Thomas

This was quite a nuisance.

I winced away from a ghoul jumping at me, its fingers scratching over my shell without finding purchase, and I shot a Magic Missile at it before scuttling over to a part of ceiling where a hole in the floor should prevent them from jumping at me like that again. Their fire damage caused some significant damage even when just grazing me, and I preferred to use my potions to replenish mana.

When we fought the Krutnik, they had quite some resistances because of their sturdy carapace. They had been resistant to magic of pretty much every variant I had. But they hadn’t been double-resistant or outright immune to anything.

These ghouls on the other hand were completely immune to poison, which made sense considering they were undead. And they had 80% resistance against fire, because they were Emberus-touched. Okay, they were literally smouldering and leaving a trail of cinders behind them, so anyone could figure that one out.

But a 60-70% resistance to cold damage because they were burning up and ice attacks soothed that? Bovine excrements. Sure, their cold resistance decreased with every hit of cold damage, so one could probably just keep hitting them until it was all gone, but needing consecutive strikes to take down pack predators?

No, I had to use other spells instead. Miho unfortunately hadn’t eaten anything with lightning immunity yet, so Chain Lightning was currently out of the question. Which left me with only Magic Missiles, shooting at creatures that were far too close for my liking.

I shot another Magic Missile, upcasting it as this was no time to be frugal, and splattering another ghoul’s head upon impact.

Thomas: I suggest that Ben vacates the premise, followed by the rest of us seeking refuge outside, beyond the reach of these creatures.

Elise threw me a questioning glance as she swung at three ghouls trying to swarm her at once. Most ghouls were after her, being the biggest and juiciest piece of meat around. And for once, that wasn’t meant sexually. Everyone else was just smaller or in chitin.

Her bat splattered two of them before losing so much momentum that the third one was merely knocked off-course, falling down the hole she was floating above. He’d be back in a minute, already making a dash for the stairs.

Elise: Isn’t there a good chance that these guys have something to screw us over if we try that?

Thomas: Probably not. The harpy nests were on floors that wouldn’t be easy to reach without flight, perhaps even impossible without clearing the debris. Seems like a hint.

“Fair enough, I’m not going to argue with less biting.” Elise said, electrifying a ghoul with the butt of her bat. The ghoul was hanging over the edge trying to grab her, and shook comically like a cartoon character getting electrocuted before falling down the hole. Elise ignored it as she swung at a few others that weren’t so cowardly and took the jump instead.

I shot three upcasted Magic Missiles in short succession, scoring one headshot and bumping two more ghouls into the hole by striking their shoulder and spleen.

Elise quickly took the opening that I gave her, floating horizontally for a moment and kicking a ghoul that came for her. The kick gave her some quick momentum in the opposite direction, and she flew away from the horde for a good three or four metres before slowing down to her hover speed again.

I scuttled away, and quickly checked on Miho and Ben. I didn’t see Ben’s dot on the minimap, meaning that he was at least properly hidden if not already far away. Miho was struggling, her Krutnik form lent itself well to survive but not avoiding or breaking grapples.

I shot a Magic Missile at one of the ghouls that was holding on to her, and its brains splattered. She bit into the other ghoul, her health immediately dropping faster as she coughed up cinders. But she tore out a chunk of its flesh, and its right arm was forced to let go. Or rather, no longer had the muscles to hold on. Miho quickly moved towards the large hole in the wall that I was already moving towards and transformed into a Vespa, giving the ghoul’s other grasping hand the slip by suddenly becoming a lot more slender.

I climbed out and scuttled up the wall far beyond the reach of the ghouls. Alexa was already outside, her song over and her outfit transformed into the nurse one. She landed on Elise’s shoulder, and the bite marks on her blue skin slowly began to mend themselves. Miho was out last, and the ghouls were after her not a moment after.

They weren’t stupid enough to jump at us, but two of them were shoved over the edge by the ones in the back pushing the crowd. Those unfortunate two splattered on the rocky ground below.

