Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 24

Angelo was getting frustrated with the Moaning Mines. If there had been more people in Twinsburg Heights, they would have been able to pick and choose among the players there. Instead, they were in a dungeon with traps, without a rogue. If Maratis hadn’t been in the group to heal them, it would have been much worse.

Of course, not having a rogue wasn’t the end of their problems. The monsters in the Moaning Mines, all ghosts, were hard to attack. Either you had to hit them exactly when they were manifesting themselves to attack, or use magic. Maratis could use holy magic to do good damage to them, but then very little mana was left over for healing. So they had picked up a Magician who specialized in fire.

This would have been fine, but the magician named Abaddon wasn’t very good. He frequently ran out of mana and had to rest. His spells often missed their mark, and some of them came very close to hitting party members. Worse yet, at least to Angelo, he was constantly flirting with Ruby. This made Angelo want to strangle Abaddon. If he weren’t the only magician in town, then he would probably have suffered that fate. Instead, he was tolerated. Barely.

Ghosts were enough trouble by themselves, even with a proper party. The liked to come out of walls, the ceiling, or the floor. Although they often made loud wailing noises, they were clever enough not to do so when sneaking up on people. This meant the party had to be constantly vigilant, and it also made Angelo’s job as the only tank that much harder. Angelo had to be prepared to move to the front, middle, or back of the group at any time.

After the party almost died, for the fifth time that hunting session, they were ready to call it a day. With barely any progress made, they would do just as well to leave the dungeon and come back another time. Perhaps the next day would go better. With that, they logged off.

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Angela sat with Solara at lunch, talking about college plans. Although they played Royal Road together, at school they talked about other things. Solara had been accepted to a prestigious university nearby, with a full scholarship, contingent on her keeping her perfect grades up. Angela hadn’t been very serious about applying to many universities yet, but she would get around to it.

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At Mortimer’s house, well, it was Angela’s home too for now, she sparred with Mortimer. They only went for a few rounds before it was obvious they were both too frustrated to properly spar.

“What’s up, Mortimer? You seem to be having a bad day.”

“Well, my day is fine. I’m just annoyed that I can’t win.”

“Ha! Well, don’t expect me to let you win. You can’t have everything easy.”

“I know that. So, did you have a bad day then?”

“It’s probably kind of trivial, but this dungeon in Royal Road is annoying me. The ghosts and the traps are bad enough, but out magician is just terrible. Say, we could use a rogue…”

“Nope, still busy. Maybe in a couple days though…”

“In a couple days, I have to start studying for finals. You probably should too.”

Mortimer nodded in acknowledgement of him probably needing to study. He would do that some, but he still planned to play Royal Road.

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Quietus entered the Moaning Mines dungeon. He knew his cousin would be logging on soon, and wanted to get a head start. He didn’t feel like interacting with that party right now. While he was going ahead, he might as well clear out some of the ghosts… and definitely the traps. While some of the ghosts would likely respawn before Angelo logged in, traps would probably take longer to reset.

Of course, his plan was contingent on him being able to kill the ghosts. Mortimer found his first ghost by being slashed on his back. He quickly spun around and slashed at the enemy, but his dagger just went through it. He was able to dodge it’s next few attacks, but any attacks he made of his own seemed to have no effect. Even his dark hand ability just went straight through.

After he dodged a few more attacks, the ghost sunk into the floor. Quietus waited, senses alert as he looked around. He heard a slight whisper of the wind from the wall behind him. If he hadn’t been concentrating on his listen skill, he could never have noticed. Quietus activated his Snakebite skill as he spun around. His dagger connected with the ghost at the same time it got hit him. Although he didn’t get in a good strike, he did manage to hit it. He realized it had to do with the timing of the enemy’s attack. Too bad it cost him 10% of his health to find it out.

Quietus then activated his backslide skill to make a quick retreat to see if he could throw the ghost off. His quick and unpredictable movements were certainly enough to confuse the ghost slightly. However, he wasted the opportunity because he had to pick himself up off the floor. Quick movements backwards on a rough floor had sent him tumbling head over heels. Fortunately, he took no damage from this, possibly because it was treated as a very short fall, and thus reduced to nothing by his climbing skill.

He eventually managed to start wearing down the ghost’s health with the use of snakebite to counterattack while he was dodging out of the way of the ghosts attacks. He avoided using backslide because the terrain was uneven, and it used way too much mana for constant application. It was very fast, though. Quietus felt like the ghost’s health was going down much slower than he was used to. He realized that normally everything he fought slowly drained lower in health after he had hit it a few times. Of course, this effect was much more noticable when he used poisons. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no such effect on the ghost.

Eventually, Quietus was the victor. It was just one monster, so he shouldn’t have even had that much trouble with it. Quietus felt like he could have done a lot better if it was always physically there. He wondered if there was a way to do that. As he was walking down the pathway and turning the corner, he stopped. He had a feeling there was something he should be doing. Then, he remembered, and checked for traps.

Surprisingly to him, there was actually one there. Quietus had assumed that traps around every corner was figurative, but in this case it seemed to be literal. He had just disarmed the tripwire when another ghost appeared. The battle went much as before, although Quietus was a bit more prepared. This time, when the ghost sunk into the floor to hide, he thought of a plan. The floor was much smoother here, so it might even work.

He walked to the middle of the tunnel and waited, listening carefully. When he heard the telltale whisper behind him, he activated backslide. Suddenly, he found himself somewhere different. Before he had not really been able to appreciate the speed that felt like he was not in the space between his starting and stopping point because he had tumbled backwards. This time, he was almost too shocked at his different location to slash at the ghost who was clawing at empty air. Almost. He still had the presence of mind to hit the ghost with a nice quick Snakebite.

