Lina and Helene were clearly affected by their brushes with death, though they seemed to be handling it in their own ways. That being forcing the problem down for Helene, and overwriting whatever fear or doubt the experience cultivated in her with sheer dogged determination for Lina.
After some silent resting, they all came together to plan and to eat the remains of what little food and water supplies they’d taken with them for the delve. Just some jerky, dry bread and Muesli bars filled with nuts and whatnot that Mia’s new tastebuds were especially pleased with.
She also took this opportunity to distribute the three Free Attribute points she got from that Hidden Quest. It wasn’t much, but she guessed in the slog that was surely going to be killing a regenerating monster stronger than the Troll from before, every little bit would help.
Primarily, she would need her Spirit and Cognition to be up to par, able to handle the stress and strain of a longer combat engagement. Mostly Spirit though, every bit of increase in her mana pool would likely prove extremely helpful. So she decided that two points would go to some Substat of Spirit, while one would head right over to Cognition.
[Cognition: 16 -> 17]
[Free Attribute Points: 3 -> 2]
Now, the question was whether she should just dump both in Manifestation or if she should instead let Control take one of them. If she went for purely pushing Spirit up, two into Control would be the best, but she also wanted the decreased strain of repeated casting to be slightly soothed by whatever increase in Manifestation she could get in.
In the end, she did some quick calculations and realised even dumping two points into Control would only up the Main Spirit stat by a single point, as would spreading the two points between the two Substats. So she did just that.
[Control: 12 -> 13]
[Manifestation: 15 -> 16]
[Free Attribute Points: 2 -> 0]
[Main Spirit: 14 -> 15]
Mia was still revelling in the feeling of her Spirit expanding, firming up and growing a touch more dexterous all at the same time when Mark made an interesting proposition that she’d somehow — rather stupidly — failed to think about.
“I say we make traps,” Mark said, his face lined with a scowl as he stared out at the now empty greenskin settlement. “It’d be dumb not to, with the fucker asleep. Especially if it is a Troll like the previous Guardian, I’d much rather you mages kill it while it’s stuck in a spikey pitfall trap than while it’s trying to turn me into red paste.”
“Mia, any level estimates?” Brent asked and Mia just shrugged.
“I’d say it’s at 15, but you could have gotten that just from the level of the Rift.”
With none of them seeing any downsides to trapping the whole way from the lakes to the ravines opening to hell, they quickly got to it after finishing up with their meal. Meaning, Mark got to it and the rest watched on supportively.
The dwarf made five metre deep pitfall traps large enough to trap the monster that they eyeballed was about four metres tall and lined the walls of it with nasty lines of spikes curving downwards like the teeth of some predatory fish.
The bottom was of course, also dotted with sharp spikes fashioned from stone, all with tips that’d make extracting them from flesh take a sizable chunk of said flesh with it.
They also made a trio of ten metre deep pits, if the smaller ones failed.
“Ready?” Brent asked, watching out over the settlement. They stood on a pillar of earth Mark had raised a short distance away from where the line of bungalows ended. Seeing everyone nod grimly, Brent nodded to the mages. “You know what to do.”
Mia, Helene, Carmilla and Amelia timed their attacks, all four aiming their strongest possible magics at the slumbering monster and shot it off all at once.
The creature awoke with a roar, lightning and an energy beam scorching its flesh just as a lance of Blood magic speared into its chest and a Bolt of arcane mana drilled into its head from under the chin.
It clambered to its feet, bulbous muscles bulging even more, like a mass of writhing worms under its leathery green skin. It had the same unnaturally small head the Troll had and looked largely the same, even the hateful snarl on its ugly mug and the malicious loathing in its eyes were the same.
“Light it up,” Brent said and Aiden complied with a small grin, an orb of fire impacting the oily waters first as a test … and doing nothing at all. “It was worth a try. Plan B.”
The second fireball impacted the last line of shoddy wooden buildings surrounding the lakes just as the Troll reached them with big, lumbering steps. The flames caught on, spreading like a wildfire across the flammable settlement even with the air being as damp as it was.
The mages continued blasting the monster with attacks, half of its face disappeared in a flash of lightning, leaving only bare bones, its chest sported a trio of fist sized holes through it by this point and a good third of its skin was seared right off. The writhing flesh underneath was healing already, the wounds closing at prodigious speed and only held back by the intense white orbs of flames Aiden kept throwing at it.
