Is this how it’s like to be a hedgehog? Rum pondered, shock battling pain. No! Wait! Hedgehog’s have their spines on the back, and not through their face! Rum involuntarily tasted his own blood as an arrow stuck into his mouth at a left angle, through his tongue, and out through the back of his jaw. Out of the 20 arrows that’d been shot, only 4 had missed their targets. Rum’s body had absorbed 8 arrows, and there were scarcely a limb not crying out in pain. Somehow though, this orchestra of pain drowned out the individual nerve signals, instead Rum just felt a bit dizzy, and was – quite literally – speechless.

Eyes still worked though, and as he clumsily rotated his arrow-decorated front body towards his elven friends, he saw 2 elves down on the ground, one of them eyes closed, grimacing with pain, the other down on both knees, trying to get back up. In front of the 2 downed elves was another elf, still fighting with an arrow to her side, protecting her people. Flanking her was Royath, the one experienced warrior wordlessly, ferociously, heroically, trying to make up for the shattering of their defensive line’s center. Rum was given a moment to marvel at the efficiency with which the elf cut down the bony advance, before his wandering mind snapped back to reality, and to the fact that he was dying, his friends were dying, and if they didn’t all die from these arrows, a second volley could certainly do the trick.

In a gurgle of spell-casting noise he willed his Trinity of Healing magic to force out the arrows and patch him up. He barely managed to get the last arrow out though, before he saw the skeletons firing their second volley. No, was the first simple thought that went through Rum’s mind. I’m not dying here! In consequence, as the rain of sharp pointy sticks assaulted his general direction, a spontaneous dance for survival commenced. Rum dodged arrow after arrow in quick session, his torch blazing back and forth with the movement. Upping his efforts, Rum multi-tasked, and started wrestling out his remaining old arrows, one by one. For every arrow he pulled out, the desperate dance almost ended in a defeat by dizziness. As he let his last dance step settle against the ground, a summary was in order: out of a total of 10 arrows, Rum managed to dodge 5, his previous wounds just barely getting the time to enter the last stages of healing, before his body was violated by new wounds. All in all, 5 arrows were an improvement from 8. Still, as 2 more elves went down behind him, including a shield-bearing elf and even Alkiath, it did look like Rum’s ability to out-heal the double-archer platoon high above was not gonna be worth much if the elven line completely shattered.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” was all Rum could say, as he decided to just ignore most of the arrows covering his legs and bleeding out of his belly, and instead ran for the downed elves. First was the shield elf – Rum had a quick spark of inspiration, and no choice but to grasp the idea whether it would work or not. Touching the shield elf’s left butt cheek, he yelled at the elf’s arse: “TRINITY OF HEALING!”. He poured lots of mana into the spell. When the elf’s eyes looked back over his shoulder at Rum, Rum yelled: “PROTECT THE ELVES AGAINST THE ARROWS”. He pointed up at the skeletal archers who were rapidly getting ready for a 3rd volley. “DON’T LET THEM TAKE MORE ELVES!” he added in another yell, before – and as a bit of a hero himself if he had to admit it – he overcharged himself with a soothingly spoken “Skin Toughen” spell, stood up and got ready. He and the shield elf scrambling to his legs behind him, now had to save their friends. Together, the duo stepped into a 2-man rear shield wall, or what they hoped to be some kind of shield wall at least. Really there was too much distance to cover. But they would try; the elf with his large shield, eyes scanning the archers’ possible new targets, and Rum, with his fat belly – his meat shield – doing the same thing. Spacing themselves apart to cover respectively the right and left half of the back of the line and blockade, Rum and the shield elf took the arrows head one, as 20 strong strung strings loosened. Rum gulped and almost cried out in pain-anticipation, his teeth coming out in the most nervous of grins. Yet, he acted like the best of meat shields: danced away the arrows aimed at himself, and flung himself in front of the remaining elves on the left, absorbing 9 arrows aimed at them. The elf to his right did a fine job too, managing to shield a couple of elves. Rum cried weakly, just a little tear running down his left cheek, as he started un-hedgehog-ing himself of his 14 new, blood-leaking protrusions. He’d managed to save his face from further arrows, but he did little else but cough up blood as he muttered “Trinity of Healing”. Only when the blood started to magically vanish from his throat, did he manage to yell out: “URVANOM! HERE!”. He didn’t even look to see if the message had landed, instead he stepped over to what looked like the most badly hurt elf lying on the ground, and cast “Trinity of Healing” on him. Seconds later, Urvanom showed up by his side as Rum was standing, like a practice target on display, ready to absorb a 4th volley.

