Chương 24: Direboar and Wraith

The next day, the direboar gave me a little more trouble—mostly because it had decided to group up in the same room as a fell-fox that I hadn't killed yet. And when I arrived, the two of them formed a temporary truce to go after me. It wasn't really a truce. But the fell-fox and the direboar didn't seem anywhere nearly as empty-minded as orcs and ruin-hounds did. They were probably just looking to kill me and then fight over my corpse—they'd been fighting over something when I arrived.

Regardless, the fox attacked from one direction, circling around the outside of the fountain, and the direboar attacked from the other direction, instead choosing to use its hulking mass to bash through the statue bust at the center of the room. Aside from its slightly longer sword-length tusks, it was just a massive boar, and it had ten times the strength. Of course, it was a steel-tier beast as well. It rammed its tusks into the wall as I rolled out of the way, and they plunged deep into the stone.

It took the boar a few seconds to free itself, which I used to swipe my spear at the fox and keep it at bay. I did my very best to focus on my surroundings, to consider the scene and what was actually present. There weren't any traps to use to my advantage, nothing obvious, but there were two monsters that couldn't communicate. One loved to charge, and the other loved to pounce. If I could time it right, I might be able to get them to take each other out of the equation…

I kited the fox around the edge of the statue ruins, using jabs to hold it back and push it away, then lined it up with the boar. As the beast turned back to face me, I anticipated its charge and tried to let the fell-fox pounce on me. The fox, however, was too quick, and I'd jumped away too soon. It knocked me flat onto my back, thrusting the air out from my lungs. The direboar crashed past, ramming into the wall again.

The fell-fox's claws tried to sink into my scale mail, but I twisted to the side and its claws slipped off, leaving only a line of scratches on the surface. I wedged my spear into the fell-fox's mouth, and without an orc riding it, the beast leapt back, dodging away from me before I could kill it right there. So I took the moment to reset myself. I backed away, timing it and resetting my plan.

I paid attention to my timings, shifted a little farther to the right, and allowed the boar to get a good look at where I was before I sprang the trap. The boar pounced, and I let the fox get closer again, its slathering maw reaching dangerously close to my face. I scrambled back at the last moment. Milky-gray saliva splattered my face, and I instinctively blinked, preparing for the fox's jaws to close around the side of my helmet, but there was no impact.

The boar rammed the fox from the side, bashing it into the wall and impaling it on its tusks. As the boar tried to pull itself back, I drove my spear once into its neck, then a second time into its eye. Both monsters fell dead, and I harvested a Presence from both of them. I wiped my face and called it quits for the day. The next day, I returned to finish the job. I found the last monster I'd brought in here, the mud wraith, waiting in the very same room I'd left it in. It hadn't moved since I'd last seen it.

It was just hovering there, head slumped, arms loose. The vague shape of a dress hung loose around its waist, fluttering in a nonexistent breeze. I'd asked Shave what the mud wraiths were. He'd been hesitant to tell me, fearing I'd go after them, until I explained that I had already lured one into the Labyrinth. Reluctantly, he had explained, "Mud wraiths are the remains of orc slaves' souls who don't make it out from under the Shroud."

"Don't make it out from under the Shroud?" I'd asked back.

"The Shroud prevents souls from rising to Welkinmere. The souls that suffered the most in life tend to be the ones who get trapped. If you kill it, there's a far better chance of them drifting west—and then rising up to the sky. Really, think about it as releasing the souls."

"Does it drop a Presence?"

"Yes." After that conversation, I wished I'd killed the wraith sooner. I needed to free its souls. But better late than never. And apparently, this was a weaker one—most were Titanium tier, but this one was only Steel tier. It was probably close to increasing its tier, but it wasn't there yet. I took a fighting stance before I even entered the mud wraith's room. It barely flinched as I entered. Brown sludge just dripped off its body, forming a puddle beneath it.

I scanned the floor, looking for any bricks that seemed slightly too clean or smooth—those were the traps, and they were obvious because the Labyrinth Keepers reset them so often. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. There was nothing on the floors, but the walls boasted a ring of holes. What were the chances arrows flew from those? But maybe I could use them to my advantage.

I shifted my spear to the side, holding it in front of the hole in the wall and practically begging an arrow to fire out. After a few seconds, a pair of darts whistled from the hole in the wall. Ah. Darts. I should've guessed that, too. They were probably poisoned. But whether they were or not, I couldn't get hit. The Labyrinth keepers would reset the traps, which put me on a time limit. I had to get in there quickly, trigger all the traps while staying low, then destroy the wraith before the traps reset.

