Court of Thorns: A LitRPG Story Read online

  “Okay,” he went on after a few seconds of stony silence. “You will only use single target spells from now on. No more AOEs. Under any circumstances. Aristobulus can throw Fireballs as well as you and I can trust him not to hit party members with them. Is that understood?”

  The Fire Wizard remained quiet.

  “I asked you a question,” Hawke said. Maybe sending the crazy bastard off to respawn was the way to deal with him.

  “Okay,” Zippo finally said. “No more AOEs.”

  Hawke let him go. The Fire Wizard fell on his butt when he was released.

  “Good. This is the second time we had to have this talk. There won’t be a third. If you disobey a direct order, you will have broken your oath to Akila. That’s perma-death, buddy.”

  The ex-Herder’s eyes widened a little at that. Maybe that would be enough to keep him under control.

  After everyone was healed up, they continued their advance. Another swarm of Chaos Crawlers showed up. They turned out to be a pain in the rear. Besides their relatively weak physical attacks, the disgusting critters cast a variety of Chaos curses that made spells misfire, applied a variety of debuffs, and cursed people with bad luck. They also spat and injected a lethal poison that took multiple healing spells to remove. It took the party several minutes to deal with the disgusting monsters. They were all feeling pretty frazzled at that point.

  Hawke looked over at the group while he collected his loot bags from the spider corpses. Nobody looked happy but they were getting the job done. Even Zippo, now that he was using spells that couldn’t splash the good guys. Real fights were always better than training, even the detailed simulations they’d used in Akila. Everybody was getting used to working together. He and Tava exchanged a smile before he added up his rewards for destroying a couple hundred spiders. About five gold and a bunch of mid-level potions, plus a handful of items that were useless to him but which he could hand out or sell to his guild members when he got home. And less than a thousand XP. On the other hand, they had killed over fifty monsters already:

  QUEST COMPLETE: Cleanse the Labyrinth

  You have received: 4,800 XP (+20% from the Triune Goddesses bonus, 600 diverted towards Leadership; 600 diverted towards Node Mastery)

  You have found: 1 platinum.

  You have found: Cape of the Witch-Hunter (Level 25, Masterwork Quality Item).

  Current XP/Next Level: 212,927/250,000. Leadership XP/Next Level: 86,228/100,000

  Current Node Mastery XP/Next Level: 38,299/50,000. Current Guild XP/Next Level: 9,344/10,000

  The new item was a fitting replacement for his Cloak of Salvation, which had kept him alive several times but was becoming less useful as he went up in level. Time to upgrade:

  Cape of the Witch Hunter

  Item Level: 25 (Minimum Level 20).

  Attribute Bonuses: +6 to all Attributes.

  Magic Resistance Aura: Any hostile spell targeting the wearer (including area-effect spells) has a 25% chance of failure. This % is modified by 1% per level of difference between the wearer and the caster (positively if the wearer is higher level than the caster, negatively in the reverse).

  Mana Storage: +100 Mana Capacity.

  The one-in-four chance of spell failure could make a huge difference, and the stat bonuses didn’t hurt, either. The cape itself was black with golden trim instead of the solid red of his older cloak, so it matched his black plate armor better. He looked like a proper anti-paladin.

  Hey, sometimes the good guys wear black.

  While he was in no danger of gaining a level any time soon, the rest of the party had done well. Alba had gained two levels since entering the Labyrinth, the usual benefit of being under-powered in a dangerous area. Blaze had hit level nineteen; Grognard and the Nerf Herders who hadn’t hit the level twenty milestone had also leveled up. They had picked a few pieces of useful gear as well. Hawke knew that they would need every bit of it.

  “The entrance to the second level should be just around the next bend,” Amelia said after everyone was done checking notifications. “About a hundred yards, give or take.”

  “All right. We’ll advance until we are halfway there and send out scouts.”

