Legend of the Spellthief

Reading over the intel pamphlet that Logan had bought from the receptionist had revealed quite a few types of naegren in the caverns. Aside from the various types, it became apparent that elemental resistances and weaknesses would play a larger part in taking on dungeons. Along with the important role they’d play, Logan learnt the most common types of damage.

Damage, Earth, Fire, Holy, Ice, Lightning, Shadow, Water, and Wind. Damage referred to physical damage dealt from weapons, though was also split into bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, it also encompassed the Force mick which was a derivative of bludgeoning damage.

Almost all of the naegren were immune to water damage and had varying resistances against earth, fire, shadow, and wind. To offset their resistances, most naegren had a weakness to lightning, and would take increased damage from such. Pretty common concepts for Logan to understand, but valuable nonetheless going forward. His Necromantic spell would deal less, but not enough to warrant not preparing at least one for the fights ahead.

The intel told Logan of the three most commonly sighted foes in the cavern, naegren swashbucklers, watercasters, and guardians. They made up a solid team of damage dealers, magi, and defensive units. What was surprising to Logan was that the watercasters could use both Aqua and Heal, showing their versatility but also linking them to Devouts.

Speaking with the receptionist, Logan was informed that he had a deadline for clearing the dungeon, as was normal for all dungeons. The coastal cavern was to be cleared within one month, or the contract would go back onto the board. These times varied from dungeon to dungeon, some allowing only a few days to others allowing multiple months.

The quest itself was to clear out the cavern of any naegren currently infesting it. Any acquired items were allowed to be kept, and the reward for completing the dungeon was 100 silver. It wasn’t amazing by the standards of the bonuses hunting could bring in, but with casting foes, Logan could easily increase Spell Absorption.

Another benefit to this quest would also be the components, the scales of the naegren taking up a large portion of a trinket that provided water resistance.

With everything settled at the G-Hall, Logan left with haste. It was still abuzz with activity, but the Spellthief was able to squeeze and skip around any would-be party members. Exiting to the streets he saw Marcus waiting atop his new brown steed with Carmen beside him. Logan flicked the contract in his hand to let Marcus know it was all ready.

The party quickly moved to the city gates, showing their disrepair as the remains of the metallic portcullis had been pried off the walls to get replaced. A multitude of rubble and bricks set the area up as a disaster point, which it was in the heat of the moment. Magi were using telekinesis magic to move around the rubble and aid in the placement of new bricks with the aid of several earth elementals.

Making it out of the gates Logan could hear the send-offs from some of the guards who recognised him, giving a wave back to them as he passed. No word had come up about the trickster’s crackers, so Logan was sure he was in the clear about the forewarning, for as much good as it did.

When the group was far enough away from the city, they gathered up as Logan dismissed his elementals. Asking ahead of time to make sure it would be alright with the animals, Logan placed his hand on Marcus’s shoulder as the Devout readied himself. With his monocular, Logan looked far ahead to an open space and mentally thought of casting a Dimensional Jaunt.

Vacuuming into their centres, the four creatures left with a blast of wind and appeared with a similar shockwave 11 miles away from where they had started. The horses gave out a few hesitant neighs but were reassured by their riders. Sadly this would be the only distance they could cover via teleportation, as the rest of the trip would be through forested areas and Logan wasn’t about to teleport into the sky.

With his summons brought back out, the team made the final three-quarters of the trip to the coastline and followed it a bit more to the south. No large stretches of land showed themselves as they moved, at least nothing more than a mile or two, so the horses got plenty of exercise out from their stables.

The peaceful sound of the wilderness calmed Logan’s senses after a tormentful previous night. It was nice to get out of the city again, and to have Marcus by his side for a chat along the way made it even nicer. Logan couldn’t remember many times back on Earth where he could just stroll like this, but then income and daily life were vastly different in his world.

Working as an adventurer meant he only needed to do a day’s work to get a week’s rest, though it was also fraught with danger of many varieties. Combining the monster threat with the quests being given to him, was it a good enough trade to stay here for a longer period? Logan continued to argue with his own mind over what to do, but thoughts of his father always prevailed.

An orange hue painted the coast a beautiful sight, the trek here brought no dangers but so close to the capital it would be a sight to see if there were any. The only commotion the group heard were adventurers scouting out the area, or killing any goblins they came across. That in turn pushed away most other monsters in the local vicinity. With the ocean on their right and tall cliffs on their left, they had made it to their destination.

Finding a large enough rock to hitch their horses to, Marcus set up a note to any other adventurers that a dungeon was being challenged nearby and to not enter it. Logan set about using Echo Radar to scout the entrance of the caverns, the clicking echoing into the depths and returning countless nudges against Logan’s body in return.

Almost immediately he could see enemies appearing on his mini-map that was filling in with geographical data. Four naegren were a stone’s throw away from the gaping maw into the cliffside.

Talking with Marcus it was decided that they’d start clearing it out today and, if needed, rest and finish it off tomorrow. Logan’s prepared spells comprised of 1 Gaia, 1 Lightning, and 3 Necromantic, alongside his 3 summon slots being used, Logan still had 3 Dimensional Jaunts left from his rings too, so a quick attack or hasty retreat were left in the pocket.

