Chương 152: AF Chapter 151 – Autobowmatic Respect

Princess Kristie squeezed the trigger, and the bolt rocketed out with a thruum and hiss that had the experienced archers there blinking in shock. The broadhead bolt smashed into the base of the nearest slithyr, and plantflesh gave way explosively. The tentacle jerked in obvious pain, rearing back to automatically throw a thorn at her, but before it could do so, the second bolt was already on the way in a flash of black and gold, and its base was torn apart by the impact.

The shattered top of it writhed and fell, its thorn discharged haplessly and powerlessly as it dropped. The rest of the tentacles turned on her, and began to throw things back at her. She calmly stepped back and forth as the thorns were whipped at her from forty yards away, and not a one of them found her.

As for the magic coming at her, she ignored it entirely, and I plainly was just standing there unconcerned, knowing that even if something hit her, it was going to do next to nothing, and she'd just Fast Heal it away in no time. Klak-klaks chained together like some machine, Kris keeping perfect form and stance even as she moved just enough to dodge any incoming thorns. R acing bolts chopped down the tendrils there one after another, two shots enough to chop through the base s and 'kill' the thing s.

Eight tentacles dropped with fourteen bolts, as two of them she managed a crit on and must have blown right through their nerve bundles, instantly dropping them into limp uselessness. It was an impressive show, equal to anything the senior Hunters could do. Then she tossed Drop to me, I caught it by stock and barrel, and she was charging just as the third respawn churned at the magic and erupted out of the ground.

Quaver flashed out, Lost Light swirled in a swathe of Force and Radiance, and she was in the middle of the tentacles, then she was on the other side of them. The petals of a rose made of particles of gold and crystal were slicing through the clustered tentacles, and then they all fell down, chopped apart by an uncompromising adamantine Blade in a blur of motion. The Aun all gawked.

They had their great warriors, of course, but their weapons were the knife, spear, and axe, not swords, and few even used greatclubs or maces, although they were naturally familiar with such things given their lugian allies and all the humans wielding strange weapons. While the Scouts had been as amazed and impressed as everyone else at the power and ferocity of her Autobow, they'd all seen her mess with slithyr nests like this by now.

They just nodded along with carefully bland expressions on their faces, belying their burning eyes that really wanted to be able to do that, too.

"I suppose I should be showing off a mite, as well," the Mick grinned, pulling Bunita out of a dagger's sheath and flicking her out to full length. Orange-gold Light swam up her edge, and he went right into a run at spawn five before spawn four could come back, and Kris was still walking back. He didn't have her Damage Reduction nor her missile evasion, nor could he kill the whole thing at once. He could, however, Cleave, and Sword Beats Fist … or, in this case, tentacle.

He was like a powerful, energetic buzzsaw going through them, chunks of plantflesh flying as they swung at him, tried to grab him, and he just hacked them through, their magic fizzling as it struck him, and the thorns just nicking him and his armor, doing nothing as he ripped into them. The Aun knew how good he should be, and their eyes popped at the speed with which he tore through the tentacles, greater than any of their surviving paramounts.

It took him less than thirty seconds to hack the slithyr tendrils apart, and he barely took any damage, strolling back in our direction as he flicked bloodsap off his Blade hard enough to make the sticky stuff slap the water to the shock of the Aun, sheathing an unmarked and completely clean Bunita calmly as he waded out of the shallow waters. Helped to know someone with Hedge Magic who could instantly dry out your boots, too, and take care of those nicks.

Our words of the night before suddenly carried a lot more weight. Everyone wanted to examine Kris' Autobow, and were dumbstruck by Kris' swordsmanship and the Mick's miraculous improvement in killing power and speed.

Kris promised to make a compound bow for them, often called a Dwarven Bow for laughs during the game, and they promised to send some of their S hamans up to help the lugians with the research into the Elemental Cleaving Formations, bringing their own unique insights and techniques into the discovery process. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. And then it was time to move on to Ithaenc City. The Scouts didn't come with us.

They were given specific orders to practice and keep practicing, putting their new knowledge to use, and we'd be back down. The two lugians with false names did come with us. So did two Aun hunters a head taller than the Mick. Humans weren't the only people slaughtered by the undead, and Ithaenc City, it was the home of the paramounts. Paramounts was the name given to the people who had reached the level cap of 275.

They may or may not have maxed out the Luminance system that had been introduced by the Empyreans, but they had largely maxed out the Augmentation S ystem, and of course the normal experience/Stat/skill limits of the Isparian S ystem. Most of them had used the Retraining Temples to specialize their Stats to extremes, becom ing as talented as it was naturally possible to be in their chosen field of endeavor.

