This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 162

[Surprise second chapter!]

Chapter 162 - Harvester

Eve started by doing the sensible thing.

Level ?? Skeletal Rock Worm

Following up with her out-of-character trend of doing the sensible thing, Eve didn’t stop to wonder why it was called a worm when the thing clearly had bones and a spine. She didn’t waste a moment considering the fact that worms were supposed to be invertebrates, and despite its circular mouth, the things skeletal structure would’ve made it more like a snake than a worm. Nope. Eve didn’t give any sort of shit about those semantics. She only cared how much exp it was worth.

So, naturally, she Jetted right at it.

The Defiant rocketed through the air towards the top of the thing’s mouth, aiming to avoid its gnashing teeth as she struck the hopefully-important bone structure around it. Her blow never hit.

While the worm completely failed to react in time to the puny adventurer attacking it, one of the skeletons below managed to raise an obsidian wand and summon a wall of inky darkness between Eve and the rock worm. As her club struck the obstruction, it stuck.

Jet still on cooldown for the moment, Eve collided with the tarry blockade with a sticky thump. Instinctively she tried to wrench herself away, but the force simply buried her deeper into oozing barrier. While she struggled, an arrow slammed into a left rib, sending icy pain racing down her side and white Mana wafting into the air.

Pushing past the injury, Eve collected herself and did what she should’ve done from the get go. She drained the spell.

Darkness Mana cascaded through her, turning her eyes and the lines along her skin inky black for the brief moments she could hold onto it. With a thought, she launched it at the archer, sheering its head clean off.

No defeat message popped into view.

Without the sticky wall to hold her up, Eve plummeted to the cavern floor, landing in a nimble shoulder roll. As she stood, she tore the arrow from her rib, allowing her body to expend yet more Mana repairing the injury. She Charged for the mage, but a round loop of stone arose from the ground below, catching her foot. With the Strength of Mana Rush running through her, her foot passed clean through the hindrance, but not without ruining her balance and sending her careening to the left.

The worm dove for her.

Eve Jetted to the side.

She landed hard against the back wall, her right shoulder taking a dent out of the stone. She didn’t stop to catch her breath.

Kicking off against the wall, Eve launched herself at the nearest of the nine mages, stealing the Mana from its spell before it even finish the cast. Against the force of her club, it exploded into a million pieces.

That appeared to actually kill it.

You have defeated Level 102 Skeletal Earth Mage: +1.6m exp!

Eve blinked the message away just in time to dodge a flaming arrow from the newly headless zombie archer. She whirled about to send a burst of annihilation Mana at it, earning herself a second kill notification for her efforts.

You have defeated Level 104 Zombie Archer: +1.7m exp!

Eve let out a breath. Two down, way too many to go.

The rock worm lunged for her position, forcing Eve to dodge away once more, this time directly into the waiting arms of another zombie. As she came in too close for its sword to be any use, the thing clawed and bit at her as she and it crashed into floor. With a Mana Rush-empowered head butt, she ended it too.

You have defeated Level 102 Zombie Swordsman: +1.6m exp!

Eve didn’t have time to wonder how such a simple undead had reached such a high level, or why a being as famously clumsy as a zombie would wield a weapon so characterized by finesse. She still had a veritable horde to deal with.

She rolled left off the dead zombie in time to watch two arrows bury themselves cleanly in its corpse, and leapt to her feet to face her remaining opponents. The rock worm screeched.

Eve panted, taking in the scene before her as her mind scrambled for a plan of action. The mages had to be her first priority. While the massive skeletal worm posed more of a threat to her life, she’d never win a fight with the mages constantly peppering her with crowd control. Sure, they could never hope to hold her in place, but all they needed was to keep her reacting to them.

But as Eve cast her eyes about the cavern, the eight surviving mages were nowhere to be seen.

It took a blast of fire roaring towards her from above for Eve to spot them.

As the rock worm twisted itself to strike once more, the skeletal mages had stepped inside it, climbing its ribcage like a ladder. They clung to the bare bones at the thing’s center, twenty feet in the air and well protected by the worm they rode. Eve cursed.

A volley of spells flew her way, bolts of darkness, shards of ice, the shimmering air of pure heat. Eve didn’t bother trying to absorb them all. She Jetted out of the way.

Two of the spells, an arc of lightning and some kind of tissue-dissolving curse, managed to hit the zombies around her, resulting in two more combatants out of the fight, even if Eve received no credit for their defeat.

As she dodged, Eve did take the moment to slam her club through another of the floor bound zombies, ignoring the kill notification that popped up. She took a precious second to distance herself from the zombies. They mostly bore melee weapons, which marked them as distinctively less of a problem than the giant worm full of mages. A smart adventurer had to have her priorities in order, after all.

Eve Charged in.

Another wall of sticky darkness materialized in front of her, but she was ready this time. In the second before she hit it, Eve claimed its Mana as her own, launching it away in the form a shadow bolt directly at the cluster of mages. A barrier of golden light deflected the projectile.

“Since when can undead wield light magic?” Eve shouted.

