Devil's Waltz Read online

  “Huh?” Gabrielle blinked as the twins mumbled between each other. “Where did you hear that?” Maybe it was because no one else had a dark class other than the six darkies, the Bandit King, and Pirate Lord. And knowledge of the dark classes and dark mana was technically top-secret information thanks to the light faction leaders.

  Fidgeting not very gracefully, she mumbled, “Mrs. Westly told us in the school back at Greenwood Capital.”

  Oh. That explains it.

  “Trust me when I say that she lied or she was ignorant. You’re a Dark Human.” Gabrielle pointed at Viola’s chest. “Check your base dark resistance. Your dark affinity should be high enough for at least the lesser dark classes. That’s the main requirement. You’re not becoming a lowly light class, especially not one that might kill you like Paladin. Understand? Kay?” That’d be a good-enough, basic explanation which would quickly spread among the hundred. They didn’t need to know of the elemental exclusivity for the better classes nor of the power ranking—for now.

  She almost jumped on the spot. “What classes can I become?”

  So eager. Good. “I’ll tell ya when you’re level fifty. That’s the second requirement.”

  She wilted by a tad, but her enthusiasm did not crumble. “Alright. I will move onto the Greater Wisps, then Lesser Elementals when I get some better equipment.” She took a breath and turned, pausing for a second as she noticed the Nihil’s presence.

  “Ask Ambiguous to buy you and any others who want to train some gear and health potions, kay? She owes me.”

  Viola glanced over her shoulder, elated. “Okay!”

  Gabrielle exhaled and watched her figure disappear into the fog, releasing the little twinges of annoyance she had held back. Guiding and raising the lot of them was oh so lame.

  But at least they were orders of magnitude better than Rowan’s mindless undead… or the humans. Yup. No doubt. She shivered at the thought of regular humans. Monkeys.

  A group of minions could power level the lot, but that wouldn’t hammer out the weaker impurities tainting their personalities. They needed to drudge through the beginner trials and get used to combat situations like newbie players who’d never played an MMO or action-combat game before. They needed experience in more ways than one. Dark Humans seemed to know that on a subconscious level. None had asked for a power level, if any knew what one was. However, they were going to get one soon anyway.

  Oron stepped forward, his almost handsome features pushing aside mist. He said with a touch of concern, “Another zeppelin has arrived. Another fleet of ten with a command ship as well.”

  Gabrielle toughened her resolve and simply nodded. “Kay. Once Rowan’s back, we’ll go for an attack once we get some up.”

  “Will they have sufficient range?”

  A good question. “I scouted out the waters earlier. There’s some patches near the shield’s boundary shallow enough to build. My Worker Dolls can swim, so don’t worry.”

  His head inclined. “They can swim?”

  A dumb question. “They’re part water mana, ya silly.”

  He huffed. “My mistake.” He turned without any more dumb comments, those wings unfolding. He said from within the fog, “We’ll join in on an attack only if we’re sure of victory and that we’ll come out alive.”

  “Kay.”

  Gabrielle inwardly sighed. They were so, so scared of death for being so, so strong. Whatever was in the game’s Hell couldn’t be fun. She stretched her limbs and plopped back down next to Redwing, checked Rowan and Insane’s statuses, then reopened her castle foundation hologram. “Red. No more comments about my dummy Rowan, kay?”

  Redwing’s arm brushed against her hand in affirmation. Good teddy.

  Oh, and another dungeon portal key finished crafting. Gabrielle pulled the hexagon onyx from her pouch. A tier seven slime cave this time. Duo: two characters max. Better than nothing. Grabbing Redwing, she went ahead and activated it solo-mode for better loot. Speed-run time!

  Chapter 14

  Wolves

  Thunder boomed above the waiting portal atop a rocky knoll at the island’s precise center.

  Rowan constructed a final Skeleton Mage from the last of the bone shards. Pieces clicked into place in a flurry of pasty white, and his necromantic magic filled the gaps with deep-frozen slate ice. This one required far more filling. His mana drained by five percent.