An angry red glow surrounded the monster, shining from beneath its skin where it still had any and forming a spectral facsimile of the monstrous creature’s flesh. Still, where its missing part of its face was shown in the spectral after image, the writhing flesh underneath could still be clearly seen through the near-translucent red light.
“Now,” Brent said, not that there was much need for it.
Carmilla shot her next Blood Lance just as the monster’s front foot reached to put weight on the thin fake floor above a pitfall trap. The spell struck, once again missing the creature’s heart, much to the vampire’s apparent annoyance, but it did its job.
The Troll’s muscles locked up again, its features twisting in agony for a second as the Blood Lance burned at its lifeforce.
That was enough to not allow the monster any hope of reacting, or dodging the trap that its half-paralysed body obediently fell into.
Its tiny head was all that poked out of it when it fully came to, but that didn’t last long as the monster tore through the spikes and the earth with a roar. When it crawled out of the new hole, it had no skin left on its head — thanks to the mages never stopping blasting it with whatever they had — and had a dozen teeth-like spikes of earth sticking out of it.
It rushed forward, hate glowing in its eyes as it stared at the distant forms of Mia’s group … then it fell into the next pitfall trap.
“It has a thick skull it seems,” Mark mused, glancing at Mia and Carmilla. “You two have the most penetrative power. You think it’s just a matter of time or should we go for its heart instead?”
“Fuck me if I know,” Mia wheezed, her Spirit and Mind straining as she kept up a consistent barrage of spells for the last minute. “It has to run out of mana, Ki or whatever the fuck it uses sooner or later.”
“Or lifeforce,” Carmilla said grimly. “Even if I’m not piercing its skull, I am killing it … just slowly.”
“Will it die before it reaches our position?” Brent asked pragmatically, his eyes never leaving the monster.
“Can’t tell without it being in range of my perception,” Carmilla said, a small smirk playing on her lips as a particularly well-placed Blood Bolt tore the windpipe of the Troll out mid-roar.
By the time the Troll fell into one of the three larger pitfalls, it didn’t have even a spot of green skin on it. Its head and neck were largely sheared of flesh, standing upright only by the grace of some magical bullshit and the rest of its body was much … thinner than before.
When it disappeared fully into the ten metre deep hole, the mages stopped for a moment. They heard it rage down below, tearing at the earth and anything in reach but struggling to clamber out of the trap as easily as it had from the smaller ones.
“Pull back,” Brent said. “Move behind the second large pitfall.”
They did so, much to Mia’s relief. The monster had been within range of her Arcane Blast for the last two minutes and two smaller pitfalls, which was far too close for comfort with the spell having a maximum range of 100 metres.
“I can’t believe you haven’t once as much as nicked the heart of that thing,” Mark grumbled, a deep frown lining his face as he jogged to keep up with the rest of their brisk walk. “If that’s really a Troll, its heart should be its weak spot. No?”
“I think it has all of its ribs fused together like a tube around its torso,” Carmilla said musingly, glancing back at the hole that hid the raging monster from sight.
“Well, fuck,” Mark said and a round of grumbling from most of the others echoed his sentiments. “Guess it’s going to be a slog then, good luck guys! I’ll be rooting for you from the side!”
Mia rolled her eyes at him, then sped up with a start as she heard the compacted earthen walls of the pitfall trap cracking. A glance over her shoulder revealed the head of the Troll, now covered in some muscles and ligaments, poking out of the hole before whatever handhold it used to keep itself up had given way under its weight, sending the big lug crashing back down.
The next half an hour went by in a blur of motion and rising anxiety only dampened by Mia’s Spirit Sense reassuring her that despite the monster’s seeming immortality, it was weakening with every wound not healed.
“Its healing is getting slower,” Christine said in a small voice, the rogue likely feeling just about the most useless out of all ten of them.
Mia wasn’t seeing it, her mana now creeping dangerously close to mana deprivation and both her Mind and Spirit starting to feel sore and wrung out like a pair of wet socks after chain-casting Arcane Blasts with only a few shorts rests.
The Troll was only now starting to crawl out of the last large pitfall trap and the team had been forced to fall back to the underground ravine that had led them down here.
The standing plan was, that if the damned monster got out of even that spiked trap-hole alive, they would start falling back through the pathway until the walls got narrow enough that the monster would be largely limited in its movements.
“About damned time,” Aiden wheezed, his whole body damp with sweat and the shakes starting to wrack his body.
The rest of them were only slightly better off, with Helene having had to step away from casting ten minutes ago when the number of mana potions she’d been drinking finally overwhelmed her Spirit's resilience.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Mia guessed the rest of them were getting close too, with her being the best off with her spells being the most mana efficient out of the lot.
