Society Standard Year 558, Month 11
“You want to take the Redcloak test, and help people grind up CS while you do?” said the Helper.
“Redcloak test? I want to face the remaining Devil in this area to test my new build, and I’ll use up too much Power before reaching them if I go alone. What’s that got to do with any other test?”
“If you beat all of the Devils here solo, your Cloak of the Condemned gets upgraded. And that upgrade is required to become one of the Fallen whose job it is to actively fight the Demons in Area 4. The Redcloaks are sort of the officers of the Fallen. But you’re telling me you haven’t even been that far yet?”
“I honestly haven’t. In the main game, I guess I never realized how big a deal it was to kill Elites solo for most people. I mean, Bonemaster and the Count weren’t even a challenge.”
“Hmm. So, when do you want to do this?”
“Not any time very soon,” I said, “There’s…something else I’m grinding for besides Crimson Spheres at the moment. I want some time to take care of that before I beat the Third Devil and reenter the Maze. Let’s say shortly before the turn of the year in the Society. How about, CHT Month 12 Day 29, 1900?”
“That should work. I’ll spread the word about the event.”
Society Standard Year 558, Month 12, Day 31
The raid on the crypt turned out much more elaborate than the escort through Inferno Castle. Before we started into the Graveyard Zone, the Helper organized those who had come along into two groups; one that would hang back and slowly clear as much of the entire area as they could, and another who would join me and the Helper in pushing toward the crypt. Probably, this was because as you got closer to the crypt, you started encountering Wraith enemies that were worth 20 CS each, so those who could handle more difficult normal enemies could profit greatly. These Wraiths were the reason I hadn’t simply used Invisibility to infiltrate the crypt—they, as well as all enemies you could call “ghosts” had the inherent ability to see invisible players. Also, the helper explained to me that until the Devil, I shouldn’t lift a finger against the other enemies unless it was necessary to bail someone out. CS always allocated themselves to the player who dealt the final blow, so it’d really cost someone if I stole a kill, even accidentally.
Well, that was fine by me. There were about 10 of them, and during my test against them, taking them on alone it took me 40% of my Power to deal with all of them, and about 2/3rds counting healing myself up afterward. (I had determined not to use any Recover scrolls for the test.) This time around I’d made quite a few more scrolls besides, and could have used them to push through to the Third Devil, but I wanted to save them for the Maze which contained no such facilities as Inferno did.
So, first the larger group went in, fighting the large group of zombies that assailed those who trespassed the graveyard at the very start. Then the second group went forward, clearing an even deeper path toward the crypt. Finally, the Helper and I followed, making sure no one was having too much trouble.
In not long at all, the entrance to the crypt came into view. It was protected by a sickly green barrier of necrotic energy, that would only be dispelled by dispatching all the Wraiths. At one point, some of them did get into trouble against a group of three of them, so I used a Gatling spell (even at that pace, my cantrips had required at least 3 Gatlings of 30 seconds each to fire enough to kill them, so I knew I wouldn’t killsteal) to draw their aggro.
After that, the group with us claimed their collective 200 CS without much further incident. Over the battle, I noticed that out of about the ten or so players there, three of them had Captain Bonemaster’s Sigil on their cloaks. I also noticed that most of them, Sigil or not, clearly were not using Auto mode for basic attacks, or most other attacks. I felt decidedly smug about this.
“All right, showtime.” Without further ado, I entered the crypt. Inside was mostly empty space, and large enough that it seemed much like a boss arena. I hadn’t known for sure there was no more dungeon than this, and I hadn’t needed them for the last two, but this time, before stepping forward, I took the time to cast my buffs. Most prominent were Haste (Circle 5, and it stacked with Fleetfoot) and See Invisible (Circle 6, but one of the less expensive spells of that class.) I also cast a few more minor buffs to up my defense and attack, then strode forward.
The Third Devil, it seemed, had indeed been invisible, currently in leisurely repose at the far end of the room. I was expecting maybe a more powerful ghost, but this was a Lich I was dealing with. Caster vs. Caster—good thing I had gotten my buffs established early because now I could go straight to the alpha strike.
