Chapter 213: Bone

A/N: Bonus chapter! :)
It was a year ago today that I posted the first chapter of this story on Royal Road. It's been such an incredible experience for me, while simultaneously growing and stretching my skills. Thank you all for being part of the journey - without you all there is no story!

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Tala

Tala ignored the curious stares from the various Town Watch guards lounging around the lobby and took a deep breath to compose herself. It would not do to show weakness before them. She reached out and knocked sharply on the door to Kieran Mori’s office.

She waited in the silence after her knuckles had rapped against the solid oak, biting down on her mounting anxiety. She had expected this summons – obviously. She had provoked it after all. If Mori realized she had done it on purpose, though, she probably would not survive this meeting. But he had been inexplicably dragging his feet, and Tala could not get the sight of Aliandra and Malika standing trial out of her mind. I’m supposed to be on the accelerated leveling plan. How the fuck are they beating me by so much…

“Come in, Tala.”

She gulped, and then opened the door and entered.

Kieran sat at his desk, signing paperwork with an expensive mana pen. His spine was ramrod straight and his focus unshakeable, and the impressive leather armor he always wore was concealed beneath a dark cloak. Tala approached the desk and waited quietly, the remaining moments of her fate slowly ticking away to rising pressure in her chest and throat.

“You have been made,” Kieran said, his gaze flicking up to pierce her with the same deadly precision with which he wielded his spear.

“What?” she exclaimed, feigning surprise, not having to fake at least the intensity of her emotions.

“Vivian Ross found Donavan’s boots on the merchant caravan and put it together somehow,” he said, putting his pen down on the desk beside the papers with unnerving deliberateness. “I can’t believe you killed Bastian’s son. He’s furious. He wants blood. And he wants it now.”

This was the moment. Tala widened her eyes to sell it better. “I…” she paused under his withering glare and then deflated her chest and lowered her head. “It’s how I unlocked my class…” She trailed her voice off.

“I figured it was something like that,” Kieran said. “No matter. It puts us in a bit of a difficult position, but nothing we can’t handle.”

Wait… he bought it?

“Do you want me to resign?” she asked, daring to glance up at the powerful assassin. She had been prepared to argue for leniency, to have to play up her value and contributions, and he had just skipped right past all of it. Is he toying with me? Is this a play?

“Officially, you’ve already skipped town and I’m searching for you to bring you back and face Bastian’s wrath – or justice, depending on who you ask,” Kieran said. “You’re no longer a member of the Watch.”

“Unofficially?”

“We’re moving up our plans. You’re still not quite ready, but… you will apprentice with Indacus Argyle. He is the Shadow Council chapter leader in Southport. He will take care of accelerating your leveling, giving you additional jobs for the Shadow Council. You’re still reporting to me directly, though, so your actions reflect on my reputation in the organization, and I will require you to return here every other week or so for specific jobs. Just don’t get seen.”

Fuck yes! “Um… ok. If you’re sure I’m ready.”

“You’re not,” Keiran said bluntly. “Argyle will push you far harder than I have. Don’t die.”

“I see…” Tala said, ruthlessly suppressing the grin that threatened to emerge by pasting a practiced demure expression on her face. “Thank you, thank you for looking out for me. I won’t make another mistake.”

“You better not,” Kieran said and tossed a small black disk at her. “Show that token to Indacus Argyle. It’s your invitation to the organization. Congratulations. Now, piss off.”

Asshole.

Aliandra

Ali directed her minions to fan out as she followed along in the middle of the pack, her Armored Drake and Forest Guardian flanking Mato at the front while she kept her Acolytes close beside her so she could better protect them with her barriers. Birds and jungle wildlife fled from the heavy thumping steps of her most massive minions, filling the air with raucous calls and the rustling of shivering underbrush.

Everywhere Mato went, his signature vibrant green mana seeped into the ground, causing the plants to respond to his passage. Tiny leaves sprouted from branches overhanging the dirt pathway, moss grew a little taller, and the trees seemed to sigh, extending their branches just a little further.

He must be enjoying the ability to use his plant magic, she thought. Working their way through the Emberforge Mines was akin to trekking through a desolate wasteland of flame and rock compared to the verdant jungle pressing in all about them. In fact, if it wasn’t for the presence of the undead and the domain mana to remind her that she was in a dungeon, she might have imagined herself taking a relaxing walk through the vibrant greenery and flowers, listening to the patter of water dripping from the canopy onto the lush ferns below, and the melodic chirping of songbirds hidden among the leaves. At least till her monsters frightened them away.

