Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (35 page)

That didn't clear up much at all, but time was ticking with catastrophic inevitability. We had to act. Going by the name, let's assume that his main attacks would be physical and poison-based. What else? In theory, trees are supposed to be scared of fire. Unfortunately, that wasn't our forte: the century only had five fire mages and seven archers with maxed out Fiery Arrow. Still, that should probably be enough. There were also about a dozen gaping rifts on the platform surrounding the boss, and I fully expected a bunch of Pinocchio types to crawl out of there to help defend the mama tree.

"Listen up, everyone! Make a semicircle around the boss, use formation four. Aritor, keep your team by those black holes in case anything crawls out. Everybody must drink elixirs of nature resistance, the ones Vaessa handed out in the castle. If adds appear, ignore them. The tanks will pick them up, drag them to the edge of the platform and keep them there, spaced out at twenty yard intervals, no less! Aritor, you're in charge of adds, but be ready to tank the tree if need be. If anything goes wrong, use your best judgment. Shift into combat form ten seconds into the fight. If this bastard falls, we split up into two squads as before and keep going to maximize the increased damage output. Officers, make sure all your units are buffed! Start falling into formation. We're starting in one minute."

We put down the tree in six and a half minutes, but spent the next three dealing with the boss' aides. Looking like ten-foot-tall black bluebells, they had crawled out of the rifts as expected. All in all, the encounter was fairly easy, if somewhat unpleasant on account of my being smashed onto the tiled floor rather painfully a dozen times or so. That, and every inch of my armor was covered with sticky goo. I looked like a flytrap that my mother used to put out at our country home every summer. Wasting not a minute, we fell into our previous formation and pressed on, up the passageway and to the right.

The clock showed 10:47 PM, and we were finally here. Before us stretched a standard stone platform, on which stood an equally standard structure with eight stone columns and a closed iron-plated gate. This had to be the Derelict Temple. Spaced out along the perimeter were granite statues crumbling with age, and on it...

Occupying the second platform, the dungeon's second boss—an eighteen-foot-tall cyclops armed with a menacing two-handed cudgel—fell even faster than the tree. We'd had to show considerable nimbleness to avoid the monster's attacks which crumbled the sturdy stone tiles with frightening ease. After catching one such blow with my shield and losing nearly 60% of my health, I'd decided to shift strategies and instead Jump or roll away from the attacks instead. It wasn't long before the cudgel had the entire platform covered with gaping fractures, falling into which meant certain death. All the while massive boulders fell periodically from the skies, splintering as they crashed into tiny shrapnel that made life miserable for anyone in their immediate vicinity. Thankfully, the cyclops wasn't the fastest creature under the Arkon sun, and I was able to execute three-four attacks before he would attempt the next swing. I kept the boss' aggro throughout the fight—it would have been tough for our damage dealers to out-aggro me with all the rift-hopping and boulder-dodging they had to do while firing off arrows or casting spells. Leaving the ugly carcass right where it fell, we pressed forward—through packs of ape-like creatures and into the final stretch. 

Surprisingly, there was no boss in sight on the third platform. But the bigger surprise was what we saw instead: people. Specifically, three groups of fifty people each. Judging by their garb, each group had paladins, priests and mages. And these weren't the disavowed either—I didn't spot a single gray cassock among them. There weren't any hints as to who they were or where they came from, but I didn't much care either way. The legends above their heads burned red, symbolizing hatred, which meant they were enemies.
Well, folks, it's nothing personal, as they say.
The group closest to us had ten priests and just as many mages, and those would need to be crowd-controlled: the former to keep from healing, and the latter as the most dangerous. Well, my century had twenty one mages, not counting myself, and all of us had Silence at our disposal, so that shouldn't be a problem.

"Krian, those are... What in Hart's name are light ones doing here? You said the way into our plane was blocked for them!" Elnar said, incredulous.

"I'm just as surprised as you are, but does it really matter to you whom to fight?"

"I guess not..."