The moment he began to move, I immediately began calling Circles. By acting quickly, I was able to get off a succession of Saint Pillars to interrupt his own casting attempts. Haste helped a lot with this, but in a very short time he got fed up with trying to get magic going against me and drew a wicked, long, waved sorcerous blade.
Even with my buffs I was still only slightly faster than he was, augmented by his Lich race and probably by his status as the strongest Devil in the Perdition area. On top of that, his unnatural undead strength meant that my Tail Sweep probably wouldn’t do jack-crap to keep him out of melee. But that was okay. I had other plans.
As he kept trying to reach me in melee, I kept pinging Second Circle Holy Light spells off of him. They didn’t damage him at all, but the continuous barrage would significantly deplete the magic in his armor, which meant what I had in mind would devastate him all the more and perhaps even Armor Break him.
My latest application of Fleetfoot wore off, and the lich finally got close enough to strike at me with his sword with what seemed to be a Dark Slash technique. That would seriously hurt if it landed, but the moment Fleetfoot deactivated, I cast a Phase Shift.
Under the assumption that I’d be facing yet another undead enemy for the Third Devil, just days before the raid I had crafted several scrolls of the Circle 6 Judgment spell, the next step up from Saint Pillar. I had originally planned to just spam them, but if I had tried that on the Third Devil, he would have likely been able to get an Interrupt on me before I could finish the chant (that was mandatory to read even when casting from a scroll.) On top of that, Liches had a racial attribute that gave them resistance to all non-Holy spells, so my usual combo wasn’t going to cut it this time. Instead, I grabbed one of the scrolls from the belt clip that represented my Quick-Use Inventory, and invoked it. Because I was attacking, the Phase Shift ended—and the Lich took extreme damage. A 5 digit number appeared in the blazing shaft of light, and the yellow bar underneath his Health and Power bars became totally empty. This along with the word “BREAK” appearing with the damage number indicated the attack had indeed sapped the last portion of magic in his armor and it could no longer add to his protection save for its nonmagic value—which for everything but medium and heavy armor types, which he was not wearing, was always very small or nearly nonexistent. Not to mention, his health meter was already much less than half full.
“Not one much for banter, are you?” he said, advancing on me desperately, trying to bring that sword to where it could attempt again to kiss my neck, “You didn’t even let me say my introduction.”
“I don’t need to be introduced to Elites that I kill, or insects that I tread on, thanks,” I said during a cooldown in between declarations of “Saint Ray!” which were now damaging him, gradually edging him toward critical health. “But banter can be fun sometimes.”
“You are much unlike the others I have faced these past years, whether they went on to join the Demons or the Fallen. Interesting.”
“Can’t say the same about you. But that’s okay, if all the Demons beyond here are as good as that Spiir guy who got me before, I’ll be entertained well enough later.”
“Take care what you wish for. The Thirteen Devils will provide all the challenge you desire and more.” By the time he said this, the cooldown on Phase Shift had finally expired and I’d cast it again. He seemed to realize that I was up to the same again, because he went on, “Death is but a state of matter here, as changeable as all the rest. Remember that,” just as I invoked my second Judgment scroll. And for the third time, the only thing left of the Elite NPC was a pile of ash and a green potion—though this pile was larger than the previous two.
But a moment later, there was a brilliant flash emanating from my own body—or rather from my Cloak of the Condemned. I picked up the green potion, then switched to 3rd person view. Just as the Helper had said, it was now red, and the three Sigils on the back were as black as it had been before. Also, on my Equip Screen, it was now listed not as the Cloak of the Condemned, but the “Cloak of the Lost.” And the magic rod that went with it had changed the color of its orb to a similar shade of red and looked much less shoddy. It was now listed as the “Rod of the Lost.”
The Helper was waiting for me outside the crypt, and the others were battling the fewest number of zombies I had ever seen in the area. “Congratulations! You’ll be heading back to the Maze now?”