Despite the idyllic beauty of Aman Rak, Ali kept vigilant, sampling the many senses of her minions. She even kept her attention on the riotous, overwhelming response from her Abyssal Stalkers’ Scent of Blood skill, immersed as they were in the dense blood mana of the dungeon’s domain. It was giving her a headache. With the dirt path winding through dense, impenetrable jungle, Ali immediately found that scent skills and her imps’ heat vision were far more useful to her than mundane vision, and it was her own Arcane Insight sensing the fluctuations in the domain mana through the obscuring undergrowth that first warned her of something changing.

“The mana is different up ahead,” Ali said, trying to puzzle out what she was seeing. It was as if there were geysers of bone-affinity mana somewhere up ahead through the trees – but they were placed too regularly to be a natural phenomenon. Warily, they rounded the next bend to find a low wall of stone running perpendicular to the trail. On either side of the path stood two age-worn stone statues of important-looking trolls, and spanning the break in the wall was an arch made from the spine of some huge monster, rib bones sticking out like spikes reaching toward the sky.

“These guys look big,” Malika said.

“Yes. Some Trolls can grow quite large,” Ali said as she studied the large statues, sculptures honoring some past champions of the tribe. Trolls tended to revere the spirits rather than the gods, and honoring the fallen warriors in this way was an ancient tradition. The two Trolls were sculpted from a dark stone, and the artist had clearly emphasized their large, prominent tusks, spiked ridges of bone armor, and the imposing weight of the axes clutched in their powerful three-fingered grasp. Moss grew on their shoulders and centuries of rain seemed to have pitted the surface of the work, leaving it looking rough and weather-beaten.

“You seem to know a lot about them,” Calen said.

“I’ve encountered a few in my time,” Ali said. Even back when she was growing up, Trolls were legendary for their reclusive tendencies, mostly keeping to themselves and avoiding the cities of the so-called lesser races – as they referred to dwarves, humans, and elves. Still, Dal’mohra had been such an important cultural center for the entire continent that their tall blue- or green-skinned forms could often be seen about the city. Their ambassadors, the ‘Mok’ as they referred to them, were often bringing delegations to the neutral ground of Dal’mohra to broker treaties, or settle disputes, and so she was no stranger to their kind.

But it was not the political ambassadors she was most familiar with. Trolls, and indeed most reputable historians, believed that their race predated even the Elves. Because of their unique and widely envied powers of regeneration, Trolls didn’t suffer from mortality in the same way as most other races. They – some would say stubbornly – did not die of natural causes, and therefore, there were some truly ancient Trolls among their kind, often invited by the scholars and historians of Dal’mohra to consult or lecture on the minutiae of historical events.

Ali had found them to be oftentimes arrogant and proud, believing strongly in the superiority of troll-kind. However, they also had a profound and complex sense of honor and access to uncommon and powerful magic which had always fascinated her in her youth. Magic that was often related to the soul or spirits of their ancestors, divination, and strange runic tattoos. While almost everyone was bigger than her, the Trolls tended to be taller than most races, standing about a head taller than even the tallest elves and humans. But Ali would never forget the awe and instinctual fear she had experienced the first time she had seen one of the rare giant trolls in a delegation. It had been so massive she would not have even reached its knees, with legs wider than her entire body and footsteps that shook the ancient stone of Dal’mohra announcing its approach before she had even glimpsed its giant tusked face and the enormous axes looming over the tops of the buildings.

“This must be the Temple of Bone,” Calen said quietly. “Lyeneru explained a little about Aman Rak on the way.”

The dirt path meandered through the macabre rib-and-vertebrae arched gateway and onward into the jungle that continued on the other side, unconstrained by the presence of a mere wall.

Lining the edges of the pathway at regular intervals were tall totems, perhaps twice Ali’s height, and made from what appeared to be fresh troll bones. A gruesome, tusked skull capped the totem, and it was decorated with jagged mystical glyphs of dark red that she hoped was paint. Scattered about the foot of the totem was a pile of what seemed to be discarded bones upon the darkly stained ground, and the entire gory construction emitted pulses of powerful bone-affinity mana that rapidly assimilated into the surrounding domain.

