Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure (28 page)

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Rest and Reflection

A giant brown oak came crashing down, followed right after
by another.  Dirt, grass, and leaves were kicked up when the giant limbs
descended.  Sam made sure to avoid being near those, but the female Knight down
the way was not so lucky.  She was brushed to the side by the lizard beast’s
leg and lost a sizable portion of her HP.  Sam did his best to aggro the
creature by stabbing its right leg with fervor.  Finally, it attempted stomping
down on him again.

“If she’s having trouble with this part of the fight then
there’s no way she’ll survive the next part.”

Sam made sure to make eye contact with the Knight and
knocked against the front of his own head with his knuckle.  The Knight
couldn’t hear him, but Sam yelled anyway.

“Hellooooooo, use your head!”

The knight mouthed “sorry”, healed up, and rejoined the
battle.  Sam found that fighting the Will of the Forest was even more difficult
without King Herke’s assistance.  It was even worse trying to do it and help
another player stay alive throughout.

His partner this time, was CrushKills, the blond, green eyed
knight he had defeated before Survival Mode was active.  She had a better
shield now, the same one Robert had used and was using the same Arming Sword
that Robert and everyone else seemed fond of using.  It was a solid weapon for
those who emphasized strength in their playstyles, unlike Sam.

She still had a long way to go, however, if she was going to
survive this game.  Her reactions were pretty slow and she seemed to struggle
with spacing and timing her attacks.  It was amazing that she had even come
this far into the game.  Judging from the way she played, this had to be the
first time she’d fought the Will of the Forest.  She was not anticipating any
of its attacks, as telegraphed as they were.

Maybe she was just terrified.  Sam looked back and saw her
slashing at the oaken leg of the monster with quick one handed light attacks. 
She would have been better off two handing her weapon and doing heavy and
charged attacks.  Sam had no way to tell her that though.  He sighed and
continued attacking.

“I may be doing this girl a disservice helping her like
this.  She’ll never improve at this rate.”

He left the leg he was attacking with a little over ten
percent of its HP and jogged over to her.  He rolled in front of her to get her
attention and when she looked at him, he took his weapon in both hands and
started attacking the same leg she was and doing much more damage.  She slapped
her forehead and again mouthed “sorry” to him.  She must’ve been nervous or
something.  She equipped her sword in both hands and began a series of heavy
slashes.

Her damage output had outstripped Sam’s own by about forty
points a strike.  That could only mean that she had upgraded her weapon at
Barrington’s, put a lot of points in leveling up her strength, or both.  She
could’ve also found some type of ring that upped her power, but Sam wasn’t too
sure about that.

Together they crushed the left front leg and moved to the
one at the rear.  Sam had already weakened all of the Will’s limbs, so crushing
each leg wasn’t hard.  Once they finally got it to the ground, Sam signaled for
CrushKills to pull her shield out by pulling and lifting his own.  She complied
and Sam ran forward to attack the snakelike body of the beast.

It took much longer to whittle the beast’s HP down since
they were lacking the damage output that Sam and the king possessed together. 
Sam was able to see some attacks that he hadn’t seen the last time including a
belly flop that nearly crushed and killed CrushKills.

If there had to be one thing Ms. CrushKills was good at, it
had to be blocking.  Her timing with blocking was actually on par with Sam’s
own, and her tower shield had made it even easier for her.  She knew when to
reserve her stamina and her dodging had improved a little since the beginning
of the fight.  Now that the battle was winding down, all of it was put to the
test.

Much to Sam’s chagrin, the Will was much more interested in
attacking CrushKills than it was him.  Since he was the one that was summoned,
CrushKills would have more to lose by dying here.  He took advantage by getting
in a ton of damage with heavy attacks and several Skyward Thrusts.

Once the Will’s HP was down to critical levels, it wrapped
its body around CrushKills and initiated the same attack sequence that it had
trapped Sam in before.  Sam was struck outside the ouroburos that was its
body.  He quickly equipped his bow and took several shots at the creature’s plant
looking head, with only a few of his arrows landing.  It was enough to stop
that particular head from attacking and all CrushKills had to do was block or
dodge the lizard-like head.