“Not right now. I still have a bit more grinding I want to do—not for CS, there’s something else I really want to complete. It shouldn’t take me much longer. We can set up a run to the Wellspring portal for the day after tomorrow.”
My natural Beast resonance, which gradually went up whenever I used Naga racial based attacks—fighting like a snake, in other words—was currently at 99%. It got harder to increase the higher it got, but I was confident that one more full day’s play would be enough to finally unlock the Secret Skill.
And as it turned out, it barely even took another half hour of grinding before a small message window appeared in front of me: <SECRET SKILL UNLOCKED: DEVOUR>. Apparently you didn’t actually need to spend any points to gain a Secret Skill once you fulfilled its draconian conditions.
Back in Inferno City, I headed for Fallen territory, and as I got near, I noticed that other players I came across seemed in small ways deferent to me, no doubt as a result of my newly upgraded threads. They seemed careful not to get close enough that they might get in my way, and one or two actually nodded at me as I passed by them. That was the thing about the Game, whether here, in the Society Cluster, or anywhere else: power and skill, and proof of it, begot respect.
Before checking my new skill, I took the opportunity to finally get the potion each of the Devils had dropped appraised. I had lost the two before when Spiir had killed me, and in fact the only item other than the robe and rod that I had kept after death was the key to the front gate of Inferno Castle. And as I had suspected, the one I now obtained was a Restore Power potion. In the main game, they were impossible to craft and dropped so seldomly that even a relatively small one like this, suitable for restoring about half the meter of a level 50 player, would fetch huge prices on the rare occasions they were bartered. This tiny bottle represented enough Power for an entire extra cast of Dimension Render, and likely a little more besides.
In case it wasn’t obvious, I was incredibly nervous about the Secret Skill. But finally, after I decided where I’d be resting next, I brought up my racial skill tree.
Devour
Some call it the ultimate Beast technique. This is debatable, but what is certain is that the art of swallowing defeated opponents whole to regenerate oneself can only be mastered by those who fully embrace the ways of the Beast, who are prepared to commit to a lifestyle of “kill or be killed,” and who have a need for power—and Power—insatiable enough that they are willing to go to extreme measures to sate it.
Target: any Zeroed Out enemy
Activation Cost: None
Activation Duration: 1 minute (interruptible for 45 seconds)
Cooldown: Variable
Effect: Grants “Digesting” status condition to user. Kills target.
Digesting: The affected will gradually recover HP and Power equal to 50% of the maximum HP and Power of the Devoured target if an Elite NPC, 100% of their max HP and Power if a player or Master or higher NPC. Recovery takes place over the entire duration of the Digesting effect, and the user will be Encumbered by the mass of their prey until the final 30 minutes of Digesting.
Digesting Durations: 30 minutes for Small targets, 1 hour for Medium, 2 hours for Large. The affected character is also Encumbered until 30 minutes before the end of this effect. Massive enemies cannot be targeted by this skill. Devour cannot be used while Digesting is active.
As I read the entry, at first my heart sank, but then it pounded. In many situations, it would be incredibly risky to use. But if used correctly, the Devour skill would change the game for me like few potential gains could. There were very, very, very few ways to reliably recover Power in the Game, and other than resting, they were all at least as difficult to access as this Secret Skill was, and most that I knew of were in several ways harder to. Well, I’d have to be careful in environments like Perdition—I was willing to bet that using this on Undead targets or others with natural Decay resonance would have negative repercussions.
Now I was so eager to get a move on and return to the Maze that I could barely return to the Game the next morning to continue adding to my stockpile of scrolls. And when I led another group—many of whom had participated yesterday—I was so antsy that I had to make real effort to wait for all of them to go on first, since if I used the Wellspring Portal, my protection would no longer apply to the group and the Count would immediately spawn there.
In fact, the last person to go before me refused to take the plunge. “Go ahead,” he said, “I want to take a crack at getting the Sigil.” He was a Halfling Alchemist who had chucked around Holy Water bombs like they were going out of style, and who’d had a solid enough mobility game last night that he had accounted for four of the Wraiths nearly all by himself. “Out of curiosity,” I said, “have you tried the Great Maze before? And how far did you get?”
