple like build, but they still lacked leaves. Bats became far more common, feasting on the odd shaped fruits the trees grew. Bright pink, they looked like oversized raspberries and smelled sickly sweet. The devs got fairly lazy here, and simply imported a fantasy version of the flying fox. Huge, docile, and loving sweets, these bats simply watched us with oversized eyes as we passed.
Of course, you can’t have prey species without a predator, unless you count the capybara. Those get along with everything. I could see the drow influence on the ecosystem, as there was a tree version of the funnel web spider. They would hide and leap out at the unsuspecting bats, striking quickly and retreating as their venom did the work. Their front legs were modified, and had fangs on them, giving the spiders much longer reach than others. Once pierced, a bat took anywhere from three to seven seconds to become completely paralyzed. Unable to resist such a tempting poison, I claimed a few spiders with an arbalest bolt and the occasional light spell to back it up. The spiders were at level 65 to 70, and after several hours of intermittent harvesting I had jumped up to level 58. I also ended up with 28 vials of paralytic venom and 32 spools of spider silk.
The forest ended, and it was too perfect to be anything but designed that way. Perfectly perpendicular to the road, it might as well have been a line on a map it was so straight. Fifty feet away was a wrought iron fence, topped with a sharpened fleur-de-lis. If mystic vision was anything to go by, then it was enchanted heavily enough that I wanted no part of touching it. Across the road was an arched gate, with the left side slightly open. On the other side the road stopped, replaced by a massive graveyard. We entered, and I got the popup I was expecting.
“I guess we have some hunting to do Inkler. The notice says we need four out of five emblems, but I’m sure we will get a small bonus for getting the complete set. Sound good to you?” Inkler gave me a toothy smile and started swiping his tail back and forth. “Excellent. Go ahead and go invisible, I’ll draw them out. For the first battle, go ahead and start it off with your reality slash. At least until we know the enemy strength.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
While Inkler prepared, I took a look around the graveyard. The headstones were scattered about, but they were much different than what I was used to. The vast majority of them were pedestal types, with a wide variety of statues on them. There were angels, some with arms in supplication, some with weapons ready for battle, while others had weapons in some sort of parade rest. Gargoyles were another favorite, each more grotesque than the next. Then there were the demons. All clad in armor and carrying weapons designed to cause the maximum amount of carnage, they were the least popular of the statues. Still, roughly one in three pedestals were lacking statues, and they didn’t have any rubble around the bases either. On high alert, I carefully made my way through the graves looking for an enemy.
“Gyah!” I cried out in pain as three lines of pain slashed down my back, dropping my health by a small portion. The more worrying part was the notification though.
I spun around, but there were no enemies. The only thing in the graveyard that I could see were the statues. THE STATUES! Studying it from the corner of my eye, I realized that the gargoyle I had just passed was looking in a different direction. In addition, there was a drop of blood on the right claw. I drew my weapon, and slowly turned so that I could unleash the maximum amount of torque with my next attack. I focused the mana into the head of my hammer, concentrating it down into a point instead of just letting it flow into the head like normal. “First one’s yours Thanatos, [Mana shockwave]!” I cried out, spinning back and smashing the gargoyle in the face as it tried to evade. The blow knocked it off the pedestal, and let me get an identification on it.
Screeching in anger, the small creature leapt at my face, looking to claw out my eyes. I ducked under the overhand blow with ease, ready to smash it with a counterattack when I took a stone wing to the face. Stumbling backwards, I was wide open for when the little bastard started spinning and slashing, getting me three good slashes across my stomach before coming to a stop. Just before it could leap at me once again, Inkler came through and slashed through one of its wings.
That attack gave me the opening I needed, allowing me to smash it in the face again, sending it reeling. One more charged attack shattered the creature’s head, dropping its life down to critical levels. “Oh you gotta be kidding me!” I groaned as it sat back up without a head. “Damn constructs, gotta smash the core. At least their senses are dulled without their heads.” Smashing it a few more times with regular blows to conserve mana ended the creature, and I got a notification that my attribute point had been returned.
“Alright, time to find the weaknesses on these guys.” I muttered to myself, searching the body for anything I could exploit. There was nothing obvious on the back, and the head was out as well. “What’s this?” Lifting an arm, I noticed a hexagonal area. It was far too perfect, so I tapped at it with my blade. The thin stone easily shattered, revealing a dull core beneath with a crack through it. “Ok, now we need to figure out if it is always here or if it moved around.
“See this shape Inkler? This is probably the weakness, but I don’t know where it will be. We will have to check around on all the statues, but from a distance in case they try to attack.” Inkler stuck his head forward and sniffed a bit, before immediately sneezing several times.
The next several hours were grueling. We tried to check every single gargoyle from a distance, and would be able to pierce the core with an arbalest bolt on nearly one in four. These were sacrificed to Thanatos, as I got a bonus 20 favor for killing them at full health. The rest had the cores hidden in some way, and we were forced to battle. I was able to loot the cores from these gargoyles, though they came up as magic cores and not golem cores. Smaller than the golem cores, they also lacked any of the runic writing that was meticulously etched on the golem cores. Personally I figured they were natural evolutions, and the golem cores were simply someone’s attempt at recreating it in a way they could control. The attribute siphon attack seemed to require them attacking from stealth, so at least that wasn’t an issue. Inkler couldn’t do much damage, and couldn’t really draw aggro as well so I was forced to battle one on one. The thing that was saving me all this time was that I could open with a magical attack from a distance. Dark and light magics did minimal damage, but the pressure wave from the explosion of the oblivion sphere caused massive damage to the stone beings.
By the time the last one fell, I had gained four levels and had maxed out the elite kills requirement for Thanatos. I ended up sacrificing several that didn’t fall in one shot, but I did take my total favor earned for Thanatos up to 1,209. “You know, I knew something like this was going to happen, but it’s still annoying.” I mentioned to Inkler. Once all of the gargoyles had died, each of the demons stepped down off of their pedestals and started patrolling. The only one that hadn’t moved was the larger one inside a triple circle of angels. The inner circle faced the demon with weapons drawn. The middle circle also faced the demons, arms raised in supplication. The outer ring faced outward, weapons drawn. The animated demon statues did avoid the angelic statues, and I wondered if they were all alive at this point or not.
“We gotta take them down as fast as we can Inkler, and can’t let the middle ring of angels die.” I hate timed quests. They go against everything that the class ambusher would do. Now I had to enter battle, taking out demons while hoping that I can stumble on their weaknesses in the middle of battle, and recognize exactly what I hit. Growling in frustration, I targeted the nearest demon and blasted the back of his knee with an oblivion sphere.
