Chapter 7

Blue Blood Runs Red

I woke up from the light of Kate’s bubble, I must have passed out after the fall. I brushed away the fuckton of kill notices, levels and xp weren’t important now, where the hell we were was the pertinent question. We had landed among other rubble and dirt in a clearly sentient-built hallway constructed out of square grey stones with glowing engravings on the ceiling. Of course, many of the engravings were broken so the light was spotty at best, that’s probably why Kate cast her bubble. I get to my feet and pick up the arm, “Did I forget to say please keep all extremities inside the ride at all times?” Dave gave a weak laugh while Kate fussed over me.

“I am so, so, sorry. I know you said not to use the bubble bolt spell, I just panicked when the kobold leapt at my face. I really didn’t mean it” Katenip somewhat resembled a cat in the rain, just sad and trying to figure out what went wrong.

I tossed the arm to Dave, “It’s fine, we survived, and got a bunch of experience too. Don’t worry about it. Cheer up or I’ll have Dave give you more chemistry homework.” That shocked her out of her glum mood.

“Hey you can’t do that you’re not my….teacher…damn. Please don’t give me more chemistry?” She ended up asking with trepidation.

“Don’t worry squirt, I’ll toss Dave at the big bad chemistry monster. Speaking of, Dave you in one piece over there?”

“Ya, I’ll be fine in a few minutes. Where the hell are we anyway?”

“Some sort of buried ruins I think, I’m pretty sure we fell straight through the mine.”

The room or hallway we were in was blocked off on one side by the rubble so we were left with only one possible direction to go. We also took the time to check how much experience we got, it was a ton. Kate must have taken down half the mine, and there must have been a hell of a lot more kobolds than I would ever have guessed. Each of us got around 18 thousand experience points, with the new levels in our classes I felt confident that we were now the highest leveled and most powerful group of players in the game. Dave could probably bench a small car now. I only got 1 level in my primordial class, damn thing took way too much experience to level up, but I got to level 12 of Initiate of the Cycle and that got me a nasty root binding skill.

Grasp of the Rotten Tree

Bind your foe in strong roots, once bound the rot will seep into them until they succumb.

Scales off of Int.

My lifesense also got a massive boost, it now had a radius of fifteen feet with much better resolution, I could extend it a bit farther, but it was so vague at that point it was effectively useless. While I was happy about the boost to the skill I was annoyed since the damn thing was causing me even more of a headache now. The new skill was impressive though, magically strengthened roots should work a bit better than my basic stone bindings had, although now that I had more mana I could reinforce them better so it might be a toss-up.

When everyone was ready to go we went through the door at the end of the hallway, Dave was now tough enough to take the lead and he charged into the room ready for anything. We found ourselves in a large hall, it somewhat resembled a temple, if a temple had all its space filled up with odd machines and vats of liquid. On the walls were etchings and faded murals depicting bloodletting and torture, blood seemed to be a big theme here actually.

One mural was defaced with what seemed like notes or ramblings, carved into the very stone. There was the word for blood carved in at least a dozen languages that I recognized, and from what I could read from the rest of it they were lab notes of some kind. Whoever was running experiments here at one point was obviously more than a little crazy by the end. I could see bits of Dwarven Runescript, Elvish, Blackdash, Bloodmark, some strange version of Draconic that I didn’t understand, and Infernal.

I was getting a very bad feeling about this place, but we had no choice but to keep looking around for a way out. Anyone using Infernal and Blackdash was bad news, Bloodmark could go either way but tended to lead to unpleasantness as well.

We split up to look around, although I told Kate and Dave not to touch the machines, who knows what they did. I found some stone tablets on a desk, written in bloodmark, from what I could read it seemed to be research into a fountain of youth or something, I wasn’t sure my translation was right since that really didn’t fit with the décor. Several of the vats were broken and the contents unidentifiable, although there were bone fragments in a few of them. The two unbroken glass cylinders contained blood, one a bright shining red and glowing softly with power, and the other a nauseating purple that felt like nails on a chalkboard just to look at. This was not a good place.

There were four side doors and a massive door at the end of the hall on a dais. The first of the doors just led to a sleeping area with a dozen rotted beds, the second led us to something that looked like a mix of a potions lab, a ritual room, and an animal testing facility. Of course, it was all trashed, the cages were broken open and the metal twisted, most of the glassware was cracked or shattered. Great claw marks ruined the ritual circles on the floor and more adorned the walls. Nearly everything had some amount of dried muck on it, remnants of potions or something I guessed. An entire corner of the room was painted in it as if a paint bomb had gone off, but instead of paint it was an unknown substance probably best left alone. I found shattered note tablets but could only make out a few words written in bloodmark, beast, possession, and spread. Well, aren’t those happy thoughts.