“A few times, and I haven’t gotten further than the 5th zone. Been trying to up my game here for a while now. If I can beat the Count I’ll know I’ve succeeded.”
“Fifth zone? I only got to the first Rest Area past the start. What do you mean zone?”
“Oh, you haven’t gotten far enough to fully work out how the Maze works. Wow, that’s kind of epic and an epic fail at the same time; that you’re good enough to be a Redcloak but got killed in the Maze so soon.”
“I’ll be getting my revenge this time,” I said, slightly annoyed, “so, zones?”
“The Maze, each instance of it, is a giant circle. There are roughly a thousand starting circles at the very outer edge. They all connect to their own discrete sections along the perimeter, and the only way to get to a deeper portion of the Maze is through a rest area. As you go deeper and deeper, the number of Rest Areas keeps getting cut in half again and again until there’s only a few left directly around the center. To get there, you have to win through a Rest Area about 7 times, I think. So, we tend to call each space between Rest Areas Zones. At the start is Zone 1, after the first Rest Area is Zone 2, and so on.”
“Hey, thanks a lot. Good luck to you against the Count.”
“And to you against the Maze.”
I positioned myself so that I was on the edge of the Wellspring, peering down into its depths. Then, one last time, I turned back to the halfling, gave him a slight wave, and plunged in.
I found myself in a room that was much the same as the last time I’d entered the Maze. This time, I declined the explanation, and immediately headed in to the first part of the Maze. I didn’t take as long to find the first Rest Area either, though before entering I kept exploring around to see if I could find equipment like last time. No such luck, so I entered and the wall with the panel to trigger matchmaking slid into place behind me. With the enhanced stats from the Cloak of the Lost, that fight was even easier than last time. I didn’t test the Devour skill on them—the poor guy certainly didn’t deserve that for starters, and I used so little power to beat them that resting to full strength would only take 30 minutes.
Once I’d recovered my full power, I cast my standard buffs—except for Haste. It was the only 5th Circle or higher buff I used, and I didn’t want to waste a moment of it, so instead I had a scroll for it in my Quick Use clip. And another one for Invisibility, which I invoked. I’d waited till here because I suspected Spiir might not show up in the starting circle.
And sure enough, less than a minute after I had, he appeared, and the ways out of the Rest Area closed. “Dismiss invisibility!” I said, at the safest distance I could manage, trying to seem nonchalant leaning my hand against the wall, “What’s up? Gotta hand it to the Maze, your response time was legit.”
“Oh yes, it was not so long ago that I last struck you down, was it?” said the diminutive Spiir, “though you’ve changed your build, or at least your look, quite a bit since then. Am I to understand that you again invoked Invisibility in the Maze simply to draw me out?”
“I wasn’t led to believe that there was a way to ask politely for a rematch. And there’s no way I’d ever defeat you in the Maze proper.”
“My, you’re being quite polite even so, relatively speaking. I was given to understand that you’re more the type to attack immediately, without any courtesy before beginning.”
“Well,” I said, drawing myself up getting ready, “you did kill me before. That tends to elicit a certain amount of respect from me. Plus, you seem like the type who has strong views on fair fights, so I thought I’d humor you just this once.”
“Ha! So you can be taught manners after all. But if you do intend to use such cowardly measures in the greater Maze, you’ll have to best me first!”
“That’s another thing,” I said, watching him warily as he went into his own stance, my left hand gripping the Haste scroll, “I am not a coward. A coward wouldn’t be facing you this way. I am a sneak, thank you very much. And it’s time I made you answer for your insults.”
I wrenched the Haste scroll from my clip. The moment I did, he charged straight toward me, but I invoked the scroll just in time to evade him and circle around, keeping plenty of open ground behind me. But as I’d expected, that alone wasn’t enough to grant me enough of an advantage to cast enough offensive spells to take him down. Rather, I was barely able to even match Spiir’s speed, and for the next few seconds I struggled to get the next item I’d need out. This one wasn’t from my Quick Use slots, but in another small pouch on my belt opposite it. It was roughly the size and shape of an MS deck box, because this was where my Combat Deck was held on my person, and in order to make a battle plan that was certain to work against Spiir, I needed to invoke a particular Spell Card.
