Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 33

Quietus looked at the four guildmates in front of him and waited for them to say something. The mage, Nilrem, eloquently made his point first. “W- Who are you?”

“I’m Quietus.” Seriously, he thought they were waiting for him. How could they not know?

Next, Maratis spoke up. “Hey… I saw you in Twinsburg Heights, right?”

Quietus nodded.

Next was Angelo’s turn. “You do realize there a path, right over there?” Angelo pointed behind them.

“Oh. I didn’t see that. It seemed better to take the direct route. That sure does look easier though.”

Ruby just looked at him. “Hmm… interesting.” It didn’t sound like a very positive review. Then again, interesting was good, right?

Angelo decided to get matters moving along. “Well, since we’re all here now, we can get started. I was thinking you could stand next to me at the front and watch for traps. Oh right, join the party.”

You have received an invitation to join a party.

“Right.”

Party invite accepted.

All Quietus saw in front of him was a series of cliffs beyond an archway. Currently, they appeared to be approaching an area where sheer cliffs dropped off to the left of the path, and another rose up to the right. They looked much harder to climb than the one he’d gone up.

Quietus wondered where the dungeon was. He vaguely recalled information he’d glanced. Something about Goblin Crags being an “outside dungeon”. It seemed like a contradiction, but they were in the right place. Plus, he did get the message about entering the dungeon after they passed through the archway.

Being in a party felt weird. Specifically, he couldn’t use stealth effectively. He had to keep pace with Angelo, and it just wasn’t practical while using stealth. Plus, the rest of the party was making enough noise for him to get noticed anyway. Quietus felt much more vulnerable than he did when adventuring alone.

“Wait. Stop.”

At least the traps were easy to find. This one would drop a large number of rocks, probably killing whoever was hit by them. It didn’t appear that it could be disarmed without triggering it on purpose, but he was able to tell dangerous locations, and had the party stand out of the danger zone.

They hadn’t gone much further when they saw some goblins. Obviously not unexpected enemies in a dungeon called Goblin Crags. Some of the goblins started drawing their small bows. Angelo prepared to charge the group.

“Wait! Pit traps.” Quietus pointed them out. One of them was directly in the path of where Angelo was going to charge. Angelo had to skirt around the area, allowing the goblins to get off some shots, but they were easily avoided, or blocked. Then, Quietus experienced something weird.

He heard Ruby starting to sing. This wasn’t weird, he’d spied on listened to her singing before. However, he suddenly felt lighter and faster.

You have heard Song of the Wind!

Speed increased by 10%

Agility increased

So, this is what getting buffs felt like. Interesting. It was rather convenient, once he got used to the speed.

The first battle was rather awkward. Although Angelo kept control of the attention of the goblins well, Quietus wasn’t used to fighting with allies around. He wasn’t exactly sure what to attack. Eventually, he went around behind the goblin directly in front of Angelo, and used Backstab. It was rather disappointing, without the triple damage from it being a sneak attack. More than triple, with the effect of intermediate stealth. It still wasn’t worth the mana cost. After that, he stuck to Snakebite.

Another part of the awkwardness of the battle was that Quietus didn’t use any magic. For some reason, he didn’t want to explain why he had magic as a “rogue”. Besides, he needed to get better at fighting properly. His dagger mastery skill had been stubbornly stuck near the end of beginner level 9.

After the battle he studied the goblins for a little bit. He didn’t have as much time to do that as he would have liked, but every bit helped for his anatomy skill. It still grew fairly quickly since goblins were a new enemy to him. He could probably get to intermediate level after fighting a few more different types of creatures and studying them. It did depend on how different they were though- similar but technically different creatures offered less skill proficiency.

The dungeon was going fairly well, and the traps weren’t too hard to deal with. Battles progressed faster once the group got more practice. It also helped that Quietus applied a new poison. It was weak, but it had the unique property of lasting for several attacks. This allowed Quietus to use Snakebite on several enemies, doing bleeding and poison damage to them while the rest of the group, and then himself, finished off one enemy at a time.

There were certainly advantages to fighting in a group. For example, Nilrem was very good at taking down enemies quickly if he needed to. He had a very large damage output over a short time. Of course, he couldn’t fight for too long because his spells were high in mana cost. He mostly reserved his spells for key moments and targets of opportunity. His aim was frighteningly good, and he sometimes shot lightning bolts that went past party member’s faces. Once, Quietus was pretty sure a bolt arced over his head.

