Spiteful Healer

Chapter 156: Belmiure

“First order of business.” Aegis stepped forward in front of his party, then turned to face them as they all stood attentive. “We’ll check out the enemies in this ruined city. We’re searching for good grinding spots.” Aegis explained and got a few nods. “But we’ll search together, and attentively. There’s a chance other high level players are in these parts of the Underrealm, as there are other ways to get down here on this side of the Red River.”

“Got it.” Darkshot gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.

“I’ll take point and keep bless up at all times just in case.” Aegis said as he walked between them and tapped their shoulders, casting bless on each of them including Snowflake. “Call out if you see anything suspicious.” Aegis finished. Once he was sure everyone was onboard, he turned back towards the vast ruined city ahead of them and began walking forward.

The others moved in formation and followed behind him. First, Lina and Snowflake. Following that, Pyri, then Darkshot, and lastly Rakkan taking up the rear.

Pyri maneuvered her four cinderbolts to hover as wide, flattened circles a few meters from the group, allowing them to see into the surrounding darkened city.

It wasn’t far beyond the statues and the shattered archway that they began seeing ruined structures built out of obsidian blocks. Most were barely still intact with broken blocks scattered about the base of their decrepit walls. There were few to no signs of any furnishings within the homes as well, and the majority of the structures had no roof remaining.

Not far into the ruins did they begin to see a feint white fog settled above the ground all around them. The moment Aegis saw it, he felt a sense of familiarity with it, like he'd seen it before, and paused to think on it carefully as he swung his hands slowly through it, feeling a cold chill through his leather gloves.

“Hm...” Aegis thought out loud as he turned back to see Lina staring at him curiously. With a serious expression he walked close towards her, and very subtely opened his interface to send her a text message in his UI through the friends list, so that it would be hidden from his stream. He watched as she looked at him confused for a moment as she fidgeted with her own UI to read it, then gave him a nod.

"Everything okay?" Darkshot asked as he saw the two of them staring at each other in the front of the group.

“Yup, everything is fine. I just...” Lina replied, glancing around at their surroundings. “I think I saw something over there…” She said absentmindedly while pointing to a ruined structure, but as she pointed at it she turned to look at Rakkan. “Do you see any writing on the walls of that building?” She asked while walking over to Rakkan and touching his shoulder. The others all stopped and watched her curiously as she leaned in to Rakkan and as steathily as possible whispered something in his ear. He went from confusion, to a look of shock as if he’d just realized something.

“No, don’t see anything.” Rakkan replied.

“I’ll be right back, let me check that building just incase.” Lina said, then without a chance for anyone to add input, Lina suddenly disappeared inside one of the ruined structures lining the streets.

“Lina, wait! It could be dangerous!” Aegis forcefully and somewhat overdramatically whisper-shouted, but he got ignored by her.

“What’s up with her?” Darkshot asked, but Rakkan shrugged back awkwardly. A few moments later, she came back out of the building as if nothing had happened.

“Nope, nothing was there, never mind.” Lina pursed her lips and looked to the corner of her eyes.

“Let's keep going." Aegis announced to the others loudly to draw eyes back onto himself. "And, focus guys. There could be deadly enemies around here.” Aegis added as he quickly maneuvered to get back in front of Lina. Pyri and Darkshot briefly exchanged looks of confusion before they followed along with the others.

They walked on a bit further like this, Pyri swarming her cinderbolts out around them without much changing. The only thing they learned was just how vast the city was. Any form of decorum and artistry Aegis might’ve been able to learn from this ancient civilization's architecture had long since been worn away by the elements, though.

After another minute of walking, the mist thickened and the temperature in the air around them suddenly began to drop rapidly. Coming from the intense heat of the Red River, it felt like they were suddenly stepping into the arctic. Out of nowhere, they were able to see their breath in front of their faces, and both Snowflake and Darkwing pulled their wings in tight to warm themselves up.

