Revenge of the Sorcerer King 2 - 18

Hey guys! How's the week going. I'm almost done with RSK 2!

Chapter 18

Oberon

I didn’t have to worry too much about the others. The enraged elemental was completely focused on me. I was disappointed that my magic missile had failed to penetrate the stone that made up the elemental’s body, but given that it was likely fifty to sixty levels higher and designed to be durable it wasn’t a surprise.

I jumped back as a boulder of partially melted stone landed in the spot I was standing. I could fell Promise eating away at the thing’s mana, but it there was so much of it. I was playing defense right now. I quickly sent some more magic missiles at the elemental to keep it focused on me. 

The room was large enough even with me keeping it contained to the latter half so that the rest of the party didn’t get attacked on accident. I was able to keep it enraged for close to a minute but there was still no end in sight. The continued assault by the elemental had turned the area in a treacherous landscape from the various elemental attacks it was launching at me.

Applying some mana to my legs, I jumped across the room much further than I had been before to gain some extra distance. I turned back to the elemental and started chanting. There was a whole branch on necromancy I hadn’t been taking advantage of due to being more comfortable with my usual spells.

The elemental lumbered towards me as I unleashed a wave of necromantic energy. The green and black cloud rolled over the elemental and the stone started turning to dust as it aged incredibly fast. The metal that made up its chest started to rust as well. Of course, all this only served to make the elemental even angrier and it renewed its charge at me.

Another billowing cloud of purple washed over the elemental, literally melting part of its left side into slag. I glanced in the direction it came and found Irgire flying near the ceiling. Ted and the some of the goblins that had shown an interest in necromancy began hurling their own Degradation spells at the elemental.

I grinned not turning down the help, and dual casted another two of the spells. The elemental’s body was continuously turning to dust and slag even as it attempted to absorb the stone of the floor to heal itself. Irgire sent a globe of poison directly down on the elemental’s head and it melted through the upper section of its body.

Feeling a change, I waved the others off. Promise gave me a satisfied burp before it slid out of the elemental. I yanked the tether and it flew back to my hand. The elemental took one more step before it collapsed into a thousand pieces revealing a treasure chest that wouldn’t have been out of place in a king’s vault.

Silence reigned in the boss room until I held my hand up and cheered. When the others joined in, I realized what I had done and lowered my hand. Damn, habits were scary. I remembered having done that after defeating bosses in dungeons when I was living. Shaking my head, I just moved over to check what we got from the chest.

Reaching the chest, I reached forward but stopped before I touched the thing. Shaking my head at my own carelessness as dozens of memories of party members meeting their end from traps went through my head, I drew Promise and nicked the top with the blade. A horrible screech sounded out and I buried the rest of the blade into the fake chest. Purple blood sprayed out as the mimic thrashed once, twice, then stopped completely. 

I kicked the lid open and the mimic melted away to reveal its contents. A spear along with a bow appeared with a magical glow that I knew would make these items top of the line back in my day. If I thought about the markets we checked on the way to rescue Alessa’s mother, then these weapons would be worth a king’s ransom. I tossed the spear over to Gobluke to replace his bone one that I made for him. It was a good item but paled in comparison to this thing. 

As for the bow, no one in my party was using one. Rather than have someone take up a weapon they weren’t used to and ended up ruining the weapon, I put it in my stash for later. I checked the ground again, and found a few trinkets. Other than a ring that greatly boosted mana manipulation, I handed the rest out to the party with Irgire and Ted getting the lion’s share of the spoils. 

“While dangerous, it sped the process up quickly. Thank you for your assistance,” I said looking between Irgire and Ted then onto the rest of the party. The goblins have proven themselves good followers of orders and I was growing quite fond of them as they could actually implement the orders in ways that exceed my expectations. Undead generally did exactly as I ordered which was fine but made it hard to put them on certain types of missions.

“We made sure to give the elemental enough time to be thoroughly pissed off at you before we attempted to help,” Irgire said with a grin that made me feel like I was looking at a picture from my younger days. With my increase in level, memories had been flooding back like someone had turned the water spicket up. I didn’t mind but I was finding myself distracted at times.

