Chapter 221: How Many Zombies in a Horde?

    Instead of experiencing the abstract concept of instantaneous movement on the soles of my boots, I felt something slippery.

    Despite not focusing on Agility, my score of 10 still placed me into the superhuman category for balance and coordination, if only barely. Thus, the slick surface refusing to grant me an iota of friction did not cause me to take a tumble.

    Falling on my ass would have been embarrassing.

    No, I avoided the shame of such mortal weakness by wheeling my arms, leaning back and forth, and yanking my feet into position each time they attempted to escape the burden of supporting the rest of my body. It didn’t help that the floor I’d landed on was an incline, so as I battled with this Home Alone-grade hazard, I was also moonwalking backward from where I’d appeared.

    I remembered that I had multiple ways to solve this problem a moment before Varrin appeared. I used Gracorvus to lock myself in place and placed a hand on my hip, looking outstandingly casual when the big guy popped into existence.

    Varrin looked at the ground, then looked up at me. Even with the shield, my feet wandered while I fought to keep my legs steady. I couldn’t see the man’s eyes through his slitless, fur-wrapped helm, but I felt the judgment regardless.

    “Slippery,” he said, then strode toward me as though the ground didn’t have the grip of greased Teflon. Nuralie and Etja appeared next, with Xim in the rear guard.

    Etja immediately started floating. Xim, despite having the same Agility score as I did, slid with far more grace down the slope. She caught my elbow to halt her descent.

    Nuralie surveyed the room, then did a slow skate around the perimeter with the ease and poise of an Olympic-level ice skater turned superhero.

    The room was mostly bare. It was about the size of a basketball court, was completely dark–of course–and had a gently sloping floor leading to the only exit, which was a large reinforced double door made of some kind of metal. It had threads of mana running through it, and I planned on taking a closer look to figure out what it did once we had our bearings.

    Xim held my arm as she squatted to inspect the floor. She ran a finger across it, then tapped it with a knuckle.

    “It’s some kind of ice,” she said. “The surface is wet, but not with water. Hmm, it’s already frozen on my finger.”

    Using Gracorvus to balance, I bent to examine the floor as well. The surface had the sheen of moisture, but it was rapidly hardening. That wasn’t much of a surprise, since it was just as cold inside the Delve as it had been above.

    “I’d ask why it wasn’t already frozen–” I began, then paused as orange-white runes began to burn on each wall. They grew in intensity for a second, raising the temperature in the room enough to cause steam to begin boiling off the ice. They went dead soon after, leaving the floor slicker than when we’d entered. The temperature immediately plummeted, and the substance began to refreeze. “Yeah, figured we’d get an answer soon enough.”

    I glanced at everyone’s health bars, but no one had taken any damage from the heat. My own health was doing something a little odd, however. My max HP was dropping by one every forty seconds or so, then ticking back up to its normal value a couple of seconds later. I glanced at my notifications and found the source.

    Miasma

    You are taking Wicked damage!

    “Is anyone else taking Wicked damage?” I asked. Everyone checked their interfaces.

    “Yeah,” said Xim, followed by the rest of the group. “If it keeps this pace, I’m taking about ninety per hour.”

    “Hmm, that is more dangerous than it sounds,” said Varrin.

    I nodded in agreement. While ninety damage per hour didn’t sound like much, what made it dangerous was that Wicked damage reduced its victim’s maximum health pool and couldn’t be healed. The only way to recover from Wicked damage was natural health regeneration. That meant if the damage exceeded a Delver’s natural regen, their max HP would constantly be draining while inside this Delve, and there was very little they could do about it.

    “Ninety damage an hour is a little more than the unbuffed regen from Level 33 Fortitude,” I said. “Nuralie, Etja, you two have the lowest regen. You good?”

    “Yes,” said Nuralie. “With your aura, mine is at one hundred and eleven.”

    “Me too!” said Etja. She glided over to Nuralie and hugged her from behind. “Twinsies!” The Geulon patted Etja’s hand, but otherwise ignored our mage’s affection as she kept watch over the room.

    The runes pulsed, re-wetting the floor and shooting more steam into the air. Given time, the constant flash melting would cause the ice to shift down the slope, but it either wasn’t an effect that was always on, or the liquid was drained and renewed somehow.

    “Then we’re okay for now,” I said, checking to see if we’d received a Delve objective. “Evade capture by the remnants of the Zng and confront its disgraced commander,” I read aloud. “Bonus: Deprive the Zng of their armory.”

    “Does that sound like a Prismatite vault to you guys?” asked Xim.

    “Yeah, hopefully,” I said.

    [Even if it is not the vault we seek, there is certainly a reward worthy of completing the bonus,] Grotto thought to us.

    The Delve Core had opted to remain in the Closet for this one. Not because of his near-death experience. It definitely had nothing to do with that. He’d even assured us that a Core does not suffer from the weakness of fear like we ‘transient meatbags’ did. He just had a lot of work to do in the Closet, and we were perfectly capable of handling a few Delves without him being physically present.

    The Closet was a complete wreck from dealing with Hysteria and their Wastelander mercenaries, so no one gave my familiar any shit about it.