Then, he had a brilliant idea. It would cost him pretty much all of his remaining mana. Once the ghost broke off the fight again, he set himself up similarly. He just hoped the ghost wouldn’t learn from experience, at least not after one time. Fortunately for him, regular monsters were slow to develop new tactics. This time when he appeared behind the ghost, he used his Backstab skill, at the cost of most of the remaining 40% or so of his mana. His strike went perfectly where he aimed it.

Critical Hit!

Backstab was successfully executed, but the enemy is immune to skills of this kind. The attack will be treated as a normal hit.

Quietus was very disappointed in his first use of the Backstab skill. Sure, he had gotten a critical hit. He would have had the same from just a regular attack. In fact, he basically did that, but at a large cost of mana. Still, it was better to learn that this skill would be useless in the dungeon now rather than at a critical point. Quietus eventually killed the ghost anyway, but it took longer without being able to used Snakebite very often.

Quietus sighed. His mana regeneration was slower here than he was used to. This was, he presumed, because ghosts didn’t feel pain. This meant that the bonus regeneration from his Sadism stat didn’t apply. Quietus wasn’t sure what else he could use to speed up his combat progress.

Somehow, Quietus managed to sneak his way past any ghosts that might have, or might not have, been in the next few tunnels. Although there were a few traps, as long as he was watching for them he had no trouble finding and disarming them. He was about to have trouble with something else, however. In front of him floated a ghost. This wasn’t really a surprise, but this one was larger than the other two. The fact that it had a name over its head- The Cursed Archer- told Quietus that it was part of his quest.

Quietus wasn’t really sure if he could defeat a stronger ghost, but he would try. He also had to remember to Soul Bind it. He would need to apply that at the beginning of the fight, just in case. Quietus tried to approach it quietly, but it quickly turned around to face him. Quietus prepared for it to charge him, ready to strike and dodge. He was so focused on that he wasn’t prepared for a bolt of darkness to shoot out of the ghost’s hands and hit him in the chest.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. Quietus looked at his health to see how close he was to dying from that. It had taken about 16% of his health. It wasn’t actually as bad as he thought it would be. It really hurt though. He realized it would have been worse without his levels of dark magic mastery, both the pain and the actual damage taken.

Quietus advanced carefully, ready to dodge the bolts of darkness should they be used again. He was still prepared for melee attacks, in case it decided on that route. The ghost slowly backed away, firing more of the bolts of darkness. Arrows, really, Quietus observed as they went past him.

Then, the ghost had backed into the wall of the circular room. Quietus sighed. He listened carefully, and was rewarded when he heard the faint sound of one of the arrows heading towards him. He dodged it, mostly, and turned to face the ghost. This time he rushed at it, trying to catch it off guard. Instead of counterattacking, it just faded into the wall again. Quietus moved back towards the middle of the room, prepared for an attack from every angle. For a few repetitions, he dodged the arrows of darkness, at least enough to reduce the damage he took. The Cursed Archer always kept out of his range, and was never close enough that he could have used backslide to get behind it.

Quietus gritted his teeth. Mostly, this was because the wounds from the dark arrows hurt. The rest was frustration. He didn’t even know if his Soul Bind would work. He hadn’t even tried it. The next time the ghost appeared, Quietus dodged the first arrow fired, and pointed his hand at the annoying enemy. He activated his Soul Bind spell, hoping it would reach the ghost. He wasn’t even sure if it had any kind of range. Out of his hand shot a beam of darkness, and when it hit The Cursed Archer, it split and wrapped around its body. Then, the ribbons of darkness coalesced into chains.

Quietus was glad that at least his spell worked. If only he could damage the stupid ghost. He would try, probably for the last time, to get near the ghost. The Cursed Archer of course fired more arrows of darkness as Quietus approached. It backed up to stay away from him, but before it could slip into the wall, as normal, it stopped. Quietus took the chance to dash forward and take a swing.

Normally, such a change in tactics would have been a trap. Even more so, Quietus wouldn’t be able to hit an unmanifested ghost. He thought about this vaguely after he was already committed to his attack. He just hoped whatever counterattack he took wouldn’t be too bad.

Then, something surprising happened. Quietus’ dagger hit the ghost, and dealt damage. The Cursed Archer took a swipe at Quietus as it shuffled to the side after his attack, but he dodged it.

After that, Quietus moved around the room with it, dodging its claw attacks and the occasional dark arrow. All of his attacks managed to hit it. He wasn’t even timing them to when he thought it would be manifested, but just attacking as much as he could. Even so, he whittled down its health.

Of course, The Cursed Archer was still no pushover. Quietus had to drink one of his potions during the fight, which the ghost used to get some distance between them. Eventually, however, Quietus got in the last strike.

The Cursed Archer has been bound!

You have learned:

Dark Arrow

Summon forth an arrow of darkness to strike a foe at range. Causes damage and pain.

Mana cost: 20

Quietus almost laughed. Instead, he grimaced. It certainly did cause pain.

He was very glad that he now had something he could use at range, although he would probably need to practice quite a bit to be accurate with it. More than that, however, he had learned something important from this battle.

Using Soul Bind on ghosts made them stuck in their manifested form. No more not getting hit, no more moving through the walls and floor. Quietus smiled. These ghosts would regret the day they chose to sneak up on him and trouble him with annoying battles.

End Chapter 24

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