  The second level was formally known as the Dwarven Garden and commonly called the Mushroom Jungle. Giant shrooms the size of trees filled a huge underground cavern, a mile or so long and half a mile wide. Roving bands of six to eight Cave Apes prowled the area, level sixteen Elite minions led by spell-casting lieutenants. Ruins of an ancient Dwarven settlement sometimes contained valuable loot. One would think that the area would have been picked clean after centuries of Adventurers’ raids, but the Arbiters refilled the place with treasure every few days. Unlike the other Proving Grounds Hawke had explored, this Labyrinth was the closest thing to a theme park he’d encountered in the Realms. A theme park that could kill you, of course, but something artificial and contrived nonetheless.

  There were two named bosses in the level, each controlling a section of the vast cavern. A giant golden-furred boar by the name of Gullinbursti ruled over the northern end, protected by a small army of Cave Apes who worshiped it. A Fungal Lord called Mykon led a band of Mushroom Giants and stood watch over the magical portal that led to the Emerald Wing’s third level.

  That had been before the place had been invaded by the Court of Thorns, of course. No telling what would be waiting for them.

  * * *

  This isn’t good.

  It was downright horrible, as a matter of fact. Chaos had turned the Mushroom Jungle into utter, unnatural pandemonium. Fungal growths covered everything, top to bottom. Among them was some variety that glowed with an almost radioactive-like greenish light, giving the whole area an alien, nightmarish feel. Hawke couldn’t see a single piece of bare rock anywhere. The ground, walls and ceiling of the cavern were all covered with varieties of mold, diseased-looking mushrooms, and lichen. Stalagmites and stalactites were still visible, but had a furry appearance from all the crap covering them.

  The poisonous growths they’d encountered on the way there were present, along with dozens of other species. And the mushroom ‘trees’ that had once dominated the cavern were still there… sort of. Their outlines still included a stem and cap, but they’d also grown tentacles, thorns, and in some cases legs or slug-like undersides that allowed them to stagger around like drunken sailors, occasionally taking swipes at each other with whip-like appendages powerful enough to shear a stalagmite as if it was made of cottage cheese.

  From the entrance to the biological madhouse ahead of him, Hawke couldn’t spot any Cave Apes, but he was sure they were around, mutated into something just as nasty as everything else. The critters he could see were level 17 to 20. All elites, all with a couple thousand Health at a minimum, except for small vermin like Chaos Crawlers, which made up for it in numbers and viciousness.

  He'd gone ahead in stealth mode and now found himself staring into a hellscape.

  And they needed to get through it.

  Nineteen

  “Speed run,” Grognard said. “Gotta muscle through everything without stopping. Move too fast for them to react and surround us.”

  “Which is exactly what will happen to us if we get stuck,” Amelia countered. “If we move past a group before we finish it off, we’ll end up drawing aggro from a bunch of them until they overwhelm us.”

  “If this was a normal dungeon grind, we would take our time, take out a few groups of wandering monsters, then confront the boss and gain XP and loot,” Hawke said. “But we’re here to find answers in the lower levels. If we can bypass this area, we should.”

  “Stealth,” Alba suggested. “We avoid the groups, move along the edge of the forest.”

  Hawke thought about it. “My Twilight Mantle can cover everyone and provides perfect invisibility when I augment it with a couple of Forces. But that’s only sight. They can probably hear or smell us, too.”

  “I have a Circle of Silence spell,” Amelia said. “Ari ha
s it too. Thirty-foot radius, and it’s a sphere, not a circle, but whatever. It’s normally used to stop enemy wizards from using magic, at least spells that require verbal components. You can cast it on a person or object. Only lasts thirty seconds, though.”

  “And while it’s on, the only spells we’ll be able to use are the ones that don’t require verbal components,” Aristobulus added. “Most of my combat spells are insta-cast, so they won’t be affected, but it may be a problem for others.”