Elise looked pissed, to a degree that one might almost expect her to charge back in again and kill the lot of them. She was covered in blood, goo and brain matter, and her surface clothes were tattered. She had been bitten several times, and one wound on her leg looked particularly bad. A ghoul managed to grab her as it was falling and didn’t hesitate for a moment, biting instead of hanging on.

The worst wound was the one near her neck though, where a ghoul surprised her. It jumped at her, and Elise smashed it in half, goopifying it with her swing as usual. The ghoul’s upper body didn’t give a damn, grappling her and biting into her neck before she even realised what was going on. I had to use two Healing Scrolls on her before she managed to pocket her bat and just crushed their skull between her hands. It had been close too, if I had been a moment later she could’ve died. She never even had the time to remove the jaw, which clung on even after its host died.

Elise carefully wrenched the jaws open, wincing as she had to rip open already healed wounds to remove the morbid accessory. She just dropped the whole thing after liberating it, and then tried to push the flesh back into place before using her Heal.

“Fuck!” She then suddenly screamed.

“It’s not your fault.” I said.

“Shut up.” She bit back.

“It’s not your fault.” I repeated.

“I know it’s not my fault, Thomas. They swarmed me, I couldn’t have done anything even if I wanted to!” Elise screamed at me.

“It’s not your fault.”

Miho: Thomas, shut up. You’re not helping.

I’m not? Hm, this seemed like a good way to support someone who was grieving, and they always did it like this in the movies.

Okay, not the best source, but still.

“I know it’s not my fault, Thomas. But if you keep going like that, I’m going to blame you instead!” Elise hissed, clearly very pissed. “Stupid bird, always getting itself in trouble like that! We always have to risk ourselves just to save his stupid hide. You know what? Good ridd-”

She couldn’t get herself to say it, and I wisely kept silent. Miho’s glare insisted I should, and she currently had a lot of eyes to glare with.

“Fuck!” Elise screamed into the air again, tears rolling down her face.

Ben: Do you want me to retrieve his body? I might be able to.

Elise: No.

Miho: I’m sorry. I tried to save him, but…

“No. That stupid thing was… Cuddles might’ve become helpful in due time, but right now he just wasn’t. He just attacked bigger foes and we’d have to rush in to save him, every fucking time.” Elise said. “Maybe it was for the best that this happened.”

I kept silent and tried to ignore the sound of ghouls loudly feasting inside the building. Only Miho had noticed Cuddles’s plight, the rest of us being too busy saving ourselves and the others to help the little critter. But Miho had been pinned in place by three ghouls as she tried to save him, and by the time we heard the demigriff’s panicked screams it was already too late.

“Fuck!” Elise repeated.

___ ___ ___ ___

Darryl

Shalanter Borethel – Emberus-Touched Goliath Ghoul Warpriest

Level 36 Borough Boss!

This is an Elite

The story of Shalanter is long and dramatic, but I won’t regale it as there’s still some feeds from the previous seasons floating around the web if anyone at home wants to know this guy’s deal. A short summary comes down to a certain orc crawler named Grendre who thought it a good idea to throw a few ghouls into this guy’s boss room instead of fighting the big bara! As if fire and an adorable pet weren’t already bad enough, they made the guy undead too! There have since been a lot of crawlers who cursed Grendre with their dying breath, and looking at your sorry state we’re going to add at least one more name to that list!

There are many priests of Emberus, and most of them are warpriests. If He gives you fire, you don’t use it to light candles or warm your room! Or at least, not for long before some divine intervention teaches all the other priests why you shouldn’t have done that! If you get fire, you use it to set things ablaze! Burn! Burn! BURN!

Too bad that Emberus doesn’t give much of a shit about His priests, and thus won’t bother to make them completely fire-proof. Guess how that ends. Priests of this church are usually not the organised kind, or the ones running a soup kitchen. In fact, there’s not a whole lot of them for good reason. Not much glory or money, you’re destined to burn alive eventually, and He’s kind of picky about who He gives powers. Well, at least He doesn’t have a lot of commandments, so they’re mostly free to do whatever they damn well please.

