Chapter 10 Ratede, Regaining Lost Ground & Field Testing
I rushed to Ratede, through the secret tunnels only to be blocked by a handful of Dhampir Guards. After enduring a frustrating check point interview with the dhampir guards I raced through the paved & empty roads of Ratede on my way to the Blood Temple. Thankfully it was easy to find as it was a distinctive building. I didn't want to waste any time by getting lost. I entered the Blood Temple & found a single Blood priest in the practically empty Temple.
"Has Ren been resurrected?" I asked.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
I explained the situation to him, telling him Ren had died due to a Paladin & that he'd previously offered some blood to Sharn for a resurrection and that I wasn't sure about the whole process for resurrection due to the other priest's vagueness.
"If Ren was resurrected, he would have been resurrected from his blood phylactery."
"Shit." I really didn't like that answer, I guess I should have asked one of the vampires how their resurrection worked but it wasn't something that seemed important before.
He checked the records for Ren's soul marker and said "It will require 1000 bottles of Fresh troll blood to resurrect Ren posthumously." The priest said with a flat disinterested tone, as if the matter of Ren's resurrection was a trivial and uninteresting matter.
"I guess I can get the Troll blood." I was annoyed that I didn't have enough Troll blood on me to pay for Ren's resurrection right now but a quick vist to Lord Ratede should fix that problem.
I took a deep breath and told myself to relax. It'd all be fine soon. My heart rate slowed and the fists I had clenched without realising eased open, I glanced at my palms to discover, I had the fading red imprints of my nails imprinted on them. I hadn't even noticed any pain.
He asked "Do you have Ren's blood phylactery or his body?"
"I've got both. "Why?"
"That makes it easier." He ignored my question, to ask me another. "Have you drained the body yet?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's typical to drink the blood of a fallen vampire as blood is power and it's better used by the living than kept by the dead."
Vampires were seriously fucked up. "No I haven't."
He shrugged. "It's usually better for someone to make use of his blood while it's still fresh. Once he's resurrected, he'll be much weaker than he was before and he'll need a strong guardian to protect him until he regains his strength."
I didn't want to desecrate Ren's body like that just for a power up, though the priest brought up a good point. How would I keep him safe? Ren's stats would drop and if the Helios church wanted him dead, they'd send more paladins next time. How does one hide from a god ?
Before I could get lost in pointless and depressing thoughts, I needed to visit Lord Ratede and get the necessary Troll blood.
I went to Lord Ratede's room guided by the ever attractive and helpful Commander Keiran.
Once inside Lord Ratede's room, I told him everything that had happened, unloading myself of the burden. He stayed silent as I ranted about Henry until I finally had nothing left to say.
Lord Ratede reacted oddly to news of Ren's death at the hands of a paladin. He merely said "That's disappointing."
"Disappointing? Shouldn't you be more upset that someone killed him? Even if I can bring him back, don't you feel anything about Ren dying."
"I've had thousands of children, only 3 of whom, correction, 2 of them survive and live in this city. I'm used to them dying."
That was disconcerting. "According to the priest, I'll need a thousand fresh Troll blood to bring Ren back."
"And?"
"I'd need your help for that."
"Unfortunately my hands are tied, I can't give you anything to resurrect him, tradition dictates that only those strong enough to ensure their own survival are worthy. Everyone else is not worth bothering about."
"So you're not going to help at all?" This day was just getting worse and worse.
"I didn't say that, I can't help you directly but I can give you three pieces of advice."
I sighed. Of course it wouldn't be as easy as Lord Ratede just giving me what I needed.
"What's your advice?"
"One, use the blood I gave to Ren to increase your stats & gain some new abilities."
I had forgotten about Lord Ratede's gift.
I took out both bottles of his blood and swigged both of them down in quick succession. My stats increased by 400, except for charisma which only increased by 200.
[God's Eye has been learned] [God's Eye: create a magical eye in the sky to observe.]
[Tunneling has been learned] [Tunneling: creates a tunnel within the earth]
[Blood line resonance, Blood Mastery increased to level 4, Blood Digestion increased to level 3] [Blood Formation has been learned] [Blood Formation: Shape blood into various forms to various effect]
Lord Ratede continued "Excellent. Those are some useful abilities, you've gained. Second piece of advice, use Blood Refill to quickly regain your lost power."
"Wait, I don't get it, how would that help? It only works if I'm out of blood, which just means I lose my stats again."
