timewalk
Malika The Fmecaller warlock colpsed in a sizeable, smoking heap of ruin at her feet, and Malika stepped back to take a deep breath, coughing as she inhaled a little too much of the om acrid bck smoke. As they pressed deeper into the mihreading through the endless winding tunnels and a excavated caverns, the Fmecaller warlock groups grew progressively stronger and more dangerous, and the st three had even included Fmecaller spear wielder, but the adjustments to their strategy had made the fights signifitly more stable. Although, for her, they felt b. Her job was to charge the warlock at the outset and drain its mana as quickly as possible. began each fight with Righteous Fury and attempted to burn down as many imps as possible with his multishot, and Ali and Mato picked up whatever was left over. It did mean they had to wait for ’s recharge between fights, but it was definitely worth the increase in reliability.
Aha, would you look at that? She bent over arieved the item that this warlock had been holding. It y precariously banced over a deep boiling tar pit, caught between two jagged rocks when it had fallen from the dying monster’s grasp. This was the first time it hadn’t been broken by the end of the fight.
Scepter of Fme – level 50Damage: Physical, Blunt+35 Intelligence.+10% Spell damage to Fire skills.Requirements: Intelligence 175Quality: MagicalValue: 4 gold, 12 silverOne Handed – Scepter – Steel
Hmm, if only Ali’s Fire Mages were higher level, she thought, st the item in her Quartermaster ring, where she kept the items that she inteo sell for team funds. Although, this scepter might be too unwieldy for the smaller Kobolds. Still, Weldin would have no trouble finding a new home for something this good.
“That was the st easy group,” announced.
“If that was easy, I hate to ask – what does a hard group look like?” she asked. The warlocks and imps had seemed rather challenging by themselves and adding a Fmecaller spear wielder had not made it any easier.
“The pa the cavern is a hunter and a warlock, both with four minions each,” said, immediately proving there was a bination that would be much more challenging.
“Aah, how are we going to kill that?” Ali asked, a note of worry enterione.
In all fairo her, Malika was worried too. The hunters had fire arrows, and the Hellfire Wargs breathed hellfire. The warlock’s first curse was the ohat lowered all their fire resistance, and there was absolutely no way she could drain it of its mana before it fihat spell.
“Mato tanks the wargs up against the wall with a couple of Hobs to keep him safe. Give that group a couple of healers and we will kill them st. Malika on the warlock. Kill all the imps first, then the huhen we finish the warlod finally the wargs.” expined.
“That could work,” Mato said, nodding slowly. “I scratch my ba those nasty volic rocks at the same time. Hard on the paws, you know.”
“Poor ol’ bear,” said, gng over at Aliandra, frowning deep in thought as she rubbed her . “Thoughts?”
“Why do the wargs st?” Malika asked, curious why he had chosen that particur order. The wargs were dangerous and did an enormous amount of damage.
“They resurrect from hellfire damage, so we o get rid of the imps first,” expined. “If you lock down the warlock quickly, the vulnerability curse will wear off a mier, and I think the rest will be sustaih maybe one or two more healers. I think the warlock is the most dangerous so stopping it from casting should be our top priority. What do you think?”
Malika sidered his proposed strategy. “It makes sense…” she said. Left aloo cast its crazy curses, the warlock was defihe most dangerous, and she had holy not thought about the possibility of the imps resurreg the wargs. “It seems good to me,” she said, finally ving herself that it might have a ce. “The Hobs and Mato will probably kill at least one of the wargs before we get to them though.”
“I might be able to block the hellfire breath from resurreg it with a barrier, ahem move away before destrug it,” Ali said. “If not, we just kill it a sed time? They only resurrece a day.”
“Yup,” agreed. “The fight should be a lot easier by the time we get that far.”
With their strategy set, Ali began to summon her minions. While she worked on that, Malika checked on her notifications. There had been a few extra chimes at the end of the st fight, and she was curious to see what it had been before they got stuto another battle.
Soul Monk has reached level 54.+10 attribute points.
She didn’t check the notifications all the time when they were caught up in a string of secutive fights, but it was o see her level growing, and the attribute points would certainly be useful.
Martial Artist has reached level 28.Soul Strike has reached level 35 (+2).Healing Mantra has reached level 34.Perfect Body has reached level 21.Enlightened Evasion has reached level 30 (+2).Diviep has reached level 27 (+2).Sed Wind has reached level 17.Crity has reached level 13.Soul Sight has reached level 14 (+2).
