The shadowy form stretched out one of its arms in the direction of Aegis as if reaching to grab him, but it was several meters away. Aegis wasn’t sure what it would do exactly, but to be safe he dashed to the side only to see the shadow arm shoot out into a blast of mist, narrowly missing him as it crashed into the wall behind him and dispersed.

“Not a boss.” Rakkan commented as he dashed in the opposite direction, maneuvering to get behind it, or so he thought. The shadow form rotated its body and formed a second featureless head that seemed to follow him, causing Rakkan to stop and instead backup to the wall behind him, grabbing a torch off of it and flinging it at the shadow’s form.

When the torch touched the shadow, the flames of it were swallowed up, and it fell out the other end extinguished, the dull piece of wood clattering along the stone floor.

“You’ve got to hit the orb, the shadow is immaterial, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to let you. If a torch won’t do it…” Aegis thought to himself as he pulled out a flask of oil from his inventory. He popped off the lid and flung it at the shadowy figure, spilling oil all around the room and into the shadow's form, though it didn’t land on the shadow itself and instead passed through it. Aegis followed up by using the flames from his shield to light the trail of oil. The flames burned across the floor up to the shadowy figure, but once the flames touched the shadow, they were extinguished.

“You’re new, right? Powerful shadow magic can only be dispersed with magical light, normal light won’t do anything. Use your smite.” Rakkan shouted at him across the room. It was becoming apparent that, despite the shadow creature's bulky form of mist, it was immobile and remained stationary. It took this time to release several more large blasts of shadow towards Aegis and Rakkan who dodged out of the way.

Smite was too risky, he’d lose his pacifism if it hit something, Aegis thought. But with this information he knew another way. Aegis charged forward at the shadowy form - seeing this, Rakkan charged forward as well with a battleaxe in one hand, longsword in the other.

Once Aegis got right up next to the shadow's form, it took a swing at him, slamming its shadowy fist into his flaming shield and extinguishing the flames.

You take 136 Shadow Damage.

“Minor Heal!” Aegis shouted, stretching his right hand into the shadow’s body for the cast. The glowing light of his healing spell that formed around his right hand during the cast did the trick, it was enough to radiate into the shadow and disperse a portion of it for a moment, effectively chopping the shadow body in half and allowing Rakkan to see the orb within for a second. Rakkan took the chance and slashed his battleaxe and longsword at the orb, cracking it. The orb retaliated by reforming the shadow around Aegis’ hand once the Minor Heal cast had finished, slamming him again, this time with both arms.

You take 141 Shadow Damage.

You take 210 Shadow Damage.

Skill Learned: Shadow Resistance (Beginner)

Minor Heal heals you for 181.

Shadow Resistance - Level 1 (Beginner)

Reduces damage taken by shadow-based attacks.

Shadow Damage Resistance: 1%

“Minor Heal, Minor Heal! Minor Heal!” Aegis spammed the spell and Rakkan unleashed a flurry of blows on the orb, eventually causing it to crack and shatter into pieces along the floor. When it did, it released a shockwave of purple energy that dispersed the shadowy form and knocked them both backwards off of their feet. When the shockwave hit the walls of the room, the ground began to crack and tiny streams of dust and dirt began to trickle down on them from above through the seams in the stonework, tiny chunks crumbling off of the ceiling.

Lesser Orb of Suffering slain!

You gain 1016 Experience!

“That was a bit too easy.” Aegis stood up nervously, taking a gander at his surroundings. “I think this place is collapsing, we’ve got to get her down!” Aegis shouted, Rakkan nodded and did a running jump onto the altar, leaping up into the air and taking a swing at the manacles holding her up, the dark elf flinched as the sound of clashing metal clanged, but it wasn’t enough to break them. Rakkan landed, turned to see it was ineffective, and shouted in frustration as he went to try again.

Aegis on the other hand started scanning the room. He grabbed the broken orb pieces seeing they had item cards, but didn’t take the time to read them, and started checking the tables and torture instruments for some sort of release lever or a key somewhere. The rumbling and shaking worsened, and larger pieces of stone started to fall from the ceiling, some narrowly missing Aegis’ head.

“Aegis, what's going on? What is that shaking?” Lina asked worriedly through the party communications.

“Uh, we broke the suffering object, now the room down here is collapsing.” Aegis replied frantically as he started tossing useless items around off the tables to try and find a key, Rakkan striking the manacles again to no avail.

“Save yourselves!” Luryala shouted to them, seeing them both unable to free her as the stability of the chamber worsened. They both completely ignored her.

“Get out of there! It’s not unusual for event dungeons to fall apart when you finish clearing parts of them.” Lina shouted back at Aegis through the party interface. Aegis and Rakkan ignored her as well, both visibly and audibly getting more frustrated as they searched more and more desperately.

They watched a large chunk of the ceiling break behind them, blocking the portcullis that they’d used to enter, and in that second, Aegis spotted a lever not far from the falling stone on the wall.

Desperate, he ran towards it and pulled it, releasing Luryala’s manacles so that she fell from the ceiling towards the altar with the manacles separately, where Rakkan caught her. Aegis saw this, turned, and met them in the middle of the room. Luryala rubbed her wrists and looked weak on her legs as Rakkan tried to set her down.

“Minor Heal!” Aegis shouted, touching his light to her and mending the last burns on her body. As he did this, he noticed an item card on the manacles that had fallen to the ground beside them, quickly picking them up and adding them to his inventory. “I’ll carry her out, you’re going to have to do the fighting.” Aegis took her up and held her in his arms. She was a lot lighter than he expected she’d be - he wasn’t sure if it was because Dark Elves were naturally light, or if he’d gotten a lot stronger in the game. Rakkan nodded and charged at the opposite end of the room, finding a lever next to the portcullis to raise it and get them out of the chamber as it continued to collapse behind them.

