New Story -- Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Petrified with fear, Thaden stood with his back to the immovable double doors, waiting for the horde to attack him. Despite his Weak Repulsion Field still being active and knowing that it would—hopefully—protect him, it couldn’t alleviate the sheer horror of being attacked by monstrous nightmares wielding sharp implements in their hundreds. And it was definitely at least a couple hundred, given that they didn’t seem to stop streaming into the tunnel from around the corner. Thankfully, most of them seemed to be Workers at a lower Level than the Guards or the Foreman, though that didn’t really make much of a difference when they had numbers on their side.

As a result of being frozen in terror, the Assistant Healer didn’t move when the first ranks of the Workers jumped at him with their knives held out menacingly, intending to stab and carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Even though he halfway expected it to happen, Thaden still flinched when the monsters rebounded off the bluish field around his body, where they were sent flying backwards.

He watched in shock as they slammed into the Workers still running behind them, bowling them over from the impact. For the most part, all it resulted in was the attackers falling over each other with possibly a few superficial injuries; in one case, however, the rebounding Worker hit the one following it in such a way that its knife ended up stabbing it in the face – or more accurately, its eyes – killing it as the knife accidentally ended up in its brain.

As the second wave of attackers bounced off his Field, and as he saw that a few more Workers were hurt from accidental stabbings – none of which were immediately fatal like the first, unfortunately – Thaden began to think he might actually have a chance against the Vogmites if he took advantage of his semi-invulnerability. Granted, his only real way to deal damage was through the use of the repulsion effect of the Field, which only seemed to work because the nightmarish monsters were actually quite lightweight, but it was better than nothing.

Therefore, he figured he might as well leverage the spell to the fullest extent, exploiting it for his own gain. Plus, he would rather proactively fight back against these things rather than let them come to him, because he figured that it was only a matter of time before something made it through that he wasn’t expecting.

With that thought in mind, he went on the attack… or some semblance of attacking, at least. In reality, all he did was start running toward the Vogmites closing in on him, forcing them to attack his Fieldwhile he had momentum behind him; from his experience back in the treasure room, he was aware that his movements incrementally helped in amplifying the repulsion for some reason, and he used this to the best of his abilities. When he was stabbed while he was running full speed, the monsters shot away like a rocket, tearing through the others behind them like a cannonball. The damage he did to them was relatively minor, though occasionally one would stab or get stabbed by another Vogmite upon them colliding with each other.

At least until he approached the side of the tunnel in one of his runs and was attacked by one of the larger Guards. As it swung its sword at him, the sword was repelled back toward the Vogmite, where it lodged in its upper body; essentially, he had made the unwary monster stab itself with its rebounding sword.

There was a split-second victory celebration in his head at this occurrence, just before he bodily slammed into the Guard, his Field failing him for the first time. The impact shoved the sword deeper into its gut while also knocking the wind out Thaden when the weapon’s hilt slammed into his stomach. His momentum pushed them both backwards, however, and even as the Assistant Healer stumbled a few steps from the unexpected injury, the impaled Vogmite took the time to try and slam its small shield against Thaden’s face.

This time, the Weak Repulsion Field worked perfectly fine, as it repulsed the attack and sent the Guard flying backwards – right into the wall a few feet behind it. It hit with bone-crunching force that had it collapsing on the floor immediately afterwards without any sign of movement, and he was fairly certain that he had killed it. He barely noticed, however, as he nearly fell to his knees as he was finally able to drag in a breath of air.

What happened? he thought, but he was fairly certain he knew what went wrong. Just like when he had slammed his face into the floor, the Field didn’t seem to negate the damage from self-inflicted injuries; as he had run into the Guard at that point, he had essentially inflicted that damage to himself.

Another vulnerability I have to worry about now. Would it protect me if I was to jump off a cliff? Or if I was pushed off, instead? Can it somehow tell the difference?

He didn’t know, but now wasn’t the time to experiment. Fortunately, he didn’t have to worry about running into too many other things with self-inflicted injuries, because the Vogmites were still out to kill him. It also appeared that they had seen his injury and suspected he had a weakness, but they weren’t smart enough to figure it out; instead, they simply threw themselves at him more and more, and it was all Thaden could do to keep moving and allow them to attack him repeatedly.