Her css level had only increased by one, but her skill growth was being accelerated by the frequency of fights they were taking on. But now she had her ever-present problem – only ten attribute points, and too many attributes she o i in. She used dexterity, wisdom, and endurance as her primary attad defeributes, but acc to Rezan, high dexterity without any iments in strength meant she would lose out a lot on power. Then there erception, which she needed for Soul Sight. With her taking on more tanking roles, vitality was being more and more essential. In fact, intelligence was likely her least tribute, and even that was like the ‘strength’ of spells – it would help her healing mantra and soul strike pack more punch. She sighed, and just put one point into all seven attributes, and split the remaining three amoerity, wisdom, and endurance.
Immediately, her notification chime sounded, startling her.
Requirements met for skill adva.
Mentor: Rezan JinPerfect Body has surpassed level 20.Has simultaneously spent at least one point on every attribute.Has surpassed level 50 without ever using body armor or a shield.Wisdom has surpassed 230.Studied the defensive magic of the hs of Ahn Khen.Performed the roles of tank, damage, and healing in the same fight.
Perfect Body gains Resolute Monk.(You gain +[skill] to all base attributes.)Perfect Body – level 21Mana: Your Endurance, Wisdom, aerity are increased by +76.8% [40 + skill + base wisdom / 10]. You gain +21 [skill] to all attributes. Reserve: 20%Soul, Buff, WisdomAccept this adva?
She sat and sidered the offered adva for her skill carefully, not knowing if she should be excited or not. It seemed she had met the final requirement simply by ce distribution of her level attribute points. On one hand, she did need every siribute, but the number was only her skill level, which wasn’t a lot sidering the level of iment in her main attributes.
“Hey, , what do you think of this?” she asked, wanting a sed opinion and knowing that would be the oo uand the numbers best.
“That seems very good,” he replied immediately.
“Doesn’t it seem a little underpowered?”
“It’s affeg your base attributes,” he said. “Which means it should affect your pertage attribute increases twice – once when it increases the pertage, and then it should apply the pertage to the bigger total. It’s like a rept for the attribute enhas you lose from not wearing a shield or body armor, but io you, so the improvement to your primary attributes should be much better than wearing gear.”
“It seems more simir to an aptitude than gear, don’t you think, ?” Ali asked.
“Yes, that’s a better parison. Gear doesn’t affect base attributes like aptitudes do,” he answered, nodding his head thoughtfully.
“I see,” Malika answered. “So, the increase to my wisdom improves my pertage in Perfect Body, and the pertage improves my improved dexterity and so on?”
“Yep,” he answered. “I’d take that one, especially with how many different roles you take on in the group.”
“Ok,” she said, accepting the adva and suddenly her dexterity jumped, clearing four hundred for the first time, her health, mana, and stamina all dramatically increased, and she felt power filling her as her skills reacted to the ge. She was stronger, her mind clearer, and she could sehe stamina energy from her friends with remarkably improved precision.
“Whoa,” she said, the ge hitting her far more profoundly than she had expected. It wasn’t like a skill or css leveling up – it felt like all of them at the same time. Literally everything got noticeably more powerful.
Ali grinned, “That looks positive?”
Malika gnced down at her hands. She had been rubbing her palms together because even that basisation was so much more immediate, more visceral, it was like feeling for the first time. Slowly she allowed herself a smile. Loudly, she said, “Yes. Don’t tell , but he was right again.”
“Fine, I’ll keep your secret!” Ali agreed, just as loudly.
Malika chuckled at the sight of the half-elf rolling his eyes.
***
Malika hopped from leg to leg on the balls of her feet, stretg her calf muscles while she waited for to fetch the Fmecallers. They had moved up as far as they dared to give him an easier time. With the imps’ ability to throw out the occasional instantaneous fireball, it was difficult for to reliably avoid getting hit on the way back.
She marked the locations of the runic circles Ali had started inscribing before each fight, just in case she needed ohey certainly made some parts of the fight easier for and Ali’s healers, but with the chaos unleashed by the imps and the curses, their effectiveness was itent at best – and for Malika, she was typically pinned down by the warlod uo move much. Still, she’d rather know where they were and not hem, thaher way around.