Ironically he’s not very picky about his priests being alive, as Shalanter can confess. The goliath has been cremating for a good few years already, and granting His blessing to all of his flock to make these ghouls even more dangerous than they already are. Kinda. The fire tends to kill the infection and makes it very difficult for these guys to make new ghouls. Not that they care that much, it just means more meat for them!

Shalanter loomed over me, studying me closely without a sense of personal space or wariness. He was wide open, and his eyes were roving over me like an antiquities dealer would with an old clock.

“I would definitely remember something like this being down here.” Shalanter said. “It looks more valuable than all the junk we hauled out here the last time combined.”

I froze up. Well, I already was, but now I actively tried to stay still where before I just couldn’t get myself to move.

“Buy foods?” The one ghoul grasped the idea, hopping happily from one foot to the other.

“Paint in gold, sells for more meats!” The other said.

“No, that won’t work.” Shalanter said. “We need gold and a good painter for that. We don’t even have a decent brush.”

“Then what’s plan?” The first one asked.

“Don’t care. I wonder why it’s here, though.” Shalanter pondered, looking at the hole in the ceiling. “Did it fall through? Was someone carrying it when they came in? Why?”

He looked back at me again, and tapped my head with a long nail. There was a dull thud every time he touched me, and I took minor amounts of fire damage each time.

“Definitely doesn’t sound hollow, that’s for sure.” He said. “We can melt it for quite a few bars, if all else fails. And who knows? Whomever left this thing here might come back for it.”

Shalanter lifted me up and threw me over his shoulder. “Heavy bastard, ain’t cha? You, stay here. You, with me.”

The second ghoul sulked but complied, sitting down to keep watch of the hole. The other one followed his boss, already having forgotten about me as he ran ahead scouting the barren basement.

New Achievement! A True Drax!

You managed to stand so incredibly still that you’re unperceivable by the naked eye! You move so slowly that others cannot even notice you’re there! Drax would be proud!

So, you somehow managed to freeze up in a way that leaves you completely visible and exposed, yet enemies didn’t attack you. Sometimes there are animals that really can’t see you unless you move. Sometimes someone else is just more interesting for them, though you only get this achievement if they’re really far away from you. Sometimes you just got lucky. Either way, congrats! You live to either be a chickenshit or have nerves of steel for another day!

Reward: You got a Silver Stealth Box!

___ ___ ___ ___

Elise

“Fuck!” I screamed once again.

Tears ran over my face and my hands were trembling. I forced myself to breathe steadily, and focus only on my breathing. It helped a little.

I wasn’t really torn up about Cuddles. I was sad, sure, and really angry. But there were also a lot more emotions mixed in, overwhelming me all at once. The sadness about Cuddles’s death was just the one that made me want to cry the most, and the one that the others thought I was crying about.

I only had him for about a week though, and none of us had truly bonded with the critter aside from the occasional head scratch and chuckle over his antics. I was sad, but not… not this.

What I was experiencing right now was just Cuddles on top of the most tense and painful experience in the dungeon I had thus far.

I took damage before, sure, and significant damage too. I still remembered getting knocked down by that hag and her placing that weird token on my chest. The sensation of it burrowing into my skin and feeling its cold tendrils worming their way through my veins. The feeling so alien and wrong, and I was completely helpless as I saw my health drain away. I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night with that memory on my mind.

And that was far from the only time I got damaged. I’ve been bitten, scratched and even felt acid melt my muscles once or twice. Not to mention the Big Bad Woolf.

But I never really came close to dying. I never experienced the pain and panic that I was losing, that I was dying, that my rage wasn’t enough.

Struggling to survive, and realising that I wasn’t struggling hard enough, that I wasn’t strong enough.

That I couldn’t do this alone.

“Fuck it all!” I screamed.

The ghouls snarled back from the shadows. They’d been standing on the edge before, awkwardly watching us for any opportunity. They wisely retreated further into the building after Miho melted one’s skull with her acid spit, and were now skulking in the shadows.

