Chapter 66: Hidden Quest

  “If only I could actually spend these damn experience points,” Alex grumbled as he sat on top of a gravestone, his aether gathering technique running at full capacity.

  “if only this, if only that…” Obby mocked him. “ If only I had a body of my own.”

  “ I get it,” he brought up his experience points in a system screen. “But come on, I could do so much with them.”

  The little nest egg of experience points on his screen was steadily climbing as Alex continued to fight his way from grave-mound to grave-mound. He glared at his stats, especially his willpower, with dejection.

  Cresting that next stat threshold on his willpower would be a huge boon for Alex at this point. It would increase his efficiency with this aether gathering technique by a large margin. It wouldn’t let him upgrade it to using nine aether braids, as that was still a far ways off, but the difference in quality from his willpower after the refinement could mean everything.

  But it was stuck just below that threshold at nine, with Alex only being able to slowly progress without access to his experience points.

  Complaining about it wouldn’t get him anywhere, so he simply closed his status screen and focused on his gathering technique instead.

  His next two excursions through the field to a new grave-mound went as well as he had assumed they would. The number of skeletal warriors he came across increased each time. He simply assumed as time went on the swordsmen would all be replaced by warriors. The difficulty curve simply showed it would keep getting harder after all.

  He focused on learning efficient and fast ways to take the warriors out. His [Flare] certainly did the trick, but it expended too much aether, and he gained nothing back since he didn’t kill them with the dagger.

  Instead he memorized their attack pattern, their reactions. The warriors were more intelligent and skilled than the basic swordsmen skeletons, but Alex still felt they were like NPC’s. They had an advanced script to their fighting, he just needed enough practice to find a way to exploit it.

  He did find it eventually. A pattern of feints and probing attacks which always enticed them into over reaching on a sword swipe and let in a huge opening. A stab with his dagger ended it right after that. It worked every time.

  He pressed forward, leaving a bone splintered trail in his wake as he moved from mound to mound. It wasn’t until Alex had spent what felt like two whole days fighting through the endless fields that something finally changed.

  He raced up the next mound, his eyes set on the gravestone peaking up at the top. As he neared it, hand outstretched, Alex abruptly halted and dashed to the left. It was just in time to avoid a large blade sliding through the air where he just occupied.

  Coming to his feet, he sized up his attacker.

  A large skeletal figure, different from the rest he had encountered so far. This one was taller than Alex by a few inches, even without its flesh. It was clad in sturdier laminar plates, these polished and well oiled. On its head sat a helm with a red crest spanning over the top. If he thought the skeletal warriors looked like roman soldiers, this one sure hell fit the bill to a tee.

  The figure held a large two handed blade which seemed not very historically accurate as far as Alex remembered from his history lessons in school.

  “History doesn’t care, that sword is real and will really kill you with real death.” Obby highlighted the weapons edge in his vision to drive home the message.

  “I got it, thanks.”

  He entered his beginning martial stance and dashed at the new enemy.

  With the warriors, Alex had to try navigating the shield which defended against his attacks. Against this foe, he barely had time to make attacks against the thing, it didn’t need a shield.

  Despite the large weapon’s size it handled the sword with deft speed and accuracy. Alex flashed through martial stances in attempt to keep up with the flurry of sword swings thrown his way. Dodging, dashing, and deflecting away every attack was feasible for him, but Alex knew he would tire out before the literal undead skeleton would.

  He had to improvise, force an opening where there normally wasn’t one.

  Alex moved in a large arc at the top of the mound, making his way back towards the gravestone. He waited for his moment, jumping over the stone to escape a particularly nasty attack, and was surprised as he nearly fell into an open grave on the other side.

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  The mound had a dug out six foot grave in front the stone at its peak.

  He managed to not fall in and jump-skipped over the hole, leading the large skeleton centurion to follow. It was easier to run and kite than to dodge and deflect, so Alex took the moment to breathe.

  Then he dropped an item at his feet as he retreated.

  The centurion followed, its aggression not lessening even for a moment. Bones blurred, a blade flashed, Alex ducked and rolled away. Then an explosion rocked the mound from directly under the centurion’s feet as the enchanted crystal he dropped finally went off.

  He seized the moment as the skeleton was blasted off its feet and crashed to the dirt below. It was already regaining its footing as Alex closed on it, but it was still too slow. It was Alex’s blade that flashed this time.

  Six impacts resounded through the field as the dagger’s tip slammed up and underneath the skeleton’s helmet in repeated fashion. The creature’s skull still held up from the first attack, it withstood the second, and even the third. By the fourth, the dagger tip broke through the bone, the fifth had fractured inside its helmet, and his sixth blow simply ensured Alex received his notification.