They were people like Lord Mick, except they weren't, because most of them never left Ithaenc without a very good reason. The white Cathedral to Adja was built on top of the highest mountain point at the end of Ithaenc Island, an ancient and holy place where the spirits still sang gentle praises to the Empyrean woman said to exemplify Life Magic more than any other.

No one was allowed to build on the grounds of the temple, so the city sprawled around and down the slopes below it that led up to it in what must once have been a processional ramp and spiral, and had now become the home and playground of the most powerful remaining members of the three races.

They were m en and women who now could die if they went out into the cold, wide world, die as their friends, lovers, spouses, mentors, students, vassals, siblings, parents, and sometimes children had done, all in one brutal stroke, and then more as they ran, ran from the undead and the shades and the virindi who had come for them.

Ran, from even the drudges, the most comedic of enemies, led by a pale Prodigal Drudge they no longer had the weapons or magic to kill, one no longer pinned in a fort and trapped behind a flaming wall. The experience had shattered many of them, the dark fear of their own mortality driven deep into their hearts.

And so, they had come here, to the greatest place of power in Ithaenc, to drink away their time and their fears, and set up competitions between themselves to confront that fear in controlled conditions and pretend it did not rule them. Even the servants here were over level 100, people who would be living legends back on Ispar were mere bartenders, maids, and waitstaff. You didn't receive any respect here unless you were level 200 and had basically maxed out your Stats…

but if you were 'new', that meant you didn't have access to the Temples, and you were stuck with the Stats you trained yourself to while growing up, which basically made it im possible to equal the paramounts. Thus, you were Gimped, and there was nothing you could do about it. The paramounts had no rivals or equals except one another, and so they played games against one another. Most of those games involved Dungeon runs now, and Ithaenc naturally had the only truly higher-level Dungeons that we could access.

In particular, there was one Dungeon it had that was a threat and a challenge even to paramounts, one that had once been entered through a token on the upper floors of Ithaenc Cathedra l. It was a place where a shard of the spirit of Bael-zaeron was still bound and held captive, much like Grael was in his rumored dungeon. The Quiddity Seed Dungeon, now usually called The Seed.

It had ruptured back into reality, a dark and brooding tunnel plunging into the ground behind the Cathedral, leading down to a place with bound virindi spirits, automated magical items, and a place with powerful grievvers and deadly shadows not found closer than Tou-Tou.

Bereft of the powerful weapons and massively reinforced armor of prior times, the creatures within were great challenges for both individual paramounts and teams, whole Fellowships needed to dispose of things one man might once have soloed with the same speed… or to survive them once they swarmed to attack. Only the most committed teams with powerful Casters to soften up their enemies with Debuffs ahead of time would actually take the final plunge and head down to the meet the shadows at the bottom of the Dungeon…

and they would no longer leap willy-nilly down the central shaft two hundred feet to do it, either, taking the circling ramp and winding their way down as they had not bothered when magic was different and they were immortal. There was another Dungeon at the opposite end of the Cathedral, supposedly involved with Lady Adja's personal chambers when alive, staffed now by moarsmen and wisps, also spiraling down into the ground near the broad ramp that ran up into the Cathedral itself.

Running that whole Dungeon solo was a lesser achievement, done with skill and speed and timed so that you rated among your compatriots. It was easy enough to help camp and keep the spawns under control while someone ran it, so they need not truly fear death if something happened, a paramount observer tagging along to monitor the 'training' of their lessers with idle benevolence that kept them in funds and food.

There were other Dungeons on the island, but those two basically kept the people moving into Ithaenc City to try them out. They were great sources of Karma, were very well known, there were always paramounts there to pull your fat out of the fire if you were too stupid, and the competition and boasting that went with being able to kill the powerful grievvers there and harvest the Karma coming off them was unmatched on all the islands.

Not being over level 200, Kris and I were basically going to be treated like young women come to rub shoulders with the elite and look to get into their good graces, or personal students for Lord Mick, basically gold and Karma diggers trying to seduce a paramount for personal attention to get ahead. It was far from unknown, and the hundred or so surviving paramounts certainly didn't mind the attention, by their behavior. The Royal Scout uniforms weren't hard to fit on, in the end.

The lugian and tumerok paramounts were not free from similar behavior, even with stronger racial bonds than most Isparians had. They might travel back and forth between their clans and here, but they had once been adventurers, too, traveling back and forth across the island of Dereth, striding everywhere as titans who could not be killed. The loss of that aura of greatness, as well as so many of their kin, had devastated them at least as much as any of the humans, if for slightly different reasons.

The paramounts still formed the single deadliest fighting force anywhere on the islands, if anyone cared to stick a finger into this nest of deadly hornets and stir it up. They still occasionally rampaged across the island, killing Summons and random creatures with abandon, just to prove to themselves they were still all that. We were going up there to find a few people who had probably sold out to the undead, and then we were probably going to kill them.