Legend of the Spellthief

With all the information now safely stored in Logan’s head, he took a quick trip back to the inn to inform his friends that he’d be out of town for quite some time. The Spellthief also picked up his elementals from the G-Hall after getting his payment for their services alongside notches on his signet for aiding in the quest completions.

Another stop was to Ahren’s apothecary, picking up salves and potions to combat curses dealt by the particular demons that the AV Club were employing in their hunt for the vampires. Quayvan was able to hand a few vials to the Spellthief, but more couldn’t hurt, especially if the mission was going to take longer than usual.

Logan didn’t want to lose, or falter during the quest. As when his discussion with Quayvan came to a close, and Logan was about to accept it, a new system quest popped up.

A quest with four additional objectives hadn’t shown itself since the beginner one. What were the factors that led to this? Whatever they were, each one was a stepping stone to legendary tier items. Those would solidify Logan’s power within his level. With demonhood being a reward, each objective could possibly also grant him more stages. However, since he had a 0.5 progression in some attributes, it could also mean that several needed to be completed to gain a stage.

One of the last visits was to an alleyway that the Spellthief had frequented whenever he had the homeless in his employ do work for him. Most were classless, or only level 1, so they couldn’t do much. But most people ignored them, or didn’t remember them in passing. They were great scouts and gatherers of both information and items.

“Lord Logan!” one of the men beamed as he jogged to Logan.

“I have a new task for you all. I am going to be out of town for some time. I need you to look into harpies for me. Location, numbers, weaknesses”, Logan instructed as he placed several lockboxes on a repaired table.

The others gathered around the boxes with the light reflecting in their eyes.

“Use this while I am gone”, Logan continued as he opened up each one. In total, there was a thousand copper in the boxes, equating to one gold.

“Thank you, sir!” one of them praised.

“We’ll find out all we can!” another admitted.

The group conversed for a few minutes more before Logan left for the town gates, climbing the battlements to get a good view of the horizon. The guards were fine with it by now, as they knew the Spellthief well enough by this point. With a good spot in the distance viewed via his eagle’s eyeglass, he used Dimensional Jaunt.

Descending into a treeline, Logan summoned up his elementals to do the usual absorbing trick he had used so many times thus far. However, with all their recent training and improvements, Logan was able to get just a little more MP from them. With a new total of 32 MP, Logan had plenty of room for activities.

With Echo Radar, the Spellthief quickly found a nearby monster to test out the range his quest allowed him to. Dropping onto an unsuspecting brown wolf, Logan killed it with a single Backstab to the top of the head.

Just as Logan was expecting, this wolf had nothing to do with the quest so it granted no progression to any of the additional objectives. But to not let it go to waste, Logan harvested it like usual.

Moving around the local area, Logan inspected his larger map. He was within a not-so-cramped forest with smatterings of old civilisations. Raised or lowered parts of the ground with reminiscent wood and stonework.

Inspecting the remains revealed they had nothing to do with his current quest, and they had even shown age before any mention of the AV Club started.

The red circle that showed the location he was meant to go to continued to shrink as he entered it and walked around. Monsters and wildlife still prowled around as if they were undisturbed. Or, they had now made a new norm for the area. They weren’t especially common, so recent numbers could have dwindled.

With as much circling as Logan did, the red area slowed to a crawl in its shrinkage. First, he sent his elementals off in different directions to gather information, second, he climbed atop the trees again to get a better view of the area.

Hours went by before they came across new leads, Celsius beaming with joy as he returned with good news.

“Miscreants ahead, Logan!” the cheerful Flame elemental informed.

Footsteps and wheel marks. They weren’t amazing on their own, but this place wasn’t too well travelled. With the use of Tracking, Logan was able to follow them to the remains of a stone building. While inside he activated the new set of eyes granted to him via Vaskt Vision to get a better look at the interior.

“Identify.”

His eyes burst open, flicks of blood fluttering away from the lower set of red-sclera eyes. Information flooded Logan’s brain, but it was a smooth process, it was normal.

Normal detail and finite, Logan was able to investigate objects with pristine sight. Logan also swore he saw colours more vividly. He didn’t know if he previously had any deterioration in his eyes or colour blindness for that matter, but it seemed when his normal eyes were “eaten” they were improved to peak performance.

Spying the room, Logan eventually spotted scratch marks across a wooden floor. They were more distinct and direct than the others. Pushing on a panel, and sliding it up, Logan found several boards could be moved. A hinge on the inside had them swing and hit the floor, keeping them open.

A stone staircase led into the earth, backing up the information granted by Wriske and Quayvan. Dark sconces teased the existence of light down below, causing Logan to consider summoning his Light Ally. If he wanted to be stealthy, that would not be the way to go about it.

Instead, Logan pulled out four oval pieces of glass and placed them over his eyelids. They quickly melted and left a waxy coating over his eyes. Logan found out about these during his time with Gaemo and Sincollo when they went to save Evén. They were a bit expensive, but with how much money Logan had, they were a pittance.

With open eyes, Logan saw into the dark underground with ease. The steps thereafter were similarly easy. Seeing the interior being cramped, Logan commanded his elementals to guard the exit, allowing him a quick retreat if needed.

A few minutes passed before Logan was able to reach the bottom of the staircase. Whatever this place was, it was well hidden and dug in. Stone walls carried on into twists and turns, carved out with pickaxe and lacking design.

Clicking his fingers, Logan had no dots design his mini-map. This was both good and bad. Moving to the first intersection, Logan had his top pair of eyes look left, and his bottom pair look to the right. His vision blurred slightly, but nothing that would hinder him, as he looked both ways before crossing the street.

Moving both his eyes to work together in a forward direction, Logan found he had perfect vision at a 220° angle, his bottom eyes being closer to his ears getting a better view of his sides.

