Well, We Ain’t Dead

  It wasn’t easy to watch. The monster was already dead, but she was screaming and lashing out with arms and feet, and only stopped screaming when she bit into it. She’d already cast one spell from her hitpoints, and I could feel the energy coalescing for a second one.

  “Anna, it’s dead. Anna, we’re fine. We’re safe, it’s over,” I said, trying to keep my voice as loud and steady as I could in my own exhausted state. She went rigid and, after a moment managed to relax. She said “Fuck.”

  Zack and Hannah pulled the corpse off of her, and she looked a fucking mess. She’d been bitten several times, true, but I expected that the overchanneling of magic had left her pale as a sheet, and I didn’t think the blood dripping out of the corners of her mouth came from the dead ghoul.

  There was an explosion and all of us jumped, looking around in a panic. It was four confetti cannons. A banner dropped from the ceiling. It had stars drawn on it. In what looked like crayon. It said “CONGRATIONS!” I swore, and looked around for more danger or anything else that the architect of this place might be saying. I didn’t wait long, because my friend was hurt. I sat down cross legged opposite to where Anna had got back in a sitting position and trembling.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ll be fine, I have healing,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “There’s nothing weird about someone freaking out when they’re about to die,” she yelled at me.

  “Okay,” said.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. There’s nothing weird about freaking out when you think you’re going to die,” I said.

  “I’m not going to say anything more about this,” she said.

  “Anything I can do to help?” I said.

  “Say something funny,” she said.

  “Little Johnny was sitting on the bridge, crying his eyes out. Neighbor from the house next door walks by and asks: ‘what’s wrong?’. Johnny responds: ‘Peter from school threw my bread in the river.’ The neighbor asks: ‘with intent?’ Johnny answers: ‘no with cheese’ and starts crying,” I said.

  She looked at me confused. In fact, so did Hannah and Zack.

  “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Anna said.

  Zack started laughing. Anna held out for a moment, then broke into laughter in the middle of saying: ‘It doesn’t even make sense, is it a translation or something?”

  “And I am also here,” Hannah said, deadpan. Which made Zack laugh harder.

  And it was almost sort of like everything was alright.

  I checked the surroundings. A hundred-ish corpses were laying scattered about the gym. The few blade traps we’d triggered by “cheating” had been jammed full of monsters and their parts long before the end of the marathon encounter. I noticed the completely fucked up bleachers.

  “Oh, Zack, how the fuck are you even alive,” I said.

  “Found this under the seats,” he said, raising up a reusable water bottle, “Full of rubbing alcohol.”

  “Booze helps you that much? I was ready to write you off,” I said.

  “Booze, seven in endurance, it adds up. I have an ability called puke and rally that basically gets me back into a fight once an hour as if I was at a 100% if I’m drinking,” he said.

  “Where the fuck does that guy get off,” I said.

  “It’s fine, not like any of us is likely to live long enough to worry about liver damage,” Zack said.

  “You don’t get liver damage from booze anymore,” Hannah said.

  “According to the MAN,” Zack said.

  “The Journal. It doesn’t lie,” Hannah said.

  “It hasn’t lied yet,” Zack said.

  “As far as we know,” I said at the same time.

  “Can’t believe we survived that. I mean it was fine while it was bees and goblins, but that manticore, I mean, how did it even fit?” Zack said.

  “Magic,” Anna said.

  “There’s space behind the walls. Or something like space,” I said.

  “More like nothingness,” Anna said.

  “Hard to explain, you’ve got to see it for yourself,” I said.

  “Snooping where you shouldn’t too, Alex?” Anna said.

  “ABS, Always Be Snooping,” I said.

  Then the adrenaline and the giddiness ran out, and we plopped down on the seats that were still undemolished by Zack. Well, three of us sat except for Hannah. Zack’s healing ability was, entirely unsurprisingly, related to alcohol. While he was injured and drunk, the alcohol was somehow metabolized at an accelerated rate, which somehow supposedly regenerated his cells. I don’t know why the ability description said that, because the truth was obviously that he arbitrarily got sober and healed with magic. Hannah had passive regeneration while she had mana, though, of course, if she wanted to keep her mind, she needed to always have her mana as high as possible, so it trickling down was not a good idea.

  So it was the two of us squishies that had the least convenient healing abilities. I, of course, had to get my ass in one of the hatches where the monsters had come through. I wasn’t very injured, but all my magic items were spent and they refreshed when I took a rest to heal. Anna’s healing ability was pretty gnarly too. It was called Cauterize and it was pretty much what it said on the tin. She could use her mana to heal herself with magic, which was very convenient, but she had to use fire spells and would feel the burning even as it healed her, which obviously was not. She insisted that she could keep the fire low enough to be just kind of annoying instead of painful, but I really didn’t like the sound of that.

  But, of course, she was a grown ass woman and she needed to get healed as soon as possible, so I didn’t say anything. She did need to recover mana, and didn’t really know how to meditate, so I gave her some pointers as I limped off (the ghoul bite had paralyzed the muscles directly surrounding the bite, but it didn’t seem like it was spreading) to the hatch in the wall where the monsters had come out of.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I had my usual contemplation and navelgazing session in the small hatch, but came to no new revelations. The tiny room was also not actually connected to the darkness in the walls as Anna and myself had assumed. But I was healed up and full of mana, and so I left the hole and found the rest of my party there.

