Chapter 13 Loose Ends
Lord Ratede & the Blood Priest watched Ren sodomising me without saying anything, Lord Ratede with a smirk & the priest with pursed lips. Presumably the priest wasn't happy with me defiling his holy workplace.
Ren continued on unimpeded by our audience, his thrusts picking up speed & vigor. I originally planned to say something in my defense but Ren was being awfully distracting with his cock and he finished thirty seconds after his dad arrived with a groan & a blast of cum up my butt.
Zombie Ren was an inconsiderate lover, not even bothering with a quick reach around to finish me off. Instead slumping to the ground with a satisfied smile, eyes drifting closed.
Zombie Ren seemed like he had worked out his homicidal urges for now. Nothing like a quick root to work out some aggression I guess.
I re equipped my armor once Ren had pulled out of me, trying to regain some semblance of respectability.
Meanwhile Lord Ratede crouched down and touched his son's forehead, which elicited a sleepy irritated grunt from Zombie Ren.
Lord Ratede turned to me and said "Ren's body seems fine but his mind or soul seems to be missing. I'll petition Sharn for answers."
"Do you think he'll be okay?"
"I don't know. I'll see what I can do."
He looked over Ren for a moment and said "Let's go."
With that the stone of the temple's floor flowed upwards covering Ren up to the neck. In a moment, Ren was dressed in the stone equivalent of plate mail. It was very stylish if impractical, white with veins of red.
Zombie Ren floated behind Lord Ratede, pulled along via the power of Earth mastery. I watched them go without saying anything.
I didn't object to Lord Ratede leaving with Ren because as much as I loved Ren, I had no idea how to help him, Lord Ratede would hopefully find a way to fix him. In the meantime I had to get stronger, build up my own army, so that I could protect Ren & myself from further attacks by the Helios church.
Admittedly Lord Ratede hadn't asked for my permission or input before simply leaving with Ren. I didn't have the time or inclination to object to Lord Ratede's behavior, I didn't want to get on his bad side by arguing with him. He ran a city full of vampires, I had enough troubles dealing with the Church of Helios. I didn't need any more enemies right now. I'd complain later once the dust settled.
I avoided looking at the priest, I felt a bit embarrassed being caught having sex in his church. It reminded me of when I got caught having sex with another altar boy when I was 16. You'd think I'd have learned to control my hormones better by now. Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I made a speedy exit from the church via logging out. Then I immediately logged back in, materializing in Ren's cave and walked over to Troll Town.
I visited Troll Town briefly and checked out my options as it's new owner. Several privileges can be bought by me as the Town's ruler, including a personal Gate, rune walls, minor environmental control & other lesser options. Unfortunately I couldn't buy any of them at the moment as the costs were absurd. I'd have to deal with that later when I had the gold.
I had a quick conversation with Bone Zone & Tom. (Tim had already logged out to deal with real world stuff). I thanked Bone Zone & Tim for their help with holding down the fort while I was gone. Tom needed to leave soon but Bone Zone was willing to look after the place while I left. I was a bit wary of Bone Zone being left in charge but I didn't have a better option at the moment. I thanked him for his help and told him I'd be off for a couple of hours to do some level grinding with the Trolls.
I took a small selection of Trolls with me, essentially the Troll King & about 9 of his Elites. They followed quite meekly considering I just beat them all up a few hours ago.
It was finally starting to get darker out which would allow me to let loose without worrying so much about being observed by other players & practice with shadows.
True night wouldn't happen until 8pm but it'd start getting darker around 6pm & gradually fade to darkness. This was the perfect time of day to practice [Shadow Mastery]. I hadn't had much leeway to practice it during the Troll clear but this could be a powerful weapon in my arsenal if used well.
I led my ten Troll subjects towards the swamp, it was a time consuming process as Trolls aren't exactly known for their speed. I made use of the time to practice casting [Haste] over and over again on the Trolls and myself. Once I got Haste to level 5, I should be able to gain [Mass Haste] which would make things much faster.
I did not like my first impression of the Swamp, it reeked of rotting plants & sweaty beasts. The weather practically changed upon the first step into the Swamp, hot & muggy with the damp heat, draining stamina with every step. Trudging through thigh high brackish water while on the lookout for threats was not my idea of fun.
The Swamp was not a popular place to level as the terrain made movement slow & tedious, especially for those with heavier armor. The lowest ranked monsters here were level 90 & were either highly poisonous or made use of poison to kill. This meant you had to bring a lot of antidotes or a Helios priest to [Cure] you, both methods were costly.
Even the demon bunnies which managed to make their way into every other ecosystem in the kingdom couldn't live here. The dominant monster in the Swamp were Lizard men that started at level 90 & evolved at level 100. There were a couple of other serious threats like the Devil Snakes & the Hippopus but they were thankfully few & far between.
My plan was not to go too far into the Swamp as I didn't want to spend too much time here right now. I had too much to do & too many threats to handle to spend a night in the Swamp. I proceeded with the quiet Trolls while on the look out for threats.
