Healer Arc 2 -- Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The sensation of passing through the dungeon’s threshold was familiar to what Thaden was used to on Tarth; there was a brief moment of transition where everything seemed to freeze as he took a step forward, a stutter in the passage of time that held him hostage to the whims of the transitionary plane.  Because he wasn’t the Party Leader, he didn’t have any input on the difficulty of the dungeon – if such a thing was even possible in the “real” world, as he was beginning to understand that Tarth had been more of an artificial extended tutorial than an accurate analog of what he could be expected to find on Plangea – so the transition didn’t take that long before he was allowed through.

You have entered the Blasted Caves Dungeon!

Blasted Caves Dungeon

Assessed Difficulty: Minimal (Swarm)

Recommended Party Size: 5

Recommended Party Levels: 3 - 6

The notification was fairly similar to what Thaden was used to; the biggest difference was that instead of it being a “Current Difficulty,” it instead mentioned that it had a Minimal Swarm “Assessed Difficulty”.  He could only assume that meant that choosing a difficulty to challenge wasn’t something that was possible on Plangea, or at least not for a dungeon such as the one he’d just walked into.  The note that this was a “Swarm” Difficulty was brand-new, however, as he’d never seen anything precisely like it on Tarth, other than perhaps a Monster Waves or Siege Challenge in the Intermediate Dungeons.  

Looking around him, he saw his Party arranged ahead of him, weapons at the ready, as they took in their environment.  Thaden peered past them to see that they had emerged from the entrance into what appeared to be a natural cave formation that was probably the entire interior of the 50-foot-tall hill that they’d walked into.  There was a natural light coming from the walls that seemed to be filled with various concentrations of a dimly glowing stone, which allowed him to see that the black stone floor was very unnatural, as it was completely flat and perfectly smooth, along with being polished with a shine that helped to reflect the light that emerged from the walls.

What was also unnatural was the cut staircase that began in the middle of the cave and led downwards.  He couldn’t see how far down it went, but he had the impression that it went deep. 

“This is not what I expected, especially with a name like ‘Blasted Caves,’” Thaden said into the uncomfortable silence after a moment.  “By the way, what does it mean by this being a ‘Swarm’ Difficulty?”

Warven glanced back at him in obvious annoyance; whether it was because he spoke into the silence or because of the question itself, he didn’t know.  All he received in response was, “Stay out of our way.”  That was it; no explanation nor warning about what to expect.

After a brief period of assessment, Thaden’s Party began moving toward the stairs leading downward, and so he followed behind them with his own annoyance at their treatment of him festering within his mind.  He didn’t say anything, however, as the Netherines seemed particularly “locked-in” with their movements and perception, as if they’d done this thousands of times before.  As much as he’d like to complain, he knew that doing so might end up with someone – perhaps even himself – being hurt or killed, so he kept his mouth shut and followed the Party leader’s orders.

For the moment, at least.  He was eager to try out his spells now that he could actually cast something, especially now that he’d selected his most pertinent his Competency Advancements.

The stairs leading downward were, as he predicted, particularly steep and descended quite a distance.  He estimated that it led at least 500 feet down through the ground without any turnings; by the time they managed to reach the bottom, his calves were starting to become sore even with his passive Health Regeneration.  The enclosed section of stone stairs was fairly spacious, with a ceiling that extended to about 15 feet above the stairs themselves, and it was approximately 10 feet wide, and there were no handrails nor any treading along the smooth steps; it was a definite OSHA violation, and he couldn’t even imagine how injured he would’ve been if he had fallen down the extremely long flight of stairs.

Of course, his Party members were quite agile and moved down the steps like it was flat ground, leaving him to slightly struggle to keep up with them.  They arrived at the bottom a few seconds before he did, and as they spread out in a semi-circle formation, Thaden moved up behind them and immediately discovered why the dungeon was called the Blasted Caves.

While the cave they entered wasn’t all that large, with it being perhaps 150 feet in length, 75 in width, and with 20-foot-tall ceilings, the damage to the brownish stone was clear.  Evidence of scorch marks along with stone rubble scattered about were only the visible side effects of what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of small explosions that appeared to have been used to carve the shape of the cave itself.  Cracks along the jagged walls, spiderwebbing out from concave impact sites approximately 2 feet in diameter, gave the entire cave a sense of instability, but Thaden intuited that it wasn’t about to collapse anytime soon; he assumed that they were there more for visual effect than places where the ceiling might fall in on them.

Even the floor of the cave wasn’t spared from the explosions, as large chunks of it seemed to be missing entirely, leading to it being highly uneven and an obstacle all on its own.  There was a clear path from where they entered to a shaped rectangular hallway at the far end of the cave, though there were plenty of places along the route where the environment was abnormal enough to hide an army of monsters that they wouldn’t see until it was too late.