  Hawke did a quick survey of the party. All the casters had gear or abilities that reduced the casting time of their spells, allowing them to use several of them even if silenced. Many of their ongoing spells effects and defenses took longer to cast, however, and would be useless as long as the silencing effect was on. Even worse, most of those couldn’t be cast beforehand. Spells like Fire Shield and Hawke’s auras would break stealth automatically. But if they could sneak past the monsters instead of spending a day or more fighting through them, it was worth the risk.

  “Okay, that leaves smell. Air magic?”

  Artos raised his hand. “I got the spell. It’s called Cleansing Aura. It creates a sphere that filters any impurities going into it. Protects against poison gas, that sort of thing. Didn’t help against the spores. But I can reverse the effect, cleaning impurities going out. Like the particles that create smells. Only filtered air would get through. No way they can smell us.”

  “Perfect. What’s the AOE and duration?”

  “Fifteen foot radius. One minute. Can cast it on myself or somebody else, and I’ve got the casting down to zero and the cooldown to twenty seconds.”

  That wasn’t great, but it would do the trick. Hawke hadn’t acquired Air as an Element, so he couldn’t modify the spell until he did, which could take days. They didn’t have days. They’d cleared the tunnel, but that wouldn’t last, not the way Labyrinths like this one worked. In an hour or two, replacement monsters would arrive. The damn place was just like a game, except the Arbiter-generated critters were flesh-and-blood and quite capable of killing you.

  Even worse, the Court of Thorns was somehow taking over the monster factory. That had to be their goal. They couldn’t unleash all the critters in the Labyrinth yet, but they were clearly working on it. Imagine owning a giant fortress filled with high-level creatures under your control. If the Labyrinth’s hordes went to war, Akila didn’t stand a chance. Probably not the entire Ruby Empire. Why weren’t the Arbiters doing something to stop it?

  Saturnyx told him.

  Great.

  Well, he’d gotten plenty of power-ups; fixing this sort of problem was how he paid for them. Nobody had asked him to make that sort of deal, but he couldn’t walk away from it. At least, not yet. And in this case, his new home would not survive if he didn’t put a stop to the Court of Thorns. Responsibilities were as powerful as magical oaths.

  “All right, here’s how I think we should play it,” he told everyone, and went over the plan. A few people made suggestions and he incorporated some of them. Even so, there were several unhappy expressions by the time he was done.

  He couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t happy with the plan, either. It was just the best one they had.

  * * *

  My second stealth run through a Labyrinth level.

  The first time had been in the Gates to Tartarus, and it hadn’t gone well. People had died.

  Saturnyx pointed out.

  Hawke shrugged and moved slowly through the Chaos-ridden shroom jungle. He was in the center of the formation to provide enough invisibility coverage for everyone. Tava led the way, guiding the group through clear areas well away from the shambling monsters and other obstacles. They’d soon spotted troops of Chaos Climbers, human-sized critters that had started out as Cavern Apes before some nutjob had decided to add bits and pieces from all over the animal and plant kingdoms. The mutant monkeys appeared to be in horrible pain just from existing, if their continuous low-key moaning was any indication. Their troops walked aimlessly around or gathered in circles where they picked one of their own and killed it in a slow, almost ritualistic way. Hawke’s party walked right past one such killing. The designated victim wasn’t resisting; it simply lowered its lobster-like pincers to the ground and let its brethren tear it to pieces. Next to Hawke, Amelia covered her mouth with a hand, although it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d screamed; everyone was still covered by the Circle of Silence spell.

  Now that’s what I would call monster behavior, Hawke thought as they left the massacre behind.

 

  You could always count on ‘Auntie Nyx’ to cheer up a guy.

  Hawke concentrated on his surroundings and on making sure nobody stepped out of the overlapping spheres of invisibility, silence, and null-odor. In theory, it would be ridiculously easy; as party leader, he had ‘marked’ the auras so everybody in the party could see them as translucent bubbles surrounding the group. Easy or not, Hawke had to tap a couple people on the shoulder when they became too worried about the nearby monsters and came close to wandering out of one of the stealth fields.