I really o see if I find him some gear with a higher movement speed, Malika thought, her eyes sing the broken scree and half-melted boulders for any signs of him. But Myrin’s Keep is probably not going to have anything like that. She sidered the marketpd the artisans and crafters she knew iown – she was quite familiar with most of them now, both due to s equipment for their little group, discussions with Weldin, and from her previous life as an occasional thief.
Myrin’s Keep is really g good leatherworkers. had also told her the fletchers were pretty limited too and he nning on doing some shopping in Ciradyl soon. I should ask him to check with the leatherworkers, there, she thought, but I’m not sure I trust him to not get ripped off. was simply too easy to read and too ho for proper bargaining. Still, the st time he had visited, he had returned with some pretty incredible Pathfinder boots which she was still wearing.
Another option eed potions – occasionally had been able to buy them from Morwynne, but the ingredients were hard to e by in Myrin’s Keep. Ahing to put on the shopping list the ime he visited the city of the elves.
There he is! ’s athleti appeared, darting around boulders and pools as he sprioward them holding his fme-wreathed bow in one hand. His entire body burned like an effigy. Close on his heels were two Fmecallers and a pack of howling wargs and cag imps. The Fmecaller hunter snapped off a shot which dodged on the run, but the warlock had tagged him with the Explosive fgration curse.
The short-duration curse expired in an explosion of bck fme. stumbled from the sudden impad hit the ground, barely avoiding a telep imp. A snap shot with his bow pihe moo the ground with s of light. One of Ali’s Acolytes stepped forward, hands glowing softly with the light of her holy magic. As the spell released, rolled to his feet and recovered his sprint. He must have pushed it hard, she thought. She was not used to seeing him breathing so heavily after a simple run.
Malika locked her eyes oarget, gauging the distahe warlock stopped slithering just a little further away than she would have liked, but it would have to do. She eled a little stamina and accelerated, tearing past imps and wargs, and dodging fme arrows that sizzled in the scalding air, the rush of power from her Diviep skill pushing her far faster than she had ever moved. The resilient caster ignored her, already i on casting its powerful ritual curse, and thus far, nothing short of exhausting its mana had been effective at interrupting its focus.
It’s just more time for me to work on its mana, she thought as she reached the t serpent-like form. Soul Strike flickered blue as she opened with a flurry of punches smming into his – her? – tough, scaled torso. In the ter of her calm, she wondered why she was trying to figure out the gender of a shat was trying to kill them with curses and demoniions. She punched again and again, enjoying the upti her overall speed, while the monster wove its potent curse magic with animated gestures and hisses.
You have been cursed with Agony of Fme.
The Warlock’s casting pleted with a fsh of fiery runes overid across the etlefield. Malika immediately felt the pain, but it was noticeably muted pared to before, obviously the result of boosting her endurance by forty points.
That’s rather nice. She kept up the pressure of her assault as the warlock hissed at her in ahat’s more like it, I’m stealing your mana, foe! She puhree times to what looked like the creature’s belly, half the upright torso and about her shoulder level. She knew she was wildly off on snake-lizard anatomy, but she simply ighat as she worked on suppressing the powerful caster, enjoying the substantial boost in her physical power.
Rezan was right. Strength matters.
You have been cursed with Explosive fgration.
Here it is. She focused on her owh while she unleashed her uing attacks. The pain from the fire curse was not quite as crippling as it had been, and with the increase in her healing magid her vitality, she felt vastly more resilient to its damage. She celebrated by leaping upward and kig the monster in the jaw with a perfect axle kick, happy that she had taken ’s advice with her skill adva. A bck fang shot loose as the creature’s jaw ccked shut.
Nice. And it will tio grow, she thought, smiling. This was a skill that would bee proportionally more and more valuable as she gained more skill levels, and her damage mitigation grew. She watched the ick by, excited for her new resiliend power. After ten seds the curse exploded, and she just healed the damage without the slightest interruption itabination.
Aliandra
Ali focused, trag more of the battle at ohan she would have ever believed possible. The presence of the warlock had turned what should have been a retively straightforward fight into a chaotic mess of fire, random curses, and explosions. More specifically, the imps made everything harder.
“o the big boulder!” Malika shouted as the Fmecaller hunter vanished, repced by its near-perfect illusory replicas.
“Ali, barriers!” shouted.