“Undead. Ghost type enemies, or wraith types do this.” Rakkan whispered anxiously as he drew out his weapons and created echoes of himself, glancing around at the surrounding structures illuminated by the red glow of Pyri's cinderbolts.

“Anyone see it? I’m not seeing anything with tracking.” Darkshot asked as he nocked an arrow and panned around the buildings nearby.

“Aura of beauty.” Aegis whispered, releasing a burst of light around them and illuminating the surrounding structures. The light from the aura cleared out the immediate mist around Aegis and allowed Pyri to send her bolts further out to see a larger perimeter around them.

“There, I see it.” Pyri pointed at the second floor of a nearby ruined structure. Moving along the structures upper level, in view of them due to passing in front of damaged obsidian window holes, hovered a spectral female dark elf. She was dark white and grey, with long pointed ears and long hair waving behind her ghostly visage. Somewhat transparent, the party could see she had a spectral sword plunged through her chest that she was carrying around with her. It was the most likely cause of her demise that resulted in her becoming a ghost, but now it seemed to not bother her.

Sitting above her head stood the red name [Belmiure Banshee - Level 119]. She seemed to have noticed them as they had noticed her, and she stopped moving about the second story of the building to turn and look down out of the window at them, particularly at Aegis and the white glowing light that emanated from him due to the aura.

From there she immediately engaged them by floating through the walls of the building and lightly hovering down to the ground level of the paved road. Like other wraiths and banshees that Aegis had encountered, she had no legs - below her waist her form transitioned into a gray misty cloud that mixed in with the mist that had settled around the surface of the ruined city.

“Plug your ears.” Aegis commanded the group, but as he did, he looked at Snowflake instead.

As the Banshee began to open her cartoonishly large mouth and reveal her broken ghostly teeth, Aegis ran to Snowflake and put his hands over his ears. Seeing this, Darkshot did the same for Darkwing’s ears, and a moment later, the deafening wail of the banshee reverberated off of the obsidian around them.

Even with their ears plugged it was deafening and painful to hear. Aegis was expecting to take damage from it, but instead heard it muffled and mixed in with a sizzling sound.

You take 321 Fire damage.

Aegis felt a burning sensation on his ears instead, and only then realized that Pyri had moved one of her cinderbolts and was burning it as two seperate small spheres over both of his ears to block the sound. He turned back to look at her and she winked while covering her own ears. As he looked back, and the screaming continued for another second, he also saw Lina, Rakkan and his echoes, and Darkshot covering ears as well. Darkshot also had cinderbolts in his ears, thanks to Pyri, while he protected Darkwing, but something else got Aegis’ attention as he was looking back at his companions.

A familiar cloak suddenly appeared from the darkness of the surrounding buildings. It was a blur of white moving quickly towards them, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the sound of the wail. Aegis couldn’t take his hands off of Snowflake’s ears to do anything about it, nor did he have time to warn his party members. He managed to get close enough, quickly enough, so that by the time the sound of the banshee’s wail had faded, he had plunged a dagger into Rakkan and Lina’s backs.

“Lina!” Aegis shouted out, rather calmly, as Darkshot, Pyri and Snowflake all turned and saw Rakkan’s body disintegrating, as well as Lina’s.

“Oh, hi. Did you miss me?” The assassin player smirked, then prepared to dash backwards away from the others as he saw Pyri’s cinderbolts breaking off towards him.

“No, not really.” Rakkan replied as suddenly one of Rakkan’s echoes reached out and grabbed the assassin player's wrist, while the other of Rakkan’s echo grabbed the opposite wrist. Simultaneously, out of nowhere, Lina shadowstepped in front of the player and pulled the hood of his cloak back, causing his red ears to unfurl and stick up high above his head.

“Hah?” The assassin, with his name now revealed, said with a dumbfounded expression. [Emerill - Level ??].

