I retargeted the smaller one and loosed the
A deafening crack from the pistol echoed loudly through the chamber as he put a round into its torso. The creature jerked back slightly with a grunt, but didn’t stop. I unleashed the
Sam attempted to parry one of the striking tentacles, his rapier skittered harmlessly off it. He jumped back, giving himself more space, shifting further down the pool side area to give room between him and the beast. In less than a heart beat, the weapon disappeared into [Inventory], and was replaced by a cutlass. He gave it a quick swing as if to remind himself of its weight and ensure his grip, and then stepped forward back into range of the tentacles.
Movement caught my eye, the little one again, creeping up out of the water a little further beyond Sam. I discouraged it with my next
The larger creature finally heaved itself fully onto the poolside. Out of the water, its crocodile-like body was unmistakable: thick scales, powerful shoulders, and six muscular legs that propelled it forward quickly despite the bulk. Four pincer tipped tentacles writhed around its head, occasionally they stabbed towards Sam, who was slowly backing away around the pool.
I hit it with another
The smaller one, all attempts of subtlety now dismissed, exploded out of the water with a loud splash, rebounded off the wall and spun to face the human. It earnt a bullet to the face for its trouble, the gunshot reverberating loudly even from my position on the floor above. I followed up with my next spell and Sam used the momentary stun from it to somersault over its back, severing off a rear limb as he landed. He dived out of the way of the smaller creature's tail swipe, putting some more distance between it and the threats.
The bigger beast ignored its wounded companion entirely, barreling straight through it to get to Sam, black ichor pulsing from its severed tentacle. A sharp report rang out, Sam blowing apart another tentacle before holstering that pistol. How many rounds was that he had fired? I asked myself, ten seconds for each to reload while holstered didn’t seem long before, but now it seemed like an eternity.
The creature pressed its attack, forcing Sam to back away constantly, from my position I would only have eyes on him until just past the corner. I’d have to move around the hole to keep eyes on him and that would mean scrabbling over the back of the chairs bolted securely to the left of the hole…I had no idea how stable that area was…was it just that one spot which had given way or was the whole room completely compromised? No choice though, not unless I wanted to abandon him to his fate.
The smaller looked less healthy, should I focus fire it down? Or keep alternating to give Sam breathing room…would the stun effect even keep working? It’s not unusual in games for mobs to gain a resistance to such status effects if they are spammed with them…
I cast another
I checked my Mana, just over half left and shifted myself around the edge of the hole, preempting the need to move so I wouldn’t be scrambling later to do it.
I thought the little one might have tried to go through the pool or around it, but instead it seemed to be looking up at me, as if realising I was here for the first time. The sound of me moving I realised. There was a ‘hurrack’ noise and a glob of bright green, almost glowing, slime erupted from its mouth in my direction.
By instinct, I shifted back. It missed me by millimetres, which for me is fortunate, because the seat it landed on started sizzling, I decided it was not something I wanted to received first hand experience of. I looked over, fired another
Glad I had moved, Sam had been pushed back some more and would definitely have been out of my sight if I had stayed where I was. I pulled back to dodge another spit attack, cast a
I quickly scrambled over another row of chairs before looking down to check on the situation. Sam had mixed things up. He was now on the other side of the smaller one, hacking at one of its legs. The larger of the two had lost a front limb and was down to one tentacle. The slide marks on the ground and wall, implying he dived by the large one and then wall walked past the small one. For once, I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight in this fight. The sharp retort echoed across the room again as Sam fired another shot.
I considered how I was nice and dry, and in relatively no danger…I really wasn’t pulling my weight. I hopped over the back of the chair, easier going this way, what with being able to stand on the seat part. Prepared the spell, leaned out, targeted the first of the two I saw, released, ducked back into cover. No green blob followed.
Jumped the next row, got back on the stairs, charged up another
“Kill stealer!” he shouts out at me with a laugh, I let out a relieved laugh.
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Sam’s plan to get back out involved a buoyancy ring with a surprisingly robust rope on it. He took a few minutes to tie a few knots to aid his grip and recover his stamina, before he chucked it up to me. I wedged the ring behind a pair of seats on a row bolted to the ground, wrapped the rope around the chairs support strut, before throwing the rest of the rope down below. It was just long enough to be skimming the top of the surface. I then stood on the ring for good measure.
There was a ‘Hiyup’ from below and the rope was suddenly in tension and swinging back and forth. The sound of the strain on it didn’t strike me as good.
I could hear the sound of him getting closer and closer from below. I started to worry the rope might snap and send him back into the water below, when a dark green slime covered hand reached up, grabbed the leg of the chair at the end of the row, just above where it was secured to the floor and Sam pulled himself up.
I went to high five him and thought better of it when I almost gagged from the smell.
Sam hopped over the chairs and moved to the front of the room to retrieve the reason we were here in the first place. I looked down the hole, at the water below, the sides of the pool with the cleared areas revealing the white stones beneath…something was bothering me…
“Ahh bugger” Sam said from the front of the room. I looked up at him. He had a bit of shiny foil in his hand. “It’s just a sweet wrapper,” he announced, supposedly having gone through all that for nothing. I looked down again and I realised what I had been missing, what had caused the niggle that had bothered me.