Grim Totem – Totem – level 58 (Bone)

“What is that?” Malika asked, her face wrinkled in an expression of extreme disgust.

“It’s what the dungeon is using to propagate its bone-affinity mana,” Ali answered. But such a statement conveyed none of the skin-crawling revulsion she experienced just looking at the horrible thing.

“The bones smell fresh,” Mato said, kicking one with his foot. “They must have killed someone recently to make this.”

“Can we destroy it, please?” Malika said.

“I can deconstruct it,” Ali said, “But I fear we will provoke the dungeon just like we did when I deconstructed the Bone Spire.” She had no desire to face another dungeon-break, and this time without the benefit of her domain mana granting them the power of a raid boss for defenses.

“How about we destroy the whole dungeon, and then clean up all this stuff?” Mato said, his face set with an uncommonly firm determination.

“Definitely,” Calen said, nodding. His cheeks seemed to have taken on a slight shade of green.

“If we can,” Ali said. They had only signed up to get information, but she wholeheartedly agreed. Some sort of horrific desecration had been inflicted on this place, defiling the once-thriving home of the Aman Rak trolls, turning it into a gruesome dungeon of butchery, crawling with the undead remnants of their people.

“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Malika said.

As they set out to follow the slowly broadening trail, Ali kept a close eye on the jungle around them, calling out the occasional warning when skeletons approached. Progress was painfully slow, as they were forced to stop every few minutes to kill some undead creature, but it was vastly safer to take care of them cleanly than try to rush through, not knowing what lay ahead.

Imprint: Undead Skeleton completed.

Ali had deconstructed so many undead by now that her Grimoire immediately categorized it as such, but she just as quickly dismissed the worthless imprint, knowing she couldn’t use them without death-affinity mana. But she didn’t stop deconstructing the undead, not certain if they would be able to be raised a second time.

Ali was already lost by the time they started encountering zombies, but she trusted Calen to remember the way out. The putrescent stench of the rotting undead flesh made her stomach crawl and their status as undead prevented her Abyssal Stalkers from doing effective damage, however, she didn’t care, she simply burned them down with hellfire and dragon’s breath and then deconstructed the remains.

Imprint: Undead Zombie completed.

She dismissed the offered imprint again, wishing she could just disable her Grimoire from trying to learn anything she couldn’t make. Certainly, any undead would be worth blocking. Although they might become useful, she thought, suddenly reminded of Calen’s idea of learning it just so that she could make undead-slayer bosses. I would need more imprint space first.

A soft whirling thwipping sound cut through the trees.

It was Mato who reacted first, suddenly transforming into his Bear Form as a light gray shape whipped out of the dense trees, flying end-over-end and burying itself into his hide before his transformation was even complete.

Ali barely had time to register the bone axe sticking out of his shoulder before it shattered, sending a deadly blast of piercing bone shards in all directions. She threw up a barrier as quickly as she could, but her reactions were too slow to prevent the shards from tearing through her legs, stomach, and chest, and slicing up the Acolytes huddled around her. She coughed, feeling the disconcerting gurgle of blood pouring into her lungs, but held onto her protective spell through gritted teeth and pain.

A powerful cascade of scent erupted through her borrowed Abyssal Stalker senses as her blood sprayed out into the air, and then she caught the smell of blood lurking behind the trees in the jungle.

“Something in the trees,” Calen called out.

One of Ali’s Acolytes slumped to the ground, her injuries too severe to heal, but the three remaining Kobolds instantly got to work. Her pain began to subside as the holy restoration began to pulse through her and she turned to focus on their ambushers.

A continuous stream of bone axes flew from the cover of the trees, spinning faster and faster until Ali could barely perceive more than a blur before they smashed against the armor of her drake and Forest Guardian and exploded among the rest of her minions, keeping the healers continuously channeling their holy magic. “Move,” she said, shifting the mountains of armor on legs to provide better cover.

Quick shouts rang out from the cover of the trees on both sides of the path, causing her to lose some mana to her Sage of Learning. But even though she was somewhat tight on mana with so many high-level minions, it wasn’t quite enough to worry her yet, so she ignored her temperamental skill, focusing all her attention instead on the shuffling among the trees.

The lean, muscular figure that emerged from the jungle had dark green skin decorated with red-and-brown painted glyphs, and his spiky hair had been colored with the same stuff. He had a mean low-slung jaw with a pair of impressive tusks jutting up out of his mouth. His pointed ears were too thick and rough to be considered elf-like, and his dark eyes were narrowed, staring at her with a feral cunning.

