Mage Tank

Chapter 251: Durgons and… (7)

The Asimanth were taking their prey to some kind of… thing.

Nuralie didn’t have a good frame of reference for it. This problem was compounded by her inability to get close to the ‘thing’.

Nuralie had started experiencing the same spiritual divergence that the rest of the forest was undergoing once she got within a mile of the distant mass of gleaming silver and bone. Her divergence wasn’t so extreme as what she’d observed in the rest of the forest, but the sensation of her soul being pulled from her physical body was deeply disturbing.

Nuralie couldn’t help but be reminded of Hysteria, and that, she hated.

Nuralie backed off the moment she noticed the effect and went through a self-evaluation. There were no notifications from the System, and a review of her recent memories revealed no inconsistencies, but that was hardly enough to satisfy her. Since Varrin’s acquisition of his absurdly powerful helmet, Nuralie recognized that she was the most vulnerable to Spiritual effects amongst the party, despite it being her attunement. Her Wisdom was low, and she’d not invested in any mitigating skills or evolutions. Her primary mode of defense against it was the same as any other–don’t get hit.

Nuralie realized that strategy was no longer serviceable after their encounter with the psychotic avatar.

Part of her recovery from the gloom of having her soul twisted had been throwing herself into her work, making use of the achievement her contributions had earned her. It was called Soul Chemistry, and it made her soul-affecting alchemical products more potent, but only if they were beneficial to the target. It had been an odd reward, given that her efforts towards undoing Hysteria’s influence had focused on destructive principles. Her poison had annihilated fragments of the soul, both Arlo’s and the avatar’s.

Still, everyone in the party had received a defensive achievement. It was as though the System recognized it would be the type of benefit they’d desire from their efforts, and in some ways the soul death her poison had caused Arlo was beneficial. It had been cutting out a disease, like burning out an infection. Tissue had been lost, but the result was the restoration of good health.

In the end, she hadn’t given it too much thought. Worrying about the whims of the System was better left to Xim and Arlo. They were better equipped for the psychological strain–not to mention far more interested than she–and Nuralie could better contribute where she had greater expertise.

Soulguard Potion

You gain +35% resistance to soul-altering effects for 1 hour.

“Soul-altering” was an odd keyword in ways. Nuralie designated it as a meta-category that encompassed portions of other effects. Both the Spectral and Psychic sub-types among Spiritual categories could have an impact on the soul, but neither was guaranteed.

Psychic effects could target the bridge between the mind and soul, the soul itself, or even the organic brain or other physical material that acted as an equivalent. Spectral effects were generally targeted at the soul, but the soul they affected was not always the focus of their harm. They sometimes harnessed intermediary entities to deliver damage, which might attack in other ways. In any case, the best defense against either was one that specifically listed that sub-type.

However, there was no other way to describe what Hysteria had done other than to say they’d altered her soul. There was also no better way to describe what was happening within this forest.

The potion’s resistance value of 35% was an awkward number, owing to her achievement, but Nuralie’s Fortitude 20 evolution boosted the effect of any beneficial substance she consumed. It was presently a 44% increase, meaning the resistance value would be a little over 50% in total.

While the potion was a valuable addition to her craft, what made it particularly potent for Nuralie was that it stacked with the passive she’d based it on, yet another potion buff. Whenever she consumed a potion she’d created, she could select one of a number of other effects to benefit from. Notably, one option was +50% resistance to mind-altering effects.

Thus, Nuralie’s achievement, Fortitude evolution, and passive worked in concert with the potion to grant her general immunity to any mental effect that targeted her soul, with a 50% resistance to other types of mental or soul-altering effects. In absence of a deific skill, that made editing her soul to affect her mind impossible.

Of course, Hysteria had been using a deific effect, but that didn’t discourage her. The path to breaking the abilities of godly beings was a long one. Nuralie was more than willing to keep walking it all the way to its end.

Nuralie drank the potion and selected her passive effect. She felt a mild sense of malaise evaporate as the concoction did its work. The feeling had been creeping up on her since entering the forest, then exacerbated by her proximity to the ‘thing’. Nuralie felt reassured that the feeling had been due to an external entity, as opposed to a lack of resilience.

Your Alchemy skill has increased to Level 41!

