[SD:DD] The Magic Smoke Is Escaping - Chapter 8

With the ground now cleared off by Gem, the other three are easily able to see the foundations of many buildings, now torn down and presumably re-used to build everything else. Though they don’t get much chance to delve into this discovery. Gem’s action of manipulating the Mana did not go unnoticed.

From between buildings, skeletons of a sort rush towards the group on all fours. Not that they appear to have been four-legged beings originally. Rather, the skeletons appear to be mostly humanoid. Rather, they race towards the group on all fours because someThing has gone and removed their original arms, replacing them with another set of legs.

Oh, and their feet were taken as well, with the ends of said legs sharpened to a point. Almost unneeded, June yells, “Don’t let them spear you!” Because that much is obvious with how their sharpened bone spikes go black at the end, flakes coming off with every step. Though those flakes quickly vanish and the bone spikes don’t actually seem to lose mass.

Gem hops up over the pile of sand around them and thrusts their spear at the foremost foe, a wind blade flying straight and true. Said skeleton crawler is pulverized by the attack quite easily, which makes Gem frown. “They’re weak! Expect adds.”

Balanced on top of the sand pile, Gem focuses their Mana into the spear, but doesn’t let it fully take control of the forming wind blade.

Emrys is also quick to react, throwing out an illusion on top of Samuel. It doesn’t do much, but the image follows his actions while being a little to the right of where he actually is. The only shame is that since this isn’t a proper displacement effect, the enemies can still see where Samuel is. Though the offset image is at least moderately confusing. A useful addition for any tank.

While this is happening, June isn’t slacking either. Both of her blessings are soon applied to Samuel and Gem. Though once the buffs are in place, she isn’t idle. After going so long without any other practical weapons, she had picked up a simple sling. So simple, it didn’t even have stats or anything, the stats panel for it literally just saying “leather sling”.

There wasn’t even a description! Though June saw this as a positive. After all, for such a basic piece of equipment, the only thing that would be of note, would be defects. So, this is one of those “no news is good news” type of situations. Either way, she had more than enough small rocks to make use of the sling.

And she missed.

Yeah, apparently it isn’t the easiest to hit a skeleton with a sling bullet. So, June takes a moment to apply both buffs to herself and gives it another try. Which proves to significantly increase her odds of hitting. So, you know, one in five shots will hit instead of one in twenty.

Though June gets lucky early on. The boost to crit chance from Cat’s Claw proved its worth. She felt it as the sling let go and her mind focused as if things were going in slow motion. The stone leaves the sling’s pocket and flies seemingly off course. It looks like it will be missing the target by a good hand’s width, except the skeleton jerks to the side.

That attempt to dodge doomed the undead monster. Their head is suddenly right in the way of the sling bullet. More than that, instead of meeting the rock head on with the sturdiest part of the skull, the skeleton had turns their head slightly and the sling bullet is now aimed right at their temple.

Shatter

The skeletons skull is unable to take it. As the stone makes impact, the area of impact is reduced to shards, though even then, it is an undead so might have survived. Except it isn’t like the stone was stopped dead.

In fact, because the sling bullet had hit such a weak point, it hardly lost any momentum as it continued on through the inside of the skull and then had enough force to finish shattering the skull on the other side.

And all the while, Emrys was throwing out minor images that barely lasted a moment. However, their use was undeniable as the advancing undead stumbled into the buildings and each other. It was possible for him to do more, but not while maintaining the offset image on Samuel.

Who was doing a decent job of tanking. His sword was almost motionless, only used to parry any stabs his shield couldn’t block. And boy, was that shield blocking a lot of stabs! Though not just blocking.

As with many things, these skeletons still followed some of their classic tropes. In particular, they certainly seemed to take after the idea that if you weren’t doing bludgeoning damage, you weren’t going to be doing much at all. So instead of trying to slash them to pieces, Samuel made aggressive use of his shield.

These skeleton crawlers might have been corpsecrafted, but it wasn’t for sturdiness or strength. Samuel was more than capable of bashing back their attacks. Not just that, but continuing the bash, turning defense into offense. And the physically weak skeletons are unable to stand up to his shield bash, shattering under his strength.

Then, all of a sudden, the fight is over. From atop their sand hill, something clicks for Gem. Their Wind Blade is charged and their Lesser Mana Control skill had a breakthrough.

Gem holds the Short Spear of Piercing Winds in one hand, with it fully extended out to their side. The tip glows a bright green that seems to push away the stagnant air around it. Then they swing the spear in a wide arc.

All the while, the glowing Air Mana at the tip of the spear stretches out across the entire arc. Though by the end, the glow is almost gone. However, it wasn’t entirely gone. There was still a glimmer in the air, which was enough.

The line of Air Mana accelerates forward, slowly at first, but picks up speed until about half what a normal Wind Blade would be going. This diffuse magic almost skims the top of Samuel’s head as it bears down on the swarm of skeleton crawlers.

Of course, this means it does miss the first three rows of monsters, but they consider it a fine trade-off. After all, the wind blade still manages to crash into the main body of the pack.

The first skeleton crawlers shatter, unable to stand up to the spell, despite how weak it is. After them, the spell still manages to score deep lines across whatever is hit, leaving behind open cuts that release a smoky black cloud, visible only to mana sense. Though with each hit, the line becomes more ragged as it is broken apart until it dissipates a couple rows from the back of the pack.

By that point, the first survivors begin to die as well. The black Mana smoke had been vital to their existence. Though Gem is also out of the fight and complaining about it. “I can cast that spell 18 times before running out! How am I down for the count already?!”

The others ignore them as they finish cleaning up the remaining skeleton crawlers. After all, there are still a good fifteen or sixteen of them crawling around.

Once those are put down though, June grabs Gem and the group runs away. Not out, but to the side. Gem’s head turns around a little too far to stare up at June. “So, uh, what’s the rush?”

June rolls her eyes, “You’re still a bit out of it from running your Mana dry. Take a moment to think about it.”

Gem frowns, and the gears start turning in their head. They had done the Mana thing. Then, some undead showed up. Which was a fun fight. Though the skeletons were kind of fast. Huh, fast. They weren’t running though.

Gem’s brows tighten and a small frown mars their face, “Can the undead run?”

Emrys laughs, “That’s the question you came up with?”

Gem, “Well, I know sources vary on that. Some undead shamble; others can go pretty fast, but when I say run? I mean exert themselves in a way that is temporary and not just a top speed they can maintain indefinitely. Because no matter how fast they go, if they can just do it forever, I don’t exactly consider that running.”

June, “As far as I understand it, they don’t have stamina and so by your definition are not running. Like, I’m sure some of them have a charge skill or some such, but that’s it.”

Gem smiles, “Okay, good to know.”

The gears turn in their head a bit more. “Oooh. Those skeleton crawlers were fast. So if we stayed around the slower undead would show up, likely in much greater numbers and they wouldn’t be glass cannons.”

June smiles, “There we go! But yeah, those skeletons were simply the first.”

Gem, “So uh, how far we running?”

Emrys laughs, “Got to get at least a few miles between us. No clue how many undead that might have drawn.”

Samuel shakes his head, “We shouldn’t need to go That far. Gem’s magic couldn’t have been sensed from too great a distance.”

Emrys nods, “Oh sure, regular land spawn? We’re probably already far enough. However! Gem’s little bleed kicker proved something. Those weren’t land spawn.”

June, “I figure that would have been pretty obvious given the corpsecrafted nature of those crawlers. Skeletons don’t tend to naturally have mismatched bones or replace their arms with legs.”

Emrys laughs, “Oh sure, that represents some sort of controlling power. Which actually, by itself would mean going a little further. But it doesn’t mean necromancy. They could have simply had some rare spawns tinkering with them. Undead don’t advance easily, tending to be a net negative thing. Put in ten lower and at most you get nine power worth of effect.

“Anyway, none of that matters because of that black mist. Normally, bleed effects don’t work on the undead. And it definitely wouldn’t kill an undead. But nah, those things bled necromancy-aligned Mana. Not negative Mana, necromancy.

“Whether undead or not, there is a necromancer in there somewhere and all these undead are being controlled.”

After that, the group quiets down and Gem is allowed back on their feet to join in the running away. It takes a good twenty-some minutes, but eventually they find a place to rest. Not in a building, but rather there are three buildings that form a bit of an alcove which they hide in.

Samuel turns to Emrys, “Okay, so what’s up with the worry about an actual necromancer?”

Emrys shrugs, “Well, first up is there is rarely only ever one necromancer. Even if they’re the crazy loner type, they’ll have created some undead mages capable of the stuff. Biggest threat? Organization.

“If  we went back, we would find a circle of incorporeal undead ringing the area. That or something similar. Undead? Generally brainless, and even those with a mind tend to be like old-school NPC guards. ‘Oh, what’s that noise behind me? Nothing? Whatever, back to looking this other way.’ and also not paying attention to the fact the skeleton that was always to their left is gone.

“Necromancers, even the undead variety, are more aware. They won’t just ignore obvious signs despite not seeing anything.”

Gem, “So, uh, we’ve ribbed June a bit for knowing so much, but I’ve got to turn the spotlight on you. What’s up with the undead knowledge?”

Emrys shrugs and laughs, “I’ve always tended towards fighting undead. While magic is my preferred path, I also love exploring. Which, in older games meant I liked to pick up healing. In particular, I’ve had a tendency to go pure healer and then as a low-level character run through high-level areas to check out stuff. Which works until monsters one-shot you and you’re stuck trying to level again.

“Except! As a healer, you’re generally supposed to fill a support role and I must admit, not always been the best at keeping a group together . However, there tends to be one exception to a healer’s generally low damage potential and I bet you can guess what that is!” And Emrys flashes a smirk.

June sighs, “The undead. And if you were walking around with spells capable of keeping you alive well past the point most others would die, you were packing quite the undead-slaying arsenal.”

Emrys laughs, “Yep! The loner healer, going out and wiping entire fields of undead so I don’t die in one shot to the chaff in an area many levels beyond me. Got a bit of a name in one or two games for being Evil because I would end up leading more than my fair share of trains.”

Gem laughs as well, “That sounds fun! Though my personal experience with games tended to be more eclectic. I liked to build stupidly complex builds in those RPGs with a ton of classes that you could just take as you want.”

June sighs, “Yeah, I remember. Even went and checked your chat history and saw the build you cooked up. I’m kind of surprised we haven’t seen a flood of people copying that build guide you tossed away like it was nothing.”

Gem shrugs, “Meh, I don’t do ‘unique’ for that kind of stuff. I take what was already there and combine it in strange ways. All the pieces were already in place and being used. Also, it takes a certain sort of person to follow through on the build. It wasn’t a quick path to power. I’d probably still be whacking critters around the starting city.

“I felt safe using it because I created it. If the devs ever nerfed any of the components? Well, they’ve already shown what they’ll do, which is either let me keep going as a unique instance or in some way pay me back. Those who copy it? Heh, they’re on their own!”

Samuel nods, “That is a good reason not to copy things too closely. You need stability to build power.”

Gem waves that off, “You need a bit of everything. A sturdy foundation, the willingness to change with the circumstances, a kindness that ingratiates yourself with other people, and enough selfishness and greed to reach for all the power you can. Even locked to chaos, it isn’t like I don’t have things that stay ordered. Otherwise, my levels and such would go up and down at random. Though speaking of which, something happened in that last fight! Maybe I hit ten?”

Negative Or Necromancy? - Chapter 7

Another Skill Rank Up - Chapter 9