Arc 02: Meeting the Tyrant

Chapter 009: It’s in the flesh

We departed the next morning. There was no point in waiting; we had to get stronger as soon as possible. Other players would not wait and there was no telling what they might be up to, considering how the world changed. My general opinion of humanity wasn't the best, and I was almost sure whatever would happen would hurt.

"Wow." Simea gawked at the view from the perch, now clearly visible in the morning light. "I think they made it look like the Bavarian Alps. Some of the peaks look familiar. But they pushed the looks up to eleven.”

"Bavarian Alps? You were there?"

She nodded. "Before the war, when Germany still existed. Once or twice my parents took me with them when they were on business trips." She shrugged. "Well, where are we going to hunt?"

There were five of us: me, Leria, Vaera, Simea and Lena. Dark caster, warrior, buffer/healer, rogue/crowd control and a living baggage train. The last one had a ‘Slave’ class which was a sort of temporary class from which one could advance to many others. Cultist was like that, but it was still far too early to think about it now. The idea was to make Lena learn warrior skills, starting from cultivation of her Aura Conductivity... it was fastest in mana-tainted environment. And speed was important here.

"Good question actually." I looked at others behind us. "We used to hunt in the Black Woods, but there is a roaming Unique that curbstomped us, so I'm not sure if it’s a good idea to return there now." DFI loved making their games difficult by almost sadistic game mechanics. A team once slain by a roaming boss could become a living beacon, drawing the boss back to them. On one hand it gave them a chance for revenge, on the other it could mean being repetitively flayed alive by almost unbeatable beings.

I looked at Leria questioningly, giving her a sign that I would require a little help.

"Well..." she sighed. "There are other options. There is The Descent, an ancient mine of the Old Kynevian Empire where something evil awoke. Then we have the Rattling Tunnels, an old abode of dark elves overrun by the goblins. Two more open air magical anomalies, Cacophony and Monochrome Forest, both much more... intense than the Black Woods. I'm not sure if we are ready for them." We weren't. Especially if Monochrome Forest was a recycled version of Monochrome. I knew the terrible truth about this place and I knew what dwelled there. Some things were better left undisturbed. "Then there is the Ravine, where fire and death daemons dwell. A Starfall Tower, which is a mix between anomaly and a dungeon into Doom Magic. Hell's Gate and surrounding lands, with even more dark daemons and undead. Mines of..."

"... Alright, stop it. It's disturbing to hear how many terrible things live around here," I interrupted. Simea and Lena thought the same, judging from the looks on their faces. Vaera, as a native, seemed to be much more used to it. Doomplaces were always an adventure friendly territory. Enjoying dark magic, unbridled hedonism and - especially in Dragonspine Mountains - permanent lack of central governance was a terrible combination. Glorastia managed it, to a point, but big patches of its territory were a mess. "Which is the closest one?" I remembered Simea’s condition... if she failed to fix it yesterday, it would be best to not go for a long trip. And I still could see her hands unconsciously crawling towards her crotch from time to time.

Two-three days best, so it would be a fast reconnaissance by force. We go in, we check the local 'fauna', get some loot and retreat before something notices us. Be it local gods, powerful fauna... or this damn anti-grind mechanism.

"That would be The Descent. It is as far from here as Ambryxis is, just through the wilderness." I glanced at the others to see if they had anything against it. Then I nodded.

"Alright, so lead the way."

***

The entrance to The Descent looked... well, like a mine. Together with a little railway used to carry ore out, some buildings scattered around that once housed the people doing the paperwork, where workers slept, and where equipment and food were stored.

They were ruined, of course. What remained was pillaged long ago. There wasn't even a point in searching through it. According to Leria the mine became a ruin more than a thousand years ago, during the last years of the Old Kynevian Empire. The only reason there were still buildings around was the fact that the highly magical environment conserved things ruling entropy out of existence (to a point).

Something terrible slaughtered the miners and imprinted the mine itself. Yaaawn.

Imprints were a mechanism that the DFI stolen from Tolkien. Strong supernatural beings imprinted their lairs and their surroundings with their power, making it resemble them more. Places where powerful evils dwelled became twisted, with even common plants taking more malevolent shapes. Whatever moved into The Descent imprinted the whole area. It seemed... dark and threatening even outside. We felt as if something watched us.

The imprint devoured the mine and turned it into a magical anomaly (a certain type, that is) Once it was a simple mine, made according to a plan. Now? The corridors were twisted and seemed to change overtime. No plan remained useful for long. The space around it was disturbed. It could as well end ten kilometers beneath us. Well, if it was a STRONG magical anomaly of that type, that is. It could still be many kilometres long.

Outside a Doomplace, the evil living there would have been long ago exorcised, leaving the anomaly to slowly collapse back into normalcy without the source of its power to replenish itself. Here? No one bothered to pay for it as long as nothing crawled out to feast on local inhabitants. Outside of a Doomplace, some local religious organization would gather money to do it in the name of moral principles even without it. And no-one was going to risk their life to take down the unknown evil that made The Descent into its lair if there wasn't a monetary reward awaiting them.

Because of that it remained where it was for millennia. From time to time a group of adventurers visited it to kill things or find something someone hired them to found. The things living inside didn't seem too angry about lack of mortals visiting them to break stuff.

"So... we go inside." I sighed loudly. That I was the leader of the group seemed firmly established even if I wasn't sure how it happened. "Leria at the front, Simea behind her. Me, Vaera and Lena as the rearguard. Anything to add?" I would not be the type of leader drunk on his own authority to the point of not listening to others. Even if they had nothing to say.

We moved forward, combat-ready.

***

Undead Miner

Category: Dark/Bones

Type: Undead/Possessed

Threat Grade: Copper VII

A body of a simple miner that died when Khyzarich the Defiler assaulted the mine. Now, possessed by evil spirits, it keeps marching through the long abandoned halls and corridors, attacking everything that is alive.

Ok, so the name of the evil that attacked the mine - the one responsible for the things we will face - has a name. Khyzarich the Defiler. Sounds... typical. So there is probably some surprising twist to it. Or quite the opposite, there is no twist... which makes the lack of twist a twist on its own.

Robinson once commented that the age of the open world VRMMORPGs is the age when originality has to be redefined. You can't make everything original. The world has to be repetitive to a point because every world is repetitive to a point. Put everything you think of as original there, then fill the rest with more... typical things... and let players change everything as they please.

The first hall we entered was filled almost to the brim with undead miners. Six... no, seven. Skeletons wearing rags that remained of their clothes. Carrying rusted pickaxes.

The second we entered, they all turned towards us in almost synchronized move.

It was a massacre. Copper VII at this point were a joke. They were a Crowd. That's how people called enemies in DRI games that weren't supposed to be enemies. They were supposed to be a diversion. Masses of weaklings that made fighting 'proper' enemies harder by limiting mobility and diverting your attention. Leria held them at bay while Simea suppressed her presence with aura and went for critical hits, slicing through their necks with a dagger coated in aura. Me and Vaera kept raining spells and hexes on them. Lena kept close to me and I protected her from rare projectiles.

We took maybe a minute, and we did it without a scratch on our side. It was almost a hack & slash level of combat speed.

We continued forward. Slaying more undead miners. They were ferocious but clumsy. A lot, but too weak to become a threat. Iron veins visible here and there explained what the mine was once used for.

Many magic-tainted mines were still exploited. They couldn't go dry, the sheer belief that a mine must include ore making them resupply infinitely, growing back from magic in the air. But... how much iron ore could we take, even using the trolleys? Most of it would be unpurified. Lots of trouble, just a bit of iron. It was sensible to be done in case of rare metals... but they required more mana in the environment to manifest that way, which meant we had to go much deeper to find them.

***

Undead Legionnaire

Category: Dark/Bones

Type: Undead/Possessed

Threat Grade: Iron IV

A body of a kynevian legionnaire that died when Khyzarich the Defiler assaulted the mine. Now, possessed by evil spirits, it keeps marching through the long abandoned halls and corridors, attacking everything that is alive.

Ultimately, we ran into something nastier. Two at once, in a hall made when miners dug out a large iron vein. The whole wall was made of this stuff.