No sign of critters, cutpurses, or curses.

“Where could—” Logan began to think.

Before his thought could be finished, however, he saw a small movement within the rock walls that surrounded him. Knowing ahead of time the dangers that lay in wait, Logan placed an open palm at the wall and chanted, “Force”, shooting an orb of grey energies at his target.

Making a fist crater in the wall, the section Logan hit began to move and crack off the surface. A lizard-like creation of rock landed on the floor, light-brown eyes staring at the caster as it hissed out.

“Identify.”

“Rock Golem (Lizard) - Golem. Level 15: 160/160 HP, 23/23 MP.

A golem made of rock that is designed like a small lizard. These creations are made to protect areas by hiding within similar-looking areas and ambushing their target.

Skills: Blend, Climb, Surface Stick, —.

Spells: Gaia, Gaia 2, Heal, Heal 2, Infuse.

Reduction: Damage 5.

Resistance: Damage 25% (-B), Earth 100%, Water 25%, Wind 0%, all other elements 50%.”

The lizard lashed out with a leaping attack, Logan dodged to the side with ease and chanted, “Wind Shot”, causing a gust of air to form in his palm before it lashed out a whip at the lizard, cutting its side harshly. It was good he asked about the enemies ahead of time, knowing to prepare a Wind before his arrival.

The spell did its full damage of 77 across the monster, it let out another hiss as it formed a pile of rock above its head.

Logan held out a hand as he caught the spiralling shard of earth, “Spell Absorb”, he commanded in his head as the spell swirled into him.

“Spell Absorption successful. Gaia charge stored. Gaia is already mastered”, a message played in Logan’s head, it had been some time.

The lizard jumped at Logan again, but the Spellthief made use of the new spell immediately with a wave of his hand over the floor, “Gaia Wall”, causing a wall to emerge and shoot upwards, pinning the lizard to the ceiling.

With an inability to move, Logan had an easy shot on the golem as he aimed at it and intoned, “Wind Shot”, shooting a wall of wind that exploded the golem’s head.

The wall fell down in time, releasing the corpse of the golem. Logan had looked into these creatures before. They were another form of creation that magi had in their repertoire. Similar to elementals or undead, golems were an expensive yet more permanent and multiple arsenal.

Picking apart the rock, Logan took out two coin-shaped cores of black metal, their sheen even present in a dark underground. These were the cores of a golem and were the only component worth taking, at 12 silver per. Most of the cost of these things came in the other ingredients to fuse with the cores and materials of said golem, not to say the amount of spellforce needed to make them.

With enough time and money, a mage could have twenty golems at his back. But, once destroyed, they had to be made anew, another sink full of coins. Logan had wondered about how useful they’d be, but combat-wise, they were easily countered by their opposite spell. There were stronger tiers of them though, that were resistant to lower-level spells.

“Just the one?” Logan pondered.

It could have been a sentry to alert those deeper in, but who would still be here after a Devout had found the place and escaped?

Continuing down the corridor, Logan spied two more pieces of the wall and ceiling that were trying to hide their real self. With them not noticing their reveal, they were unaware as Logan aimed at one and cast twice over, “Wind Shot”, hurling two balls of air to hit another rock golem to the floor, finishing it off with a, “Force”, mick.

The second golem formed a larger pile of rock above itself before firing it at the Spellthief, Logan caught it as usual, “Spell Absorb”, and had it swirl into his palm.

“Spell Absorption successful. Gaia 2 charge stored.”

The golem did it again, and again, Logan absorbing the first, but having the third impale his hand towards his face as he halted its movement.

"144/188 HP”, Logan saw on his status as blood coated his face.

“Spell Absorption successful, Spell Absorption failed. Gaia 2 charge stored, Gaia 2 has progressed to tier 2.”

Logan ran forward, he couldn’t hold too many charges and he would like to do something else with them. The golem seeing at least one spell worked fired two more salvos of rock at the Spellthief. Logan dodged one and caught the other, “Spell Absorb”, he mentally commanded and was happy when it worked.

Spinning around the golem, Logan placed a hand behind its neck and grappled it to the floor with another hand on its tail. The monster wiggled insanely, surging stress through Logan’s arms as he chanted, “Wind Grasp”, causing gusts to explode violently from within the golem, dealing a heightened 213 Backstab damage.

Logan let out a sigh as he loosened his grip on the corpse. He wouldn’t be able to do that too much, as he could feel the golem, while small, was stronger than he was physically. His lack of a trinket, or space for one, to improve his Strength was showing in that encounter. But there weren’t any specifics to its attributes.

There were going to be issues if there was a range of golems, as Logan could only prepare so many types of spells. When it came down to it, water extinguished fire, fire melted ice, ice froze wind, winds eroded earth, earth discharged lightning, while lightning coursed through water. There were some side-along weaknesses too, such as earth also being eaten and carved apart by water.

Harvesting two more golems, Logan pocketed the cores and sat down. He had a good five-minute rest to Charge Transfer the three Gaia 2 spells into 4 MP.

It was as if he hadn’t cast any spells at this point, something that could happen several times over if he absorbed more spells. Speaking of which, that fight had improved his skill.

Logan was quite unlucky to have the 90% for success fail him in one of his attempts at absorbing one of those Gaia 2 casts. There were only so many caster monsters he could train it against, however.

That risky gamble came with added benefit though, as Logan calculated from his previous uses that the level of the spell affected how much mastery he gained.

Drinking a potion to top himself up, Logan double-checked his quest objectives and expectantly saw none of them had made any progress. He would need to find something other than golem scouts to deal with, as he wouldn’t be able to kill them stealthily or quickly.

--- *** ---