The Element of Surprise

Spells

Conjure Greasefire (Conjuration) Tier 2, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Conjure Gresefire spell of the Conjuration school. When you cast this spell, open twinned pseudoportals to Elemental Fire and Primordial Grease. By default these portals occupy the same space and disgorge a spray of flaming grease at the target. By raising your hands and pointing at two distinct points and focusing on them, the caster may separate the pseudoportals, left hand directing the fire portal and right hand the grease one. This spell has the adaptable property. By performing the first half of the incantation you may open only the pseudoportal to Primordial Grease and by performing only the second half, you may open only the pseudoportal to Elemental fire.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2:

Kill 0/100 enemies with fire

Void Sphere (Evocation) Tier 2, Rank 1

Below is the sigil for the Void Sphere spell of the Evocation school. When you cast this spell, create a 1ft radius sphere within line of sight. The sphere empties of air and other gases, leaving a sphere of vacuum at the designated point. Non-magical fire inside the sphere is instantly snuffed. Magical fire of higher rank is reduced based on the rank and level of the spell. Creatures made of magical fire take extreme damage. The sphere lasts for 10xArcana seconds.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2:

Kill 0/1 biological creature through suffocation by using this spell

I took the time after the feast to copy the spells into my book. The threatening aura of the Monarch never really retreated. Being in the same room with them felt like standing next to a sparking electrical cable waving in the wind and flailing from its own electrical discharge. I was pretty sure I was far enough to not be in danger, but at the same time I knew that nature and energy could flip at any moment and I could do nothing to stop them. I wanted to leave as soon as possible, but the second rank sigils were too complex to easily memorize quickly enough to cast them reliably, and I wanted to have them available as soon as shit went down. These spells were good.

My instincts weren't always right about the utility of the spells, I hadn't guessed, for example, that the invisible barrier spell would be bar none the spell that was carrying me the most through the dangers of the Tower, but I was really getting tired of only having the icicle spell as my one offensive option. It was good, especially at the high level I had it at, dealing a good deal of both frost and slashing damage, but fire was just so much more destructive. I had a sense that the Void Sphere would ultimately be even more useful, but right now I could only see its use in extinguishing fires, or maybe killing one person very very slowly for some reason. Fortunately for me, I was going on a quest where I would almost definitely have to fight fire elementals, so that was good enough for me.

As they led me towards the holes in the floor of the classroom that had had the elemental incursion, the Monarch explained the situation to me in more detail:

"We ought be on the lowermost floor of this reality; the true bedrock of the universe as it is, and yet, suffered We have two incursions from down below already within the day. A brave hero such as yourself is needed to go in there and complete this Quest of Ours," they said.

There was a strange effect underneath the holes in the floor. The wood was still as broken and scattered, but the holes themselves were sealed in semi-transparent, glossy, bubble-filled brown stone, perhaps opaque glass or crystal. At first I thought that it was some sort of a repair job that the goblin market had done on the floors, but as I looked closely and thought about it, I realized that the floors were perfectly level and smooth. All the goblin craftsmanship I had seen around was a ramshackle mess of all the resources that I had access to- desks, blackboards, lamps, lighting fixtures, drawers, shelves and stationary.

"This stone, these are the remains of the elementals?" I said, after a moments consideration. "Just so. The press of bodies did not abate even as Our barrier remained, and so the creatures mixed, molded and melted together, until they all died and gave their experience unto Us," the monarch said.

I nodded a few times, took my staff and struck the glassy stone with it. It broke apart like brittle caramel, and fell into the darkness below. The hole was not particularly deep- though it was dark I could see the reflections of the shattered glass at the bottom, not more than five feet down. I didn't want to go down into the black monster hole. But the reasons to go down outweighed the reasons to stay many times over. I would have a hard time getting quests away from the Guild. I needed the experience. I was curious about the makeup of the Tower, and why there was something underneath the floors that should not be there. And there was a goblin of impossible power, smiling lopsidedly behind me. I doubted I could talk my way out of it with them, and I thought that trying might leave ripped apart by overpowered magical skill. And so, into the darkness I went.

I dropped onto the floor, and I had expected it to be… not this. I was still getting used to my ratskin boots. I could understand the fur, to an extent. Sometimes there were boots with the fur back on Earth. But why did the toes have to end in their noses, I did not understand.

Equipment

Goblin Boots (Ratskin) Enchantment: Faerie Lights This pair of goblin-made boots provides limited defense against slashing damage. Goblins prefer to walk barefoot under most circumstances, and fashion their boots in such a way that if forced to wear them, they can still almost feel the texture underneath their feet. This pair is magically enchanted. By clicking the heels together, the boots light your path. Repeatedly clicking the heels will change the color of the light.

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As the Journal had suggested, the soles were very thin, but they seemed tough. I took a few steps into the darkness before clicking my heels together, and the rat noses of my new boots started shining in a LED-bright white light, lighting up the tunnel some twenty feet in front of me.

I saw that I was not in the rough-hewn cave that I had expected, but instead in a sterile looking, low-ceiling hallway. There were runes carved in an unbroken line near the roof. The floor and the walls seemed more metallic than stone or wood. If I had to guess, I found myself in some sort of a maintenance tunnel. I clicked my heels a few more times, flashing through glitter, strobe and bright pink lights, until I got to red. I read somewhere that red light is the most difficult to see in darkness, so if I wanted any chance to see any enemy before they saw me, these would hopefully boost my chances.

