Pick something you can dedicate yourself to. Don’t be the fucking twat who runs around whining about their Elite Class not being what they wanted.
- Delver’s Guild Handbook, Section 1 - "Classes”
Raylan responded.
Elin suggested.
No one objected, so we started off into the tunnel furthest to our left. Raylan and Elin had cast Light, since they had plenty of mana. This path was narrower than the ones we’d tried so far, forcing us to move single-file. Elin took the lead, her shield and scepter out. I could tell she was eager to redeem herself for missing most of the last fight.
Would her Pain Bolts have worked through the chieftain’s armor? Or would it have ignored the pain the way those Berserkers seemed to?
A hundred or so yards in, the tunnel squeezed even tighter. Here, the ceiling spikes - stalac-whatevers - hadn't been broken off and some of them hung low enough that Raylan and Zaire had to duck to avoid them. I didn’t like the narrow confines at all. If anything attacked us here, we’d struggle to use our numbers effectively. Zaire could cast his Spells out in front of us, but I was going to have trouble shooting past Elin. The final straw was when the passageway started to go down.
We returned to the chamber, then tried the opening the initial ambush had come from. This tunnel was much wider, with a higher ceiling. It only went for about fifty yards, however, before ending abruptly in a wall of tightly-fitted bricks. They were distinctly unlike the ones we’d seen down where the skeletons were. Torches lit the wall, the light glistening off of a series of dark red shapes crudely painted over the brick. I took a couple steps closer.
Are those… runes of some kind? Painted in blood? Fresh blood? And what is that - I swear I felt the ground tremble just now. I quickly retreated to join the rest of the team.
Zaire said what we were all thinking.
Our final choice of tunnels led us up a short rise and then into the largest chamber we’d seen so far. It spread out in front of us, irregularly shaped but easily over a hundred yards long, perhaps fifty yards across in places, and with a high ceiling. Scattered throughout the space were a number of poorly-built wooden structures. Some looked almost like large piles of wood just leaned up against each other, sheltering a small space below them. A few looked like simple one-room buildings, with hides for doors and no windows.
The space was broken up by occasional pillars of stone that reached up from the floor into the darkness above. The flickering torchlight, even supplemented by our two Lights, didn’t reach the ceiling of the huge space. The only area that was well-lit was an open space in front of a single larger building, with a large, wide fire burning. Atop the fire were three charred shapes, giving off the sickly-sweet stench of burning meat.
Dead gods, are those the bodies of the orcs we killed first? The ones that disappeared from the tunnel? If they burn their dead, does that mean they’re… intelligent?
I looked at him and smiled. Oddly enough, that brutally simplistic view of the situation did make me feel a bit better. Swallowing hard, I led the team through the - I guess it’s sort of a village - towards a single larger building that looked to have more than one room. As we approached, I realized that despite how generally shoddy everything looked, it was all much larger than I had thought. The doorways had to be seven, maybe eight feet tall - clearly these were sized for the huge orcs we’d killed.
Before I could come up with any sort of a plan, Elin pushed ahead, shoving aside the heavy furs covering the doorway. I rushed to follow her, sweeping the barrel of my gun around the room, but nothing moved. The room looked, well, a bit like the inside of the saloon back in Sunland, except shittier, with even worse furniture. And with a crude wooden throne sitting against the far wall. And with everything being several sizes too large. The whole place stank nearly as bad as the stables. I tried my best to ignore my sense of smell and failed.
The room was full of shadows, lit only by Elin and Raylan’s Lights. It seemed to fill most of the space inside the building. Slabs of apparently raw meat sat on one of the large tables, several crude daggers stabbed into the wood around them. There didn’t seem to be anything of value lying around, except for a pair of huge axes hanging from pegs on the wall above the throne. Raylan insisted on claiming one of them, though I doubted they were anything special.
The right side of the room held another doorway with more furs covering it. Through it, we found what looked to be a small sleeping chamber. There was a huge pile of stinking furs in the corner, but much more excitingly, there was a simple shelf on the wall, holding up a glowing, faceted object that I immediately recognized as a Spell orb.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He looked at me in confusion.
After a slightly too long explanation, the Earth Mage predictably threw rock.
She snatched up the gem with a huge grin, cupping it in her hands and concentrating. A few moments later, the gem seemed to soften and flow into her hands.
The second what wasn’t directed at Elin. A loud sound had echoed through the cave. We all dashed outside to see what was going on.
boom boom boom
It was coming from the entrance to the orc village.
