Chương 92: Chapter 93: To escape or to die

I'm not sure we're going to make it out of here. The woods end just a dozen feet away, but we're moving so slowly. We're gaining like two feet of ground every minute. Getting out to the field will save us, but I don't know if we're going to make it. I deflect a thrown dagger with my sword, knocking the dagger out of the air before it gets a chance to hit me. A notification goes off, but I don't have the time to look at it now. Maybe I'll look at it when I respawn. I don't want to lose my sword.

I don't want to lose my bow either, which is why my bow is in my spatial bag. But I really don't want to lose the sword. I hope I get to keep it when I die. Which is going to be any minute now, I think. I'm taking a lot of damage, and it is adding up very quickly. Another minute, another two feet. I have two minutes until my Shell can be recast, and I'm taking close to 3500 damage per minute from all the attacks of all the surrounding orcs.

My Shell is going to go down in the next couple of seconds, and then I'll start actually feeling the attacks. I do my best to push forward, gaining a precious few inches as I use Killing Blow and actually kill the orc in front of me. I leap into its place before the orc behind it can move forward, earning us another foot closer to the edge of the forest. How far are we now? I wince as I feel a hundred little cuts start to add up.

I'm getting hit almost every second, taking that same 58 points of damage every time I get hit. Another minute ends, another 3500 health gone. Well, three thousand; the Shell was good for a final five hundred or so. Now I have around eight thousand hit points. I'm going to survive long enough to activate Shell again, but I don't know if I'll last long enough to do it again after that. Ash puts a hand on my back, and I suddenly feel a cool breeze pass through my body.

All the little nicks and cuts from the orcs close up, and I'm back up to full hit points. Healing magic. I turn to Ash and return the favor, restoring half of her maximum hit points with a single spell. In a minute, I'll cast it again, this time on El. She's still got her Shell going, but it isn't going to last much longer. Two more feet closer to the edge of the woods. I can see sunlight. I can almost touch it. My health is back down to eight thousand when I cast Shell again.

I cast Healing Touch on El and restore half of her maximum hit points, fully healing her. We're just a few feet away from safety, but there is no end to the orcs. And the orcs we're fighting now are not wounded. Doing almost ten times as much damage to them as they do to me doesn't matter nearly as much when they're hitting me twenty or thirty times more often than I'm hitting them.

I slash at my nearest opponent with the kind of abandon that El usually fights with, throwing him back on his heels and carving my way through his armor, hoping to kill him and take his spot, to get just a little bit further out. But it takes a lot of hits with a sword. Even with the bleed from Bleeding Touch, it takes a long time to get through a fully healthy level 50 orc's health pool. I try wounding them and pushing past, using Chop on a leg here and an arm there in an attempt to get through.

I'm gaining ground, but it's still slow going. We get into the sunlight around the time my Shell drops again. I now have two minutes until its cooldown is over and I can cast it yet again. I shout for El to cast hers again, and she does. So she isn't going to die. That's good. Once we're out in the sun, help starts to come.

It starts slow at first, just a few arrows slamming into unsuspecting orcs from behind, the archers in the tree towers taking their own Sniper Shots at the orcs as we slowly force them out of the forest. They're still doing damage just as quickly, and I feel the pain start to build from a thousand different little wounds. I'm sure I'm as coated in blood as El is right now, and I'm sure that it's mostly mine. My health drops down to five thousand, then four, as I keep killing orcs.

It's starting to get easier again, as the arrows are wiping out huge swaths of their health and my sword is keeping up with the movements. More notifications pop up, but I ignore them all, determined to focus on fighting. I'll see them when I die. If I die. One more minute before I can Shell again. If I can survive this last minute, I can probably get back to the wall. We're about to break through the orc line, I think. Ash is swatting orcs back and forth, clearing a swath through what's left of their line.

I think we might make it. I reach out and heal Ash again, just in time. She was down to triple digits, and about to go down to double. She gives me a look of thanks. I get stabbed in the leg by a spear, and a sword cuts off part of one of my ears in the time it takes to exchange that look. We break free from the orcs and start to move more quickly, turning from a fight in one direction to a retreating action.

We keep fighting the orcs that are chasing us, but continuously give ground as we get back into the field between the ongoing forest and the wall of Elmspire. Once we're out in the field, there's less of a worry about being killed. We can fight against the horde and know that we're not alone, as arrows fly over our shoulders and stab into the orcs that are chasing us. We are still taking a fair amount of damage, but instead of taking four thousand damage in a minute, I go down to taking about eighteen hundred.