“You stored the corpses?” I asked.
Sam tried to look innocent. It wasn’t successfully.
I made sure to stand upwind of Sam as we made our way back up the stairs to the Manor House and its working showers.
When we arrived, Sam split off to make use of the facilities, while I headed to the back garden with the target dummy. I wanted to give Peachy’s idea a go.
I sat down not too far away from the dummy and considered how I was going to do this, while my mana pool finished refilling. I tried just imagining myself casting two
I tried forming one in my left hand and holding it while I formed the other in my right hand. I could feel the pain in my head from a growing headache. I also discovered that the longer I held a spell, the more mana it cost me to do so. The spell also felt like it was becoming increasingly unstable and the more it did that the more effort it took me to keep a hold of it. Once I could no longer concentrate on casting the second spell, I released the first spell at the dummy. The unstable spell felt weaker to me than the normal casts did, it hit more like a whimper than a bang.
I considered how the spell felt in my left hand and in my right…there was a difference between them…it was minute…but it was there…i tried casting a spell as quickly as I could with my left. Then my right. Alternating between them. I got a feel for the spell and then tried to imagine what that would feel like with both at the same time…
Half an hour later, Sam found me in the mausoleum, talking to Wendy about what I had discovered. Turns out you can indeed cast two spells at the same time…if you don’t mind the fact it costs half again as much mana for each spell. So tripling the cost, for twice the benefit, or that it minimises the damage each spell could potentially do, in other words, never crit. You also need to be willing to suffer the backlash, as the human brain isn’t naturally inclined to doing the same things like that, which means you need to be more careful when putting together the spell images in your mind. Failure of one, will fail them both, and still expend the energy. If you are lucky.
She also explained that it is considerably easier and less risky to cast two completely different spells, and something you need to learn to do to combine spells from different schools…so I didn’t feel completely bad as my health pool slowly recovered from the damage I had taken when my one of my attempts backfired and my own magic turned on me. I can only imagine what Sam was thinking when he found me sitting on the stairs, healthbar at the halfway point, blood stains around my eyes and ears, and a huge grin on my face as I stared at the last two notifications from the system.
‘You applied experimentation to discover a way to apply your magic, Intelligence increased’
‘You have unlocked the [Dual Caster] title.’
Once I had managed to convince him my self-inflicted injury wasn’t fatal, and with Sam clean and us both heavily injured, we headed to the dining room to share another meal and discuss the fight. I pulled out the kebabs he had given me earlier, but he waved them away, retrieving his own.
“So, what went well?” I said starting us off before taking a bite.
“Yourspell, the stun component, was opening up a vulnerability that I was able to exploit for extra damage. I also think it was doing some significant internal damage. Not as obvious as some of my slices, but more damaging, less superficial.”
“Lack of damage numbers are making it surprisingly difficult to gauge how effective my spells are… I could be doing more injury if I just swung the stick. I thought I was just making it easier for you to hit.” I replied before finishing off one of the kebabs and starting on the next
“No, those spells are definitely digging in. When I butchered the rats earlier some of the meat was already partially cooked. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the large one died more to having it brain cooked by that last spell than the rest of the damage we had done. We should experiment more with rats in the sail loft. See if we can critically one shot the right body parts. The decapitation killed the smaller one.”
“Speaking off, I thought you changing your weapon mid-fight was a smart move. Those tentacles were keeping you away from anything vulnerable. You were also a lot more nimble than I had seen you move before.”
“Parkour. Mispent youth.” he laughed, I grinned. “The System rewarded me with a point of dex and a skill for it. The Rapier is better, I lost the full set bonus when I stored it, but the cutlass let me do more slashing damage, which let me cut through body parts.”
“Do you have to store the rapier?”I asked. “It had a sheath, maybe that would allow you to keep the bonus, while wielding a different weapon.”
Sam stood up and pulled the rapier and it’s sheath out of his storage, attached its to his belt and then drew the cutlass. “Yeah…that works. Could be better if?”
“We didn’t split the party.” I said, “being so far out the danger felt wrong somehow.”
“Nah, that actually made it easier, all I had to do was worry about not getting hit…I usually try to avoid playing a tank, not a fan of the stress of trying to ensure people other than me aren’t getting hit. Besides, you couldn’t see it from up top, but that room was sealed. The ceiling had collapsed near the only doors. There might have been, but I couldn’t see another way out. I might have been able to throw the rope up, but no guarantee it would have been secured. I also think they were ignoring you until you moved around. They might have been blind. The only source of light was the hole. The fight might have been easier, but your oversight also helped…consider the start of the fight, we might have been ambushed…”
“True…”
“But being out of the fight feels cheap?” he suggested.
“Yeah.”
“For me, it was that I should have been more aware. The full didn’t hurt, but my stamina bar took a hit and I just didn’t consider that there might be hostiles hiding in the water. If you hadn't called out or sparked that second one I might have been seriously injured by either of them.”
“Sparked?” I grinned, liking the verb for my spell, “Which is a point in the ‘split the party’ column, if I had been down with you, I probably would have missed them as well. Splitting the party is bad though…even if it does sometimes work out.”
“Yes. Bad.” he agreed. “Exceptions don’t disprove the rule.” he nodded sagely.