Chương 46: Undead Spawn Point

The spawn point, it seems, is in the catacombs beneath the temple. That shouldn't be surprising. We come across two undead warriors moving on their own as we go through them. They get a few lucky hits in, but for the most part aren't a match worth talking about for the three of us together. The second one wanders into the fight while we're still killing the first one though, which makes me think that they are spawning at a rate faster than one every five minutes. I think those two are barely a minute apart.

That means at least fifteen more of them have spawned since we entered the temple. It's still slower than some of the generators we've seen, but it's far faster than I'd be comfortable with. When we step out into the large mausoleum like burial area, we see the spawn point at the far end of the room. It's too far for me to to identify just yet, but it's clear that's what it is; I can see another undead warrior emerging from it as we come into the room. And between us and the generator, there are two main obstacles.

The first is a group of twenty two undead warriors. And the second is something that I can only just barely make out. Ghost warrior. Legendary Advanced undead, level 15. HP: 7500/7500 The ghost warrior is entirely translucent, and I'm left wondering if we'll even be able to hit him with mundane weapons. Gigi probably can with her flaming sword, but I'm not sure if El and I will be able to. Maybe I'm wrong, and we'll hit him without any difficulty. But if I'm right, we need to plan this fight out more carefully.

"Gigi, you go for the boss. El and I will take care of the minions. But your spell might be the only way to hurt it." I could test it out with a bow shot. We've got time. But that would leave me having to back away and change weapons before the undead warriors engaged with us. So maybe we don't have time.

"Right," Gigi says.

"Cover me, I'm going to charge forward." And then she bangs her shield three times, takes a deep breath, and charges. El charges right behind her, and I'm kind of swept up in the whole thing. If we're going to get surrounded anyway, I guess I might as well. My Shell still has about six hundred hit points, and I'm ready to cast it again. I can handle being surrounded for a while. We start fighting, and I wish I'd saved Mab's Rage for this group. Though if I had, we might not have gotten here. We are too confident.

Are we going to survive this battle? Am I? Right now, my stamina is full at 858. That's not a surprise. I don't really use any abilities in combat without my bow, and I regenerate 2 stamina per second. My HP is at 1036/1040, my Shell at 605 points, and my MP at 217/780. I can afford a healing spell or two. And I can keep my Shell up for as long as possible. I focus primarily on defense, only taking a hit once every five or so seconds, and only hitting about that frequently.

I won't be able to keep up this strategy for long if I want to keep up with El, but it might be my only way to survive the fight as a whole. I cast Shell again after about a minute and a half, when I take 30 damage to my natural hit points. In that time, I bring one of the undead warriors I'm fighting down to dangerous territory. This is bad. I can't kill them fast enough, and they aren't going to let up. Another minute goes by, and I take 420 damage.

My Shell is down below five hundred, and I have two minutes before I can cast it again. One of the undead warriors is down, another one damaged by about one quarter of its health. I grit my teeth and push myself to fight faster, trying to dodge and attack in a more fluid style, trying to hit more often without getting hit as much. I notice that my stamina starts to drain as I do this. I'm losing five stamina per second fighting this hard, but that's okay.

It's going to take me a long time to fully drain my stamina, even fighting at this pace. I'm getting hit only about ten times a minute, and I'm hitting twice as often. A minute into that style of fighting, and I'm down to 678 stamina, my Shell is down to 300 points, and my HP is sitting at 1007. A minute later, I'm getting ready to recast Shell after another hit or two, and I take down a third undead warrior, who is quickly replaced, still leaving me surrounded. I take another 17 damage and recast Shell.

The battle is pretty general now, and while I am still dodging as much as I possibly can, I'm getting hit a bit more often as the undead warriors are closing ranks, not giving me nearly as much space to maneuver as I'd like. I glance back to the passageway we came from, but it's too far for me to get to, too far away to be of any use. I'm surrounded, and it's going to stay that way for a while. I take almost 400 damage over the next minute, and only manage to deal 2200 back to my opponents.

Another minute of them crowding me and I'm now taking hits more often. My Shell is down below two hundred points, and I've got three minutes before I can cast it again. I'm not going to last three more minutes like this. Something has to change. I wish I had a bursting spell. Something that would let me shoot at everyone around me. But I don't. I could try a fire bolt to take down one of the undead warriors a bit faster, but I might need that MP for healing. I'm down to 197 MP.

That's only three casting of the Healing Touch spell. And I'm probably going to have to cast it on myself; I don't think I can get to El any time soon, let alone getting to Gigi. I've taken down four of the twenty two undead warriors when my Shell drops for the last time. I have to survive another two minutes without it before I can cast it again. If I've only taken out four of them, then even if El has taken out the same number, there are still fourteen of them.

More than enough to be surrounding both of us, even if three of them are helping the boss to surround Gigi. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I glance at the two of them. It seems like El is having the time of her life, her health sitting strongly at about half. Gigi is having a little more trouble, but probably still has eight hundred or so health. I wish I could get to her and heal her. But then, as I watch, her health shoots up.

I forgot Gigi can heal herself. I take a hit for 36 damage, and it draws my attention back to what I'm doing. The girls are fine. Forget about them. You need to focus on your own battle. I focus only on dodging for a while, and over the next minute I take 132 damage. That's not bad, but it's not really good either. It gets me closer to when I can cast Shell again, but it doesn't get me any closer to taking out the remaining fourteen undead warriors. Okay, I've got one minute to survive, and I can heal myself.

