Firm: Opal’s Story

I hear another loud thud coming from the gate and remember that we’re being attacked by zombies. We all turn to look at the gate and the laughs from the surrounding elves stop. “Okay anyone with ranged skills get on the wall, and I want anyone with summons to put them out here and wait so we can send them all in at once.” Ruby yells.

I use my ally buffs that last until end of combat, and then try to cast Gloaming Call. I remember when I cast it in Liberation it keeps getting blocked, but in front of me on the ground forms a familiar black hole. I get excited as the first shadow starts crawling out and see others summoning things as well. I do a little wiggle and tell Amber “It works here!” Ruby asks why it wouldn’t and I tell her about how it was blocked in Liberation. “It must not be something all of their attacking groups have, and it must only work in the area, or you wouldn’t be able to cast it here, since you’re still in combat over there.” Ruby tells me, and I start doing as many as I can.

I lose track of how many I put down, but I stop when we start running out of room near the gate from all the summons people are calling. The whole time people have been up on the wall firing skills down into the zombies, and I’ve seen a few green colored skills fly over the wall at us. Before we can send the summons out to join the fight we hear “INCOMING!” shouted from a few different elves on the wall. The gate explodes into wood and metal shards that fly inwards towards us. I use my body to cover as much of Amber and Ruby as I can. I realize they both have Firm too, but I’m still tougher than them and don’t have to worry about bleeding.

I look back and a lot of the summons have disappeared, so I think mine were all destroyed, until they all grow back up from circular shadows that were on the ground. Some of the elves are injured by the debris, but I see zombies start to flood in through the new hole. So I order my shadows to charge and I hear similar orders from the other summoners who aren’t too injured. My shadows sink into the floor again and I see a long dark spot move towards the gate. I run forward myself, along with Amber and Ruby, to hold back the zombies, so that the injured can be pulled back by the Healers.

The remaining summons are able to quickly push the front line back outside the broken gate. As I get outside the gate myself, I see my shadows devouring a ton of zombies and then multiplying like they did with the orcs. It looks like this fight will soon be hogged by my shadows again until I see a huge explosion of green fire that takes out a bunch of zombies, but also my shadows. They simply disappear when the green fire touches them, and I hear Ruby shout to someone behind us “Someone get a replacement gate from the 10^th floor, and hurry.”

I start casting a lot of Dark Tendrils, since they are much cheaper than Gloaming Call, and they don’t evaporate when touching the green flames. I wonder if the shadows die to any fire, or just the green kind the zombies are using, but I’ll have to test it later. Another surge of zombies come, and the tendrils are only able to hold and slow a small portion of them, so we’re in a melee again. I make sure to keep an eye on Ruby and Amber, but Amber proves she’s been fighting with me the past few days in the dungeon. She stays close and we can cover for each other.

Ruby is with a bunch of her daughters, and they seem to work just as well, or even better together. They’ve probably also been going to the dungeon here. The large spells from the mages on the walls are now targeting further into the zombie masses, probably so they don’t hit us too. From time to time I feel a good tingle from somewhere and I’m pretty sure I’m being healed.

I don’t know how long the fighting has been going on for my two bodies, but I notice the gates are back on, and I see Ruby and her daughters tossing one of their own injured back over the wall. She learned that from me, I’m so proud of my cute wife. I put down a Sentry, but it’s almost immediately swarmed by zombies and torn apart, so I don’t think using them will help either. I’m surprised to see those blood tentacle summons from when we took Opal’s Home, and they don’t have the same green fire weakness as my shadows. They aren’t really doing much damage either, since choking the zombies doesn’t seem to kill them. Zombies probably don’t need to breathe, just like me.

The fight at Liberation is getting a bit hectic, since more powerful zombies are now fighting on the front line. I get an idea since both of my bodies are in combat and yell “I’m pulling back for a minute, Amber come here.” She shows up next to me quickly, so I grab her and toss her over the wall. I then yell to Ruby saying “I’ll be right back!” and jump onto the wall. I use a bunch of Gloaming Calls behind the wall after jumping down next to Amber. She looked like she needed to recover some stamina anyways and is looking at my summoning.

Amber says “Won’t they just be destroyed by whatever zombie is making that fire?” I nod and say “They will here, but what about in Liberation?” she shakes her head and starts saying “You can’t summon in Lib…. Oh that’s a great idea Opal.” I wiggle and she gives me a kiss. I like it when my daughters compliment me. Once the holes have dispensed of all their shadows I command the shadows to go attack the zombies at Liberation, and hope they know how to get to my other body at least. They all head in the right direction I think, so I tell Amber “Join me back outside the wall once you have stamina again.” She nods and I jump back over the wall, and into the melee.