“Do we engage in melee?” Clive asked, his voice tinged with both eagerness and worry. It must have been grating on the Ki warrior to watch the ranged fighters straining themselves while he was left to fiddle his thumbs on the side and watch.
“We’ll give it a shot near the previous chokepoint,” Brent said. “Helene, how do you feel?”
“Like an over-tenderised flap of meat,” the Storm mage said weakly, stumbling along with the rest of them, with her hand over Clive’s shoulder for support. “I don’t think I’ll be of much use.”
By the looks of things, neither would Aiden and Amelia either, though the latter looked to be in the best shape after Mia despite having drank copious amounts of mana potions too.
“Carmilla?” Brent asked, his voice turning grim. “How long can you keep that barrage up? Can you outlast the thing if we just keep it off of you?”
“Depends,” Carmilla said, not looking all that wrung out other than the spots of gunk and blood sticking to various parts of her clothing and the thin layer of sweat on her face. “How far is it from keeling over? Mia? Compared to the start, how strong does it feel?”
“It’s at its last legs, 10 to 15 percent power.”
“I’ll last,” Carmilla said, grimacing. “If barely. If the damage the rest of you do to it doesn’t let up.”
“We’ll take up the slack,” Brent said firmly, his hand thumbing the pommel of his sword. “It’ll die. One way or another.”
“Wish my Earth Manipulation was strong enough to just spear it through the ass and get its heart that way,” Mark said idly, chewing on his cheeks as he glared back at the monster. “That’s the sort of death these monsters deserve. A spike through the ass.”
Mia had to agree, after half an hour of flinging spells mostly ineffectually at it — sure, her Arcane Blasts deleted its flesh in a half a metre radius, but the damage never stuck for more than a few minutes — it would have been a gratifying sight to see.
“If only that damned thing decided to obey biology for a change and stopped walking when we blew off all the flesh on its legs,” Aiden said, grumbling even as his body shook from exhaustion. “That’d be viable. And satisfying. Though I’d prefer it both staked and burning alive.”
“That’s a compromise I’d be willing to make,” Mark chortled.
They had a few minutes of rest, just catching their breath and devouring what little remained of their food and in the water canteen while the Troll struggled to break out of its latest hole.
The thing wasn’t particularly smart, bordering on non-intelligent. Mia was guessing even a dumber dog would have connected the two following facts to have some consequentiality between them: ‘if follow humans’ then ‘fall in big hole’.
That was a leap too large to make for the Troll though, and it obediently ran at them in a straight line no matter how many times it fell face first into a hole.
Must have been a downside of its ridiculous regeneration, a complete lack of a brain. By now Mia was starting to doubt whether decapitating the thing would even faze it.
It clambered out again, having torn a chunk of the rocky ground making up the wall of the pit up and throwing it behind itself.
The team readied themselves, the three melees standing firm in the front with Clive taking the lead and the mages sending whatever they could at the beast.
Mia was attempting to blast through a knee joint, having given up on destroying the creature’s neck or boring through its thick ribcage — or rather rib-armour — with her spells.
She managed to make it stumble a couple of times, the force of her Blast kicking its leg out from under it just as it was going to put weight on it. Still, that didn’t stop it for long and far too early Mia saw the monster sending one of its titanic fists flying right at Clive.
The man set his feet and raised his shield, the only sign of his agitation being the sudden spike in the speed of his heartbeats.
The fist landed with a thunder crack, bare bone knuckles on some reinforced wood and Clive grunted, skidding back a metre or two, but that was it.
Mia gaped, forgetting to even cast her magic for a second and the Troll seemed similarly shocked that the puny human, only tall enough to headbutt its balls, managed to not get splattered from a single punch.
Mark and Brent took advantage of that momentary pause, and in the next moment a mace larger than even the monster’s pair of fists crashed into its left kneecap. At the exact same time, a sword glowing brighter than ever with runic script cut into its right one with a torturous screech of metal on bone.
The Troll’s legs buckled under the onslaught, not breaking in half just yet, but the four-metre tall creature still keeled over.
Which brought Mia out of her shock enough to send a Blast at its head. She hadn’t expected it to work, and it didn’t, but it sent its head snapping back like it’d been punched in the nose by a beast as large as it, which was satisfying to watch in and of itself.
