Path of The Dragon Mage (Nomad) 66. Strength and Cunning (Patreon)

Note: This was going to be two chapters buuuuut I think it works better as one big one instead!

From past experimentation, Corvus knew that the runic ownership stamp would lose its effectiveness if he wrote Gwen's name inside. She would have to be the one to add her signature and charge with her mana.

His job was to carve out the barrier circles on the arrow heads themselves. This was easier said than done. But Corvus had a lotof practice drawing out perfect circles.

Once carved, Gwen etched out her name in her scrawling handwriting and charged the rune herself with her blood and mana. With her second arrowhead charged, she wavered in place.

He reached out and caught her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah.” She gave him a shaky smile. “Mana pool just came close to bottoming out there."

"You should think about getting a mana reservoir tattoo." His hand was still on her shoulder, her face tilted up to regard him. Corvus found himself staring at her lips.

Roan coughed.

Both jerked away from each other. Even Starella was giving them a look, one eyebrow raised.

"Are we going to kill more slimes, or are you two just going to make eyes at each other?" Roan asked.

"Of course not," Corvus said swiftly turning away, face flushed.

"Yes," Gwen said, not embarrassed in the slightest. She turned, knocked an arrow. Then, with a let out breath the arrow head flashed blue with mana charge and released.

Gwen’s new arrow went neatly through the toughened slime. By her steady stance, the mana drain had been minimal. She turned to Corvus with a brilliant smile.

The three of them quickly established a pattern. Gwen's long distance shooting made gaps in the slimes further down the row of hedges. Roan would bash anything he could get his hammer on, and Corvus cut through the rest.

Only Starella trailed behind, unable to participate. By the disgruntled look on her face she wasn't happy about it, but at least she was no longer wringing her hands with anxiety.

There was no sign of her egg, or the nest guardians. Only the hedge mage and an endless supply of slimes.

Finally, they turned a corner and came to the wide open garden. As before, the boss slime was waiting for them. It was twice as big as the last one -- so enlarged with converged slimes that it actively dripped extra jelly-goo off its arms. Enough of those droplet would reform into new slimes which congregated around the boss like a guard.

Corvus glanced around the corner of the last hedge bush, got an eyeful of the boss, and ducked back again to the others.

"This is going to be a challenge," he said. "Roan, you and I will attack the boss directly. Gwen, distract the vanguard slimes with the arrows--"

Gwen shook her head. "Reverse that. Make me some more rune arrows real quick. I'll shoot at the boss from afar while you two attack the vanguard. Once they're done, we take down the boss together."

Corvus hesitated, exchanged a look with Roan, and nodded. It was a solid plan.

"What do I do?" Starella asked.

Corvus turned to her. "Have your elemental talents returned?"

"Well... no."

He gave her a look, and she subsided, though still looked mutinous.

"You watch our backs," Roan said, unexpectedly kind. "In case anything else comes up while we're focused on the boss."

Starella crossed her arms. She knew she was being handled. "Slimes don't move that fast."

"Those nest guardians do," Corvus said. "I don't know what part they play, but I’m certain they’re somewhere underground with us."

She hesitated but nodded.

Corvus sent Roan a grateful look. He knew how to deal with Starella in a way Corvus couldn't. He suspected it came from being a big brother.

"Here." Gwen shoved the quiver of arrows at Corvus. "Slap a rune on these and lets get this over with."

"It takes more precision than that..." he groused, but no one listened. They were more interested in the results than the process. Corvus sighed and got to work.

It took longer than he would have liked. During which the boss slime melted with several other wild slimes to become that much tougher and taller. At the end Corvus had put the rune on ten of Gwen's arrows. She had to wait a few moments between charging them with her own mana, which took more time.

Finally, she nodded and slung her quiver back over her shoulder. “I’m ready.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Roan said.

They gathered right at the opening to the garden. Roan counted down and they advanced on three.

The boss turned… and took an arrow immediately through the shoulder.

Gwen must have been dumping mana into her shots because that single arrow blew open a hole the size of a fist.

It gave a gurgling roar and charged towards her… At a shuffling pace which allowed her to quickly reposition and shoot again at a safer distance.

Roan and Corvus went after the vanguards of slimes. With each he sliced through, Corvus received a ticket stamped X 5.

He added them in his pocket along with the others. By now, they were fairly bulging.

