Grand Game 317: The Reek of Corruption (Patreon)

I examined the three corpses as carefully as I had the first, but my investigations revealed nothing new. Whatever had slain the ents had done so without taking any apparent losses of their own.

“We should return to the clifftops,” Ghost said suddenly.

Glancing at her, I noticed the worry shadowing her eyes. I didn’t think I was imagining it, and I was sure it was not for her own sake that she was concerned.

I shook my head. “I don’t think we can.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said slowly, articulating my thoughts as they formed, “the mystery here has grown too great to ignore anymore. If there are things in this dungeon powerful enough to slay elites without leaving any evidence of their passing, sooner or later, we are going to run across them. And when that happens, I want to be armed with as much information as possible.”

Ghost shifted uncomfortably. “What do we do?”

“We follow the canyon and see where it leads.”

“And if we run across these… things?”

“We kill them.” I sighed. “Or, if they are too great to face, we flee to the plateau.”

✵ ✵ ✵

Hours later, Ghost and I were still in the canyon. We had passed several smaller side tunnels and cul-de-sacs but had decided not to deviate from the main canyon.

We’d run across more dead elites, too.

All had been killed in a similar manner as the ents, and all were gigantic creatures of one sort or another. Colossal elites, I began to suspect, was the central theme of Draven’s Reach.

Ghost had placed herself in the lead, and I had not demurred. It made sense, and I’d grown used to her passing unseen by others. And truly, my initial concern had abated somewhat.

Some of the corpses we’d run across had smelled truly awful, their remains half-rotted and decaying. It was clear they had been killed months ago, which meant that whatever was killing the dungeon’s elites had been at it for a long time.

The realization eased my fears.

It would have been far worse if the things haunting the dungeon could cut through more than a dozen elites in a scant few days. All the evidence pointed to the invaders waging a sustained campaign—if they were in fact invaders and not part of the dungeon’s own denizens. Still, some of the killings had obviously been recent enough that the blood had not congealed yet, and I didn’t lower my guard.

Which was why when Ghost came racing back, I was primed to react.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, drawing my blades in a flash.

“Hostiles ahead!” she exclaimed, the words spilling out of her in a rush. “Come quickly!”

I didn’t relax. If it were any ordinary hostiles, Ghost would not be as worked up as she was. “Did they see you?” I asked, wondering at the cause of her haste.

“No.” She shook her. “They’re fighting each other!” Not waiting for my response, she turned around and hurried back the way she’d come. “Follow me!”

I opened my mouth to call her back, then closed it with a snap. I would find out all the quicker what was going on if I did as she bade.

Sheathing my blades, I crept after the spirit wolf.

✵ ✵ ✵

It did not take long for the sounds of the battle raging ahead to carry to me. The combatants remained out of sight, though, blocked from view by a twist in the canyon. Ghost had already turned the corner and disappeared again.

Despite being eager to uncover the mystery of the dead elites, I didn’t rush and took the time to cast my buffs.

You have cast heightened reflexes, load controller, and trigger-cast quick-mend.

You have cast fade, blurring your form and making you 25% harder to see for 1 minute.

Ready for anything, I braced my back against the canyon side wall and inched forward. Reaching the bend, I peeked around the corner.

A remarkable sight greeted me.

Feet spread and arms akimbo, a frost ent stood in the center of the canyon. He was enveloped in a bubble of spelled ice that was as wide as he was tall. The cold sphere was so large it cut through the surrounding cliffs, rimming them with frost and icicles.

The cliffs, though, were not the only things to suffer the touch of the ent’s magic. The horde of creatures assaulting the elite were likewise afflicted. But while the lifeless rocks were able to shrug off the subzero temperatures, not so the ent’s foes. The ice field turned many into frozen blocks and those it didn’t, it chilled, leaving them slow and clumsy—easy targets for the ent’s massive club.

That’s one powerful spell, I thought.

