Legend of the Spellthief

After their short rest, which followed a round of looting the corpses for quick vials for further combat, the group stood and looked to Logan for their next path.

“This place is turning out to be more of a maze the further we go, these corridors are seemingly nonsensical”, Logan spoke as he scouted his mini-map.

“A dungeon if I ever saw one, but, the design is too man-made. Like I said, probably ruins from the time of the Bandit Lord”, Gaemo responded.

“We’ve heard about him a few times, was it that long ago?” Marcus asked as he stood by Logan’s side.

“Close to two centuries ago now? He was quite a powerful individual with a multitude of skills at his disposal and passed down to his underlings. This place just ‘feels’ old enough to be from that time.”

“That way”, Logan replied as he pointed down a hallway. “The Lord is the cause of the bookkeepers right?”

“Yes. His was a presence that even worried the saebers”, Sincollo added.

Gaemo swivelled his head at this, “Really? How come?”

“He was in the possession of a few tomes relating to the transformation of my species.”

“Ah, gotcha. Better to keep that under wraps so that your foes know little about it”, Gaemo replied.

“Transformation?” Logan asked.

“You’ll probably see it if we get into a rough patch, or we find the final group”, Gaemo answered for his friend.

Logan’s curiosity was piqued, but with the mention of keeping it hidden, he didn’t pry any further as he continued to guide the party forwards.

The corridors continued to end in doors that were almost or entirely blasted apart, allowing the party to travel faster than before. This did, however, worry the party that more bandits would be behind the destroyed barriers. It showed that the bandits were being quite brash in trying to escape the ruins that would become their tombs.

It quickly became time for more skills to come off of their cooldowns, making some of their rest redundant, but it was better to be safe than sorry in this place. The caution of the party paid off immensely as Logan held up his hand once again to halt the party.

“Shit, big group ahead, they must have reformed after exploring this place”, Logan informed.

“How many?” Gaemo asked.

“48.”

“Shit indeed, that’s four times the size of the last group.”

“How do you want to approach this?” Logan asked.

“Hmm. Can you detect their ranks at all?”

“I need to be able to see them, means me getting in closer.”

“Do it, we’ll be close to teleport far back and make a retreat if we’re spotted.”

Logan nodded and turned to face the direction of the next chamber. It was just as large as the previous, though it felt smaller due to the sheer number of bandits that were standing in front of yet another large door. This door was different though, it was inlaid with golden carvings that depicted a large monstrous head, something of an amalgamation of orc and ogre, with four sets of fangs.

“That’s Madamra’s symbol”, Logan thought to himself as he looked at the door.

This spelt trouble for the party. Madamra was the Lady of Monsters and one from below. Her domain is that of all monsters that roam the land of Avanar, it is said that the forming of monsters from residual spellforce is her doing. She is one of the few deities that intelligent monsters pray to, and some more suspect civilised races also pray to.

If that was on display, it could mean it was a door leading into a dangerous dungeon or the lair of something dedicated to the deity. Thankfully it seemed undamaged by the bandits, but from this distance, it was hard to hear their chatter.

As all of the bandits were engaged with the door and their leader, Logan was able to use Identification on all of them. Whilst their quantity was high, their quality wasn’t as worrying, with only a few level 7s as the biggest threat.

Stealthily returning to his party deeper in the corridor he informed the others of the force ahead.

“Alright, this will be close, but we should be able to handle it. At least three will go down in the initial charge. Sincollo and I will go for the strongest-looking ones, most likely at the front with the better gear. We’ll start with a Flash crystal to blind them, Logan take out the lights as usual to continue their lack of sight.”

“No magi from what I could tell, I can Force the torches they hold easy enough.”

“That helps at least. Marcus fire from the back and heal when needed, the summons would do better in the thick of it so we don’t get overwhelmed.”

Celsius slammed his hand into his head in salute to the order while Spark nodded cordially.

“I don’t have many of these, so if all goes to plan we don’t need to use more”, Gaemo added as he pulled out a long crystal, around 5” in length and 2” thick. The crystal was a pristine white, almost shining in the dark of the underground.

Logan was informed it was a Devout spell, of third-level, that could blind opponents for a short time. It was hard to place into items for repeated use, so it was resigned to single-use crystals like the one Gaemo was going to use.

“If none rank over 7, I shall save my transformation for the final group”, Sincollo announced.

Logan assumed it was due to either its cooldown or some other factor that meant the saeben wasn’t willing to use it against such a large enemy team.

Gaemo gave a quick once-over of the party, checking that all skills were ready alongside the people they were attached to. The man showed little in the way of concern for the upcoming encounter, though lower levelled foes did find difficulty in even hurting the team, their gear being infused with a stronger deal of spellforce to ward off injury more than those that the bandits could wear.

The bandits conversed amongst themselves, kicking at rocks at their feet, or chomping down on rectangular rations blocks. Totally unaware of the danger, what could even come from behind them down here in this deserted place anyway? They had met up via several hallways so if they were to be attacked it would have been before that point.

Disrupting some of their talks was a collection of tinking noises, the crystal having been tossed by Gaemo and was now rolling its way into the centre of the pack. Several bandits looked at the now scratched crystal, some of their mouths opening to shout and others whose wide-eyed stares of fear only aided in their approaching debilitation.

A sharp scraping of a chalkboard emanated from the crystal as it shook, cracked, and exploded in a large flash of light and sound. This explosive beginning to the ambush was accompanied by the pained yells of the men and women who were blinded by the light.

The repeated sounds of wind blasts echoed through the hallway that the party were previously stationed within, two presences making themselves known with their Rush tactics followed by two summons and crossbow bolts.

Logan had teleported into the front of the enemy force, placing his hand on the back of one of the level 7s he had spotted previously and chanted, “Flame Grasp”, igniting the foe in a blaze of heat death. The Backstab surprise brought what was assumed to be the leader of this portion of the bandits dealt a fiery 130 damage, bringing him straight to unconsciousness.

Swirling around, Logan grasped onto another level 7 and repeated the tactic, emblazoning the foe with 123 Backstab fires and taking her down.

Thrusting his hands to his hips in a cross fashion whilst dodging to the side, Logan drew up his blades in an x-slash into the last level 7s back for a double Backstab hit of 37 and 40 damage. His final use of the skill left him to let out the following flurry to bring down his foe as they continued to flail around in their blind state.

Flashes of red, blue, yellow, and purple danced across the back of the bandits, the two allied Fighters letting loose with their dazzling deadly displays. The weakest of the enemies were felled in single strokes, others requiring a second attack to quell their short lifespans.

Celsius and Spark had grown accustomed to fighting foes at ranged, but this tactic hadn’t diluted their melee capabilities. Celsius accepted blade strikes as his body was resistant, and decided to punch through the opposition and slam into their arms to have their attacks falter even more so. Spark was faster and adept at dodging, yet his body had caught up with his older brother’s and could take a blow or two without worry.

Some of the bandits surprisingly had spell rings, Logan spotting the jolts of Lightning amongst one of the bandit’s arms. Seemingly attempting to fire blindly, Logan was able to interlock his fingers with the foe’s and pull him to the floor, absorbing the spell out of sight of any other foes or friends, “Spell Absorb”, he mentally commanded.

“Spell Absorption successful. Lightning charge stored.”

Without much time to himself to transfer this into MP, Logan let it out with a tall Wall of Lightning against a group of bandits, “Lightning Wall”. Columns of sparking doom erupted from the floor as they danced across the men and women, digging into their bodies over and over. In their blind states, they weren’t able to get out of the wall in time, leading to all of their deaths.

Gaemo leapt to the side of the Wall, a smirk on his face as he was delighted in the offensive attitude of a mage, fighting back any idea that Logan was passive. Continuing to coat the battlefield in blood with his slashes, Gaemo had dealt a massive blow against the high number of 48 foes.

As the skirmish was reaching a good minute and a half, the bandits’ vision began to return to them, the item doing well against enemies with such low levels. Their attempts at retaliation gained a step of proficiency with sight back on their side, but with the higher levels down for the count, they had little hope left of winning this confrontation.

A parrying move from Logan led into him stabbing another foe to the floor, throwing his dagger at another, and using Force to knock out the flankers after his allies.

Slash, stab, deflect, and crush. The half-blind bandits all fell to the floor, Logan’s team only partially hurt in the confrontation. If anything this fight just ate up spells and skills, the latter of which could be fixed with a half-hour rest, which was most likely going to come after the floating experience numbers faded away.

Logan gathered up his thrown dagger, double-checking for any unconscious bandits while he was at it. Another window popped up by his side, alerting him that Spark had also reached level 11 and would stop progressing just like his older brother. Logan was sitting pretty at 89,149 / 91,000 XP, another fight and he’d more than likely be able to hit level 14. The level before his next System upgrade.

Gaemo let out several tough breaths and looked around the battlefield, “Logan… how we looking?”

“We’re safe, none of them are going to get back up and none are closing in on us”, Logan replied, a bit worried about his ally.

“Good… this spellforce expenditure at such a high rate is exhausting”, Gaemo continued as he sat back down.

Logan already knew a fair bit about spellforce, from reading books and talking with other people. A caster was able to utilize spellforce in the air to cast their spells, causing a toll on their mental fortitude with each spell, which equated to the MP and Spell Slot translations the System gave him.

On the other side, the martial classes used internal spellforce which caused them a physical exhaustion. That was translated into their cooldowns and uses per day, but the higher level you got on both spectrums led to somewhat harsher feedback. The Fighters probably had it worse with their combo skills, each one inflicting a portion of fatigue.

Logan stealing the spells of others, and having a lower allocation himself, was probably why he hadn’t felt such a feeling of tiredness. Marcus was mostly sedentary outside of crossbow fire or the times he had been forced into melee combat, so he could handle the fatigue well enough.

Either way, the party had defeated a total of 72 people in a matter of hours, which would have caused almost anyone to require a few rests here or there. And rest the party did, with Marcus using Healer’s Caress to bring his allies back to full strength.

An hour passed before the team were ready to march onwards, the imposing door giving them a sense of dread but otherwise a solid barrier against attack. Gaemo had interrogated the foes that Logan had brought down, though their words just added into the same phrase as the previous bandits, they had no clue about the artefact.

There continued to be no signs of Evén within the bandit groups, leading the team to assume she was somewhere random or with the final group. With only 15 bandits left to deal with it was a sure-fire guess they were in a large formation.

Logan still had his rings to use, sadly he couldn’t add any of the foes’ rings to his stock as they had all been used. Two sequential Grasp spells should deal with the level 10s when it came to it, but without another use of Flash they would be able to retaliate better than this force had.

Though as Logan checked over his allies he noticed that Gaemo had caught up with Sincollo, reaching level 16 within this confrontation and gaining just a little bit more power from it. The Fighter hadn’t mentioned anything, so Logan took the educated guess that without a direct correlation of spellforce into spells it was hard to determine an increase in level. Either that or Gaemo didn’t feel the need to announce it.

“So, any clue what this door is guarding? Think the last lot are through it?” Gaemo asked as he prepared his gear.

“I can’t scan past it, it’s possible they are on the other side, just as much as possible that they aren’t”, Logan answered.

“I feel it best we search the rest of this labyrinth before inviting the beast”, Sincollo added.

“Either way, we don’t know which is the correct choice, so let’s continue”, Gaemo accepted, “Hey, Logan, take these”, he continued as he handed two spell slot potions to the mage.

“Thanks, I’ll use them when we get to the next group.”

“Drink them now, 8s and above may have scanning abilities similar to yours. We don’t want anyone unprepared.”

Logan nodded in agreement, “Right, good call.”

Even though it went against any previous hoarding mentalities that Logan held, the Spellthief downed the potions and recovered two more uses of Flame. With his Charge Transfer skill, Logan seemingly had no more worries about having his spells last for the same time as a normal caster.

Combined with that fact he hadn’t been reassessed, a Wizard of level 10 or thereabouts had a good minimum of twenty-two first-level spells and eleven second-level spells. However, that number diminished with quickcasting and meta alterations. Since all of Logan’s spells were quickcasted he was observed as using more slots than usual, accompanied by his MP pool from Celsius and Spark buffing up to a believable number of spells.

With both of his summons reaching their limit, however, Logan would need to work on a third if he were to stick around much longer, and that would require more slots or MP. That would be a problem for later, for now, he continued to steer his party towards their final confrontation within the ruined underground.

The party walked through corridor after corridor, Logan’s map becoming a network of lines connecting dots in a fashion that made him think of ant colonies. Several doors were destroyed, most likely by the teams of bandits they had faced so far, showing the attitude they had at being trapped in the underground.

Logan’s quest had been updating as they pressed on, showing 72/87 bandits dealt with, another counter tracking the unconscious ones waiting to be taken back to Gauntlet, and the object of retrieving Evén safely. Gaemo did ask every so often about the condition of his ally, to which Logan could only say, “I think so”, in return.

The walking wasn’t too difficult, though hours of it combined with skirmishes in between was certainly a workout for the party. Celsius and Spark were fine with it as they did not experience fatigue, but the Fighters did have some sweat on their brow. There wasn’t much time for rest, Gaemo was hyper-focused on finding Evén.

She wasn’t weak by any means, but being trapped underground with bandits all on her own could spell danger if they teleported in a strange fashion. While the party saw bandit groups with all their gear on hand it wasn’t a certainty that they appeared with everything in hand. Evén was also going to be surrounded by enemies of levels 7 to 10, without the aid of Stealth it would be a sticky predicament indeed.

The party halted as they reached halfway through yet another chamber, Logan’s arm raised as usual to motion the group to stay still.

“The last group is ahead, 16 people, Evén is there”, Logan informed as he saw a single green dot surrounded by reds.

Gaemo’s body jutted forward as if he were about to run but his instincts took over and stopped him from going any further. “What is her status?”

“Hard to tell, but she is alive at the very least. I’d need a sightline for anything more.”

“How are they gathered?”

“Rather clumped together, it seems the chamber ahead is a dead end of sorts”, Logan explained as he stared at his mini-map that only he could see.

“We’d best not risk you getting detected. Let’s prepare now for an ambush and change according to the situation.”

“Would it not be better to assess before attacking?” Marcus inquired.

“There are cons on both sides. But, if Logan is detected they could take Evén as a body shield, it is possible she is just tied up somewhere and not in immediate danger. Logan will teleport Sincollo and me next to her, if needed teleport her out. Then we’ll take on the forces”, Gaemo explained as he pointed out at his allies.

“I surmise that my transformation will be put to best use here then”, Sincollo announced as he moved slightly back.

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