The only downside to Gwen’s plan was she didn't have the mana pool to keep peppering the boss with arrows. But she worked as a distraction. By the time Roan and Corvus were done with the vanguard slimes, the boss was injured grievously injured.

Corvus came out from behind it and cut it down at the knees. A faint ding! in his mind told him that he had that little maneuver had given him an extra level up.

You have gained a new level!

Mana Charging: Level 5

the boss gurgled out again and swung a heavy fist towards Corvus's head. He ducked it and Roan came roaring in to slam the elbow joint with his hammer.

Another arrow shot past — one of Gwen's last — and struck the boss right in the head.

The creature gave a mournful low note and then fell to his knees.

Corvus aimed for the neck and swung down. Though chopping off the head was not quite as devastating to an amorphous creature, the slime boss shuddered, darkened, and died.

His sword came back with two tickets stamped X 100.

As he handed it to Gwen, the sky once again exploded in a message.

Congratulations for passing level two: Strength.

180 Slimes Defeated!

1 Slime Boss Defeated!

Bonus: All Slime Enemies on level defeated!

Calculating experience…

Corvus: 5 Levels (Dual Wield)

Gwen: 6 Levels (Archery)

Null Runtime Error: 0 Levels (No Skills Found)

Null Runtime Error: 0 levels (No Skills Found)

Would you like to continue to level 3: Cunning?

Continue / Exit

"Yes, were continuing on," Roan said, before Corvus could ask.

Gwen nodded, her eyes sparkling. "I've almost leveled my mana charge to intermediate already."

Starella joined them, then. "Yes. Let's continue."

Corvus nodded and pressed and mentally selected the option.

This time, instead of darkness, or blinding light, thick, gray fog swept rose up from between the hedge bushes and engulfed them all.

Corvus waved his hand in front of his face, only to realize he could not see his hand at all. The fog was that thick.

A moment later, the fog thinned and vanished, leaving them standing, once again, before the entrance to a maze.

The slimes have sensed an attack!

Use cunning to defeat the slimes before they coalesce into the boss!

The maze ahead of them was completely empty of slimes.

Roan grunted. "I suppose were going to be ambushed in there," he said, casually, twirling the hammer with his wrist.

Gwen made a face. "Do you think it’ll be more slimes? Or something else?"

“Maybe the nest guardians,” Corvus said. “We should—Roan, wait!”

As usual, Roan decided that they had talked to long and started moving forward. He got a grand total of four paces in before he jerked to a stop in surprise and kicked one of his legs out. His foot up to his midcalf was engulfed by a slime.

He brought his hammer down as if to knock it off, but like the slimes on the first level, the hammer passed through. The slime clung on.

"Where did this thing come from?" he demanded.

Gwen cupped her hands around her mouth and called out to her brother. "This maze is about cunning. Get back here before you get yourself killed."

Roan shot his sister a rude hand gesture, but then tromped back, pausing to try to kick the slime off. It held on, stubbornly.

Corvus stared straight in, trying to see any sign of where that slime had come from. There was nothing. It was as if it just appeared, clasped around Roan's foot.

Was this maze full of traps?

He pulled out a belated dart from the bandolier crossed over his chest.

Then, he casually lobbed the dart in. The tip stuck into the short grass, and… Nothing happened to it. It wasn't instantly surrounded by a slime.

Gwen seemed to have the same idea and moved to the side as she placed an arrow on her bow. She's shot down at a shallow angle so that the arrow skimmed right above the leaves of the wall the hedge-wall.

The arrow traveled for five feet before it stopped, quivering.

A moment later, a slime was visible, darkening before it fell off the wall with a plop.

"That tears it. They aren’t moving fast," Gwen said. "They are damned near invisible. Until some idiot steps on one." This last part was aimed for her brother.

Roan spat to the side.

"There must be a trick to passing through," Corvus said.

He glanced over his shoulder to Starella. "A zephyr could be useful now to find out where they’re lurking. It doesn’t have to be strong.”

She said that her Talents had left her, but she had been able to command zephyrs to her will since she was a small girl.

Starella nodded, a pinched look of anxiety on her face. She stepped forward and waved her fingers through the air.

There wasn’t so much as a breeze.

Starella held the pose for a moment, her arms up, wrists delicately posed with fingers outstretched.

Then, she lowered her hands, looking like she was on the verge of crying.

"It's no use. My Talents have left me. There’s nothing left."

Corvus bit back in uncharitable thought: Then what good are you?