  Lifeless, the skeleton flexed its neck and limb bones, stared at Rowan with misty eye sockets, bone staff held with a loose grip. Like the Bone Drake, it was a puppet lacking consciousness, an organic machine that’d idle and loiter until decay claimed its fleeting animation. To be surrounded by Undead, alone in a barren wasteland, was a cruel fate—as Rowan was this moment. Half a dozen Mages, fifteen Bone Pigeons, and two Bone Gargoyles lingered at his sides without a word or thought. The Drake flapped high overhead.

  Rowan swept his gaze across the landscape for another giant skeleton, or even a small skeleton, but the island was barren in the truest meaning. There was nothing else of value here. He wasn’t going to spend time excavating hard dirt.

  Close to an hour had already been spent converting the Gargoyle and Pigeon mana designs to bone on top of the brief duel with Not Insane. An hour and a half wasn’t much of a loss, but that could’ve been invested into a first-wave counterattack. Or perhaps a quick dungeon run. It was debatable whether this excursion was worth anything; the dinosaur’s bones were only slightly more durable than those conjured by Create Bone.

  A whiff of blood drifted by.

  Oh. Him.

  Rowan turned, boots scuffing. A twinge of anger quivered as he eyed Not Insane’s melting unrecognizable corpse across the slick battlefield. This had been all his doing. Bird-man. Sneering, Rowan skipped to the body with two blinks, then examined.

  [Player Corpse] Raven Lord: Level 216

  Integrity: 58%

  Decay: 0%

  Buffs: Light Freeze (reduces decay rate by 10%)

  Debuffs: Tainted (reduces armor)

  58% integrity—high enough for raising. Except it was nine levels out of grasp. Rowan had hit level 147, and Raise could only target corpses sixty levels higher at its current tier. Too bad, for a high-level Raven Lord minion would’ve been valuable considering it could undergo Ione’s Dark Conversion. This corpse would have to be kept under Deep Freeze in the town’s vault.

  Not if a tier point was used.

  Lips pinching, Rowan stared down that priceless skill tier point granted every twenty-five levels in his character sheet. Raise was easy to level in tiers. Simply raise more corpses. But the next tier would require three thousand raises if the numerical pattern held, and most corpses counted for only one or two raises, Demons counting for more on average, re-raises not counted. It’d take days if not weeks to find thousands. He’d have to regularly reapply the freeze.

  Screw it. I’m not looking after a damned corpse.

  A nervous twinge settled in his stomach as the ache of a phantom head-pummeling from Gabrielle rapped his scalp. It felt too real. Oh well. It was his character to mess up—and there was always a chance of the AI controller implementing a point reset. Nothing was set in granite even if most buildings were.

  The point was spent.

  Skill Tier Level-up (x1): Raise

  Raises a corpse to an Undead minion. Usable on skeletons. Corpse decay weakens the resulting minion.

  Skill Level: 65, 15%

  Skill Tier: 7

  Channel duration: 1.5 seconds.

  Mana Cost: 200

  Effect: 3 maximum targets. 6.5% fewer minion slots used, minimum 1 slot.

  Tier Effect: Not usable on targets of 70 or more levels than yourself. Cannot be used on World Bosses. Minion skill tiers are capped at your highest class skill tier.

  Rowan flicked his wand. “Raise,” he whispered in the dark language.

  Airy dark-ice mana, mostly dark, rushed from the bone wand, far more violently than usual, and flowed into the corpse, slo
wly at first, then grew into a maelstroming hemisphere. The magic repaired wounds and missing swaths of skin and muscle. Those ruined eyes reformed and bleached to a milky white. A standardized set of soulbound mythical rarity gear solidified. Not Insane’s facial structure, quite average-looking for a man, shifted into something more regal, and those many scars were no more save for one on his cheek. And another next to his eye.