At this rate, I can keep fighting for a really long time. I'm able to activate Shell again before I start taking regular damage. We don't retreat all the way back to the wall. We start to hold our ground about halfway into the field, the three of us fighting more orcs as the arrows pummel them, allowing us to kill more orcs as we go. More notifications come up as we fight, and though I am still taking damage, I'm able to keep fighting. Five more minutes pass, and my Shell is down only about a thousand hit points.

The orcs finally break, leaving the battlefield and withdrawing back into the forest, leaving the three of us standing strong in the field, a huge loss for the orcs. We come back to the palisades amid applause and cheers. Regardless of how many orcs we killed, we've just achieved a major morale victory. People pat us on the shoulders and cheer us as they help us over the wall. I'm out of breath, and I'm still down to about eight thousand hit points. The buff from Ash's speech made a huge difference in that battle.

I'm not sure we would have survived if not for the extra eleven hundred hit points, and hence the extra eleven hundred points of Shell, to protect us. The orcs pull back, licking their wounds, and I figure we have a bit of a break before they attack again. I don't know how many of them we killed, but I'm hoping at least one of the notifications will let me know. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. You have improved skill sword 33. You have improved skill dodge 29.

You have improved skill spellcraft 39. You have improved ability Killing Blow. You have improved ability Chop. You have slain Orc soldier x356. You gain (4, 450, 000/27) 164, 814 experience points. You have gained a level. You are now level 36. You have 11 stat points to spend. More than 350 of them. That's pretty good. Not as good as thousand, but a serious blow to their overall numbers. Let's deal with the level up.

I put two points into strength, agility, and vigor, then put the other five points into manipulation. This gets me my last secret quest for attributes hitting 100, giving me an additional 10, 000 experience, which puts me a little past halfway for the next level. My new hit point total is 11, 664, my new MP is 4, 140, and my new stamina is 4, 500. El, who reached level 30, now has 15, 000 hit points, and Ash at level 28 now has 10, 640. All in all, my sheet is looking really solid.

All of my stats are triple digits, and my skills are getting really high. Caleb Strong, level 36 wolf blood ranger. XP 78947/132000. HP: 8, 152/11, 664 MP: 3, 440/4, 140 Stamina: 4500 Defense: 294 Magic Resist: 115% Strength: 162+10 Agility: 252 Vigor: 162 Manipulation: 100 Presence: 115 Willpower: 125 Charisma: 103 Awareness: 115+4.

Skills: Animal Harvesting 17, Alertness 26, Bow 36, Climbing 5, Cooking 3, Dagger 7, Detect Traps 6, Disarm Traps 4, Dodge 29, Haggling 5, Intimidation 3, Meditation 14, Negotiation 9, Pick Lock 15, Riding 8, Scrounge 13, Shield 10, Sneak 39+4, Spellcraft 39, Subterfuge 11, Survival 17, Swimming 2, Sword 33, Throwing 12, Tracking 29, Trap making 14. Secondary skills: Armorer 19, Bowyer 7, Fletcher 5, Scrapping 12, Smithing 24.

Talents: Darkvision, Exemplar (Agility), Polyglot, Regenerate (stamina), Fast Reflexes, Toughness, Resist Fire. Hunter (copper): 30/330, Adventurer (steel): 195, Scout (copper): 200/300 Yeah. That's a good looking sheet. I've got some skills that are pretty low that I'd like to improve, but now is not the time. Right now, we're still at war. Though there's a good chance that the orcs are going to be willing to negotiate now.

After all, we're stronger now than we were when we just pulled this off, and we can clearly do it again and again. I just need two hours for the cooldown of Mab's Fury and we'll be able to go again. First, though, I use five of my magic crystals to upgrade Chop. It evolves into the uncommon ability Vital Slash. Vital Slash. Uncommon ability 5/10. Stamina cost: 25. Casting time: instant. Cooldown: 2 seconds. Attack with a melee weapon and deal 160% damage. Even more reason why we could do that attack again.

Maybe next time we'll even take a unit of soldiers with us so that we can get even deeper into the orcish army. Maybe next time we'll just go deeper on our own before we start the spell, so that we can kill more of them and just keep fighting until they kill us. Maybe they'll scatter when we come, in order to avoid the same thing happening again, and we'll be able to make our way through their army and just destroy their supplies.