“This place is really creepy Lazarus, I don’t like it.” Kate said.

“Neither do I kid, neither do I.” I murmured.

Dave was inspecting the glassware, “I’m no expert on fantasy science but this stuff looks like a cross between a distillation setup and someone trying to do genetics work with the equivalent of bubblegum and stone tools.” I have no idea how he came to that conclusion, but I had a feeling he was way closer to right than I would like.

“Alchemy isn’t my thing, rituals I’m a bit better with though, and the remains of these circles look to have something to do with biological transmutation. I would say you might be right, that’s not a comforting thing by the way. Kate, can you do a cleanse here? We might find something more under all this muck.

As her bubble washed over everything it removed the mystery crud and revealed the corner, scratched on the wall was a badly drawn hooded shape, and at what seemed to be the origin point of the muck was a pair of skeletal feet fused into the floor.

“Well, that’s not concerning at all…..” I state, staring at the feet.

“I really want to get out of here Laz, it's freaking me out.” Kate said as she backed towards the door.

“I think that’s it for this room anyway.” Poor girl when things get bad sights like this would be much more common.

The third room seemed to be a lady’s bedroom, broken furniture draped with dresses, a massive broken wardrobe, and a collapsed four-poster bed. A cracked statue in the corner depicting a corpse just made the place seem so inviting. Some of the items were much better preserved, including some of the clothes, I suspected minor enchantments were at work.

We searched through the debris and Kate found some nice white opera gloves still in great shape which she kept. Dave found a perfectly preserved parasol under the bed pieces, an odd thing to find in an underground temple. In the remains of the couch, I found a small wooden box with 12 gold and two blood rubies. This place was really obsessed with blood, there weren’t that many creatures or races that had such a fixation either. The first to come to mind of course was vampires, although what they were trying to accomplish, I still have no idea.

When we turned to leave the statue spoke, “INTRUDERS, THIEVES, THE LADY’S CHAMBER HAS BEEN BREACHED!” It shakily broke free from the wall and limped towards us. The eyes now had a sanguine glow and a pale violet light shone through the cracks in its form. This thing was basically dead already.

“Dave, punch it.” I ordered.

Dave gave it a solid hit when it got to us and it shattered, the crystal core guttering out and the eyes dimming back to grey stone.

Level 8 Petrified Guardian Killed!

+200 EXP

“That was anticlimactic.” Dave said, looking at the rubble.

“That thing was probably a terror in its prime, it was mostly dead Dave. That was pretty much a mercy kill instead of a fight.” I replied.

The core was dead, but I pocketed it anyway before we moved on to the next room. The door was stuck and enchanted, so I removed the stone around it, letting it fall into the hall. I kind of wished I hadn’t. The stench of rotten blood was overwhelming, Kate and Dave both gagged, when we went in they actually threw up. The enchantment on the door must have kept everything in the room in stasis and I broke it by removing part of the wall. The room might have been a storage space at one time, but now it had broken shelves and blood all over, blood covered the walls, and the ceiling, and the floor. Where there wasn’t blood there were chunks of flesh and organs, and the skeletal remains of eight vampires. You could tell by the teeth.

I had to sidestep a blob of flesh that fell from the ceiling with a splat. Whatever did this was powerful and gave no shits about an enchanted door. There didn’t seem to be any clues on the skeletons so I stored them in my inventory. I love the fact that corpses stack and only take up one slot. Sadly, the blood would be problematic to take, I gave a brief thought to Kate’s mop but looking at her still on the ground retching I figured that was a lost cause. Might be better to let her clean it all. Even rotten vamp blood was valuable, the transformation it underwent into a power source after they ingested it gave it a lot of uses. As valuable as it was it wasn’t worth the toll it would take on Kate to collect it. She might have to grow up fast, but not that fast.

“Kate you can clean the room now.”

With almost no delay the bubble shot out and encompassed the room, cleaning all the blood and flesh away. Revealing the words ‘phantom plague’ scratched on the wall, in Common of all things. The pieces clicked in my head with a horrifying finality. The cloaked figure and words in the lab, the focus on blood, and the word phantom. Some crazy fucking vampires a long ass time ago were experimenting on a Blood Phantom, those things are dangerous enough as they are. Messing with one could only make it worse.