"You just need to store 80% of your own blood into a blood phylactery, drain a victim or drink stored blood & you'll gain a higher proportion of their strength for yourself than normal. Then you just drink your own blood & repeat. Simple."
"If its that's easy to gain stats, why wasn't Ren using it?"
Lord Ratede shrugged. "It's not a common practice to use Blood Refill unless you're desperate, as it can be dangerous."
"In what way?"
"Well you might have noticed that when your blood volume dropped, your aggression rose."
Considering that Henry murdered my boyfriend by chopping off his head in front of me, I was already pretty enraged before my blood volume dropped so I hadn't linked the increased blood lust with the blood loss.
"I guess. I wasn't quite calm to begin with."
Lord Ratede "hmmed" & continued his explanation. "Blood Refill is a last ditch survival mechanism for a vampire suffering extreme blood loss. Blood lust rises to a fever pitch & the urge to rend and tear and drain an enemy rises explosively. While this provides a temporary boost to combat ability, it comes at the cost of sanity, so it's hazardous to allies."
"If it's so dangerous, why do you want me to use it now?"
"Well, Blood Refill can't be taught as much as unlocked & very few are willing to be in the same room as someone whose basically in a psychotic state. However Blood Refill is useful for very specific circumstances."
"Such as ?"
"Someone who suddenly lost a lot of their strength for example. While it's dangerous for a young vampire to gain a lot of power quickly without the necessary control. You've previously gained the power & control over time, so it's less strenuous on your mind & body then it would be otherwise. Admittedly some have used it to increase their power rapidly but the results were ultimately counterproductive as they gained strength without control & were a danger to themselves and others."
"Okay, I guess I'll be doing that then."
"I'd suggest, practicing on your captives, so you learn control over the psychosis."
"What's the last piece of advice?"
"While power is important, expertise is equally as important if not more so."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You gained dark power from the paladin."
"Um yes. How did you know that?"
"You are an open book to me, I know your stats as you champions like to call them, your skills, your classes, your level. I also have personal experience draining the dhampirs who've returned from becoming holy knights. I'm familiar with the process."
"So you have the priest class as well? Which God did you choose?"
"Sharn of course, I'm a high Priest of the Blood Temple among other things."
"So you could bring back Ren?"
"I could act as an agent to do so but it's ultimately Sharn who would bring him back using a priest as an instrument of her will on this realm. The point remains that a sharp sword wielded by a skilled swordsman is better than a sharp sword handled by a novice."
"What do swords have to do with Ren's resurrection?"
Lord Ratede sighed deeply in frustration. "If you wish for Ren to be resurrected & continue to survive you're going to need to get much stronger & more importantly learn how to use your power effectively. There is no point having a lot of physical strength if you don't know how to punch."
"Oh okay I guess that makes sense. What will you do about Henry?"
"I'll arrange to have some troops on standby to be ready for him if he returns. However I can only do so once, in retaliation for Ren's death. Beyond that, it'll be up to you & those on the border to stop them. I'll only act if they reach the city, however if they do so, there will be hell to pay if I find out that you let them through without giving it your all. I have no use for those who hide behind others for protection."
I resisted the urge to point out that he was hiding behind the border guards & dhampir guards with great difficulty. "I'd like to know when your troops are around so I can get my own pound of flesh."
"Commander Keiran will visit you later to arrange the details. However I must warn you that it would be in your best interests to gain as much power as you can before then. If I know humans, they'll be back with a greater force next time & they'll keep coming until they break you."
On that depressing note, I decided it was time to leave and get the Troll blood I needed as quickly as possible. I'd need some help though if I wanted to survive Henry's retaliation.
I logged out & logged back, skipping the tedious journey back through the tunnels to log back into the game at the save point of Ren's cave, effectively teleporting through miles & miles of tunnels to get where I wanted.
It was time to follow Lord Ratede's second piece of advice & use the power of [Blood Refill]. I went into the back of Ren's cave where the captives were held along with my blood phlactery.
I emptied myself of 90% of my blood & stored it within my blood phylactery. A moment later, the blood lust would descend and I'd rip into a captive drinking their blood & my stats rose dramatically. Each time I took advantage of [Blood Refill], the blood lust would be slightly less severe than the previous time. I used the effects of [Blood Refill] on six Trolls, four Ogres and two Doom Wolves.
After the tenth captive drained, I gained another level in [Blood Refill].