  The sentinel fell in a heap immediately after and Alex wasted no time in touching the gravestone and starting the thirty minute protection timer.

  “Shame the sword nor the armor will fit in my bracelet. Both might be worth something. But seriously, what the fuck is up with the open grave?” Alex peered over the edge of the hole, finding neither body nor coffin resting within.

  “Do I look like funeral director? I don’t even have arms with which to hug the bereaved.”

  “ Well…” Alex looked back at the armored body of the skeletal sentinel. “You think he belongs in there?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea. I thought that was where he was going to dump you after cutting your fleshy form into three separate chunks.”

  “ You always believe in me Obby, I appreciate that.”

  Alex made short time of getting the sentinel into the grave. With his stats, the corpse felt surprisingly light. Granted, it was simply bones and armor so it really was lighter than a fleshy corpse would have been. Once he tossed the sword in with the rest, a new notification flashed in front of him.

  “Oh thank god,” Alex sighed and slumped against the gravestone.

  It went without saying that he had no idea about the hidden quest. So far The System was very tight lipped on all of its hidden quests, and only revealed them if they were completed. When they did though, they always seemed to have very useful rewards such as his dimensional storage bracelet.

  “This makes things easier for sure. You can top up your aether reserves faster than you spend it now.”

  “ As long as the distance between the mounds doesn’t suddenly increase. Or the number of skeletons drastically spike. Or a whole number of other things that can go wrong.” He eyed the edge of the protective barrier, watching the skeletal swordsmen and warriors already gathering at its perimeter even as he began forming the braids of aether for his technique.

  “Hey now, I’m supposed to be the cynical one.”

  “I’m being the one who is actually risking death in here. How about that? So far this dungeon has upped its difficulty at every turn, so I can’t exactly let my guard drop after a lucky break.”

  “Fair enough. Get to gathering, then. I’ll start scanning for the closest mound from here. ”

  “Thanks Obby,” Alex let himself sit down this time and actually rest. He finally had the time to do so after all.

  ***

  It turned out that Alex’s paranoia was indeed very much founded. The dungeon did not give up on trying to kill him as quickly as possible.

  First, the number of skeletal swordsmen dropped while the number of skeletal warriors kept rising. Soon, Alex was forced to fight against multiple warriors at once. He had to figure out faster and faster ways of taking them down. In Alex’s mind, it was a lot like learning a combat puzzle for an MMORPG back on earth. Each new technique for killing the things shaving off seconds or fractions of a second in having to fight the things.

  He started to get a bit more confident in his chances of surviving once more. So of course the dungeon threw in something new.

  The skeletal Dread Ranger. If the skeletal warriors were the step up from the swordsmen, the Dread Ranger was the step up on the basic archer. Just as before, they now wore armor, leather armor, and had a higher level of sentience and skill.

  Alex nearly lost his entire arm fighting against the first one, as its powerful arrows nearly pierced his aether shield entirely and practically tore straight through his right arm. The jagged hole it left behind was agony, and took another of his precious health potions to fix.

  These potions are not going to last if I have to keep going through them like this. I only have four health and five stamina potions. Alex thought as he mentally inventoried his bracelet while he glared at offending Dread Ranger.

  Killing it was also not as easy as the archers.

  Once he closed into melee distance, the damn thing used its bow like a quarterstaff, attacking and blocking Alex’s strikes with surprising dexterity. In the end though, it was still a ranged combatant, and he brought it down in an aggressive assault.

  He had to start using his [Shield] spell at full power to block or deflect the arrows from the rangers. It was difficult the first couple times to undo the habit he had learned in his training with Sylvaris to use as little aether as possible when casting the spell. But he focused simply on the duration of the cast instead of lowering its strength.

  Unfortunately, it also meant the amount of aether he used to get to each mound started to increase once more.

  This wasn’t an issue yet, but Alex knew it eventually would be. He really doubted he would come across another hidden quest to increase the protection duration again, so this became a creeping worry in his mind.

  “Focus on the now Alex. Warriors up ahead.”

  Alex nodded and dove back into the fight.

  The next curve-ball came after three more grave-mound hops. Yet another new enemy. This time a ‘Skeletal Knight’, at least according to the notification he got when he killed it.

  The ‘Knights’ appeared to be a mid-point fighter between the warrior and the sentinel that Alex encountered before. Carrying a sword and a large square shield, armored in more laminar and a helmet. The helmet was without the crest that the sentinel had been sporting.

  A new dance had to be learned to fight the knights. The amount of aether he spent on his spells kicked up once again. He still was able to gather more than he spent, but that gap was closing over time.

  He pressed on.