The Blood Phantom was not technically a spirit or an undead, it was something between the two. In its natural form, it was an empty floating ragged cloak entirely composed of cursed blood. The phantom possesses people or creatures through wounds and binds to their blood, it then sucks the life out of them like a nice milkshake and abandons the shriveled corpse. What makes them even worse is that they steal the soul as well and trap it within the blood that makes up their forms. Being part spirit, the things can phase through walls and such as well. They are nasty shits that punch way above their weight class, and I have never heard of one at a level lower than 250. A modified Blood Phantom could be much, much worse, especially if they did what I thought. My guess was that they somehow made it able to split itself and act like a plague, probably to make either some sort of mass blood stealing device or maybe even an endless source of blood. Obviously, they failed and made something horrible, some sort of chimera, the only good news was that this thing hadn’t gotten out. If it had I would know about it, that’s a city or even country killer threat, depending on how they enhanced it. If they used vampire blood it would get stronger the more blood it harvested. Since that is pretty much the worst-case scenario, I am betting that is exactly what happened. Since there were only 9 vamps accounted for when you include the feet in the lab, I am guessing the rest either sealed or killed the thing. With my luck it was only sealed, sadly a blood phantom isn’t something I can murder in its sleep. This was bad enough I was seriously tempted to kill each of us and send us to respawn in the plaza. Oh, who am I kidding I can’t ignore a threat this big, even if I really should. Looking at Dave helping Kate up I knew I couldn’t just murder them either, damn I’m getting soft in my old age, young age…fucking time travel.

Leading my companions out into the hall I told them my theory. We would need to find out what happened by going through the final door, and we may even have to fight this thing. If it was sealed it would be weaker just when it woke up, that would be our chance. Hopefully, the fucking vamps cleaned up their own mess. I unbarred and opened the massive doors with little effort, they were surprisingly well made. What awaited us was a massive circular sanctuary with a black stone pedestal in the middle with an iron box on top and a crude copper throne against the sidewall. Opposite the throne was a tunnel where someone had broken into the sanctuary. Arrayed around the pedestal stood four vampire skeletons, all with staffs still in hand. One of the skeletons wore a black and red stone tiara, and all four put off a dense amount of death energy. Getting close would be a bad idea.

Sitting on the copper throne was another fucking lizard, wearing a copper crown imitating the form of the one on the vampire. This one was much bigger than the others, standing at a full seven feet tall as it noticed us and hopped off its throne. A Kobold King, shit, just what we didn’t need. It screeched and gestured at us and the door wildly waving a massive glowing scepter of copper and iron. Enchantment-capable kobolds were definitely bad, hopefully they all died in the collapse.

The king charged us and Dave stepped forward to meet it. Scepter met sword with a mighty crash and the king was stopped cold. “Kill that fucker and don’t hit the box!” I yelled, following my own advice as I shot lava bolts at it. As tough as the king’s scales were, they couldn’t stand up to my lava and small chunks were burned off making the kobold scream. Kates darts just bounced off with a clang while Dave met each strike from the king with one of his own. “Use the bolts Kate!” I called. That was my mistake. My lava had seared the wounds it made shut, when Kate landed a bolt in the king’s shoulder it blew out a bloody chunk the size of a grapefruit. When the blood hit the floor the box screamed.

The death auras from the vampires rushed into the box as the skeletons collapsed but it just screamed louder, it was a sound that grated on the soul and chilled the blood. The cry of something unspeakable tortured for countless years. The box exploded and blood rushed out of it towards the king. I sent a lava bolt at it, but I was ignored. The moment the blood touched the king’s wound he roared in pain as the phantom bound to him, black swirling marks appeared all over him and a huge crimson specter formed behind him, linked by a chain of blood. The specter was a ragged cloak of blood with vicious claws as long as my arm on one hand and an oversized crab claw on the other, it had one large bat wing and a dozen spikes of bone protruding randomly from its body. This was a true horror.

I noticed the crown of the kobold crumble and it hit me; the vamps had sealed it with royal blood. That was actually pretty smart, the blood of a royal vampire was very powerful and with the right seal, only another of royal blood could break it. Unfortunately, the vampires didn’t know enough to make it only vampire royal blood, any royal would do, and it seems this kobold qualified enough for the phantom to break free. Although since we weren’t already dead it couldn’t be at full power, breaking free must have cost it.

As the kobold howled in pain bone spurs burst from its skin and its eyes glowed red. The phantom tried to smash Dave with its claw but he dodged just in time. I fired a few lava bolts at the specter and they just went through as if it wasn’t there. Then I understood.

“Kill the king, it needs to feed off him to regain its power. We take him down and it dies like a parasite with a dead host.” I called, refocusing my fire at the massive kobold. My bolts did even less than before, but the phantom was enraged and flew towards me claws first. At least I was on the right track.