Your Spiritual Magic skill has increased to Level 33!

Nuralie checked the notifications and nodded. Field testing new products was always a good way to gather valuable data. The Spiritual Magic level was a little unexpected, but she had used a variety of Spiritual principles when creating the potion. She expected the Dungeon environment had a significant impact on the advancement.

Nuralie self-evaluated once again, finding nothing amiss. The resistances wouldn’t grant her immunity to the soul divergence, but it would certainly help. By about 50%, she surmised.

She stored the empty vial in her inventory and set back out towards the mass of silver and bone. Owing to the exponential buildup of the entity’s soul-pulling effect, Nuralie’s 50% resistance did not allow her to get 50% closer. She made it another quarter of the way before she grew spiritually uncomfortable. Nuralie found the highest tree she could and a quick Shadow Walk took her near the top, still shady from its large, thorny leaves.

The final destination of the Asimanth was in a large clearing, free of the forest’s mists and easily visible from her vantage point. The bulk of the ‘thing’ they gathered near was long and oblong, mildly cylindrical with rounded ends. Smooth lumps bulged out in places, like a molded inorganic casing for the organic thing within.

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There was a large rent in one side of the object, the silver shell torn away down most of its length. It exposed yellowed bone, wet with a substance the consistency of mucus. There were arcing rows that looked like titanic ribs, and near what she labeled as the front, there was a thick, curved plate. The gouge had dug deeper than the silvery shell here, and the bone was missing a large piece, exposing a wall of densely folded flesh.

It was a brain, and one that appeared whole and undecayed. There were other organs as well, behind the wall of ribs. A squirming mass of unidentifiable flesh. Aside from the brain and bone, the thing’s internal anatomy was alien to Nuralie.

Behind the entity was a large wake of destruction, a deep furrow in the ground, nearly a hundred feet wide. It cut through trees, soil, and rock alike. A distant hill was even missing a significant portion out of the middle of its rise. It looked more like the thing had struck the ground and slid to where it now rested, rather than carving the devastation intentionally as it moved.

If it had moved, Nuralie didn’t know how. There were no appendages to be seen, as the creature was limited to a skull with ribs running down the full length of what was visible through the hole in its exterior. Magic was always a potential explanation. If that were the case, it meant the creature had a strong grasp over mana.

One Asimanth brought a boar forward, which had recovered enough to shriek and squeal, though not enough to struggle. The boar’s spirit stretched further and further from its physical form as the Asimanth brought it close, until something snapped. The mass of silver and bone tore the soul from the boar’s broken body. It flowed into the wound on its simple skull, and a pulse of spiritual energy dispersed throughout the folds of the brain. The boar went still, its life extinguished.

One by one, each Asimanth delivered their offering. The cries of the Asimanth’s victims were made even more unsettling by the silence of their killers. Nuralie was no stranger to the hunt, to taking life for food and materials, but the way these Asimanth treated their game was foul. Not only did they force them to suffer on the long walk back to their master, but they dumped the corpses into a pit afterward, to rot away unused. The soul was all they needed, and all the rest was chaff. A waste, if nothing else.

Nuralie went ahead and tried to identify the distant being. She’d waited to try and keep the System’s input from biasing her initial observations, but the information it provided was sparse.

Domininth: Unknown, Grade Unknown

Nuralie wondered how the System could know what to call the entity, but not what kind of creature it was. Then again, she was inside a Dungeon. An information blackout might be part of its conditions, although Grotto insisted that Dungeons were not created or managed by the System. It simply took advantage of them, like a gatherer collecting berries from the wild. Nuralie didn’t know enough to guess. There were too many variables for any useful predictions.

Nuralie then spent the mana to cast Target Analysis. This was riskier than a System-derived identify, which relied on archived information. Target Analysis actively probed the target for information, so there was a chance of detection. The skill usually went unnoticed, but there were always exceptions.

Nuralie was mildly surprised when a wealth of information flooded her mind about the creature. The skill had been quite successful, which she hadn’t expected from how strange the entity was.

Domininth

Health: 208,000

Stamina: 32,000

Mana: 5,000

Immunities: Cold, Slowed, Fear

Conditional Immunities: Immobilized, Paralyzed, Stunned, Forced Movement, Forced Teleportation, Distracted, Dominated, Mesmerized, Paranoid, Psychotic, and all mind, perception, and memory altering effects.

