Lambert chuckled, “I think you’re one of the few who’s gotten it.”
Fluff was giggling, “The sheepish lion?”
Lambert nodded, “Yeah, the old cartoon.”
“Okay. Lambert and DrBone, you guys stayed out of it, so I’m not kicking you from Alpha Company. You’ll need to find a new group to hang with, but we’re probably going to get more members soon. Just, next time, if someone starts shit like that again, come to us first. I don’t want to see this kind of thing again.”
“Right,” DrBone said, pulling out his Homestone. “I’m going to head back to the city and probably spend the rest of the day thinking stuff over.”
Lambert also took out his Homestone, “Thank you for the second chance. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to try and stop her.”
“Live and learn,” Gerald told him before Lambert vanished. He turned to Alburet, “How did you know that would work?”
“Bullies always think they’re stronger than everyone else, and the way she moved didn’t even hint that she had any training. If she had, I would have sent Karen to fight her instead.”
“I would have won faster,” Karen replied with a smirk. “You seem to be getting a little slow there, Al. Maybe I need to take you to the mat again, get those reflexes back up to speed.”
He looked into her laughing eyes before shaking his head, “Double entendre much?”
She shrugged, “I am who I am.”
Ironhand coughed lightly, “We’ll be heading out after all. Thanks for the help, they were brutal.”
Alburet nodded, “If you want, you can stay out here with us and finish off your quests before you go. Easy XP that way.”
“Aye, it will benefit ya and she will nay think about another go with us, so it will be safe for now,” Stacia added.
Ironhand got nods from his group so he nodded, “We’ll do that. Thank you again.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a couple of hours, Ironhand’s group was ready to turn in their quests, then they planned on going off to another zone. Once they’d taken their leave, Alburet looked at Gerald, “So, ever done the Blighted Tower?” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder at the bell tower.
“No, so this should be interesting,” Gerald said as the group gathered by the doorway that shimmered with the same portal like appearance of every dungeon entrance. “We’re inside the level range for it at least, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Anyone else done this place?”
Fluff shook her head, “I didn’t.”
“Me either,” Karen added with a grin. “I’m so ready for it, though.”
“Well, let’s try it out,” Alburet said, before he stepped into the tower.
The others appeared beside him a second later. The building was a fifty-foot square structure five stories high. The bottom floor had rubble strewn across it, and a stairwell leading up along the left-hand wall. The cross braces for the floor above them were fashioned of a dark wood that had an unpleasant green tinge to it. “Well, this looks friendly,” Gerald muttered at the gloomy air that also held a soft green tinge to it.
“Blighted,” Marysue murmured, “I’m betting disease.”
“Cure sickness doesn’t cure disease, does it?” Fluff asked.
“No, which means this might be kind of rough. Level twenty had an option for cure disease, but I picked up the area heal instead.”
“We still going to do this?” Alburet asked, looking at the others.
“If we fail, we only die horribly,” Karen snorted. “We always come back to life, so I don’t see a reason not to give it a go.”
Stacia frowned, but nodded, “Tha’ be the biggest point tha’ sets ya two-souled apart from us. As long as Alburet be our master though, we,” she pointed to herself, Tiny and Bob, “will nay die a final death either.”
“Right,” Gerald hefted his shield and went towards the stairs, “let’s see what happens.”
The group gathered up behind Gerald and followed him as he started up the stairs. As Gerald cleared the last stair and turned past the wall to look into the room on the second floor, a roar echoed through the building. Gerald darted forward to clear the way so the others could follow him up.
“Golem,” Gerald called back at them as he brought his shield up, blocking the hand that crashed down.
The others exited the stairwell into the room and were able to get a good look at the monster Gerald was fighting. Frankenstein’s monster it seemed to be, a patchwork of flesh stitched together and standing seven feet tall. The Blighted Golem was hammering at Gerald’s shield just fast enough to make it difficult for him to try returning an attack. Fluff, Karen, Alburet, Tiny and Stacia all rushed forward to surround it, while Marysue and both Bobs hung back by the stairs.
As they surrounded it, the Golem stomped a foot heavily onto the floor, knocking them all to one knee and stunning them for two seconds. While they were stunned, it backed away to keep them in front of it and slapped Fluffball as it went by. A good quarter of her life was taken away by the hit, which caught everyone’s attention quickly. As the stun wore off, Fluff triggered her Rage and leapt at the monster as everyone else went to try to surround it again.
Fluff sank both claws into its right arm, shredding the appendage, but no blood came from the mangled limb. Gerald taunted the Blighted Golem as it turned to hit Fluff again, causing it to turn to him instead. Its swing clanged off Gerald’s shield again, as Karen finally sank her blades into its back. “Fucking undead, always immune to poison,” she snarled.
Alburet triggered the flame on his axe and swung at the legs of the mob. His hit did a decent amount of damage since it didn’t have much in the way of armor. The hit barely dented the health of the creature. “Treat it like a mini boss,” he called out to the others. The Blighted Golem also had a taunt, which seemed pointless since it was alone in the room, and it expelled a cloud of green gas at every quarter of its life.
Blighted Air appeared as a debuff, decreasing their overall health pool by 20%. As the fight went on, the lower health pool made Marysue’s job of keeping Gerald alive more challenging. After almost two minutes, they finally whittled away the last of its life and it dropped. While they healed and regained mana, waiting for the debuff to fall off of them, Karen initiated the loot. A nice amount of silver trickled to each of them, but no other item drops were forth coming.
Once they were all healed and the debuff had fallen away, they went up to the next floor with Gerald in the lead again. They found another Blighted Golem, but they knew now how to handle the fight, so it was much easier to deal with. The third floor contained five zombies. The putrid odor they exuded was their big downside, however the gasses turned out to be flammable. That eliminated the stench, but also set the zombies on fire which did damage to anyone they hit or that hit them in melee. The upside was that they also took damage themselves from the fire.
The fourth floor held a Blighted Golem and five Putrid Zombies together. Tiny took the zombies, moving off to one side of the room with them while Gerald took the Golem. Alburet called out, “Everyone go to the far corner and help Gerald. You move over there, too, Marysue.” Once they were all in the far corner, he had Tiny position the zombies diagonally across the room from them, as far away as the room would allow. He then used a spell he’d only used once before, Fire Burst. “Flame On!” Alburet cried out, unleashing the twenty-foot radius burst of fire from his body. Both Bobs, Stacia and Tiny were uninjured, but the zombies were all burning along nicely. He used all of his mana chain casting the spell as his minions did as much damage as they could to the burning zombies.
It still took two hits with the axe per zombie to put them down. As the last zombie fell, he turned to go help Gerald and the others, “Sorry for the delay guys, I was having a bit of a hot flash.”