  Hannah and Zack were mostly the same as they always were, which is to say stoic and much too chatty respectively. Zack was talking Hannah’s ear off about some nerd minutia too obscure even for myself, but she seemed to not be bothered by it. The smell of burning hair and the red blotches on Anna’s arm belied how comfortable she had claimed it was to be healed by fireballs or whatever, but otherwise she seemed to be recovered.

  “We all good?” I said.

  “Ready to rumble,” Zack said.

  “Alright, let’s check our rewards and get out of here,” I said.

  “Oh, we already got ‘em. It’s just you,” Zack said.

  “What? That’s mean, Tower etiquette clearly insists that you wait for everybody to be healed to check your rewards,” I said.

  “Tower etiquette?” Anna said.

  “You are not missing anything. We are as confused as you,” Hannah said.

  “Well I always waited to check my abilities until my party members were ready,” I said.

  “Yeah, I think that’s a you thing,” Hannah said.

  “Whatever, I bet Artemis would agree,” I said.

  “Artemis is always the last to check her rewards because she fusses over everyone. She’s fussy,” Zack said.

  “Speak not so of our glorious leader,” Hannah said.

  “Artemis is the coolest person in this whole Tower,” I said.

  “I mean, yeah, obviously. Thus we can joke about her,” Zack said.

  “Let’s not talk about her when she’s not here. I don’t like it,” I said.

  “Fair enough, dude. It was out of line, I’m sorry,” Zack said.

  “Went too far,” Hannah said.

  “So, anyways, you get anything cool?” I said.

  It turned out that there had been a lot of experience. It made sense, because we had killed a lot of monsters, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d been shafted by this special event having special rules. Each of them had gained a full level, and I was over half-way to 12. They were all both lower level than I, and also hadn’t just gained a level before coming into the room.

  Hannah and Anna had both hit level ten, getting a new class ability. Hannah now had the ability to inscribe runes in her weapons, which glowed with a green fire, and could choose from a variety of options from dispelling to additional elemental or necrotic damage. Anna got a simple ability that let her fire overcome some fire resistance and burn hotter in general, which I absolutely would have taken in her place too. Anna was also a little bitter about increasing her Enlightenment attribute to 4, maxing out her Mind stat, which would have allowed her to pick wizard as had been her initial plan, but since her fire sorcerer class was far from bad she wasn’t too mad about it.

  Zack had hit level 9, and gained another ability for his Drunk title. It was called ‘toilet wine’ and he could turn any carbs and water into wine within five minutes of mixing it. The ability also apparently stated ‘the less said about the taste the better’, but since he was almost out of booze again already and needed it for half his abilities, he decided to pick it up for immediate utility.

  Each one of them had also gained a special reward ability, tailored to their build. Both Zack and Hannah gained an almost identical ability that’d let them ignore low damage attacks almost entirely, while reducing the total damage they took from all attacks. The names were different, but the ability description was the same. Anna gained an ability that gave her fire damage the additional effect of reducing the accuracy of enemy attacks.

  “At least we got good stuff,” I said.

  “We don’t know that, check your Journal,” Hannah said.

  “Yeah, maybe you got shit,” Zack said.

  In fact, I didn’t.

  First of all, my Log was full of monsters killed, many of which granted me extra experience from killing them while defending my allies. It brought my experience to 7633/12000 to level 12. I’d figure out the arbitrary math of the level-up cost increase one day.

  There was also:

  Quests:

  Extra Credit: Survival- Completed!

  You have survived the survival challenge by surviving the survival challenge. Reward: Survivor Trait.

  Traits and Abilities

  Ward Specialist (Survivor): When any of your abjuration spells transfer a portion of damage to you, they do so with a five second delay. Damage is reduced by further 2%. Spells affected: Invisible Barrier. Damage transfer reduced 10%-8%. If split with a party member, both of you gain 1% reduction for a total reduction of 5%-4%.

  And another boost that I hadn’t expected:

  Spells

  Grease Fire has reached Rank 2. Choose Rank 2 specialization.

  Hazard: Optionally, more oil covers a larger area at the casting of the spell, creating a 10ft radius area of fire. Furthermore, the oil is more viscous and burns longer, creating a persistent effect lasting for Arcana x seconds. The continuous burning is very likely to catch anything flammable on fire, at which point it’s really more about physics and chemistry than magic.

  Requirements to increase to Rank 3:

  Burn all organic matter in an area of 0/1 square mile

  Flammenwerfer: Instead of dropping out of a pseudoportal at terminal velocity, you may choose the oil and fire to be expelled at speed, creating a flamethrower effect. The spells duration is increased to 2 seconds per casting. If cast within again within the duration, the effect is continuous.

  This might have been a difficult choice for someone who wasn’t an abjuration specialist, but for me the main advantage of my spells was that I could cast them from behind the safety of my barriers. The flamethrower would go directly against my most usual tactics, and while I suppose it could be used situationally, a solid area of effect spell was invaluable for a spellcaster like myself.

  I explained the abilities to my allies and they agreed that they were, indeed, cool. I was excited about the special trait. 10% to 8% wasn’t much, but while I was in a party with Hannah, we would have to be faced by something with incredible overkill potential for 4% of the damage to kill either of us. Well, I could still see several things that could kill me, but I didn’t mention it. I was happy enough that it increased Hannah’s survival chances significantly.

  There was a door the opposite side of the gym, and we had noticed it open right after the challenge had ended. Now that we were good and ready, we went through it and found ourselves in the next hallway with the next set of doors.