Ali didn’t bother replying – he was just getting caught up in the freic pad falling into mia. She resummoned her barriers, of course. She had decided to restrict herself to only two Sparkling Oozes for this fight – it was simply too hard for her to mahem in the presence of the Explosive fgration curse. Their ability to run – wobble? blob? – whatever the appropriate term for slime lootion was, it was too slow. With only two of them, she had been able to separate them from each other and all the rest of her minions and have them simply lob bombs at the Fmecaller hunter from maximum distance, but she felt the ck of the additional effective area damage keenly every time the hunter pulled its vanishing trick. More and more, she was ing to appreciate the y Death’s Acolyte Kobolds for their ing and intelligent awareness of the unfolding situation. Even now, wheuro direct them, she found that both of them had anticipated her request and were already huddled behind the new barrier lobbing blobs of ominous-lookih across the field to nd among the illusions and the crag lightning totems. Why people sidered Kobolds weak and stupid, she had no idea. They were some of her most reliable minions.
She studied the battlefield simultaneously through her own sehe senses of a holy Acolyte, a shaman, and one of the Hobgoblins. In the first chaotiute of bat, with an uered warlock spraying curses around, she had lost three of her four archers to an instantaneously cast, empowered hellfire fireball, and three of her six shamans to a bination of fme-arrow suppression fire and the Explosive fgration. It had turned what should have been an easy task into a nightmare of anxious improvisation as she struggled to cover her responsibilities with far fewer resources than she had pnned.
The illusions shattered, and the interrupted Power Shot cracked against her barrier with shog power, but without the additional critical damage ing from Ambush, the golden wall just cracked a little. The Death’s Acolyte who had just been saved let out a high-pitched squawk and fell on his butt.
“Clear,” called out. “I’m baps.”
“Right,” Ali said, sending a series of rapid-fire dires to her remaining minions.
Agony of Fme. The curse gave her lower-level minioive resistao fire, actually amplifying the damage far beyond what was normal. Her little Acolytes struggled to heal her shamans through the enormous damage that resulted from the fgration and fme arrows. Her Kobolds, at least, had a racial resistao fire damage, but even that was no match for the giant ball of hellfire that had taken them out in an instant, especially given that the shamaoo low-level to use the elixirs to boost their fire resistance.
She only hoped she would have minio by the time Malika finished suppressing the warlock.
“Move,” she ordered, but the Hobgoblin who had just been hit with Explosive fgration was intelligent enough to uand their strategy and was already bag away from the melee so that the explosion wouldn’t hit everyone else and proliferate the curse. The muscur crimson Goblin was also robust enough to survive the explosion, allowing her Acolytes to handle healing the damage without panic.
She examihe melee group carefully with her Acolyte’s Healer’s Sight trag their health. She had hoped Mato and the Hobs could kill one or tws while they were w on the warlock, but the imps seemed to favor dumping fireballs – or themselves – on the melee grurly, damaging all her Hobgoblins and simultaneously healing the wargs with ara infusion of hellfire damage. She would just have to keep healing through it and deal with the sequeer. They still had a huo kill.
“Fury,” said, biting the word out from between ched teeth.
“Kill the imps,” she instructed, and Ali’s remaining shamans, archer, and the one Bone Mage she kept around to boost her intelligeribute all unleashed their spells and arrows at the uable imps. Light mana ignited somewhere behind and off to her side, causing the pulsing of the floating beas of light te with an iion of raw power. A veritable storm of brilliantly shining arrows filled the air, raining down on all the imps as they scampered around the battlefield. By now her Hobgoblins were familiar with ’s powerful damage enha, and they reacted with booming shouts of their own to further enhahe melee attacks.
Ali cast her senses broadly across the expanse of the battlefield and as soon as she detected the spell-formation for an empowered fireball, she summoned her barrier to block it from bsting into Mato and the wargs. In her haste, she had ahe barrier poorly and it shattered from the devastating explosion, but the hellfire rained down in sizzling gobs hitting bare rocky ground and missing the monsters it had been inteo heal. The imp that had fired it materialized in midair amid the spray of tinkling golden shards and burning bits of hellfire ao the ground with a painful-sounding thump she could hear from all the way over by the healers. A shining arrow of light smmed into the demon, pinning it to the ground, and instantly it turned into fme, telep to one of the nearby pools of burning hellfire.
