“Unique locations inside the world of NEMO could be discovered by lucky explorers. These hidden lands could offer danger and treasure in equal measure. Entire groups of players dedicated themselves to seeking out these secrets and sharing them with the world.”

  From “Hidden Lands: Finding the Forgotten”

  Year 1, Month 2, Day 10, 18:00

  The party emerged into a vast domed chamber. The ceiling at the center of the room rose over one hundred feet high. A bone and flesh monstrosity pulsing with necrotic energy dominated the center of the space. It stood motionless, not yet activated.

  Scaffolding surrounded the undead construct. Motion in the room caught the attention of the party. Partially fleshed undead creatures with glowing red eyes moved through the scaffolding, attending to the beast.

  Allestor exclaimed, “Oh Hell No! They’re trying to turn that thing on.”

  “Kill them fast!” Torgon yelled. He pulled the string on his bow and started firing. He commanded the skeletal archers to engage as well. Dusty and Allestor rushed forward, the skeletal spearmen accompanying Dusty and the swordsmen with Allestor. Stabitha moved with the pair, providing healing support and dragging a handful of lower level undead out of her inventory to help.

  Hyperia hurled magical strikes into the scaffolding, coating areas with ice and making the footing treacherous. One of the undead tumbled down thirty feet and smashed into the floor. Bones splintered and flesh ripped, but the figure began crawling towards the party with malevolent intent.

  The unengaged undead kept attending to the monstrosity. Thick bands of magical energy formed, pushing power into the creature. Miasma began spreading along the floor and slowly rising. Runes of activation began to glow on the feet of the giant undead construct.

  The air in the chamber thrummed and pulsed with growing magical force. The hairs on the back of Torgon’s neck rose in primal fear. The energy was worse than death. It was unclean and inimical to the world itself.

  One by one the creatures fell, but their work carried on. The runes on the monstrosity began lighting up higher and higher, climbing the legs and reaching the torso. Mana began to slowly drain from everything in the area. Torgon found that his regeneration had slowed, and he felt his skin growing numb from the rising level of necrotic energy.

  He cast spells on everyone in the party to clear away the disease stacks that had started to accumulate. His hands found a mana potion, uncorked the cap and downed the contents. The beast in the center of the room kept pulling all the mana away and he needed the potions to keep casting. Hyperia had swapped to using a bow to conserve her own mana.

  An unwelcome system announcement greeted them.

  “The Entropy Golem has awoken. Slay the creation to succeed in the trial. Normal death penalties are tripled.”

  Black eyes that absorbed the light around them snapped open. Twin beams of lambent darkness snapped out and shattered one of the skeletal swordsmen hacking at the feet of the golem. Torgon’s brain shorted out for a moment from the paradoxical nature of the attack. He yelled, “Dusty, don’t get hit. Allestor, good luck with that thing. I don’t want to find out what the rest of its attacks are.”

  Allestor gave Torgon a rude two-finger salute and scampered up the scaffolding to strike at the golem’s chest. His sword carved lines into the undead creation’s chest that leaked oily black smoke. He dodged a ponderous swing of an arm that crumpled the wooden framework as it passed by.

  Dusty pounded at the monster’s ankles. Stabitha lent her aid by tossing potions at its joints. Her potions caught fire briefly but sputtered out as the beast absorbed the magical energy. She swapped to a different mix, trying to glue their foe in place or at the very least, slow it down to keep it from crushing them.

  The skeletal minions added their damage to the fight. The archers kept firing arrow after arrow that marked the decaying flesh of the golem. It slowly began to resemble a hedgehog with the shafts buried deep in its body. The skeletal mages fired weak force bolts that did little damage and soon charged forward with their staves to fight at close range.

  The entropy golem tilted its head back and roared. An incongruously glowing black cloud billowed forth, catching Allestor in the area of effect. He cried out in pain, “That hurts! Torg, it’s a stacking damage over time and weakness debuff. Cleanse it if you can.”

  Torgon cast cure disease to no effect. He tried cure poison and remove curse as well, but they did nothing. “I can’t fix it Allestor, what kind of debuff is it?”

  Allestor ducked another swipe and jumped to a section of scaffolding behind the golem. He staggered on his landing, his balance affected by the magic. He shouted again, “It’s called the Plague Curse. I can’t get any other information.” He drank a healing potion to top his health up and continued hacking away at the golem.

  Torgon yelled, “I’m going to try something. It’ll either work or I’m going to be so low on mana that we won’t need to worry about my healing.” He stashed his bow in his inventory and began dual casting spells. He cast remove curse with his right hand and cure disease with his left. He timed them to land together and watched as the magical glow enveloped Allestor.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Allestor yelled, “It worked! It grants immunity to the effect for 15 seconds too. If the golem attacks that way again, cast it immediately.”

  Torgon reequipped his bow and unleashed a fusillade of arrows at their foe. Its health dipped slowly, just passing the 80% mark. Its enormous feet crushed more of the minions surrounding it. Only a single skeletal mage survived along with two swordsmen and two spearmen.

  Stabitha alternated casting heals and throwing potions and oils on the monster. She threw several vials of oil that coated the monster’s lower half and then yelled to Hyperia. Hyperia fired a flame bolt that ignited the creature. The wooden scaffolding surrounding the monster also caught fire, forcing Allestor to swing down a rope and move to the ground.