“And that was a good call. Now! Let’s see how much more there is to this dungeon!” I shouted before we turned to the black portal that had formed on the opposite wall of the entrance. I turned back when there was a weak echo to my shout and saw more than a few of the goblins were mana drained. It would be safer to let them rest before we proceeded. “Let’s rest first!” This was met by much more cheering.

Even Irgire and Ted looked relieved to rest. Since this was a boss room, we shouldn’t have to worry about a stare elemental wandering into our party while it rested. The boss shouldn’t respawn until we left either. It was the closest to true safety that we would probably find. 

Since we had a moment, I decided to look over my status to see how many levels the fight got me. I knew I’d gained at least one from how much access to my pool I gained. I was close to eighty and I was hoping for another improvement when I reached it. With a wave of my hand the screens appeared.

Name: Oberon Dark Phoenix

Age: N/A

Race: World Lich

Level: 83

[Necromancy Basic Magic Mastery: Expert] [Basic Magic Mastery] [Sword Mastery] [Rune Mastery: Partial Lock 51%] [Advanced Magic Mastery: Partial Lock 76%] [Contract Magic Mastery: Partial Lock 26%] [Space Magic Mastery: Partial Lock 53%]

Followers: 10610

Sin: Error! World’s Curse! EXP gain reduced by 66.6%!

Curses: World’s Curse, Ancestral Curse, Undeath

Boons: Forgotten Knowledge

Enhancement: [Body + 1]

Enhancement Available: Mind; Body; Soul.

With a boney grin, I found it happened like I’d hoped. Without hesitation, I clicked on Mind. It felt like chains were lifted from my thoughts that I hadn’t realized were even there. Magic that I knew but never thought to use flew through my head. It wasn’t even the leveling system’s fault. Something had been restricting me.

I pointed my hand at the wall, and a ray of heat flashed between me and the point I was looking at. Within seconds, the ray melted close to a meter through the rock before I canceled the spell. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought to use Destruction Ray! It was my bread and butter after I discovered the spell in my adventuring days.

“What the hell was that?!” Ted asked with wide eyes as she stared at the melting hole in the wall. 

“Something I had completely forgotten about, but not anymore.”

Alessa

With a crack, I punched the hobgoblin’s head into a paste. We were basically waging a war, at least, this is what I thought a war might look like, against the hobgoblin tribes we found on the next set of floors. My vampires were at the front of the lines tearing through the hobs with abandon. 

Jade stood at the back-raining death with her magical arrows. She’d recently switched to lightning and was causing great destruction with the new magic. It helped having a four or five century old vampire sorceress with us for teaching. She was teaching all my vampires one thing or another to help them. Though, with the exception of Jade, they were all set to become berserks like me.

I was working on my magic as well. While I didn’t mind beating my enemies to death, I had access to my own incredible magic. It was a waste not to use it. Turning the blood of the now dead hobgoblin into blades, I caused them to spin around me with tremendous force, I set the magic to keep me at the center. Running into the thickest section of the hobs, they died quicker than they could react.

Coming to a stop on the other side of the enemy line, I focused my magic and condensed all the fresh blood around me into a new piece of armor. The idea had come to me when my armor from the smiths back in the city broke. It just couldn’t handle the abuse I was putting it through. The pauldron took a red crystal look as it attached to my already existing armor. 

I currently had my chest plate and cuisse giving me overall protection. I went with tight fitting as the cold didn’t affect me and as I could alter it with a thought. I condensed it enough that it wouldn’t melt even without me supplying mana to it. At least not for a few hours. I would need to get with Oberon to make it more permanent. 

After checking to make sure the new pauldron fit correctly, I observed the battlefield. I noticed that most of my vampires had gotten used to pain, but it wasn’t a good thing. One of the girls was fighting with three swords embedded in her. Her eyes told me that she wasn’t fully in control.

There were only about forty of the hobgoblins when the battle began. They weren’t quite on par with the boss hobgoblin I fought before, but they were still much stronger than the goblins. With Helena staying out of the fight, it took us longer to finish, but even then, it lasted for only a few minutes.

At this point, my vampires were so satiated that even with all the blood around them they couldn’t drink any more. Rather than waste it, I added it all to my armor while also creating a few blood orbs. Once done with that, I raised all the bodies as undead. When I was done, I had to take a deep breath as I was using more mana than I was used to.