“Urvanom” Rum breathed out with anxiety, “I think you’re the only one who can do this. We need to take out all those archers above, and we need it FAST! Can you do it?” Bewitched by positivity, Urvanom merely smiled, then looked up at the closest skeleton. Without a word, he just ran. Rum had totally forgotten the incredibly power that a higher level being could put into performance, but now watching that level 64 elf sprint like his agility attribute was made for this very moment, it made him remember. The speed, length and precision of Urvanom’s steps looked as if he’d been training for this for months. In mere seconds the elf scaled the ugly spiraling stairs, and effortlessly kicked the first skeleton off the ledge and down towards the rock ground, where it crashed and splintered. It was all so amazing to watch that Rum nearly forgot for a second his role as the apprentice meat shield, and it was only by staring at the arrow ready to launch from Urvanom’s next victim, that he snapped back into his self-chosen role, and welcomed the 4th volley, and 19 arrows. Of these arrows, 1 arrow grazed the valiant Royath’s cheek after he expertly dodged a much worse fate, while 2 other arrows made their home in the already downed Alkiath’s poor back. 4 more arrows completely missed their target, 1 arrow was barely deflected by Udevi’s blade, while Rum gracefully absorbed 6 arrows, and his shield elf friend blocked 5.

Up high, Urvanom continued his masterful destruction of the double archer platoon, mixing between kicking, slapping and throwing skeletons to the hard ground, or sniping them with elven arrows right in their bony skulls. To Rum’s relief, this merrily annihilating force of destruction that was Urvanom was starting to capture the undead archers’ attention. One by one the aim of their bows began rotating away from the ground down below, away from Rum and his elven friends, and towards Urvanom whose excited energized fighting left the archers constantly readjusting their aim to the elf’s changing position. And with Urvanom sprinting and turning to impressive feats of acrobatics to hurry his way up and along the ledges, that position changed constantly.

“Trinity of Healing” Rum breathed out as he channeled magic into the prone Alkiath. He quickly went over to the 2 other elves still suffering and healed them up too. One of them was the elf who’d managed to continue fighting, though at a seriously reduced capacity, with an arrow stuck in her side. The tide, it seemed, is stabilizing in our favor. Rum afforded himself a sigh of relief.

“BREACH!” Udevi screamed. The sudden outburst made Rum shoot his gaze to where the elf’s voice had been coming from. On the ground next to her was Arrovani, the elf dying – again. This time from a dagger impaled in his throat to his left side, and some kind of massive cut to his right side that was almost totally obscured by the associated blood and gore. The poor elf also had a spear stuck in his stomach. But just as alarming as the dying of the elf, was the small stream of skeletons who’d managed to push past their left flank, and were now threatening to surround them. Before Rum could properly react, the shield elf he’d saved earlier, ran to the breach and tried to push the skeletons back singlehandedly. Glancing to the right flank, Rum observed how his healing was restoring their fighting ability. Yet, they were also slowly losing one of their best fighting assets, as Royath had started to shamble in his strikes, his stamina clearly nearing depletion.

Rum jogged over to the dying Arrovani and knelt down next to the man rapidly turning into a corpse. “Next time” he said as he ripped out the spear, “protect yourself better, you look like you were trying to die!” He ripped out the dagger as well and put both his hands to the blood choking elf’s throat before shouting “Trinity of Healing!” The nearly-a-corpse turned back into fully-an-elf in a moderately fast process.

“Thanks” Arrovani faintly let out, his voice dried up by blood loss.

“We’re just barely holding” Rum commented, as much to himself, as to the small group of elves fighting for their lives in front of him. He stood up, Arrovani rolling over on his belly and trying to get back up too. Behind them, there had grown a greater calm from inside the cave, a calm only interrupted by the almost rhythmic sound of feet hitting hard against a rocky surface. As Rum turned to observe their rear and their savior, he saw why the noise was so hard. Urvanom was almost giddily jumping down from ledge to ledge, his feet smacking each time and stumbling just a little. There were no more skeletons, just a splatter of bones at the mountain floor ahead. When Urvanom jumped down the final set of stairs, and then came jogging towards Rum, the mage just pointed at the struggling left flank, at which Urvanom steered his jog and readied his bow and arrow.

“Can you keep our elves alive?” he asked the elf as the first skeleton fell to his perfect skull-piercing archery.

“Yes!” affirmed the elf, not even giving Rum a glance back, just happily executing the task.

