Chapter 02

Deep Wound

Poison

Fear

Frost Burn

Burn

I was riveted to Garmar’s every word during his lesson.

The sun was out and bright. The day was astoundingly beautiful. It had stopped snowing, and the valleys and mountains around Magic & Lance were brutally bright. However nice it would have been to spend the day outside, there’s nowhere I wanted to be but here. I had a belly full of eggs and toast, I was warm beneath my cloak, and I was ready to learn.

“So let’s jump right in,” Garmar said. “Deep Wound is an affliction, not a wound. However, the affliction needs to happen to a physical wound you might receive in battle. You could have been pricked by a thorn, slashed by a sword, taken an arrow head to the gut, or had your skull bashed from a club. Normally you can heal any of these wounds. Deep wound, however, differs in that it is an affliction which cannot be healed by normal means: potions, runes, chants, and spells. Even a small thorn prick can afflict anyone with a deep wound. Identifying it is easy. Above your health bars, you’ll see the symbol of a drop of blood with a barbed gash through it.”

I remembered seeing the depiction in the book of afflictions in the commons of our lodge. Since there had been one copy, we’d all taken turns to study it, or looked over each other’s shoulder.

The book of afflictions was sold in two different ways. One version costs 50 gold with a list of afflictions that had up-to-date information from the time it was copied from the master book of afflictions. The second version cost 500 gold. It’s a permanent copy that updates itself whenever the master book of afflictions is updated. Magic & Lance had invested in the latter one. As we perused the book, we’d sometimes see corrections being made by unknown scholars. Ink would disappear or appear to update various texts. Along with a list of afflictions were descriptions, cure runes, and tidbits of other information.

Each of the depictions were as brightly colored as those I’d seen in my dungeon runs. I was eager to learn what the afflictions I’d run into were, and eager to build my knowledge. The symbol of the broken drop of blood was fresh in my mind.

“Poison,” Garmar went on, without missing a beat, “will generally be green. We’ll talk about two basic variations of poison. Once you’ve been poisoned, you’ll likely feel overcome with sickness and nausea. Your health bar will intermittently flash green. Everytime it does, you’ll feel a surge of the sickness and a flash of pain. On your health bar, you’ll see a small amount of damage occur. Poison will linger until cured. A secondary affliction of the poison is when your health bar is surrounded by a wreath of green. This means that whatever poisoned you, can activate the affliction, further dealing damage beyond the normal damage you would be receiving. Make sense?”

“So if we’re poisoned by a boss,” Pelle said, “We’ll be damaged every minute or so. If we’re poisoned with the wreath symbol, we’ll be damaged every minute or so in addition to the boss dealing damage through the poison.”

“Yes. In your example, Pelle, the boss may choose to rapidly use the poison against you, or it may simply let the double acting poison work of its own accord.”

So it was almost like double poison. I had fought a bone snake like that. Not only had I been poisoned, and taken damage every 30 seconds, but I had suffered additional damage every time the boss had flashed green. It was brutal.

“Moving on,” Garmar continued. “Fear. This is a difficult one because there are thousands of fear afflictions. More than half the fear affliction symbols are purple, so the color can sometimes indicate some sort of fear affliction or variant. Receiving a significant amount of damage can sometimes negate the effects of low level fear afflictions.”

“Like headbutting your companions,” I said.

“Well, uh, yes, I’ve heard that works,” Garmar said. “Next two afflictions are elemental in nature. Burn and frost burn. They’ll be pretty apparent when you’re afflicted by either. You’ll see a variation of a flame, or a variation of snowflakes, ice, frost, etcetera. These are perhaps the most difficult afflictions to cure, because the cure has to be specific to the affliction. An Ice Shard Infection affliction cannot be cured by a Cure Hoarfrost Infection spell or rune, for example. Keep in mind that burns and frost burns are often accompanied by supplemental afflictions. For example, frost burns are often accompanied by a slowdown affliction, which is represented by a downward pointing red arrow. Other times, frost burns will be supplemented with stupefaction.”