  The magic subsided. The preserved Undead Raven Lord stood without a sound, a mental connection formed. The body would last indefinitely as long as it ate a plentiful diet of dark mana. Sazar’s ring and its mana aura came to the rescue yet again.

  Rowan checked its skills, expecting wonderland. His toes curled.

  Dismay violated his innards, cold daggers in his gut. The dueling ultimate skill was missing! The sense-robbing skill as well.

  Rowan groaned a sigh. Well, that explained why every one of his thirty-four Undead Water Mages had similar skills, none sporting an ultimate. Undead minions were standardized to a tee, skills and professions included. What a bloody shame, a goddamn waste. Rowan stretched his back, flattened his oddly clean robes. It was time to leave.

  Gray dust kicked into the air while his boots trudged toward the portal. His crafted Undead filtered through an extensive rock formation behind him. He came out of a Rime Blink and breathed dry air by the mud-caked lake, leaving a bland, bitter taste at the back of his mouth. This whole pocket dimension was miserable, nothing like Ambiguous’. Onward he went, blinking and blinking without thought. His minions kept up quite well. The island was bigger than he had estimated.

  He paused six blinks short of the portal as lightning tore through the clouds, brighter than usual. It struck a dead tree atop a gentle incline by the ruins, the remains of a keep or mansion, at the island’s right side cliff overlooking the infinite void. A nagging inner voice urged Rowan to explore in case Not Insane had hid something useful there.

  Fine. It wouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes to check it out. “Stay by the portal,” he said to the Raven Lord minion. “You’re going to be somebody one day.”

  The minion didn’t respond.

  “Silent treatment after I invested so much into you?”

  It stared at the dry river.

  “You’re more useless than Bird-man.” Rowan sniffed sadly. What a waste of a skillpoint. He discarded this mistake, yet again promised to do better, and went off toward those ruins.

  The melancholic feel of undiluted dark mana oozed into him as he neared. Whatever Bird-man had hid was powerful, invisible dark mana evenly dispersed throughout the area.

  But it turned out to be nothing. The ruins were nothing more than a series of crumbling basalt walls and foundations atop the same grayish-brown cracked ground. No signs of moved earth or burials were present.

  Just ambient dark magic, Rowan concluded, scowling. Who knew Not Insane was this useless, unable to build up his own pocket dimension to something respectable when he was a bloody level 216. Had he even leveled a single profession? Probably not. Rowan couldn’t see a guy like him maintain the stomach-clenching patience for one. No wonder his gear was so shabby without a single visible legendary piece.

  I should just bar him from my kingdom and be done with him… but I need all the allies I can rope in.

  Mumbling a curse, Rowan turned with a brisk walk and whipped the skeletons with an intention to rush back to the—

  The ambient concentration of pure dark mana spiked to an almost unbearable level, and Rowan had to buffer against it with his own else he risked falling into a well of hate and despair. His eyes snapped to the ground. Tiny wisps of darkness leaked between the cracks by a wall. There was something buried.

  A wicked smile pulled at his cheeks as giddiness curled in his muscles. Bird-man’s treasure was his for the taking. A tax and payment of apology for this stunt. Rowan was the king of Aeon’s upcoming dark empire after all. He deserved the dues.

  The Gargoyles landed and dug, slashing and hacking with powerful claws. The rocky, hardened soil gave way scoop after scoop, a foul smell marring the earth in places.

  Rowan hardened his Mana Shield, reinforced to the max, his wand out and prepared for a trap just in case. Disgusting scents usually meant trouble.

  One foot was dug. Then two feet. Three. Not Insane sure was a good digger.

  Finally, at the fifth feet, a Gargoyle’s claws hit something immovable.

  Rowan pulled them back to prevent damage to the treasure. Recalling the technique for the classless Water Bolt skill, he sprayed the excavation cavity with lower-power bolts until a masonry started emerging from the mud. A straight-cut edge surfaced, and Rowan upped the rate of bolts in impatience. What cleared almost made him drop his wand.

