NOVEL NEXT 125 - The office-worker’s fantasy part 1/5: attacking your boss
"Rory, Guard!" Archmund shouted. "Everyone else, behind him!"
They got into a huddle behind Rory as the Merchant of the Damned threw a barrage of crystal darts at them that resembled the black darts of the wandclerks. Rory spun his staff, knocking them to the side.
Gemmy, he thought. Can you provide any sort of in-fight guidance?
I can't tell you what it's going to do, hummed Gemmy in Archmund's mind. But I can tell you what it just did.
Anything that can help me manage these four other people?
Only after I see them fight. Sorry.
It would have to be enough. He needed to know what this creature was capable of.
"What's the plan?" Rory said.
"Still observing it," Archmund said. "Rory, taunt?"
Rory nodded. The tip of his staff glowed an angry red, drawing the eyes of the crowd.
The Ghost of All Granavale had only superficial similarities to the Monsters he'd fought to get to it. But the rules here might've been different. Every instinct in him screamed that hierarchy ruled. The Ghost of All Granavale had been a noble, and so had fought with a noble's weapons — blood and magic. This creature was a boss of some sort, and so why wouldn't it fight with the weapons of the worker?
"Alas," said the Merchant of the Damned. "I find that such emotional appeals have little place in the world of commerce."
"You're not a salesman, then," Mary muttered.
"Of course not, peasant," said the Merchant of the Damned. "My blood is every drop as noble as my station demands."
Of course. Nobles, skilled in sword and sorcery, populated the vast imperial bureaucracy, regardless of how meaningless their titles were. Some went and made something of themselves by slaying monsters and peasants, and some climbed the ranks of the bureaucracy.
"A mind like yours is rare," said the Merchant. "Terribly organized. Full of chaos. But oh, what wonderful chaos. Put in its place, channeled into a trusted process, and a mind like yours could push my station forward even further."
Archmund snorted. The Monster was talking to him, but what station? This was a Dungeon, for fuck's sake. There wasn't anything to strive for in here except the surface — and he'd already been tempted by that one once. Twice, even. And he'd refused it.
The Merchant nodded. The words might have been sad, but its voice remained the same monotone. "Some instincts, I fear, cannot be allowed to run wild."
It extended a perfectly white hand, smooth fingers clutching the air, and a blue-white net sprouted from them.
"Rory, guard! Beatrice, magic guard!"
Rory raised his staff, but with its other hand the Monster Warped space, moving Rory out of the way, shunting him sideways like one of those moving platforms in an airport. Beatrice cast a red tapestry from her magic wand to intercept, but the Monster spun its hand; the red tapestry split down the middle, allowing a clear path for the white net to fly directly towards Archmund.
Archmund whipped his Rapier up. His Deflection activated. The blade cut through some strands of the net, but only a few, and the bulk of that bright white binding flew forward past his protective blade.
He had no choice but to rely on his mental barrier or his Bodily Barrier. He could flare his magic outwards, but he lacked the fine control to manipulate its shape about his spirit.
It landed upon him and vanished as soon as it touched his clothes and skin, white light vanishing.
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It didn't hurt. There was no stinging sensation. He could still move.
Something felt wrong. His magic-sense, Numen-sense, whatever it was felt… diminished.
Gemmy? What's happened?
Stats diminished.
Numbers please?
Your Gem Bonuses have been cut off. Your base stats have fallen.
He was weaker now and it sucked. He was just human now. Overpowered Omnio-human, but human nevertheless.
Warp hadn't been a Monster's Skill, not really. It had been his. Yet the Monster could use it as if it was natural.
And there was also an oppressive, insidious authority coming from the Merchant of the Damned.
"Do you guys feel that?" Archmund whispered.
"It's his Influence," Beatrice said. "Like yours, but…"
"We know it's evil," Rory said. "So…"
So they resisted it. But it still wormed its way into his mind. He was second guessing himself.
The Merchant of the Damned had the Skills he'd exploited to make a quick buck. Of course it did.
