Mage Tank

Chapter 17: Are Severed Heads Loot?

I sat up. The C’thon had just finished ripping off the head of the final harvester. The octo was in terrible shape. Five of its limbs dragged the ground. Its head was half mangled. Colorful feathers floated down through the air and covered the floor, mingling with the creature’s blood. It turned to me, and its expression transcended the boundaries of species and dimension–rage.

“Got it,” I said. “Go.”

[The way you use spells is archetypal. The descriptions given to you by the System are strong suggestions, they are not inherent within the spell itself.]

“This the time for a theory discussion?”

[Silence. Oblivion Orb manifests as a small orb within your palm because that is the most efficient size, shape, and distance from your body for your current mana matrix, which is small, crude, and weak. You are not beholden to this shape and you can adjust it to your will. Doing this will vastly increase the drain on your mana until you have mastered the techniques. These are skills that are developed by superior mages and many of your kind seem to have forgotten the art.]

Grotto’s speech came at an impossible speed, but I was able to comprehend it. He was communicating through feeling and intuition as much as through words, which allowed him to explain all this before I became octo food. The C’thon was struggling, wobbling and looking like it was having difficulty staying aloft, but still closing the distance. It grasped at the floor with mangled feelers, dragging itself through the air.

[This is called mana-shaping. The exact form and nature of a mana-shaped spell are personal to the caster and sometimes unique. I cannot tell you what shape to apply to the spell, I can only guide you there.]

“Got it.”

[I don’t think you do.]

[That’s not how this works!]

The C’thon was nearly on top of us. There wasn’t any more time for Grotto’s school of witchcraft and wizardry. I waited until the C’thon was close enough to tickle my nose with one of its still-functioning tentacles. I looked up, and cast Shortcut.

I went as high up into the rapidly deteriorating crystal cloud of poison essence as I could, my body facing flat downward toward the top of the C’thon’s head. I pointed my arm down toward it, two fingers extended, and concentrated on Oblivion Orb, rather than casting it.

[Focus on the shape! It needs to be something you’re intimate with! Something you resonate with! Don’t cast the spell, release it!]

I fell, smacking through the crystals, toward the C’thon. It was turning around, trying to find me.

No one ever looks up.

I focused everything I had on my shape. I imagined it erupting from my fingers and felt the sensation of power building in my gut. I watched as my mana bar drained, going well past the five mana normally required for the spell. I plummeted as my mana did, growing closer and closer to the C’thon. Finally, when my mana was about to hit zero and I was breaking through the essence cloud, I took a deep breath.

“Makankosappo, bitch.”

A finger-wide beam of light-warping energy sprouted from my finger and shot out in a concentrated, spiraling shaft. The attack whipped through space in an instant, drilling into the top of the C’thon’s head. The pop that sounded from the spell was as loud as a nine millimeter and mixed with a wet, meaty slap as octopus flesh was sucked into the fresh vacuum within its own body.

I landed on top of the C’thon, its body like a hard rubber mattress covered in feathers. I bounced off of its head and flopped over onto one of its tentacles before hitting the ground. The air was knocked from my lungs and I struggled to take in a breath. It was only then that I considered the fact that the fall could have finished me off. Fortunately, octo was tough, but it wasn’t hard.

The C’thon’s remaining limbs went limp. It drifted to the side, then dropped to the ground as whatever force that kept it aloft had finally called it quits. Probably tired of the poor working conditions. I stared at the beast, waiting for it to get back up. I sat there for a full minute before I endeavored to get back on my feet. Without the screaming sensation of pain that I was sure my body was trying to send to my brain, it wasn’t too much of a heroic effort. I went over to the C’thon and gave it a good, hard kick, but it didn’t stir.

“Gonna make a feather boa out of you or something. Maybe a shirt.”

Another beam of light erupted up from where the obelisk once stood and I tensed.

“This better not be phase fucking three of this fight.” Rather than facing another hitherto unseen menace, a series of notifications popped up.

Your party has slain 1 Hognay Haskagander: Silver Delver, Grade Ten. Your party receives the following reward(s):

1: 9 Emerald Chips

2: 9 Ruby Chips

3: 48 Hiwardian Golden Notes

4: 300 Hiwardian Silver Notes

5: 981 Hiwardian Copper Notes

6: 1 Glove of Cursing: Weakness

7: 1 Glove of Cursing: Blindness

8: 1 Amulet of Blinding Light

9: 1 Pair of Grippy Boots

10: 1 Tablet of C’thonic Summoning (Broken)

Party Leader has set Chip and Currency allocation to even distribution.

You receive: 3 Emerald Chips, 3 Ruby Chips, 16 Hiwardian Golden Notes, 100 Hiwardian Silver Notes, 327 Hiwardian Copper Notes.