It was unfair. He of all people knew there was more to someone than their magic. But anger at her earlier betrayal boiled up at unexpected times. There was a difference between thinking such thoughts and acting on them. So he firmly clamped down on the anger and nodded.

"Then we’ll think of something else."

"Times ticking," Roan grumbled, his fatalistic streak on full display. "The longer we wait here, the harder that boss will be at the end — if we can see him."

"What's your bright idea, then?" Gwen asked. "Give up before we try?"

He shrugged. "I don't see what's so important about getting to the end of the maze."

Abruptly, Starella flared up. "My egg is somewhere down here —"

"And nothing can crack the shell of dragon eggs, right? It will be fine if we come back another day," Roan said. “I know you guys are getting more levels, or whatever, but there’s more important things to consider.," Roan said. "I gotta think about keeping you safe."

"I can keep myself safe," Gwen told him.

“… And I figure out a way to get these damn slimes off me,” Roan continued, holding up his slime covered arm.

Corvus ignored their bickering. "There has to be a solution." He bent and grabbed a handful of grass, tossing it scattering the bits before him. Apparently his Throwing Accuracy didn’t extend to bits of grass. Nothing stuck to anything unusual — like invisible waiting slimes.

He frowned. What caused their invisibility?

"Gwen. Do you have your See-Me-Not Pendent on you?"

That was a stupid question. The pendant was an heirloom from her mother. She always wore it.

Sure enough, Gwen pulled it from her neckline and showed it to him.

Corvus had the two visible runes on the pendent listed in his private rune dictionary, but it had been a while since he looked at them.

Sure enough, Bend Light was one of them.

"I have an idea," he said. “But it may take a minute."

With that, he sat on the ground and pulled out the black notebook.

"We may not have time for your reading," Roan warned.

“My cousin has always been a quick study,” Starella said, unexpectedly loyal.

Corvus ignored the conversation over his head. He would rather take the time to do this right then fumble along and risk get covered from head to foot in slimes.

They were kind of funny when they were attached to someone's limb, but not so much if they became attached to someone's face.

He flipped through several pages and wished that he’d had time since the siege to sit down and really read through the thing, or the library—

The library.

True, he had given some of the books to Perry for safe keeping and to save on weight for his bags of holding, but kept some choice selections for himself.

He reached into his bag and started pulling out one book after another.

“How are you doing that?” Starella demanded.

Roan answered for her. “I’ve told you: Freaky magic.”

She looked dubiously at her bag. “Can I…?”

“Do you have freaky magic?”

“No, I have normal magic gifted through my royal blood—”

Corvus heard Roan’s grin. “Then, no. You can’t.”

Gwen bent to kneel on the ground beside Corvus. “What are you looking for? Can I help?”

“I remember seeing a book—ah, here.”

He pulled out a thin volume entitled: The Transitionary Nature of Runic Barrier Circles.

Gwen made a face at the name and hurriedly stood up again as if afraid it would bite her. “I’ll just… keep watch.”

With an absent nod, Corvus cracked open the book and began to flip through the pages. He was currently training his Dual Wield skill, but his subclass was Witch Professor. This sort of research was where his true strength lay.

The first few pages were not helpful. Mostly, they contained refreshers on short descriptions of linked runes, specifically the points where the barriers intersected with one another.

However, past that was a chapter on what the book called a scattering barrier rune.

Instead of a smooth round circle that contained the magic, the barrier itself was evenly broken into even dashes around the circle.

This had the effect of throwing the magic out from the rune in a scattered pattern.

It was terribly inefficient on mana, but it was better than nothing.

“Someone get me a stick," Corvus said. "Actually, a few sticks.”

He pulled out one of his bladed darts to etch into the wood.

It took a few attempts, but finally, he got the desired effect. Within the two linked and dashed barrier circles, he drew two sigils. The first was the Bend Light rune found on Gwen’s pendent. This bent light around a fixed object, rendering that object effectively invisible.

The other was a simple Cancel rune.

Together, he hoped that this would cancel any basic light bending magic.

He activated it, and the rune sputtered to life. Translucent blue-tinted sparks erupted from the end of the stick where he’d carved the rune, and from the mana drain he sensed he’d have to recharge the thing in a few minutes. But it was working. Barely.

“That’s pretty,” Roan commented.

“What is supposed to do?" Starella asked.

“Hopefully, reveal the slimes.”