We ran into a Hippopus, which is a terrible mix of a hippopotamus and an octopus. It's body is quite similar to the standard Hippo, except twice as big, and has 8 tentacles, 4 on each side of it's torso, allowing it to swim through the swamp at greater speed and also to attack enemies. The suckers on the tentacles are used to latch onto prey, injecting a mild paralytic poison into the victim before the hippopus devours them.
I tried to match it's tentacles with my own tentacles made of shadow. It didn't really work at all as the shadows had about as much impact on the beast as cobwebs.
I didn't give up, I overcharged the shadow mastery spell & used it again & again, ignoring the pain from the mana backlash. My Shadow Mastery improved to level 2 & I gained [Shadow Tentacles].
Regardless my [Shadow Tentacles] didn't do much to slow down the beast. The Trolls surrounded the beast, hammering it with their bare fists, doing little damage but keeping it off balance enough so it couldn't eat any one of them.
I backed off a bit more & infused the [Shadow Tentacles] with dark power from Abyss, giving my shadows greater heft. I gained [Dark Tentacles] and I managed to slow the beast, I cast [Bind] as well to halt it's movements while I used my sword to slash off it's tentacles.
I finished it off with a blade to the brain. The Trolls all gained at least one level, a few gained a couple levels. I took the time after the short but intense battle to regroup.
I collected the blood of all the Trolls, storing it in Stone Jars that I stashed in my spatial inventory. It would come in use later, either for gaining stats or gold.
I needed to upgrade the Trolls' equipment, them fighting bare handed was stupid. Ideally I'd like to equip them with enhanced weapons & armors to make them a truly dangerous private army. Unfortunately I didn't have the time or money for that right now, so I'd take a page out of Lord Ratede's play book & make them something from stone.
Trolls sometimes used large wooden clubs, so I used Earthen Construction along with Earth Mastery to create crude stone clubs. I didn't have the skill to equip them with armor and heavy armor in this environment would just make them even slower than they already were. I learned [Stone Club] after equipping the last Troll. With the Trolls equipped with better weapons, we proceeded on with our Lizard hunt.
After another twenty minutes we finally found a Lizardmen village. I used [God's Eye] to look it over.
There were only 50 Lizardmen living on what was essentially a small island in the middle of a swamp. The Lizardmen were about 6 feet tall, with slim bodies with green & brown scales, typical of fantasy worlds, the major difference were that their jaws were far wider than you'd expect, more similar to crocodiles than lizards and they had the sharp teeth to go along with it. The lizardmen village had a shoulder height stone wall with small holes around it & small huts made of dried reeds within.
Upon getting within sight of the village we were greeted by a rain of poisoned javelins.
I called out to the Trolls to advance.
A third of the Lizardmen threw javelins, another third kept providing them more javelins while the remaining third formed a weird line behind the walls, with spears sticking out from the holes. A few were positioned just behind the only entrance to the village, a narrow gap in the wall, fit only for the Lizardmen to pass through.
The javelins had little impact on the Trolls as their high vitality & rapid regeneration countered the damage from the physical damage & poison damage.
The trolls trudged through the thigh high waters undeterred towards the Lizardmen.
I used [Rock Break] to shatter their defensive protection of the walls, injuring a couple of Lizardmen in the process.
I summoned Angus on dryish land & let him boost the Trolls with [Alpha's Roar] before he used [Gigantism] to boost his own attack power for a little rampaging.
The Trolls crashed upon the walls, using their brute strength to push through the new gap in the defenses. Once their walls had fallen, the lizardmen's lines were quickly overwhelmed.
Even with superior numbers the Lizardmen were doomed to fail after the walls were down.
The average stats for a Level 90 Lizardmen was
Strength:100 Dexterity: 200 Agility: 200 Intelligence: 200 Stamina: 100 Charisma: 50 Vitality: 200
While Lizardmen were highly intelligent and versatile, they suffered when up against living tanks of Trolls with stone clubs. It didn't help that I destroyed their tactical advantages of a fortified position & I kept using [Heal] whenever they tried making use of their superior numbers to take down a Troll.
Trolls leveled up every time a Lizardmen died so the momentum was in our favor.
I used [Bind] to restrain the highly mobile Lizardmen making it even easier for the Trolls to use their superior strength & vitality to kill the Lizardmen.
After twenty minutes of fighting, I had gained three levels, while the lowest level in the party was 90. All the Trolls had become Troll Lords. As I was their Troll King, they had been downgraded to Troll Lords once they evolved. Their stats had doubled and they had all gained [Rapid Regeneration 2] & [Stone Skin].
I stored all the Lizard men bodies in my inventory, I'd check with the apothecary to see how much they'd be worth once I returned to Ratede for Ren. I was in desperate need of gold, I had so many things to buy now.
The Lizard men raid had been successful. Happy with my progress I called a halt and told them to return back home. I didn't want to risk my luck & deal with a larger group of lizardmen.
I only drained one Lizardmen during the fight & gained [Total Regeneration] from it.
[Total Regeneration: Allows for the total regeneration, including, blood, bone & tissue over a period of time, depending on the nature of the injury.]
Total Regeneration was in some ways far superior to Rapid Regeneration as it allowed you to regrow limbs. The only downside was that it was more of a long term skill, allowing a lizardmen to regrow a limb after a day, whereas Rapid Regeneration recovered lost flesh in minutes.