I had made sure to slot that card at the top of the ten cards in my Combat Deck, but even so getting it out while constantly evading the feral, constant, yet calculated assaults of Spiir was no easy thing.
The particular card I drew out contained the Spells Disrupt Barrier and Disrupt Protection. In MS, the first spell would Unreveal[1] all of your opponent’s Barrier and Ward spells, and the second would do the same to all your opponent’s spells that prevented their own spells from being fizzled (removed from active play.) Not bad, but their effects in the Combat Deck were far more important. Disrupt Protection in particular temporarily nullified all passive defensive effects on a single target—not including resistances due to Elemental Resonance, but including effects from equipment. And given how much he was invested in promoting fair fights above all, casting it was absolutely necessary to guarantee the next part of my plan would work.
“Spell Invocation: Disrupt Protection!” I began the invocation as soon as I got the card into my hand. It shone brilliantly in my hand for a moment, then Spiir’s spear also flashed with light. For a fraction of a second, he hesitated, not sure what I was planning.
It was all I needed. I kept backing off and yanked the second of five scrolls from my Quick-Use clip, and read the chant needed to invoke it without even unrolling it. “Stem the flow of the Cosmic current!” “Slow!”
Finally, with my Haste effect, plus his Slow debuff, I was finally able to get enough beyond his reach to cast properly damaging spells. As I hadn’t used Scan on him, I didn’t know his Resonances—beyond probably the usual Earth resonance for minotaurs—and in any case, I knew very few truly effective attack spells in Material Elements other than Light, Dark, Lightning, Ice, Wind, and Fire. Only Ice among those could damage Earth resonant defense worth a heck
However, Primal Elements were another story—and defense against such was incredibly rare to encounter. I wasn’t able to bring my usual Cosmic element spell, Dimension Render, into play, because I suspected from the design of his spear and the rest of his apparent build that it was capable of allowing him to cast the spell Gehenna’s Flames which dealt extreme damage to any Invisible or Phase Shifted opponents. However, the 4th Circle spell Starburst had 50% Light and 50% Cosmic Resonance. It would do.
However, it would take quite a while for a mere Circle 4 spell to wear down an Elite’s HP completely, especially a physical type like Spiir. I got his HP meter below 2/3rds even so…but Slow wore off.
He grinned wickedly and came at me as vigorously as ever. “So what now, sneaky serpent? You planned all that just to deal with me, and I’m barely bloodied.”
But this time, instead of once again moving to continue avoiding his spear, I lunged straight at him. He was so surprised that the blade of the spear completely missed me and I easily encoiled him. His HP began to slowly drop again, but the attack itself wasn’t the point. I needed him immobilized in order to cast a certain tricky spell, one that couldn’t be scribed because of special requirements to get it to target what you wanted. It was also Circle 6, so I’d need at least 15 seconds. And judging from how my coils were straining to hold Spiir, I might not even have that. I called the Fifth and Sixth Arcane Circles with more alacrity than I’d ever before done, and chanted “Egress the sorcerous power from the arms of my foe!” Then, I waved my hand over the entire length of his spear as exactly as I could. “Weapon Breaker!”
The moment I finished the spell, Spiir broke out of my coils and leaped away. However, it was too late to stop it. Malevolent purple light spilled from every inch of his spear, and when it faded, it looked dull and ordinary. The metal tip was as large as ever, but it no longer glowed with bright orange hellfire. The Infernal runes all along its shaft had dimmed completely, and the shine on its surface had vanished.
In spite of the name, Weapon Breaker did not actually destroy the equipment it targeted. What it did was completely disperse the magic in it, making Spiir’s spear an ordinary metal stick that would be virtually useless against all but the lowest level opponents, or more exactly Level 19 or so. And though it was temporary, in this case “temporary” meant a few hours instead of the mere 60 seconds Slow’s effect gave.