Or maybe they'll surrender and pull back, giving us more than a little bit of a victory. We've killed about five hundred orcs since the siege started. More than half of those have been in the past half an hour. If that's not a good reason for them to try to negotiate terms and at least get something out of their invasion, then I don't know what would be.

"That. Was. Awesome!" El says, rolling her shoulders as the wounds on her body heal up.

"I want to go again. How long until we can go again?"

"Two hours," I say. I look at my health. I need fifty eight hours to fully heal. I cast Healing Touch on myself. That takes care of my health, but I still need about twelve and a half hours to refill my MP.

"If I can take a little while to meditate, I can get my mana back in those two hours. But don't ask me to fight again during that time." El laughs and slaps me on the shoulder hard enough that I stagger forward a few feet.

"I don't think they're going to organize enough to attack in that time," she says.

"You go ahead and rest up."

"Before you start to meditate," Ash says, "we should talk about whether we want to do that again."

"How could we not?" El asks.

"We didn't even die, and we got a lot of extra levels."

"Yeah, but now you're level thirty," Ash says.

"So we don't want you to die until you've gained a few more levels." I look around to see if anyone is watching us talk. I don't want to let out the secret of how we all got so powerful. Granted, even if the other players find out about it, it'll take them a long time to catch up, because they won't have a dragon who helps them regain the levels in between deaths. We basically condensed what could be weeks of leveling up into a day or two at most, allowing us to do the cycle much faster than normal.

But I don't want people even thinking about this. I like the three of us being the most powerful players in the area, and I don't want to have to go through another set of cycles to keep that power gap where it is if we don't have to. Luckily, it seems like everyone within earshot is a native. And they can't do they cycle, because death is a one time thing for them.

"I'm about ready to fight to the death if we go out again," I say. Ash nods.

"Me too. But I'm not sure that's the right plan with El at level thirty." El pouts.

"I don't want us to avoid dying just on my account," she says.

"It may not be ideal, but it still works. I only lose fifteen from each attribute." That's true. We don't know what happens after level forty. Presumably, you lose twenty from each attribute. But given how much of a bonus you get for levels thirty five to forty, the penalty might be higher. We might lose twenty five from each attribute. That's 200 stat points. That will take a long time to make up for. I don't know if that's worth getting another talent or not.

It might be that thirty nine is the ideal level to do the whole cycle from.

"I want to know if this whole thing is even going to come up," I say.

"They might decide that we're not worth fighting if they're going to lose numbers on that scale."

"Or they might just gather all their numbers and attack us en masse," Ash says.

"They might decide that their best option is to put all their forces into one section of the wall, so that they can break through and bring the fight to us."

"If they do that, we're kind of screwed," I say.

"I can't include the natives in the party, so I can't exclude them from the damage. Meaning I can't use Mab's Rage without it hurting our own people. I really need to get across the field."

"Can you sneak over there?" Ash asks.

"Like you did with their camp?"

"I don't know. Probably." My sneak, when I'm using Blur, is currently 86. I don't know if that's enough to get across an open field. Maybe if I literally crawl my way out there. But then that leaves me alone, surrounded and probably getting killed before help can arrive.

"You thinking of letting him get it started, then we fight our way to him?" El asks, looking at Ash.

"I'm thinking let him get in there nice and deep, then the two of us start moving more openly." Ash says.

"We try to link up, but if we can't, he activates his spell while they're trying to surround the two of us. That way, we catch a lot more of their army in the radius. We do our best to link up. But if we can't, then we die trying." I rub the scruff of my beard. I need to shave, even if it's just a trim. I like having a five o'clock shadow, but I'm not sure I want to go full beard.

"That's a possibility," I say.

"Could have some merit. Do either of you have something that makes it more likely for us to be able to link back up?"

"I have that ability that lets me throw people out of the way," El says. I look at her with curiosity.

"What ability is that?" I ask.

"A strength of 225," she says, smirking.

"Mine is 207," Ash says.

"We can do a lot of tossing people around if we have to. Plus, I imagine we'll be surrounded in the field, not the forest. So we could have arrow cover helping us cut a path to you."

"Let's plan on that," I say.

"Talk to the archers in the three towers that cover this part of the field, make sure they know they're trying to cut a path between us."

"I'll take care of it," Ash says.

"You go rest. Recover your mana. Meet us back here when you're ready."

"Two hours should be enough for all my mana to come back," El says.

"So long as I don't cast anything between now and then."

"Okay," I say.

"Sounds like we have a plan."