Two warriors stood in the middle, clad in timeworn remains of stereotypical Roman legionnaire armor. Lamellar armor, rectangular shield. Armed with spears and with a sword sheathed at the belt. Plus seven undead miners. SEVEN. This would be a p...

Leria was at the front. Her shield saved a life or two. Both legionnaires drew and threw javelins, typical Roman pilums with almost supernaturally fast movement, betraying that both were stronger than they should be. Because magic, of course.

Her shield stopped both javelins... but they remained there, firmly lodged at it. She spent no time thinking, just threw her shield back them, then used Charge on the nearest.

Simea vanished from my peripheral vision, having used her Suppress Presence. Vaera cast her Dragon Might on Leria. I fired three Destroyer Bolts at the Undead Miners closest to the Legionnaires, to clear the way for our warrior to fight unmolested by them.

... It cost me half of my mana, but I one-shot all three. Destroyer Bolt wasn't as gory as it would be if the targets had flesh. It broke them into pieces, their bone arms flying around, one of them still holding his pickaxe. Their skulls caved in as the spell overcame them completely. Costly, but destructive.

I fired another one at a Legionnaire that Leria wasn't fighting with. His head caved in as if something powerful crushed it. The strength was so great that it crushed the helmet together with it. Another warrior launched a javelin, nearly impaling me. Lesser Bend Reality deflected it.

The javelin just... melted into nothingness? It was hard to describe what happened. The Bend Reality hex itself was... weird. It was not what the world should be like. But it worked.

Simea showed herself, hitting the legionnaire in the back with what looked like a small hammer. In this case, a blunt weapon was much more useful than a dagger. She must have prepared herself earlier.

The legionnaire could no longer sustain itself and collapsed on the ground. Simea disappeared again, but was soon forced to show herself again... it was hard to make yourself vanish with aura after you announced your own presence by a critical hit from stealth. The rabble of miners wasn't the most perceptive bunch around, but they weren't blind. Simea avoided the pickaxe. With her Lust Magic useless against undead she relied on aura, fighting against two miners.

Leria felled her legionnaire with a Piercing Lance, impaling him on her sword, his ribs and spine breaking. He collapsed, and she used Wide Slash on the two miners that tried to get closer to her, damaging them, but not fatally. They were pushed back as a rain of Dragon Flare's came at them from behind.

I decided to help out Simea. My Hex of Devastation made her hammer glow black. She swung it at the nearest miner. The effect would be gruesome on a living target. It was as if a giant hand grabbed him, almost breaking the skeleton in its iron grip... only to raise him up and smash on the ground, broken bones and parts of pickaxes scattering around.

... Yes. That was a critical hit. For already overpowered magic that loved murdering weak enemies in an almost artful, gruesome ways. I once saw a human critically hit by it. The effects were rather memorable. That one time when I got killed by it... not so much.

... Simea seemed almost shocked by what just happened. She jumped back, looking at her hammer with disbelief. Can't blame her. She shook it off when the second miner, unshaken by the death of his compatriot, lunged at her with his pickaxe. She blocked it, pushed the miner back and hit him with the hammer. It was a glancing hit to the arm, but the miner lost it when it was ripped out by the malevolent (and almost sapient in its hatred) hex.

It effectively disarmed him. The Hex of Devastation ran out of power, so Simea pummeled the skeleton to death, in the same time Leria slew the last two.

"... So, I guess it's a win." I commented. "I should improve my mana management since I wasted too much of it on Destroyer Bolt. We won regardless, just not as quickly."

Aura recharged much faster than mana. Leria and Simea could fight as long as they had stamina to do so. However, mana-based active skills were much flashier and stronger. It was the magician's mana that, if it ran out, would force the adventurers to retreat from missions.

"What did you to my hammer?!" Simea still seemed shocked by what happened earlier. She barely noticed that the fight ended.

"Hex of Devastation. Too bad it doesn’t last long. The first must have been a critical hit, so don't expect it happening too often." I looked around the hall again. It was big, defensible enough... mana density in the air looked decent. "I think it might be a good idea to have Lena meditate on her aura here. For a while. Let’s make camp.”