“Troll!” Ali yelled, “Alive.” Despite the heavy leather-and-bone armor, he moved with a lithe power and delicate grace. And it was not one of the undead.

“That’s a dungeon monster,” Calen said, and Ali immediately saw what he was talking about. The mana connection she had observed within her own minions was present within this troll, only bone and blood affinities instead of her familiar arcane and nature.

The troll shouted something guttural and harsh, the delicate runic carvings on his tusks glowing strangely in her mana sight. Suddenly the bare skin on his arms, throat, and legs erupted with spines and ridges of bone bursting their way out of his body in a gory display of self-modifying magic, quickly covering his body in a second layer of dense bone armor – evoking the deadly image of the stone sculptures of Troll warriors Ali had studied near the entrance.

From the insides of both his forearms, bone growths ruptured the skin, elongating and shaping rapidly under the influence of a powerful bone manipulation skill. In less than a second, he had created two bone axes from his own body which he snapped off and launched into the air with rapid powerful throws. Even as his weapons flew, he was already growing new ones to replace them as his body healed the self-inflicted wounds.

Warrior – Troll – level 65 (Bone)

Another harsh shout sounded, and a second live Troll emerged from the trees, this one obviously female, and even more intimidating with the wicked-looking blades she was growing from the outside of her forearms. Her blades grew longer and longer until they extended from her elbow all the way to past her hands, half again as long as her arms; weapons clearly designed for both slashing and punching.

She blurred into motion, tearing across the path, burying both blades up to her fists into Mato’s flank in less than a blink of an eye, leaving bone spikes scattered across the ground in the wake of her charge. Mato roared in pain and challenge, swiping across her thighs, tearing at the bone armor, and drawing blood with his powerful claws. Vines and brambles burst from the ground in response to his magic, entangling the troll’s legs. But already Ali could see the gashes in the troll’s legs beginning to close.

Four more trolls emerged from the forest, quickly sprouting gray armor and blades that gleamed in the dappled sunlight as they charged into the fray.

“Attack,” Ali commanded, and took her own focus to the melee fight, observing from her Armored Drake. She faced two Trolls, both well over two meters tall. She lashed out with her dragon claws, Cleaving across her foes, but the first Troll dodged, and the second blocked with both blades crossed in front of him, both reacting with uncanny speed. Her powerful Cleave shattered one of the Troll’s bone blades sending shards flying, but he simply regrew it as he pressed his counterattack. The trolls’ blades flickered and flashed, growing faster and faster the more they hit until she struggled to even see the blades moving. She tried biting the nearest one, but again it simply dodged to the side. Frustrated, she breathed out, unleashing intense waves of dragon’s fire at the trolls, eliciting sharp shouts of pain and anger as they were caught in the blast, and setting the right side of the forest path alight.

“Watch the flanks,” Calen said.  

Ali swapped to watching her Abyssal Stalkers sneaking up on a troll each and felt the satisfaction of seeing both staggered by the powerful unleashed ambush attack, combined with their blood shock magic. But as soon as the trolls recovered, again she found their wounds slowly closing as they began dodging and slashing in counterattack.

They’re tough. Really tough.

She swapped to her Hellfire Imp and was suddenly subjected to the bizarre disorientation of having her body turned into flame and appearing in the center of an unleashed ball of hellfire. The heat was intense, with black flame surging all around her, but instead of pain, she felt rejuvenated. Not even her vision was impaired, she could clearly see herself and the flame hurtling toward the ground and the creatures fighting there: her drake, wargs, and stalkers all fighting trolls with their bristling armor and flashing blades.

A flicker of worry passed through her, but at least half her minions were entirely immune to fire, and suddenly she was the epicenter of a devastating detonation. She emerged from the explosion unscathed and back in the physical body of an imp, hopping up and down with excitement, spreading extra flame everywhere with its flame shield.  

She triggered Amplified and Accelerated Casting and shot a fireball point-blank into the face of a troll, the imp cackling with glee as the troll howled and gobs of burning hellfire rained down onto the battlefield, but the troll retrieved a red health potion and downed it before charging back into combat, blades still dripping hellfire and slashing at the imp with redoubled ferocity and speed.