He held the stick in the palm of his hands and stepped forward, knowing that he looked stupid.

If this didn't work, he risked stepping on a slime the same way Roan had.

As Corvus stepped forward, the air wavered a few feet around him. Like seeing a heat haze out in the distance.

He peered closer and realized it wasn't a haze, it was a slight warping of the air. Whatever magic the slimes used to conceal themselves wasn't rune-based. Creatures magic worked off of essence power. But his anti-bending light charm still had a minimal effect.

There were slimes everywhere. So many that he'd mistaken them as a haze along the ground.

Unlike the other slimes, these didn't reach for him or jiggled closer. They appeared to be content to wait for his approach, like a spider waited for a bug to stumble into its web.

However if he looked closely he discovered narrow path through.

He turned back. "There’s too many to fight... But I believe there's a way through the maze."

"No more tickets?" Gwen said with a put-upon sigh.

"What do we do?" Starella asked. She was clearly anxious to get a move on and continue the search.

"Step exactly where I step. We'll go slow."

"I'll take the rear and watch our backs," Roan said.

With the charmed stick in hand, Corvus led the way through the path of slimes. The grass was slightly dewy, showing where his footsteps landed. Following the revealed path also didn't lead them down any false turns and the maze felt much shorter than usual.

His only regret was that because they weren't killing slimes, they wouldn't receive the completed bonus at the end. The perfectionist in him hated the waste of opportunity.

Finally, with a few turns, they reached the open garden.

The boss was large and mobile... and supposedly invisible, though the distortion of air was easy to pick out when it got close to Corvus's charm. He backed away before it could strike at him.

"Give me your stick," Gwen said.

When Corvus handed it over, she tied it to one of the shafts of her own arrows using a bit of thread from her clothes. She sighted and quickly shot, aiming for the middle of the garden.

It struck true and the boss became visible as a clear slime slowly shuffling towards them.

"How did you know where to shoot?" Starella asked with grudging admiration.

Gwen shrugged. "I guessed." Then she knocked another arrow.

Fully visible, the boss was fairly easy to kill. It didn't have the toughness as the level two or the surprise of the level one. Clearly, it had depended on its invisibility for maximum effect. Once that was gone, defeating it was a snap.

Roan knocked it down with a hammer to where the knee would be. Gwen made the killing shot. When she yanked out her arrow, it came away with two golden X500 tickets.

"Thanks," Corvus said drolly as she handed him one.

Congratulations for passing level three: cunning.

1 Slime Defeated!

1 Slime Boss Defeated!

Calculating experience…

Corvus: 1 Level (Dual Wield)

Gwen: 1 Level (Archery)

Null Runtime Error: 0 Levels (No Skills Found)

Null Runtime Error: 0 levels (No Skills Found)

Congratulations! You have shown precision, strength, and cunning. Pleas continue onto the bonus lounge to collect your prizes and play again!

Continue?

Yes/No

Corvus selected 'Yes'.

Nothing seemed to happen for a moment. They all looked at each other, then around.

Gwen pointed across the garden. "What's that?"

It was... a sign? Corvus was certain that it hadn't been there a moment before because it was so noticeable. IT was the word 'Exit'. The first two letters were blazing red like the coals to a cook fire. The last two were dulled and burnt out.

Corvus started across, but Roan got there first. A curious handle stuck out of the row of hedges and when Roan pulled on it, the section slid out and to the side to reveal a hidden door.

A gust of cold, damp air flavored with mildew hit them. The way beyond was made of cold stone with flickering luminescence.

"I'll go through first, see if there's any trouble," Roan said boldly.

As he crossed the threshold, the slime jelly that had congealed on him liquefied and fell away, freeing his arm and foot.

"Finally!" He shook out his arm and transferred his hammer to the other hand. "No stains on my uniform, either. Nice."

"Why do you worry about stains?" Gwen asked. "You never do your own laundry."

Ignoring her, Roan turned back and extended a hand to Starella. “Your turn, Princess.”

Starella took it and stepped through the door. The slime attached to her arm also fell away, leaving her free.

She didn’t, Corvus noticed, let go of Roan’s hand for a few seconds.

Gwen stepped through next. As she didn’t have any slimes on her, there was no change.

Corvus brought up the rear with one lingering look back to the training dungeon. It had been an odd experience... but productive.

Instinct told him that whatever the quest had wanted to show him still lay ahead.

He let the door close behind him and followed his friends.