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Congratulations rolled over Alex, as his group came by one after another to clap him on the back or offer other forms of praise.
Alex inspected each—likely the other reason they came by—purging the bits of turning plague from those he found with it.
As Natasha moved toward the ash on the lowest level—likely to pull it into her Inventory as she was wont to do—Alex waved her down. “Let me first.”
She arched an eyebrow, but shrugged, content to move through the rows to verify them clean.
Alex pulsed out Detect Unlife—not the first Initiate to check, but he wanted his own assessment—and found that the auditorium was clear.
Outside was teaming with undead, and his one second of feedback showed him that the battle had clearly already begun on that front.
Below, there were thirteen powerful undead forms and then radially outward many trails of them, leading well past his range.
On that ‘wheel of undead’ there was a conspicuously missing spoke, causing Alex to give a half-smile.
Good, our efforts weren’t wasted, then. He cleared his throat, drawing attention back to himself. “It does look like twelve flesh golems. The fact they haven’t attacked up through the floor is good proof they are currently restricted, but I would imagine that such restrictions will vanish as soon as we engage with them.”
Grant nodded, twisting slightly and clearly getting ready for what would be a painful fight. Without Brianne there—she was needed in the outer defense—he would be reliant on the few healing potions they had, as well as hoping that Alex had a few moments here and there to heal him.
Alex only had one of the potions himself, and he prayed he wouldn’t need it. Still, he was ‘important’ enough to their fight that the others had insisted that he carry one.
Most had gone to Grant due to his offensive skill, but even with all those potions available to him, they all knew that Grant couldn’t possibly take out twelve Flesh Golems of the Plague Guard.
It was going to be a… difficult fight. What made Alex feel worse was the fact that that fight was mostly intended to keep pressure off Alex so that Alex could end this once and for all.
Grant had a resolute look on his face, knowing the pain that was to come. “Let me finish a few preparations, and then we’ll blow this popsicle stand.”
Someone chuckled and added, “Check for money before you burn it down!”
One of his friends, sitting beside him as they all rested, shook her head. “That was a banana stand.”
“Right, right.”
Alex sighed, creating a mouthful of water and swishing it before swallowing. He pulled up his notifications, moving past those itemizing his kills, and finding what he’d hoped.
Not one, not even two, but three levels in his Basic Resistance - Magic.
Attribute Level-Up:Basic Resistance - MagicLevel 2 → Level 5
That had to be useful… he hoped. Regardless, it was clearly something rather special, and likely the only reason he had been able to do as he’d done.
I need to do more resistance training than the little I’ve been able to fit in… and hunt down some more resistances. He looked at the ash around the room, and grinned. Speaking of which…
He quickly went around the room, pulling his Life back in. Unfortunately, none had earned him anything individually—likely because it hadn’t had long enough to work—but as he continued to pull back in the Life, he noticed a building feeling, as if his Life had somewhat randomly been trying to learn—his fault entirely—but when combined, they might be able to add up to a useful whole.
He sped up, feeling like the fragments learned would fade if he waited too long.
Even when he felt a culmination, he continued, wanting to pull in all the Life before he checked the waiting notification.
It wasn’t a long process, and when he finished, he looked at the System message.
System Notice:New Attributes Available
Basic Resistance - Resonance (Level 1)
OR
Basic Resistance - Sonic (Level 1)
Choose:All choices have consequences, not all roads may be taken.
Apology Tutorial, Courtesy Addendum:Well, here we are again. Neither of these are… restricted, so thank you for that.
When it comes to resistances, especially those in the ‘Basic’ advancement, the broader they are, the less effect they naturally have. Conversely, the narrower their focus, the less they will come into play against.
Note: Resistance to Magic is less affected by this trade off, but it is unique in many other ways as well. Don’t treat it as a good example, and continue to explore it as you can.
Good Luck, Alex
Alex frowned, considering. Sonic or Resonance.
Of the two, resonance was obviously the broader, more general resistance, much like ‘magic’ was unbelievably broad.
That in mind, he was actually quite interested in the broader one, given how much he’d been able to utilize even the broad resistance of magic.
True, the addendum had warned him not to take his magic resistance as a good example…
But it also specified that this limit was at the ‘Basic’ tier. That doesn’t mean it vanishes higher up, but if it was universal, why have that addition?
He took a deep breath and nodded. Go big or go home. He hesitated. Well… I suppose I wish I could go home? He huffed a mirthless laugh. But that’s not an option so…
System Notice:New Attribute Acquired
Basic Resistance - Resonance (Lvl 1)
Details:Innate ability to resist resonant damage and status effects or the build up of resonance within your body.Your Life energy has a minor boost when combatting resonance.
Description:Whether you are facing off against sirens and banshees, are a being of glass who angered an opera singer, or through some other means, you have found yourself with a building problem. That sounds awful!
Your Life has learned to combat externally propagated resonance, allowing you to directly oppose that which others must simply bear through or heal against… assuming they survived at all.
Alex felt like something shifted within himself, and his hearing quieted for a moment before both ears popped at once, seemingly returning his hearing to normal, but beyond that, he couldn’t feel a difference.
Still, that was more than he’d felt for the earlier acquisitions. It was a stark reminder that these weren’t skills. He was fundamentally changing himself.
…But he could deal with that later. Another notification awaited him—much to his surprise—seemingly also having come from his Life’s learning and possibly having to do with which resistance he’d selected.
System Notice:New Attribute Available
Basic Dissonance of Tonality (Level 1)
Do you wish to Learn Basic Dissonance of Tonality?
Y/N
Alex hesitated. There was no helpful addendum, nor did he know what choosing this would mean.