Since the three varieties of enemies were easy to distinguish between, Marcus and the elementals were instructed to attack the guardians first and then the swashbucklers, but to leave the watercasters alone. If they didn’t flee at the sign of danger, Logan was to suck up any spells slung at him to improve his skills. It was a shame that he couldn’t use Essence Absorption on monsters, but this was good enough.

Summoning up his Light Ally, after such a long time of not doing so, the team had a viable light source to see them through the interior of the cavern. Rushing ahead to draw the attention of the foes, Logan appeared in front of the four enemies, identifying them revealed them all to be swashbucklers.

“Naegren Swashbuckler - Aquatic. Level 3: 18/18 HP, 2/2 MP. The most common type of naegren to be seen in adulthood. A naegren swashbuckler has trained in the arts of bladed combat and is normally seen using a trident though many use cutlasses gained from pirates. Standing on average at 5' 7" tall, these creatures almost rival the height of adventurers.

Skills: Water Jet.

Spells: Aqua, Infuse.

Reduction: Damage ?. Resistance: Damage ?, Earth ?, Fire ?, Holy ?, Ice ?, Lightning -50%, Shadow ?, Water 100%, Wind ?.”

Seeing the naegren for the first time revealed their form. A strangely bipedal fish with finned arms and a large fin on its back. Covered head to toe in blue scales with some smooth skin in places. Their webbed hands and feet made them excellent swimmers, with their opposable thumbs allowing them to use their tridents easily.

Seeing that the swashbucklers had 2 MP each, Logan moved to disarm the closest foe. Grabbing ahold of their arm he gave a solid knee into the elbow joint and broke it out of place, the trident hitting the floor with a loud clang. With Logan’s Strength, he dealt 5 damage to the surprised swashbuckler.

In retaliation against the assault on their kin, the three others charged Logan with their tridents. With a Force mick into one’s leg, followed by a parry and spinning kick to another’s head he sent two to the floor. The final one was interrupted by a bolt combined with a fiery and electrifying ranged volley, almost bringing him to death.

The first naegren had forced his elbow back into place, outside of the breaking of bones the cavern was beginning to fill with the sound of combat. Echoing into the chambers further away, Logan was sure they were going to draw the attention of more enemies.

Realising that melee confrontation was not winning, the fishy fiends backstepped away. The first two shooting out volleys of water towards Logan, his hand catching the orbs of water as he mentally commanded, “Spell Absorb”, causing the spells to be vortexed into his palm.

“Spell Absorptions successful. 2 Aqua charges stored. Aqua has progressed to tier 4.”

With the charges stored, Logan let them loose immediately into the weapons of the other two. “Aqua Shot”, he called out twice, a waterfall emerging across his arm as it formed into an orb in his hand, shooting at the tridents. Exploding in a crash of waves, the spells cracked the weapons easily, though they stayed in single pieces.

Seeing their spells were ineffective, the two naegren that had shot the spells instead pulled up water to their maws and shot out short beams of pressurised water. Logan already calculated this to be their Water Jet skill and dodged to the side.

“Those two”, Logan called out to his party.

Turning bolts and skills against the two naegren, they fell quickly to a barrage of ranged attacks. Seeing their brethren fall, the last two naegren started to retreat but were met by Force micks to the backs and subsequent death.

A quick battle, and one that saw no losses on the parties’ side. It wasn’t a large sum of experience but the size of the dungeon would make up for that. With the XP numbers popping up, that also alerted Logan that the party was out of combat. They didn’t want to spend the time descaling the foes though, as that was going to take time. Instead, they pressed onwards to the next battle.

Moving through winding corridors cut out from the rock of the cliff, the party could hear chatter down the way accompanied by water droplets hitting puddles. It was a mess of warbly taunts and phlegmy screeches, totally undecipherable. Was it a normal discussion or a heated argument?

Whatever it was, Logan’s Echo Rader showed the next room to be a wide-open chamber, a good hundred feet tall, and just a bit over that for its width and length, with several offshoot corridors. Within the chamber lay fourteen adversaries, which was not exactly an ideal number to be gaining further skill mastery with. Logan could only hold four charges at a time, any further spells would hurt him as normal.

Readjusting their tactics to allow the party to attack foes who stopped using spells, Logan absorbed two Lightning spells from Spark to use as a barrier in the coming room.

Darting into the room, Logan saw the caster variant of the enemies and gave them a quick Identification.

“Naegren Watercaster - Aquatic. Level 4: 12/12 HP, 7/7 MP. A skilled mage of the naegren, the watercaster is adept at dealing damage with its spells as well as healing its allies when the going gets tough. Often taller than the swashbuckler, at around 5'10", they would be mistaken for brutes if not for their thinner frame.

Skills: Water Jet.

Spells: Aqua, Heal, Infuse.