He lost track of time as he continued to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, making all the Vogmites attacking him bounce off his Field and injure themselves in the process. He concentrated on trying to corral them toward the walls, where they did a lot more damage to themselves when they hit the immovable stone, and the dead quickly piled up to the point where he tripped over a number of them in his assault. Once or twice he accidentally landed on one of the still-living monsters, and the same result happened to them as the one back in the treasure room – as in, they had their bodies crushed by the Field. He discovered that it didn’t count as self-inflicted because they were constantly trying to push him off, either through the use of their knives, swords, or shields, or simply with their hands; even squirming under him could be considered an attack, which ended up with their demise as each time they were repelled against the ground, they rebounded back up to him with enough force to be considered another attack – which would then repeat the repulsion effect.

It was completely unfair for the Vogmites, he realized, but he didn’t care. The fact that they didn’t seem to learn meant that they kept coming at him despite hundreds of their companions lying dead on the floor from accidental stabbings, blunt damage originating from hitting the stone walls with force, or simply repeated injuries as they were flung away from him.

He was practically dead on his feet by the time he cornered the last Guard he could still see on its feet, and a stab toward his face was met with a repulsion that sent it flying into the wall behind it, where it cracked its head on the stone. Stumbling to its feet and obviously disoriented, it attempted to attack him once again, but completely missed as Thaden was standing too far away from it to make contact. As it fell forward from being unbalanced by the swing, the Assistant Healer stepped forward and allowed the Vogmite to fall into him, which counted as a physical attack, sending it flying back into the wall, where he heard a *crack* as something seemed to break in its back.

As it flopped to the floor, incapacitated if not dead, Thaden was about to collapse from exhaustion, starvation, and dehydration, but he heard something behind him. Slowly turning his head around, he met the eyes of the Vogmite Foreman he had forgotten about in his rush to send the Workers and Guards flying so that they killed themselves.

The angry-looking Foreman was standing approximately 10 feet away, but that was still close enough for its whip to snake out and try slicing at him, but just as everything else did, the weapon was repelled a number of feet backwards. As for the Vogmite holding it, it didn’t seem to be affected by the Field in the least.

Instead of attacking with the whip immediately again, the Foreman stared at Thaden for a few seconds as the Assistant Healer shuffled his feet until he was facing the Vogmite, intending to rush it to perform the same stunt he’d done against all of the others. However, before he could take a single step, the whip held by the Foreman ignited with green flames covering its entire length.

Uh, oh.

Recognizing them, he started to back away in fear, but it was already too late. With a flick of the Vogmite’s wrist, the whip cracked toward him; he was only relieved for a split-second as he saw that the physical whip was stopped and repelled by his Field, but the green flames around the tip of the whip that impacted the barrier around him seemed to detach and continue toward his chest.

Horrible pain flowed through his upper body as the flames passed through his shirts and began to burn his flesh. He screamed in pain even as he panicked and forced his tired legs to move in order to run away from the source of the flames. He made it all of three steps before another crack of the whip inflicted more burning fire along his side.  Crying out from the absolute agony that engulfed his flesh, he stumbled over a Vogmite corpse and just barely avoided being hit again by the whip and its green flames.

Scrambling to his feet, he ran with every bit of energy he could scrounge up, putting distance between him and the horrendous Foreman. It felt like his entire torso was a mass of burnt and melting flesh at that point, which also had the unfortunate side effect of making it harder to breathe. Fighting through the pain, he noticed that the flames had subsided, leaving behind damage, which was alleviated somewhat by the Weak Regeneration that he had been subconsciously maintaining throughout the entire fight against the Vogmites. It was actually easy to do, as he simply renewed it every time he felt the healing energy rush through him; he wished that it stacked so that he could have hundreds of copies of the spell running simultaneously, but unfortunately all additional instances of the spell simply reset the duration.

But it was going to take entirely too much time for it to heal normally, which meant that he had to cancel his Weak Repulsion Field and use Weak Healing to fix himself back up. Fortunately, a glimpse of the Vogmite Foreman showed itself to be more than a bit cocky, as it slowly walked toward where he had retreated, as if confident that it was only a matter of time before its fleeing victim succumbed to the damage it had already inflicted.