Something isn’t working here…

Ali returned her awareness to her own body and called up the Healer’s Sight of a nearby Acolyte to augment her perception. At the same time, she levitated a little to gain an elevated perspective of the battlefield.

Five trolls were tearing up her minions from melee range, dodging drake claws, and battling her Wargs, Stalkers, and Forest Guardian. The dense grasping roots and vines from her Guardian and Mato’s Rampant Growth skill periodically locked the trolls in place, but any time that happened they simply switched to throwing their devastating exploding axes into the fray, barely seeming inconvenienced in the slightest. But the wargs and drake both used fire breath attacks, and the Hellfire Imp used fireballs, all of which vaporized the burgeoning plant growth with intense fire, freeing the trolls to return to the melee.

Up on a small rise at the back, among the dense trees, two trolls stood unmolested, raining down a continuous storm of throwing axes. Dancing through the chaos, Malika kicked and punched her way through the monsters, and glowing brilliant arrows fell everywhere with ruinous accuracy, while Mato laid about with his claws striking whatever he could reach.

But none of them have died.

As Ali studied their tactics carefully, it became clearer. The trolls were wading into the thick of battle with great sweeping strikes of their blades that struck multiple of her minions simultaneously, but it was their sheer resilience that caught her attention.

They dodged nearly half of the attacks thrown their way, avoiding many of the most powerful strikes. And what they couldn’t dodge was either skillfully blocked or rebuffed by their garishly painted leather-and-bone armor, or the dense layer of additional natural bone armor they had grown out of their own bodies.

With the benefit of her Healer’s Sight, she could visibly see the effect of their continuously regenerating health as it climbed steadily after each successful strike. In fact, the only thing that seemed to cause lasting damage was the different forms of fire attacks, and for that damage, they had healing potions.

On the other hand, they had not lost any of their forces save for the poor Acolyte who had perished to the first surprising axe explosion. Their strategy was uncannily similar – with the dominant presence of the Forest Guardian in the center of the melee, and Mato’s aura, all of their melee forces were regenerating rapidly too, with Malika and her Acolytes simply picking up the most damaging strikes to repair. This would not even be a battle of attrition; it was a stalemate.

“Splitting our damage isn’t working,” Ali said, her voice pitched to carry to Calen, who was flying nearby.

“My target,” he said, picking a troll that was currently at half health, but rapidly recovering as it discarded an empty health potion.

Ali divided her attention among her minions, redirecting each individually. The drake and the guardian wheeled about to strike Calen’s chosen troll, and her two wargs flanked it, catching each other in their opposing hellfire breaths with the troll crisping between them. Her imp launched an amplified fireball, and she even sent her stalkers in, ignoring the friendly fire, relying on regeneration and the Acolytes to keep them alive. Malika clearly read the strategy and swapped targets in a flash.

Ali’s Abyssal Stalker struck from behind, unleashing a powerful Blood Shock, and the troll visibly staggered from the stunning impact. In that brief moment, while it was stunned and unable to dodge, three simultaneous breath attacks struck, a cleave, a fireball, a flurry of soul strikes, and even an axe attack from a Hobgoblin.

The troll’s health vanished in an instant, and it dropped like a marionette with suddenly severed strings, smoke and flame rising from wounds that no longer closed. A soft chime sounded in the back of her mind, which she ignored.

Now I just need the breath attacks to recharge, Ali thought, directing her Acolytes to keep her wargs and Hobgoblins from dying to the retaliatory charge from two trolls tearing through the melee leaving trails of bone spikes in their wake, slashing at everything with great sweeping strikes of their blades.

But she was not the only one able to read the battlefield. Before her minions’ skills recharged and Calen could pick a new target, the leader of the trolls standing high upon the ridge barked several short words that rang out across the battlefield, provoking her Sage of Learning skill again. The four remaining melee trolls whirled about and simultaneously struck one of her Hellfire Wargs with a blindingly fast flurry of slashes and stabbing punches, causing it to drop even under the direct attention of the overworked Kobold Acolytes.

Amid the noise of more barked troll orders, Ali reacted to the loss of her warg by accelerating a hellfire fireball and directing her remaining warg to breathe on the battlefield. The instant fireball shot out across the battlefield, carrying her imp in Flame Form, and detonated amid the trolls. Her imp emerged, cackling in the center, but most of the trolls had managed to dive out of the way, escaping unscathed. But she had managed to disrupt their momentum, and the fire breath from her remaining warg blasted across the field, merging with her imp’s flame shield. Clearly, it was enough, as the warg’s mana rekindled, and a pair of glowing red eyes appeared in the heart of the raging black flame. There were numerous surprised exclamations from the trolls as the warg howled from within the fire and charged out to rejoin the battle.