Darkshot was confused as well - he was sure he saw Lina die, and how and when did Rakkan switch his real body with one of his echoes? He didn’t have time to think it out too much though,

“Pin spam him, Darkshot. I’ll keep the banshee busy, you guys deal with him.” Aegis instructed them confidently.

“With pleasure.” Pyri smirked as her bolts all pressed against his armor.

“Pinning shot.” Darkshot hit him multiple times, locking him in place. Once he was pinned, both Lina and Rakkan jumped backwards away from him so that he couldn’t retaliate.

“Lures aren’t going to work. Alone, and rooted, you’re basically just a high level sitting duck.” Aegis commented. "Once an Assassin can't use his speed, he's in trouble, right?" Aegis confirmed with Lina.

"Right." Lina smiled back at Aegis and gave him a thumbsup, watching as Aegis easily dodged a swiping claw attack from the Banshee in front of him.

“You really think I don’t have ranged attacks?” Emerill shouted back at her as he waved his fingers up and shot out multiple daggers hooked on wires.

“Smoke bomb.” Lina responded, firing the ball at him, shrouding him in smoke.

“That’s not gonna… god damnit.” He shouted in frustration as Aegis looked back and saw Lina twirling Emerill’s ring of visibility between her fingertips.

“I’m a thief class too, remember?” She smiled mischievously.

“Damn, nice job Lina.” Darkshot commented between firing more pinning shots. Aegis was paying attention to their fight somewhat while he made sure to dodge the claw swipes from the Banshee in front of him - he stood a few meters ahead of the others on the street.

“So, you knew I was following you?” He asked from within the smoke as his thrown daggers fell aimlessly to the ground around them before disappearing due to him canceling his skill. He seemed to be resigning to his fate, he wasn’t even attempting to get out of the pinning shot bindings. The group had a bit of time before Pyri’s cinderbolts burned him to death, but he was completely crowd controlled - four on one was hopeless even with the level discrepancy.

“I had a hunch. The moment I saw the mist, I figured we’d be encountering banshees. They’re a great distracting enemy for ganking tactics, because they always open with a wail. I did some studying on ganking in this game after you got me killed.” Aegis replied as he easily anticipated the banshee's teleport movements in the mist around him and avoided her strikes, not too unlike how he'd been practicing dodging hits from Lina earlier.

“That’s why you messaged something to Lina, and she tapped Rakkan and started acting all weird?. She used shadow-steal to copy echo, and told him to hide himself between his echoes too, right?” Darkshot figured it out.

“Yup. The real me was hiding in the building still, I sent my copied echo back out.” Lina nodded.

“You got lucky." Emerill snarled back.

"Nah, I knew you'd go after Lina and Rakkan first. Too predictable. You know a lot about us though... to know to target them." Aegis replied with a curious tone.

"It doesn’t matter. I’ll be back to finish you guys off in 24 hours. You’ll never be able to grind here in peace.” He growled back from within the smoke as Lina recast it a few times on him.

“Hm.” Aegis hopped back avoid another swipe from the banshees. “So that’s your goal? Now we know what, we still don’t know why.” Aegis thought out loud.

“What’re you talking about?” Darkshot asked Aegis curiously.

“Well, he didn’ take our items so he’s not interested in gold. He also doesn’t care to assassinate our NPCs, so he’s not just doing this to be an edgelord. The question before was, what was he trying to do? And he just accidentally answered it. He was trying to stop us from grinding in these ruins.”

“Heh… annoying little shit.” Emerill sneered. “Please, kill me faster, I don’t want to listen to the wannabe Makaroth monologuing. Believe me, I won’t be ‘trying’ to stop you. I just got careless from how easy you idiots were the first time around. You lulled me into a false sense of security.”

“Is that the why?” Aegis asked inquisitively from across the way. “Makaroth sent you to slow down our leveling?”

“Hah!” He guffawed. “Why the hell would Makaroth care how fast you level?”

