Save him! shouted Rose over the comlinks to Ralph and Brandy.

Brandy cast a healing spell as Rose was demanding she save Lucas. From the look on her face, Brandy’s mana was nearly gone afterward.

“I… I can’t. I don’t have enough mana. I’m not sure one more spell will do him any good as his health is still ticking down slowly, and one more spell will knock me out and prevent me from doing anything to help for hours.”

Try Brandy. For Lucas try. Ralph, is there any way you can bind some of his wounds? Maybe we can stop the slow damage over time and give Brandy’s Mana time to regenerate before he dies.

“Uh... Brandy, did you cast a heal spell? His health just ticked up instead of down. It went up a little less than 10% of his health,” asked Ralph

Bind his wounds quickly. I completely forgot about Mind over Matter. It must still be active. He’s going to regenerate around two dozen hit points every minute or so. If we can get his Damage over time to below probably 20 a minute, he will live!

Pausing for a moment, Brandy reported, “He’s currently losing about 40 points of health every 60 seconds, so that is probably doable. Let’s bandage him up and then I will use whatever mana I have regenerated to heal him. Unless it tips the balance and makes enough of a difference to save him, I’m not going to cast spells until I pass out from lack of Mana.”

Fair enough. I’m going to see if I can pull any tricks out of the Dungeon Tech Tree while you are working on him. I haven’t spent the last of my EXP, and I got some more from this battle. Maybe I can find something.

The Commons, Cyberspace

Rose had 602 EXP. Checking her Tech Tree, the first thing Rose picked out was the Tier 3 in General Minions for Freelancers. Rose was 48 EXP away from being able to pick that up. She didn’t have time to have her cats or robots earn her 48 EXP before Lucas died. (Authors Note: Table is in Post-Chapter notes, multiple colors in a table doesn't work within the chapter area very well.)

The only thing she had that might help was Freelancers Blessing. But there was no guarantee.

“Grey! I need help,” shouted Rose into the void. “I know you care about Lucas and I am about to lose him.”

Grey popped into existence within the Commons Cyberspace. “I’ll help where I can. What do you need?”

“I need to know what Freelancer’s blessing does. We very close to being able to save him. But he is still bleeding out faster than Mind Over Matter can heal him.”

“I can tell you what it does, but why would you go for that instead of the defense boost?” asked Grey

“I’m 48 EXP short of being able to get that,” cried Rose.

“OK. Give me a moment,” said Grey. The light in the Cyberspace flashed brightly, and there was a sound like thunder. “I just wrote a hack for you into the system. Think ‘Right Click’ at one of your purchased skills. I’d use the EXP one.”

As Rose did this, suddenly a new box popped into her view.

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Sell "EXP +50%" back to the system for 100% of the purchase price?

This percentage decreases by 10% for every skill sold. It increases by 10% once per month.

“Here’s the other info you wanted,” said Grey, as another pop up popped up for Rose right after she accepted the first.

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Freelancer's Blessing:

Improves the rate at which Freelancers skills which are used for the Dungeon's gain by 10%

Defense Boost:

Reduces Damage taken from all sources by 10%

Rose, we’ve got his damage over time down to 28 points of health every 60 seconds. There’s nothing more we can do. On net, he’s still losing a few points over every minute. Unless you have something you can pull out of your magical bag of tricks, he’s going to die, said Brandy

“Roger. I’ve got something I can try,” said Rose. “How much total health does he have left?

Roughly 30 points of health. Best I can do is to double that to 60, but I will pass out if I do. That’s me casting Heal Major Wound twice. That won’t reduce his dot, but it will improve his health. Heal Flesh Wound will reduce his dot slightly, more if I get his health high enough, but the total I can heal is 15. If I do nothing, Lucas's got seven and a half minutes left until he bleeds out, unless he runs out of mana first.

“Give me a minute,” said Rose as she bought Automated Respawn, Freelancer’s Blessing, and Defense Boost.

“How about now?” questions Rose with an undertone of panic, knowing she had done everything she could do.

His regen and his dot nearly balance. He is losing a fraction over 25 health a minute, and he is regenerating only slightly less, replied Brandy I think we can save him. I regenerate enough in 10 minutes to cast a Heal Major Wound. As long as Mind over Matter doesn’t give out, I can slowly heal him. Cast once, wait for mana to regen. In that time, he ticks down about 12 health, but that means he is up 18 health. As long as I don’t pass out, eventually we should get him above 50%.

“Thanks, Grey!” shouted Rose as she stopped focusing on the Cyberspace and shifted back over to her robots in the mines.

Seventy minutes later, as Lucas's health crested above 50% before it began to sink again, Brandy cast “Heal Flesh Wound!”

As Brandy slumped forward from the mana exhaustion, she waited with bated breath. After a minute passed, there was no change in Lucas's net health. Two minutes, still no change.

I think we’ve stabilized him. Brandy, cast a few more heals as soon as you get mana. He’s out of the woods, now we’ve just got to wait for him to wake-up.

It took another almost two hours before Lucas finally woke up. His health had just ticked over to 100%, and his multiple bleed over time injuries had been healed.

“I take it we won,” said Lucas in a gravelly voice, coughing as he sat up.

We did. At least for this wing. There are two more wings to check. Since there isn’t any boss loot yet, you haven’t beaten the main boss of the dungeon.

“Has anyone checked the other two wings while I’ve been out?”

“I did Boss,” said Ralph. “The Copper/Iron wing looks like it is guarded by elementals of some sort. They are just standing there without moving. The third wing, the one that the symbol is all sorts of random colors, has animals defending it. But it is a real trip to look at the walls in that wing. My guess is that it has every different type of ore, more than I can identify anyways. I saw some jade, sapphire, ruby, and a host of other precious gemstones along with probably 50 different shades of grey ore.”

“The third wing is a little bit of everything then, but they aren’t attacking us either?” asked Lucas.

I’m not sure, but it is possible that whoever the Dungeon Master here is cannot get the Animals and the Elementals to attack. I’m having difficulty getting the squirrels to go outside the roof of The Commons. If they aren’t native to the Dungeon Master, who knows.”

“Eventually we are going to have to take them out. But if they are not attacking, let's do it tomorrow. I think I need to rest more before we move on. My health may show as 100%, but I sure don’t feel like it is at 100%,” said Lucas.

I’m going to send in some reinforcements too if you wait. The Robots should be able to get the Bandit corpses back to me, I should be able to strip them down and spawn new robots and send them back before morning. 15 robot bandits, maybe 15 new robots. Depends on the metal content.

“I suppose you could send your miners into this wing to mine while we wait.”

I had not thought of that. Good idea.

“Is there anything else you want us to do while we wait?” asked Brandy.

“Let’s just stand guard in the common room and wait for Rose’s reinforcements to get back here,” said Lucas