“Good” Rum continued, “because I think it’s time for me to try and end this siege. Royath over there is already losing his ability to fight, and the other elves are bound to be exhausted too, very soon.”

Urvanom made no comment. Rum reached out with his mana again, dragging it forward and into the skeletal hoard. He pushed and felt it envelop and flow through the massive force of bones. “DISRUPT SKELETON!” he shouted with the fullness of his lungs, his magical words echoing throughout the cavern. Shortly afterwards, the first skeleton fell on the left flank, seemingly for no reason at all. Within two seconds the next one fell. Then the third, and soon, like the slowest domino chain ever, the skeletons began falling. Rum breathed in, out, slowly, rhythmically, trying to keep the spell up and not burn out. But all his major healings, it had all exhausted him. After a mere 40 skeletons, Rum’s head felt like it was about to blow up from a pressure he couldn’t keep up, and so the spell fizzled out on his own, and he fell to a knee.

Even if he personally had lost against their numerical advantage, the effort had given the elves the room to stabilize their front, and they were back to start, except for a couple of elves lying on the ground behind the front, not wounded, but exhausted. One of them was Royath, another Rum didn’t have the name for, but she was probably low level and didn’t have the stamina for this. 10 elves was enough though. Rum decided to lie down, with eyes gazing up into The Deathtrap, as he’d named it. Curious as to his own state, he afforded himself a spell which he hadn’t used for some time now.

“Rumalize” he whispered.

The information flooded Rum’s mind, and he instantly focused to catch and understand it all:

Rum (male human)

Level

44

Health Pool

915/960

Stamina Pool

306/400

Mana Pool

74/1370

Constitution Score

12 (natural) + 84 (level)

Strength Score

14 (natural) + 67 (level)

Dexterity Score

6 (natural) + 34 (level)

Intelligence Score

13 (natural) + 124 (level)

Wisdom Score

6 (natural) + 40 (level)

Willpower Score

8 (natural) + 31 (level)

Luck Score

11 (natural) + 60 (level)

Known Basic Effects

None

Oh wow, I’ve gone up 2 levels since last time! I wonder why? And how? The nature of leveling in Aclima was not precisely understood. It was well known that the most adventurous of people, and the most successful, were also the greatest at gaining power levels. At Flip University, the academics taught three different theories on why and how power levels are gained. The Theory of Struggle and Adaptation (TSA), The Theory of Cultivated Growth (TCG), and The Theory of Inherent Blessing (TIB).

According to the TSA, what produced individuals of extraordinary power was the opportunities they took in struggling against their own limits, and through their subsequent adaptations, they qualified for the higher power levels. It was a theory that explained well how dungeoneers and adventurers managed to gain so much power compared to common people, and it was also used to explain how academics were able to rise to such high power levels, the difficulty of their academic research acting as their struggle. The academic posts were few after all, and the rivalry to achieve them, particularly the higher positions, was sometimes fierce. An academic shadowy council of grand mages often demanded great deeds of those who would succeed a dead or current post holder. Suffice to say, the explanatory power of this theory, and how it reflected upon the powerful, made it a favourite among the academics. However, the competing theories were far from defeated.

According to the TCG, individuals rarely if ever managed to excel on their own, but needed guidance and a beneficial environment for growth. This helped explain how successful people often tended to grow faster than others, and how the seemingly untalented individuals of the wealthy and the powerful could still grow way past the power levels of practically any ordinary inhabitant of The Raven’s Slum. A place that surely would pose several challenges for individuals, and certainly led to struggling, yet to little leveling. This argument was a thorn in the side of the adherents of TSA, as it did make a lot of sense and did seem to make TCG the better explanation. However, many TSA people saw it as discrediting their individual efforts, and instead tracing their power from privilege rather than the glorious deeds of besting adversity.

Lastly was the TIB. This line of thinking considered people as being initially determined in their growth and general success. It was popular with few, but evidence for it was mounting as it became clear that power sometimes favoured individuals who otherwise showed little signs of either struggling and adapting, nor having some particularly favourable conditions for growth. The fatalistic aspect of this line of thinking bothered many though, as it seemed to suggest that either you were born for greatness, or you were born for ruin. The existence of people disabled from birth and finding it harder to gain power levels, seemed to suggest this was at least probable, but even among the disabled, some rose to gain many levels, and some vocal critics argued that it was the hostile social environment more than anything else that limited many disabled people. The TIB was mostly favoured by mages of the aristocracy, who viewed their own bloodlines as destined for glory. If not true for every member of a bloodline, as was undeniable from all the idiots born ever so often, then at least having an aristocratic bloodline was thought to drastically increase one’s chances for growth. A situation of belief which did appear a little self-prophetic, at least to Rum, as people who believed they were made for greatness tended to welcome opportunities for growth, and those who believed their children to be destined for greatness, showered them with the privileges that offered opportunities for growth. Thus, both TSA and TCG were adequate to explaining any aristocratic observations made through the lens of the TIB and its fatalism. Yet it was undeniable that people born disabled, or with the conditions setting up future disability – they did not have the same benefits in personal growth.

