Vindications path a litr.., p.15
Vindication's Path: A LitRPG Adventure (Lich Lord Book 2), page 15
I hoped to get far enough ahead that the pursuit would become pointless. The goal was to escape this kingdom via a ship on the coast.
When we were first out of the city, I channeled a small amount of death energy into each of the intelligence rings, I felt something shift in them. Then when I put them on my finger, I could feel a connection. But once again they were too loose.
Maxwell saw me fiddling with them. “That’s a problem I hadn’t thought about you having,” he chuckled. I gave Maxwell the other vitality ring and he slipped it onto a finger, it fit him quite well.
“If I allow them to be affected by the illusion they fit just fine,” I grumbled. “But the problem is if I ever have to dispel the illusion, they’ll suddenly become loose.”
Maxwell hummed, leaning back in his saddle. “I might have a solution. I bought some lightweight cord for supplies, you never know if we might need that kind of stuff, maybe you could wrap your finger to give the ring something to be on.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” I reached into the bag of holding and looked around until I found the cord he was talking about. I tried wrapping it myself, but between having to use one hand at a time in riding a horse it proved impossible.
“If you wait ’till we stop for the night, or the day, depending how you look on it,” Maxwell said, “I’ll do it for you.”
I grunted in agreement and stowed the rings and cord back in the bag, and pulled out the tracking map. It was a cloudless sky, and the stars were bright, there was no moon though, but that didn’t matter, darkness was my friend.
I studied the map and saw Maxwell studying the treasure map along with another map I did not recognize. Raven was practicing a new spell and had shrouded herself and her horse in shadows and moved ahead. Her constant need for scouting gave us assurance and allowed her to practice her magic.
“You know this treasure location is really not far off this main road,” Maxwell muttered. “It really might be worth the diversion.”
As the map updated, I saw that the dots indicating those chasing us were converging on the city, even though the dot indicating me now showed me far to the east. It would take them a while to realize we’d left. Judging by the last experience, we had about a day and a half before the flickering showed us in our actual location. “We might as well stop and see what’s there, treasure is almost always worth the risk after all.”
23
Maxwell stopped his horse in the middle of the road early the next morning. “I think this is where we turn.”
I looked at him in confusion. “There’s nothing here.”
Maxwell shook his head and waved me over to look at the map he’d been comparing to the treasure map. “I picked this up in town. It’s a much more detailed map than the one that’s tracking us.”
We dismounted—the horses needed a rest anyways. I looked at the map Maxwell had laid out on a smooth patch of dirt. Along the main road we were traveling, the map showed several trailheads that led off, along with a few other details.
“We just passed that bend around that pond.” Maxwell pointed at the spot. There’d been a small pond nestled in the forest, fed by a stream that filled a small draw held back by a beaver dam. Once outside Maltis, the plains had vanished, replaced by forest and rough terrain, though not as rough as the mountains. The horses made excellent time down the road. “The treasure map has a few notes about what to look for, and I’m pretty sure that dead snage is what it’s talking about.”
Maxwell gestured at a twisted, dead tree peeking above the trees on the other side of the road, opposite the pond. Looking closely at the map I saw that there was some kind of abandoned road indicated. When I looked up and down the maintained road we were on, I saw no indication of the side trail. “You sure it’s there?”
Before Maxwell could respond, Raven road out of the trees were we were looking at. “Are you talking about the path just over there?”
“How did you know to look for that?” I asked.
“Max told me to keep an eye out,” Raven said. “There’s something off about how the trees grew in this spot, so I decided to investigate. They were clearly planted quite a long time ago to block off the old road.”
“Just how much did you pay for this map?” I asked. The fact that it had markings for an old, abandoned road that was so long abandoned that full-size trees had grown up to block it said something about the quality.
“You probably don’t want to know,” Maxwell said sheepishly. “Let’s just hope there’s a lot of money in that treasure, because we need it.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to strangle him. “We had quite a bit of money, Maxwell. How did you spend it all?”
“It’s not that hard to do,” Maxwell assured me. “The horses and map were the two most expensive things.”
“Well, let’s go find this treasure then.” I took Shadow’s reigns and led him into the forest.
The others followed, Raven dismounting River to lead her in.
After about twenty yards, we came through on the other side. The old road was just barely visible underneath an overgrowth of plants and fallen leaves. The only indication I truly saw was how there were very few large trees planted in a long straight stretch. Unlike the start of it, the rest of the road had been slowly overtaken by the forest, and not forcibly overgrown by planting trees.
Maxwell kept consulting the treasure map and his expensive map as we traveled up the abandoned road. Like the tracking map, Maxwell’s expensive one was also magical in nature, allowing him to adjust it to see different parts in more detail. When I glanced over, I noted that there was a dashed line indicating where the road used to be. Now that we were traveling down it, that dashed line was much more prominent.