[Blood Refill 2: Effect extends to 2 targets.]
I used [Blood Refill] before draining and killing the last 2 captives, the Doom Wolves.
776 strength, 216 dexterity, 248 agility, 160 intelligence, 256 stamina, 80 charisma, 976 vitality gained in total from the captives.
Blood Refill was very useful for restoring my lost stats, being ten times more effective than drinking blood from targets yesterday night was. The only problem I found was the loss of control, after losing so much of my blood, I just wanted to go and murder something. As such all my captives ended up dead, which was less than useful for future prospects.
Now that I had no captives left, it was finally time to make use of the blood Ren & I had collected from our blood thralls Tom & Tim.
I emptied myself of blood, storing it in the blood phylactery & drank 2 bottles of Tom's blood & gained [Wind Blade] & [Haste] along with more stats. [Wind Blade: Shape the Wind into a blade, to slice into enemies] [Haste: Doubles speed for a minute]
I went through the same routine as before & drank 2 bottles of Tim's blood & gained [Hawk's Eye] & [Poison Arrow]. The archery skill wasn't much use to me but [Hawk's Eye] could be useful. [Hawk's Eye: Grants you the eyes of a Hawk, increasing range of vision & clarity] [Poison Arrow: Using your own mana, you infuse an arrow with energy that disrupts target's mana,
392 strength, 140 dexterity, 140 agility, 300 intelligence, 40 stamina, 28 charisma, 425 vitality gained from the brother's blood.
My stats had grown to 1922 strength, 1010 dexterity, 1042 agility, 1100 intelligence, 920 stamina, 330 charisma, 2063 vitality & 60 dark power
I logged out again
**** Reality
I looked through the information in the file labeled favors stored on my data port.
I had spent months helping noobs while completing strength elixir quests and other related quests for the apothecary. I had kept meticulous records of every noob I helped so that I could maintain semi regular contact just in case they could be useful later.
Despite my lack of interest in the family business, that my father & older brother managed, networking was a basic skill that was drilled into me as a child. "Always keep track of who knows you and who owes you. " is a favored pearl of wisdom spouted by my father after every business lunch & social ocassion.
I messaged everyone I knew to check their availability for a Troll Clearing mission & organized a party.
As a last minute mission, my options were limited but I managed to get Tim & Tom on board, along with a necromancer, druid & berserker. A party of 6 would do, especially since all their levels were higher than the Trolls and me. Should be a simple exercise.
The necromancer was the most important for my future plans.
Now that I had organized some temporary allies, I needed to get more information about my enemies.
I checked the forums for information about the Church of Helios and their agents.
They were balls deep into the Holy War with the Undead empire, assisting the front line with holy warriors, paladins, templars & priests. They were backed by multiple kingdoms & had millions of troops at their disposal, thankfully for me most of them were busy with the war or proselytizing but if things got serious, this would be a be a real slog.
I had gotten lucky in the last fight but I would need more power if I wanted to survive a rematch, especially if he brought friends along next time.
I had a day before Henry would return, possibly less for other paladins, I needed to make the most of my remaining time to get stronger & more skilled.
I also wanted to go kill Damon & Thad, since they probably could have helped Ren fight off that Paladin easily enough but they hadn't. Luckily I had worked off some of my rage by killing my captives and had suppressed that impulse as at my current strength, it'd just be suicidal & pointless.
After experimenting with [Blood Refill] I had a slightly better understanding of vampires.[Bloody Rampage] should have taken about roughly 90% of my strength & vitality stats from the amount of [Blood Missiles] used. Instead I lost all the stats I had gained from being a dhampir. Losing so much blood effectively wiped my progress as a vampire. Which explained why Ren was always telling me that blood was the most important resource to a vampire.
Presumably there was some kind of work around to the problem that a more experienced vampire could teach me like Lord Ratede. However our last conversation was deeply frustrating and I didn't want to suffer through any more stupidity at the moment.
Tom & Tim arrived, so I stopped experimenting with blood & thinking about blood & focused on explaining the current situation to them. They were aggravated after I told them Ren had died but after I told them that he could be brought back, they were relieved. We'd all grown attached to Ren, me more than them for obvious reasons. The NPC's in this game were far more realistic than others, possibly because of the superior AI that administered over this 'world' which made everything more realistic or possibly from prolonged contact with us 'Champions'. It was hard to know.