“Red zig-zags,” Ali announced, identifying the male troll who happened to have the lowest health by the glyphs painted on his armor.

“Got it,” Calen said. The motes of light above the melee flared brighter as he ignited his mana with Righteous Fury, and Ali unleashed all her minions to attack their target. Calen’s magic disproportionately benefited fast strikes, so she favored her stalkers and the dual-wielding axe Hobgoblin. Calen’s powerful bow howled deafeningly, filling the air with a deadly stream of hellfire-enhanced arrows. Blood Shock again stunned the troll at the crucial moment, and the hail of arrows, minion strikes, and Malika’s flurry of ultra-fast punches took the troll down even faster than the first one.

“Green handprint,” Ali said, calling out the next most damaged troll. They all switched targets, destroying the troll under the withering onslaught of damage enabled by Calen’s magic. Down to only two trolls remaining in melee, the axe-throwing trolls on the ridge both charged, yelling orders as they tore up the distance. All four remaining trolls turned with flashing blades, and Ali’s Hellfire Imp pattered to the ground, sliced into several pieces before any of the Acolytes could even get off a heal.

But the tide had turned. Two of the remaining trolls were low on health and appeared to be out of potions. Malika and Mato ganged up on one with the aid of her wargs and a stalker, while the remaining stalker stunned the second one, allowing her drake and Forest Guardian to stomp it into the ground with cleaves and tramples while Calen’s arrows finished the job. With the troll forces dwindling rapidly, it became progressively easier to focus their damage, and they quickly finished off the remainder.

Your group has defeated Bone Warrior – Troll – level 63-67 (Bone) x7

“Well, that sucked,” Mato said as he reverted to normal. “I couldn’t hit anything.”

“Yep, they are really hard to pin down,” Malika said, agreeing with him. She walked over to the smoking corpses, turning one over and crouching to examine it closer.

Ali sympathized with the sentiment. She had been immensely frustrated to unleash her drake’s cleaving attack only to have it dodged and then blocked by the canny trolls. “They’re fast, too,” she said. Whenever she had managed to hit, they had proven to be ridiculously resilient with their armor and regeneration.

“It’s a good thing they didn’t have healers,” Calen said. It was a sobering thought – potions and regeneration were one thing, but healing was vastly quicker and more powerful. It also went without saying that they had been fortunate to not have any of the skeletons or zombies wander into their battle.

“They didn’t seem to need healers,” Malika said. “They were constantly regenerating.”

While they regrouped, Ali pulled out her Grimoire, resummoning her dead Acolyte and imp, and restoring her intelligence buff. Then she slowly scoured the battlefield, deconstructing each troll, and collecting the gear so that Malika could appraise it all.

“I got a few things,” Ali said, returning to the group and pulling out the leather armor pieces she had collected. Each of the warrior trolls had been wearing a leather body armor set, heavily reinforced with bone plates attached by some delicate magically enhanced stitching. While there was some minor variance among the attributes on each piece, they looked like they had been created as a batch for the warriors by someone called Zor’kan.

“What did you find?” Malika asked, uncoiling from her meditation pose.

“Here,” Ali said, offering up a leather jerkin with abstract swirls of green and white paint adorning the back and sides.

Bone-Studded Jerkin of Agility – level 60
Armor: 504
Evasion: 504
+41 Dexterity
+20 Strength
+22% Evasion
3% of your Physical damage is returned as Health over 30 seconds.
Requirements: Strength 120, Dexterity 120
Created by Zor’kan.
Body – Leather / Bone

“This is a really good set of armor,” Malika said, picking it up and turning it over in her hands. “Uncommon quality. It’s too bad none of us can use it. I would love to see that percentage evasion increase on a bracer or something I can use.”

But Malika’s assessment was spot on – in their party, only Mato had the strength to equip it, and he had almost no investment in dexterity. Calen, on the other hand, had the reverse problem – more than enough dexterity, but nowhere near the strength to cover the requirements. And of course, Malika couldn’t use any body armor at all.