***

Lena was a complete newbie in terms of aura... but she had several advantages. First, was that she was a newbie - and it was always easier to start than to become a master in something. Second, she had Leria to show her the ropes. Third, as a blood elf she was naturally talented in everything connected to magic and melee fighting... and aura was both these things combined. Fourth, aura was all about manipulating magic in the air, and there was more aura in the air here than in normal places.

She quickly made her Aura Conductivity grow from level 5 to 11. Which still took us two whole days, during which she meditated, putting Leria’s advice to practice, while Simea guarded her and the rest of us walked around, slaying Undead Miners, Undead Legionnaires and - upon reaching the second half of day two - Undead Velites in droves. The last ones, the javelin throwers, were troublesome, unless pinned down early.

Level 11 was required to learn basic aura techniques. 1-10 was the typical human level of aura conductivity. Better for those of a more healthy and physically strong bodies, worse for those of weak constitution. Having level ten and knowing how to use it to strengthen yourself could make you - even if you look scrawny - as powerful as Earth’s strongest body-builder. Onwards? Whew. I once knew a level 55 that used trees as melee weapons. Level 91-100 were physical gods capable of surviving pretty much everything, including a point blank nuclear warhead detonation (but they were extremely rare, one digit number worldwide, all of them NPCs… most of them potential bosses).

Making Lena reach level 11 enabled her to become a proper warrior. Without it? Even town militia had at least level 11-15 of aura conductivity. A level 1-10 trying to fight anything supernatural was tantamount to suicide in this world.

Then shit hit the fan. Spectacularly, as always in DFI games.

After our last camp we made one final push deeper into The Descent, hoping to probe the strength of enemies dwelling in the deeper part of the place before retreating to Tyrant’s Hold. Soon, however, we came to a large hall... greeted by a sight of unspeakable carnage.

It was hard to say how many people died there. They were flesh and blood, so they couldn't be locals. Adventurers like us, no doubt. The biggest part left of them I could see was a limbless torso with the sad remainders of a head that somebody impaled on a stalagmite in the middle. It was a female, probably human guessing from the one ear that was left. Her face frozen in a look of unspeakable terror. Blood was dripping from the ceiling; the massacre was fresh.

Bent swords, broken shields, and mangled parts of armour lied around, some of them decorated by gruesome remnants of their users.

"Jesus Christ," I whispered. I could hear Lena emptying her stomach behind us. "The fuck happened here?!"

"There was a lot of hatred in this hall," Leria commented quietly. I guess such a sight could overwhelm even murderous cultists.

Suddenly, we heard a quiet cry.. We all jumped. A child emerged from behind a large stalagmite, his clothes covered in blood. Ten years old, perhaps? He looked around, scared, but still walked towards us.

Wait, this isn't right. A child? In such a place? In the middle of such carnage, probably traumatised by seeing it... and yet walking straight at the people he never saw earlier?

NEW QUEST

Type: Location Quest

Name: The Descent Into Depths

Difficulty: Mithril X

Survive.

I nearly shit myself when I saw the difficulty rating. Mithril was tier sixth… and the X beside it meant it almost reached the Orichalcum grade. Then I almost shit myself again when I understood the situation.

A Tentacle Push hit the child, throwing his little body back. He hit the stalagmite with a loud thump, slumping down to the ground like a broken doll.

"What the f..." Simea started, in shock. I would probably get lynched here and now, for murdering a child out of the blue... if he didn't stand up, his head twisting unnaturally and eyes replaced by endless and hungry darkness.

Fleshling

Category: Eldritch/Pentagram

Type: Daemon/Servile

Threat Grade: Silver IV

A servant of Pentagram. It can perfectly impersonate mortals it devoured, using this camouflage to manipulate others to their deaths… or to simply approach them before ripping them into shreds.

Known spells and hexes:

???

Sil… oh fuck.

"RUN!" I shouted.

I turned around and ran the fastest I could... but not before I saw the Fleshling vomiting cancerous flesh - its true body - through its eyes in a great example of body horror. My trauma compilation grew again.