There was a slight hitch in today's hunt as neither Tom & Tim benefited from Blood Pact at the moment. If all had gone as normal, they would have received a boost from [Blood Pact] tonight. As such their stats were imbalanced & they'd be less powerful than normal. They weren't concerned as they were 30 levels above the target Trolls and had received great benefits from hitting level 100. They also knew how to fight on their 'off days' since they dealt with the situation every third day anyway. I trusted them to manage.
I formed a new party once everyone had arrived, assigning myself as party leader. It was a bit unusual considering I was the lowest leveled in the group but they were fine with it for a single raid. They'd all been power leveled by me in the past before they had moved on at different levels and for different reasons. They trusted my leadership, at least for a few hours.
I invited Tom and Tim (obviously), a necromancer who had hilariously (according to him) named himself Bone Zone (level 105), a druid named Andrew (level 102) and a barbarian berserker called Blade Fury (Level 100).
They all met me outside the cave and I explained my situation (about being a dhampir) and swore them to secrecy, I didn't expect that to mean much in the long run but it'd do for now & I'd worry about the long term issues later. Frankly I needed their blood too much to bother with secrecy or discretion. I explained that I had a particular purpose for today's hunt & I needed their help in order to succeed.
The first thing I did was to meet up with the three new players to the party & drink their blood.
Bone Zone dressed like a typical necromancer with a black robe over leather armor, decorated in skull motif. Bone Zone's face was pale & gaunt while his body was skinny bordering on anorexic. Bone Zone was kind of a weird guy, quiet & methodical but also prone to juvenile bouts of 'humor' & pranks.
I drained Bone Zone carefully of his blood, doing my best to be gentle so as not to break him. He looked & felt fragile as fuck. I acquired [Death Bolt] and [Raise Skeleton].
[Raise Skeleton: Raise a skeleton with 10% of original physical stats, 100% intelligence cost.]
Necromancers could only control summons based on their intelligence stats and the level of their necromancy skills. Often they were forced to make a choice between having a few powerful undead summons or using a mob of trash summons to distract enemies while casting death & poison spells from afar.
[Death Bolt: inflict direct damage to target's soul]
Andrew the Druid dressed in loose clothing of green & brown, looking like Robin Hood minus the bow. Andrew didn't have any obvious weapons, his hands empty save for all the rings on his fingers. His real strength came from being a Priest of Viridios (the nature God) & his ability to transform into a various forms for maximum versatility.
Andrew is a freak, he loves nature, in an intense & unhealthy manner. He also has the title of Pervert for reasons I mostly try and forget. He's a brawler, he's wiry, with small but potent muscles; he loves the smell of grass and the taste of blood.
I drained Andrew and gained the low level nature spell [Bind] & the passive skill [Beast Mastery]
[Bind: summon a vine to bind a target temporarily]
[Beast Mastery: effectiveness of animal companions increased by 10%, intelligence and charisma requirements reduced by 10%.]
Blade Frenzy the barbarian berserker was arguably the hunkiest looking of the group, with shoulder length hair, broad shoulders & BIG muscles. He only wore a loin cloth made from Doom Wolf pelts & leather bracers on his forearms armed with a pair of large battle axes.
Blade Frenzy is an insatiable power top... Straight supposedly, but I had my doubts about that.
When I sank my teeth into Blade Frenzy to drain him, he pulled me in close (having stored his axes away via inventory recall) and squeezed my ass, while grinding his thick cock against mine. "I've missed your ass."
"Um thanks."
I gained [Taunt] and [Frenzy].
[Taunt: Taunt an enemy to provoke an irrational hatred, temporarily ignoring other threats.]
[Frenzy: Damage increases exponentially with each successful strike when dual wielding.]
I looked around, Blade Frenzy had gotten me horned up and I was curious as to the reaction of the rest of the party. None of them were surprised. I had sex with all of these guys previously, except for Bone Zone who was way too skinny for my liking, though he'd seen me have gay sex before and been generally disaffected. I think he may be asexual as he never seems interested in anybody or anything other than the undead.
Blade Frenzy & I traveled together up until the Orcs (level 40 – 50) & he used to plow my ass with his thick cock regularly. His loin cloth allowed for easy access to his cock & also to his nice muscular butt.
Andrew & I traveled together until we finished level grinding on the Doom Wolves at level 60. He fucked me a lot, mostly in the Beast Forest, pounding my ass while I held onto a tree trunk & one memorable occasion while I clung to a tree branch as we fucked in the tree tops. He also got real kinky after level 50 when he got [Companion Transformation] which I still feel very conflicted about.