It wasn't that useful for Champions as we could simply log out & log back in to regain lost limbs but it still was an impressive ability.
On my way back I ran into someone I really didn't want to meet up with, Thad.
"Hey Derek, this isn't your assigned area, what are you doing?"
"I needed to level up faster, I need to get up to level 100 quickly."
"I don't really care what you think you need. This is my territory & you are not to hunt in this area without my permission."
"Yeah well frankly I don't give a shit what you think about it."
"Ooer, what's got you in all in a tither?"
"Ren was killed by a paladin & you could have helped him!"
"That's not my job, if he's not strong enough to survive, it's his problem, my only responsibilities are to organize hunts so that they are unnoticed by the humans & if necessary protect the tunnels to Ratede. That's it."
"Fuck you."
I lashed out with a fist, which he easily avoided. I shook my head and focused, physical attacks would be worthless, his stats were way higher than mine. The only way that I might be able to hurt him was through magic. Holy light would be really useful right now but sadly that wasn't an option for me.
I instead used [Bind] which he easily tore through, so I made use of the deepening shadows around us to spam [Bind] & [Shadow Tentacles] to pin him down.
Once he was pinned in place, I had Angus use [Alpha's Roar] to boost the damage of the Trolls while he used [Gigantism] for a short bout of attacking before quickly recalling him before Thad could land a blow. Angus's attack didn't do any damage as Thad had already created a [Mana Shield] around him.
It didn't matter. It was a useful distraction so that my Troll Lords had the time to surround him. I hastily summoned Skeletons pummel him & his mana shield. Thad didn't even try and escape from the encirclement by 15 enemies, casually scratching one Troll & forming a finger nail thin sword out of it's blood.
He slashed at the Trolls, ignoring the skeletons entirely as if they weren't worth bothering about. Considering their low stats, I couldn't blame him.
Every time the Trolls bled, their blood was added to Thad's Blood Sword, he slashed and parried the attacks of the Trolls & their stone clubs as if it was child's play.
I filled up the rest of my summon inventory by unloading the corpses of the Lizardmen & using [Raise Skeleton] infused with Terminus's dark power to get me Skeleton Lizardmen with 90% of their original stats. I basically had the Trolls withdraw while having my undead be front liners.
Thad was holding his own quite easily against 20 enemies, his superior stats & skills allowing him to dominate despite being outnumbered.
The skeletons were bashed & hacked apart by Thad's blood sword but their injuries weren't feeding his blood sword, and was gradually reducing the effectiveness of his Blood Blade.
It was only a matter of time until Thad grew bored of this game & finished them all off with an AOE attack.
I wasn't concerned, while Thad was dicking about being his usual arrogant self, I sneaked up behind him and took a bite of him.
"Hey what are you doing?" I ignored his protest, the Trolls & Skeletons & Bind & Shadow Tentacles keeping him locked into place, unable to escape my coup de gras.
I drank deep of his blood, with every drop of his blood, I felt more powerful as my stats steadily rose.
"You can't do this." Thad whined.
I waited until I had drained Thad of most of his blood before responding "And yet I just did."
"You'll pay for this."
"From what I've heard, it's a vamp eat vamp world."
My stats had risen above what they were before I met Henry & Thad's had dropped enough that I didn't consider him a threat at the moment. I thought about killing him for the level ups but that could get messy. I didn't hate the guy, I just wanted to punish him for being such a smug asshole.
I'd give his stats back after I dealt with Henry... Probably.
I left Thad behind, half buried in the mud, chained with shadows & vines. It'd take him a couple of hours to get out.
Most of my skeletons had suffered serious damage & would take some time to recover. The Trolls would be fully recovered in ten minutes.
On the way back to Troll Town I made use of [Corruption] to convert the Holy ring I had nabbed off Henry into a Dark Ring. It required me to permanently sacrifice ten Dark Power from Abyss.
Thankfully a notification wasn't too far off.
[You've gained ten dark power from Abyss for corrupting a holy item & depriving an agent of Helios of it's use.]
[Dark Ring: 20% extra power to darkness spells.]
While the Lizard Hunt hadn't gone perfectly, as I wanted to level up to level 100 by the end of it but I guess that was too much to hope for. Ideally I would have gone to hunt Manticores for some power leveling like Tim & Tom had but that area was crawling with soldiers & on the border with a larger kingdom so it could get messy. I didn't need any more conflicts right now with national powers.
Despite not getting to level 100 and gaining the qualitative difference of Aura Control, I had gained a lot of stats thanks to Thad and my arsenal of spells & skills had grown and improved. I also had a few trump cards to pull out if necessary like the new and improved Troll Lords. I was about as ready as I could be for my rematch with Henry given the time I had remaining.
Authors Note: As always if you have comments or feedback, feel free to email me & I will get back to you presuming outlook doesn't plot against me...
Somehow my chapters are getting shorter, not a very porn tastic chapter this time, damn plot is overshadowing the sexy times. Damn priests & paladins getting in the way. Who wants to know what Commander Keiran is packing?
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