WanderingLeaf
patreon
Common Clay B3Ch6: Another Chance
🕑 Added 2024-12-10 15:00:02 +0000 UTCTheir escape from the Dungeon was not as memorable as their entrance had been.
Syr Katherine led them through the corridors with an impressive grasp of navigation. She seemed to know exactly where they were, and they came back to the stone archway without meeting any further monsters aside from the serfs.
Emerging from the Dungeon was like coming up from under a river of filth. The air seemed impossibly clear and fresh; the lingering malice of the Dungeon itself retreated from his mind. By comparison, the mere howling of the ethereal wind didn’t seem nearly as bothersome.
Clay paused for a moment to tilt his head back and revel in the feel of the normal spring sun on his face. Orn clapped him on the back, and he looked over to see the [Fighter] grinning at him. “Well done, young hero. Your first time in a Dungeon, and you brought an entire building down on them!”
Taylor seemed far less happy. She had a sour expression on her face and was staring back at the arch. “Those… things were far more clever than I expected. Perhaps it will take some time for me to readjust to this task.”
Syr Katherine glanced at the [Artifactor] and nodded. “Perhaps. For now, we need to return to our camp. Tomorrow we will rest until the Malus is gone, and then we will try again the day after.” She looked at him, her eyes studying him. “Did you level, Sir Clay?”
The question was as direct as it was unexpected. Most adventurers had a tendency to keep their levels and abilities secret, partially because of the way the Guild encouraged competition among its members. Of course, she could have simply used the Orison to find out for herself, but it would have been a bit offensive to do so.
Clay looked back at her for a moment and nodded. “Yeah, I did.” He shrugged as she continued to look at him. “I’m not sure how much it will help for the next assault, however.”
She seemed to relax slightly. “Do not worry, Sir Clay. You have done well already.” Then she turned to face north. “All we need to worry about now is returning home safely.”
He blinked. It slowly dawned on him that they were still deep in the Dungeon’s territory, surrounded by hostile monsters—and that they were all still being affected by the Malus.
It was going to be a long walk home.
Clay grimaced as the Undead gathered for their third attempted ambush. His hands ached, and his breath was harder and harder to catch. The sun was getting low in the sky as well; another hour or two, and they’d be fighting in the twilight.
He wasn’t the only one getting tired, either. With the Malus still affecting them, the others weren’t able to enjoy their use of [Chants] as much anymore. Orn wasn’t able to use anything more complicated than the most minor ones, and the others had been heavily limited in what they could do. Even Clay’s [Chants] were not nearly as effective anymore.
Fortunately, the Undead who faced them were not the same level of threat as what they had found in the Dungeon. The first ambush had been a group of rank fours that had tried to stop them; fighting sergeants, scouts, and hunters after the Dungeon was almost laughable. Their second attempt had been with mere corporals, foragers, and riders, and had fared even worse.
Now, they had tried again with their weakest. Syr Katherine appeared so much more justified in her contempt for them now as she gave the order. “End them. Finish this.”
Clay nodded and finished his [Chant]. Four spears of ice sprang into existence and shot out to skewer the riders on the road.
{Skeletal Rider slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Weary Horse slain!}
{Skeletal Rider slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Weary Horse slain!}
{Skeletal Rider slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Weary Horse slain!}
{Skeletal Rider slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Weary Horse slain!}
{Achievement Reinforced! Corpsebane: 10% increase to all skills and damage against Undead. Bonus increases to 20% versus Rotted Levies, Wretched Corporals, Weary Horses, and Skeletal Riders.}
As they collapsed, he saw Orn charge into the ranks of the levies on the side of the road. They went flying into the air as he hit them; weakened or no, the [Fighter] had no need to conserve his [Feats] anymore. Dogs and levies alike went flying, with the latter collapsing as Orn pushed through to their corporals.
Clay had his bow out, and he began shooting down the foragers. Their return fire was as weak as it was ineffectual. One arrow bounced from his helmet, but nothing else hit him before he killed them all.
{Condemned Forager slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Corpse Hound slain!}
{Condemned Forager slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Corpse Hound slain!}
{Condemned Forager slain! Soul increases by 10}
{Corpse Hound slain!}
{Achievement Reinforced! Corpsebane: 15% increase to all skills and damage against Undead. Bonus increases to 30% versus Rotted Levies, Wretched Corporals, Weary Horses, Skeletal Riders, Corpse Hounds, and Condemned Foragers.}
{Condemned Forager slain!}
{Corpse Hound slain!}
As he lowered his bow, the only satisfaction he felt was the fact that he’d finally reinforced [Corpsebane]. The [Achievement] hadn’t seemed to help very much so far, but every little bit helped.
He turned to look back at the others and saw that they had already virtually finished the Undead on their side. Syr Katherine looked as weary as he felt, only far, far worse. Taylor’s sour expression made a certain kind of sense as she finished the last of the corporals she faced; it was unpleasant to know that their task was still not done.
As the others rejoined him on the road, Clay just felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps they’d finally finished the last of it.
By the time they’d staggered back into their camp, the sun was already low in the sky. They hadn’t run into any more Undead, but Syr Katherine had insisted on pausing near the dead village of Sarlsboro to make sure they weren’t followed back to their actual camp. They had waited there for nearly an hour until she was satisfied.
Now, as Clay lowered his pile of supplies from the tree where they had hung them, Syr Katherine walked by him. She looked as rough as he felt; fatigue was clear on her face, though she still smiled at him. “Get a good night’s rest, Sir Clay. Sir Orn will take first watch. You’ll take third.”
Clay nodded, and the [Calculator] went off to find her own supplies and bedroll. He watched her for a long moment and then turned to his own work. Something told him that there would not be very much resting the next day.
“Keep your foot planted, Sir Clay.” Syr Katherine’s ever-so-helpful advice was delivered in the same cool voice as always, but Clay had to suppress a burst of irritation. Orn simply grinned at him, adjusting his grip on the practice sword he carried and prepared to attack again.
“Stop, Sir Orn.” Taylor’s interruption was incredibly welcome. Orn had been battering him around the campsite for nearly half an hour, and Syr Katherine had been doing it the same amount of time before that. Apparently, being under the effects of the Malus didn’t excuse him from training meant to increase his [Stats], now that he’d gained a level.
Syr Katherine looked over at Taylor, her eyebrow arching. “Is something wrong, Syr Taylor?”
The scholar gave her an irritated glare. “His grip is sparking again. I need to take a look at it.”
Clay looked back at Orn’s false hand. The artifact that was fixed to the [Fighter]’s arm had taken a hit during his fight with the saboteur, and now the runes that covered it were sparking occasionally. Sometimes it made the [Fighter]’s artificial hand twitch and spasm, something that would be disastrous in an actual fight. Taylor had been keeping an eagle eye on the thing ever since Orn had mentioned it, and now that she had pointed it out, he noticed a telltale fragment of lightning stuttering from one of the runes.
Orn caught sight of it as well and sighed. He glanced at Clay. “I need to thank you again, Sir Clay, for destroying that monster. Its effectiveness has been… irksome, today.”
“I just hope I can be faster next time, Sir Orn.” Clay bowed to signal the end of the spar, which Orn returned. The Armsman then stomped over to where Taylor was waiting. She seized hold of his hand almost immediately, peering at it and muttering under her breath.
Clay tried to repress a smile as Syr Katherine sighed. “You are fortunate that Syr Taylor decided to come along, Sir Orn. Otherwise, we might have already lost your service on this mission.”
Orn nodded solemnly. “You have my thanks, Syr Taylor.”
The [Artifactor] snorted. “As if this isn’t the entire reason I came along in the first place. Well, most of it, anyway.” She took out a small tool and began etching away at something on Orn’s hand. “We both know that there’s no one more qualified to maintain these things than I am, and they wanted to make sure you didn’t manage to end up dying on this mission. Don’t make it out to be anything more than it is.”
Bemused, the Armsman bit his lip to avoid a smile. “As you say, Syr Taylor.” He glanced at Clay and seemed unable to avoid a grin. “I have actually enjoyed this trip, to be honest. It has been too long since I have left Crownsguard, and speaking with David was a true delight.”
Taylor snorted again, muttering something dark and threatening. “Don’t move, you overeager…”
Clay tried not to listen to the rest of the sentence. Taylor hadn’t been in the best of moods since the last fight in the Dungeon, and he couldn’t exactly blame her. It had probably been years since she’d been thrown into danger and getting thrown across a room by an Undead warrior likely wouldn’t leave anyone happy. He looked at Syr Katherine instead. “So, are we planning on reentering the Dungeon again tomorrow?”
She nodded, her eyes serious. “We are. Though, to be truthful, a good portion of our mission is already complete. I trust that you have already grown familiar with the kind of threats a place like that can bring?”
He grimaced. “You could say that, Syr Katherine.”
“Good.” She shook her head. “The Council was concerned that without that knowledge, you’d throw yourself into the first Dungeon you could find, the same way you threw yourself at the Lair in the Tanglewood.”
Clay opened his mouth to protest the implication and then thought better of it. “I suppose that is a fair worry to have, Syr Katherine.”
The [Calculator] glanced up at him and then went back to studying her sword for imperfections. “I tried to tell them it wouldn’t quite work out that way, but they didn’t listen. At the very least, I hope that I’ve convinced you not to go into one with someone who is unprepared? You saw what the Malus did to us. What it can do to someone far less advanced would be devastating.”
He pictured a batch of level one [Commoners] stumbling around with the [Stats] of a [Youth]. “I understand, Syr Katherine.”
For a moment, she simply continued to check her gear in silence. Then she sighed and set the blade aside. “You have questions. Ask.”
Clay blinked. He hadn’t expected to have it come out quite so directly, but he couldn’t ignore the opportunity. “Do all adventurers approach a mission like this in the same way?”
“As far as I know, yes.” Syr Katherine’s lips twisted into a smile. “It is not what you are used to, I understand, but it has kept the Dungeons we face suppressed for years. It is thanks to these methods that our land is not swarming with unstoppable armies of monsters.”
“It just… seems so ineffective, Syr Katherine.” Clay shook his head. He set down his spear and sat down on a nearby log. “With just a day or two of delay, we could all reinforce the [Achievement] that works against these monsters, and then enter the Dungeon. Those bonuses could help us fight that much more effectively.”
Syr Katherine tilted her head. “True. At the same time, a group of high-level adventurers is capable of clearing a Dungeon without such bonuses easily. While we are fairly experienced, we are somewhat… out of practice compared to most of the parties that assault places like this one.”
Clay frowned. “If that’s the case, isn’t it even more important to be cautious? Missions like this one seem extremely dangerous, and rushing in every time could easily lead to the kind of casualties that limit the number of adventurers the Guild has to send.”
She fixed him with a steady stare. “Perhaps, but managing the situation in this way allows the Guild to also send adventurers of a similar level against Lairs, where they can seal off potential Dungeons. Even more important than that, they can keep lower-level adventurers from dying regularly.”
His frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
Taylor sighed in frustration. “She means that most adventurers barely live long enough to reach level ten, let alone fifteen or twenty. Most of us end up dying to some unfamiliar monster type in a Lair nobody remembered long before we reach this point, which means we don’t have enough—stay still, you ingrate!”
Orn gave her a reproachful glance before he looked at Clay. “She is correct, of course. It is a struggle to keep our younger heroes alive for long enough to make a difference in our eternal war against the Curses. We try to prepare them as best we can, but the weight of our tasks turns our own responsibilities against us. Too often, we must send them into danger unprepared and unescorted, where they then pay the price.”
Clay thought back to his time at the Academy and shook his head. “There were so many high-level adventurers at the Academy, though. They seemed like they were everywhere, especially the ones on the Council. Why aren’t they being sent on missions? Why don’t they join in the war?”
The adventurers looked at one another for a moment. Syr Katherine spoke carefully. “By the time they reach our level, many adventurers are either battle-weary or wounded. Many end their careers and serve the various houses of the nobility, or the Rectory. Many also choose to be part of the Academy as teachers or trainers.”
“Or guards.” Taylor grimaced, and then rolled her eyes when Syr Katherine glared at her. “He’s going to figure it out eventually, Katherine. Even if he doesn’t, someone else will spill the beans, eventually. Just tell him.”
Syr Katherine set her jaw and looked away, so Clay turned back to Taylor. The [Artifactor] had fallen silent, bending forward to examine the adjustments she was making to Orn’s hand. She didn’t seem ready to acknowledge his unspoken question. “Tell me what?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Orn cleared his throat, very carefully not moving his hand. “Sir Clay, when we spar, you’ve learned the importance of guarding yourself, have you not?”
Clay nodded, wondering at the non sequitur. Orn continued in a casual voice. “Intercepting your enemy’s strikes is more and more important the closer they are to your heart, are they not? More important than any attack, or any fancy feinting or other stylish tricks, is the ability to prevent someone from striking at your center.”
He nodded again, thinking over his time at the Academy. The Council had literally never left the Academy at all, and those higher-level adventurers who did leave were kept on a rotation. They always kept enough around to guard… “The library?”
Taylor sighed and scratched at something on the metal with her tool. “Yes, Sir Clay. The library. Specifically, the more restricted sections that you as yet do not have access to.”
Clay looked at her and frowned. “Why? Even if there was a group of [Knaves] or something that wanted to break in, even one member of the Council would be able to destroy them all. You can’t be worried about monsters appearing, not when there is a literal army of adventurers nearby, and the King to back you up. Even if there was a war, the invaders wouldn’t want to attack an Academy of the Guild. So, who are you worried about?”
Syr Katherine remained silent, as did Taylor. Orn grimaced and looked away. “Wizards, Sir Clay. They are concerned that a Wizard will attack.”
Confusion ran through Clay’s mind, and he shook his head. “Are you serious? Wizards are nothing but a fairy tale, something that…” He paused, thinking back to the very beginning of his adventures. There had been something that Olivia had mentioned... “You’re saying they are real?”
“Sometimes, yes. The [Wizards] are real.”
The way Syr Katherine said the name twisted in Clay’s gut. He looked at her in surprise, and she sighed. “When someone creates a Curse on purpose, and survives the experience, do you know what happens to them, Sir Clay?”
He thought back to the mad scribblings of the [Occultist] who had died trying to open the Lair in the Tanglewood. “It had something to do with power. That was what they are usually looking for, when they do it on purpose, right?”
She nodded. “There is only one known way to change your [Class] in this world, and that is to become a [Wizard]. The moment someone creates a Curse and opens a Lair, they gain access to a tremendous amount of power. At the same time, they lose something, a part of whatever makes them human.”
Taylor tilted her head and paused in her work for a moment. “It’s theorized it has to do with the loss of the [Gift] actually. It hasn’t been studied very much, for obvious reasons, but the gods apparently withdraw their protection and sponsorship from the [Wizard]—and something… else steps in to take their place.”
Clay shivered at the way she’d said it. Even the clinical tone couldn’t rob the horror from her words. “Are there any [Wizards] out there right now? People who’ve done this?”
“They are not common, young hero.” Orn shifted slightly on his chair. Taylor gave him a sharp look, and he fell still again. “As soon as they appear, all available adventurers are called to hunt them down, sometimes at the cost of our other duties. The appearance of a [Wizard] rates as that much of a threat, you see. A single one can easily build enough power to handle a small army of adventurers. One that gains enough strength might be a match for the entire Council.”
Syr Katherine broke back in, her voice grave. “So the Council cannot afford to risk sending too much of their strength out of the Academy. The chance that a [Wizard] might strike, even a newly made one that they do not yet know of, is too much of a chance. The damage they could do, both to the Academy and Crownsguard itself, would be bad enough. Even worse, however, might be the knowledge that we might lose. Things preserved since the War of Heroes, things that cost dozens of adventurers’ lives to learn, might be wiped from existence. It cannot be allowed to happen, no matter the cost.”
Clay didn’t respond immediately. He could see the choices that the Council had made, and the compromises they had traded in order to try to make it all work mostly made sense. They were desperate to keep the Lairs and Dungeons at bay, so they rushed the missions in order to cover all their responsibilities. They couldn’t risk a threat to the library or to the place where their new recruits could gather, so they kept many of their strongest at home to guard against that possibility.
Yet it didn’t change the fact that they were still losing their war. Every Lair that became a Dungeon was a wound they could no longer heal. Every adventurer that died, unprepared and unled, became a casualty that they could no longer easily replace. It was a war of attrition that they could never win, not unless something changed—and they seemed to have become too afraid of the consequences to ever take the leap and try a new approach. How long before even the strength they were already clinging to faded from them, and the monsters really started to take over?
He shook his head and looked back at Syr Katherine. “Thank you for explaining, Syr Katherine. I… need to think about this. Can I be excused?”
The [Calculator] hesitated, looking as if she wanted to find a reason to tell him to stay. Taylor snorted yet again, however, and shook her head. “Just let the boy wander, Katherine. He’s proven himself trustworthy, even if he is a little reckless. I imagine he isn’t going to run off on us, or go back to the Dungeon today.”
Syr Katherine glared at her, but she turned back and nodded to Clay. “Go. We’ll expect you back by dinner. Do not go near the Dungeon.”
He nodded and took up his spear. While he didn’t intend to attack the Dungeon again—yet—he didn’t want to wander around unarmed. Clay bowed slightly to Syr Katherine, and then to Orn and Taylor.
Then he strode off into the woods, heading through a silent forest to think about what he’d learned.
As he walked through the forest, his footsteps slowly took him south. While he had no desire to betray Syr Katherine’s wishes, there was something that he wanted to visit, just to say that he had been there.
Clay strode through the trees, feeling the lack of animals with every brush of wind. His sense of unease only grew worse as he once again began to see the signs of corruption on the life around him. More and more patches of that papery brown grass appeared, along with stretches of barren, grey dirt. When he looked closely enough, he saw the occasional sprouting tree, twisted and gnarled, that had the unnaturally smooth bark.
Eventually, he reached the place he’d been looking for.
It wasn’t an impressive place. The owners had built it on the western edge of the village, just out of sight of the village proper. They had not built anything fancy at first, only a simple farmhouse with a barn. In time, it had grown and expanded, becoming a big enough place for multiple generations to live there comfortably, with fields on all sides that stretched to the edges of the forest.
Now it was a ruin. The expansive fields were choked with paper grass, and the fine house was a shamble. Windows gaped open, and the shattered remnants of the front door still swung listlessly on its hinges. Clay hesitated for a long time at the front gate, where someone had carved a family sigil into the fencepost.
He looked at the edges of the forest and remembered his father’s words. One night my father woke me up. He said there were Undead at the edge of the forest.
Clay shook his head and stepped through the gate. He walked up the small, overgrown path and tried not to shudder as the grass brushed his shins and crackled at his passage.
He stepped through the front door and was greeted with a place that had once been full of warmth and life and family. The front room had held portraits and a small table full of keepsakes. To the right, there had been a dining room with a table large enough to hold well over a dozen people. A kitchen with cupboards full of dishes and a pantry stocked with food was beyond that, and there was even a small bookcase tucked in behind the stairway that ran along the wall to the left. Above, he could see the start of a second floor, where the bedrooms for the family were kept.
Now, however, the house was full of ruin and worse. The grand table lay half-shattered on the floor; the cupboards and pantry had been torn to pieces. There were old stains on the floor, where blood had once been spilt and never washed away by rain. He bent down to run his hand along the scratches and stains near the front door. Obviously, the home had not fallen undefended. Someone had stayed and fought until the end.
Clay wandered the main floor for a moment, feeling a heaviness in his heart as he saw the broken windows and scraped walls. Then, after studying the stairs carefully, he made his way to the second floor. The stairway creaked dangerously, but it held firm as he climbed.
He found more signs of desperate resistance on the second floor. Blood stained the top of the staircase and trailed backwards along the hallway. Most of the doors to the rooms stood open, with the beds inside torn and desecrated. One door, however, at the very end of the hall, had been shattered. The weapons of the Undead had battered it to pieces as the monsters tore their way inside. More ancient blood stained the floor inside. Clay stared at it for a long moment and then turned away.
His father had occasionally talked about his room, but he had never really mentioned where it was in the house. It took some searching to find the place, but Clay recognized it when he entered. There were three beds, all set into one of the walls and stacked on top of each other like crates. His father’s had been the top one.
Clay spent a moment touching that old bed, thinking over the stories he’d heard about this place and the people who’d lived there. Then he sighed and turned to search. It took a while, but he found the stash of keepsakes that Sam had never been given the chance to rescue. They were small things—a smoothed branch, a bit of parchment with unfamiliar handwriting, a small knife—but Clay tucked them away all the same.
After that, he looked through the rest of the house. There was a book that his father had mentioned, something full of stories about ancient nobles and honored adventurers. He found it after a diligent search in one of the rooms, tucked beneath a bed. A necklace his grandmother had loved turned up inside the largest of the rooms; his grandfather’s cane had been left leaning against a window. Each item was a piece of a world he’d never known, and one he never would.
In the end, Clay stood in the ruined house of his fathers, and thought of the cost the Guild had been forced to accept. Sarlsboro was hardly the only place to have been destroyed by the monsters. Zelton was apparently another such place. All of the rushing and urgency of the Guild was not keeping such tragedies from happening. For all the sacrifices they were making, the monsters were still advancing. Their cause was still failing.
He thought back to the stories his mother had shared with him about the famine that had destroyed her home. It hadn’t been caused by monsters. The tragedy there had been completely mundane, but now her words came back to him. She had talked about how as the hunger began to take hold, the people of her home had grown desperate. They had eaten through their remaining stores and then turned to more severe methods. Their animals had gone, and the seed that they were keeping for the following planting season.
It had saved them, for a time. More people had survived the winter than they had expected. Yet when they had faced the following spring, they fell back into despair. Their flocks were gone; the seed they would have planted was gone. Even if they had managed to live longer, they had sacrificed their future to do it. Hunger returned, and in the end, they were forced to abandon their homes.
The Guild was doing the same thing, even if they didn’t see it. They were burning the lives of the younger adventurers to hold off disaster, and in doing so, they made the safety of the survivors too precious to risk. It was working, for now, but at some point they were going to look around and discover that they had run out of time. Disaster could only be delayed for so long before the consequences came due.
From what the adventurers were saying, the Council was reluctant to change anything about the way they were doing things, because it was what they knew, and had worked so far. He didn’t know all of their plans, but it seemed like they would rather watch things burn slowly than risk any failure.
Clay looked around the house that had been a home one last time and made a decision. If the Council was too stubborn to change, they would discover that he had his own brand of stubbornness. He would show them a new way of doing things, and if that meant he would defy the Council’s wishes, so be it. There would be no more compromises, not when they were being made out of fear.
Decision made, Clay sat down on the old staircase. He stared at the shattered door for a moment longer, and then he drew out the notes that Olivia had given him. There hadn’t been much of a chance for him to study them before, and he’d been limited by the need to hide them on the road and at the Academy, but he had plenty of time now.
His lips moving slowly, he began to read as the wind brushed through the ruins around him.
It was nearly dark by the time Clay left the house. His head was swimming with new [Chants]; Olivia had been right that her corrections to some of the translations had been off originally. Her corrections had opened up an entirely new set of minor [Chants]. They were things he could have used even as a level one [Commoner], but he was already able to see how useful they could be.
Mischief’s Ladder was one such [Chant]. All it did was create an invisible ladder for him to climb, but it would have been incredibly helpful in the Tanglewood. Its reverse created one he could use to descend, which seemed just as useful. The Hawk’s Flight had given him hope for some kind of flying spell, but he’d discovered it just acted as a kind of distant sight. Its opposite had been in the notes as well, called the Mouse’s View, and allowed for him to see things that were incredibly small.
There were more, though they seemed less directly helpful. Needle’s Aid could mend fabric, Brewer’s Joy seemed to distill things. Paint of the Sky could create images on a surface, and Mule’s Dismay could carry a small cartload of supplies for him. Horn of Distress seemed to be intended to summon help, while the last one, called Freshening Breeze, banished smells. Their reversed [Chants] provided a blend of other effects, mixing or unmaking, fixing something in place or placing a mark on something to keep track of it. He wasn’t sure when he would want to enhance his sense of smell, or perfectly memorize an image, but he was sure he could find a way to use them.
The most interesting discovery, however, was not a minor [Chant]. It was a small thing, one that Olivia had misspelled slightly on the first run through. This time, however, she had fixed it, and he knew instantly what it did. After all, the King himself had used it on him, once. Olivia’s translation called it the Unharmonious Discord, and from what Clay had experienced, it instantly put a stop to another person’s [Chant].
At first, he couldn’t think of how he would ever use it outside of a spar. After all, any adventurer he traveled with would consider that kind of interference rude, if not an actual attack.
Then he thought back to when Lawrence had stood in front of the writing on the cave wall, fighting not to lose the battle and begin the [Chant] of the Poisoned Wish. If he came across another adventurer, one who was losing that same fight, how valuable would it be to have a tool that could stop that [Chant] in its tracks?
As he dutifully filed all that knowledge away, he’d been rewarded with two pieces of news just as he left the ruined home.
{Memory increased by 1!}
{Malus from the Legion of the Unliving has expired! Stats are now normal}
He felt a rush of power flow through him, and with it, some of his fatigue evaporated. Clay nodded slowly and then started to run. The adventurers would be waiting for him, after all, and he didn’t want to miss out on dinner. Not when they had the Dungeon to face the next day.
They set out together the next day, just as the sun had risen in the sky.
It had only taken a little time for them to prepare their camp. Compared to their first attempt, they would be attacking much earlier in the day. They’d even had a good night’s rest; Clay had slept well, despite the way his head had ached from the work of memorizing the new [Chants]. The others had been in a good mood as well. Taylor had been curious as to where he had gone, but Syr Katherine had simply nodded and assigned him to help with dinner.
Now, with breakfast eaten and a lunch of trail rations prepared, they were already on their way. Once again, they followed the route that took them around the dull ruin of Sarlsboro. This time, as he passed by, Clay felt a far more visceral reaction to the unnatural grass and the dead, grey soil. Each one of those houses was a story like his father’s; every building was a tragedy written in blood. He wanted to erase those scars, the way he’d erased the Lair in the Tanglewood. One day, he promised himself he would.
For the time being, he had to look out for the dangers waiting for them along the trail, and prepare himself for what they would face in the Dungeon itself. Even though his teachers seemed confident—they were all far more relaxed and steady than they were the first time—anything could happen. Anything.
{Wretched Corporal slain!}
{Rotted Levy slain!}
{Rotted Levy slain!}
{Rotted Levy slain!}
Clay frowned as the last of the Undead fell. It was the fourth ambush of the day, and they hadn’t even made it to the next rank of monsters yet.
He looked over at Orn, who just shook his head and laughed. “Don’t worry about it, young hero. The monsters around the Dungeon have probably just been stirred up a little. It’s nothing to worry about.”
Syr Katherine nodded. She was already walking along the road again, her eyes fixed on the path ahead. “They are trying harder to wear us down. We should be prepared to face greater challenges now.”
Taylor sighed. “As if these poor creatures even count.” She nudged one of the fallen levies with her foot. “At least we’ve all gotten [Corpsebane] by now. That should help finish this whole thing a little quicker.”
Clay nodded slowly, but something about the way she had said the words bothered him. It was as if she saw the whole exercise as a mere formality, not a serious mission. What had changed between yesterday and today?
Shaking his head, he hurried after the others. The way things were looking, the last thing he needed was to be left behind.
They endured another two ambushes, this time from the medium ranked Undead, before they once again reached the entrance to the Dungeon. Neither of those ambushes really took much effort to destroy; now that he knew the way the Undead worked, and had an [Achievement] boosting him significantly, the work of destroying them was far, far easier.
Once again, a wall of poisonous fog was waiting for them. It didn’t look any bigger or more intense than the last time, something which made Clay feel a little better about their chances. He glanced at the others. “There shouldn’t be any of those really dangerous ones down there, right? Nothing from the Dungeon itself?”
Taylor snorted, but it was Syr Katherine that answered. “No. Those only emerge when the Dungeon is about to claim another territory for itself, or if adventurers hang around the entrance too long. A Dungeon Breach is a dangerous, lethal thing, but we aren’t likely to face that today. Not for a while, at least.”
Orn’s grip tightened on his hammer, his eyes momentarily seeing something that was not there. “Be grateful, young hero. I was present for one such occasion. I never want to see another.” The [Fighter] rubbed at the wrist of his false hand absently, though Taylor had spent quite a lot of time and effort to make sure it was working fine before they’d left.
Syr Katherine drew her sword and then glanced at the others. “Once we defeat them, we’ll pause for a brief meal. Then we enter the Dungeon and renew our search. Are you ready?”
Clay nodded along with the others and then set himself for the charge. If there were any more traps waiting for them, they would be there. Syr Katherine motioned for them to begin, and Orn unleashed the Ballad of Air again, clearing the space so that the battle could begin.
Then they all ran forward, and the fight truly began.
It was over with almost disappointing speed.
Clay had sprinted into the nearest marshal’s troops, destroying them with the Flame-Tongued Song. Then he had slain the marshal and cooked the levies a second time with the Refrain, putting an end to the threat almost immediately. A lancer had charged him, too late to help its friends, and Clay had killed it with a leaping strike of his spear. When one of the archers had turned its attention to him, he’d easily put an arrow through its head.
The others had dealt with their own threats just as easily. Had the change in [Corpsebane] really made that much of a difference? Or had it just been the lack of a change in the Undead monsters’ tactics? Clay was still shaking his head over the problem when Syr Katherine told them to break out the water and rations and eat.
They took only a short break, and then they were once again passing through that dreaded doorway, and into the Dungeon.