    “Alright,” I said. “Then we proceed as normal. If the Wicked damage gets worse, we can reevaluate. In the meantime, let’s deal with this door and have Nuralie do some scouting.”

    “This plan is Etja-approved,” said Etja.

    I decided to make productive use of the stroll. We’d talked over our short-term build directions before leaving Eschengal but hadn’t settled on any final approaches.

    “I think I’ll go with placing five points into Fortitude to get the Dumping bonus, with the other three in Strength,” I thought. “That’ll get me to Fortitude 70 by Level 15. Then, if I put all eight into Strength at Level 16, I can get it to 40.”

    “Your offense will suffer short-term,” thought Varrin. “Regardless, I think it is a good plan. The Level 70 evolutions are typically more powerful than Level 40, and Fortitude is your closest. In fact, it may be ideal if we all tried to reach a Level 70 evolution before heading to the Littan mega Dungeon. That would give us a significant advantage over their Level 16 group.”

    “In case they’re up to something?” I asked.

    Varrin glanced over at me. “Better to be safe,” he thought.

    I wanted to believe the Littans were being genuine with us, but I was also on board with Varrin’s caution. “What about intrinsics? I’ll have two slots once we finish the Expansion Delves. I figured another crafting skill would be good, but I can''t decide on something we don’t already have.”

    The group had also spent an afternoon working through our skills and comparing their overlap. We’d used that to create a Dungeon priority list, choosing skills that would have the largest impact on the party as a whole.

    “Athletics is boring but dependable,” thought Varrin. “It could improve your mobility or help you dodge.”

    “Yeah. I was also considering Reconnaissance, but my revelations make a lot of its evolutions redundant or obsolete.”

    “What about Animal Husbandry?” Etja suggested. “You could get a pet!”

    “There is an Animal Familiar passive,” thought Varrin. “It is distinct from Bonded Familiar.”

    “I sort of gave up the horde of Minions route when I picked Auradilato over Minion Menagerie,” I replied.

    “No, you chose quality over quantity,” Varrin thought. “Minion Menagerie granted bonuses based on having a large number of summons and familiars, but Auradilato improves your auras for all of your allies, while also empowering you. Another high-quality familiar would benefit from your auras and likely become a strong addition.”

    “The party’s already kind of busy,” I thought. “Do we want to manage another combatant? With Shog and Grotto we’re already a group of seven. Plus, what animal? Would I need to raise one? How much of a time commitment is that?”

    [I can always rear a beast for you,] Grotto suggested. [We could engineer something truly abhorrent to the sensibilities of mankind.]

    “Or you could grab Nottagator,” thought Xim.

    “Nottagator’s a berserker,” I thought, “without any of Varrin’s ability to discern allies from enemies. Plus they’re built like a tank, so I don’t think it’d add much to our party composition.”

    [I am using Nottagator in the Pocket Delve. The Atrocidile is not for sale.]

    “Oh, what about the plant?” asked Etja. “It seems to like you!”

    “How would that even work? It’s kind of bound to the Closet.”

    [The Dominion Ivy of the Endless is also not for sale! Although, you may be able to raise another from a juvenile. We’d need to experiment to determine the best growth conditions.]

    “Is that an animal?” asked Xim. “It’s literally a plant.”

    [I would need to research, but it likely possesses intelligence and lack of communicative abilities sufficient to fall within the System’s ‘animal’ categorization.]

    “That’s... interesting,” I admitted. “But let’s go back to crafting. I’ve got a 100% progression bonus from my Human racial trait, so I wanna be craftier.”

    “You do not smith much as it is,” thought Nuralie.

    “Only due to lack of opportunity. It’s on the List.”

    “Wandmaking,” thought Varrin. “You can take Woodworking, broadening the items you can create, and focus on wandcraft bonuses. Or, you could take the dedicated Wandmaking skill to wholly specialize in creating wands. It would also allow for the use of broader materials.”

    “If you do that,” thought Etja, “I definitely want some neat wands.” She held up her three empty hands. “Look at all this untapped potential!”

    “You know, I kind of like that idea,” I thought, looking at Etja’s limbs. “Thinking of underutilized appendages, I don’t have a great use for the tentacles I get from Therianthropy at the moment. I just throw less awesome hammers. I can grab people too, but I’m not built for that so it’s only useful against weak shit. If I had a collection of wands, I could use them to blast more spells without burning mana.”

    [If you make even a meager attempt at creating a wand I can have the System prompt you with the skill. I would also be interested in ‘borrowing’ the ability for my own purposes. Few of your current intrinsics are useful for me to access via your Traveler’s Amulet.]

    “You could always pivot your build,” I thought. All I got back from that suggestion was a condescending chuckle.

    The psychic conversation ended as we got close to the Zng legion. Nuralie appeared from the shadows and had me float up the wall with Gracorvus to reach a narrow platform that ran into a massive staging area. It seemed like it was made for observation, though it didn’t look like anything patrolled it. I belly crawled behind the loson–which was more of a slide with the ice–to peek out over the edge at the Undead army, trying my best to stay hidden.

    “Oh yeah,” I thought, observing the tightly packed formations. “Firebug is definitely the play.”