Legend of the Spellthief

Grabbing his periapt of mana, Logan activated it before the lord could get close enough to stop him. With 2 MP in hand, Logan could use it for attack or healing, though plans would need to be immediate as he just barely blocked a strike from the trident with his Spellthief’s edge dagger.

With the use of Identification, Logan could see the damage dealt to the beast that his party was facing. Marcus’s crossbow bolt would normally deal between 7 and 9 damage, against this foe it dealt only 2 to 3. Celsius’s Ember Shard which would deal 6 fire damage was also reduced to 4.

Parrying another blow, Logan saw Spark’s attacks with his body deal 4 to 6 damage, dealing more than usual due to being made of lightning. However, this damage wasn’t going to continue for very long. With the force of the lord’s trident, he knocked Logan off-balance to attack the elemental instead, slashing into the sparky friend for 32 damage, the following piercing thrust dispersing the energies of Logan’s ally.

“Fuck, attrition won’t work with that damage output”, Logan thought.

Parrying another blow Logan cast a Flame Shot at the leg of the lord, dealing a lessened 25 damage. The lord was only down to 98/148 HP so far, a spinning slash into Logan’s dagger allowing the lord to cover his blade in a red mist and strike down into the Spellthief’s shoulder. Bringing him to a knee, Logan took a painful 88 damage, almost taking his right arm off with the attack.

“Shit, He-” Logan started to shout, though remembered that Marcus was out of MP.

Darting his eyes to the far back of the chamber, Logan used Dimensional Jaunt to gain some distance from his foe. Clumsily fumbling with his inventory, Logan pulled out four healing potions and downed them for a total of 68 HP. He saw the lord doing a similar tactic, grabbing their chest and using the Heal spell to recover 20 of their own health.

Continuing to get pelted by the Devout and Flame elemental, the lord turned his head to the weaker members of the team.

“Flame Shot!” Logan called out, fires wreathing around his arm and firing towards the opened back of the naegren.

One after another until all three charges were spent, the lord was pelted with harder-hitting spells, taking 25, 26, and 27 damage.

Instilled with rage against Logan, the lord turned to the Spellthief and became a fuzzy mess of afterimages. Using its Dash skill, it ran towards Logan at breakneck speeds with its trident lined for the man’s heart. Logan drew up his ashin dagger to block the blow as the trident started to glow a bright yellow.

Crashing metal filled the room as the trident cracked the dagger all over, retrieving the trident for another attack it changed from yellow to red as the lord was utilizing its Combo skills similar to how Iimi did back in Moella. The second attack caught Logan’s dagger, the blade shattering into pieces of metal as it was destroyed. Hastily bringing up the Spellthief’s edge, Logan just barely parried the following combo strike but heavily damaged his main weapon.

The body of the lord then glowed a bright violet for a second as its Combo was coming to an end, letting out a spinning slash into Logan. Even though he had blocked the attack, a wave of violet energy shot from the trident and cut across Logan’s form diagonally, causing a large cut to erupt blood all over the naegren.

Throwing its hand outwards, the naegren grasped Logan’s throat and pinned him to the floor, his health nearing empty. The naegren shuddered now and then from the assault of Logan’s fellows, but it would take much more to finish him. Logan glanced across his foe, noticing his health increasing without the need to touch his own body, probably letting go of the Grasp bonus and just applying it a different way.

Holding its trident up high the naegren prepared to skewer Logan a final time. Darting his eyes across the room Logan used his final Dimensional Jaunt to create distance between them once more. A vacuum erupted with a red stream as Logan continued to bleed across the room on both ends.

With one hand free Logan created another Lightning Wall across the floor to block vision and damage a charging naegren. Downing two more healing potions before his mini-map alerted him to the closeness of his foe, the naegren jumped through the barrier of shocking might. Its trident glowed once again as Logan threw his dagger into his foe’s chest, causing it to wince in the air.

Drawing Goblin-Killer, Logan just barely blocked the trident as its longest spike was an inch from his face. The naegren snarled at Logan as it seemed confident in its victory over a weakened foe, though through a sneer Logan chanted with a hand aimed at the stomach of the lord, “Lightning Shot.”