“Harven.  Set up here.  We’ll have Scarven bring them to us.”  Warven pointed to a few places around the largely level entrance area, which extended about 30 feet from the stairs before the blasted portions of the cave became more pronounced.  Thaden was able to see the Novice Trapper finally do something related to his Class, as he swiftly used his abilities to create 5 separate concentrations of energy around the perimeter of their area, each of them flashing red before disappearing from visible sight.  He could sense where they were, thanks to his connection to Harven as a member of his Party, but any monsters would likely be unable to detect them.

Once he was done, Scarven set out on his own, moving past the traps that the Novice Trapper had set, as the others prepared themselves in their own way.  The Stalker Trainee slipped through the blasted portions of the floor like a shadow, moving quickly and with enough stealth that he was hard to spot.  Nothing happened for nearly a minute as they all stood in silence, with Thaden almost at the bottom of the stairs, staying behind them as instructed, before he caught sight of Scarven moving swiftly back toward the Party.  On his heels were dozens of small bipedal creatures, each of them no more than 2 feet tall, though long ears made them seem wider than they really were.  The creatures had long, spindly limbs and their skin was a mottled green and brown color, with sharp, dark-colored teeth in wide-open jaws that appeared capable of rending flesh with ease, and they all had claws with inch-long talons that looked like they could hurt. 

Gremklin Swarmer – Minimal

Level 2

Gremklin Forager – Minimal

Level 3

Gremklin Blaster – Minimal

Level 3

There were 3 different creatures that he spotted within the crowd following Scarven, with the most numerous being the Gremklin Swarmer, which were all Level 2.  Slightly larger than the Swarmers were the Foragers, though “slightly” meant only about 20% bigger, though they seemed slightly sturdier than their smaller cousins.  Bringing up the rear, however, were the Gremklin Blasters, which seemed like supremely overweight versions of the others; they had distended stomachs that appeared like they were ready to blow if you poked them too hard.

Fortunately for the Party, the Gremklins were rather slow, though they were certainly numerous.  Thaden counted at least 50 of them coming in a large wave toward them, which he assumed was what the notification meant was a “Swarm,” as it was extremely rare to encounter this many monsters all at once in a dungeon.  By the time Scarven had returned to the Party and prepared for their coming, the monsters were only then approaching the perimeter of their defensive area.

Explosions of light, triggered as the traps that Harven had placed activated, flashed through dozens of the closest Gremklins, causing them to collapse onto the ground in writhing agony.  None of them appeared to be taking enough damage to kill them, but they were temporarily taken out of the fight – which was exactly the point of the traps in the first place.

The remaining 20 or so Gremklins that weren’t affected by the light that paralyzed the others moved past them without stopping, not seeming to care that their brethren were incapacitated.  Concentrated beams of water jetted out from Unarven as her spells tore through a half-dozen Foragers like they were nothing, while Warven and Scarven pounced on a number of other Gremklin and cut them down with efficient strikes of their weapons.  Harven stood back as the others went to work, ready to jump in if necessary, but it didn’t appear as if it would be…

…at least until the first of the Gremklin Blasters arrived.  When Warven stepped close to slice one of them apart, as soon as his sword touched its skin, Thaden heard a strange squeak come from the Blaster.  Even as the Party leader’s sword pierced the monster’s skin and began splitting it in half, there was a sudden rush of energy inside of the Blaster.  Thaden could’ve guessed what would happen next, and he would’ve been absolutely correct as he witnessed the Gremklin Blaster detonate like a bomb.

The explosion wasn’t expansive, perhaps only 3 feet in width, but it was still strong enough for the shockwave to blast through Warven and knock the Untested Swordsman off his feet, landing on his back in surprise.  Before any of the others could react, a Gremklin Forager pounced on him from where it had been beside the Blaster, seemingly completely unaffected by the blast somehow.  While he doubted that it could actually do much damage to the front-line Fighter, as the size and Level difference was too great, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be wounded – so Thaden decided to step in. 

Instant-casting his Weak Enthrall spell, he initially targeted the Gremklin Forager on top of Warven, hoping that his Ultimate Spiritual Domination Advancement would bridge the gap of success between their spiritual wills.  At the same time, thanks to his Fortunate Catastrophe Class bonuses, he mentally chose to alter the Weak Enthrall spell he was casting from a single-target spell to a wide area spell that would target all hostile targets within 180 feet.  As it went off, he felt it immediately succeed, not only with the Forager he initially targeted, but also on every single Gremklin but 3, which unfortunately didn’t succeed the battle of spiritual wills.  The next split-second, he felt his Class bonuses and Advancements relating to efficiency increases kick in.