“That is a stupidly good teleport,” Ali muttered, keeping her entary quiet enough that it wouldn’t distract as he peppered the battlefield with unily accurate shots.
Ali ighe fickle demon, leaving it to . She didn’t have the mental bandwidth to harass it with her barrier shards – all her left-over capacity oured into defending her healers and herself from stray fireballs and the never-ending hail of fme arrows raining down about them. With what little remained, she attempted to interfere with the fireballs that whizzed aonated all around, angling barriers to deflect them out of harm’s way.
As if she had suddenly been dunked into a cool pool of soothing waters, relief flooded her mind and body as the pain of the Agony of Fme faded and the curse expired.
“One minute,” announced. “Agony down.”
Thank goodness! So much was going on that it was hard to believe that it was only just the first minute of bat, but Malika’s effect was bei – the warlock failed to refresh the giant area curse. The monstrous caster couldn’t have been fully drained because it was still tossing the Explosive fgration about, but the highly damaging curse was vastly more manageable without the ive resistane of her minions had been subjected to.
’s intense glow of ignited mana faded, and Ali spied the corpses of three of the imps lying dead on the rocks. As she took note of them, a double bst of lightning ripped the final imp out of the fireball it was riding and threw its bed, smoking corpse against the wall. It bounced and hit the ground and y unmoving, fmes extinguished.
“Imps are down. Hunter ,” called out the strategy calmly, shifting his focus.
No more fireballs! Ali breathed a sigh of relief and swiveled all her barriers, irely focused on blog fme arrows. At least the Fmecaller hunter was always shooting from a mostly predictable location. She tweaked the positions and targets for her remaining Sparkling Ooze ah’s Acolytes, happier with the locations their explosive magic was nding in, and directed her one remaining shaman to drop her Lightning Nova totem beside the Fmecaller. The hunter fired its arrow, vanishing from sight and leaving four illusory images behind. Four shining arrows of light from ’s bow struck through the ter of each image, dispersing them into sparks, and interrupting the hunter’s ability to Ambush.
“Good shot,” Ali observed, impressed with the speed with which he dispatched the illusion.
“Thanks, got lucky,” he answered. But it was far easier to be ‘lucky’ when the archer no longer had to also trate on pig off crazy imps riding fireballs in all dires.
As best she could with her remaining minions, she filled the spaear the Fmecaller hunter with explosions of light, death, and arg lightning, and began attag with as many barrier shards as she could spare. Over by the wall, a Hellfire Warg colpsed, and she reacted, dropping all her barrier shards in favor of a protective reventing the hellfire of its kin from reag the downed warg.
Mato reacted to her barrier, shifting sideways along his wall, dragging the remaining three wargs along with him.
“Stay,” Ali instructed, keeping one of her Hobgoblins standing over the downed corpse of the warg, and as soon as Mato had created some distance, she activated Minion Teleport, switg pces with her Hobgoblin and arriving right on top of the warg’s body.
“Don’t move”, she said, dishing out instrus to the same Hobgoblin, now waiting in her inal spot, and began destrug the corpse, keeping a watchful eye for stray arrows. As the warg turned into mana, refilling her pool, her teleport recharge expired and she switched back, right in time to see and her pitifully small, ratack group finish off the Fmecaller hunter.
“Let’s finish the wargs, Malika has the warloder trol,” called the strategy. It was the pn all along, but it sounded like didn’t like leaving things to ce.
With none of the ranged enemies remaining alive, save the drained warlock, Ali let her protective barriers drop, verting all her power into flying shards. The wargs dropped quickly to their bined assault, and she only had to destrue of them before the final two died simultaneously. After that, it was a simple matter to finish up the warlock.
“Took you guys long enough,” Malika said, grinning as Ali joined her to destruct the corpse.
“ime you chase down all the imps,” Ali offered.
“No thanks,” Malika said. “I like my cushy job.” She mimed pung an invisible Fmecaller several times.
“Pfft,” Ali said, feigning disi.
Variant: Fmecaller Warlock added to Imprint: Fmecaller.
Yay, more useless monster imprints. What a great reward!
----------
https:///DungeonOfKnowledge
https:///series/1135403/dungeon-of-knowledge
https:///fi/80744/dungeon-of-knowledge-raid-bat-litrpg
timewalk