This view made others understood what was happening. I could hear them running behind me through the halls and corridors, with the terrible sounds coming from behind us. My Tentacle Push was the only thing that kept us alive since it bought us a ten meters advantage.

We ran into a large hall... filled to the brim with undead. Twenty miners, four legionnaires and two velites.

We are so dead.

They all turned towards us in a synchronized manner... right before the thing running after us barged into the hall. I got a good look at it.

It was large. Up to three meters high, a moving pile of distorted flesh animated by hatred and magic. It was vaguely humanoid, but probably could switch to quadruped and pretty much any other imaginable form if it wished so. The moment it caught up to us it mutated its upper limbs into massive lashes, made of meat, muscles and exposed tendons.

Leria leaped towards it when it caught up to us, probably hoping to stop it and buy us some time. In vain. The lash struck her, breaking her shield and Aura Armour at once, still having enough strength to send her flying. So much for trying to kill the thing, its fucking Silver IV for God’s sake, you need aura manipulator of at least level thirty to have a chance of beating it solo.

It would slaughter us all in seconds, but a hail of pilums struck it. It pushed every javelin out of its body by manipulating its own flesh... but then the second wave hit.

Undead are hostile to it?! Oh, right. Pentagram originated in the same pantheon as Deviation... and this pantheon god of undeath isn't Pentagram's best buddy. When local Satan and his compatriots consider eradicating you their sacred duty, you know you are fucking evil.

The Fleshling conjured his own version of Bend Reality (much stronger than my own) after the second wave hit. It repelled the third one. Then he caught two nearest Miners into its lashes, brought them closer and... vomited flesh on them?!

The flesh enveloped them, settling on their bones and changing them from skeletons into thin humanoids.

Flesh Puppet

Category: Eldritch/Flesh

Type: Undead/Possessed

Threat Grade: Iron V

A mass of bones possessed by evil spirits… that was then enveloped in the Fleshling’s flesh. It is nothing more than a puppet, controlled by a mass of cancerous tissue that is still connected to its true master.

Fleshling tossed them both at the line of Velites and Legionnaires that kept throwing javelins at it. Each of them hit a Veles, throwing them to the ground and stomping on their skulls. Then they leapt on the nearest undead. Legionnaires turned to face it.

Alright, enemies murdering each other was a fine thing to watch, but I think undead are losing and we don't want to be around the moment the Fleshling ends slaughtering them.

"Simea, check Leria. The rest after me." This woke them from the stupor. Simea suppressed her presence, while we kept running, trying to keep the distance from the battle. A few miners tried to swung pickaxes at us when we got too close, but when we only jumped back, they returned to their march against the Fleshling... only to be smashed into pieces by its lashes, or converted into more Flesh Puppets.

The battle still raged when we left the hall, but the Fleshling seemed only pissed off by the inconvenience. The undead, in the same time, kept losing their numerical advantage much faster than the Fleshling was losing his mana and life.

Simea materialized beside us when we left the hall.

"Leria is dead." She said. "What the fuck was that thing?"

I decided to not ask if she was alive when she found her. Leria seemed to hit the wall with her back, with great strength. If she broke her spine, a mercy kill to have her resurrect at top condition at the Hold was much better than leaving her to be devoured alive by the Fleshling.

"We ran into a Locational Quest. Anti-grind mechanism must have rolled a crit." I sighed. "Loquests are the long, expansive sets of missions and hardcore boss encounters that leads to the discovery of the biggest secret of a magical anomaly. Namely how it was created. Which often comes in a package with powerful artifacts, great powers or even ability to wrest control from its current owner." Mighty magicians doing it and fielding small armies of daemons and other things were a major lategame pain in the World’s Requiem.

“Let’s keep moving until we leave this place.” Lena interjected. ”I don’t want to be here when it wins the fight.” We kept hearing the voices of the ongoing battle, including the rare roars the Fleshling gave, that seemed to be imbued with magic to cause fear. At least judging from the chills it gave us even at that distance.

"Right." I nodded. "We should keep moving at the very least until the quest updates. Simea, vanguard. The rest after her."