A stream of bolts snapped from Logan’s fingertips into the body of the lord, his back continuing to get pelted with bolts and fiery blasts. While it began to collapse the smile never faded from its face, a glint in its eyes as it fell totally. Logan saw a horrifying sight as he looked at the fallen foe, a wipe mark on its face as if it had digested the blood of Logan.

“Did he gain my skills?” Logan feared, but as the experience numbers started to appear it seemed his worries were for nought.

“Level up! Gain: 8 HP, +1 Str, +1 Agi, +1 Con, +1 Int. You have 1 attribute point to spend.”

Having dealt with thirty-four naegren as well as their lord, the dungeon’s quest in Logan’s window popped up as being completed. Granting him further rewards.

“You have gained the ‘Naegren Exterminator’ title.”

“Naegren Exterminator: Clearing the naegren coastal caverns has hardened your will against aquatic foes who have learnt to fight back against humanoids with devastating powers. Fishers are calmer in your presence and naegren can smell the blood of their kin on your flesh.

When dealing with creatures of the aquatic type you deal 5% more damage (minimum +1) and gain 5% damage resistance. You have gained 1 skill point to distribute."

Planting himself on the floor, Logan breathed in and out so heavy he became slightly light-headed. He only had a single Necromantic remaining from his spells, Celsius had only 1 MP left whereas Spark who had died had nothing and Marcus was also at 0. Dumb luck and hasty plans saw them through, but Logan praised whatever allowed him to survive.

If the lord hadn’t fallen at that moment Logan was going to use his final spell and have Celsius use his, but outside of that, he was losing options outside of fleeing and leaving his allies behind. Thankful he had saved those potions for a more opportune time, Logan looked at the final three in his inventory. “Need to stock up again”, he thought to himself.

Marcus ran over to a tired Logan, using a Healer’s Caress that had come off of cooldown. “Logan, you alright? That was a hair’s distance from disaster”, Marcus asked as his face was still showing signs of fear.

“Better than dead, so I can’t complain. Sorry, we should have rested after clearing this chamber-” Logan began to apologise but was cut off.

“Hindsight is a hundred versus in the moment, we couldn’t have known that invisible foes would flee and call the entire cave at once. They were meant to be rare, but this place held many more than we thought.”

“We got them, boss, all good here”, Celsius chimed in with a hearty fist in the air.

“Can you sense any other foes nearby?” Marcus continued.

“No, they should be dead. All of them actually, the quest alerted me to its completion.”

“There could be survivors that our quest didn’t include, I say we explore in the morning just in case.”

“I was thinking the same, who knows, maybe there is loot further inside”, Logan replied with greed on his mind.

“Speaking of, it seemed that larger naegren was wearing trinkets, I’ll gather those”, Marcus spoke as he moved over to the lord’s corpse.

“I take it you don’t know anything about naegren lords?” Logan spoke a bit louder as Marcus moved away.

“Nope, was it another that drunk our blood?”

“Seems so. Not a hero though, as far as I could tell.”

“We can take some joy in that fact. If hero monsters became common the hall would get quite the shakeup trying to deal with it.”

Taking up the trinkets and trident, Marcus brought them over to Logan to fully inspect them. They consisted of a pristine hobgoblin wristband, pristine earring of gobtree, pristine shaman necklace, and a lord’s trident. Marcus took the wristband and necklace, the Spellthief taking the earring to replace his and the trident to sell. Hand-me-downs and spares would be moved between the two or sold.

“No wonder he was strong, these are only one tier of quality below the maximum. It’s a shame I can’t benefit from two necklaces at once, I don’t want to give up the spellforce of this periapt”, Logan stated.

“It certainly aided us in that fight. I second your choice of spellforce over a capability increase.”

Standing up and using Clean to remove the blood and dirt, the group left to the outdoors to rest for the night. Checking over his summons Logan saw they had both levelled again, Celsius to 10 and Spark to 9.

The journey to the exit was accompanied by more uses of Healer’s Caress from Marcus, bringing Logan to 66/136 HP. Logan placed one of his ashin daggers from his rib holsters into his back sheath to replace the one that broke in combat.