Party Leader as set item allocation to: Master Looter.

Party Leader receives all other rewards.

Your party has slain 1 Ihbriobrixilas: Lesser C’thon, Grade Nine. Your party receives the following reward(s):

1: 6 Emerald Chips

2: 18 Ruby Chips

3: Lesser C’thonic Essence

4: Lesser C’thonic Core

5: Lesser C’thonic Ink

• Personal Loot (Varrin Ravvenblaq) Lesser C’thonic Bone Greatsword

• Personal Loot (Xim of the Third Layer) Lesser C’thonic Bone Prayer Beads

• Personal Loot (Esquire Arlo) Feather Boa of the C’thon

• Personal Loot (Esquire Arlo) Leather Vest of the C’thon

All players receive their Personal Loot

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Party Leader has set Chip and Currency allocation to even distribution.

You receive: 2 Emerald Chips, 6 Ruby Chips.

Party Leader as set item allocation to: Master Looter.

Party Leader receives all other rewards.

I was suddenly dressed in a fitted ocean-blue leather vest, and draped in a sumptuous violet and indigo feather boa. I probably looked like a male stripper that had just spent a month in trench warfare, but at least I had some new clothes. Though, I’m not sure how happy I was with the personal loot distribution. Xim got some beads that were surely magical, and a bone greatsword sounded righteous. I’d have to check out whether these clothes had any magical effects, or if they were just dapper, but that would have to wait until later.

Party members have perished during the Delve. Inventory items of the slain Delvers have been returned to their chosen deposit point. If no deposit point was chosen, items will be delivered with the Delver’s body.

Congratulations! You have cleared Delve 1156: The Toxic Grotto

This was a platinum Delve! ( ﾟヮﾟ)/

You earn 8 additional stat points. Please prepare yourself to receive them.

The beam of light from the broken obelisk split into three and twisted in the air, then shot out toward Xim, Varrin, and I. The energy flowed into me. It wasn’t uncomfortable or painful, just very strange. It was an inexplicable sensation of weight, but not a physical one. If I had to put it to words, it was as though my soul itself was becoming denser.

Remember this, Delver! Unassigned stat points will degrade over time as the unintegrated mana dissipates. Therefore you MUST spend these points within 24 hours to gain the full benefit. After 24 hours the points will be reduced by 1 and an additional 1 point will be lost every 3 hours.

A fucking time limit… I doubted there was any way to train another stat up to ten before I had to drop these somewhere. More Fortitude, I guess. Shit.

Yikes! You got poisoned a whole bunch for a really long time. How are you still alive? Why would you do this? Is this fun for you? I think you have a problem and you should see a therapist. Regardless of this reckless, self-sabotaging and destructive behavior, I am going to enable your bad habit by giving you an achievement!

You gain “Exposure Therapy: Poison”. Toxicity build up is reduced by 25%. Isn’t that great? If you’re a no-good begging-chooser and don’t think that’s enough, then you can gain additional poison resistance by suffering higher levels of toxicity for even longer amounts of time. How much and for how long? Torment yourself endlessly until you figure it out!

I rolled my eyes at the System rediscovering its sense of humor. It was like the thing had a split personality. One minute I’m getting dry loot notifications, the next it’s gaslighting me for dealing with its own environmental hazards. I didn’t ask to breathe toxic mist until I wept blood.

Well, I definitely had enough poison essences to afflict myself with a crippling level of toxicity for some unknown length of time, maybe my whole lifetime. Not something I was eager to try, even if it did snag me a better buff.

There were no more status messages, so I hobbled over to Xim.

She was breathing, but still unconscious. I went to check on Varrin as well. He was face down, but his eyes were open. I slowly bent over to check his pulse, when his eyes rolled up to me.

“Please don’t touch me,” he said.

“You wanna stay down there?”

“Maybe. For a minute at least.”

“Alright. You do you. I’ll go and take care of Hognay.”

“What? Hognay? He’s dead.”

“That’s what they always want you to think.”

“They? Who wants you to think that?”

I scooped up one of Varrin’s swords, gave him a little salute, and walked back to Hognay.

“You dead?” I asked, giving the organ-thief a fiercer kick than I’d given the C’thon. He didn’t budge. “Guess you don’t mind if I do this, then.”

I swung the sword down hard on the back of his neck. The blade bit deep, but didn’t go through clean. It took me four more chops before his head came off, which I felt took some of the drama out of the moment. The human spine is pretty tough. I rolled the head over with my foot, making sure it was really Hognay and not some sort of shadow ninjutsu clone, but it looked like him, right down to his oily hair and shitty teeth.

