The shadowy form stretched out one of its arms in the direction of Aegis as if reaching to grab him, but it was several ters away. Aegis wasn’t sure what it would do exactly, but to be safe he dashed to the side only to see the shadow arm shoot out into a blast of mist, narrowly missing him as it crashed into the wall behind him and dispersed.
“Not a boss.” Rakkan comnted as he dashed in the opposite direction, maneuvering to get behind it, or so he thought. The shadow form rotated its body and ford a second featureless head that seed to follow him, causing Rakkan to stop and instead backup to the wall behind him, grabbing a torch off of it and flinging it at the shadow’s form.
When the torch touched the shadow, the flas of it were swallowed up, and it fell out the other end extinguished, the dull piece of wood clattering along the stone floor.
“You’ve got to hit the orb, the shadow is immaterial, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to let you. If a torch won’t do it…” Aegis thought to himself as he pulled out a flask of oil from his inventory. He popped off the lid and flung it at the shadowy figure, spilling oil all around the room and into the shadow's form, though it didn’t land on the shadow itself and instead passed through it. Aegis followed up by using the flas from his shield to light the trail of oil. The flas burned across the floor up to the shadowy figure, but once the flas touched the shadow, they were extinguished.
“You’re new, right? Powerful shadow magic can only be dispersed with magical light, normal light won’t do anything. Use your smite.” Rakkan shouted at him across the room. It was becoming apparent that, despite the shadow creature's bulky form of mist, it was immobile and remained stationary. It took this ti to release several more large blasts of shadow towards Aegis and Rakkan who dodged out of the way.
Smite was too risky, he’d lose his pacifism if it hit sothing, Aegis thought. But with this information he knew another way. Aegis charged forward at the shadowy form - seeing this, Rakkan charged forward as well with a battleaxe in one hand, longsword in the other.
Once Aegis got right up next to the shadow's form, it took a swing at him, slamming its shadowy fist into his flaming shield and extinguishing the flas.
You take 136 Shadow Damage.
“Minor Heal!” Aegis shouted, stretching his right hand into the shadow’s body for the cast. The glowing light of his healing spell that ford around his right hand during the cast did the trick, it was enough to radiate into the shadow and disperse a portion of it for a mont, effectively chopping the shadow body in half and allowing Rakkan to see the orb within for a second. Rakkan took the chance and slashed his battleaxe and longsword at the orb, cracking it. The orb retaliated by reforming the shadow around Aegis’ hand once the Minor Heal cast had finished, slamming him again, this ti with both arms.
You take 141 Shadow Damage.
You take 210 Shadow Damage.
Skill Learned: Shadow Resistance (Beginner)
Minor Heal heals you for 181.
Shadow Resistance - Level 1 (Beginner)
Reduces damage taken by shadow-based attacks.
Shadow Damage Resistance: 1%
“Minor Heal, Minor Heal! Minor Heal!” Aegis spamd the spell and Rakkan unleashed a flurry of blows on the orb, eventually causing it to crack and shatter into pieces along the floor. When it did, it released a shockwave of purple energy that dispersed the shadowy form and knocked them both backwards off of their feet. When the shockwave hit the walls of the room, the ground began to crack and tiny streams of dust and dirt began to trickle down on them from above through the seams in the stonework, tiny chunks crumbling off of the ceiling.
Lesser Orb of Suffering slain!
You gain 1016 Experience!
“That was a bit too easy.” Aegis stood up nervously, taking a gander at his surroundings. “I think this place is collapsing, we’ve got to get her down!” Aegis shouted, Rakkan nodded and did a running jump onto the altar, leaping up into the air and taking a swing at the manacles holding her up, the dark elf flinched as the sound of clashing tal clanged, but it wasn’t enough to break them. Rakkan landed, turned to see it was ineffective, and shouted in frustration as he went to try again.
Aegis on the other hand started scanning the room. He grabbed the broken orb pieces seeing they had item cards, but didn’t take the ti to read them, and started checking the tables and torture instrunts for so sort of release lever or a key sowhere. The rumbling and shaking worsened, and larger pieces of stone started to fall from the ceiling, so narrowly missing Aegis’ head.
“Aegis, what's going on? What is that shaking?” Lina asked worriedly through the party communications.
“Uh, we broke the suffering object, now the room down here is collapsing.” Aegis replied frantically as he started tossing useless items around off the tables to try and find a key, Rakkan striking the manacles again to no avail.
“Save yourselves!” Luryala shouted to them, seeing them both unable to free her as the stability of the chamber worsened. They both completely ignored her.
“Get out of there! It’s not unusual for event dungeons to fall apart when you finish clearing parts of them.” Lina shouted back at Aegis through the party interface. Aegis and Rakkan ignored her as well, both visibly and audibly getting more frustrated as they searched more and more desperately.
They watched a large chunk of the ceiling break behind them, blocking the portcullis that they’d used to enter, and in that second, Aegis spotted a lever not far from the falling stone on the wall.
Desperate, he ran towards it and pulled it, releasing Luryala’s manacles so that she fell from the ceiling towards the altar with the manacles separately, where Rakkan caught her. Aegis saw this, turned, and t them in the middle of the room. Luryala rubbed her wrists and looked weak on her legs as Rakkan tried to set her down.
“Minor Heal!” Aegis shouted, touching his light to her and nding the last burns on her body. As he did this, he noticed an item card on the manacles that had fallen to the ground beside them, quickly picking them up and adding them to his inventory. “I’ll carry her out, you’re going to have to do the fighting.” Aegis took her up and held her in his arms. She was a lot lighter than he expected she’d be - he wasn’t sure if it was because Dark Elves were naturally light, or if he’d gotten a lot stronger in the ga. Rakkan nodded and charged at the opposite end of the room, finding a lever next to the portcullis to raise it and get them out of the chamber as it continued to collapse behind them.