Thankfully, it didn’t seem like he had to choose now—unlike with the previous selection it didn’t seem like this was fading away—and so, he wouldn’t choose now.
That’s right. I’ll put the choice off until after we win. And if they didn’t win, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Now, he needed to help those with him survive and finally beat this scenario of undeath.
“Are we ready?” Those with him gathered close. What injuries there had been were patched and healed to the best of their ability, Alex helping as needed.
Weapons were checked, and other gear verified. Finally, each person gave a motion or utterance of readiness.
Alex took a deep breath and smiled. “Let’s do this.”
As planned, Natasha and Jacob threw open two hatches downward on opposite sides of the central circle, each with two other spear wielders at their sides.
A moment later, they dove through, ignoring the ladders to drop straight down.
Even before their heads vanished in a freefall, the bellowing roar of flesh golems rolled upward, and Alex staggered, the horror aura slamming home.
Around him, the chairs suddenly had eyes, watching him, the floor was made of flesh, and the hatches downward were gaping, slavering maws, filled with sharp, mangling teeth.
He saw those with him—each twisted to more resemble the undead they were to face than the humans he knew to be his allies—staggering as well, but they’d prepared for this.
This was not unexpected.
They knew from experience that it was only the details that could be changed. Walls would still be walls, holes, holes, and so on.
One by one, they overcame whatever madness they saw and dropped down to join the fighting already in full swing below.
John positioned himself on one side, with Pilar taking the final position on the other to provide support from above.
Alex dropped through John’s hatch, using the short trip down to get an idea of the situation. The marksman took a few shots around him as he dropped to continue supporting those on the ground.
As for what Alex saw?
First, it was a farther drop than he’d been expecting, being close to twenty feet, rather than the ten he’d guessed. I guess the passage we traversed was more down-sloping than we realized.
Thankfully, Jacob had left a working of wind that blew upward to slow everyone’s fall enough to remove most of the danger from such a drop.
The Flesh Golems of the Plague Guard were in full swing, fleshy tendrils lancing out even as they charged around the sixty-foot circular room.
That was a surprisingly small space for all the combatants now engaged below, but the Initiates would do their utmost to keep Alex free of outside interference.
To one side, a large number of vats were being fed by undead fodder who mindlessly kept throwing bodies in from open passages a bit more than half-way up the walls on that side.
In the center, the Plague Lord still sat, unmoving in his task, seemingly content to let his guards fight this battle.
At least, that seemed to have been the case until Alex appeared.
Even as Alex dropped downward, he saw the Plague Lord’s head snap up, eyes locking on him, a rictus of rage overtaking his features.
That’s odd, before it was smug. Is it that I keep breaking from the script? He didn’t know, and honestly, Alex didn’t much care.
Regardless of the reason, the big-bad slowly stood to its feet as Alex fell, coming fully upright even as Alex landed in a crouch.
In the surrounding passages, the no-longer-connected undead would soon begin to stir.
From that crouched position, Alex launched himself forward, bridging the distance between himself and the Plague Lord in a single bound.
It was fast, but not fast enough.
In that split second, armor unfolded around the Plague Lord, reminding Alex of that of the Death Knight and Squires.
John finally seemed to have the time and a clear line of sight. As such, a bullet pinged off the helmet a split second later, but it was ignored.
A sword came into the creature’s hand, and he thrust it forward, toward Alex’s heart.
Alex’s left hand came up, intercepting the attack with Life’s Active Defense, still taking a small hit to his HP and Stamina.
That gave him an opening, in which he slapped his hand on his opponent’s vambrace.
A pulse of HP turned the armor to rust, allowing his hand to contact the undead flesh. He also sent HP into the metal sword still point-first in his left palm, all but ruining the weapon.
With a triumphant grin, Alex dumped HP into the undead creature through his right hand on its arm, the resource bent on destruction.
The Plague Lord screamed in rage and jerked back, some of flesh rotting away before it reformed.
Thus, it was only then that Alex remembered the Undead Spawn Queen, and the key flaw in his strategy.
In order to overwhelm an opponent with Basic Life Transfusion, he had to have more HP to spend than they had at their disposal.
Even with the massive four-to-one advantage he had against undead, he still had to impart the energy through a non-infinite means.
All this flashed through his head quickly enough that he was able to activate Multi-Strike, calling his dadao to hand and slashing at the enemy, leaving a cut on the newly restored flesh.
The Plague Lord threw out its off hand, a black cloud sweeping over Alex and infecting him briefly with a turning plague.
He quickly overcame it without slowing, but it took most of his health regeneration to do so, even if only for a breath or two.
The Lord came back with a powerful chop with the all but broken sword. Alex barely jerked aside to avoid the blow, exposing himself to yet another wave of undeath working against his natural healing.
The next three exchanges were entirely in the Plague Lord’s favor, even if mainly because Alex continued to send HP into the creature whenever he could, lowering his total down to nine-thousand with dangerous rapidity.
He couldn’t continue in this manner. He had no idea how much health this boss had, and if he over estimated himself, he could end up killing himself for nothing.
His Analysis didn’t seem to want to tell him how ‘healthy’ the undead boss was, so Alex couldn’t lean on that either.
He growled in frustration, even as another shot pinged off the Plague Lord’s armor, this time causing it to stumble due to the impact.
Alex had thought to claim a quick victory, but it seemed this would be a battle of attrition.
As Alex lunged forward in pursuit of the momentarily off-balance foe, he took in the sounds of battle around him, and he sent off a prayer that his companions could hold their own until he killed this monster.
If not, they would all be in a very bad way.