Chương 19: Night two, round two

The experience from the giants was a nice taste, but I don't know if we can do that again. I don't know if I can get monsters to follow me into a trap as easily as I was able to get the giants. For one thing, I don't know if anything else has the hit points for me to do damage to them without killing a few of them. I don't know if that will keep the experience just for me or if I'll still have to share it, but it feels unfair if I have to share. I need fifteen hundred experience points to reach level thirteen.

We can go and get those during the day, or I can go out and get them at night. But I don't think getting enemies to follow me back to the park is going to work again. It's getting close to midnight, near as I can tell. The moon is high in the sky, and the stars are providing a fair amount of light, but it's not enough for them to see. I can see. It's frustrating to be the only one who can. Makes me not want to rely on them anymore. I mean, I could go out and find some spiders to kill, or some shadow wolves.

Hell, I could probably find some skeletal warriors to kill. Though I don't do well against them myself, so maybe not. We might get lucky, though. There might be a group of them that come close enough for us to leave the park and attack them. That would be good. Ashley's mace can wipe one of those things out in a single hit, I think. And even if I only do half damage, I can still put a hurt on the skeletons. Plus I have spells that can do more damage to them.

I go out and scout around for a little while, hoping to find another group of monsters. If I can get them to chase me, I will. But mostly, I'm planning on fighting for myself, or just seeing what's out there. It strikes me as obvious where the skeleton warriors are as soon as I spot them. The basilica of Saint Mary is just down the street from the park. Of course the skeletons are there.

I don't know if there are graves in the basilica or not, but there have to be at least three dozen of the skeleton warriors there. More than we can take. Are they protecting something? Is there another chest in the basilica? I bet there is. We should try going in there during the day. We should also try going through Loring Park tomorrow. It's literally right across the street from us, and there's bound to be something there.

I sneak around the skeletons, never getting close enough for them to spot me, and head over to Dunwoody College of Technology. There's a big open parking lot there, and there is a huge spider web being strung up between the street lamp posts inside the lot. By my count, there are ten of the giant spiders. They should be able to see just fine there, so I go back to the sculpture garden and bring the others back to fight some spiders. Giant spider, Advanced Rare monster, level 10. HP: 1000/1000.

With ten of them and five of us, we need to plan things out so they will go in our favor. The first thing we do is decide to burn the webs. Webbing burns, right? They're made of silk, and silk burns. So yeah, it should burn. I throw a flame ball at the web, and it starts to burn slowly out to the edges. I throw another ball and then a third so that the burning is happening from multiple angles. Then I shoot one of the spiders with Sniper Shot.

Around that time, the spiders begin moving towards us with ill intent, ready to poison us and eat us. Maybe I didn't think this through. There are twice as many of them as there are of us, and we can't kill any before they get to us. Even with the girls standing firm, I'm going to have to fight straight up with my sword against these monstrosities. I just hope that my Shell holds up. When the first spider comes into range of my sword, I lunge forward and stab it right in the head with a Bleeding Strike.

I do 124 damage, getting a critical hit out of my lunge, and I pull back before the fangs can come down on my arm. My Shell is worth 110 points, but I don't want to tempt fate any more than I already am. It swings at me, and I block with my bracer, dealing 7 damage and taking 14 to my Shell. That's not tenable for me. Neither is the fact that there's another giant spider even now circling around me and about to bite me.

I do my best to dance between them, trying to keep them together so that they can't just surround me. Combat is as much about movement as it is about killing your opponent. At least, this one is. I'm not trying to be the first one to kill their spiders. I'm just trying to make sure I'm not the first one to die. One of the spiders leaps at me with something green dripping from their fangs. The fangs manage to hit me in the chest, but only deal 11 damage, my Shell staying up as I get another notification.

I hit for 61 damage and do my best to stay away from the spiders. I don't let myself get too much distance, though. If I pull away too far, they'll turn on my companions, and the last thing I want is for them to get overwhelmed. If anything, I'm counting on Ashley, Gigi, and El to finish their two spiders each so that they can help me finish off mine. I slip on some ice, the result of Vinny's ice storm, and nearly lose the grip on my sword.

If I hadn't wrapped it in grip tape, I think it would have slid right out of my hand and gone of to who knows where. As it is, I still fall, barking my head on the concrete and getting briefly stunned. During my time being stunned, the spiders leap on top of me, and I think this might be it for me. I roll over in time for the first one to leap on top of me, dealing 28 damage to me with the leap and apparently a critical hit of some kind.

I put my bracer into the fangs and push them away from me, trying to toss the spider off me. It's big, but it can't weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds or so. Easy enough for me to toss off myself if I use my foot as part of the toss. But no sooner have I tossed the one off me than the other pounces, leaping high in the air to get a gravity assist on its attack. Stolen story; please report.

