Magic potions, you say? Haven’t I done something like that?
*thinks back to post 70*
No, that was about a “recipe”, not specifically a potion.
Now, regarding this post: it is taking place in a world with just about the same rules as RL Craft, a modpack for Minecraft which I started playing recently =-D
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“Recall Potion?”
Ignoring the clashing of metal, bones, wood, and flesh that resounded around her, Kovini (Koh-vih-nee) became momentarily distracted from her looting when she chanced upon a strange bottle of light blue liquid. Her eyes lingered on it for a split second too long as she struggled to remember an item by that name, but after the moment passed, quickly went back to taking what she could from the chest.
“DONE?!” A pained voice shouted from somewhere behind her while she picked up the last ender pearl from the now empty wooden box.
“DONE!” She shouted back, loot disappearing from her hands into her inventory while an iron scimitar and wooden shield took their place.
The girl turned around to find that her friends weren’t holding up well against the torrent of poison spiders and skeletons. Almost half a dozen of the bone creatures were scattered around the large room, all mechanically shooting arrows with deadly precision, while twice as many poison spiders did their best to whittle down the shields the villagers had put down between them. Judging by the worried cries of her friends, Kovini knew their party would not last much longer in the tower dungeon if she stalled too much.
And despite having destroyed the four spawners they came across in the two rooms they had explored, more enemies spawned in floors above them—some of those happening to fall through holes in their floors to arrive in Kovini’s party’s room.
As soon as the party leader—an old, wrinkly woman who would fit right in at a graveyard—heard Kovini’s reply, she chugged a potion of regeneration, followed by one of speed, and equipped a summoning staff. Some seconds of focusing later, two miniature trees as tall as herself—ents—appeared at her sides and charged the attacking spiders, after which the old lady put her staff away in favor of a two-handed battleaxe. Then, letting the shield in front of her fall to the ground, she gave her best war cry.
“RETREAT!”
Although her voice was worse for wear and had shouted better days, her fellow villagers were mere steps away from her and heard the message loud and clear. The other four party members, including Kovini, lifted their shields high, put one foot in front of the other, and began hacking away.
Despite their earlier ferocity, the poison spiders stood no chance against the villagers once their dexterous rogue finished looting the treasure chests. To begin with, the granny and her summoned ents pulled most of the enemies’ attention towards herself, who was in possession of their strongest armor, most damaging weapon, and most useful potion effects. The sack of bones swiftly dodged arrows targeted at her skull, ducked beneath swipes from the zombie that fell from a higher floor, and quite effectively wielded her giant, double-sided axe.
Spiders did land atop and bite into her, but she remained unaffected due to the bezoar she had equipped, which granted her immunity to poison.
Swing after swing and slash after slash, the old crone made quick work of backline skeletons and easily tanked the spider bites, leaving barely any work for the rest of her party.
However, their shields were nearly torn asunder, their armor required repairs, they had no potions left, and most importantly, daylight was fading. The third floor, of nine, would remain the highest they climbed for a while.
It was only when the battle ended and the party retreated down to the ground floor, where fewer monsters were likely to spawn, that the villagers could relax slightly. Smiles broke out as XP and monster loot were discussed, and Kovini brought out what she had taken from the three chests—one from each floor.
Although some items were clearly much less valuable than others, nothing was useless—wool could be utilized in the crafting of medical supplies while perfect glass was difficult to produce and required in building certain infrastructure. But, of course, nobody cared much for those dull items. It was rarities such as gold armor and enchanted books that everyone paid the most attention to. Enchanted books for obvious reasons, but gold armor because it could be melted down into ingots to be made into incredibly useful tools, such as the old woman’s summoning staff.
It was when the party chose to distribute their XP to skills when Kovini’s ear twitched, seemingly disturbed by something she heard. She stood directly next to one of the two large windows each dungeon floor had, and so leaned out of it, sure that what she thought she heard was outside.
A second later, and the old woman whipped her summoning staff out and began casting. This time, rather than the miniature trees from before, flying, living crystals poofed into existence and quickly spread out, searching for danger.
“Hush, children!” The old woman demanded, pulling Kovini back into the dungeon from the window and behind cover. “Those be wings beating.”
Her craggly hiss seemed to do the trick, and the room immediately quieted down. No matter the creature, if something had wings, it was dangerous. And as far as they knew, nothing with wings was peaceful.
At this point, the party leader sat crouched at the window, her eyes peering over the edge and into the blue sky beyond. Not long after hearing the wings, the ground shook as a mighty, bestial roar descended upon them. From over the horizon soared a green beast with a figure atop its back, the sight of which sent shivers through the party leader.
“Oh, no…” She turned around to face her party members. “Bad news, I have, younglings. On their way towards us are two things bad enough on they own: a quetzodracl and…an immortal, riding the beast. The quetzodracl belongs to a Lycanite species of dragon; very dangerous with health ta spare and can pick ye up by its talons to drop ya from the sky! Bad idea to fight it, but hiding be an option too. Yet…”
The woman turned back to stare at the beast and immortal duo, shuddering as they made a beeline for the tower they sat within.
“The immortal, perhaps we can kill, but they’ll be back! Stay flat against a wall not seen through the window. If the immortal spots us, we likely doomed.”