Tom & Tim had fucked me a lot over the last couple of months, though less frequently the last couple of weeks as they've found more 'talent' in the capitol to mess about with.
They were all looking at me, waiting for me to do something. My hands were still on Blade Frenzy's large solid pecs & his were still on my butt. While it was tempting to distract myself with some hot sex, I had to focus. I needed to level up, get a lot of Troll Blood & increase my power via skill mastery.
"Thank you all for coming." Tom & Tim snickered like filthy children while Blade Frenzy's smile widened & his hands moved from groping my ass through layers of clothing, to sliding his hands into my pants to squeeze my bare ass. It felt really good, Blade Frenzy's hands were big & callused & pressed me against his solid muscles & hard cock. It was getting much harder to focus for some reason all of a sudden.
"Haven't cum yet." Blade Frenzy said before biting onto my neck, his teeth just holding firm, while his tongue did very distracting things.
I moaned involuntarily, I couldn't help it. I looked back for some help only to find Tom & Tim with their cocks out, stroking each other while Andrew got closer, his breeches loosened, with his hard cock sticking out. This may have been a bad idea. Like having an AA meeting across from a bar. Most of these guys were filthy perverts, part of the reason I had hung out with them to begin with but it was not helpful right now.
"Guys, work first, fun later."
"Tease" Andrew said pulling down my leather pants below my butt, to rub his hard cock against my hole. "Sure we can't have a little fun first?"
"After we're done with the Trolls, we can have as much fun as you like but for now can we get back to the actual goal."
"I'm going to hold you to that one." Blade Frenzy said.
"Me too." Andrew said, before pushing his cock into me, then he bit me, his teeth growing larger and sharper and his grip on my waist grew tighter and his cock got longer & thicker.
"Okay enough of that." I said pushing them both backwards.
Andrew was halfway into 'Beast Mode' looking like a cheap 90's horror film Wolf Man. "Mean." Andrew half growled/said. It was weird seeing a wolf man try to pout, or possibly just fucked up, his face started melted back the other way.
"BOO. BORING." Tim & Tom shouted, their cocks in each other's grasps, Tim continued "We wanted a good show."
Bone Zone just rolled his eyes, with his arms crossed, looking thoroughly bored.
I continued on as if nothing happened, fastening my leather pants & rearranging my somewhat damaged chain mail armor, trying to look more presentable.
"First thing, we're going to clear the Ogres, my aim is to practice using some new skills & level up some old ones. What I want from the rest of you is help to bring them in & pin them down until I can kill them. After that we're going to clear the Trolls in a different way than normal, I need them alive long enough to drain their blood, so try not to kill them too quickly. Is everyone clear on this?"
I got a chorus of yes & yeahs of varying levels of enthusiasm, mostly low. All the cocks were put away which was a little sad but I had things to do now, sex could come later.
All in all I had gained 10 new skills from my party members, [Death Bolt], [Raise Skeleton], [Taunt], [Frenzy], [Hawk's Eye], [Poison Arrow], [Haste], [Beast Mastery] and [Bind]. I had also gained 4 skills/spells incidentally from Henry, mostly priest skills [Corruption], [Shield Bash], [Poison], & [Curse]. Lord Ratede provided three, [God's Eye], [Tunneling] & [Blood Formation] & Abyss provided one [Shadow Mastery].
I had a total of 18 new abilities, 6 of them weren't immediately useful or practical right now, namely [Shadow Mastery], [Shield Bash], [Tunneling], [Blood Formation], [Corruption] & [Poison Arrow]. Which still left with me with 13 new skills/spells to develop to see how they'd shape up & another 25 or so spells & skills to hone into useful weapons. I was starting to appreciate Lord Ratede's third piece of advice more, I had too many skills/spells that I didn't make use of, because I could simply overwhelm monsters with pure stats. That wouldn't work against other 'Champions'.
Being with Ren had made me lazy & complacent. I needed to regain my previous style, random & ruthless. I used to have to jump out of trees to make use of gravity to kill Ogres & strength elixirs to increase damage. I needed to fight smarter, instead of relying on high stats like I had been for the last month.
I wouldn't be able to regain all my lost stats in a day but I could make use of the time to increase my skill proficiency & work up some tactics.
Tom & Tim didn't require much in preparation, nor did Blade Frenzy the Barbarian.