He could see her health bar through the Will’s massive body
and it hadn’t decrease yet, so she was at least doing well with her blocking. 
His arrows weren’t doing much damage, so he would need her to actually start
damaging the creature if they were going to win this anytime soon.  He saw the lizard
head go down for a really fast attack and saw CrushKills health go down by a
small margin.  The entire red health bar was moving forward though, so she
didn’t seem to be knocked back.  Maybe it had only clipped her.  His questions
were answered seconds later when she unloaded some nice damage and finally
finished the creature a minute later.

“Nice!  We got ‘em.”

Great Beast Slain

Sam got five thousand souls for his efforts, half of what he
got for defeating the creature before on his own.  He also got a second
Otherworldly Token of Appreciation since it was his second time helping someone
complete the boss fight.

Returning To Your Own Plane

CrushKills did a little curtsy and Sam gave a victorious bow
before he was transported back outside the boss gate in his own plane.  Here,
the Will of the Forest was already defeated and there was nothing ahead but an
empty boss area.  Sam whipped out his Charity Scriber, signed his initials unto
the ground in glowing gold letters, and waited to be summoned by another needy
player.  He breathed deeply and thought of the battle ahead.

“Just one more before I go back.  I need the training and
souls anyway.”

******

Sam returned to Sedwin and Barrington after helping another
player with the Will of the Forest.  He hadn’t spent any of the souls he had
recently gained yet, so he was sitting on a hefty stack of them.  Now was the
time to prepare, because he would be leaving soon for a new area.  Alex had
vaguely told him that the area south of Caesar’s cabin would be opening up
soon.  He knew nothing of what to expect, so he opted to upgrade himself and
his weapons as much as possible.

“Maybe a poison weapon will be good there,” he thought out
loud as he read over the stats of his Dagger.

He wanted to do something special with it since he also had
both of Rondo’s daggers.  Both blades were Silenced along with the greatsword
he had gotten from Caesar.  Sam had read up on what the Silence effect entailed,
but Sedwin had explained the rest.  The bear had told Sam that weapons procured
from any strong willed warriors he killed would Silence themselves once the
Quintessence was taken from their masters.  That meant that the weapons would
be unusable until Awakened by a skillful blacksmith.  Barrington was such a
Blacksmith, but his rates for his Awakening services were not even close to
reasonable.

“Silenced weapons need to consume an abundance of souls
before they can be Awakened,” Sedwin had explained after Sam had yelled at his
smith master.

Sam returned to Barrington’s camp and was amused that the
smith was apparently still upset with him for yelling about his prices.  He
avoided acknowledging that Sam had even walked into his camp.  When Sam walked
up to him, he continued his feigned obliviousness.  Sam couldn’t help, but have
a laugh at the realism or the sulky blacksmith’s attitude.  He had known people
to act this same way in the real world.  All the same, he was all business when
it came to talking to the smith.  He had too much ahead of him to take this
transaction lightly.

“Mr. Barrington, I have a request,” Sam said.

“What is it, boy?” the smith asked with more gloom than
usual.

“I need you to imbue my Dagger here with poison.”

“Do you have the necessary materials?”

“I believe so.  I have five Blightstone Pieces in my
inventory and have absorbed a sizable amount of souls into my Dagger from
before.”

“Remember, you need to strengthen your Dagger with enough
souls before I can reforge it with these blightstones.  These five should be
enough to permanently imbue your weapon with a light poisonous effect.  You’ll
need more stones after that to increase the affect or more mithril to increase
the pure strength of the weapon.  It’s your call.”

Interesting
,
very interesting
, Sam thought. 
The weapon crafting in this game offered more flexibility than the previous
Death Planes games.

“I’d like to use all the souls in the weapon to increase its
power.”