The hallway was not much of an improvent, the ceiling was collapsing here as well. Several creatures and cultists were fleeing for their lives, not interested in battling them and more interested in surviving. Rakkan led the way, his sword still flickering a faint fla to illuminate their path, while Luryala passed out in Aegis’ arms from exhaustion. A few ters into the corridor, they ca to an intersection with three possible directions to run in, all shaking, rumbling, and collapsing.
“Which way?” Rakkan shouted, glancing down each hall anxiously. Aegis recalled the 2 hour detour they’d taken last ti around from choosing the wrong direction, and knew if they made that mistake again, it’d be ga over for Luryala. He looked down each hallway as carefully as possible, looking for so sort of indication of which to run down, listening for sounds and watching the creatures' movents.
Aegis noticed the spiderlings were running sporadically, but the cultists were all avoiding them in the wide corridor and going into their mist forms all in the sa direction.
“Follow the Shadow Assassins.” Aegis pointed at one misty form that fluttered past them. Rakkan nodded and gave chase, Aegis following behind him. They ran a few ters down the hall and spotted it - a staircase leading up to the next level. The two ascended the stairs as quickly as possible, it was quite a climb but as they got higher, the sound of the collapsing stone around them lessened, as did the rumbling, and they eventually arrived at the floor above.
It was still shaking violently, but the floor seed much more stable and not at risk of falling apart. It seed at least for the mont that they had escaped. They were not the only ones, however.
At the top of the staircase was an army of cultists, crowded together in the narrow corridor outside the stairwell. Aegis and Rakkan peered through the doorway of the staircase to see them in the midst of battling with spiders and other creatures that had fled up to the second floor with them.
Spotting them, Rakkan and Aegis took a few steps back through the threshold of the stairwell, a narrow doorway that separated the staircase from the large corridor.
“Because they’re already fighting, my lure doesn’t seem to be affecting them. That’s lucky…” Aegis said as he hit his party communication. “How long till you guys get here? The entire third floor is standing in front of us.” Aegis asked.
“Uh, bad news. We found the way down to the second floor from the first floor, it's through the boss room. We won’t be able to get to you guys unless we beat the head cultist, he’s sitting in his chamber doing so weird chanting.” Darkshot sounded visibly stressed as he replied, holding the door into the boss room shut to prevent an annoyed Lina from entering.
“I think we can kill it, then we’ll be right there.” Lina replied anxiously.
“We won’t, we don’t even have a healer, get a grip.” Darkshot groaned at her. “Is there any way you guys will manage to get to this boss room from the other side?” Aegis looked at Rakkan, then looked at the now unconscious Luryala in his arms. Rakkan stared back with a determined expression, but Aegis could tell he didn’t have any ideas.
Aegis looked over his skill list, equipnt, and inventory. His new shadow resistance skill would help, but it wouldn’t be enough. He checked through his recently acquired items instead, hoping sothing might be useful.
Na: Manacles of Suffering
Type: Manacles
Quality: 40%
Durability: 133/150
Option 1: Deals 5 Fire Damage per second when the right manacle is attached to a creature’s wrist.
Option 2: Restores 5 health per second when the left manacle is attached to a creature’s wrist.
Description: A set of heavy dark iron manacles enchanted with dark magic, used by Darxon cultists for the purpose of torturing their foes. The enchantnt will permanently fade from this item if it is not within 50 ters of an Orb of Suffering for over 12 hours.
Aegis quickly began doing math in his head. He had next to no health regeneration, but with his Rockjaw Steak buff, his stamina would be able to out-regenerate attacks from one cultist shadow assassin if he was modestly using Brace, and if he spread his heals out efficiently and allowed the healing from the manacles of suffering to offset the majority of the damage, he might be able to hold out. The primary requirent of his plan would be that only one enemy could be hitting him at a ti.
“There might be a way we can fight through them all…” Aegis said as he took a few steps down the stairs and safely set down Luryala out of harm's way. “It will take a long ti, and if we ss up we’ll die.”
“Tell what to do.” Rakkan replied confidently.
“The doorway, if we hold it correctly so that only one cultist can attack at a ti, I might be able to tank them indefinitely. They’re elite so they might try sothing, but I’m hoping the fights with the other creatures will disrupt their organization. You’ll have to hold the doorway with but not take any damage, I don’t think I’ll be able to heal you. So just attack from behind as much as possible and body block anything that tries to slip past.” Aegis said as he pulled out the last of his oil flasks. He doused a section of the floor at the top of the staircase behind them, separating them from Luryala. The sounds of battle in the corridor were able to drown out their conversation.
“I’ll light this so they can’t get behind us using that shadow movent skill.” Aegis motioned to the oil, he then pulled out the Manacles of Suffering. He locked the healing manacle on his right hand, then fastened his shield onto his left arm and took a deep breath. “I’ll call them over here and try to hold them one at a ti. Sorry if this fails and we die. You ready?” Aegis asked. Rakkan nodded. Aegis took a deep breath and stretched his arms as best he could, preparing for what he anticipated to be a long battle.
“Are all dungeons like this?” He mumbled as he stepped through the doorway, while simultaneously Rakkan dipped his sword down to ignite the oil, shrugging at Aegis’ question.
“Hey, Darxon guys, over here, I broke your orb!” Aegis shouted at them in the distance. The closest was a group of 3 cultists fighting a strange stony-looking centipede creature, just having finished killing it. All three of them turned and rushed at Aegis as he and Rakkan took their positions back through the stairwell doorway. They moved in their shadowy mist form but were stopped from sliding along the ceiling above Aegis’ head, due to the glowing flas burning behind him, forcing them all to materialize in front of him.
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