Raylan echoed.
Looking for an exit, we ran to the back of the cavern, but didn’t see anything that looked like a tunnel leading out. We found a couple of deep crevices, but nothing more than a few feet long. We split into two teams, circling the cave in opposite directions, but we soon found ourselves at the same opening we’d entered through. The sound was getting louder.
Tentatively, we got into formation and moved into the chamber full of bodies, stepping carefully over the corpses. It was now obvious the sound was coming from the tunnel that had been walled off.
BOOM BOOM CRASH!
The sound of bricks crashing to the rocky floor made me gulp and tighten my grip on my gun.
THUD THUD THUD
The cave trembled with booming footsteps, bits of rock and dirt falling from the ceiling, as they drew slowly closer. The… thing that finally came into view was like nothing I’d seen before. A massive being, seemingly made of blackened iron. Its shoulders were as broad as Vale’s would be if she was taller than an orc. Huge slabs of metal formed its chest, wider and thicker even than the orc chieftain’s armor. Its head looked like a massive, squat greathelm, wider than an orc’s and illuminated from within by a menacing glow. Every joint glowed molten hot, rivulets of liquid metal running down its limbs like sweat.
An Earth Spike drove out of the ground only to shatter on its armored shin, barely leaving a mark. Elin’s Pain Bolt had no more effect, not slowing the creature in the slightest. I put two shots into its face with no better results.
Backing up, I stumbled and tripped over one of the bodies on the ground, landing on my back hard enough that I felt the hit on my barrier. As I scrambled to get up, the golem reached the first orc body. The massive foot rose, came down, and pulverized the dead orc’s chest, blood spraying out almost far enough to reach me. Another ponderous step, this one smashing an orc’s skull into a paste.
I felt a tide of panic rising in my body as I stumbled back into the large cavern. My teammates were waiting there, eyes wide, breathing fast. My thoughts raced.
How in the Wasted hells are we supposed to fight that! It looks just as indestructible as that fucking elder treant. I’m sure one hit from that thing would kill any of us… FUCK, Az, get it together, everyone’s counting on you!
THUD SQUELCH THUD
Each step brought it closer to us. As it came over the small rise leading into the cave, its head scraped the ceiling, breaking off chunks of rock that bounced harmlessly off its shoulders. I studied it, trying to come up with something we could do. It was clear there was no way we could get through its armor, not after we’d struggled so much with the chieftain. I was sure even my slugs would just bounce off its chest, maybe leaving a little dent or two at best. The only thing keeping us safe so far was that it was so very slow.
She pointed with her scepter, and something gathered at the end of it, a black void like an absence of light. The Shadow Bolt hissed forwards, aimed for its right shoulder, and splattered over the monstrous construct like a pot of spilled ink. Part of it landed on the glowing joint, and we all held our breaths as the red glow dimmed for a moment. Then the shadow evaporated, leaving the creature untouched.
Nothing. FUCK! What do we do… I don’t know what metal is weak to! Acid, maybe? I thought I remembered something about that, but it didn’t really help. OK, we don’t have anything to counter metal, and Force is going to be useless against something this big and strong, but it’s also hot like fire. Ice and cold counter fire, and we don’t have those either… I can infuse my shots with Conjure Water. Would that actually do anything though? Only one way to find out!
It took me two tries to get the spellform just right. I’d practiced it dozens, maybe hundreds of times, but never while backing away from a terrifying sight like this. Please fucking let this work…
CAN A HEALER SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE... ALONE?
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THE RELUCTANT HEALER
Fantasy
LitRPG
Adventure
Psychological
Progression
The system took everyone from Earth. Except for Matt.
Earth's integration into the system has started, plunging it into a multiverse where conflict is law. To prepare, humanity was sent to distant planets to participate in a 'tutorial'. All except one.
Rejected and abandoned on a new Earth where mana has turned beasts into monsters, Matt must find a way out of the harsh Egyptian desert, all while being a class that has long been deemed redundant: Healer.
A mysterious interim leader, a strange dungeon placed in the middle of nowhere, and a class ridiculed by everyone. Will Matt be able to overcome these difficulties and reunite with his friends, or will the hardships of the system break him first?
Alone, under-equipped, and written off, he will either reinvent the rules of the system... or become Earth's first casualty.
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Begin the Journey
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* A Tale of Survival & Revenge *