There were six Ghouls staring us down in the dead forest. The setting sun made it harder to see, but it wasn’t totally dark yet. Their rotting flesh was peeled away to reveal tissue and bone, and their jaws hanging open to reveal a row of sharp teeth. Upon being transformed into a Ghoul, a body would go through a few modifications. Pointed teeth and long claws were some of the things that grew in.
Instantly, my mind went to work. “Dryad, move to the side and flank them when they charge. These monsters are dumb and fragile, but have some nasty effects if they hit you. I’ll draw them forward, since I can operate at long and close ranges.”
“These are the bad monsters? Made by bad Human?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Will help kill them.” There was a pause in the communication. “I ask your lover to shoot them before I attack. Will stun them. Watch out for explosion.”
I nodded, and the Ghouls charged. They snarled and scratched at the air as they sprinted toward us, seemingly dying to sink their teeth into something. The Dryad stepped to the side, blending in with the trees. The single-minded Ghouls didn’t seem to notice.
I stepped forward. “Erani, keep back and snipe from behind. I’ll keep them busy up here.”
The moment the one in the front got close enough, it snarled and leapt at me, claws out, jaw unhinged, and eyes wild behind a mess of matted hair that covered its face. I stepped to the side and cast Crippling Chill to interrupt its attack.
You have cursed Level 8 Ghoul with Crippling Chill. For the next 15 seconds, it loses 7.76 Health and 6.21 Stamina each second, and its Dexterity score is lowered by 15.5.
56.2 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 864.It stumbled past me and I raised my arm and pushed it further away, using Noxious Grasp to hit it for the split-second my skin was touching it. I had Venomous Grasp, so even a tiny amount of time with Noxious Grasp meant a minimum of 5 seconds consuming double Stamina. The Ghoul was sent spiraling to the ground from my light push – they hit hard and were pretty fast, but couldn’t take hits for shit. That was most of what I’d heard about them.
Two more rushed at me while the first attempted to climb back to its feet, and I stepped back to dodge their simultaneous swipes. Their claws barely missed my skin, and I lifted a hand and shot one of them with a few Rays of Frost, while I grabbed the other’s arm and activated Noxious Grasp.
Damage notifications flew through my mind for the Rays of Frost while I yanked the Ghoul I’d grabbed toward me, trying to keep myself too close for its claws to be useful, but still far enough that it couldn’t bite me. For Ghouls, the Stamina drain on my Spells would be especially useful. They had all had a low Endurance, and Endurance was the Stat that mainly increased maximum Stamina, so, especially with Venomous Grasp doubling all of the Stamina drain.
I heard an explosion beside me and stole a glance over to see the Dryad diving into battle with the other three Ghouls. Her whip lashed through their soft flesh and cut them to pieces – not that it seemed like the Ghouls minded or even noticed, taking mindless swipes at the Dryad despite the damage.
“Are you struggling?” She asked me as she fought, startling me with the sudden transmission in my head. “I handle one more? One of yours?”
“Just make sure none of them sneak up behind me,” I sent back.
There was another explosion from one of Erani’s Explosive Firebolts. She’d aimed at the ground, this time, trying to only catch the Ghouls in the blast and avoid hitting us. Specifically, she seemed to be destabilizing the two Ghouls that I’d hit away, pushing them back to the ground before they could attack me.
The Ghoul I was holding growled in anger – or maybe just hunger. I’d gripped both of its wrists in my hands and turned it so it was facing away from me, effectively disabling the two ways it could hurt me. And, over time, it’d quickly lost the energy to struggle.
But then, one of the other Ghouls – the one I’d shot with the Rays of Frost – suddenly got to its feet and rushed at me. It seemed the five seconds of decreased Dexterity that Ray of Frost inflicted had worn off. I threw my held Ghoul to the side and stepped back to dodge a swipe by the charging Ghoul.
You have struck Level 7 Ghoul for 144 damage and drained 145 Stamina over the course of 8.9 seconds using Noxious Grasp.
41.8 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 724.