“Huh, ok, wrong guess." Aegis replied while dodging more strikes. He couldn't read Emerill's facial expressions due to him being shrouded in Lina's smoke. "But sounds like your objective was indeed to stop us from leveling here. Still don’t have the why, though…” Aegis thought out loud.

"Maybe he just really likes this grinding spot and wants to keep it for himself?" Rakkan suggested.

“Maybe he’s one of those haters. Stream snipers. Plenty of other streamers get them.” Darkshot suggested.

“I’m no fucking lowly stream sniper.” Emerill growled back from within the smoke as he was pelted with more pinning shots.

“Oh? Want to tell us why you’re attacking us then?” Pyri asked, but Emerill didn’t reply, instead the group just heard the annoyed groans of the banshee striking out at Aegis.

“He suddenly got shy.” Lina shrugged.

“You’ll be dead in 24 hours. See you soon.” Emerill said threateningly.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Aegis replied. “We know your name now, and my map has all the respawn points of the underrealm marked on it. If we kill you, and you really do drop some items, I think you’ll find yourself logging back in partially naked, and surrounded by Night Hunters and Blades of Kalmoore members.”

“I’m not afraid of Kalmoorians.” He scoffed.

“So you’re not from this island. Interesting.” Aegis chuckled.

“He talks way too much.” Pyri whispered in disbelief.

“Laugh all you want for now. It’s only a matter of time before…” He, for the first time, stopped himself from talking.

“Before what?” Aegis asked, but he went quiet. “Before your friends come and back you up?” Aegis tried answering for him, but there was no response. Instead, a few moments later, he was killed and forced to log out by Pyri’s repeated fire damage.

“I didn’t get a penalty because he has a bad reputation.” Pyri shrugged as Lina’s smoke faded, revealing that Emerill had dropped his white cloak and a pouch of gold on the ground.

“We got our gold back.” Rakkan said as he picked up the pouch, while Lina walked forward and looked interestedly at the cloak.

“Aegis, this cloak is purple quality Voidsilk. He has tier 3 equipment on…” Lina commented as she inspected the item card.

“Hm…” Aegis pondered on it, but couldn’t think too hard as he was forced to dodge more attacks. “Can you guys, you know, kill this thing?” Aegis sighed while motioning to the banshee.

“Oh, right.” Darkshot noded, as the others sprang into action and began attacking it, including Snowflake. To Aegis’ surprise, the banshee died in under three minutes despite the big level difference. It wailed two more times, but the group knew how to avoid the damage for it so it wasn’t an issue.

“I think I know why he tried to stop us from fighting enemies in these ruins and grinding here.” Lina said as she watched the banshee’s body dissipate and fall to a pile of spectral dust onto the paved obsidian road.

“Why?” Aegis asked her curiously as he collected the dust and added it to his inventory, though unsure of what to do with it.

“Wraith and ghost type enemies are notoriously annoying to fight, because they are resistant to a lot of damage types, and non-magical attacks just plain do not work against them…” Lina explained while sheathing her daggers back in her hilts.

“But, they take double damage from holy based attacks.” Rakkan grinned from ear to ear.

“Interesting…” Aegis said as he turned from the group and excitedly panned his eyes across the gigantic cavern before them. “We better not disappoint Emerill, then. Let’s find the densest, easiest undead enemies and start grinding.” Aegis said while rubbing his hands together with excitement.

The party moved forward deeper into the ruins of Belmiure. They were no longer on edge, waiting for someone to attempt to attack them. Emerill being dead for a full 24 hours gave them a greater sense of freedom and they began spreading out and checking the nearby buildings until they they arrived at the base of their first dark grey glowing tree.

It was set in a planter surrounded by a ring of cracked and destroyed small black obsidian stones at the center of an intersection of paved roads. The roots of the tree had long since overtaken the outerring of the planter and curled over the paved blocks of the intersection in search of other places to dig into the soilrock below, finding some in several cracked and decayed portions of the street.