Reduction: Damage ?. Resistance: Damage ?, Earth ?, Fire ?, Holy ?, Ice ?, Lightning -50%, Shadow ?, Water 100%, Wind?.”

Looking around he saw the chance to make himself a corridor, throwing his hands to the left and right he chanted, “Lightning Wall”, twice over, creating large streaks of azure bolts to appear in large vertical planes. Effectively blocking the sight from four naegren on his left and six on the right.

With four ahead of him, Logan held out both hands in preparation for the casters to do their thing. Four spheres of magical water formed in the hands of the naegren, and were shot towards Logan one after the other with delays due to the enemies getting into position or being late to react.

Catching the balls as if playing catch back home, Logan commanded over and over in his head, “Spell Absorb.”

“Spell Absorptions successful. 4 Aqua charges stored. Aqua has progressed to tier 5.”

“Aqua Wall”, Logan chanted four times over, combining the shocking barriers with torrents of crashing water on his sides.

Continuing to wait for his signal to attack; the rest of the party hugged the wall at the entrance to the room. Whereas on the other side of the spell walls, the remaining naegren charged around to get a good view of their attacker.

Peeking over his shoulder, Logan called out to his allies to commence their attack. Bolts, embers, and electricity balls came hurtling from behind the flanking naegren and hit them in their backs. As Logan had already increased his spell mastery from the two types of naegren he was only going to lose out on absorption mastery so it wasn’t a total loss if any were to fall.

Four more volleys of water came shooting towards Logan, though this time they were in sync, forcing Logan to take two hits and two absorptions. With his new charges, he created a wall in front of him to block off the four casters and charged backwards to meet the foes behind him.

Drawing his blade, Logan sliced with amazing speed into the backs of the naegren swashbucklers, hitting four Backstabs with his ashin dagger dealt between 22 and 25 damage which killed the foes instantly. Another two fell to the barrage of ranged attacks from Logan’s allies.

Another naegren watercaster amongst the bunch that had flanked Logan cast another Aqua spell towards the Spellthief, though it was quickly absorbed. A Force retaliation to the face caused the caster to crash to the floor away from Logan.

The three remaining flanking naegren charged at Logan’s allies, but a readied Spark let out a Lightning Shot to one, and Celsius burnt down another with a Flame Shot. The last chickened out as a sight of shock shot across his face, seeing his allies die all too quickly. Slipping across the floor it began to flee but a Force sent him to the floor just like all the rest.

With their flanking foes dealt with, the walls of magic all started to crumble and wash away, revealing the last remaining naegren casters had climbed the walls to hide away in higher-up alcoves. Orbs of water formed over and over again as they began to hail towards Logan, dodging, weaving, and grasping onto the spheres of magic where he could, Logan shot them into the nearby walls to free up space in his skill.

It wasn’t long until the creatures had used up all of their MP and started to resort to their base skill that wouldn’t help Logan in the slightest. Giving the command to attack, the party let loose with their crossbow, skills, and mick to bring down the high-ground foes. After it all ended, the experience numbers started to float upwards, Logan successfully absorbing another ten spells but getting hit by three more.

A fight that hurt on both sides, though mostly the enemies as they all lay dead on the floor. The damage that had been taken was being patched up by Marcus’s Healer’s Caress, no wonder it was recommended by the hall.

Checking over his skills quickly, Logan saw that Backstab was up to 75% and Spell Absorption was at 89%. Stealth was also upgrading swiftly as he reached tier 3. Depending on the numbers ahead he could get both of his main skills into the next tier, though they’d need to take a break for the Backstab usages to return. So the team took a short break, giving Logan time to harvest up the components from the naegren corpses.

Two hours passed, the elementals pacing between the hallways and the entrance into the large dome-like room. Logan took his gilded skinning knife and took the back fins off the naegren and picked out 5 hidden purple scales from each corpse. It was a long time to spend on Harvesting, but it would be worth it in the end. With the time spent, Marcus was able to fully heal the party alongside having all skills off of their cooldowns.

Due to the timed, but unlimited, healing combined with the absorption of spells, the party hadn’t lost much in the way of ability resources. It was decided that they would proceed even further before resting for the day. They had four choices for hallways that split off from the chamber they rested within. Ending up with a clockwise rotation, they took the left-most corridor deeper into the cliff cavern.

The group was curious as to why they hadn’t been attacked during their two-hour break, they weren’t exactly quiet. Was it because the chamber they had gone to wasn’t frequented much? It was entirely possible that the corridors were winding and interconnected. Clicking his fingers to map the area ahead he found a possible cause.

Echo Radar painted a messy map, with tiny passageways in the walls, crooked paths, and barely the full range that his skill could reach. The caverns were made in a way that caused sound to travel in a weird way, diminishing its distance. Though this was just a faint clicking noise, not the explosions and electricity of his previous spells.

Approaching the next chamber, the group heard a large group of the naegren screeching at one another. The dots on Logan’s mini-map revealed them to be slightly larger than the previous ones, leading him to believe the room to be full of naegren guardians. Since the fight would be vacant of any spell flinging, it would be the opportune time for a quick clear.

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