“No wonder they were so tough,” Ali said, examining the enchantments on the armor. It was abundantly clear that the troll warriors had emphasized both evasion and armor and with attributes like that on the piece, it was easy to see just how difficult it was to hit them. On the other hand, it had no benefit against magical attacks, which seemed to be why her stalker’s blood magic, the fire, Calen’s motes of light, and Malika’s soul magic all were effective.

“That health leech is strong,” Calen said.

“That’s probably why they refused to die,” Mato offered.

“And trolls have legendary racial regeneration,” Ali said. The leech was just a small percentage of damage returned as health, but with the amount they were dishing out all the time, it easily explained how their health refused to stay down despite a lack of healers. That, combined with their powerful natural regeneration and healing potions made for exceptionally durable warriors. It was no wonder they hadn’t killed a single troll until they focused on them one at a time.

“Here, learn these and I’ll sell the ones you don’t want,” Malika said, handing back the armor pieces one at a time.

Variant: Bone-Studded Jerkin of Agility added to Imprint: Armor

Too bad my Hobs are too low for this armor.

“What about these?” Ali asked, retrieving three broad rings carved from bone with intricate patterns adorning the smooth polished surface. Only three of the trolls had worn the rings adorning a tusk.

Troll Tusk Ring of Storage – level 62
Mana: Store or retrieve an item. Capacity: 106 / 550 kg
Requirements: Troll
Tusk – Bone

Malika studied a ring curiously, and then she activated it with a little puff of her mana. Two mana potions, three health potions, and a whole pile of bone axes cascaded from the ring onto the ground. She tossed the mana potions to Calen, and he stored them without a word.

“This will be hard to sell,” Malika said thoughtfully. “Maybe we just store it for now?”

“Tusk ring?” Mato asked.

“Trolls only have two fingers and a thumb, and their fingers are quite broad compared to other races,” Ali explained. She had already deconstructed all the corpses so she couldn’t just show him. “I think most of them prefer to use jewelry, rings, and charms on their tusks instead of their fingers. At least most of the ones I saw were extremely proud of their tusks.” This also explained Malika’s assessment, nobody but a troll would want to buy something like this. And it was not like they had access to any market frequented by trolls unless they were regular guests at Ciradyl.

Ali retrieved the last set of items that had been worn by the warriors. They were a simple set of greaves worn on the lower leg, laced up from the back. They were made from rugged leather that had been tanned nearly black, with several long strips of bone reinforcement carefully worked into the surface. Each was decorated with unique stylized swirls of color in the typical gaudy troll style.

Swift Bone-Studded Jambeau – level 60
+40 Dexterity
+32 Endurance
2% of your damage is returned as Health over 30 seconds.
+15% to Movement speed.
Requirements: Dexterity 210
Created by Zor’kan.
Feet – Leather / Bone

“Now this… this is really amazing!” Malika said, examining one of the sets. She was positively beaming.

“There’s plenty of them,” Ali said, retrieving the rest and dropping them on the ground in the middle of their group. “All of the warriors wore them.”

“Hey archer-boy,” Malika said with a grin. “You need to check this out!” She tossed a pair to Calen, laughing at his literal double-take when she shared the attributes and enchantments on the item. “So much better than those Pathfinder boots, right?”

“Zor’kan…” Calen muttered slowly as if searching for something. “Oh! Lyeneru had an item made by him.” For some reason, Calen seemed very excited about this discovery. But then, Calen always seemed excited about anything to do with Lyeneru.

“I think I’ll take this set,” Malika said, selecting a pair of the Jambeau with a red design on them.

“Don’t you want the ones with forty dexterity?” Calen asked, holding out the pair in his hand.

“Thirty-nine is good enough,” Malika said. “Besides, this pair has higher endurance, and I can use that far better than you.”

“Fair enough,” Calen said. “Is there one with strength? My bow has a high required strength to use.”

“Here,” Malika said, tossing him what appeared to be an alternate design. Then she turned to Ali and the pile of items on the ground before her. “Do you want the rest?”

“Sure, I have a free chapter,” Ali answered, “But I don’t have an imprint for this class of item. I’ll probably need about twelve to fifteen before I get the imprint. Why don’t you keep them for now?” Ali had a feeling they were not going to be in short supply.

While her friends chatted animatedly about their upgrades, Ali busied herself summoning mana potions to replace the ones her Acolytes had consumed. So far so good, but this is far from over.

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