Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Read online

  Darkness Guardian (Shadowling)

  Level 12 Elemental (Elite)

  Health 1200 Mana 600 Endurance 1200

  The Shadowling roared a challenge, a sound like nails on a chalkboard turned up to eleven. Instead of quailing in fear, Hawke used that time to trigger Analyze, one of the abilities of his Monster Trainer Class. In the course of three seconds, he had a clear understanding of the creatures’ Attributes (its most impressive scores were Strength and Constitution, at 58 and 60, respectively), weaknesses (not surprisingly, Elemental Light topped that list), and enough information to let him write an entire Wiki article about it, if the Realms had a Wiki page and he had access to a computer. Just as he was finished analyzing it, the Guardian charged.

  The monster covered the two hundred feet separating it from Hawke at the speed of a runaway train, or maybe a runaway elephant. Hawke spent the first couple of seconds buffing himself. Energy auras made of Light stabbed into the surrounding shadows. The Guardian hesitated when the inimical power revealed itself, but only for a moment. It soon resumed its rush, pincer-tentacles cocked back and ready to lunge from thirty feet away to crush, render and flail the Half-Elf who had dared challenge it in its domain.

  At ninety feet, Hawke unleashed Dazzling Light, a blinding flash that would stun most creatures, with much greater effect against nocturnal targets and even more against beings of Darkness. The Guardian’s Elemental Resistance levels were high, however: the flash disoriented it for a couple of seconds, nothing more.

  Next, Hawke pointed with the short sword in his left hand and a Hammer of Light sprang to life and darted towards the Guardian faster than a crossbow bolt, followed by a Hammer of Twilight, which did half Light, half Darkness damage, and, less than a second later, by a Burning Light, a cone spell that did less damage than his Hammers but affected an entire area. The trio of attacks tore huge chunks of dark matter from the monster. Its Health dropped below eight hundred before it could recover from the first spell.

  Under different circumstances, Hawke would have followed the devastating volley of spells with his go-to move, Twilight Step, which allowed him to teleport behind his victims and deliver a devastating double backstab. Unfortunately, the spell didn’t work in a battleground made of Darkness. Saturnyx had tried to explain the dimensional mechanics involved; he had smiled, nodded, and forgotten all about it afterwards. He was a doer more than a thinker. As long as something worked, he didn’t care much about the details.

  So, instead of rushing towards the monster, he cast Consecrated Ground under his feet. The spell would supplement the continual healing of one of his other buffs, Aura of Light, and between them he might be able to survive the pounding he was about to receive.

  The monster shook its whole body the way someone would shake his head, maybe because it didn’t have a head to shake. It charged on, and its depleted Health began to tick upwards at a rate of 10 Health per second. Annoying. The cooldowns on his offensive spells reset just as the Guardian whipped its tentacles at him. Missiles and waves of Light and tentacles of Darkness flew by in opposite directions. All his spells landed on their target. He ducked one of the tentacles but the other three tore into him like so many cannonballs, each doing enough raw damage to cut down his 312 Health by more than two thirds. Luckily, he had a few buffs on his side, including a Shield of Light that reduced all damage by 42 points, and a Bulwark of Light that could absorb another 210 damage, all of that before the pincers hit his Armor of the Battle-Mage with all its resistances and damage reduction bonuses.

  He still got whacked for over a hundred points of damage. Worse than that, one of the pincers grabbed him by the waist and began to crush him. Grimacing in pain, Hawke cut at the limb with the Saturnyx Twins, as he called the paired-sword set that currently held the soul of the Fury. Each slash, imbued with extra light damage, fortified with a lightning aura, and delivered with enough strength to cut clear through both ends of a suit of steel plate armor, tore deeply into the tentacle’s fleshy darkness. He didn’t quite sever the limb, but the sudden agony forced the monster to release him while its other tentacles descended on him with their pincers closed, seeking to pummel him to death.

  Hawke activated his newest Elemental Path sword power: Dome of Force. The semi-sphere of Light Energy only lasted three seconds, but during that time it would stop any attack inflicting fewer than four hundred and twenty points of damage. The tentacle-pincers smashed ineffectively against the energy barrier while Hawke cast a couple of healing spells on himself and then opened up with his three-spell offensive combo. Even with its regeneration, the Guardian’s Health had been reduced by two-thirds by the time the dome disappeared and a fully-healed Hawke rolled into melee range and stabbed the monster’s underbelly with both blades. He landed three solid stabs – one of them a critical for 104 damage – before he had to duck away from the stomping trunk-like legs of the Guardian.

  The Darkness monster was an Elemental, and they didn’t suffer from low morale, fear, or any foibles affecting mere flesh-and-blood creatures. It still was slowed down by the massive amount of damage and the corresponding pain it had suffered. Hawke tried to finish it off by summoning a copy of the creature, another Monster Trainer trick he’d been dying to try out since he’d become a member of that Class.

  Summoning Failed! No entities may be brought into a Mana Node Challenge.

  Saturnyx told him.

  Hawke didn’t have time to argue with his sword. The Guardian came at him, ready to stomp, pummel or rend him to death. He remained on the move, dodging tentacle strikes and alternating between slashing at the monster and burning it with his spells. Eliminating the last third of the Guardian’s Health was the toughest part of the fight. It became a deadly dance where a small misstep meant getting hit on the head with a hundred-pound pincer and a big misstep would end with said pincer closing around your neck and popping your head like a cork. Another new spell, Healing Blows, restored fourteen Health every time he landed a hit with his swords. Between that and his other healing abilities, he kept just ahead of the damage the monster was inflicting. It still hurt like hell, of course: few things compared to having an arm breaking in three places and then having it spring back into shape, with tortured nerve endings screaming until they finally realized the damage was gone.

  It was painful and terrifying – and Hawke loved every last moment of it.

  One of the Guardian’s legs collapsed after being crippled by multiple slashes, and the giant creature staggered and fell. Hawke leaped a full twenty feet into the air, propelled by a strength than on Earth would have earned him a cape and a movie deal with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and delivered a double blow onto the monster’s back. It only had a sliver of Health left when Hawke, struck by a sudden burst of inspiration, directed Hammer of Light through both of his twin swords, something he had never done before. At first, the spell sputtered; some instinct made him pour more power on it, and it went off. The Mana cost of the spell exploded from 2 to 37 Mana, nearly draining his energy to dangerous levels, but a giant-sized energy hammer exploded through the monster, inflicting double the spell’s normal damage. That did the trick. The Shadowling dissolved into a tar-like puddle; he barely had time to leap away before sinking into the ensuing mess.

  Hawke laughed out loud. He had never imagined how great it felt to win a fight until being brought to the Realms. On Earth, he’d been in a couple of adult brawls, and he’d just been angry, scared, and drunk. Very little joy there. But here, the contest of skill, strength and willpower made him feel alive like nothing he’d ever experienced as Ben Velasco from Ohio. The only other thing he enjoyed as much involved the two gorgeous women in his life, including the one inhabiting his paired swords.

  He had spent over a week in one meeting after another, trying to get a town of almost two thousand people back into working order after its previous Rule
r had sold them out to a Necromancer. It had been useful, important work, and he had helped a lot of people, but there was a part of him that demanded action, driven by an addiction to adrenaline that people on Earth would have deemed toxic and unhealthy.

  As the monster died, several notification prompts appeared on the right corner of his field of vision, demanding his attention. He waited until the shadows dissipated and he was back inside the hidden cave where the Mana Node and his Reincarnation site were located. Then he started opening messages. In this world infused with game-like rules, he was constantly bombarded with text messages from the Arbiters, entities that even the gods feared. Most of the notifications were clearly automated. Hawke suspected the Arbiters were, like a computer nerd buddy of his had once explained, SysOps Administrators, watching over the system while they let it run itself most of the time:

  Congratulations! You have learned: Dual Casting I (Mana Channeling Ability)

  By infusing your spell with Mana, you can now double its effect by casting it with both hands. At your current level, the Mana cost of a Double-Cast spell is multiplied by ten before any other modifiers. As you improve, you can reduce that cost. This is a prerequisite for the Mana Channeling Ability: Chakra Casting I.

  A few weeks ago, although it felt like a lifetime and a half, he had sort of eaten a Mana Core of Darkness, even though his body was attuned to its opposite Element. He had nearly died in the process, and not just ‘I’ll respawn later’ died, but ‘throw dirt on your face, worms will now eat you’ died. It had been a big gamble, but it had paid off. Among several other things, Hawke had gained a much deeper understanding of how Mana worked in a living body. He had been a plumber on Earth, having decided that going to college and becoming mired in debt wasn’t for him, and his understanding of the flow of water through pipe networks had turned out to be surprisingly useful in controlling the force that permeated the multiple worlds known as the Realms, the bizarre universe where he and thousands of gamers from Earth had been dragged off to without their knowledge or consent.

  One of the reasons he was devoted to increasing his power was simple: he wanted to find the person or people who had thought it was a good idea to do that. And make them pay.

 

  I know. I’m still a bug and they are elephants.

  But I’m growing up.

  Two

  More notifications, lots of them, demanded his attention:

  For slaying your foe, you have earned: 100 Experience.

  Notice: Most of the Guardian’s energy (experience) has returned to the Mana Node.

  Current XP/Next Level: 15,113/16,000

  “This is total BS,” Hawke muttered. A monster that size, an elite monster at that, should have netted him close to a thousand XP, maybe more. Early on, he had learned that ‘experience’ was just how his gamer perspective had perceived the flow of energy that defeating an opponent granted the victor. That energy allowed you to become more powerful. To level up, in other words. In this case, the ‘XP’ from the Guardian had been returned to the Mana Node. The Mana Node he now controlled:

  Congratulations! You Have Claimed: Level 10 Mana Node (Darkness).

  You have earned: 1,000 Experience

  You have gained: +200 Mana as long as you are within 1 mile/level from the Mana Node.

  Congratulations! You have reached Level Thirteen!

  You have gained 6 Attribute points to distribute (12 unspent points total).

  New Darkness, Life, Light and Twilight spells available.

  New Darkness Spells Acquired: Dark Tendrils, Shadow Transformation

  You are now a Level One Node Master! New Abilities Available.

  Current XP/Next Level: 16,113/18,000

  “Who is your daddy?” Hawke yelled at the top of his lungs.

 

  “Thanks for ruining that phrase forever.”

 

  “Deal. Okay, scratch ‘Claim Node’ from the to-do list.”

  It was a long list. The top entry still remained ‘Kill the Necromancer and Save the Gamers’ but there had been too many other urgent matters to take care of. The only reason claiming the Node had been moved up was that he’d had a free day to run to the hidden cavern and challenge the Guardian. He had a Town Council meeting that evening; the next day he and a group of Adventurers were going to a Lair to clear it and maybe claim its Mana Node as well.

  A day or two after that, if all went well, he and several dozen volunteers would march up to the Sunset Range and clear out the Necromancer and his Undead and Arachnoid servants. He was terrified of the battle to come, not out of concern for himself but for all the non-Eternals who only had one chance at life and for whom death was permanent. He had thought about reducing the size of the expedition but all the information they had indicated they would need as many troops as they could get.

  Saturnyx told him.

  “I wish it was just us,” Hawke said as he sent his armor and other equipment to his Bonded Vault, the magical inventory space that he could access with his mind and could hold as many items as he could fit in its thirty-two slots. Naked, he waded into the small lake that filled a third of the cave, and swam past the waterfall that concealed it from prying eyes. If he got killed, he would be reborn there, minus all his Experience and a piece of his Identity, the combination of memories and life experiences that made him who and what he was. If his Identity ever went down to zero, he would suffer the Final Death.

 

  “Paladin Ninja,” he told her as he waded ashore and got dressed.

 

  “It’s part of their tradition,” Hawke explained.

 

  “Also part of their tradition. They are the best cannon fodder there is.”

 

  As he walked and began looking at his options regarding his new Mana Node, Hawke kept an eye out for the local wildlife. Not because he was worried – the deadliest creature he had encountered there, a Dire Bear, would pose little danger to him now – but because he wanted to find a likely pet. He had chosen Monster Trainer as his second class, and most of its abilities required him to find and train a beast companion.

  Saturnyx reminded him.

  “I know.”

  No bears of any kind showed themselves, so Hawke looked at the options menu under Node Master. There were three abilities to choose from:

  Node Empowerment: Once per day, you can draw power from the Node, increasing your Mana Pool by fifty Mana per level of the Node. The range of this ability is one mile per Node Mastery level.

  Node Recall: Once per day, you can instantly transport yourself to any Mana Node under your control. The range of this ability is fifty miles per Node Mastery level. Cost: 150 Mana.

  Node Travel: You can travel instantly from one Mana Node to another Mana Node or Core under your control. Node Travel costs 100 Mana. Current travel routes available: One (Orom).

  “Choices, choices.”

  Node Empowerment was the worst of the bunch; he already had plenty of Mana, thanks to his killer gear and choice of Classes. That left the two teleport abilities. Hawke had gr
own to love teleporting. His short-ranged Twilight Step had saved his ass a bunch of times already. Being able to go back and forth from Orom to his Respawn point had lots of uses, but being able to teleport to the Node from anywhere, with a current range of fifty miles, was too good to pass up. He picked up Node Recall.

  “Always good to have an escape option available,” he told Saturnyx as he reviewed his updated character on the way home.

  Name: Hawke Lightseeker. Race: Half-Elf, Eternal. Classes: Twilight Templar, Monster Trainer. Level: 11 (Level 12 and 13 unclaimed)

  Experience/Next Level: 16,113/18,000

  Attributes:

  Strength 26(41), Dexterity 20(37), Constitution 31(45), Intelligence 20(22), Spirit 20(24), Perception 18, Willpower 18(22), Charisma 19

  Characteristics:

  Health: 312 (15.5/min)

  Mana: 348(648) (16.4/min)

  Endurance 277 (15.5/min)

  Identity: 23

  Skills

  Blacksmithing 2, Climbing 2, Dodge 7, Lore 3, Shield 7, Spear 4, Stealth 4, Survival 3, Sword 7(19), Swimming 2, Tracking 1

  Languages: Common Fey, Vulgate, Lesser Celestial

  Perks

  Dark Vision, Speed-Casting (Life and Light Magic), True Sight, Undying, Unlimited Potential

  Spells

  Animate Shadow, Armor of Life, Aura of Light, Bless Crops, Bolt of Darkness, Bolt of Life, Bulwark of Light, Burning Light, Consecrated Ground, Dark Step, Dark Tendrils, Enlightenment, Gift of the Martyr, Growth, Hammer of Light, Hammer of Twilight, Healing Blows, Healing Wave, Lesser Healing, Sense Life, Shadow Leech, Shadow Step, Shadow Transformation, Shield of Light, Shroud of Darkness, Shroud of Twilight, Touch of Light, Transference, Twilight Mantle, Twilight Step