06 — Conceit and the Boss Room Menace

06 — Conceit and the Boss Room Menace

“Status, all good. Magic, full. Equipment, stocked.” I was all warmed up, had had a good breakfast (minus the usual), and was raring to go.

The (theoretically) undead labyrinth stank like nobody’s business. And after thinking about it, I realized that maybe there weren’t many exorcists like me who were used to such rancid smells, and that was why Jord had made such slow progress. Assuming this was a job they tossed to all newbie healers, there likely weren’t many who had actually cleared the whole thing. But if there were some who had, could I get a fabulous prize for clearing it faster than anyone else? I wanted to believe that, anyway. Just thinking about it had me so excited that I’d hardly been able to sleep.

Yesterday, I’d used up fifty thousand of the approximately ninety thousand points I’d saved up to buy a holy silver bow along with twenty silver arrows, all of which I’d stuffed into my magic satchel. I wasn’t particularly good at archery, but having more options never hurt.

Along with my bow and quiver, I had Brod’s magic-sensitive sword in my satchel, plus a second holy silver one-handed blade, a holy silver shortspear, and four barrels of Substance X (which I had picked up from the Adventurer’s Guild earlier and kept in my bag because they stank too much to leave out for long). Once my new job calmed down a little, I really needed to get myself a second satchel.

On a side note, when I went over to the Adventurer’s Guild, Granhart found out that I had left the castle without my robe and made me promise never to do so again. I was grateful that he didn’t make up another contract, and that he didn’t punish me, for that matter, but I wasn’t looking forward to my next outing.

Anyway, my lunch brought my total items to ten, meaning my satchel would be full. I hoped I could find some bags with a larger carrying capacity that were within my price range.

“I’m letting myself get distracted. Focus on taking down that boss, Luciel,” I told myself as I entered the labyrinth.

Each floor took me about ten or twenty minutes, give or take. When I reached the tenth floor’s boss door, I took a short break.

“Jord mentioned they would come in a group. The question is how big that group will be. So first, I’ll start with Purification, then thin them out with my sword and spear. If it gets dicey, I’ll fall back on Purification again. Simple, but I’m doing this solo, so it’ll work.” And of course, this was all an illusion anyway, a training ground for newbies. How could anything go wrong?

I put an ear to the door, but it was completely silent.

“Does someone summon them or something? Hard to say. Well, no use wondering. A bit of Substance X’ll remind me of my fights with my master and hype me up.”

I took out a barrel and downed a glass, then remembered there was a rumor among adventurers that monsters avoided Substance X for some reason. Did that include the undead too? Whoever made these illusions clearly had their work cut out for them, given they could handle the way this labyrinth reeked.

As I readied myself to open the iron door, never once did it cross my mind that I was about to understand true fear.

The door swung into the room with a long, ominous creek that reverberated throughout the hall. I didn’t let it faze me and continued into the darkness.

“They could do without the theatrics, though, I gotta say.”

I readied my weapons. A moment later, the door slammed shut behind me, but I had expected that and kept my eyes forward. As darkness closed in, the room was suddenly relit to have the same sort of glow as the corridors outside, revealing a sea of monsters before me.

“Okay, yeah, I wasn’t expecting that many.”

Their numbers obscured my vision and every single one of them was looking my way. Zombies, skeleton knights and archers, more monsters than I could even count, filled the massive chamber. Ghosts and fireballs loomed overhead. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed them before. I hadn’t once let my guard down, yet there I was, my back to the door, surrounded by nightmares.

But nothing had happened. I hadn’t been attacked yet. I had panicked a little, but quickly convinced myself I was still in this and began to chant. “Oh holy hand of healing. Oh birthing breath of the land. Heed my prayer. Banish the impurities before me and shepherd them unto deliverance. Purification!”

I couldn’t believe what happened next—absolutely nothing.

“What? Why?” I felt no magic leave me and my panic grew.

The undead didn’t waste their chance. All at once, they descended upon me. Since coming to this world, never had I experienced such peril. I poured my magic into my weapons and slashed like mad, form be damned. For my entire descent through the labyrinth, I had been cutting down small groups with blades and handling larger ones with Purification. Now I was up against a writhing mob without any magic on hand. Never had I experienced such terror, illusions or not.