Looking at the tree up close, the light was coming off of tiny little beetles that were crawling their way up and down the crevices in the tree's bark, feeding on it. They didn’t have any red names above their heads initially, until Aegis got really close with his head to try and inspect them and saw [Corpse Beetle - Level 1] sitting above their heads.

The group gathered around the tree and looked on at the nearby ruined buildings.

“Let’s scout out the surrounding city blocks from here and use this as a base point. Pyri, move about using invisibility and your cinderbolts and see what you can find. It’s too dark for Lina and Darkshot to scout without using light that gives their positions away.” Aegis explained and she gave a nod in return. From there, Pyri did as she was asked while the others simply looked on in the darkness. With Pyri gone, their only source of light was the tree, as Aegis had cancelled his aura. But they could keep track of Pyri’s movements by watching the glow of her cinderbolts in the distance.

It took awhile, but eventually she returned to the group from the opposite side of the intersection than from where she’d left, and dropped her invisibility spell to reveal her lips pulled to the side as she was thinking on something.

“So? How’s it look?” Aegis asked her as the others turned to her expectantly.

“Well, There are three types of enemies. The Banshees, are few and far between. Then there are Belmiure Wraiths. And far away, walking along the streets is an elite enemy called a Cursed Dreadnaught. It’s sort of two enemies, because its dragging along like 6 smaller skeletons called Cursed Belmiurian using chains. Really creepy. The Dreadnaughts are level 125, the wraiths and banshees range from levels 110 to 120.” Pyri explained.

“Okay…” Aegis began thinking as he scratched his chin and looked around. “How are the banshees spread out, relative to the wraiths? Any idea? I don’t think we can efficiently kill more than one banshee at once, but it might be possible to grind the wraiths.” Aegis thought outloud.

“Well, each section…” She pointed around the various blocks of houses that surrounded the intersection they stood at. “Has one banshee and between 13 to 20 of the wraiths.” She explained.

“Okay.” Aegis continued to ponder for a moment. “Let’s try fighting a wraith. Pull one.” Aegis instructed Pyri and she gave a nod. She didn’t have to go far from the intersection before she spotted one lurking in a ruined building.

Aegis did the rounds and blessed the group, activated his aura, and readied his shield while the others drew out their weapons. A few moments later, with a cinderbolt burning on it, a spectral male Dark Elf came hovering towards them. Like the banshee, it had no legs and its body dissipated into the foggy mist below the waist.

As it neared them it let out a haunting groan, [Belmiure Wraith - Level 111] standing above its head. The closer it got to them, the lower the temperature dropped, and it moved much more quickly than the banshee but nothing close to the speed of the Mosstrappers.

It stopped a meter in front of Aegis' shield in the townsquare as the others watched it to see what it would do - Aegis held his right hand out to signal the others to stay back before moving forward to bash it with his shield, so it would focus on him.

Once he had hit it, he had its attention. It stopped looking at Pyri and took a swipe at Aegis’ shield with long bony claws that stood in for its fingers. When the claws scraped across his shield, he felt an icy chill shoot through his entire body and let out a violent shiver.

You take 6,310 Cold damage.

Aegis was able to brace it and was surprised by how less the damage was, but he then saw a debuff appear on his interface in his peripheral vision. In order to take the time to read the information on the debuff, he jumped backwards away from the wraith to create space between them.

Despite this, the wraith swiped his other claw out at Aegis from a meter away. From his claws, an icy blue wave shot out from the swipe that grew wider the further it got from the Wraith, until it crashed into Aegis’ shield again.

You take 6,224 Cold damage.

Skill Learned: Cold Resistance

He was quick enough to brace it, but he saw that his debuff number had went up from the hit, it now had a 2 on it to indicate it was a stacking debuff.

[Freezing Curse]

Reduces movement and attack speed by 5% per stack (Maximum 10 stacks). At 10 stacks, you become vulnerable and take 100% more damage from all sources.

