DD1 ASC - Chapter 34 - Absence

The wagon kept getting stuck in the mud. It was infuriating, having to hop out of the almost comfortable driver's seat, trudge around to the back of the wagon through the churned up mud, only to then have to then lift the damn thing out of the cloying earth. By itself, it wasn’t a particularly bothersome chore, but the fact that he had to repeat the whole process every dozen or so feet as the wagon kept getting stuck was starting to grate on Typhoeus’s nerves. The creature in the back didn’t particularly like it either, always taking the opportunity to snap its fanged maw at him as it thrashed against its two sets of chains, one forged in steel and the other hardened mana made solid through his skill-infused spells. The novelty of transporting such a large creature had long since worn off. Arilla didn’t really need such a challenging foe to push her to 20, and if he hadn’t insisted on such a big animal in the first place, then perhaps the wagon wouldn’t keep sinking quite so deeply into the ground whenever his team of dire rats dragged it over a slick patch of wet soil.

Typhoeus swore loudly and pumped mana into his feeble human muscles, empowering his strength by a few orders of magnitude as he efficiently utilised a tiny fraction of his true power to lift the stuck wagon out of the mud. Inch by painful inch, the wheels of the vehicle rose slowly from the sucking earth, the wood of the bed groaning in protest against its heavy and angry load as the team of dire rats at the front, eager to escape from the wagon’s monstrous occupant, rushed forwards heedless of their lack of driver. Their long-clawed feet rapidly churned up the wet earth into even more loose mud as they pulled the wagon the rest of the way out of the mire. As soon as the vehicle was free it promptly lurched forwards down the hill without him. The dire rats squeaked in terror as they ran down the incline, their heavy burden threatening to overtake them, while the monster in the back thrashed in delight as it fixed its eyes on the panicked beasts of burden.

“Fuck,” Typhoeus swore, envisaging the coming disaster in perfect clarity as he tried to take a step forwards only to realise that in lifting the wagon out of the mud, he had inadvertently pushed himself deep into the wet ground until the soil was reaching up to his mid-thigh. He groaned in dismay, for his outfit was thoroughly ruined by the muck, as were his chances of swiftly catching up to the escaping wagon before the monster once again whittled down the number of dire rats pulling the wagon from five to four.

Typhoeus was running late; he knew that, but he wanted today to be special for Arilla. Everything from his gift of ratling-forged platemail to his choice of an obnoxiously large opponent were all carefully chosen to put her in as good a mood as possible for their long-awaited talk. He had very nearly let things slip earlier when he told her about the reason why humanity lacked a species class, but as much as he wanted to curse himself for nearly blowing his secret, he couldn’t help but be pleasantly surprised by how well she had taken the ‘monsters are people too’ news. Or at least, how well she appeared to be taking it. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that his ability to anticipate how humans would react to his words and actions had barely improved since meeting Arilla.

He caught up with the wagon before the dire rat massacre could truly begin, tightening his arcane chains around the monstrous creature’s throat and forcing its long neck back down onto the flatbed of the wagon as he reclaimed his seat. His mud-covered legs trailed clumps of wet soil behind him as he took hold of the reins and guided the dire rats straight into another patch of deep mud.

“Fuck!”

Hours later, the wagon trundled back into camp, missing all but two dire rats and immediately Typhoeus knew that something was wrong. The wardposts were missing, and as he extended [Sovereign’s Perception] over the campsite to search for Arilla, he was dismayed to see more and more signs of theft, but no trace of her at all except for a pool of her dried vomit and some spatterings of her blood, both of which were smells that he knew all too well. He leapt out of the driver's seat and rushed to the periphery of the camp, making a beeline towards the site of her attack and likely abduction.

He searched frantically for any clues and found nothing. With his high-level perception skill, if there was anything to find, he was certain that he would be able to see it, but the unfortunate truth was that it didn’t take all that many levels in a bushcraft skill to eliminate all traces of a trail and without a suitable divination skill he was shit out of luck.

“Arilla! Arilla!” Typhoeus yelled, frantically looking around for any sign of her, his desperation mounting as his efforts to find her were met with immediate and total failure. He knew it was a waste of time, but lacking any better ideas, he found himself screaming to the heavens until his throat was sore and cracked.

He should have taken her with him to collect the monster or left more potent wards behind to protect her, or better yet, simply held down a high-level monster weeks ago and let her slowly hack it to death with her sword. If he hadn’t wanted such a memorable end to her training in the pit, then he could have been back hours earlier, which, judging by how fresh her blood on the ground was, would have ensured he was there to protect her. He tried to breathe through his rising panic, to tell himself that she was okay, that every sign pointed to the fact that she had been taken, not killed. That the blood splattering the soil was nowhere near enough to be lethal, but the self-recriminations wouldn’t stop.