The hallway was not much of an improvement, the ceiling was collapsing here as well. Several creatures and cultists were fleeing for their lives, not interested in battling them and more interested in surviving. Rakkan led the way, his sword still flickering a faint flame to illuminate their path, while Luryala passed out in Aegis’ arms from exhaustion. A few meters into the corridor, they came to an intersection with three possible directions to run in, all shaking, rumbling, and collapsing.

“Which way?” Rakkan shouted, glancing down each hall anxiously. Aegis recalled the 2 hour detour they’d taken last time around from choosing the wrong direction, and knew if they made that mistake again, it’d be game over for Luryala. He looked down each hallway as carefully as possible, looking for some sort of indication of which to run down, listening for sounds and watching the creatures' movements.

Aegis noticed the spiderlings were running sporadically, but the cultists were all avoiding them in the wide corridor and going into their mist forms all in the same direction.

“Follow the Shadow Assassins.” Aegis pointed at one misty form that fluttered past them. Rakkan nodded and gave chase, Aegis following behind him. They ran a few meters down the hall and spotted it - a staircase leading up to the next level. The two ascended the stairs as quickly as possible, it was quite a climb but as they got higher, the sound of the collapsing stone around them lessened, as did the rumbling, and they eventually arrived at the floor above.

It was still shaking violently, but the floor seemed much more stable and not at risk of falling apart. It seemed at least for the moment that they had escaped. They were not the only ones, however.

At the top of the staircase was an army of cultists, crowded together in the narrow corridor outside the stairwell. Aegis and Rakkan peered through the doorway of the staircase to see them in the midst of battling with spiders and other creatures that had fled up to the second floor with them.

Spotting them, Rakkan and Aegis took a few steps back through the threshold of the stairwell, a narrow doorway that separated the staircase from the large corridor.

“Because they’re already fighting, my lure doesn’t seem to be affecting them. That’s lucky…” Aegis said as he hit his party communication. “How long till you guys get here? The entire third floor is standing in front of us.” Aegis asked.

“Uh, bad news. We found the way down to the second floor from the first floor, it's through the boss room. We won’t be able to get to you guys unless we beat the head cultist, he’s sitting in his chamber doing some weird chanting.” Darkshot sounded visibly stressed as he replied, holding the door into the boss room shut to prevent an annoyed Lina from entering.

“I think we can kill it, then we’ll be right there.” Lina replied anxiously.

“We won’t, we don’t even have a healer, get a grip.” Darkshot groaned at her. “Is there any way you guys will manage to get to this boss room from the other side?” Aegis looked at Rakkan, then looked at the now unconscious Luryala in his arms. Rakkan stared back with a determined expression, but Aegis could tell he didn’t have any ideas.

Aegis looked over his skill list, equipment, and inventory. His new shadow resistance skill would help, but it wouldn’t be enough. He checked through his recently acquired items instead, hoping something might be useful.

Name: Manacles of Suffering

Type: Manacles

Quality: 40%

Durability: 133/150

Option 1: Deals 5 Fire Damage per second when the right manacle is attached to a creature’s wrist.

Option 2: Restores 5 health per second when the left manacle is attached to a creature’s wrist.

Description: A set of heavy dark iron manacles enchanted with dark magic, used by Darxon cultists for the purpose of torturing their foes. The enchantment will permanently fade from this item if it is not within 50 meters of an Orb of Suffering for over 12 hours.

Aegis quickly began doing math in his head. He had next to no health regeneration, but with his Rockjaw Steak buff, his stamina would be able to out-regenerate attacks from one cultist shadow assassin if he was modestly using Brace, and if he spread his heals out efficiently and allowed the healing from the manacles of suffering to offset the majority of the damage, he might be able to hold out. The primary requirement of his plan would be that only one enemy could be hitting him at a time.

“There might be a way we can fight through them all…” Aegis said as he took a few steps down the stairs and safely set down Luryala out of harm's way. “It will take a long time, and if we mess up we’ll die.”

“Tell me what to do.” Rakkan replied confidently.

“The doorway, if we hold it correctly so that only one cultist can attack me at a time, I might be able to tank them indefinitely. They’re elite so they might try something, but I’m hoping the fights with the other creatures will disrupt their organization. You’ll have to hold the doorway with me but not take any damage, I don’t think I’ll be able to heal you. So just attack from behind me as much as possible and body block anything that tries to slip past.” Aegis said as he pulled out the last of his oil flasks. He doused a section of the floor at the top of the staircase behind them, separating them from Luryala. The sounds of battle in the corridor were able to drown out their conversation.

“I’ll light this so they can’t get behind us using that shadow movement skill.” Aegis motioned to the oil, he then pulled out the Manacles of Suffering. He locked the healing manacle on his right hand, then fastened his shield onto his left arm and took a deep breath. “I’ll call them over here and try to hold them one at a time. Sorry if this fails and we die. You ready?” Aegis asked. Rakkan nodded. Aegis took a deep breath and stretched his arms as best he could, preparing for what he anticipated to be a long battle.

“Are all dungeons like this?” He mumbled as he stepped through the doorway, while simultaneously Rakkan dipped his sword down to ignite the oil, shrugging at Aegis’ question.

“Hey, Darxon guys, over here, I broke your orb!” Aegis shouted at them in the distance. The closest was a group of 3 cultists fighting a strange stony-looking centipede creature, just having finished killing it. All three of them turned and rushed at Aegis as he and Rakkan took their positions back through the stairwell doorway. They moved in their shadowy mist form but were stopped from sliding along the ceiling above Aegis’ head, due to the glowing flames burning behind him, forcing them all to materialize in front of him.