I dropped the sword, picked up the severed head by the hair, then looked around the room. It was absolutely destroyed. Harvester parts, bones, cracked stone, corpses, shattered obelisk, gallons of octo blood and ink, and hundreds of feathers. More and more of the crystalline poison essences were crashing into one another and raining down around us. The mist was growing thicker by the second as well. Picture perfect post-apocalyptic vibes.

I went over toward Xim, but was distracted when I noticed an unfamiliar pack in the corner of the room. My inner lootbug came out and I shimmied over to it. It was a different style from any of the ones brought by our party, so I figured it must have been Hognay’s. I tossed it into my inventory, using up the little bit of space I had saved after farming the essences upstairs. When I did, a smaller satchel popped back out. The larger pack was still in the inventory, so this must have been tucked inside.

ERROR! Unable to place Bag of Refreshments inside inventory. This is a spatial item. You don’t want a black hole, do you? Because that’s how you get a black hole. Stop it.

I picked up the bag and peeked inside. There was some bread, cheese, various dried meats, and what looked like a fruit and nut mix, each wrapped in wax paper. There was also a canteen full of something, but I didn’t open it. I put all that on my “Shit to Check out Later List”, slung the strap over myself cross-body, and went back to Xim.

I tried to wake her, but she was out cold. I set down Hognay’s noggin’, bent Xim’s knees, tucked her feet together, put my foot on top of hers for leverage, then grabbed her arms and pulled her up and over a shoulder into a fireman’s carry–putting one of the skills I acquired from numerous three a.m. YouTube spirals to good use. Maybe I’d find some utility for how to start a drop-shipping company next. I scooped up abbreviated Hognay and walked back to Varrin.

“Time to go,” I said. “I’m barely standing here. We wait any longer, I won’t be able to walk out of this place. Also, poison fog of ever-increasing intensity.”

He looked up at me. Leather vest over a dirty, shirtless chest. Gaudy feather boa. Luxurious beard caked in blood, mud, and probably some guts and other viscera. A couple pieces of bling, amulet and ring. Carrying an unconscious woman over my shoulder, and holding a severed head by the hair.

I gave him a winning smile and a wink.

“Ok,” he said, then slowly, and with many a grunt and groan, pushed himself back up. He spat a wad of blood onto the ground next to his second sword, then stared at the blade. It was chipped and covered in C’thon goo. He waved a hand at it dismissively, as though the effort to bend over and grab it wasn’t worth the hassle, and started limping toward the opposite side of the room from where we’d entered.

A large section of the stone wall had begun descending, similar to the entrance we’d taken to get into the Delve. Behind it was a shimmering portal of myriad flowing colors. I looked around for Grotto, who’d been suspiciously quiet this whole time, and found him hovering over the C’thon’s corpse.

“You coming?” I asked.

Grotto spun and floated closer to me.

[The Delve is ruined.]

“Yeah, you mentioned the obelisk was toast.”

[Without the obelisk, there is no reason for this Delve to exist.]

“Ok. So, you’re coming then, right? One of the system notifications said we had a “shared fate”, whatever that means. So, I figure I need to keep up with you.”

[As my final act as the guardian of this Delve, I will set it to shut down.]

“Sure thing. Just, make it quick. My legs fucking hurt and I’m carrying someone here.”

Grotto floated back to the broken obelisk and nestled inside the spherical recess, what was left of it, and his runes played out in a pattern. A deep rumble filled the air and the ground beneath my feet trembled.

“What does shutting the Delve down mean?” I asked, too tired to grow nervous at the sounds.

[I am making it collapse in on itself.]

“Oh. Self-destruct button.”

I felt him scan my brain, though it was no longer an uncomfortable feeling, maybe because he was now my bonded familiar.

[Yes, we have about sixty seconds to leave. Would you like to wait until the timer reaches one second, for the theater of it?]

“Absolutely not.” I marched straight towards the portal, Grotto floating over to my side.

[Oh, one last thing.]

“Goddammit Grotto!”

They hovered back to the C’thon corpse, and tendrils of energy flowed out from them to the body. Feathers and flesh began sloughing off of the octo and started forming up around Grotto. After a few seconds Grotto was a perfect copy of the C’thon, but three feet long from top to tentacle-tip. He was also decidedly cuter than the dead monster.

“I won’t even ask why.” I kept moving toward the exit.

Varrin looked back at me from the portal’s edge and opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it. He gave me a nod, then reached out and touched the portal. It didn’t behave how I’d expected. He didn’t walk through it, he just disappeared as soon as his fingers brushed against it. He left a faint afterimage behind, which quickly vanished as well. I walked to the portal a second after he was gone, then reached out and slapped it.

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