There was nothing good about this situation; the foothills were large, and there was little he could do to find her without some form of a lead to go on. In the intervening hours since her abduction, anything powerful enough to bypass his wards could already be dozens of miles away. He walked back to the wagon slowly, simmering in his guilt and failure, the shrieking monster in the back of the wagon irritating him one too many times and earning itself an artillerist-empowered manabolt to the face. The spell impacted the creature between the eyes, turning slightly mid-flight to correct for his lacklustre aim. Its payload of hardened mana and dragonfire practically disintegrated everything above the neck of the chained creature as its stump burned and threatened to spread to the wagon before Typhoeus put a stop to it.

*Congratulations, you have defeated a level 21 Hill Drake, experience is awarded.*

The rush of energy that came with the kill did little to improve his mood. That the creature was chained and unable to defend itself, made him feel dirty and cheap as he had essentially killed a wild animal for not being quiet in its captivity. He sat down on the floor, holding his head in his hands as he wondered what to do next.

Lightning-fast, Typhoeus strained his 41 dexterity to the limit as he spun around, rising to one knee as he caught the knife arm of his assailant—the rogue pinned in place as he held the slight man still with his much smaller hand.

“You,” Typhoeus said as he recalled the human's face from the graduation party.

“Me,” Harlowe said, the man grinned wickedly, as within a fraction of a heartbeat, he drew another long knife from his belt and plunged it deep into Typhoeus’s chest.

He collapsed backwards, releasing his grip on the rogue’s arm as his health plummeted, the familiar sensation of poison coursing through his veins. It felt like a paralytic rather than a necrotic toxin, so it wasn’t the worst possible turn of events. As the numbness spread, he fell onto his side, the hilt of Harlowe’s dagger still protruding from his chest.

“How did you see me, little mage? I suppose it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but I’d like to know before Rolf starts working you over," Harlowe gloated, his thin face contorting almost unnaturally in order to fit his wide, ugly smile.

“I always forget your kind loves to dual wield,” Typhoeus said breathlessly, stalling for time. His obscene mana regeneration was being converted into HP, stymying his internal bleeding as it fueled his accelerated healing, reknitting the punctured blood vessels and torn tissues around the blade of the knife.

“It’s only sensible, really," Harlowe said, casually tossing a knife up into the air where it flipped three times before he caught it in the same hand. “Short blades are light, so it would be foolish to carry only one.”

“Where’s Arilla?” he choked out, discreetly biting his tongue so that a trickle of blood escaped his lips in order to better sell his lie.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be seeing your lady love soon enough. My brother may have gotten a little rough with her, but she’ll survive. Warriors are made of tougher stuff than you or I. Now, why don’t you let that poison do its trick, and you’ll wake up nice and groggy back at our camp.”

“Ah good… she’s still alive,” Typhoeus sighed, a relieved smile on his face as he relaxed, rolling onto his back as he lay there on the ground. Most of his worries had evaporated upon hearing Harowe confirm that Arilla was all right.

The rogue smiled sweetly as he waited for his poison to take hold. And he kept on waiting and waiting before an expression of unease gradually grew across his face.

“How are you still conscious?” he said, taking a cautious half-step backwards as he drew a second dagger which he raised along with the first.

“Oh, it's because I’m not human,” Typhoeus confessed, relishing the look of surprise that appeared on the man's face. There was something thrillingly illicit about saying the words out loud, like a physical weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders. Harlowe’s reaction ultimately didn’t matter, as there was no way that he was going to let the rogue live after this, but telling his truth, even to a dead man, was freeing.

“You're what? What are you?!” the man spluttered, panicking as his eyes went wide with fear.

Typhoeus slowly pulled the long knife out of his ample chest, the blade coming free with a wet sucking sound as his wound sealed up behind the small weapon.

“I’m hungry,” Typhoeus said, answering the rogue as he finished casting the first of many spells to come.

Harlowe rocketed forwards with a flurry of blindingly fast attacks. The rogue’s knives somehow dripped with fresh applications of poison as he stabbed at Typhoeus over and over again, the thick droplets of inky venom hissing as they fell to the ground. Typhoeus’s body jerked up and out of the way unnaturally, his magic enveloping his limp body in golden bands of light that yanked him violently out of the path of Harlowe’s rapidly moving blades. With a twist of will his spell quickly morphed to cover him instead in the thick golden scales of hardened mana that he was so fond of.

Between whatever skills the rogue had used and the poison, Typhoeus was fairly low on HP, and so he stalled, waiting patiently for his health to recover from burning the poison from his veins as the level 54 rogue tried frantically to end him.

Assuming good dental hygiene and a little luck, an adult human’s mouth contained thirty-two teeth. Typhoeus’s long-dead assailant, Silver, had neglected to replace all of his molars, leaving the dragon with just twenty-eight silver teeth in his pocket to remember him by. Those teeth and three delicate silver rings that had been gifted to him by the ratlings formed the backbone of Typhoeus’s external mana reserves, which he habitually kept topped off with 150 mana in each item from his [Warcaster’s Reservoir] skill. He had tried using other materials, but already he was pushing the upper limits of the impure silver’s mana capacity, giving him a total emergency reserve of 4650 mana to rival his own internal stores.