As Rum lay there, gazing up into the ceiling, and thinking about his levels, he was inclined towards The Theory of Struggle and Adaptation right now. If only there was a way to measure progression in-between levels, he wished silently. Or maybe there is?

“HEEE-HE-HE-HEEE!” came a voice from above. It was soon joined by a duet of similar voices screaming merrily the single-beat tune of evil sadism. Rum’s mind snapped out of the beginnings of a mental journey to academic wonderland, and his eyeballs began rotating around, scanning in full the tall circle of space above.

There, as he’d earlier feared, far above from the small tunnels of The Deathtrap, the witches laughed their way out of deep dark holes. The torches of Rum and his elven team provided but a shallow light so far up. Combined with the red colors of their robes however, the mages were trackable enough. Only their faces were difficult to discern. Rum counted 3 witches, each from a different tunnel, and each followed by 2 or 3 skeletal archers. Like 3 different teams, a witch and her archers, they hurried over to and positioned themselves along a ledge each. What are they planning? Rum worried. Casting a quick Rumalize on himself again he found his mana had recovered to 442 points, or about a third of the way, while he’d been pondering. It’ll have to do. He rolled over and got up, putting the torch he’d been holding all this time up in the air, as if the extra half meter or so in the direction of the witches far above would better illuminate them.

“Urvanom!” Rum shouted without taking his gaze off of watching the witches, who just cackled down at him. Before the elf could reach Rum, one of the witches spoke a few words of magic. Rum observed as a light, both white and blue, formed for just a second at witch’s hand, before going “ZAP!”. In a flash the light flung itself across the space between them, an arc of electricity running towards Rum’s general direction, and then going past him, above him. Rum did not see the attack hit, it happened so fast, but as he quickly turned around he got to witness Alkiath collapse on the ground, his whole body shaking ever so lightly. Before Rum could turn back more of the same words of magic had already been spoken, and Rum in his shock got to witness 2 flashes of electricity “ZAP!” and then quickly “ZAP!” again, instantly incapacitating a shield elf and an elven warrior.

Urvanom arrived at Rum’s side, and both of them stood there, stunned by the display of magic for a brief moment. When the moment passed, Rum locked eyes with Urvanom, and said softly, but determined: “Take them out, fast!”

Urvanom nodded with equal determination, then smiled a little, as he sprinted past Rum and began his energetic ascent of the spiraling stairs yet again. Rum ran up to the shield elf, kneeling down at the stunned man. He touched the elf’s forehead and whispered his now all too familiar words: “Trinity of Healing”. As Rum was pouring his mana into the stunned elf, he heard it again: “ZAP!”, and the whole cave flashed with the blue and white light. But no elf had been hit that he could see this time, and so he turned around, and just in time to witness another “ZAP!” as the witches were actively assaulting the ascending Urvanom with magic. Every shot of electricity seemed to stun Urvanom, but just barely, and just for a second. It merely slowed his ascent, the elf stumbling back each time. However, the initial strikes brushed off, the “ZAP!” and the flashes kept on coming. Rum watched the elf take a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh... and then the witches stopped, and then Urvanom stopped. The elf fell on one of his knees in the middle of a stairway. Rum couldn’t see the witches gazes, but he felt sure they were weighing how much more mana they would expend on this tough elf, because spells like that, cast with so much power, they must cost a lot of mana. Rum was sure of that much. Finally, as Urvanom began rising to his feet again, 2 of the witches spoke their words of magic again, and with 2 rapid succession “ZAP!”, Urvanom staggered off the stairway and fell down. The merry hero crashed hard against the mountain floor. Rum saw blood everywhere, the elf unconscious, hurt and dying.

Gazing up at the enemy, he saw they had already began casting new magic. And he saw what kind of magic it was. The skeletons had their bows raised, and their arrows aimed at Rum and his elves. Beside the skeletons were the witches, enchanting, or should I say cursing, the arrows.