  The golem stumbled to a knee and put a hand down to brace itself. Allestor and Dusty attacked its head when it was in range. It opened its mouth again and a wave of frost spread across the room. The fires extinguished, but they had served their purpose, pushing the health of the monster below 70%.

  Stabitha kept throwing a variety of potions to hinder the movement of the entropy golem. Thick viscous glue coated the elbows, knees, ankles and wrists of the monstrosity. The party could dodge the attacks easily now, keeping their damage high and taking little damage.

  The boss’s health kept dropping at a visible rate. The combined fire from the skeletal archers and the attacks of the party drained away the magical energy that powered its form. When it reached 50% a wave of negative energy burst from the golem, dissolving all the glue and hurling everyone backwards.

  The giant rushed to the archers and smashed two of them into pieces immediately. Dusty tried to regain the aggro, but the boss ignored her and focused on crushing the skeletal archers. Only two remained when the berserk rage ended. Stabitha flung even more fragile vials of glue, coating the bone and flesh joints all over again.

  Hyperia eyed Stabitha askance, “How many more of those vials do you have?”

  Stabitha laughed as she healed Dusty, “Plenty. They stack to 100 like the rest of the potions. You never know when magic won’t work on something.”

  When the golem dropped to 25% health, it froze in place. Its mouth opened and a glowing black cloud began issuing forth, expanding to fill the entire chamber. The plague curse spread to everyone in the party and visibility dropped to near nothing.

  Shouts and cries of pain rang out as everyone’s flesh and spirit suffered in equal measure. Torgon cleansed himself and yelled, “Form up at the golem. I’ll heal everyone and keep trying to damage it. It’s not attacking except for the cloud. It’s a burn phase.”

  The group stacked at the legs of the golem and attacked as fast as they could manage. Stabitha healed the damage everyone suffered while Torgon dual cast remove curse and cure disease. The fifteen seconds of immunity gave him time to cycle through the group and drink potions.

  “Hyperia, give me all your spare mana potions,” Torgon begged. She passed him her stacks of potions, and he kept casting and drinking while they kept attacking. He paused briefly to vomit up the contents of his stomach, wiped his mouth and sucked down another mana potion.

  One of the legs of the boss severed completely and it topped onto its side, the mouth still spewing the noxious cloud. After a few long minutes the last of its health drained away and the cloud began to disperse. Torgon was forced to continue casting on all of them until the cloud dissipated. The last twenty minutes of his life had been distilled down to casting, drinking and puking.

  An announcement from the system confirmed their success.

  “Congratulations! You have defeated the Entropy Golem and completed the Trial of Destruction!”

  Their world shifted and they found themselves once more in the chamber with Regulus. Torgon immediately fell to his knees and continued to throw up the spent remains of the mana potions he had been forced to consume. Regulus waited patiently until Torgon picked himself up off the floor. With a wave of his bony hand, Regulus cleaned the floor and Torgon.

  He spoke, “You have successfully completed the three trials. I hope that this will arm you with knowledge in your fights to come. There are other Entropy Golems inside the ruins of the city here. The guiding force behind the mockery of remains of the Morzeshi Empire will seek to activate them and send them against the towns and cities.”

  The towering skeletal figure regarded each of them, “I would task you with finishing what we could not, the eradication of the cursed disease that destroyed our empire.”

  A system message popped into Torgon’s view.

  “Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Repository of the Forgotten Empire Instance. You have been awarded 5,000 free experience points.”

  Regulus continued, “There are many rewards for you. Chief among them is this space itself. When you exit, you will be granted an item that will let you plant an archway that creates a portal to my research labs. You may activate it inside your guild base. It provides bonuses to the creation of automatons, golems, undead and other non-thinking creations that can be used to fight, work or other simple tasks.”

  “I will remain inside the space to offer my wisdom. If you allow it, I can wander around your base. I would love to find new books to read.”

  Dusty bounced up and down, “We are going to have so much fun!”

  Regulus indicated a chest that materialized in front of him. “Please open this and then we can begin the first chapter of our journey together.”

  Torgon moved to the ornate chest and ran his hands over the carved wood. “Can we keep the chest too?”

  A rasping laugh echoed from the chronicler, “Yes. I think you will enjoy your rewards.”

  Torgon unhooked the clasp securing the lid and opened the chest. New screens popped up detailing their rewards.

  “Your party has been awarded 4 common dungeon cores. Your party has been awarded the Repository of the Forgotten Empire extra-dimensional space.”

  “You have been awarded an ornate wooden chest. You have been awarded a comfy chair. You have been awarded the advanced skillbook, Fused Casting.”

  Torgon sighed contentedly, “Thank you Regulus. I am going to love sitting in this chair when I get the opportunity.”

  Torgon messaged Ovarrix, “We’re finally finished. How’s it looking outside?”

  The reply back was quick, “It’s clearish. We might have to fight our way through some patrols from SPQR. They’re running their little legions around trying to start fights.”

  Torgon looked back to Regulus, “How does this space thing work? Do you want to travel with us, or will you have to stay inside until we get back to the guild base?”

  Regulus spoke, “When you leave the portal, it will detach from the area and move to a small cube in your inventory. At your base, plant the cube where you like and it will spring into an archway with a portal connecting this space. I will remain inside until the portal is opened at your base and you allow me to exit. These bones are a bit too old for much traveling.”

  Allestor did a few stretches and waved them over. “Let’s get going. I need to kill something that’s not already dead.”