The Tower of Infinite Evil [A LitRPG Horror Comedy]

Marked

Thank god for Chronomancy. In addition to being useful in general, it also had the advantage of happening in an instant from an outside perspective, and so couldn't be countered or dispelled by normal means. When the time bubble went up, I managed to get the twenty-ish surviving and uncorrupted Guild members inside with me. There were also two goblins, who went for the throats of their nearest captives, as the Hag had ordered. If they'd come after me they might have been fast enough.

"Wrong choice. Halo-Nix! Halo-Nix!" I said. I conjured the ice in the form of large, dense blocks. Nothing fancy, center mass, I wasn't trying to instantly kill the goblins, just get them away from the captives and they both crashed into the edge of the time bubble with a satisfying crunch. I didn't know what the density of the wall was, but I remembered that nothing could enter or exit it while active. As they slumped on the ground groaning I flipped my spellbook to the dispelling spell, and cast it once for free, freeing Yusef- the man I'd first met in the Exam Hall who'd joined the Guild at the last minute. I really didn't know how competent the others were.

The knife meant for my kidney slid off the invisible armor I was wearing, but the shadow monster behind me wrapped three of his limbs around my throat and knees, and pulled me to the ground without effort, slamming my face into the packed dirt. Yusef screamed, charged and kicked it in the face, but the grip remained strong, so that we both were knocked back, the only difference being that I was now on top of the shadow creature.

"Behind you!" I shouted, as the goblins reached him, and he turned just in time to take two knives in the belly. He barely flinched, grabbing each of the smaller creatures by the face with his hands and pushing them on the floor, dropping himself in a follow up. The pressure around my throat was tightening, and I knew I only had seconds left to breathe. I called greasefire directly on top of my, even as my instincts screamed against it. A wet, slick, stinking glob of oil splattered over my face, followed immediately by a cinder of flame igniting it instantly. My ability activated the fire resistance on myself, so I was mostly unharmed even as my vision was filled with flames and my ears split by the horrid screams of the shadow creature.

I rolled off it and kept rolling until I was put out. I looked up to see Yusef curb stomping the last surviving goblin to death.

"Alex, good to see you," he said.
"Same. We have maybe five minutes before the bubble goes down, I need to get these people out of her control," I said. He just nodded and raised his arms in a 'well go ahead then' gesture, then winced and grabbed at his sides. There were more wounds than the two I'd seen, but he was toughing it out for now.

The rest of the time in the bubble was spent dispelling the charms on the rest of the captive Guild members. Three of them grabbed the knives from the downed enemies, but most were still unarmed. Hardly a fighting force, but it'd have to do.

"As soon as the bubble goes down, I'm going to throw up barriers surrounding us. The Hag will dispel some, and the shadow monsters can go over, but it should focus their attack at least. Help is coming," I said in the last moments of the time bubble spell.

As the hag resumed her movements I cast the barriers- one with my voice, two from the staff- expecting her to react by countering at least one of them. Instead, she reacted by pulling Artemis outside of their protection.

"No!" I shouted, but the hag was already pressing her hand against Artemis' face. I saw rage in Artemis face, as she held the hand away, but as inevitable as a glacier, it moved closer, as the hag's face grew more and more gleeful. And the same green burning and screaming came from her mouth that had come from the dominated man I'd seen before. We were, also, immediately under attack. As expected, the goblins rushed at us and couldn't pass through the barrier. Also as expected, the shadow creatures seemed to be able to see the walls and scaled them with uncanny ease.

"She's in my head! She's in my head! She's in my head!" Artemis screamed. I made myself think that this was a good thing, as the last victim had succumbed without a word.
"Fight it!" I screamed, before turning to fight the monsters.

It was a fucking nightmare, the unarmed members of the Guild were unable to do any damage to the shadows, but the shadow monsters moved straight to grappling and strangulation. I expended my use of the Arming the Militia ability for the day by casting Mage Armor on everybody. It was inefficient, but the only way I could keep them alive even a little longer. As soon as that was done, as long as the hag was ignoring me, I sealed off the roof of the makeshift arcane fortification with two more barriers, making it sealed tight.

Fortunately for me, at least they seemed to go for the more vulnerable targets. In any other situation that would have been me, but here, next to the unarmed captives in rags, I was downright armed. I wished for a more efficient single-target fire spell, but ice would have to suffice. I started blasting the shadow creatures, desperately aware of Artemis' screams, but hoping that she was now valuable somehow to the hag.