Adrenaline coursing through Kovini, causing her heart to beat in her ears, she peeked through the window against the leader’s orders and watched the possible enemies approach. Dragons, although powerful and frightening, were still relatively common. What interested her was the immortal, which, as far as she knew, was a god playing mortal in the Overworld. Those beings had limitations and weaknesses, but far fewer than them villagers. Their reach extended further, they could survive indefinitely without sleep, they could move mountains with enough time, and they always came back to life after death—even if at the hands of the most powerful beings. Yet, they could not breed.
Or so she was told, but now began to believe after seeing one flying a dragon! However, the most persuasive piece of evidence proving that the person riding the quetzodracl was not a mere villager was…the name floating above their head, clearly spelling “YaBoiTazy”.
Even in legends, only one type of being had ethereal nametags permanently fixed above their bodies that could be read from hundreds of meters away.
And so she watched, curious, as the immortal led his mighty steed higher into the sky, past the clouds, upon reaching the tower.
“The immortal challenges the tower boss directly!” The old woman shrieked. “Quickly, back to the waypoint before everything collapses!”
With haste, the five villagers and granny’s four aegis elementals exited the first tower dungeon floor in time to hear another dragon’s roar echo from beyond the clouds. The group stopped for a moment to check their magical atlases, finding the direction the waypoint was, and resumed their run, but they were too late.
With a deafening explosion, the land just in front of the party leader was sent into the air as the tower boss landed. All five villagers were sent sprawling onto their backs by the shockwave, but granny recovered first, as her Defense skill was highest in level among them.
Dust cleared and tension grew thick as Kovini and the rest of the party laid their eyes on the four-meter, one-eyed golem made of stone that stared back at them, seemingly confused as to why it was looking at people different from the one who first challenged it.
But it didn’t really care. It shot a fireball at the party leader.
“No!” Kovini cried, watching as her gran accepted the attack with the iron tower shield she pulled from her inventory.
When everyone’s ears stopped ringing and the dust faded, the old woman could still be seen standing behind her shield. Although battered, she wasn’t lost to them yet.
“I still have some years left, bastard!” She shouted in rage, pulling out a scimitar. “Ye won’t be takin ‘em!”
The granny was clearly buying time for her fellow villagers to escape, which wouldn’t be difficult because the tower dungeon’s boss had a small perception range and was only really a problem in the confined rooms of the dungeon, but it was then that the monsters from the upper floors finally managed to make their way down the thin stairwells connecting each room. A small army of undead and spiders marched out of the ground floor dungeon room in single file before fanning out to attack the villagers, who had only just begun recovering from the initial shockwave produced when the dungeon boss landed in front of them.
Kovini watched as two zombies latched onto her brother while another friend was piled onto by spiders, and time seemed to slow down. The scene of carnage and hopelessness seemed to occur as though through water with how everything moved…yet Kovini could not capitalize on her adrenaline.
She panicked, fumbling with her sword and tripping as a skeleton pinned her leg to the ground. The girl managed to raise her shield in front of her face and prevented an instakill, but the enemies continued moving forward, killing her friends while their leader was busy distracting a monster they couldn’t defeat. All the while, Kovini was running out of options.
She had dropped her sword out of arm’s reach, her left leg was pinned and too injured to move, her Magic skill was too low-level for her to use an ender pearl…
Tears poured down Kovini’s face as she thought back to the unusual potion she found in the tower dungeon’s third floor’s chest, which said something about teleporting to one’s spawn location. The girl couldn’t be sure of what “spawnpoint” meant, whether it referred to the bed one slept in—like other items did—or the actual place she was born—as legends claimed some items referred to—but either was fine, as both locations resided within the safety of her town.
With one last look at her dying friends and ridiculously brave grandma, sorrowful at the fact that she had no choice but to leave her friends and family behind to save her own life, Kovini removed the recall potion from her inventory, uncorked its top, and chugged the blue contents.
……
An unfamiliar kind of dizziness inundated Kovini as she awoke to find herself lying on her back, fiery orange rays swallowing the sky.
“N—”
She attempted to speak, but her senses still swam from the teleportation experience that was nothing like traveling between waypoints.
“Night…”
The girl struggled to sit up, her body shaking from both the translocation and exhaustion. When she managed to prop herself up on her elbows, her first observation was not that she was neither back home nor in the clinic she was born within, but instead…
“So much ash…”
All around Kovini sat piles upon piles of black ash. The ash made up the ground she lied on, faraway hills, and countless random piles standing nearby. Charred piles of bones could also be made out in the distance…hundreds of meters away. Whatever those creatures had been before they were burned to death, they were huge.
“And it’s getting dark. S***!”
Kovini used the spare stone polearm from her inventory to assist her in standing before surveying the landscape. She couldn’t be sure, but she imagined that it was once grasslands with how flat the terrain seemed.
Kicking up ash, she picked a direction and began walking. She couldn’t make out any structures in the vicinity, thus her current location wouldn’t do her any good. She had a sleeping bag with her, but that would not protect her from the bloodthirsty creatures that would spawn in just a few minutes.
But, most importantly…
“YaBoiTazy…I will find you.”
It was the immortal who caused it all. All that suffering. The likely deaths of her friends, and probably grandmother, too. The immortal had used his quetzodracl’s grab ability to toss the tower dungeon boss to the ground so that he could loot the top chests in peace.
He would pay.