I respawned Angus at the cost of some experience & gave him a hug, we were both without our partner because of Henry. Angus was a warm fluffy killing machine & I needed to figure out the best use of him. The first step would be getting him to level 100 where his stats would double & he'd get a new ability as well.
Level 100 was an important goal for me too as I'd gain [Aura Control], which would make me far more powerful.
Bone Zone summoned half a dozen skeletons & two special undead summons, a level 100 death knight and a level 100 lich. He used [Bolster Undead], a necromancer's buff to undead, it also provided a boost to my defense, which was interesting.
The Lich was capable of death & poison magic and would inflict ranged damage. (One of the reasons why necromancers were unpopular with other players, most of their AOE attacks were indiscriminate in their damage to the living)
The death knight was a powerful melee combatant that could tank damage & also use [Life Drain] to steal life from enemies.
Andrew summoned his level 100 Treant Soldier & Doom Wolf King & cast [Nature's blessing] on the party which increased mana recovery by 40% .
Once the party was set up, I restated the mission objectives just in case they were too distracted by their hard cocks last time which summed up was "Use Ogres for target practice & collect Troll blood".
I didn't really need their help for this part but it would be faster than doing it alone.
Bone Zone was the most central to my plans as he was a mage with a necromancer speciality, with a subclass of Priest of Terminus & magic scholar. I wanted to pump him for information & make full use of his undead minions during the Troll hunt.
I used [God's Eye] along with [Hawk's Eye] to find the direction to the nearest group of Ogres. I sent off Blade Fury & Tim to bring in the Ogres. Blade Fury used [Taunt] to draw Ogres to us from afar.
The Treant soldier, Dire wolf king and death knight took up positions covering the sides and back.
Tom, Tim, Andrew and Bone Zone formed a tight square in the middle with the lich & death knight covering the rear.
As the enemies attacked, I used [Bind] to cause vines to spring from the ground and wrap around the feet of the ogres. As the skill was only level 1, it could only target one enemy at a time and the vines called weren't very strong, it still slowed them down for a second while they ripped themselves free.
I used my abnormally high mana pool to cast [Bind] repeatedly & often, overloading it with mana to summon longer & stronger vines to hold the Ogres for extended periods of time. It was a good delaying method. Admittedly overloading the spell caused constant mana backlashes & pain but with my high health pool it was irrelevant. More importantly, the skill leveled up quickly and got up to level 3, allowing me to summon 3 vines at a time, that were more durable.
While the Ogres were pinned down by [Bind] I used [Transformation] to increase the size of my fingernails into claws and used [Frenzy] to kill an Ogre. It only took a few dozen strikes for it to die.
After the first ogre died, I used [Raise Skeleton] & it's flesh just kind of sloughed off. It was gross but I had seen it a lot when I had helped level Bone Zone back when he was a noob. Of course I only leveled him to level 30 before he joined Necropolis and he got training from them instead.
Immediately after being raised, it tried to attack me.
Bone Zone said "Enslave it with [Soul Slavery]"
"I only have Soul Contract."
"Well try that then."
I used [Soul Contract] on it instead. It only paused it to stop briefly, then it tried to attack me again. I just slapped it down, its stats were pathetic, despite the advantages of being undead, it was no match for me.
After several seconds it finally accepted the [Soul Contract] & I got new notifications.
[Ogre Skeleton has been added as a personal summon, you can resurrect it as long as you're alive, by sacrificing some of your own experience. This summon will share half of it's experience with you & will take an equal share of any experience you gain from combat while it's active in a party with you.] [Necromancer specialization unlocked, undead will offer less resistance in future, further necromancy skills will unlock when meet certain skill requirements.]
I directed the new Ogre Skeleton to attack the living Ogres with a telepathic command. It didn't really do much damage but it was a useful decoy. I also used [Earth Golem] as a decoy, Earth Golem required the manipulation of earth to move but I just used it to randomly block enemy movement & it was also kind of funny to create an Earth Golem in the path of a rampaging Ogre, causing it to smack right into it & fall over.
The Ogre Skeleton was nowhere close to being as effective as Bone Zone's death knight but it was useful cannon fodder and a distraction for the growing mob of Ogres. Whenever the Ogres were looking like they were about to swamp the others, I'd move off a bit from the group & use [Taunt] and use a combination of [Bind], [Quicksand] & [Stone Prison] to slow them down. I found that [Death Bolt] was quite useful & could be used through a [Stone Prison].