Resistances: Physical, Dimensional, Infernal, Wicked

Vulnerabilities: Holy, Righteous

Nuralie’s head swam from the massive health pool and the list of conditional immunities. The health pool was more than an order of magnitude larger than anything she’d even heard of. The highest health pool that Varrin was aware of was that of Patriarch Bluewren, who had a natural health pool somewhere in the seven-thousand range.

Not seventy thousand. Seven.

The entity ahead of her had hundreds of thousands of health. It was already injured as well, meaning its potential maximum might be significantly higher. With health like that, what did its DR look like?

Nuralie settled herself and looked over the conditional immunities, recognizing them as the effects of both the Unstoppable and Unflappable buffs. The Domininth had some way to generate both of those, but they weren’t currently active, else they’d have been included under Immunities.

It was resistant to two full schools of magic, along with half of Divine, although the Divine resistances told Nuralie something about the nature of this creature. The vulnerabilities to Holy and Righteous made sense, especially if it too was an Undead, like its minions.

Nuralie felt better once she finished her review, focusing on analyzing the data objectively to remain calm. Her success with Target Analysis also told her that whatever the creature’s equivalent of Charisma was, it had very little.

The Domininth’s mana pool was much smaller in comparison to its enormous health and stamina, but it was still several times larger than what a 100 Wisdom would provide with no other bonuses. It had more than enough mana to cast spells that could level entire cities, perhaps even tear the souls from everyone in a major population center.

There was also the possibility that Nuralie had caught it in a moment of relative depletion. Target Analysis didn’t tell her the creature’s upper boundaries, only its current resource levels. Its mana pool could be as large as its health for all she knew.

Nuralie watched the Asimanth make their sacrifices to the Domininth for some time, thinking over the results of Target Analysis while taking notes and making sketches. She noted that a small amount of bone around the skull had reformed, and when she pinged the entity again with her skill, it had gained nearly ten thousand health. The mana had gone down an inconsequential amount. It appeared that whatever the Domininth was spending to maintain its constant state of soul devouring, its mana regeneration was keeping up.

Nuralie considered what to do. On the one hand, whatever was happening here wasn’t necessarily of concern to her. She needed to find a way out of the Dungeon, and there was no guarantee that interacting with the Domininth or Asimanth would yield an exit. She expected the Domininth would prove disastrous to this environment once it finished recovering from its wounds–the recovery itself was already a disaster of sorts–but she also didn’t know if that mattered. Where was this forest? Was it near something important? Was it on Arzia at all, or was this a pocket dimension like Arlo’s Closet?

On the other hand, Nuralie had strong evidence she was in a real forest through her senses and observations, which meant the death and suffering the entity caused was real as well. Her potion made it significantly less likely that a mental effect was tricking her. If this were some kind of physical illusion, it was of a complexity that would demand the talents of a Delver at the peak, or perhaps something even greater. Not only would such a thing be an ill fit for a Spiritual Dungeon, it would also need to fool her life sense, magic sense, divine sense, evil sense, and motion sense.

At that point she would need to assume she was being manipulated by a god, or an avatar at the very least. The simpler explanation was that this was a real space with real, living–and unliving–entities.

If that were the case, did Nuralie want to walk away? She’d often struggled with the tolerance of evil. She liked to believe that she fought against malice and sadism, whenever she had the power to. And yet, how often had she advocated for a more pragmatic approach to a difficult problem? When had she been the one to suggest taking a risk to save others from oppression?

She’d fiercely pursued her morals in Eschendur, but that was her home. Elsewhere, she’d often been more concerned with safety. How much weight did her righteousness carry, if her righteousness only bore the weight of certainty, and never the weight of doubt?

There were no people to save within this forest, but Nuralie’s empathy was not limited to the sapient. The Asimanth tormented the wildlife, wasting their bounty to serve the Domininth’s ends, profane to her gods. Nuralie would end the misery here, whether or not doing so was the way out of the Dungeon.

As for how to kill a creature with nearly a quarter million health… Well, she had an entire forest of spiritual ingredients to harness, and some excellent recipes for poisoning the soul. She just needed to work out the dosage.

And figure out how to get closer without having her soul eaten.