The Ghoul I threw away fell to the ground and stayed there, motionless. I looked back at the Ghoul whose strike I’d just dodged and, while it was still in the follow-through of its attack, I quickly reached out to tap its arm, tagging it with Venomous Grasp.
You have struck Level 11 Ghoul for 1.5 damage and drained 1.5 Stamina over the course of 0.1 seconds using Noxious Grasp.
0.5 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 724.
This one was the only of my three that hadn’t gotten its Stamina drained, so it was pretty much the only one that could move, at this point. That said, it’d also taken the most damage out of any of them, so I decided to just try and focus on killing it instead of slowly draining its energy from a distance with Crippling Chill, which would probably be the safest play. I didn’t know how often fights like these would occur while traveling through these wastelands, so I wanted to conserve what Mana I could.
The most Mana-efficient method of dealing damage I had was Noxious Grasp, so I lunged forward and tackled the monster, sweeping it off its feet and into my arms. I tried to wrestle it into the same position I’d had the one before – grabbing the wrists to detain its claws, and attempting to spin it around to avoid its teeth. But as I was trying to maneuver the monster, one of its claws barely scratched against my wrist, drawing a dribble of blood.
You have been scratched by claws. 2 damage.
Your Health is 308.
Your flesh has been necrotized. For the next 24 hours, your Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity are reduced by 2.
“Shit!” I cursed and pushed the Ghoul away, causing it to stumble to the ground. Seemed that, even though I was technically wearing armor with the Dark Plate, it didn’t actually offer any protection aside from the explicit magic effects listed in the Spell. The Ghoul’s claws just passed right through the seemingly-metal shell.
You have struck Level 11 Ghoul for 56.7 damage and drained 57.1 Stamina over the course of 3.5 seconds using Noxious Grasp.
16.5 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 708.
“Fuck,” I rubbed my arm. I could feel my entire body ache, the pain radiating from the one tiny scrape.
The Ghoul stepped forward again, apparently still having just enough Stamina to keep moving. Still, at this point, it was much more sluggish than it once was. That said, I didn’t want to get another scratch on me – those 2-Stat debuffs could add up quite a bit if I wasn’t careful – so I stayed back and shot it with a Ray of Frost.
You have struck Level 11 Ghoul for 58 damage using Ray of Frost.
You have cursed Level 11 Ghoul with Ray of Frost. For the next 5 seconds, its Dexterity score is lowered by 7.4.
24.4 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 683.
You have offered major contribution toward the slaying of Level 11 Ghoul.
You have earned 32 XP. Your XP is 373.
That seemed to finally be enough to kill it. I glanced around and saw that the three Ghouls the Dryad was fighting were already dead. She was sitting on one of their corpses, polishing the thorns on her whip.
“Show off,” I muttered. But still, I was glad she was okay.
The other two Ghouls I was fighting were still technically alive, but I didn’t really consider them combatants, at that point. They were both so drained on Stamina that they couldn’t even get to their feet, so they were just lying on the ground. I just walked over and stomped on both of their heads until they died. Not exactly a clean solution, but it got the job done.
You have slain Level 7 Ghoul.
You have earned 31 XP. Your XP is 404.
You have offered major contribution toward the slaying of Level 8 Ghoul.
You have earned 25 XP. Your XP is 429.
It was a shame that Ghouls gave out so little XP. Sure, they weren’t incredibly high-Level, but compared to even something like an Anacap, the XP reward was pitiful. But then, Ghouls were supposed to be pretty plentiful out here, so it was still possible I could get a Level out of them. I’d just have to kill a lot.
“Everyone alright?” I asked both out loud and through my telepathic connection with the Dryad.
“Unhurt.”
“Yeah, I’m good,” Erani looked at my scratched arm. “You okay? Ghouls curse you when you get hit by them, right? How many Stats did it drain?”
“It was above tenth Level, so two from each. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue, as long as I avoid getting hit in the future. Getting stuck with zero of any of my Stats for a day would pretty much be a death sentence. Got dealt basically no damage, though, so there’s some upside.”