Sam presented his plain Dagger to Barrington and he laid it
on his anvil.  The smith then sprinkled some kind of salt unto the Dagger and
rubbed it into the sides of the blade.  It began to glow and emit a faint pulse
that Sam could feel, like a heartbeat.

“Your Dagger has been strengthened, but it is not enough.”

Sam looked at the blade’s stats as it sat on Barrington’s
anvil and saw that it was only at level eight.

“Dammit!” He couldn’t help but to yell.  He didn’t feel he
had the time to grind the souls he needed.  He wanted to hurry along to the
next area.

“I see that you’re frustrated.  Good!  Now you can feel the
grief that you cause me,” said the smith.

Sam was amused by Barrington’s rant, but he dared not show
it.

“Unfortunately forging your weapons brings me more joy than
you bring grief, so I feel I must help you out.  As to your current dilemma,
you can use the souls you’ve collected to increase the power of your weapon. 
It will cost a little more to do so, but you currently seem to have a nice
abundance.”

Barrington smiled behind his thick beard.  The way he smiled
had unsettled Sam.

“Okay, just use enough to get my Dagger to level ten.”

The blacksmith did so, this time wrapping the blade in a
white cloth.  The smith instructed Sam to put his hands on the cloth and when
Sam had done so, he felt the souls being drained right out of him.  The act the
left him breathless for a moment until the smith had urged him to pull away. 
The cost to level-up this way seemed to be double what it was for souls already
on the weapon.

“Good ... good,” the smith said while he examined the
Dagger.  “Now, we shall reforge this weapon with the blightstone, correct?”

Sam nodded his head and watched the smith go to work.  He
hammered away and in an instant Sam’s level ten Dagger had increased to a level
fifteen Blighted Dagger.  The stats increased very little compared to his other
weapons, but Sam guessed that was to balance the damage it did with criticals. 
The poison slider had increased by ten to match the bleedout slider.

Blighted Dagger +15

Knife

A small blade, typically reserved as a last resort on the
battlefield.  For most, it is a useless weapon, but a few know human vital
points quite well and look for the perfect moment to strike.

ATK  70

     Weapon Damage  25

     S ATK  F = 0

     D ATK  B = 45

     M ATK  F = 0

     B ATK  F = 0

     F RAT  0

     L RAT  0

     D RAT  0

     P RAT  10

     B RAT  10

Weight: 1 lb

S Abs: 0

He counted the souls he had in his possession and decided to
take a little risk.  Instead of leveling up like he planned, he asked
Barrington to fulfill another request.

“Can you Awaken this weapon here?”

The weapon had merely said Silenced Dagger, for its name but
its design was unique.  It was the black dagger that Rondo had used.  It had a
black blade and black grip.  Sam placed it on Barrington’s anvil and Barrington
grinned greedily as he inspected the blade’s craftsmanship.

“This one was beautifully made.  Quite a shame that it’s Silenced. 
I feel duty bound to Awaken this masterpiece, for the right price.”

“I know, I know.  Souls, souls, and more souls.  Go ahead
and awaken it, please.”

“I can sympathize with your impatience, but this one must be
done correctly, which means I must take my time.  It also requires more than
simple souls.  Items like these require pure Quintessence.”

“Quintessence?  Well you’re just lucky that I’m swimming in
it, now aren’t you?”

Sam was currently holding twenty-four loose units of Quintessence
thanks to all his farming and Encroaching.  He didn’t mind losing one for the
sake of gaining a new weapon.  He offered the Quintessence and watched Barrington
do his thing.  The smith rubbed a red salt down unto the blade this time, then
covered it with a blood soaked cloth.  He had Sam place his hand down onto the
cloth and Sam felt the same draining feeling as before, only this time it was
more intense.  Once it was done, Sam felt a wicked pulse come from the weapon
and he knew it was now fully Awakened.

“Yes, yes, this one feels different from the last one, does
it not?  Weapons that were Silenced tend to be less complicit than those you’ve
Awakened from giving your own life force to.  They are further matured and more
limited in their growth, but if you’re skilled enough, they may yet bend to
your will.”