Mark’s mace came crashing down on one of its legs. The mace broke apart and Mia’s breath hitched for a moment, but then the earth and stone it’d been made of turned liquid and flowed over the leg. It flowed up till the knee, then hardened and locked the leg to the earth below.
The monster seemed singularly focused on Clive though, like his previous survival of its punch somehow deeply offended it and was a transgression it couldn’t bear to see go unpunished.
Amelia’s energy beams, Lina’s bursts of wind and even some of Aiden’s fire were crashing into the beast while Brent busied himself by hacking away at the leg of the monster like it was the trunk of a tree and he was a woodcutter.
Mia sent her Spectral Blade forward, hoping against all hope that it would be enough to cut its head off, but the spell shattered the moment it clashed with the spine of the Troll. Grimacing, Mia got back to casting her regular spells.
Just as Mia sent her latest Arcane Blast into the side of the monster’s skull, she saw Carmilla burst into action.
The vampire pounced, jumping two metres high and kicking off a wall to send herself flying right at the Troll.
Mia saw her move as barely more than a blur with the vampire’s prodigious speed. She watched the girl grab onto the neck of the monster, swing herself about to mount it like she was some tiny, human shaped backpack and then pierce her red clawed hand down between its neck and collarbones with a predatory grin.
Mia felt the spell activate — the Blood Lance activate — she knew it in her bones, felt it with her Spirit Sense. Still, her eyes were locked onto the stupid vampire getting doused in spell flames and singed by a beam of energy.
The Troll went still, then limp, collapsing in a clatter of bones and squelch half formed muscles getting squished underneath into a pile of blood, guts and gore.
Carmilla rolled off her kill, grim satisfaction clear on her face despite the blood coating her from the neck down like she’d just taken a dip in a pool of red paint.
A part of Mia just wanted to go over and punch the girl in the face, she distinctly remembered Carmilla mentioning that she would not survive getting eaten by a Troll. That last move had been uselessly reckless, and uncoordinated with the rest of the team. Hell, if Mia had to wager a guess, only Amelia’s quick reaction time saved the vampire from eating that last beam of energy in the face.
Another part of Mia was just … tired, relieved that the fight was over and just wanted to collapse in one peaceful nook of the cave and sleep for the next week. That part wanted to pat Carmilla on the shoulder for saving the day before anyone could have died.
Everyone survived in the end, so it was fine. Right?
We’ll have to have a long talk about teamwork and not being an idiot. Mia decided, but she also decided that said ‘talk’ was going to be future-Mia’s problem.
“Wanna stake it through the ass and set it on fire?” Mark asked, the first one to break the silence. “I mean, it’s dead already, buuuut … “
“I just want a corner to die in,” Aiden said, wheezing as sweat came flowing down his face. “Fuck. Never again, never. Don’t ever drink a mana potion during mana deprivation. I still got the shakes from it.”
Mia turned, finding Helene sitting on a nearby rock with exhaustion written across her features. Catching Mia’s glance, her mother smiled tiredly and gave a nod.
“Well,” Brent said, sheathing his now dim blade as he stared at the dead Troll and Carmilla with a slight frown. Likely, he had the same thoughts as future-Mia was going to have to worry about. “Let’s get out of this shithole.”
That earned a weak round of cheers, and everyone clambered up to their feet. As a final ‘fuck you’ though, the Rift put the damned exit archway right where the Troll had been sleeping.
“What about the loot?” Mark asked tiredly, glancing at the scattered monster corpses.
“Fuck the loot,” Mia said, her lips curling into a scowl at the mere thought of spending another few hours inside the Rift elbow deep in corpses. “You can get the cores and whatever you want, but I’m not helping. Hurry up though, I have fluffy blankets and soft pillows waiting for me.”
Mark grumbled and Lina cast some regretful glances about the place, but neither volunteered to actually do the dirty work of getting them. Christine and Clive were mostly healthy but both of them stayed silent as death lest they ended up on monster dismantling duty.
Luckily for them, everyone wanted to just be out of the damned deathtrap that was this Rift.
“The actual rewards will be enough,” Lina muttered, and Mia nodded gratefully.
With some grumbling, the group set off on the final trek of the delve. They trudged through collapsed pitfalls, stepping over goblins, orcs and hobgoblins in various states of intactness spread over the underground cavern’s floor with an almost tangible air of relief surrounding them. While they walked, Mia tried to distract herself from the bone-deep soreness in every pore of her body and the aching fibres of her spirit, so she glanced at the System Log. Even as utterly exhausted as she was, a smile crept onto her parched lips.