Normally, Thaden could only use Weak Enthrall on targets that were at an even or lower Level than he was, which essentially meant that they had to be Level 1 like he was.  However, Thaden had learned on Tarth that spell efficiency increases tended to affect these limits, either by making a spell’s effects quantifiably stronger, such as additional healing or healing for a longer duration, or by extending the range of what it could affect – which was what he was hoping it would do with Weak Enthrall.  His Spiritual Connection Advancement gave him a 50% efficiency increase, which essentially raised his limit from an even Level of 1 to Level 1.5; rounding up or down seemed to be a 50/50 split, so half the time he might succeed in enthralling a Level 2, while the other half it would fail. 

But that wasn’t the only spell effectiveness bonus that he possessed.  His Fortunate Catastrophe Class had a number of increases, the first of which was an additional flat 50% bonus to spell effectiveness, thereby bringing him to a total of a 100% increase along with his Spiritual Connection Advancement.  The second, and most important increase, was when he converted the single-target Weak Enthrall to a wide-area spell, which then increased its effectiveness by another 100%, bringing him to 200% spell effectiveness – otherwise meaning that that he could enthrall up to Level 3 targets.

And that was exactly what he did.  When 37 of the remaining 40 Gremklin, including those still paralyzed by Harven’s traps, suddenly stopped moving, Thaden’s Party was momentarily taken aback, but they still reacted swiftly, slaying the trio of monsters still moving around swiftly.

Warven also physically picked up the motionless Forager on top of him and chucked it at one of Thaden’s enthralled Blasters, and the impact had the desired effect of causing the latter Gremklin to explode harmlessly away from anyone else.  Seeing this, Thaden picked out the tiny connections he felt with each of his Enthralled monsters, and sent another Swarmer or Forager at the few remaining Blasters, instructing them to simply bump into the larger Gremklin in a “non-damaging” way.  Since he couldn’t actually have them attack or use any offensive abilities, they ended up simply throwing themselves forward into the distended bellies of the exploding monsters, nearly looking like they had accidentally tripped into their targets.

Fortunately, that was more than enough to prompt explosions, which again didn’t seem to affect the other monsters despite being literally an inch away from the detonations.

Effectively neutered now that none of them could explode and harm the Party, he eventually had the Gremklin gather together – once the traps’ effects wore off – into a large group that reached 33 in number, all of them standing perfectly still as they stared at Thaden, awaiting orders.  He did all of this while the others warily backed up, their movements showing their confusion, but they also somehow intuited that Thaden had control of them.

“What… what did you do?” Warven asked after a few seconds of silence.

Thaden cleared his throat, somewhat amazed that it had actually worked, but not wanting to show how astonished he was, as well.  “I, uh, used my Weak Enthrall spell to take control of them.  They can’t actually fight, only defend or use non-damaging abilities, but they’re all effectively under my command.  I can also siphon Health from them using another spell to heal all of you,” he explained, before doing just that with a cast of Weak Health Siphon, targeting one of the Swarmers and Warven, who had taken a small amount of damage from the explosion that knocked him on his back.

It took a few seconds for the spell to activate, thanks to Thaden’s Delayed Satisfaction Advancement, but when it did, the Swarmer immediately dropped to half-Health (which was the limit of the Siphon spell), and Warven was completely healed.  With a 900% increase in spell effectiveness thanks to Delayed Satisfaction, plus another 300% increase in healing and reduction for all healing spells from Strongest Healing, and then adding the 50% bonus from Fortunate Catastrophe, the normal 5 Health that was siphoned from the spell was increased to 67.5, which was more than enough to heal the Party leader’s small injuries.

“I see.”  The entire Party was silent as this was revealed, before Warven continued speaking by asking, “How long are they… enthralled?”

“Indefinitely,” Thaden answered.  “Or, at least, as long as I maintain the spell.”  While he could theoretically cancel the channeled Weak Enthrall spell, thereby freeing the enthralled Gremklins, there was no reason to unless he wanted to cast another channeled spell – as he could currently only have a single channeled spell active.  The 1 Mana per second upkeep cost was negated by the fact that his Mana was effectively infinite.

“That’s impossible.  I assume that spells like that must have a cost associated with them, don’t they?”

Thaden nodded, acknowledging the accuracy of the assumption.  “They do.”  He didn’t necessarily like revealing that he had unlimited Mana, so he came up with another explanation.  “But my other Class, uh, gets rid of that cost.  So, it’s essentially free to maintain the spell indefinitely.”

“That’s extremely broken.  How has the Assimilation System not fixed something like that?” Unarven queried, shaking her head at the absurdity of what Thaden had just revealed.

Oh, it has certainly tried.  He didn’t say that, however, and instead just shrugged.

“Well, whatever it means, I think we can take advantage of this,” Warven said, with a slow smile that was a bit frightening, considering he was basically a tiger-demon and had large, deadly teeth on display.  Thaden couldn’t argue with the statement, however, because now that he’d had a taste of what a few of his spells could do, he was eager to test the rest of them out.

This should be quite interesting.