Before he could think about it, he canceled his Field and activated his first Access Slot, and it was at this point that he discovered that he couldn’t move while it was being cast. A few seconds later, as healing energy began to flow through his body – which quickly repaired the melted flesh on his torso, he could move again while it continued to heal. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to heal everything as the Foreman saw what he was doing and sped up its walk while he was restricted during the casting process, but he managed to cancel his channeled healing spell and activate his protective Field just as he threw himself to the side.

Landing on top of a corpse, he rolled a few times as the initial whipping attack and a follow-up were just barely avoided, and he began to look for a solution to his problem. Still slightly hurt but not debilitated any more, with his Regeneration helping to finish off the last of the healing a second later, he attempted to run away, but his legs were already so tired that the Foreman only had to walk fast to keep up with him. That only lasted a few seconds before another strike by the whip at his back caused his right shoulder to erupt in agonizing pain from the green flames that passed through his Field, and he tripped over another corpse from the sudden attack.

Lacking the strength to immediately get to his feet, he could only scramble to his knees, only for yet another whip and its subsequent flames smacked in the back of his head, pitching him forward from the flare of sudden attack. With just the barest coherent thoughts in his pain-riddled mind, Thaden managed to fall on his side so that he was looking back at the Foreman approaching him. He had a final thought to rush to his feet and… do something… but another whip crack caused green flames to begin consuming his lower torso, which ended that idea right there as he began to lose consciousness.

Out of desperation and nearly out of his mind, Thaden canceled his protective spell yet again and started casting Weak Healing; his arms could barely move into the position as he laid on his back, and another flare of agony consumed his legs as he finally cast his spell. Even though healing energy flowed through him, it wasn’t enough to keep up with the flames burning his flesh. Soon enough, he could feel himself slipping away, especially after he was whipped in the face and his skin was torn from the physical contact.

But then a miracle happened.

No, it wasn’t his body being suddenly healed like it was being resurrected, though that surely would’ve been nice. Instead, even as his sight was fading from the flames that had flowed over his head, he noticed that the Foreman’s whip suddenly stopped burning with the greenish hell it contained, and the Vogmite itself had dropped to its hands and knees in apparent exhaustion.

It stayed that way for the next few seconds as the flames guttered out over his skin, and the healing energy he was channeling finally pushed back against the damage his body had sustained. With a scream of pain burning his dry, raw throat, Thaden sat up and cautiously got to his feet while maintaining his channeled Healing spell, and by the time he was standing steadily on two feet again, his Regeneration once again finished off his recovery.

The incredible trauma of almost being burned to death was worse than the trap before, and his mind temporarily snapped at the same time his fingers did the same, canceling his current spell while activating his protective one. With an incomprehensible roar, he stumbled toward the visibly recovering Vogmite Foreman with his hands out in front of him as if he was getting ready to tear the vicious monster limb from limb.

Instead, he unintentionally threw himself toward his adversary when he tripped over his own feet, tackling it as it began to stand up, its lower leg inadvertently coming up as if trying to knee him in the stomach. That, of course, was all his Weak Repulsion Field needed as it kicked in, pushing the Vogmite away from him toward the floor, and Thaden landed on it. Its bounce against the floor as it hit kicked the Field into action again, but he wasn’t satisfied with simply crushing it to death with his spell.

Without any skill or plan, his fists lashed out and pounded against the face of the Foreman, cutting his fingers on its sharp teeth in the process, but he ignored the pain as he used what little strength he had left to do as much damage as possible.

Unfortunately, his strength was measured by his Physicality stat, which at 1, didn’t really inflict much damage. He eventually cracked a few teeth and caved in a small portion of its skull, but what really did the Foreman in was its attempts at fighting back, which resulted in it being smashed against the floor repeatedly, and eventually it succumbed to death after nearly a full minute of abuse.

When it stopped moving and he was convinced it was dead, Thaden rolled off the top of the corpse of the Foreman, his breathing heavy and his anger still blazing through his mind. The fact that he had survived hadn’t really hit him yet, though he was aware of it on a subconscious level. Instead, all he could think about was wishing that he could bring the Foreman back to life so he could smash its face in again.

In the silence of the corpse-filled tunnel, a sudden *click* made him turn his head toward the sound as he feared another trap at this point, though that fear burned up in his anger from his pain-fueled memories. Instead, as he watched the green flames inside the skull carved into the double doors extinguish themselves, followed by the red stone slabs parting and swinging open, all he could think about was if there was something else inside that he could conduct his revenge upon.