Opal’s body in Liberation

I hope those shadows can make it here, the elves are having to swap out more and more often. I probably would have to swap out myself if I had things like blood or those weird ropes that elves have in their stomachs. They do not like when those are pulled out, and end up needing a lot of healing. I realized that with my 3^rd body, also came a now tripled, instead of doubled max stamina. My health and mana are shared between my bodies too, so I’m making sure Citrine keeps my little body healed when I need it. It’s pretty useful, but I am taking a lot of damage with both bodies, so if I didn’t have a healer around I could see it being a detriment instead.

Right now there’s an orange haired male elf fight next to me, and he’s probably one of Amber’s kids going by the color. I think he’s actually 5^th tier too and fights a lot like me, using mostly his fists. He’s wearing some metal looking gloves though, probably since he’s not as heavy as me, so he wouldn’t do much damage without them. I want to chat with him about stuff, but there are just too many zombies, so I don’t ever have the opportunity. A large ball of green gunk shoots at him, so I block it with my body. I’ve seen what it can do to these elves, and I don’t feel like seeing that again.

The green stuff splashes me all over, but it doesn’t melt my flesh like that elf, just my cloths. Luckily there aren’t any humans around or it would be embarrassing. I hear him say “Thanks grandma.” so I do a little wiggle, and then continue squishing the zombies around me. He ends up switching out with someone else after taking a hit that crushes one of his hands, so I get yet another fighting neighbor. The zombie doesn’t seem to be able to do that green blob very often, but I block 3 more before I start hearing fighting noises from somewhere else in Liberation. That’s hopefully the shadows, maybe.

The dead zombie’s bodies are weird and just disappear shortly after being killed. It’s useful, since the bodies aren’t stacking up and making the fighting more difficult, but I don’t know why it’s happening so I ask Citrine with my little body. She says “During my last life, the cultists and their summons did the same thing. A Necromancer friend of mine said it was probably to keep the Necromancer class from being overpowered in the scenario. They were a little weird, but it sounded like a good explanation at the time.” I don’t know what a Necromancer does, but it probably has to do with bodies, if them not disappearing would make them extra strong. I ask Citrine “What does the Necromancer class do?” she answers “Necromancers control undead like these zombies, but are Players, so they usually don’t have their zombies fight other Players.”

I look at the ugly zombies I’m smashing. Someone is weird if they pick a class like that. Probably. It does sound useful though if you can get past their looks, unless there are cute zombies. Kind of like how Amber can have ugly and smelly boars as pets, or she can have cute and fluffy hoppers. Her big bunny wouldn’t have been able to help us today, because she’s hardly leveled it at all. Maybe we can fix that later, now that I have 3 bodies we can have slightly smaller dungeon parties, making room for the hopper.

The waves of zombies in front of the dungeon get less numerous and a bunch of shadows start helping us push back the zombies. Onyx is next to me again, she has to switch out a lot since she’s not even 4^th tier yet. I don’t even know if she’s 3^rd, I’ll ask her later. “Lift me up mom, so I can see over the zombies real quick.” my black haired daughter tells me. So I lift her as high as I can and she looks around before pointing in a direction and saying “The one that’s shooting the green blobs is that way, can you go take care of him Opal-mom?” I set her down, and seeing that the shadows are helping to keep the zombies here pushed back, I nod and start pushing past zombies. I smash a lot of them on my way, but I finally see one that’s larger than the rest and it shoots another blob of the green stuff at me.

It seems surprised when I jump onto it, causing it to stagger because of my weight. I start hitting it with Power Attacks on it large bulbous head, but it only takes a few before tossing me off. I manage to land on my feet and get hit by another green blob to the face, which is gross, but I jump at the zombie again. This time I manage to knock it over and as it falls on it’s back, my butt ends up smashing it’s head and it stops moving.

Ding!

You have resisted a (Confuse) skill.

I see a screen, but then get blasted by a green bolt of lighting from the side. Little me sees I’ve taken a lot of damage, well, a lot of damage for me. It took like a 4^th of my total health, so I ask Citrine for more heals and am quickly back to full and charging at the tall and skinny looking zombie that blasted me. I have to kill a lot of zombies getting to it, taking two more blasts before I manage. When I get to it I see the same screen again about resisting a skill, and jump on the skinny zombie. I think I hear it’s legs snap, and I start Power Attacking it’s face. This one only takes 10 power attacks before it’s head is mush, but it gets off another lightning blast before it dies.

Citrine calls over more Healers, since she’s running low on mana trying to keep my little body healed. Hopefully I don’t run into too many of those lighting zombies at once. With those two zombies gone, and the shadows adding to our numbers with each zombie killed, the fight here in Liberation starts turning in our favor.

It only takes another hour for the fight in Liberation to be won, and there is a lot of celebrating. How are we going to tell the people hiding in the dungeon that it’s safe to come out again though?