While he had already burnt the worst of Harlowe’s poison from his system, he was still mostly paralysed, his body sluggish and slow to respond to his urgent commands. So Typhoeus was entirely reliant on his spellcraft to keep him from further harm, as he erratically flung his own body through the air by exerting his will on the hardened scales made from his own protective aura. As he cast his spells and moved his body, he pulled on his external stores, doing his best to keep his mana pool full so that his impressive mana regeneration set about rectifying his much more limited health. Recovering at a rate of about 8 and a half HP per minute, it would take a while for him to be back to perfect health, but already he was feeling much better after his initial stab wound; the rogue's skill-enhanced strike had done far more damage to his HP than what could be accounted for by a blade of that size.

Typhoeus hastily dragged himself up into the air, his stomach protesting at the sudden vigorous motion as he pulled himself out of the path of a thrown knife. He tried to gain some distance from the rogue, continuously raining down manabolts from the sky as he put himself firmly out of stabbing distance. His plan to seek refuge up above was quickly nixed when Harlowe merely jumped and then jumped again, managing to close the gap between them by stepping on the wind as if it were solid ground. As the knives in Harlowe’s hands flashed forwards, they shimmered, scraping against his aura’s scales and somehow managing to pierce his flesh despite the steel weapons failing to penetrate his magical defences.

Fresh poison seared Typhoeus’s nerves, and he was quick to burn it out, sacrificing his newly regenerated health in the process as he batted the rogue away from him with a large pulse of kinetic force. Harlowe fell from the sky like a meteor, crashing through the mud hut that had been Typhoeus and Arilla’s home for the past few weeks. While he was concerned that he may have overdone it, he had to maintain the illusion, and so he followed up with a large volley of powerful manabolts that decimated the ruined structure.

Any concerns that he may have accidentally killed the rogue were quickly dispelled when Harlowe emerged from the shadows an instant later to throw five well-balanced daggers at him. Each one left trailing lines of cloying darkness that hung in the air, obstructing his path as he was forced to return to the ground to better manoeuvre away from the rogue’s attacks.

As he dodged, Typhoeus intermittently fired off volleys of glowing manabolts at Harlowe, the arcing bolts of golden light rarely managing to narrowly clip the rogue who was desperately diving out of the way, the wards on the rogue’s leather armour lighting up as they mitigated the worst of his spells. Bolts that missed entirely circled up, and into the air, each one adding to the growing halo of golden light that illuminated their battle as a literal cloud of hundreds of magical projectiles circled quickly around them, their flight continuously course-corrected by Typhoeus’s skill as he prepared for his endgame.

When Harlowe’s stamina finally reached its limits, Typhoeus still had thousands of mana left to burn in his external stores alone. Yet the rogue slowed dramatically, no longer able to contort his body in quite the same way without the benefit of his active skills, and the results were immediately catastrophic. The storm of manabolts that Typhoeus had kept aloft in the sky streamed down as one upon the weary rogue, tearing through the wards on his leather armour and crumbling the protective charms distributed around his body into a mist of very expensive dust. Each successive hit bruised flesh and singed skin as the swirling halo of glowing lines that had surrounded their battle disappeared in a matter of seconds as the earth exploded around the rogue in a flaming torrent of hostile magic.

When Harlowe finally emerged from the storm of destruction, he did so on unsteady feet. His body was a battered and bruised wreck, his skin and armour visibly charred down to the bone in numerous places with one arm hanging uselessly to the side. The joint of his elbow was pulped beyond recognition as his forearm hung on by a thin thread of crispy flesh. He didn’t scream or beg, which was in many ways admirable, the man biting his tongue instead as he turned around and fled, his form immediately disappearing from Typhoeus’s mundane sight.

“You’ll regret this, bitch! My brother will gut you and your whore both!” Harlowe spat as he made good his escape, his voice seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

“Finally…” Typhoeus muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes as he watched Harlowe go. The rogue's path was clearly visible to his extraordinary senses with [Sovereign’s Perception] easily overcoming the rogue's stealth skill. Typhoeus had a range of just over three hundred feet with his skill without entering a meditative trance, which would ordinarily make a pursuit challenging; fortunately, he had recently picked up a skill to supplement that.

He forced his mana into a crude approximation of a long lance as he cast his eye along the glowing arc that appeared in his vision, the scrying effect from [Artillerist’s Guidance] showing him an innocuous patch of earth one and half thousand feet away. He pushed [Sovereign’s Perception] through the skill, his dragon and mage classes briefly warring with one another until his species class came out the victor, the tiny patch of dirt blooming into a perfect sphere with a radius of exactly 303ft. A sphere that was filled with sounds, scents and, more importantly, a fleeing rogue with one functional arm.

Typhoeus narrowed his field of view down to the base of Harlowe’s skull, the golden line indicating his spell's projected flight path moving quickly to match. He frowned, thinking better of it as he lowered his aim down several inches, narrowing the tip of his spell construct to a fine point.

Typhoeus wouldn’t be granting anyone a swift death, not until he knew for sure that Arilla was okay. Normally he made a point of never playing with his food, but if she wasn’t in perfect condition when he found her, then he would be making a very large and very drawn out exception to this rule.