It seemed like Dark Plate hadn’t been of much use here in this fight. It needed something to do a massive amount of damage in a single hit to activate, and these Ghouls were more of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts type of monster. Still, since I had no more activations of Time Loop left, keeping it on just as insurance would probably be a good idea here. Out in an area where it was possible to see Dragons and Drakes, I didn’t want to take my chances when I couldn’t go back if I died.
“Well, we aren’t even officially in the wasteland yet, so don’t go getting low on Stats just yet. I’ll be mad if we come all this way, only for you to get killed this close to the finish line.”
“Yeah, sure,” I rolled my eyes, “if I die I’ll be sure to offer you a very sincere apology.”
“Let’s just keep moving. We don’t want to be here when even more Ghouls show up attracted to the sounds.”
We resumed our journey through the continually-graying forest. Within an hour of travel, the forest got to the point where I didn’t see a single leaf anymore – on a tree or on the ground – and the trees themselves seemed more like husks of what once was than real things that may have once been alive. The ground was crunchy, like everything was made of gravel, and we didn’t see any more monsters. Well, other than Ghouls, of course.
We saw them everywhere, constantly having to fight them off while we walked, to the point where I couldn’t even regenerate my Mana. Even with almost 18 Mana/Minute, I was casting Rays of Frost and Crippling Chills faster than I could recover. I avoided using Noxious Grasp, since I didn’t want to end up with even more lowered Stats from their attacks; I now knew that the ‘plate’ armor I was wearing didn’t actually do anything to protect against it.
Yeah, the lowered Stats sucked. I’d gotten used to having the little boost, and having it taken away was extremely uncomfortable. My strides felt too long and too short at the same time, I felt sore, my joints were tighter, and my skin felt like it’d been sanded down to be a bit more sensitive. And, on top of all that, my maximum Health and Stamina were lower, too. Now, that didn’t mean my current Health or Stamina had technically taken a hit – my Health was actually at 308/290. What that meant was that it would effectively be unable to heal above that 290 point. So, by now, I would have naturally gone back up to 310, but since my maximum Health was below my current Health, I wasn’t able to heal.
I really wished I’d known that going in. Even if it didn’t change what my Spell Choice would’ve been, it sure would’ve changed how I’d gone about that previous fight with the Ghouls. Even with this Intelligence Information thing giving me knowledge about my Class options, I was still falling into these little pitfalls that would be trivial to avoid if I’d just had the opportunity to research my Spells beforehand. I really just wanted someone who knew about my Spell Choices, who I could ask whenever I had questions. But unless someone else magically got my Class, that wouldn’t happen.
By the time the hour passed, my Mana had slowly fallen to a precarious 300.
Of course, I was also seeing some decent XP gains at the same time – I was close to only being 400 away from the 1000 needed to Level up – but I wasn’t sure if I could keep doing this for long. I still didn’t have Time Loop, so I was eagerly awaiting midnight to strike. Once it got to that time, I’d feel a whole lot safer.
The sun had set by now, and it was getting dark. Sure, midnight was coming, but our visibility was disappearing much more quickly. And with the abundance of the dead, gray trees that littered the area, the Ghouls had plenty of places to hide and ambush us once we got close enough. The damn things seemed just smart enough to understand surprise attacks. Lucky us.
But, just as I was beginning to consider suggesting we just turn back and head into safety so we could try this again the next day, I saw an end to the forest. The deadened trees stopped abruptly, like we’d arrived at the edge of a crater.
And, for all intents and purposes, we had.
It was just a really, really big crater.
Standing at the rim, I could see for what felt like forever across the endless, barren field. The ground was a gray dust and ash, completely flat if not for the occasional hill or hole. And, of course, wandering the field were hundreds – no, thousands – of Ghouls. Shambling ceaselessly in no particular direction in search of anything they could kill.
And across this seemingly-endless field, I could finally see it. Our way out. The threshold to freedom. The gates that could send us either to our deaths, or to a safe rest of our lives. The mountain range I’d been searching for. Kingdom’s Edge. The peaks touched the sky and the bases blocked the horizon, the valleys were taken over my yet more mountain behind them.
But they were off in the distance. Right in front of me, we had one more obstacle before we reached our true goal. The field of death. The crater of nothingness. The barren gray.
We’d arrived at the wasteland.