"Probably not going to snap this one to its senses," Archmund said. No one laughed.
"What did you do to me?" Archmund asked the Merchant.
"A generous donation courtesy of our sponsors in the Omnio Imperial Family," said the Merchant. "The Omnio Grand Working is a suppression of a Dungeon's freedom, a regularization of a beautiful and living system. Thanks to your hard work and tenacity, we have developed a secondary enhancement of this policy that we can generously extend to all of our employees, current and former."
"Don't let it hit you," Archmund said. "It'll strip away your magical bonuses from gemgear."
He'd known that the Grand Working had been powerful and mysterious and entirely something that the Princess wanted to keep close to her chest, but he'd guessed it would be something like this. The surprising part was that the Dungeon boss had managed to twist it for its own purposes.
Beatrice's eyes flashed with sudden opportunity, but she steeled her jaw and nodded. "Are you still able to fight?"
Archmund nodded. He was. One or two stat levels didn't matter that much, but he'd have to be careful. Luckily, it hadn't cut off his techniques, so he still had a Bodily Barrier that would stave off any lethal blows.
"I'm attacking," he said. He rapid-fired Infrared Lances towards the head and heart of the Merchant of the Damned.
"I have no head I have no heart I serve only the needs of the Dungeon."
That was concerning. The Monster didn't fear his most spammable offensive technique. It could regenerate far beyond his power to damage it. Presumably, it was intimately familiar with how much power he had remaining — it was of the Dungeon, and he had been tied into the Dungeon as well.
Or maybe his Infrared Lances were weaker. Maybe it did scale with INT and a one point drop was enough to make a difference. He really wished he'd actually tested this, but Raehel "the Magnificent" hadn't seemed to have any idea of stats and so his one magic teacher couldn't have helped him in this regard.
"Beatrice, blue attack!" he said.
Beatrice shot a blue spiral out of the wand towards the Merchant of the Damned. It flicked its hand, and the flight path of the spiral changed, twisting away into a wall, dissipating harmlessly.
"While I may have created this rule and policy, I am not bound by it," the Merchant said.
"We'll see about that," Beatrice said. She fired another blue spiral, getting deflected again, but she flicked her wand and the blue spiral turned around to chase the Merchant of the damned. Another distortion, and another chase.
There was a lanyard dangling from her wand, and it flashed blue with every command. Archmund was impressed. He'd only seen the lanyards impart a boomerang effect to weapons like Rory's staff, yet Beatrice had adapted it for her spells.
If Archmund had been the boss — if he'd been the one fighting with the full resources and power of the Dungeon, he would have opened up a portal and redirected the spiral into Beatrice, cutting off her access to her magic. The Merchant could warp space, it could use a twisted form of the Omnio Grand Working (presumably merged with the powers of Gemstone Wands), and it had some weird hierarchical-bullshit mindset.
It was a little more advanced than the average run-of-the-mill Monster, but it still wasn't capable of independent creative thought. It was a creature of organization, adapting to the constraints placed upon it without evolving past them. It could warp space and break, but not make portals. It could throw the chains of the Omnio Grand Working onto others. Presumably, it could use the powers of the Slingerclerks and Wandclerks and Swordclerks and whatever other Monsters Archmund had cooked up to hunt down Gelias.
But it didn't seem likely to innovate.
Its techniques would be manageable. That was good news. But that was the other problem.
It hadn't moved a single step. All of its power had been expressed through the warping of space — the changing of circumstance and environment around it.
"I just don't get it," Archmund said. "How do you fight an enemy that can continuous reconfigure the very ground that you're fighting on?"
"It can't reconfigure us," Rory said.
Beatrice nodded. "Otherwise, it would have torn us apart from within. Ripped us apart like handkerchiefs or ugly dresses."
That was a good point. He wouldn't bet on it, but if it was hiding the power to rip them apart like paper and just toying with them, then they were going to lose or die no matter what they did.
Better to die standing than to accept defeat sitting down. As long as there was a chance.
"I can almost see it," Archmund said. "I almost have a plan. I almost know how we win."