Light mages can die too, you know, Lumy responded.

Eve sighed.

In a decidedly unrehearsed motion, the rock worm decided the best way to stop her advance was to swipe its tail at her, a maneuver which dislodged three of the skeletons from its ribs. They fell to the ground with a clatter, collapsing into piles of unattached bones for the few seconds it took them to reassemble.

That was all Eve needed.

In the same second as she Jetted up and over the rock worm’s tail swipe, the Defiant launched a wide-coned Mana Burst at the momentarily incapacitated skeletal mages, annihilating all three in a single spell. She grinned as the kill notifications came in.

One of the zombie archers loosed another arrow her way as she landed, but Eve managed to dissociate her lower abdomen in time for the projectile to pass harmlessly through. Her only ranged attack on cooldown, she retaliated not with physical warfare, but with mental warfare, which is to say she flashed it a rude gesture.

Eve didn’t dare leap for the worm while her only way to reposition mid-air—Jet—remained on cooldown, so instead she backed off, darting away from worm and mage alike to clear out the last of the zombie archers. As she drew near, however, the mages threw hindrance after hindrance at her.

The Defiant absorbed walls of darkness, kicked through grasping roots, skidded across conjured oil slicks, and burst through nets—not magic, just normal, rope nets—as she tried to cross the cavern towards her chosen target. By the time she actually managed to reach it, both Jet and Mana Burst were available once more.

The battle dragged on. The skeletal mages slowed Eve down with their barrage of inconveniences, forcing her to over-depend on Jet to force her way through or Mana Burst to strike opponents at range. The whole affair would be easier if she could fully dissociate to get around the blockages, but she didn’t dare leave the cursed ring sitting around for some zombie to pick up. That sounded like a great way to set an eldritch plague loose.

Still, Eve made inexorable progress. By the time her Mana pool fell to half, she’d already taken out all but a few of zombies, and half the mages. The rock worm itself still raged, but her various Mana Bursts had managed to knock out a number of its ribs, leaving it wriggle awkwardly without the support of those particular bones. Eve took a breath.

The fight was a slog, plain and simple, but a winning slog nonetheless. At least, it was until Lumy ’s mind reached out to Eve’s.

This is taking too long, she sent.

Eve paused. “What?”

Before she could press further, though, every undead in the chamber collapsed all at once, each leaving a small ball of silver light floating above their corpse. As if at the snap of a finger, the lights all arced through the air, meeting at a single point where a certain phantasm hung above the cavern floor. Eve received no kill notifications, but the monsters clearly lived no more.

Eve froze. “Lumy, what the hells was that?”

You were taking too long, so I harvested them, Lumy explained as if she hadn’t just killed an entire party of level one-hundred undead on her own.

“You did what? How?”

I harvested their phantasm, came the reply. Undead like to make it difficult, but it’s still pretty simple, really.

“And that kills them?”

It kills everything, really. Well, not everything, Lumy clarified. It probably wouldn’t kill you, but that’s because you’re not technically alive.

Eve stared wide eyed at her companion. “Since when can you do that?”

Oh, I’ve always been doing it, Lumy sent. Usually you kill things faster though, so I wait until after things are dead. How else did you think I was leveling up?

Eve blinked. Truth be told, she hadn’t thought Lumy was leveling up. She’d always known monsters grew by eating rather than fighting or questing, but she supposed it didn’t surprise her to find Lumy wasn’t like most monsters. She didn’t eat, for one.

For the first time since she’d first met the phantasm, Eve Appraised Lumy.

Level 94 Phantasmal Harvester

“Ayla’s tits, Lumy,” Eve cursed. “How’d you get so high level?”

You guys kill a lot of things, Lumy sent.

Eve blew air through her cheeks. “That’s absurd. And this whole time you could’ve just… killed shit. Just like that?”

It depends. Anything too much higher level than me tends to keep a stronger hold on its phantasm than I can break. Similarly, things that don’t need phantasm to bind them to the mortal plane—constructs, elementals, you—I can’t harvest at all.

Eve shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve been walking around with a floating one-shot machine all this time.”

And I’ve been floating around with a walking one-shot machine, Lumy sent back.

“Fair point,” Eve said. “But why am I just finding this out now?”

Lumy sent back the concept of shrugging. I’ve never had a reason to show off. Besides, I know how touchy you get about your precious exp. It’s easier for everyone if I just wait until after you’ve killed things to claim the phantasm.

Eve froze, realizing that no kill notifications meant no exp. “Hold the fuck up. Are you telling me you stole my exp?”

Anyway, Lumy hastily changed the subject, that looks like our vault right there. Think you can get it open?

Eve opened her mouth to complain further about the grievous misdeed Lumy had just carried out, before stopping as she realized the end of her secondary quest represented a windfall of exp far beyond anything the rock worm could’ve been worth. She swallowed back the witty retort she totally had planned that absolutely was not just calling Lumy an asshole, and diverted her focus to the cavern around her.

The way was clear. All that remained was to claim her prize.

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