In another fight, Quietus was badly injured. The goblins weren’t even close to defeated, either. He prepared to die. As usual, this didn’t meant he would stop fighting, but he just accepted it as inevitable. Then…

“Healing hand!”

A good quarter of his health was restored by Maratis. That was much faster than a potion could restore his health! Plus, it didn’t have any limit in how many times it could be used, except for mana. Mana could be recovered, however. Potions had to be made again. Quietus actually thought of an idea he figured would be good for himself in the long run. He gave all of the party members a couple mana potions. They weren’t very powerful, but they would help in an emergency. Besides, he didn’t need to use potions as often with support from other players. He could also make more… once he got some resources and time.

This is not to say that being in a party was entirely better than hunting alone. First, there was the aforementioned problem of stealth. There also occurred times that party members triggered traps before he could detect them. Most importantly, it was awkward. Although the other members talked among themselves, nobody talked to Quietus. They weren’t intentionally excluding him, but his responses were limited. The actual awkward part, from Quietus’ perspective, is that they had initiated conversation at all. He didn’t really have anything to say.

Then there was the slight matter of party formation. Although it was effective, there were disadvantages. Specifically, Quietus couldn’t ogle observe watch out for Ruby. And of course Maratis and Nilrem. The casters obviously needed protecting too. A little bit. Mostly though, he wanted to watch her dance. So he would know what debuffs she was giving to the enemy. Of course. There wasn’t an ulterior motive to that.

Eventually, the party came to a branch. The cliffs had actually grown up to both sides, and the group had a choice of two paths in their own little valleys. Angelo chose a path, and Quietus followed along. He didn’t have any preference.

Then came the ambush. Although the goblins had tried ambushes before, this one was different. Instead of coming out from behind rocks or out of holes they had dug, the attacks came from above. Although there were not many goblins, they were firing a pretty steady rain of arrows. Most of the party had to hide under what cover they could find, generally where there were slight ledged from above. Angelo covered for Nilrem, and Nilrem performed the job he was most needed for. After a longer time than normal, he shot a bolt of lighting at the goblins on one side. Unlike before, it chained from one goblin to another. All of the goblins on that side were heavily injured. Then Nilrem started firing smaller bolts to finish them off one by one.

Quietus was still worried about the goblins on the other side. He decided he would tip the scales a bit. The Spectral Hand spell was subtle enough, especially if he summoned it behind the goblins. It wasn’t too far for him to do so, just about twenty feet up. All it took was a slight push, and one goblin fell over the edge. The other goblins backed away from the edge a bit and got into more steady positions, but it still helped the battle.

The next battle Quietus was waiting for, and he managed to hear the goblins ahead of time. This let the party be more prepared, and allowed them to avoid the first hail of arrows, which had previously been undodgeable. This time, two goblins managed to slip off the edge at the same time. It was really awkward to make the right movements out of sight of the group.

Then the group came upon a much more dangerous trap. It was also a falling rock trap, but it covered a much wider area. This included all of the area around the trigger itself. It looked to be a bit less deadly, but it would still be dangerous for the party. Quietus had the group back up, and pretended to fiddle with the wall while using Spectral Hand to trigger the trap from a distance.

“Whoa,” said Ruby. “I’d heard they had big traps like that here. I heard that you just have to send whoever has the most health in to trigger them.”

Angelo looked at Quietus. He understood that an explanation was required.

“Well, theres a trick… it helps to have intermediate search.”

Not a direct lie, because that helped him spot the trap more easily, but the trick was unrelated to the search skill.

Angelo accepted the explanation. “Well, I’m glad we got the one rogue who can disarm those traps safely. That should help.”

The party continued along and continued to earn reasonably good experience, and gained some levels. Nobody complained about goblins mysteriously losing their balance, although it was unheard of.

The hunt continued over several days, with breaks to leave the dungeon to sell loot, get repairs, and of course time to log off and deal with real life things like food and sleep. After they had gained a few more levels, Angelo declared that they were ready to face the boss. The boss was down a path they had been avoiding on purpose. There was no need to face a boss when the party was unready.

Mortimer was actually rather excited to face a boss. He’d never taken on a real boss before, at least not directly. He had fought some sub-bosses, but a real boss was too dangerous for him to take on alone. Plus, he hadn’t found any.

End Chapter 33

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