Name: Stone Breaker
Deity: Naktos
Class Type: Fighter
Level: 15
Health: 441
Mana: 160
Energy: 591
Spirit: 0
Armor Class: 376
The Stone Breaker wore bronze studded leather and carried a bronze hammer on each hip. The guard spoke and Ruwen’s maxed level Hey You allowed him to understand the language like a native.
“Chummo? Did you fall in, you drunk?”
Ruwen pulled the hood of his cloak up and oil seeped down his face. He smeared the oil over his skin. Fresh Air had kept his head mostly clean, but the oil offered a crude disguise. As he neared the Stone Breaker Analyze finally returned.
Target: Stone Breaker
Type: Humanoid
Strengths: High Strength, Increased Endurance, Oxygen Independent
Weaknesses: Fire, Ill-Fitting Armor (Joints and Neck), Side Preference (Right)
Disposition: Hostile
The guard removed the hammer from his right hip. “Chummo?” A second later the guard’s Mana dropped by fifty and a faint sheen surrounded him.
Ruwen had closed to within ten feet, when the Stone Breaker twisted suddenly, swinging his hammer behind him. The hammer struck nothing, and the Stone Breaker turned the momentum into a spinning attack, pulling his second hammer as he turned.
Dodging the hammers, Ruwen stepped up to the guard, gripped his arm, and tried to flip him onto his back. But Ruwen’s slick hands and oil-soaked cloak caused the Stone Breaker to fall sideways. The guard quickly regained his feet.
Grasp Crate, a level three Worker spell, would have increased the roughness of Ruwen’s hands by ten percent and helped counteract the oil that dripped down his arms, but the three second casting time made it impossible to do now. He would remember that next time.
For now, it just meant no more Bamboo Steps. Oil, like being covered in your opponent's blood, would not affect the potency of Viper Steps, however.
The guard brought both hammers up in an uppercut that would have separated Ruwen’s head from his shoulders. He leaned back, letting the weapons pass, the violent wind from their passage cooling his skin.
The guard’s neck, and the bag of flammable gas at its nape, lay exposed. The guard had probably loosened his armor during the boring hours protecting the lake. Ruwen struck at the bag with his right fist, immediately turning and bringing his right elbow around in a blow to the guard's head.
The guard’s magical shield shuddered, and he stumbled backward, but his Health didn’t drop. Two leeches, generated by Ruwen’s Amulet of Leeches, hung from the guard’s shield, doing extra damage. The guard narrowed his eyes and blinked forward, his Energy dropping by seventy-five, and smashed into Ruwen.
A stun debuff flashed under Ruwen’s Profile. The guard raised both hammers over his right shoulder, preparing for a devastating attack. Ruwen triggered his Fighter ability Tunnel Vision and cleared the stun debuff.
Analyze had said the joints were a weakness, which was the truth for most armor. But this armor fit the guard poorly, and with his arms raised in a backswing, Ruwen saw a large gap in the left armpit.
Ruwen struck the gap with a flat left hand, like a spear. The guard’s magic shield flashed and failed, and while it had absorbed most of Ruwen’s power, he still struck a pressure point under the guard’s arm.
The guard dropped the hammer in his left hand. Ruwen knew from experience that unless the guard had special training, his entire arm would remain numb for the next few minutes.
Another leech hung from the guard’s armpit, and his Health finally dropped by three. Despite the incapacitated arm, the guard swung the hammer in his right hand at Ruwen’s head.
Ruwen ducked and moved to the right, avoiding the blow. He struck the guard’s exposed right elbow, overloading the nerve there and creating a painful numbness. The guard dropped his remaining hammer, and stood in shock, as the pain briefly overwhelmed his mind.
Standing straight, Ruwen didn’t give the guard time to recover, and struck at his unprotected neck. Ruwen’s Fortified hands were like steel mallets. His Worker ability Brawl added twenty percent to his unarmed damage, the Fighter ability Honed increased it by ten percent, and his ninety-five levels of Unarmed Combat skill added another forty-seven and a half percent. His Warlord Banner buff Havoc increased his damage by twenty-five percent, and the five levels in Warlord’s Warcry provided another fifty percent damage bonus.
Ruwen’s eighty-four levels of Viper Step training had increased his Critical Strike chance to eighty-nine percent, and with a stunned target, made it a certainty, doubling his damage.
The unarmed strike did one hundred six damage and shattered the guard’s neck. Ruwen struck the guard another four times, all critical strikes, and killed him before he hit the ground.
Ruwen tossed both hammers into the lake and then dragged the body with him into the oil. As the guard sank to the bottom, Ruwen stayed submerged ten feet under. He activated Survey and Stone Echo, studying the overlay for any signs the others had discovered him.
But everything remained the same in the other cavern, and after thirty seconds, Ruwen crawled back out of the oil lake, and crept toward the tunnel.
Now that Ruwen had left the lake, the pain from the Coiled Lightning rings should have disappeared, but one ring still damaged him for one Health point every second. The human cutout at the bottom right of his vision now had a yellow finger. Opening his Inventory, he looked at the Coiled Lightning ring on that finger. The durability had dropped to under ten percent of its maximum.
Quickly glancing at a few pieces of gear, Ruwen saw everything had taken a durability hit. The acid from the sludge had done more than just dissolve his clothes. The Coiled Lightning rings had taken the worst of it, but only one had dropped far enough to trigger a warning and cause pain. He decided to leave it on, as five Energy per second more than balanced the one Health it damaged him.
Curiously, the pain from