I dodged and activated my new skill, thick roots burst from the ground and coiled around the kobold, locking him in place, then the makeshift cocoon pulsed with black light that seeped into the possessed lizard. He strained at the roots and they creaked, some even snapping. I dodged another attack by the phantom and sent a large burst of mana into the ground, skewering the king from all four directions with stone blades. The phantom screeched again and retreated to its host. The black marks pulsed red and the roots and stone were ripped apart by a wave of power.

Dave came charging in sword swinging from behind the monster, he scored a massive gash on its back but the phantom backhanded him with its crab claw. Dave stood his ground and took the strike on a raised arm, I could hear the arm break from my position 20 feet away but Dave didn’t budge, it must have been a new skill. Just as the kobold turned to join the phantom in killing Dave bubble bolts dug into its back, blowing off more chunks of flesh. The phantom turned its attention to Kate, ripping one of the bone spines out of its body, revealing a 5-foot long spear. It hurled the spear at Katenip and tried to catch Dave in its pincer. I was still sending lava bolts at the king, adding in some eruption disks when I had a clear shot that wouldn’t hit Dave with shrapnel.

Dave dodged the massive claw but that put him right in the reach of the kobold king, I fired off another Grasp of the Rotten Tree to slow him down and started charging a new spell. I took my decay water idea and compressed it, adding more and more water to it while keeping it in a sphere. When I saw the king about to break free again I let the pressure go on a small part of the side of the ball aimed at him. A thin beam of black water hit him right in the chest and sliced all the way through him, the decay taking root inside, only clear water poured out his back and scored the stone.

I had to end the spell to dodge a javelin followed by the phantom, I was hard-pressed to keep dancing between wing strikes, slashes, and slams from the pincer. Dave was keeping the king busy, matching him blow for blow, occasionally even scoring a hit. While he was distracted Kate was blasting the kobold as fast as she could, and it was working. The king looked like a pig used as a shotgun target, huge chunks of its flesh were blown out, torrents of blood pooled on the stone floor, and entrails hung out from his decaying flesh.

I stomped the floor and upset the ground under the kobold king causing him to stumble, Dave took advantage of his distraction and grabbed the protruding entrails. The kobold managed to backhand him and send him flying into the wall, but Dave managed to hold on to the handful of unknown organs and ripped them out as he was sent flying. That got a reaction from both the specter and the king, they howled in pain, with the king taking a step towards where Dave lay before another bubble bolt blasted the back of his head. The phantom was starting to shrink slightly as it had to feed more blood and power into the king to keep him alive. In its distraction, I even managed to sever a claw with a quick slash of my Will-infused sword. I started firing rot at the king while avoiding the specter, and after a few hits I switched to growth magic. The first bolt of growth magic made him stop and shudder, the second hit an arm and it rotted away instantly. I could see his lungs and heart exposed to the air through his ribcage. Before I could take a shot, the specter started firing blood spikes at me and I had to focus on dodging or get skewered.

“Target the heart Kate!” I called.

The king was closing in on Kate and gave her a perfect shot when it was only 10 feet away. Kate finally managed to conjure multiple blasts at once and sent three straight ahead, lodging in his massive heart before detonating. The kobold king collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut and slid to a halt inches away from Kate. The specter was reeled back by its blood chain and stuffed into the king’s body. I breathed out a sigh of relief. Then the fucker’s eyes glowed red again and its mouth opened.

“Kate watch out!” I screamed as I ran towards her, but I was too late.

Blood fountained out of the king’s mouth and engulfed her. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in a soundless scream, barely visible through the sea of red. She thrashed trying to get out as the blood formed into a more human shape around her, still sporting its single wing and massive claw. The blood darkened until I couldn’t see Kate anymore and the thing cackled. There was no real mind behind the laughter, just insane bloodlust and an instinct to kill.

I saw Dave was up and running towards Kate as well, but I would make it there first. I prepared to coat myself in stone and dive into the blood to fish her out, hopefully I would make it in time. Soul damage is nasty, and it was one of the first things to carry over although it was so rare that it took years for us to realize it. At the moment Kate was in very real danger. Both Dave and I leapt at the same time, although he was farther away his strength gave him an explosive leap. Right as we were about to hit the mass of blood it exploded and a massive soap bubble washed over us, knocking us on our asses. Kate stood there dripping wet with golden suds in her hair and on her clothes. The Blood Phantom was completely eradicated by the holy-tinged cleaning magic. I just laid there on my back in wonder and laughed, an unspeakable blood horror defeated by the Magical Mopgirl and her cleaning spell. It was just too much.