I crept slowly ahead. I had expected some strange elemental spawner hole, or maybe a portal, but I hadn't expected that I would have to slowly crouch forward for ten, twenty minutes in an extensive underground tunnel system. Fortunately there weren't many tunnels going off to the sides, and those that were were more like ventilation shafts or access tunnels, much smaller and more narrow, so I wouldn't get lost unless I did something stupid.

After twenty-five minutes passed, I finally saw something- there was a flickering, orange, fire-light coming out of a door on the side a few dozen feet away. I remembered the fire elementals that I had seen two times before now, and made an educated guess that that would be what I was about to encounter. I clicked my heels until the flame was the only light I could see.

I stepped as silently as I could towards the light, my feet carrying me far more silently than they could have back on Earth. Or back when I was wearing crocs. I was still far from any sort of a master rogue assassin, so I wasn't at all confident in my sneaking ability, so I had my staff and book raised even as I crouched a little in my approach. The crouch was entirely instinctual, one of those other instincts I knew I had never developed, they simply came to me with the skill levels. So, apparently, a shallow crouch was somehow good for stealth.

I took a quick glance into the room. It was a full room, not an intersection to another hallway, filled with elementals. Either they didn't notice me in my half-a-second glance, or else they did not care that I was here. I couldn't tell any more detail with a quick glance, but I had fought all of those sorts of creatures before, and, in my experience, just about anything that wasn't intelligent was put here for me to fight. Most of the things that were intelligent also wanted to kill me, they were just smarter about it.

But I had finally understood the real advantage of the conjuration based damage skills. They worked incredibly well with transparent shield spells. If I was shooting bolts of lightning or rays of fire from my hands, they would likely be more damaging as an instant attack, but I only needed line of sight to conjure the pseudo-portals, which meant that I could do it from behind the wall. I had already used this tactic in some of the smaller classrooms before, against small groups of enemies, but this was the perfect place to try it out at scale.

I cast the barrier spell, arranging the squares in such a way that they entirely blocked the way into the room, and then I walked into view of the elementals. It was a roiling mass of floating motes of earth, steaming, hissing water and dominating the view were the bright flames of the fire elementals that seemed to fill almost the whole room, though in truth it was just the bright light that they generated all together. The air elementals could only be seen as breaks in the fire and steam. The room itself was either clearly magical, or else the flames of the fire elementals didn't produce any soot or smoke. In each other room that I had encountered flame spirits they'd had ample access to fuel, which would, of course, burn and produce smoke and soot, and hell, probably chemical fumes. I could only hope that my recovery ability would take care of any lead poisoning that the paint in the classrooms probably contained.

So, anyways, I started blasting. By now the invisible barrier could last nearly a minute, and I was going to use my time with it wisely. I wanted to keep the fire elementals for last, because they were illuminating the room, so I started by blasting the air elementals with ice, then moved to the fire spell to melt the stone elementals and evaporate the water ones. By the time I was about halfway through emptying the room, a red light started flashing and a loud klaxon sound ripped at my ears. At the same time I heard more forceful scratching from the Journal than I had ever heard before. I flipped it open, and saw that the Quests section in the table of contents was bold and underlined now. Well, what the hell.

Quests

Elementally, Dear Alex The Monarch of Goblins has asked you to investigate the strange elementals escaping into the lowest floor of the Tower. Find the issue, fix it and return to them for your reward.

Update: WARNING! Elementals fueling sector 341 001 of the lowest level have been decreased by 2%. Further reduction will severely impact the habitability of the Tower. Starting with your location. Find a way to repair the problem without destroying all of the elementals.

Well that was ominous. Also interesting as shit. First of all this meant that the Journal had some sort of an intelligence behind it that could react to events beyond my own advancement. Second, this meant that whatever these maintenance tunnels were, they were central to the functioning of the tower. As soon as I'd thought that, I heard more scratching.

Log Destroyed various elementals x31, exp to level 9 1280/2500 WARNING! Damage to Tower structure detected. No further experience will be gained from defeating elementals during the first challenge. Skill gained: Lore: Tower, Rank 1 Achievement gained: No it wasn't

I didn't really have the time to read. My wall would only last for a few more seconds, so I cast it again. I could do that a few more times, but I couldn't waste too much time here. I had to get in there and figure out what was wrong with the Tower, because clearly there has been some sort of a breach. Except, I couldn't do that. My fire resistance spell would help a little with the fire elementals, but the rest of them would smash me apart.

Except… was that true? With all of the elementals inside that room, if they had started smashing and attacking my barrier, I would have been badly hurt, even with the 90% damage reduction. They weren't attacking the wall at all. Some had tried to leave the room, but that wasn't really an issue, unless they were made out of fire. I saw only two choices.

I could summon the pseudoportal inside the room and try to fix whatever the issue was by casting another spell through the portal. I still remembered the lurching, crushing, bleeding sensation that this method of magic had left me the last time I had tried it, but I was still pretty sure it would be technically safer than the other option.

The other option was to cast my flame ward and just walk into the room, hoping that the elementals really were passive or neutral. This way I would be able to find the actual problem and interface with it using the limited tools at my disposal, and to cast as many spells as I needed to in order to repair it. Hell fucking damn it, how was this not something that would remove my Coward class? I would literally be walking into a burning building.

But ultimately the pseudoportal plan was just too abstract. I didn't have mage-hand or telekinesis spells, all that I could do through it would be set something on fire, hit it with an icicle, or shield it for a minute. It could work, but I didn't fancy my chances. Besides, I could run real quick now. I waited for the wall to expire, as I cast my fire protection spell and walked into the elemental engine room.

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