Current Stacks: 2

Speed Penalty: 10%

Duration: 15s

Once he’d finished reading it, he looked back at the Wraith and saw it preparing to swipe out at him again. This time he was aware the wraith had a large attack range and knew he wasn’t safe 1m away, and jumped backwards to get further from it.

When its claws finished swinging through the air, it released the same blue wave of energy outward again that expanded, but with Aegis 5 meters back, he saw that the blue wave dissipated at about 3 meters.

“3 meter attack range.” Aegis announced to the others as they watched.

“It’s a frontal cone basic attack too, that’s pretty nasty.” Rakkan pointed out.

“Yeah, and the debuff makes it hard to kite them around, right?” Lina added.

“Not to mention they can pass through walls.” Darkshot said. As they spoke, Aegis prepared for it to strike again, and dodged it, while beginning a heal on himself.

“Still… I think we could manage to grind these, somehow.” Aegis replied to them. “How likely is it that we’ll find something easier?”

“Not likely.” Lina replied with a shrug. “Everything above level 100 has some tough gimmicks and abilities.”

“Ok, kill this wraith quickly, let’s see how well our holy damage works on it.” Aegis said as he took a few steps back. “Smite.” he cast on it. To his surprise, even though smite was a low rank, it dealt 953 holy damage to the wraith, and a few seconds later he saw the damage numbers of his allies popping up on it.

Huge hits, just from the holy damage bless effect. The wraith, despite being nearly 20 levels above them, died in just over a minute.

“Kill speed is incredibly fast.” Aegis said with an impressed look at his party who all proudly looked back at him. “With the experience that gave, and the banshee…” Aegis thought as he started looking around the intersection. “Four sections, each with a banshee…” He scratched his head thinking deeply. He went quiet for a moment as the others continued to watch him expectantly.

“Here’s the plan.” Aegis took a deep breath once he’d worked it all out. “We single out the banshee in each section and kill it alone, but I’ll be sure to let her hit me once so my health isn’t full. Then, Pyri,” Aegis motioned to her, “You send out a cinderbolt to get the attention of every wraith in that section of the city. Only damage them once, though, so I can get their attention off of you easily.” Aegis explained and she nodded.

“Once she has all of the wraiths, I’ll heal myself and smite them to get their attention onto me, then run in a line back and forth here…” He motioned to the street they’d come from. “We know no enemies spawn there. While they are chasing me, you guys deal damage, just don’t stand in front of them, okay?” Aegis explained to the others.

“Got it.” Darkshot nodded.

“Since they're spectral, my weapon swings can cleave through and hit more than one at a time if I enlarge them.” Rakkan replied excitedly.

“Oh, then I should shadowsteal enlarge for my daggers to do the same.” Lina added eagerly.

“Perfect, that’ll make us able to clear each group quickly. Once a section is clear, we’ll move on to the next section and repeat the process.” Aegis continued. “If we cycle between the four sections of the intersection like that, the first one should respawn by the time we get finished with the fourth. That’ll mean we won’t have much resting time like we did during our other grinds, but the experience should be good.”

“How good are we talking here?” Darkshot asked curiously.

“Well, with our kill speed, and the monsters and their experience, we’ll be gaining a level in under 24 hours at first. It’ll slow down, but this rotation should work well until we reach level 130.” Aegis shrugged.

“Wait…” Darkshot began wiggling his fingers and counting it out in his head. “You want to grind here for a month?”

“5 Weeks, more likely.” Pyri shrugged.

“Yo, you’re saying we can reach 130 in just 5 weeks of grinding?” Rakkan replied in disbelief.

“It’ll be nonstop, and hard work, but, yeah.” Aegis shrugged.

“Shit yeah.” Rakkan rubbed his hands together excitedly.

“Most of the top players that had reached advanced classes a few months back are now around level 180… we’ll stop seeing question marks.” Lina smiled cheerfully.

“Are you guys ready to get started?” Aegis asked them as he began stretching and preparing for battle.