The ent’s enemies had numbers on their side, though. For every foe that the elite bashed to death inside the freezing sphere, ten more waited outside to take their place—which was why more than a dozen of the creatures had already managed to crawl past the ent’s defenses and latch onto his naked torso.

Despite his impressive size and magic, the ent was doomed, I realized. Letting my gaze drift away from the elite, I focused on his attackers.

Ordinarily, I would’ve described the creatures as large—each was at least twenty feet in length—but in comparison to the colossal ent they looked tiny. In many respects, the attackers resembled armored caterpillars. Each had hundreds of clawed feet, and segmented bodies that rippled as they moved.

But unlike ordinary caterpillars, the attackers’ bodies lacked the comforting solidness of physical beings, and instead, were formed from billowing clouds of black mist. Mist that stank of filth and horror. Mist that emitted a palpable aura of evil. And mist whose origin I, of course, recognized.

Stygians. The ent’s attackers were stygians.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered, staring at their wavering forms.

It all made sense now—why the Adjudicator had labeled Draven’s Reach ‘corrupt,’ why Ghost had not seen the fog, and why the dungeon’s elites were dying.

And truly, I was not entirely surprised. Ever since spotting the gray haze in the violet sky, I’d suspected something like this, yet had steadfastly refused to consider the possibility.

Stygians in a dungeon were an impossibility, after all.

The Game itself shielded the Forever Kingdom’s dungeons from invasion. Nothing, not even the Powers, could breach a dungeon sector’s protective barrier—or so I’d been led to believe. My breath escaped in a rush. That was not quite true. I knew better. I’d been told better.

Kolath, one of the very guardians tasked with upholding the barriers around the dungeons, had warned me that something was amiss. He’d even tasked me with finding his silent brethren, fearing the worst.

I glanced up at the violet sky and the gray haze scarring it. Nether. Call it nether. You know that’s what it is. I sighed. It seemed clear enough that the guardians had failed their mission, at least when it came to Draven’s Reach.

The dungeon’s protective barrier had been breached. The stygians were inside the dungeon. And the insidious nether was spreading, blighting all it touched.

Which was bad for me on multiple levels.

If the nether infestation had spread far enough, then the sector’s safe zone could be compromised, leaving me with nowhere to resurrect if I died.

I swallowed unhappily. But as bad as that was, what worried me more was what effect the nether would have on the dungeon’s gateways.

Would the exit portal still work?

I had no idea. But if it didn’t... then Ghost and I could be stuck here forever. Drawing back from the corner, I slumped down dejectedly.

It was time to rethink the future.

✵ ✵ ✵

I sat on the ground, head bowed. Behind me, the battle raged unabated. It concerned me little, though. I got the sense that the skirmish had been going on for hours and would likely continue for many more before coming to its inevitable end. Eyes closed, I pondered what the nether’s presence in this sector meant for me.

After my initial bout of panic—had it been that? if not, it had been awfully close—passed, I realized things were not as bleak as they first appeared.

For one, the dungeon could not be in imminent danger of falling. Moonshadow had told me it could take months, if not years, for a sector to succumb to the nether. Granted, he had been talking about kingdom sectors, but I was sure the same principle applied to Draven’s Reach.

And if I needed more evidence, sector 18, 240—the blighted sector from which I’d come—was still unclaimed by the nether and conditions there were visibly worse.

In fact, given what I’d observed of the fog banks, I suspected the nether had only just begun to gain a toehold on this sector. Other than for the central region of Draven’s Reach, the rest of the dungeon appeared mostly untouched by the gray haze.

I have time, I concluded. Lots of it. Years, probably. My shoulders straightened and my unhappiness dissipated. There was no need to panic, rush, or take undue risks.

Something else occurred to me.

As strange as it sounded, the nether’s invasion was not without benefits. In fact, the stygians had already helped me, albeit unknowingly. Without them injuring the stone golems—and I was sure now the stygians had been the one responsible—I would have not killed the two elites.