“Dammit! Stay away! Stay away from me!” I shrieked, flailing my sword and spear about. “They block your magic inside this room?! You’ve gotta be kidding me! They really don’t want me to have that prize!”

I had let myself get cocky. I was no protagonist. I was no prodigy. This was my own fault; I hadn’t done enough information-gathering, and that was all there was to it.

“You’re a wimp, Luciel! How could you forget that? You’re weak!” I spat, disgusted by my own carelessness as I continued to frantically thrash about.

“God, these things hurt! Is the pain some fancy fantasy world hallucination too? Ow! Who just scratched me?!” I shouted. “Ow! Knock that off!”

I lopped the squirming zombie’s head off. “Would you stop biting me?! You’re really starting to piss me off!”

I swiped at the monsters with my spear to give myself some space, then took off at a sprint. My no-damage dream was dead, but Brod had still been tougher than this lot. He had been scarier. A slash with my sword here, a block with my spear there, I slowly but surely reduced their ranks.

If this had been real, this boss room that I’d been looking forward to oh so much, I would have collapsed on the spot out of fear, and that would have been it for me. I considered that, perhaps, this was meant to instill new healers with some respect for the knights. Perhaps that was why Granhart had obeyed Lumina several days ago. But I figured now wasn’t the time to ponder such questions.

I didn’t want to be deadweight—the guy who couldn’t hold his own—so I ran and ran around the room, “kiting” the enemy horde. All for that fabulous prize. That was all I had on my mind. My desires became power and I dispatched one undead enemy after another. For how long, I couldn’t say, but thanks to my armor, the nicks and scrapes I took didn’t amount to much damage.

No matter how many I slew, however, their numbers never seemed to dwindle. The only indication that I was making progress was the increasingly frequent glint of those crimson magic stones. So I kept at it, cautiously maintaining my distance and running around like a madman. Brod’s training carried the day.

Eventually, if not quickly, the entire horde was vanquished.

“That’s all of them,” I wheezed between gasps of air.

Red stones blanketed the room. I stood there, taking it all in, unable to move and with only just enough energy to stay on my feet. A cast of Heal would have fixed me right up, but I knew I had to be just about out of magic by now. Physically, mentally, magically, I was utterly drained in every sense of the word. Not even Brod could have whipped me into action. Well, actually, yes, he could have, but I would have passed out right afterwards.

“I’ve never been happier to have been trained by him. Now there are just all these stones left to pick up. Yeesh, this is gonna be a pain. I’ll step out and heal up fir...” I felt a chill run down my spine and leaped forward, spinning around.

Something horrible, something blood-curdling, had fallen from the ceiling onto where I had just been standing. I sensed a terrifyingly intense bloodlust oozing from it, every ounce of it directed at me.

I gaped at the creature. “Please don’t tell me that wasn’t the boss fight earlier. Is the prize that fabulous? Or is the Healer’s Guild just that stingy? Or am I just that weak?”

The thing was undead, clad in a sheer white clerical robe, and it wielded a staff of incredible magical power. On its head rested a crown. At first glance, I thought I was up against a lich or something, but there was no way an enemy that strong would be on a floor this low. Then the answer came to me.

“A wight?! We’re not gonna start off with a wraith or something?! I mean, I’ll take neither, if that’s an option!”

As if having taken offense, the wight raised its staff and gathered magic to it, then fired a ray of pure darkness. It streaked towards me at speeds greater—scratch that, far greater than any I’d dealt with so far. I failed to dodge it completely and the blast grazed my right thigh. An intense, searing pain began to throb from that one light scrape.

Wincing, I chanted, “Oh Lord, receive my energy and mend this wound. Heal! Okay, that’s cool, so my magic still doesn’t work, but his does! What a coward!”

I’d known I was low on magic, but the pain was bad enough that I had to at least try. To no avail, though.

“I refuse to die here! I’m clearing this room and getting that prize!”

My body was a whirlpool of adrenaline. In that moment, beating this boss was no different from working towards a raise at work. As the wight began to charge up its staff with more dark magic, I condensed my own magic into my lance and hurled it at the fiend, forcing it to abort its attack and dodge away... Like it was telegraphing that it couldn’t handle combat up close.

That gave me an idea.