Helena moved next to me as I sat to rest. I didn’t get tired per say but mental fatigue was a real problem. I just couldn’t sleep to relieve the stress. “The next floor should be the boss room, but I think we should pull back for now. It’s been almost a day with night coming up soon.” 

I looked at everyone and nodded. While my vampires looked ready and raring to go, the goblins were exhausted. Level gains don’t recover stamina in most cases. We’d been fighting constantly for the last twenty hours or so with only small breaks in between. They could probably use a rest.

“Yeah. Let’s do that.” I waved for everyone to gather. “We’re going to return to the city for now. We’ll be back in a day.” I got a few disappointed grunts from the vampires, relieved sighs from the goblins, and silence from the undead. 

We gathered everything that was useful and handed it to Helena as her space magic allowed her to carry everything we’d found so far. Nothing to brag about but the weapons and armor of the hobs were worth a good amount of coin and the goblins said they could put them to use right away.

With that we made our way back up the dungeon. There was nothing until we reached the boss floor. When we went through the doorway, we found that we’d skipped the boss floor altogether. Glancing back at the golden door, we shrugged and continued on.

We had to kill a few goblins that had reappeared. It was even easier than the first time as they were no longer overcharged. My vampires could literally slap them and they would die. In an eighth of the time that was mostly just us walking, we found ourselves back in the entrance way.

“I’m going to head down the other passage and see if I can find Oberon. The dungeon might have been lying but it did say that the other way was trapped.”

“Alright. Try not to fall to it yourself,” I said. “We’ll be heading back to the castle.”

The goblins were already exhausted from the fighting and the trek back through the dungeon. It wouldn’t do to allow the relatively rested vampires to speed off ahead and leave the goblins in the middle of the desert. I ordered them to take points around the goblins and practice guarding.

Nothing bothered us though. I decided to check my status while we walked. I knew I had gained quite a few levels in the dungeon. I was excited to see how much my power had grown.

Name: Alessa Darkfeather 

Age: 14 

Race: Pureblood Vampire

Level: 65

[Basic Sneak: Master] [Basic Magic: Expert] [Magic Resistance: Major] [Necromancy Magic: Adept] [Vampire Forms 1:2] [Blood Magic: Expert] [Hand-to-Hand: Adept] [Telepathy: Novice] [Telekinesis: Adept] 

[Servants:5] [Ghouls:0] [Family:7] [Followers: 326]

Sin: [Pride: 35%] [Greed: 7%] [Lust: 40%] [Envy: 3%] [Gluttony: 35%] [Wrath: 36%] [Sloth: 1%] 

Curses: Ancestral Curse. Undying 

Boons: One With The Darkness.  

I saw that my abilities had expanded a bit. I understood where most of them came from but didn’t know when I got telepathy. Helena would probably be able to tell. I knew instinctively that it was related to my vampire nature. The woman in question appeared out of the shadows as I was thinking about her.

“Yeah. We’re going to have to work on that,” she said, and I gave her a raised eyebrow in confusion. 

“Telepathy is tricky. I heard when you noticed it and started thinking about me.”

“Is there a way to just turn it off?”

“Not really. Practice mainly.”

“Lovely. Find Oberon?”

“No. There was a room at the end of the tunnel with a shattered crystal structure. Whether he was the one that caused the destruction or it was the aforementioned trap, I can’t be sure. Knowing Oberon, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Helena! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were worried about him!” I said with an exaggerated gasp. The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air before I crashed through a sand dune. I rolled end over end before I finally came to a stop several hundred meters away from the group. “Yeah. I earned that,” I muttered.

“And don’t forget it!” said a thoroughly pissed off Helena from the top of the sand dune before she vanished into shadow. 

Jade came running over the dune along with the rest of my Familia. “Mistress! Are you alright?!”

“Yeah. The lesson is don’t joke with the five-century old vampire.”

They all nodded before helping me up. I couldn’t feel it lying down, but once I stood I found my stomach was nearly caved in and the blood armor completely shattered. I grimaced before I returned it back to normal. I could feel my stomach repairing itself as I limped back to the group.