It opened the way for some interesting… possibilities. Hmm. Rubbing my chin, I considered my next move.

“Why are you still here, Prime?” Ghost asked. “Aren’t you going to watch the fight?”

I looked up to find the spirit wolf sitting before me. “I’m thinking, Ghost.” I glanced at her thoughtfully. “Do you recognize the ent’s attackers?”

“Of course. They’re those nether creatures.”

I nodded.

Ghost wrinkled her nose. “Do you think they followed us through the portal?”

“Unlikely,” I replied. “Besides, the ones here look nothing like the ones we fought back in the kingdom sector. They must be from a different nest. I’m sure they got here before we did.”

Ghost didn’t question my reasoning. “Then you don’t think they’re a danger?”

“Oh, they’re still that,” I murmured. “What I’m trying to figure out is what to do about it.”

“I don’t understand.”

I jerked my thumb in the direction of the skirmish. “I mean what do I do about that? Do I help the elite? Or the stygians? Do I try killing both? Or do I ignore the battle altogether? Which is the right choice here?”

Ghost yawned. “You think too much, Prime.”

I rolled my eyes. “Much help you are.”

The spirit wolf sat beside me and scratched vigorously at one ear with a hind leg. I eyed her askance. Did she really need to do that? She had no physical form after all. “Neither the stygians nor the elites are Pack,” Ghost said finally, ignoring my look. “And both are your enemies. You should kill them however you can.”

It was not an entirely unreasonable conclusion. It was one I’d reached myself, and ordinarily, I would have no scruples about pitting the stygians and elites against each other.

But.

But the stygians were no normal foes. The void was the anathema of life. If left unchecked, the nether would destroy not just the elites, but eventually, those I’d pledged to protect, too.

Which left me in an unhappy predicament.

How far did I go in my fight against the nether or, for that matter, the dungeon’s denizens? Did I try to protect the elites—or sacrifice them to the void? Should I attempt to stop the nether claiming the sector? Or should I ignore the future—and somewhat nebulous—threat the stygians represented and take the easiest path before me?

And I had no doubt what that path would be.

It would be simple, almost laughably so, to use the nether to slay the elites. Merely touching the stuff was fatal to non-players. All I had to do was lure the dungeon’s denizens into the fog banks and let the free-floating nether do the work for me.

Granted, I would gain no experience in the process, but killing the elites in this manner would be as ‘risk-free’ as it got. Then, I could walk out to the dungeon, without looking back, and without caring that I’d furthered the void’s cause.

Easy enough.

If I was willing to betray my promise to Kolath—and the Primes of old.

I had only Kolath’s word for it, but according to the guardian, the ancients were the void’s sworn enemies. “It’s not that simple,” I said at last.

“Why not?” Ghost challenged.

“I can’t allow the nether to claim the sector, not if there is a chance to stop it.”

“Then don’t let it.” Ghost met my gaze. “But you should still kill the elites.”

I stared at her blankly for a moment, then laughed helplessly. “Back to that, are we?”

Ghost seemed to shrug. “You said it yourself: you need to get stronger.”

I frowned, but Ghost was right, and I didn’t owe the elites of Draven’s Reach anything. They were not Pack. By the same token, the stygian menace could not be allowed to spread unchecked. That would threaten my Pack. Perhaps not today, tomorrow, or even years from now, but someday, the void would spread to the sectors my allies sheltered in.

Rising to my feet, I came to a decision.

The dungeon’s denizens were my enemies. But the stygians were more so. I would not use the nether against the elites as tempting as the prospect was. I would stay true to the task Kolath had given me. I would protect the sector from corruption, but only the sector itself; the elites were fair game.

Meanwhile, there was a skirmish raging ahead, and while I was not in a position to defeat either of the battling parties, I could still manipulate the outcome to my own ends.

Recasting my buffs, I slipped around the corner.