Low-level Patrick and Irita took one and a half percent of the damage between them, but that was enough. Everyone got hit bad. A single bite from the barakata had nearly killed the whole group. Francesca’s Vampiric Cunning buff saved us, allowing us to avoid deadly damage.
When I saw my friends nearly empty health bars, I left the group and waited for Immortality to activate before I came back. The Destroying Plague ability absorbed damage completely, so we shouldn’t have any more problems of that kind.
Once sure that everything was going to plan, I flew to the stone forest and gathered a few dozen cockroaches from all over with a Sleeping Vindication explosion. Each had over a hundred million health, so Vindication without Justice only annoyed the mobs.
They crowded closer, the stamping of hundreds of legs grew louder. Soon I was buried beneath a giant pile of cockroaches. I wasn’t worried about my friends within the place of power, but I still set off Sleeping Vindication after the cooldown ended, to keep aggro on me. I didn’t use Plague Fury— it would kill Patrick and the others among the living. It took more than an hour to work my way through the pile, and when the pressure of cockroach corpses finally lifted, I stood up and saw a sight to behold.
Babangida the ogre waved his huge hammer as he tried to deal at least a single point of damage to one of the barakatas hanging off me. Next to him, Bomber was doing the same, standing just as tall as the ogre.
Two dolls also poked the cockroach with red-hot needles; a straw doll and a rag doll, both around half a yard tall, familiars of the ju-ju shaman Yemi. This was the first time I’d seen the class in battle—the Yoruba leader’s magic was based on sicknesses, curses and strong familiars. Right now, Yemi was leveling up his weakest skill tree. However funny it looked to see the dolls fighting mobs over level one thousand, they were dealing damage! Obviously, the familiars ignored penalties from differences in level.
Patrick, in the knowledge that this death might be his last, had weaseled a low-level bow from Irita and was leveling up his archery from a safe distance. The ranged attackers clustered by him: the undead gnome Crawler, leveling up his weaker schools of magic; the battle mage and vampire Francesca alongside Yemi; the demon hunter Gyula, enthusiastically teaching himself new crossbow skills—while I laid the path to Terrastera, Irita equipped him with powerful bolts.
It was fun. We even had music. The guitar riffs that Infect dropped on the barakatas dealt no damage and caused on slow effects like they were supposed to, but they helped me aggro mobs from all around. The bard had learned the important Artful Prelude skill, which redirected aggro on to whoever he wanted, and he chose me as the target.
All I had to do then was stand under the acid rain and hit those pesky cockroaches in the face with all the weapons I had on me. Unarmed Combat froze at level one hundred, rank one. I dealt damage with Reflection, precise shots of plague energy and vindication— so it would be silly not to use this opportunity to level up one-handed and two-handed swords, clubs, daggers and spears, axes and archery.
My weapon skills didn’t go up quite as fast as when we first started to conquer the Lakharian Desert. It seemed the barakatas’ weren’t ten times my level like those mobs were. Archery reached rank one and I kept to my traditions in choosing a path for it—Path of Justice again. Once I got level one in the new rank, I put my bow away—it wasn’t easy to use from underneath a pile of barakatas, and the acid rain quickly broke weapons. I had to change to a different weapon eveiy five minutes.
Somehow, I managed to make some Plague Fury scrolls after all, but it didn’t work with Sleeping Vindication. The Sleepers’ abilities were in the list of available skills, but the chance of a successful Inscription was zero.
My bag filled up with innards, blood and mandibles from the barakatas—my Magnetism, newly configured to pick up everything, was hard at work. Yoruba would get their third when it all ended.
But most importantly of all— Resilience was leveling up. The group also leveled up, and by the time the flow of barakatas ceased, my main defensive skill that didn’t depend on the gods was at rank three, and I chose the path that I’d successfully tested in the Nether: Path of Equanimity
You completely ignore all damage for the first 3 seconds of battle.
New sounds joined the hissing of the falling acid raindrops—not trampling feet, but oil sizzling on a frying pan. Something huge was moving toward us. Stone trees rumbled, fell, and the culprit appeared.
Devourer of Flesh, Giant Dalezma, level??? solitoid
Local boss.
“What a horrible beast,” Patrick spat, staring at the monster.
The thirty-foot tall snail-like thing looked a distant relative of the cockroaches. The boss’s shell split into two halves. A powerful segmented tail stretched up behind the beast and shot something, blowing a hole in my chest and taking out all my ribs. A ton of poison flowed through me, causing absolutely no harm. My spine alone held the top of my body to the bottom.
“A boss!” Babangida roared. “The gods are generous!”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Ba!” Yemi frowned. “Scyth might not be able to handle that thing.”
“Hah!” Bomber chuckled. “Time to play, Infect!”
My friends and the trio from Yoruba had reached level four hundred by now. Gyula was over three hundred, and