After about an hour, Maxwell indicated we needed to turn off once again. This time we turned onto a game trail, fortunately it opened up into a small meadow where we left the horses to graze. Maxwell promised me that they wouldn’t run off, it was part of their training. You could leave them in places like this and call them back. I didn’t begrudge him spending the extra money on good mounts, they were worth every penny.
We followed the game trail for a bit, coming to a small creek bubbling happily along the side of the hill. The creek led into a crevasse, where all of the foliage and dirt along the creek had been scratched up by large claws that left furloughs in the dirt. Whatever lived in there was big. I bent to look closer at the signs. I was no professional tracker, but I recognized the footprints.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” I murmured. “If we’re lucky, it’s out, and we won’t have to fight it.”
“And if we’re not?” Maxwell asked.
“Then we fight the bear,” Raven said matter-of-factly. “It’s just a bear, we can handle it no problem.”
While Raven’s confidence was justified, I can’t help but feel like she jinxed us as we followed the creek. The crevasse opened up into a small grotto not too far along, with broken sunlight filtering down from above. The trees had formed an almost complete canopy over the grotto.
“I’m assuming the treasure is in there?” I nodded to a cave at the far end.
“It’s a little obvious,” Maxwell chuckled. “But where else would you put it?”
Raven scouted ahead, followed shortly by a roar. I groaned as a massive bear came barreling out of the cave chasing a fleet-footed Raven back toward us.
I stretched out my hand and activated both of my new spell storage rings. Couldn’t pass up an opportunity to test them out. The activation time was short, I wondered if that had to do with my spell, or if they were just of a higher-quality. Two bolts of black lightning hammered across the grotto into the bear. I didn’t plan on ever putting anything other than pure attack spells into the ring, the other spells I had for buffing the undead and raising undead were too situational for me to be able to predict what I would need to. Having two or more powerful attack spells already cast and ready to go was far more useful.
The bear staggered and roared. Raven dove to the side and circled around behind it. I rushed forward as Maxwell began his song, and the heavy metal music buffed up my speed. Maxwell had two primary ways of buffing: either a larger area of effect that would increase multiple people, or a targeted one that would only increase a few. The targeted one could be quite powerful.
I kept Mercry in a long slender curved blade, perfect for leaving slashing wounds. This bear stood no chance. Even if it had been higher level than me, it had no armor to stop Mercry. One of the greatest powers of my blade was the ability to leave festering wounds behind, an ability that only seemed to be growing in strength as I grew. Mercry was a scalable weapon that increased in power as I did, the festering wounds didn’t work fast unless I enhanced them, but they were very hard to cure.
Unarmored foes like this bear were the perfect enemy for me to fight. I could land scores of shallow cuts that would turn into larger problems as time passed. All while being able to fight more defensively and prevent the bear from landing any strong attacks.
Raven leapt onto its back and drove her daggers into it before releasing them and jumping away, the daggers embedded black magic and also added their own poison effect. When the bear was too weak to stand on its own, I approached, reshaping Mercry into a long, slender needlelike tip and drove it into the bear’s heart. There was no point in making the creature suffer.
24
With the bear slain, I nodded toward the cave, and Maxwell and Raven rushed to it. Meanwhile, I looked at my slain foe. Part of me felt bad. Before the fight, this bear had been a beautiful specimen of what the species could be. Now it was covered in festering wounds weeping from a dozen shallow cuts.
I pulled on the death core. A few moments later the necrotic energy ate its way through, and the orb flew into my hand. I debated absorbing it but changed my mind.
I acted quickly to bind the kernel of the true soul of this creature. For monsters like this, their kernels were significantly easier to work with than those from self-aware creatures. Not to mention the moral quandaries about that one.
With monsters, their soul adapted to what their body was, with self-aware creatures they retained memories of what they were and very much remained the same person, just trapped in a different body. Sometimes I thought of it as justified punishment, and sometimes people even wanted it, I just didn’t like forcing it unless they were truly bastards.
Did that make me kind of take the role of judge, jury, and executioner, maybe? But in this world is morally gray. I began to cast a spell, and I let the illusion spell fade.
Death magic swirled around me, and I channeled it into the bear. Spell diagrams appeared in the air above the fallen creature. This wasn’t quite the same spell I used to create the bear in the ambush, I wanted to retain control with this one, and not create something more powerful than I was.
The death core I received from the creature was reinforced by my own death energy, then added to the spell. Taking the time to work carefully with the magic I began to cycle the death magic through the death core in a giant siphon that I ran through every inch of the bear. There weren’t any immediate effects with the creature, it was simply enabling me to work with powerful death energies and not rot away the flesh.
Instead, as I channeled the magic through the flesh and it changed, it became death attuned, then something else as I added my own death energy into the cycle. This is not a quick process, and I was dimly aware of Maxwell and Raven returning with big smiles.