  Not Insane’s treasure? Give me a break.

  It couldn’t be, for it was stone—the same type of stone of the Dark Temple at Stonehurst. That shade of slate and charcoal was unmistakable, not a patch of erosion anywhere, not a scratch where the Gargoyles had struck. And when Rowan ordered one to strike once with full force, not even the tiniest of blemishes were scored. It was nigh invulnerable.

  But was this a Dark Temple? It refused his Examines.

  Maybe a vault built by Not Insane? No, the chances of that were microscopic. Numerous questions challenged Rowan. Where had he gotten the stone? How could’ve he even shaped it? It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. This structure was not built by him, and Rowan would bet one of his real life kidneys on it. Maybe that dueling ultimate skill had procedurally generated this pocket dimension. Not Insane would’ve noticed the gushing dark mana here.

  There was but one way to solve this mystery: more earth needed to be moved. Rowan wiped away frozen sweat beads on his forehead. The Gargoyles sprang back into work.

  He squirted his hose wherever their claws met the structure, tedious but mollifying work; a desire for a Builder’s profession tome sprouted. The seconds blinked by at the top-right of his game interface. Minutes rolled on, and before he knew it, the top of the thing’s sealed entrance emerged from the mud, still refusing an Examine. Whatever the structure was, or whatever lingered inside, better be worth the effort, for his demanding Gabrielle wasn’t going to be pleased if he crawled back to her empty handed.

  Growing mounds of clay piled against the ruin walls. Murky waters trickled down the slope into the riverbed. Eventually after what felt like thousands of Water Bolts, three entrance and three front steps washed clear of earth, the gargoyles caked in frozen mud. Rowan gave them a thorough wash, then examined the entrance. Symbols he didn’t recognize engraved the entrance. His breath hitched as the dialog faded in.

  [Functional Building] Dark Tomb (T6)

  Health: ?

  Armor: ?

  Resistances: ?

  Functionalities: ?

  Augmentations: ?

  Instinctively, Rowan presented his palm to the hexagon onyx at the vertical seam. He fed it his power.

  The gem flared with fiery black magic, and the entrance split with a protesting groan as though the stone itself didn’t want whatever was held down there released. The ambient dark mana intensified and resonated with Sazar’s Ring at his finger and Cracked Necromancer’s Keystone at his thumping chest, but he had long gotten used to its gloom during the dig. He was the lord of darkness, the ruler of an empire.

  And judging from the tomb’s tier, this dungeon was at a perfect difficult level.

  Rowan glanced up to his Bone Drake. “Wait by the entrance. You’re far too big to fit in there.”

  It didn’t even look back at him, only giving a mechanical, scripted response through the mental link.

  He positioned the two Gargoyles ahead while the Pigeons and Mages stayed in defensive formation around him. They too were scripted automatons. Sighing a lungful of foul muddy air, Rowan stepped forward.

  The air inside rippled as his boot touched the first step. His Draconian eyes and Night Vision passive could not pierce into the gloom, and on second inspection,
something about the ambient dark mana was off—not the regular type of ambience he could draw from. Its texture was runny, and it saturated the air in a fleeting way. If he reached out with his consciousness, it’d slip by his grasp and filter into his mind’s depths.

  If only he had Gabrielle or Ambiguous to consult. Or…

  Rowan opened the web browser, but its connection was also blocked. Of course, it would be. Such a loophole would render the communication-block moot. The only way around was logging out and sending her mail from the real world. He almost hit the logout button as one little tidbit hit him in the head: he had no phone on his person, and Gabrielle’s was more than likely password protected. Nor did he have her contact details. Damned Bird-man. This was all his fault.

  This dungeon better be worth my time.

  Casting Ball Light with his free left palm, Rowan further buffered against the gloom and followed the Gargoyles in. Silver and gold engravings, the dark language, decorated the walls in squarish-triangle patterns, similar to that Dark Temple. He recognized one out of twenty to thirty symbols.