I used [Curse] on all of the weapons used by the party, to increase their damage. Whenever anyone got injured I would use [Heal] to restore their health.
Tom used [Wind Blade] [Tempest Blade] to kill Ogres while using [Tornado] to trap Ogres in a wind funnel for a couple of minutes at a time.
After thirty minutes of fighting ogres, we had cleared the Ogre Forest of Ogres. Our party had 6 players, 6 Goblin Skeleton Soldiers, 2 Doom wolves, a lich, a death knight, an Ogre Skeleton and a Treant, so the Ogres didn't have a hope of stopping us.
After clearing the Ogres I got a notification
[Terminus approves of your genocide of the Ogres & grants you 10 Dark Power & the Priest sacrament 'Offering] [Offering: When you place your hand on a corpse or carcass, you can offer it's essence to Terminus in exchange for resurrection for yourself or others, dark power or experience. Value varies depending on level of the offering & it's mana concentration]
I asked Bone Zone about it & he said it was part of the reason he chose to be a Priest of Death, the bonus experience helped level up faster & dark power made spells under Terminus's dominion (death magic) easier.
We received a dud Clearing Reward, receiving an Ogre Club, presumably because the level difference between the party & the prey was too extreme & it made a poor spectacle for the Gods.
On the upside I had managed to increased the skill level of [Frenzy], [Raise Skeleton], [Death Bolt], [Taunt], [Hawk's Eye] [God's Eye] and [Curse] to level 2. [Bind] grew to level 4 & was quickly developing into a new favorite of mine as it did no real damage to the target but made killing so much easier.
We took a break for a moment to regroup & reorganize, the Ogre clear was just practice to improve our team work before dealing with the more troublesome Trolls.
I made use of the down time to practice my [Offering], releasing the dead Ogres I had collected & using [Offering] to get rid of them & exchange them for an experience bump.
After using [Offering] a hundred times, I gained enough experience to level up to 88 & gained [Mass Offering].
[Mass Offering: Offer up the dead in droves to Terminus with greater ease in exchange for his dark favors.]
I emptied out my inventory of anything below that of Trolls, getting rid of all the accumulated Demon bunnies, demon deers, monstrous boars, goblins, hobgoblins & Orc bodies I had picked up while power leveling Jason. Then I got rid of all the bodies of the Doom Wolves & Ogres I had collected while hunting with Ren for blood & stats.
I offered them all to Terminus in exchange for experience, which was what I needed the most. I needed to get up to level 100 ASAP. It would make a serious qualitative change to my strength rather than a quantitive amount like the boost in stats.
Unfortunately due to diminishing returns, I only got up to level 89 after basically emptying my inventory of everything except Troll corpses & Ren. I also got some class experience from using the sacrament so many times, my Priest sub class was up to level 30, if I could level it to 50, I'd gain a new Priest ability or bonus according to Bone Zone.
While I was busy with my offerings, Bone Zone had equipped one of my Ogre Skeleton with a great sword. Apparently it had leveled up to a rank 2 Skeleton, Skeleton Soldier without me noticing.
Bone Zone had temporarily taken possession of the skeleton in order to equip it since I didn't have the passive skill he did. Once it was equipped he returned it to my possession, I gained a semi equipped undead soldier.
[You have gained Undead Equip] [Undead Equip: When your undead are equipped with items they'll be able to use them.]
In a way it allowed Necromancers to boost the effectiveness of their minions more than any other summoner. On the other hand it meant a necromancer had to constantly keep track of its minions so that the items weren't lost or damaged beyond repair. Necromancers also had to constantly upgrade their own and their minion equipment to keep up with higher level threats.
Part 2 of my plan was complete, the Ogres were killed, now for Part 3 Drain the Trolls, then Part 4 would Ren's Resurrection. Part 5 would be Wreck Henry.
************************************* Author's Note
Some new characters have been added to the story, most of whom will get into greater mischief in the next chapter. Some of which will be very graphic & very weird...
Bone Zone will be a semi regular for plot reasons, let me know if any of the others take your interest for cameos or greater involvement in the story.
As always feedback is helpful to know what's going right & what's going wrong & helps to motivate me to write more & post more frequently.
The next chapter will probably be out in a day or two once I work out some kinks (depraved & otherwise).
Also Nifty makes use of donations to provide a platform for these depraved and debaucherous tales.
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