I wasn’t exactly certain what I was doing, but whatever it was I could tell it was having an effect. The bear’s previously brown and gray fur was replaced with ebony fur. I couldn’t see its bones, but I could sense that they’d changed in some way, along with the organs. The feeling was familiar, and it took me a moment to realize it was similar to what I had felt when I became a Lich.
When I finished cycling the creature with the combination of death magic and death energy, I let the spell complete and the creature rose. I had a connection to it, and could sense my control, though it did not feel like it was absolute. When I examined the creature, I smiled. My hunch was proven right.
Morsursa
Level: 48
Morsursa are a death biome bear. Like all creatures of the death biome, they are predators, even more so than normal bears. They still retain their ability as omnivores and there are few plants even the death biome bear cannot consume.
“Okay, what is that?” Maxwell was examining the Morsursa as well. “And why does his name sound like it’s from Earth?”
“This is more of an experiment. I knew death biome creatures had certain aspects, so I tried to re-create it.” I shrugged. “Pretty sure I can only do this because I have access to death energy. As far as the name goes, Morsursa literally translates in Latin to death bear, I think. Why we have Latin in this world, I have no idea. Take it up with Altor if you ever see him.”
“Is it going to follow us now?” Maxwell asked. “I feel like that might draw a lot of attention.”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” I could sense that the bear actually kind of liked me, it most definitely did not remember me killing it. It felt like it saw me almost as his mother, something I was a little uncomfortable with. “I guess we could let it tag along. Think about it, we’re getting into the area where there’s more players around, players have odd pets, we would just be another group with an odd pet.”
“I like it,” Raven said. She transformed into her lynx form and walked up to the Morsursa and sniffed it. She transformed back into her human form. “Can we keep it, please?”
I honestly hadn’t planned on bringing the bear with us, despite what I said, it would draw attention. But Raven’s pleading eyes were a little too much for me.
“As long as you promise to feed and take care of it, we can keep it.” I barely held back the laugh and when I looked over at Maxwell, I saw him fighting a smile as well. “What did you find in the cave?”
“Gold,” Maxwell gave me his best winning smile. “It seems like this wasn’t so much a treasure map for them as a location for their stash.”
I followed Maxwell and Raven into the cave where we loaded the loot into my storage bag. There were other supplies there as well that we proceeded to destroy, nothing was valuable to us, and from what I remember seeing in the cave, it seemed like it was supplies for that ritual they used to transform the people.
We returned to our horses and elected to spend a few more hours in the meadow. I recharged my spell rings and proceeded to practice with Mercry. I hadn’t practiced with Mercry like that since we left Omark. The familiarity of motions had me falling into a kind of trance.
When I finally stopped, I noticed that Raven had been trying to follow along with me, obviously not using a weapon like Mercry, but using her daggers. A frustrated look clouded her face.
“I can’t seem to keep up,” she huffed.
“Don’t stress about it too much,” I chuckled. “It’s not a simple thing to learn. I will try and slow it down for you next time, though I don’t know much about doing it with daggers. It’s different for every weapon type. If Vito were here, I’d have him teach you. Have you picked a name for your pet?”
“Tuffy,” Raven said proudly. “Since he will be so tough.”
I didn’t care, I just shook my head. The horses had eyed the Morsursa suspiciously when it first showed up, but when he just laid down in the trees, they ignored it. I wondered if I could transfer them into a death biome version but decided that wasn’t something I should experiment with right now. The last thing I needed was to destroy one of our mounts.
When midafternoon rolled around, we mounted the horses and returned to the main road. When the map updated in the night, I saw that the dots showing our pursuers had all converged on the city. However, when I zoomed out a little bit I swore. There was another cluster out in front of us. Rhea must’ve enlisted more players when she realized she’d been duped.
Judging by the distances, we had about a day before we would be within reach again. All of that work to buy us some time was pointless. Even if the dot still showed us in the wrong location, Rhea was smart. She clearly figured out where we had gone. Even as I watched, the dot representing me flickered and showed our true location for a bare moment.
We pushed hard that night, and come dawn, we made sure we took the time to rest our horses. I was certain we would have to fight, and I’d rather our steeds be well rested and ready for a couple long nights and days. We could push them harder than we were, but there was no point in exhausting ourselves and our mounts now. All we would be doing is rushing toward the oncoming clash. Better to save their strength for when we were actually running away from danger, not toward it.
Even once we had rested the mounts for the majority of the day, we walked through the night until the map updated. The dots coming from the north had spread out, taking every major and minor road heading straight to us. Maxwell was busy studying his more detailed map as we walked.
“I think I found something,” Maxwell said and waved me over.
I looked at the map where he was zoomed in and saw an indication of another hidden road. Likely part of the original road system that span across this kingdom, like the one we used to find the treasure. It looked like whatever Rhea was using to pen us in wasn’t as detailed as what Max had. The road appeared to cut through a small valley in the hills we were traveling through. There was no telling why the road had been abandoned, but it might allow us to slip through the net cast for us without having to fight. No doubt they would be better prepared this time.