As they breached the maw of the cliff to the coastline they were again surprised to see a group of four adventurers waiting for them. A Rogue had a bow nocked and ready to fire, a Fighter with two swords, a Knight standing tall with a greedy smile and shield on his vambrace. A familiar sight accompanied them, Gaemo, the hunter with grey hair.

The leader of the group, the Knight, shouted towards the team, “Finally got out, we were about to go in after you.”

“Weapons on the floor”, the Fighter continued as he brandished his blades.

“Fucking ambushers”, Logan thought. He remembered Marcus mentioning this back in Tinte, adventurers that would take advantage of other groups during their missions.

Staring daggers at Gaemo, Logan noticed the hunter who he had thought to be an ally give him a quick wink. The hunter stepped a bit to the side, behind the Knight.

“What happens after we do that?” Logan asked.

“We take your gear and go on our merry way”, the Rogue replied, his bowstring making stretching noises.

“This because we’re casters?” Marcus chimed in.

“One factor, you’ve just come from a dungeon, your spell reserves are bound to be low. Whatever you have left we can take. Sad to see the rest of your team didn’t make it out though”, the Knight replied.

“They must think we were part of a four or five-man”, Logan surmised in his head.

“Pretty common to see the casters flee and leave the rest to die, you’re only good for a few spells anyway”, the Fighter spat.

“Koay, you sure you’ll hit this time? They are bigger targets than bunnies”, Gaemo teased as he readied his sword in his hands.

“Shut up, Mike”, the Rogue replied, his eyes turning to Gaemo slightly.

Surrounding his blade in a red mist, Gaemo struck the Knight in the back with a Power Strike as he exclaimed the name of the skill. Logan followed with a Force at the Rogue, colliding his energy blast with the arrow in the air as it flew. Marcus charged at the Rogue with his staff while Celsius began to pelt the Fighter with Flame spells from his increase in MP.

Logan ran towards the foes ahead, driving Goblin-Killer into the back of the Knight as he turned to fight Gaemo. The Backstab brought the leader down quickly after Gaemo’s attacks. Kicking off from the Knight allowed Logan to dodge an arrow from the Rogue, returning the ranged attack with another Force to the foe’s leg, causing him to fall to the floor.

With attacks from afar by Celsius and Marcus’s melee prowess increasing with his new items, they were able to hold back the Fighter to allow Gaemo to get stuck in that particular fight. Yellow and blue lights shone across the hunter’s blade as he brought down the next foe.

Logan ended the fight as he fired a Necromantic Shot at the Rogue with the bow, stabbing him with several tendrils that helped to recover Logan further. Dragging him to the floor, the ground surrounding the quick team was full of ambusher corpses. Signalling the end of the brawl, experience numbers floated above the bodies.

“Sorry you got caught up in that, these fuckers would just not camp out”, Gaemo spoke as he cleaned his sword on the Fighter’s clothing.

“Your marks I presume?” Logan asked as he used Clean on himself.

“Yeah, all I had to go on was a new team of traitors had been killing adventurers out on quests. The situation with the goblins was a good time for them to hide and up their routine, but it was enough for me to find them out.”

“I take it you were waiting for them to sleep to attack?” Marcus asked.

“That was the plan. But the Fighter saw someone pick up a dungeon quest, so they grouped up quick. I have an alias as a traitor under the name Mike, so it was easy enough to get in with them.”

“Good thing you went with them, they were right about the lack of spells”, Logan spoke jokingly.

“I was going to say the same, with you lot I was sure you’d notice me and help in the fight, others would just see me as another target”, Gaemo responded with a smile.

Gathering the coin purses of the three traitors, Gaemo tossed them to Logan. “Take that as an apology for the attack, these fellas’ gear was stolen so I need to give most of it back.”

Passing one of the pouches to Marcus, Logan accepted them. “So you’re not dealing with the goblin quests?” Logan continued as he helped take the gear from the corpses.

“I’d ask the same of you. Though my reasons are that if we lack adventurers, that’s worse than me not aiding in killing the goblins.”

“Fair enough, I can see that view. Just like us taking on hunts because hardly anyone else will in our place”, Logan replied, obviously dodging the partial question from Gaemo.

“How’re the other hunters by the way?” Marcus chimed in.

“Well. There’s always hunts, and the ruckus with the invasion has allowed a few more criminals to do their business in the confusion”, Gaemo responded with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Why didn’t you deal with those traitors in the city? I am sure you’d have help from the guards”, Logan asked.

“I had bare descriptions, they were good at hiding most of their tracks. I had to be sure before taking them down.”

With the gear of the ambushers fully stripped the group moved the corpses closer to the beach to let the sealife take it. Logan didn’t feel the need to keep any for himself so he handed everything over to Gaemo who showed no signs of betrayal. Deciding it would be best to rest together before Gaemo set off back to Gauntlet on his own the team made a small camp near their horses.

“You’re for sure a strong couple to be able to take on a dungeon on your lonesome. Your previous hunter work had me a bit wary, but if you can deal with this place I have no more worries.”

“It hasn’t been easy, that ambush from the traitors was the third of the day. The naegren had a few stalkers amongst them, like the fomin they drank classed blood”, Logan explained as he handed a spare ration to Gaemo.

“More classed drinkers? This place is going to the below. Good thing you two are clearing it out, a weaker team taking this on hoping for a quick coin would have been wiped”, Gaemo responded with worry.

“We should hopefully clean up tomorrow, here’s to having no more stalkers”, Marcus announced as he raised his waterskin.

The trio drank as Celsius stayed on watch, the elemental keeping vigil throughout the night to let the group get the rest they sorely needed after the day they had.

Awakening to a new dawn, Logan could hear the waves of the ocean nearby, combined with the sea salt air bringing a new morning to his senses. Sleeping outside also brought with it a face full of sunlight to burn the eyes from the darkness of slumber. Logan’s body was a bit hot, though not from the sun, a throbbing sensation across his right shoulder and across his chest led his fingers to a new scar.

The slash from the lord had cut him deep, the jetstream of blood would have ticked him off to such when it occurred. As his largest scar, it was the easiest to hide under his clothing, though with them adding up his mind wondered about the possibility of purchasing regenerative healing again. Its expense was slowly getting outweighed by the number of scars that Logan was collecting.

Spending a few minutes to resummon Spark, Logan prepared his normal spell array for the day. His summons started to rival the MP of Marcus, Celsius at 13, Spark 12, and Marcus just pulling ahead at 16. Thinking in terms of battery power, Logan had access to many more spells in the day than his lowered spell slot progression normally allowed.

With his mind on using his allies’ spells, Logan spent the newly acquired skill point on Charge Transfer. The usual window popped up with its updated details.

Doubling its effects, the time taken was also halved. While the skill itself said it was maxed a new skill branched off of it, allowing Logan to decrease the time required in meditation even further for more skill points invested. If he were to transfer his summons’ spells Logan would end up with 12.5 MP, plenty to spread across his spells.

At least for the naegren dungeon, Logan didn’t see much need for transferring the spells into MP, since they were weak to Lightning. It could be useful to change Flame into more Lightning or even Dimensional Jaunt, but putting it into practice would reveal its better use.

With the final preparations for the day ahead complete, Gaemo slung his backpack on and waved the party off as he left. The team returned to the caverns.

Putting his new skill to use, Logan absorbed four Flames from Celsius and transferred them into 2 MP to use as he wished later. However, it proved to be just steady caution as the team were able to explore and map out the rest of the caverns in peace. A few extra trinkets and weapons were found here and there from fallen adventurers, but all of it was to be sold back in town. Harvesting a few extra corpses, including the stalkers and lord, their search was a bit slow.

Confident the cave was clear, the group left to the coastline. Since they had prepared for three days away, Logan spent five hours and 24 minutes crafting his cache arm. It was a pretty silver bracelet around 6 inches long, on its clasp there was a design of an eye with six irises that was hugged by a fang. The undersides were softened with parts of a wolf pelt and fashioned with vorkas feathers.

Elated the trinket came out as high-quality, the third tier, Logan felt a sense of comfort that his skills would be hidden from prying eyes as those would be the biggest giveaway to him being an oracle. Placing the new item onto his left wrist Logan was slowly losing space on his body to equip trinkets.

Not wanting to return to Gauntlet at night, the group rested again after Logan’s crafting session had come to a close.

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