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Which was, of course, when the hag acted. I had expected her to dispel the barriers, or take hostages. I should have put two and two together, because back in our camp the first spell she'd used had been a conjuration spell. My favorite thing about conjuration spells was that they ignored barriers completely, so long as there was a line of sight. I heard her chanting, three, six, twelve syllables and tried not to think about it, as I dispatched shadow monster after shadow monster. Then, a pseudoportal appeared square in the middle of our defensive wards and swarms of worms, centipedes and insects exploded out of it. Thousands of them died in a skittering crunch of the whole mass falling out of the portal, crushed underneath their fellows, but tens of thousands crawled, slid and flew out of the portal. I couldn't dispel a spell of such high level, and I could think of only one thing to do.

Even as I flipped my spellbook over to the page for greasefire, the massive, stinging insects found gaps in my armor, stinging and biting me around the eyes, groin, knees and elbows, but I maintained focus, just barely. The others were stomping and screaming, and I hoped that the ability that allowed me to automatically cast fire resistance on allies would be powerful enough. With a mouth full of bugs I cast grease-fire at the largest radius I could. The makeshift arcane fortification instantly filled with first flame, then foulest of smoke as the insects died in the tens of thousands, even as more flew and crawled in through the pseudo-portal. There was instantly nothing to breathe, even if the fire didn't burn us.

"Now, my pretties, hit that wall with everything you've got," I heard the cruel hag's voice from without.

I had several abilities reducing the transfer of damage from the Invisible Barrier spell. If Hannah was around, I'd take as little as 4% of damage dealt to the wall to my hit points. But she wasn't here. And there were hundreds of goblins outside. When the hail of arrows hit the barrier, it felt like being stung by a thousand wasps, and I let out a gasp of air, inhaling the foul smoke. There were limits to my willpower, boosted as it was and I collapsed to the ground coughing and gasping. I couldn't cast spells like this. I couldn't fight. I could only crawl. Another volley came and I spat blood. I heard and felt others of the Guild join me on the floor. I thought that this was going to be how it finally happened, as I reached the edge of the barrier. And when I reached it, the cruel, smiling face of the Goblin Hag was leaned over right next to my face.

I looked up at her in horror and despair. And then a smile came over my face. The hag's eyes shot open, and she turned to look behind her, but it was already too late.

"Get fucking wrecked, ####!" Emma shouted as she leaped over the goblin formation with some sort of a magical enhancement and landing on the roof of our barrier.
"Shoot the girl!" the hag ordered.
"Better not be dead in there, big man!" Emma called down to us, and I could hear an attaching sound, something like a magnet connecting to the roof of my barrier. There was a sound of near-electrical feedback, and then a yelp from Emma, followed by a thud of her landing behind us, and an almost immediate reduction in the density of the smoke. Enough that I could incant, and I incanted the wind blade spell for the first time. It was a lot stronger than expected. In fact, I was very glad that everyone but me was on the ground, because I could have hurt them. The feedback against the barrier itself was strong enough to push me several feet via damage transfer. But the air cleared out almost instantly.

We could now hear other sounds of battle from without the barriers, and the hag was nowhere to be seen when the smoke cleared.

"Get up, bossman," Emma said, reaching a hand out of me. I took it and pulled up.
"Didn't Brooke teach you not to use that word around Americans?" I said.
"Just words, innit?" Emma said.
"What's the situation?" I said.
"We hit the goblins from behind pretty hard, it was like they weren't expecting us to actually attack. But it was slow and it sort of sounded like Artemis was dying, so I figured I'd get here quick. Where is she?" Emma said.

I looked around frantically, and everywhere around us there was nothing but the visages of battle-mad goblins, ready to tear come at the barrier again.

"Fuck. She's alive. She'll be fine. Let's make sure the same goes for us," I said.
"Aw shit. This is one of them things what I should have thought about before, innit?" Emma said.
"Think of it this way, if it doesn't work out, nobody will know that your dramatic rescue ended up in failure," I said.
"What is it with you anglos and bantering in a crisis. Get your shit together and come up with a plan," Yusef said, stumbling forward. He was drenched in blood, his white oxford shirt looking burgundy by now.
"Catch, you're not yourself when you're bleeding to death," Emma said, throwing a healing potion to him which he drank gratefully.

A volley of arrows hit the barrier again, and I saw stars in my vision. Fuck, this really wasn't the time for banter. I coughed and cast a few fog spells in quick succession to at least make us a little less obvious target, which had the effect of the goblins and shadow creatures pushing through it, and approaching the barrier within spitting distance now.

"Emma, can you get another one of these walls down? I can't take many more hits like that," I said.
"Sure about that? Them goblin pricks don't look too friendly," she said.
"It's either that, or they kill me via damage transfer, the wall goes down and you don't have me with you," I said.
"Fucking Hell, bruv, let's see what you can do," Emma said, and withdrew the same runic device she must have used before. It looked like a mix of a nintendo color and the Rosetta stone.

I raised my book and my staff and began casting magic. The goblins outnumbered us ten to one. And the barrier went down.