I ignored them. They weren’t an issue right now. Not like they were just moments ago.

They opened my eyes to the truth, however. About how weak and fragile I really was. About how I just needed one bad day or shitty situation, and it would all be over for me. How easily I could die.

I mean, they were regular mobs. Fucking trash mobs, the kind we’d been cheerily grinding for the last few hours! But because there were a few more of them and they were batshit crazy, I almost…

I was the second-toughest amongst us, and yet I never took that much damage. Yet I was so fucking fragile. So fucking easily overwhelmed.

I never really had to hold an entire group at bay for more than a few swings, knowing that Darryl stopped most of them and Thomas would burn the world if we couldn’t manage. And that Ben was somewhere, ready to deal ridiculous amounts of damage to any big guy without prompting.

Knowing that I was relying on others while I swung my bat like some crazy madwoman, charging in reckless and suicidal like Cuddles. And now they were eating his innards.

I felt the tears well up again. The little bastard didn’t deserve this.

Livia told us that we could buy a Mount Carrier in the bigger towns, allowing us to ghost him out of danger in situations like these. Allowing me to just get rid of the bothersome bird when it pulled another Leeroy Jenkins at the wrong time.

Why didn’t we go to the town immediately? Why did we decide to grind before we…

No. Don’t think like that. I’m not clairvoyant, I couldn’t have known.

Just like how I couldn’t have saved Cuddles even if I knew I had to. I got jumped by five of those damned ghouls, and I couldn’t let them get too close. Once they grappled me, I could no longer merrily smash them. I had to focus all of my attention on keeping them at bay. I had to leave Cuddles to fend for himself, I knew that much for sure.

Once they would grab me, their nails would dig into my skin and then they’d-

The image of the disembodied head and arms of that one ghoul flashed through my head again, my neck burning as I recalled them gleefully biting in despite their own sorry state, and my vision going red with my own blood.

How I panicked and tried to shake him off, ineffectively bonked him with my bat. How Thomas had to heal me twice before I managed to clear my head enough to…

I would’ve died if he hadn’t healed me. I panicked and would’ve died trying to shake off a mindless predator, or worse. I could’ve shoved them away, tearing open my own neck in the process and…

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck it all!

I was so weak! I was so dependent! Why was I even…

“Elise.”

“Fuck off.” I snarled.

“I will. But could you take care of those, first?” Thomas said, devoid of emotion as usual and fucking insensitive to boot.

I looked over my shoulder to where he was pointing, and saw the swarm of harpies that was coming our way.

Right, those cunts.

This fucking dungeon didn’t allow us to unwind for a bit. It didn’t give any fucking breaks.

You know what?

I didn’t even care anymore.

I was feeling too many emotions at once, and yet I was empty at the same time. I used up all my common sense just now, trying to survive those ghouls. None was left.

“Off.” I snarled. I didn’t even wait for Alexa to comply before the winds roared around me and I started to build up momentum.

Back in the box, emotions. I had to look stoic and strong, don’t show my weakness to the guys and the people watching. I didn’t want to be a fucking charity case. Deep breath, and smash some birds.

Well, these things were less scary than the ghouls, at least. And there were like what? Thirty, maybe forty? Forty of them? I’d take out half before they’d kill me.

At least they wouldn’t eat me alive while they did it. Or burn me. Just scratches and bad singing. I could handle that. I had to handle that.

I flew at them, one woman against a swarm. An idle thought ran through my head, something I usually didn’t even think about unless we were talking about it.

Well, maybe this will get me some more views before I die.

Then I felt a gentle caress on my back. Like a lover’s touch, sending chills up my spine and leaving a tingling sensation. The Chain Lightning then jumped to its next victim, and the harpies weren’t immune to lightning damage like I was.

Right, I forgot. I wasn’t just one dumb brute against a horde. I was just the dumbass that smashed while the others killed enough of the mobs so that I could kill the rest.

With tears in my eyes, I let out a hoarse cry and allowed my rage to take over as I charged at the stragglers.