I have to hit back. I have to retaliate when one of them stabs me in the leg. I can feel the jagged blade digging against my muscle, and I chop at the attacker almost on instinct. Somehow, I get lucky and cut off his head. That's five of them down! Means there are only seventeen left, minus whatever Gigi and El have taken down. There's barely time to count, and it takes me most of the next minute to do it, but it looks like Gigi has taken out two of them and El has taken out six.

So their eight plus my five is thirteen. That's more than half, not counting the boss. Nine left. Four on me, four on El, one on Gigi, plus the boss. That means that the more I take out, now, the fewer I have to fight. They don't have any more reinforcements. My hit points are at 557 when I put Shell back up. I'm briefly reminded of the last time I had only 500 hit points. It's been a while. A lot of levels. It's been even longer since I was at basically half HP. The pain is there, noticeable and even insistent.

My shoulder twinges when I move it, my breathing is a bit ragged from what I believe is a cracked rib, and I can't see as well out of my right eye as I can out of my left. Still, with Shell back up, I can afford to be more aggressive. I can afford to let one of them hit me in the back while I unleash on another of them, hitting him three times in the time it takes he and his companions to hit me once.

I deflect blows with my shield, I dodge and duck under swings that are just not as fast as mine, and I lash out with brutal slashes at legs and at arms, hoping to incapacitate or at least further slow down my enemy as I go. If I can break away a leg and cut down the maneuverability of one of the undead warriors, then I can turn my focus on another one and kill it rather than the wounded one. It might be faster to take out the wounded one, but his lessened ability to do damage to me will make up for the time lost.

I don't take out his leg, but I do defeat one of the four surrounding me while only taking another 330 points of damage from the other three. Four minutes left until I can cast shell, I turn to the other three and go back to my stamina draining pace. My stamina recharged by 120 points in the last minute, but it still isn't full. That's okay. I don't need it to be full. I don't mind it draining when I'm fighting hard.

I'm able to hit the undead warrior practically every other second, and it takes them about eight seconds to hit me even once. So they deal another 245 points of damage in the time it takes me to defeat another one of them completely. Then it's two on one, and I take 197 damage in the time it takes me to bring it to one on one. I defeat my final opponent just in time for Shell to come off cooldown, though I still have about four hundred hit points left on the one I had up.

I move to join El in taking out the last undead warrior while Gigi focuses all her attention on the ghost guardian boss thing. I take another look at it. Ghost warrior. Legendary Advanced undead, level 15. HP: 4613/7500 Gigi has done a great job with it. I cast Healing Touch on her, bringing her health up from halfway to almost full. El is even lower, but she isn't in as much danger as Gigi is right now. El and I slip around Gigi and the ghost warrior and head to the generator. Undead Warrior Generator.

Very rare elite generator, level 18. HP 9000/9000 That's a lot of hit points. But I can hit it maybe thirty times a minute, and El can hit it another twenty times a minute, so it's not going to last long. It does last long enough for one more undead warrior to come through; apparently they're coming through at a rate of about one every five minutes. So we've fought twenty five of them in here, not twenty two. El and I kill the warrior pretty quickly.

Once we're able to flank it, it doesn't stand much of a chance of surviving. It manages to do 56 damage to me and a little bit to El, but neither of us are really bothered by that. We turn towards the ghost warrior, and I test my theory. I step up behind it, flanking it with Gigi, and I slash at it. I hit it for 70 damage. That's not even half. I was flanking, which means I get the double damage from sneak attack. I should have done 282 damage, but instead I did 70. And again when I hit it a second time.

I see El hit it and frown at the result. Still, a little is better than not at all, and I'm not about to just stand there and watch Gigi fight. I can hit the ghost warrior as often as I want, as it completely ignores me, focusing all of its attacks on Gigi. So even with just 70 damage every time we hit, it doesn't take long before we defeat it. You defeated Undead Warrior x 57, Ghost Warrior, Undead Warrior generator. You gain (228, 000+7500+9000 = 244, 500/3) 81, 500 experience. That's worth a full level.

It'll be two when we turn in the quest. For now, I have just the nine stat points and a ton of notifications. I think I'll check the notifications before I spend them. Your strength has increased to 27. Your willpower has increased to 30. Those are good. So are the notifications about my skill increases. Dodge has gone up to 22, shield to 10, spellcraft to 24, and sword to 27. I decide to put two points into agility like I have been every level.

The other seven points I spend two on vigor and the other five on awareness. I've seen magic resistance at work finally, and I want to get better at it. Also, I like the idea of Mab's Rage having a larger area of effect. I've only used it twice, but that spell is absolutely clutch. Level twenty seven is looking pretty good on me, if I do say so myself. Caleb Strong, level 27 wolf blood tracker. XP 41, 185/48, 000.

HP: 1134 MP: 810 Stamina: 918 Defense: 123 Magic Resist: 35% Strength: 27+3 Agility: 72+2 Vigor: 42 Manipulation: 20 Presence: 30 Willpower: 30+4 Charisma: 12 Awareness: 35. Skills: Animal Harvesting 10, Alertness 15, Bow 28, Climbing 2, Cooking 1, Dodge 22, Haggling 3, Intimidation 1, Meditation 10, Pick Lock 14, Scrounge10, Shield 10, Sneak 20, Spellcraft 24, Survival 3, Swimming 2, Sword 27, Throwing 12, Tracking 16. Secondary skills: Armorer 15, Bowyer 4, Fletcher 3, Scrapping 10, Smithing 17.

Talents: Darkvision, Exemplar (Agility), Polyglot, Regenerate (stamina), Fast Reflexes. Hunter (steel): 100, Adventurer (leather): 50