  There were plenty of distractions: two thirds of the mushroom ‘trees’ had been transformed into Lesser Chaos Titans. Those had been the lurching giants Hawke had spotted traipsing around. More than one time, the group had to detour around the clumsy, disgusting creatures as they waved a variety of wings, tentacles and other limbs and lurched around. The trails they left behind glowed faintly in a variety of colors and were highly toxic. Grognard found out the hard way when he accidentally stepped on a small puddle. The substance ate into his boots, reducing their Durability to 0 and ruining the Masterwork item. His feet would have been next, but Gosto hurriedly insta-cast a neutralizing spell before that happened. Grognard ended up having to grab a lesser pair of footwear out of his inventory, and everyone watched their step more carefully from then on.

  Besides those, there were spore clouds that luckily were small and slow enough to avoid. Without a powerful monster creating and speeding them up, they were only a threat if you weren’t paying attention. Chaos Crawlers were slightly tougher to spot and evade, but the group managed. They navigated past a good quarter mile’s worth of grotesque sights without incident.

  Every living thing they passed looked sick and miserable. Death would have likely been welcome by most of them but they wanted to spread their suffering before they died. Every creature they saw looked eager to torture and kill; whenever a former Chaos Climber got too close to one of the Chaos Titans, the larger monster would pounce. The Climbers would in turn tear into any Crawlers that crossed their path. It was dog eat dog out there, except that nobody was eating anything; they killed each other for the joy of it. Out in the distance, they heard a big fight breaking out. Maybe the Chaos Climbers had decided to join forces to take out one of the Titans. The only good thing about that mess was that the noise attracted the attention of other monsters, allowing the party to advance at a slightly faster pace.

  It's only going to get worse, isn’t it? Hawke asked. They were making good progress, but it didn’t feel like it.

 

  Saturnyx didn’t use the word ‘fear’ lightly. Hearing it made Hawke nervous. What do you mean?

 

  Beyonders. Hawke had heard about them before but Saturnyx had told him they were nothing he needed to worry about until he rose a lot further up in level. They were supposed to be nastier than Demons or Undead.

  Maybe you should tell me a little
more about them, then.

  Saturnyx paused for a moment before continuing in an urgent tone.

  The easy part was over.

  Twenty

  It was bound to happen, of course.

  They had made it to the northern tip of the cavern when a troop of Chaos Climbers literally ran into them. The critters had been chasing one of their own, smaller and lower in level than its tormentors. Maybe its group had gotten overwhelmed and destroyed, making it the lone survivor. And not for long. Unfortunately, it was long enough for the desperate monster to jump into what seemed to be an empty patch of jungle.

  Instead, it landed right on top of Digger, Hawke’s Greater Tarakken.

  Digger was usually a fairly placid monster. As long as if was fed a steady diet of meat and some choice rocks, the demi-elemental beast mostly slept or stared aimlessly into space. Hawke had shrunk it down to the size of a horse to make it easier to hide. Unfortunately, when presented with a threat, the lobster-scorpion-octopus hybrid reacted with the speed and viciousness of a viper. The Chaos Climber was gripped by four tentacles and held up while a pair of pincers cut into its legs. The struggle revealed Digger at the same time as the unlucky Climber’s pursuers came up. Eight big critters, each uglier and more misshapen than the last, all in a course that would take them right through the party.

  “Buff up!” Hawke ordered as he stepped forward to meet the first charging monsters.

  He had time to raise some of his defensive auras or to go on the offensive; he chose the second option and hit the rushing monsters with Order-enhanced Burning Light and Death Cyclone spells, followed by an Elemental Blast that he lined up just right to skewer two of the already-wounded monsters, finishing them off. A moment later, one of the surviving deformed apes hit him with an organic whip tipped with a biting head. The impact staggered Hawke and he felt the whip’s head – a fuzzy ball with a shark’s mouth – gnawing at his shoulder. The creature with the whip-arm yanked it back, keeping Hawke off-balance while another one charged and drove its horned head into his midsection.