Usually, it had a high failure chance unless you were fighting someone below your 10-level, in which case you wouldn’t need it. That’s where the MS Spell Disrupt Protection came in: its Combat Deck effect was to make a targeted piece of enemy equipment, whether weapon or armor, vulnerable to spells like Weapon Breaker or Armor Breaker and physical techniques like Sunder and Piercing Rend, that would turn strong enchanted weapons or armor into weak lumps of metal. “Now the real fight begins,” I said, “Scan.”
Spiir the Youngest, Enforcer of the Maze
Level 50 Minotaur Dragoon
HP: 30,716/60,037 Power: 322/322
Resonances: 30% Earth, 20% Fire, 1% Infernal
The youngest sibling of the four Minotaur Brothers who are charged with preventing the unworthy from breaching the Great Maze. Spiir’s particular duty as the Fourth Devil is to hunt down and destroy those who attempt to circumvent the area’s physical challenges through means such as Invisibility, Phase Shift, and invulnerability spells. As such, he possesses numerous skills that penalize opponents who attempt to resort to such tactics.
I had barely taken in the Resonances when Spiir threw his now useless weapon at me. It bounced off me, dealing no damage and not even depleting a single portion of my Armor bar. “I don’t think I’ve faced anyone who fought me quite like you,” he said, eyeing me much more warily now that he was disarmed, “whether they defeated me or not.”
“For the record, after we started the fight, I realized what was supposed to be the conventional way to beat you in about five seconds,” I said, eyeing him just as warily just in case he had some unarmed techniques, though that was very unlikely with the Dragoon class. “Your spear is so long that you can’t actually attack point blank. I was supposed to just charge in and melee you to death inside its reach. You even dangle that in front of everyone’s face with your talk of cowardly tactics not working.”
“Yet that isn’t what happened. And when you did close to me it was to cast your spell to remove my spear from the fight entirely.”
“I don’t let anyone dictate how I fight. I would have used the conventional strategy if I really had to, but I enjoyed this a lot more. The Game should be fun, you know? And the Maze is so much more enjoyable than the boring grinding in the last place. I didn’t want this fight to be boring like the three before you. Not to mention, you did really annoy me when you called me a coward.”
I grinned at him. “Although, I guess I misspoke a little. I shouldn’t have said that the real fight was beginning. I should have said the fight was over.”
He charged at me again, trying to close enough to deliver an unarmed attack. But due to his small size, my Tail Sweeps not only kept him away easily, but knocked him back enough that I was able to hit him with a Starburst before he got close enough for a Tail Sweep again. Before long, the repeated attacks broke his armor, and from there it was a complete rout. When his HP was almost fully depleted, I smacked him with my tail one more time, leaving him ZOed and helpless to rise.
Another small green potion fell from him as he impacted, which I collected. Then, I picked him up in my coils again. “When you respawn, tell these apparent brothers of yours that the next one who tries to get me with a cheap shot ambush like you did will get even worse than I gave you!”
With that, I triggered the Devour ability for the first time. When I did so, the game automatically switched me to 3rd person view. So, when I was trying to use this, I would be as vulnerable to attack as possible, and for an entire minute. It also gave me a front row seat to exactly what the process of swallowing Spiir whole looked like. It was pretty disgusting, but also morbidly fascinating. I had thought I’d barely be able to watch this, but as it turned out I couldn’t bring myself to look away. Every 15 seconds, more of him disappeared down Veralix’s gullet, until only his hooves and ankles were sticking out of it at the 45 second mark.
The moment 60 seconds had fully passed, 1st person view resumed and Spiir’s form fully vanished inside my own, except for a bulge that immediately moved from my human stomach down into the interior of my coils. In the upper left corner of my vision, where such things usually displayed, there was a unique indicator icon for the Digesting status, which would persist for 30 minutes. Since I was in a Rest Area and all, I figured I’d log off then check back in 30 minutes to see how much I’d regained.
[1] An MS game mechanic—Unrevealed spells are flipped face-down and stop affecting the game state, usually to be flipped face-up again when the spell which Unrevealed wore off.