At the moment, it was the best plan I could come up with. Rushing into the room, I stayed low, dragging my spear along the wall and triggering all of the darts. The wraith's head flicked toward me, and its eyes locked onto the side of my head. I kept it in the corner of my vision as I raced around the outside of the room. The room was circular, like the others, and the pilasters at the edge made it hard to stay right up against the wall.

They forced me to lift my spear away from the wall at times, and instead of dragging it, I had to aim at the chutes where the darts would shoot out. Sometimes, they didn't even shoot darts. The wraith must have triggered those ones already. But when I did trigger one, they shot toward the monster, piercing through its midsection, but the mud just reformed. The poison didn't seem to have any effect on it at all. When I'd made it about halfway around the room, I missed a dart's launch tube.

I saw it, but I was running too quickly, and I didn't wave my spear close enough to it. I was about to turn around and re-trigger it, but the mud wraith flung its arms toward me, launching a glob of debris at me—or where I had been. Muddy pebbles and wood chips slammed into the wall, shattering stone and creating a plume of dust. But it triggered the trap I missed. The dart that I'd missed launched out, pathetically weak in comparison to the wraith's attack.

There was something about whatever was causing the darts to launch that made them more receptive to larger objects. A larger object could trigger the dart to launch from farther away. For now, that didn't matter. Labyrinth Keepers streamed across the floor in tiny lines, and they glowed a faint green in the dim light, the same way a glow-in-the-dark toy would from my childhood.

They climbed up the walls to reset the traps I had triggered, rebuilding the darts bit by bit, or repairing the wall that the wraith had smashed. I had a minute, at best. And the wraith wasn't just going to sit there and let me pre-emptively trigger the traps, either. It kept launching attacks as I sprinted around the edge of the room, continuing on my previous course, all while waving my spear in front of the dart chutes.

The wraith flung its arms out toward me, throwing clump after clump of pebbles into the wall and creating massive explosions of dust. One clipped my shoulder and sent me sprawling into the wall, and if I hadn't leaned my head aside in time, a dart would've smashed through my skull. But I kept moving. I pushed myself up and inspected the damage to my pauldron as I ran. The wraith had only clipped it, but it left a dent, and I could feel it pressing into the chainmail below.

When I finally reached the other side of the room, having cleared out all the traps, I stopped myself and reasserted my focus. I needed to figure out how to kill the wraith, and clearly, stabbing it over and over again wouldn't help. As I concentrated, my mind constricted, and the room seemed to clear up. It wasn't sight specifically, but instead, it was like I could focus on all my surroundings at once, keeping them in my mind, and isolating everything I needed to know.

I could concentrate on the Labyrinth Keepers and the wraith at the same time, I could keep track of the traps and how much time was left, all without losing focus on one or another object. I couldn't do that before, and it seemed like a superhuman level of focus. I must've increased the Focus attribute. But that didn't give me any clues on how to beat the wraith. It opened a hole in its head where its mouth should have been, and its muddy lips parted wider than they should have been able to.

A pale blue light, the exact same shade as its eyes, appeared. Then it screeched in reverse. I didn't know how I knew it was in reverse, but it just was. The sound started at a high pitch and descended, and the air of the cavern wisped toward the beast's mouth. Something inside my body, a point somewhere in the back of my head, tugged toward the wraith. My brain thrummed, and it felt like something was trying to pull the material right out my nose. It was trying to feed on my soul.

But where a regular human might have lost focus, I kept my wits about me. I narrowed my eyes, looking into the wraith's mouth. A crystal hovered within its head, glowing, causing the light that beamed out its eyes and mouth. That crystal was my target. I had to rip it free from the wraith's mouth. Letting the wraith's call tug me forward, I angled my spear toward its mouth and didn't fight the momentum. At the last moment, I leapt, pushing with as much strength as I could muster.

I probably matched an olympic long-jumper now, but it was hard to say. I did also have the benefit of the wraith drawing me toward it. But the wraith was smarter than I took it for. It raised an arm and swatted me to the side, flinging me into the wall. My shoulder popped, and I gasped—first in shock, then at the pressure, and then, after a few seconds, at the pain. It was probably dislocated. The wraith was still approaching. I could only hold the spear with one hand, and I didn't have any other weapons.

My armour hadn't done much good. It loomed over me, now, reaching with its arms and opening its mouth wide, ready to draw out my soul.