[Base Will: 5 -> 7]
[Main Mind: 15 -> 16]
[Base Manifestation: 7 -> 8]
[Base Control: 6 -> 7]
That Main Mind upgrade I got somewhere mid-fight is likely why my mind only feels like someone took a bat to it and went to pound town instead of the half-dead state my Body and Spirit feel to be in. Unlike when she played magical weapons battery on the wall defending Andritz, this time Mia had been forced to rely singularly on Arcane Blast, which while neither the most complicated nor the hardest to cast spell, it still strained both her mind and spirit much more than flicking off small Bolts every fifth second. It was the difference between doing barbell curls with 1kg weights or 3kg ones for hours on end.
The constantly rising stress of seeing a four metre tall, lumbering monster with apparent immortality running at her for minutes that dragged on and on and on until it felt like she’d been fighting for hours had made it all the worse. Magic needed focus, and seeing a half dead Troll running at you in leaping strides that shook the earth wasn’t conductive to keeping that focus. At best, it made keeping that focus a thousand times harder while it constantly sapped at your willpower.
By some blessed miracle, Lina still had both the mental capacity and mana to keep a bubble of fresh air around the group as they walked. The softly swirling breeze was a nice touch, but the scent of blood and death was far too entrenched in Mia's sinuses for her to fully appreciate the fresh air. Still, it was a silver lining to this shitshow of a delve, along with the fact that no one actually died during it.
When they reached the archway, this one made of the same cracked white marble as the entrance had been, they walked right through with Brent and Mia in the lead.
“Go ahead,” Brent said, coming to a halt as the group streamed into the cube-like pure white room and Mia didn’t have the energy to do more than shrug at him, letting her do the honours.
She walked up to the Core, sitting on the opposite wall, and touched it.
[Congratulations! You have Cleared this Rift: ‘Greentide Fortress’]
[Rewards will be generated shortly for any delvers who’ve contributed!]
[Do you wish to Destroy this Rift: ‘Greentide Fortress’ - level 15]
[ Yes / No ]
Yes.
[Rift’s Destruction has been initiated! Process will commence once all delvers have left the rift or after 2 standard ‘Earth’ hours.]
[Generating Rift Rewards … ]
[Reward quality increased by being the first ever delvers to Clear this Rift]
[Reward quality and quantity increased by 500% for initiating the Destruction of this Rift!]
[Rewards Generated for User Maria Vexley:
- 2 x Natural Treasure: Prismatic Gem
- 5 x Elixirs of Greater Healing
- 2 x Potions of Unleashed Potential
- 1 x Natural Treasure: Fingle
- ‘Rank 0 to Rank 1 Training Manual’ by First Arcanist Arwintar
]
That felt a touch lacking after the previous Rift’s rewards … but Mia was happy enough. Prismatic Gems would up her Attunement, possibly enough even to get it to 40% and get [Wisp Form]. Plus, healing, natural treasures and those potions were good rewards. She wasn’t sure how useful the training manual would be, but she’d be optimistic until proven otherwise. She’d been aching to put some direction and order into her training. Overall, it was a pretty good set of rewards. Not good enough for her to consider running the Rift ever again though — not that it would be possible with its destruction already scheduled to happen — nor did she feel it was worth it for having to see her mother with arrows poking out of her body and Lina nearly gutted.
Mia turned, focusing on the shelf with her name on it and packed the stuff up while the others did the same. The four new temporary additions oohed and aahed, while the rest who’d already been through this once just got it over with.
“Alright everyone,” Brent said, raising his voice as everyone turned to him and the new archway that stood behind him. “Pack up and get ready. Let’s get out of this Rift … and Mia, could you put a Lesser Ward on everyone before we leave? Tensions must be running high out there, I don’t want us to get shot just as we finished up with this delve.”
Mia checked her mana pool, calculated some and then just shrugged and nodded. She could put the stronger Wards on her friends and the weaker versions on … the rest. Though she’d have to drink a potion even for that. Her Spirit would likely ache a bit, but it would be doable.
I have no idea whether even the strongest Lesser Wards I can make would be enough to stop a bullet. Maybe a small 9mm one, perhaps a .22 cal, but above that … ?
5 Chapters for 5$ and for 10 Chapters for 10$
Here is the DeviantArt gallery for this Story. Btw.
'Troll' Rift Guardian AI Illustration:
Sparkle Illustration: (In his summoned Familiar form)
Goblin Illustration: (Did I post this already?)
Carmilla Illustration: (Not my favourite)
New Mia Illustration I kinda like: