Chapter 18 Planning Part 2

When it came to holy magic, there were two categories, holy mages and paladins were one of them. We were regular mages or warriors who prayed to and worshiped a divine being. Some of us got blessings for it or divine spells and all of us did end up serving our churches for one time or another, but generally, we were free.

Clerics are not. All they are, all they can be is bound to their respective Gods. In some ways it was just sacrificial magic, whereas someone might sacrifice mana or offerings to their god to gain some ability, clerics sacrificed themselves.

It was their purpose to do their diety’s will.

One of the perks of being a cleric was that their access to divine spells wasn’t as restricted as holy mages or paladins. I, for example, rarely used holy spells and some paladins were only paladins for status or faith.

But clerics weren’t. Everything they did was holy, whether it was healing or killing, was done through the power of their gods. And their gods did far more for them than any else of their children. Gods were worshiped throughout all of Yggdrasil and because of that, they rarely ever cared about how any of their churches operate.

It would be their cleric’s job to follow their doctrine.

That meant clerics were like mages in some ways. They were limited in their elemental pool but their power and intensity made up for it quite nicely.

They were strong, as long as you weren’t fighting angels, then they were useless.

“I do have one miracle allocated to me per year, though I don’t expect to use it during this expedition.”

I nodded. The miracle spell wasn’t really a spell as much as a pass for the gods to act within the mortal plain to aid their followers. It was limited in some ways, there was a cap to the tier of the spells the gods could use, one that was reliant on their follower’s mana, but it was a powerful thing.

The God of Wisdom’s miracles were more wanted than any others. Miracles were functionally a pool of mana for the gods to shape as they wanted. The more capable the god, the better the spell. Now that didn’t matter much, seeing as all gods were amazing at magic, but the God of Wisdom was something else.

He was the god most worshiped by mages. He was one of the strongest gods, his influence was present in any occupied realm and his miracles had shaped civilizations.

He knew not only what spell to cast, but when to cast it as well. A lot of his clerics found themselves granting involuntary miracles as the Lord of Wisdom moved through them and did as he saw fit. He’d heal a beggar who grew up to be a king, a girl who would rise to be a warrior queen. He had saved realms and in a few cases, destroyed them.

He was very much like my goddess in that regard.

I nodded.

“Me next!” [[Niff]] yelled, jumping up and down.

“I’m [[Niff Nifann ]]! My specialty is speed! I can enhance that to twelve while keeping up a general enhancement of ten! I’m naturally fast so my speed is really quick! Look!”

Then the mouse broke the sound barrier, literally running circles around us before I could blink and causing a massive burst of wind that circulated around the room, even after she had stopped moving.

“Aren’t I cool?” She said with her chest puffed out.

We all just looked at her for a moment.

“My bed…” Darvind spoke, looking at his empty bed.

It used to have his clothing and blanket on top of it, but now it was empty and unoccupied. A giant dwarf boxer brief floated in the air for a moment. It was decorated with little images of mugs of ale and axes, and it slowly descended onto Velin’s head.

“PFFFTH GAH.”

The centaur made noises as he flailed for a moment before throwing the boxer onto the ground.

“Darvind!” Velin yelled.

“Oh come now, surely that wasn’t my fault!”

“WHO THE HELL CARRIES AROUND UNWASHED CLOTHES?”

“I was gonna wash them eventually. Not my fault they flew into your mouth.”

“Sorry,” [[Niff]] muttered, her ear pressing down with embarrassment.

The centaur didn’t respond, he was instead too busy casting a holy cleanse over his entire body, repeatedly. Then he cast it at Darvind and [[Niff]], and then almost on me.

I stopped him before he could. That would have stung a little.

After about five minutes of cleanup, everything was set and we were ready to continue our meeting, though Velin glared at Darvind occasionally.

“Well Niff, we now know what you’re capable of,” I replied.

“Alright, me next,” Darvind said. “I can do general enhancements to fifteen and I can push strength to twenty if I need to. I can imbue my attacks with the holy element and have access to the Mind Gate spell and was blessed with great healing by the Lady of Mirth.”

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That was impressive too. A Mind Gate spell along with a healing blessing made him extremely durable. Add in a couple of protection spells from me and Velin and he could probably take down a hundred zombies easily. It was simple but powerful.

“Well, go on then,” Velin commented eyeing me with interest. “You're the only one left.”

“Oh, right. I’m Elurn, my best attack spells are tier-five Wind Menace and Earth Spears. But most of my fighting style revolves around using lower-tier spells in conjunction with one another to create adverse effects. I’m very experienced in combat with monsters, including the undead. And I have access to three holy spells from The Lady of Lies, along with the blessing of stealth and lie detection.”

Darvind and Niff looked at me with slight confusion.

“Uh, I can cast a lot of spells but in terms of offense, I’m the weakest here,” I added.

“What spells can you cast?” Niff asked.

“Or how many? What can they do? What do you specialize in?” Darvind added.

“I can cast… thousands of different spells, most of them being mainly cantrips and uh… I don’t specialize in anything.”

“No offense lad, but you’re not reassuring us with that? What can you do in a fighting situation? What are your abilities and fortes? What can we rely on you for?”

“It’s… It’s probably better if I just show you.”

My hands weaved together as I multicast. One hundred flame whisps came together within a second, along with one hundred minor spirits. Both of these were cantrips, one allowed for minor possession of a spell construct while the other created small thumb-sized flames.

Each whisp was paired with one spirit, allowing me to move them freely. I clumped them together, creating ten small glowing balls of flame.

“A regular fireball would be fifty mana units, but with cantrips and multicasting I can make ten small fireballs for the mana cost of four regular ones.”

The room was starting to heat up and I could see my party members covering their faces.

I canceled the spell.

“That’s some good stuff then lad. Right good stuff. I didn’t-”

“That must have been at least one hundred spells,” Velin interrupted. “How?”

“Two hundred actually but they were all cantrips-”

“I’ve never heard of a cantrip like that. Where did you learn it?”

“It’s just the summon minor spirit spell. They normally can’t do anything besides float around you, but you can attach them to your own spell constructs and have them guide the spell as one.”

The cleric thought about my statement for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes, I suppose you could do that, but what about the calculations? To summon one hundred spirits right after creating one hundred flame whisps? That must be tiring.”

“Not really,” I shrugged. “Cantrips were the only spells I could get my hands on back in the Woven Forest, that and magical theory books. And higher tier spells are nice but I have a limited mana pool and I couldn’t risk having low mana out there, so I resolved to fight with the lowest tier spells possible.”

“Don’t they have houses in the Woven Forest?” Niff asked. “Or cities?”

“Yeah, but I’m a half-demon. They’d never let me settle down. I’d be lucky to get a roof over my head for one night.”

“That’s awful,” she replied.

“It is what it is,” I replied.

“Well you’re here now lad, and with skills like that you’ll make a decent adventurer yet!”

“Yes, it takes a lot of skill to multicast that many spells, even if they’re just cantrips. Not to mention maintaining the whisps while you summoned the spirits then properly fusing them together… Yes, you’re quite skillful indeed.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “But I do have one more question, how much battle experience do you guys have? Specifically battle experience fighting monsters out in the wild for prolonged periods of time?”

“I’ve dungeoneered before, as has Darvind,” Velin replied.

“It’ll be my first time!” Niff squeaked. “But I’ll do my best!”

That was good. That was better than I thought.

“Okay. Good. How many of you have fought undead specifically?”

This time only Darvind raised his hand.

“Sentient undead or monster undead?” I asked.

“Sentient, a criminal zombie who was extorting some folk up in district seventy-nine.”

“Those two are completely different things,” I said while shaking my head.

“Well there are two distinct categories of undead,” Velin started. “The first is those who were living having then died and been brought back to this realm, tethering their soul to the world of the living, one way or another. Then there are clumps of spirits that gather around and possess the corpses of the dead, having no identity of their own and seeking to do nothing but kill the living, is that it?”

“Partly,” I nodded. “But it’s more complex than that. Natural undead, the ones that possess corpses all on their own, are horrendously evil. Once a person dies their soul rises up to the astral realm or to whatever god they worshiped, but often it sheds off bits and pieces, the parts of them that refuse to leave this realm. These parts are often hateful and lack intelligence but have a burning, passionate desire to destroy.”

Velin nodded.

“And they are not like the undead you know. They are violent and filthy. They carry diseases and plagues that could turn you into one of them at the slightest cut. Some of them grow strong and intelligent and lead their kind into war. That’s why liches occasionally rise in the dungeon. And the worst part is going to be their numbers. They will come in droves and you will have to manage your stamina correctly.”

They all nodded.

“The most important part is to not get injured. Once we get deep in the dungeon, we’ll either have to go to a relay station or one of the settlements out there to get help and those will be miles away at best and be costly, okay?”

They all nodded again. Velin looked slightly irritated at my lecture but it would be better to get it out now rather than later.

“Also, bones are what we want. That’s what gets us profit. Try to not damage their bones unless you have to, and Velin, please don’t use attack spells unless it’s necessary. You’ll burn the undead and they’ll be useless to us after that.”

“Yes, yes. You adventurers must turn a profit, is that all?”

I relaxed and nodded.

“Good, then I have our route laid out all right here.”

Velin pulled out a map and spread it out on the floor.

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it was a map of some realm or world.

Well, technically it was. It was a pseudo realm, which meant that it relied on not just Yggrasil to exist, but on the Asrin Tree itself, and it was vast, larger than Asrin City. It was a world all its own, all of the Asrin Tree’s fifty-three subspace dungeons were.

That was why the Adventurer’s Guild had chosen to call this realm its base.

But all of the dungeon spaces were mostly inhospitable. The Graveyard Dungeon only had about a hundred thousand natural inhabitants, and most of those were sentient undead, citizens of Asrin City who chose to settle within the realm, or even people who had entered the dungeon from the realm it drew its power from.

For the Graveyard Dungeon, that was the Land of the Dead, one of the outer realms occupied by celestial beings. Now the higher beings themselves couldn’t enter the realm, but all their monster and creations could, including their undead.

The map was littered with settlements, most of them being castles and areas that were not deemed safe for silver rank and below. The map described in detail, the spots and places we needed to check through, as the threat was mostly present within the rookie areas.

It was also littered with places to refill our resources and known safe spots.

I didn’t have any objections to the whole thing. Velin seemed to have thought of everything, but still, something tingled the back of my brain.

How was it known? How did the threat know exactly who to pick off and how strong they were? Why was it only taking out bronze rankers and below?

I couldn’t figure it out, at least not right now.