Thankfully, I still have my sword, and I hold it up so that the spider impales itself on the blade, and the gravity assist goes to me instead of to it. I deal 126 damage, and wrench the blade free to do bleed damage. The spider still slashes at me when it lands, but only manages to do 11 damage to my rapidly depleting Shell. I use the blade stuck in its abdomen to throw the giant spider off me, further breaking the carapace and doing the same double damage hit, massing off 124 more damage.

I scamper to my feet and look at the two spiders. One of them is down to 654 hit points, the other one 441. Both still more than me, both still more than capable of continuing the battle, neither one looking for a way out. They charge at me again, and I sidestep, chopping at the legs of the stronger of the two, my Shell taking another 11 damage as the exchange goes by. I can't take much more of that, though I do have the important trick up my sleeve of another casting of Shell.

That's the real reason why I cast it as soon as it goes down, even if we're not in combat, and why I'll recast it when we're safe. It lasts until dispelled. So as long as five minutes pass between me casting it and it going down, I can cast it again. So when I exchange blows with the spiders, even though they deal a total of 22 damage to me between them, I'm not too worried. I still have 24 points on this casting of Shell, and a whole 110 on the next.

This is what I meant when I said I was a bit of a tank myself; we haven't even started on my hit points yet. I'm doing between 52 and 62 damage every time we clash, which I think means they're going to go down before I do. Especially if I keep out of their way as best I can. I don't know how long I can maintain a fight against two enemies at once. They're working together, trying to surround me, which makes it harder.

If they weren't coordinating, I could easily keep them in a line, so I only had to fight one at a time. But with them moving around, skittering to try to surround me, my options are a bit more limited. 62 damage, and I manage to dodge their bites. 57 and I deflect an attack from one of their forelegs, scraping at it with my bracer for another 7 damage. I'm whittling them down, slowly but surely. I manage to get one of the spiders down before the girls all finish with theirs.

I know they're finished with theirs because both Gigi and El take the legs out from under my remaining opponent, and suddenly it's quiet. The sounds of battle have come to an end, and all that's left is the five of us, panting and in some cases bleeding. I've taken 9 actual damage, some of an attack getting through between castings of Shell, but I'm otherwise okay. El is covered by little cuts and bruises, and seems none the worse for wear judging by the smile on her face.

Gigi's armor has a few new dents in it, but she seems fine. And when I look over at Ashley, I see that she's limping a little but doesn't seem otherwise concerned. You have defeated giant spider x10. You gain (10000/5) 2000 experience. You have gained a level. You have 6 stat points to spend. And then there are the other notifications. My bow increases to 12, dodge increases to 8, spellcraft to 8, sword to 8, and Shell to three. Shell is now a whopping 60% of my total health.

I put two points each into strength, agility, and vigor. I should really up my presence and willpower at some point, but for now the physical attributes seem more important. So does going back to the park. I have some other things I want to do, one of which is sleep. Once we're all leveled up, I see that I'm back to being one level higher than everyone else, except Vinny. I'm two levels higher than Vinny. But he's a pretty powerful spellslinger, so I'm not exactly counting him out.

I cast Shell again, this time forming a shield worth 195 points of damage. I'm liking this spell. I want to work on my other spells, maybe get flame ball improved by another level or two, to see how much damage I can make it do. If I can get it to the point where it does the same or more damage than my arrows, then I'll feel pretty comfortable with it as a secondary weapon, or as a mid range attack during combat. I could wield my sword in one hand and a spell in the other. That might look pretty cool, too.

In fact, there might be a class based around that very idea. First, though, I want to up my tracking and get the Tracker class. Maybe there'll be a magically inclined swordsman class that branches off of that. We go back to the park, and I start following everyone around for what they did all day. I don't mean literally following them. I mean I start looking at their tracks and try to use those tracks to see what they were doing.

I go over to where Ashley and El spent all that time sparring and try to follow the tracks of their fighting, the movement around that open area of the park. I keep thinking about Princess Bride, and the movement of the two masters as they ranged all over. I imagine I can see what the two of them were doing as they fought, like two ghosts moving through the tracks and fighting one another. My tracking skill goes up, and so, for some reason, does my awareness.

Maybe I really can see them moving around, see their ghosts fighting. Maybe I can really tell that that's where Ashley stepped into a blow with her shield, pushing El back half a step. And maybe I can really tell where El dodged a swing and where she ducked below a back swing, all from the way the tracks they left behind look. It would be easier in sand, certainly, but the dirt is pretty loosely packed here, and I can see the movement in the steps.

My tracking skill is at 6 now, still too low for what the class I'm going after. I haven't qualified for any new classes in a while, but I'm awfully close to some. If I boost my strength up to twenty next level, I'll be qualified to be a barbarian. A few more levels of shield and sword will qualify me for footman, and another level of meditation will qualify me as a spellslinger. I think that's the next one I want to qualify for.

If I'm going to be a spell using swordsman, I should be qualified to be a spellslinger. So I need to spend some time with magic, and some time meditating. Of course, it makes sense to spend through my MP before I start to meditate, as the meditation will help the MP recharge. Plus, I might get other skills to increase while I'm at it.