I too was extremely curious what in the hell one hundred fifty high-level human NPCs were doing in Gilthor. And the fact that these weren't ordinary mobs was beyond doubt, as every one of the fighters on the platform had a unique name. 

"Listen up! Battle formation two! Archers and mages focus on the priests—the ones in white mantles. Maximum crowd control. No AoEs [Area of Effect are mass destruction spells that strike a particular area rather than a specific target] of any kind. Do NOT hit controlled targets..."

Following my orders, the archers and mages split into two groups and began to move, taking positions at an angle just behind the melee fighters; this way, after the battle began they could fan out and unload on the enemy while minimizing risk of friendly fire. But then, when the entire raid made it out onto the platform, something strange happened. The tallest of the paladins from the group nearest to us pointed right at us and cried out in alarm.

"Demons! Everybody in wedge formation!"

All three groups of fifty humans stirred into action, and a mere fifteen seconds later we were facing down a tight formation of plate-clad warriors bristling with spears, their mages and priests spread out in a semi-circle behind the main attack force. 

Impressive drilling,
I admitted in spite of myself. And then the same paladin bellowed again.

"Crush those filthy scum! Attack, brothers, attack!" And the formation began to advance on us, hiding behind a wall of massive shields. 

I admit, it was an unsettling sight, especially considering their superior numbers—by about fifty percent—and each unit boasting around 350,000 to 400,000 HP. 

I felt a blinding rage surge through me, sweeping away all hesitation and doubts. The blade slid out of my scabbard with a strident screech, and I took several steps forward, shifting into combat form on the go. 

"You sold your souls to the dark gods, and you're calling us scum?!" my roar reverberated over the platform, bouncing off the temple gates. "Everybody in combat form! Salta, Reece, take out the priests!" I commanded, and immediately popped Aura of Horror, scattering the humans as they screamed in fear, thereby completely obliterating their monolithic formation. Only the paladins weren't affected, their divine shields sparkling around them. Bow-strings snapped all around, as Reece's and Salta's teams pushed forward, shelling the priests at practically point-blank range. I had to give the paladins credit: though there were only forty of them, they didn't panic and immediately commenced with closing their ranks, moving swiftly like a single unit. But my century of demons just wouldn't have that. The front row was upon the enemy before they could regain their formation, and then the butchery began. 

The whole thing was over in less than five minutes. Deprived of their heals and magic support, the melee fighters couldn't hold out for long. Though paladins had some healing capacity, making any real difference was tough when beset by demons intent on interrupting any cast that wasn't instant. The paladin class was one of the toughest to defeat in a fair fight, as it was able to dole out decent damage, hunker down like a tank, heal when necessary, and also stun, which actually felt like a punch in the nose in real life. Except no one said this was going to be a fair fight.

Infernal Rage was an
awesome
talent. Every ten seconds guaranteed a critical hit, and since my archers' average crit against mobs, bosses and NPCs was in the neighborhood of 50,000, the enemy ended up running out of priests real fast. My archers and mages then moved on to the enemy mages, snuffing out nearly all of them by the time Aura of Horror wore off. They didn't even bother hiding behind the melee anymore, though still remaining within their healers' casting range. With the mages dispatched, our ranged dps proceeded to bombard the half-century of enemy fighters, already tied up by our own melee units. At first the enemy tried to achieve some semblance of a formation, but gave up on that idea after a dozen of them fell dead in quick succession, and the entire platform became a dueling arena. And, as everyone knows, in a duel it's the side with heals that wins more often than not, even when the difference in hit points between the duelists is close to four thousand percent.

They must have been the third boss,
I realized, looking out on the platform littered with corpses. After all, the notion of a game boss transcended the classic definition of a big bad monster, whether alone or with a bunch of minions. But I wasn't blind to the fact that the global bump in NPCs' intelligence after the patch had nearly played a real nasty trick on us. Logic dictated that each half-century of enemy fighters was designed to attack us separately, after a certain time interval, but certainly not all at once. Otherwise the encounter would be virtually impossible for an ordinary raid of fifty level 180 players. And even for us, truth be told. If it weren't for my Aura of Horror... When would my streak of luck run out, I wondered? The very fact that I had remembered a talent I hadn't used even once before was remarkable. And suspicious. Were the gods looking out for me? Ugh, how ludicrous that sounded. And arrogant! As if the gods cared whether I got out of here alive. With the possible exception of Celphata, who had some skin in the game, I doubted that any of the others gave a damn. Apparently I was just a lucky son of a bitch.

The air on the platform was scented with sweat and blood. Blood... Hart, but I was beginning to like the smell! What was that? A byproduct of my new combat form? Or was I really starting to turn into a monster? I didn't want to think about that.

Skirting the vividly red pools spreading out from under the piles of corpses and listening absently to reports from team leaders, I walked slowly toward the closed temple gates, and peered into the image depicted on them. It was a pair of dueling knights. Scowling canine-like jaws dripping with drool, eyes glowing crimson red—the artist had managed to convey the heat of the battle rather well. Only it didn't say anywhere in the drawing whether these creatures actually existed in this world, and if so, where? 

"Elnar, casualties?" I bellowed. Speaking in a normal tone was impossible in this form, or maybe I just hadn't had the time to try and learn.

"No casualties, dar! Incredible, but true," my deputy reported.

"Excellent," I sighed with considerable relief. "Take three minutes to get everyone back in order, and form up in front of the gates."

"Wow! What handsome fellas!" Reece clicked his tongue in awe. "Are their females as pretty, I wonder?"

The mage was his usual jolly self, totally unbothered by the mountains of corpses around him.
In fact, I could probably count on one hand the things that might ruin his mood.

"Reece is talking about females? You don't say!" Salta chimed in. "Would you tell me why you'd want a mate with those teeth? She's likely to bite everything clean off, you know."

"There's so much about the ways of the world you don't understand, child," the mage retorted in a mentoring tone. "There are times when a muzz... I mean, a face like that gives an undeniable edge to a woman."

"Like when slurping moonshine from a bowl?"

"I fear this one's a lost cause, dar," Reece turned to me with a sorrowful grimace. "Here you have a grown woman, with her own man and even her own tail for Hart's sake. And yet she, uh..." the mage creased his brow in search of the right words, but I hastened to interject.

"Save the debate on the merits of sharp teeth in a relationship for later, I've got no time for this now," I waved them away, though a part of me couldn't help but wonder what advantages Reece was alluding to.

That rogue! He'd intrigued me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask for clarification in front of Salta. Suddenly I felt great appreciation for these two, exactly as they were—no way would I want them to revert to being ordinary NPCs. I glanced at the clock, which showed one minute to eleven. We had been moving at a fast clip, but only one hour was left till midnight. Only the temple remained. No use guessing now, let us see what secrets awaited inside.

It had gotten dark. To clarify, the sun had actually set long before we entered the dungeon, but up until now it had been fairly light. The darkness had fallen quickly and suddenly, as if some unseen giant had flipped the switch and pelted the sky bright with stars. It was time...

The gate leaves groaned, and we found ourselves inside a great hall with rows of massive columns on either side of a walkway stretching into the distance. Hundreds of torches illuminated the space; as the draft blew in, the torchlight danced an enigmatic dance with the shadows. Half-crumbling statues stood over by the walls, and the cracked floor was lined with bones and gravel. All signs pointed to the true owners of this place abandoning it many centuries ago. The air was scented with burning oil and wood, which mixed with rot and desolation into a queer, pungent bouquet.

Further ahead, by the temple's far wall, stood a lopsided altar constructed from some black material. And before it knelt a massive figure with its back to us—clad in heavy silver armor, its head hung low, a two-handed sledgehammer resting on its shoulder. Ulrich the Zealot, Champion of the Order of Impending Dawn. Level 280 with half a billion HP. I wished someone would explain to me what in Hart's name the champion of Erantia's foremost order was doing in this bloody hellhole? Even I'd heard of the Order of Impending Dawn, and I'd barely even played the damned game before getting stuck here.