“What about stacking?” I said.

“Yes,” Garmar said. “Stacking. Burns and poisons are the most common afflictions which stack. Stacking afflictions deal additional damage per stack. Often these can be self stacking over time. Other times, being exposed to the same source of the affliction enough times will earn a stack.”

“Stacked afflictions don’t cure easily, do they?” a healer said.

“Depends on what you mean by “easily”,” Garmar said. “Each stack must be cured which could be quite expensive. If curing a basic burn costs 45 mana and there are 10 stacks, then you’re out 450 mana.”

There was no other way.

Every single one of us had encountered afflictions a handful of times. I was sure of it. There’s no way we had all gone through at least ten to twenty dungeons and had not dealt with afflictions. Especially healers, which I learned are expected to handle curing afflictions.

Our trainer explained that level 5 dungeons start to really incorporate afflictions. Wards would help, but the only guarantee was to be prepared with potions or spells. Since I had my spellbook, and I was accruing quite the mana pool, my first task was to add a cure for each one of the basic afflictions to my spellbook. The only problem was that I didn’t know which burn and frost burn affliction to put. There were just so many!

So later that evening, I sought out Garmar’s help. He’d been on one of his jogs around the guild when I’d finally spotted him. As usually he was eager to help, but more eager to get on with his day.

“Well Tosin, as far as runes go, burns and frost burns do have a basic rune you can use. They’re the first ones you’ll see in their respective categories in the book of afflictions. Try those. Often, they can mitigate some of the damage where the affliction is more complex, but it may not cure the root affliction. Complex afflictions require complex orders of runes, and that’s something we’ll get to much later. For now, at least until level 10 dungeons, you shouldn’t run into complex afflictions too much.”

With that, he’d simply leaned back into his jog and zoomed off. I considered what he’d said on my return.

Back at the commons of the healer’s lodge, I was ready to copy some runes and apply them to some empty pages in my spellbook. The first thing I needed to do was absorb today's mana crystal growth which took half an hour, since only one crystal had grown. Between yesterday’s crystals and today’s, my mana pool was now 621.

Clean of any mana crystal evidence growing from a spellbook, I returned to the podium where the book of afflictions lay open. There were a handful of healers milling about around tables and leant over items of interest, but none occupying the book.

The book of afflictions was a work of art. It was bound in tarnished gold and the cover alone was quite heavy. The pages were thick and meaty and smelled of ink and of colors. Yes, it smelled of colors. Symbols of afflictions were elegantly depicted upon each page. The colors were so rich and wet, that it was a mystery and a wonder that the ink did not bleed upon each previous page.

The first cure affliction I wanted to add was cure deep wound. When I found it, I explored the page, enjoying the art at my leisure. The top of the page read: “Deep Wound. Affliction.”

Beneath it was a fist size symbol of a deeply red drop of blood. A barbed gash cut diagonally through the drop, breaking it in two pieces.

Below the image, it read: “The deep wound affliction prevents the afflicted wound from being healed by normal means. Injuries afflicted can range from insignificant scratches to nearly lethal wounds. Must be cured. The deep wound affliction’s origin is still under investigation and study. There are sixteen possible origins, and the most likely comes from Legendary Dungeon Boss Tattaoh.”

Reading the trest of the text, I learned that Tattaoh had developed his dungeon to legendary proportions. The dungeon had earned an abyss that quickly catapulted the rise of the dungeon’s danger. Hundreds of adventures had fallen to an affliction, for which no cure yet existed, and that could not be healed.

It was then described that the affliction symbol earned from battling Tattaoh, closely resembled the current one, but several witnesses had claimed that the symbol was not quite the same. By description it was quite a bit different. Without substantial evidence, the true origin is still being sought out. Nevertheless, the most possible origin was still described in the text.

Matteel the Divine Shaman, entered the dungeon after learning his most prized devotee perished between the glossy teeth of Tattaoh. Accompanying him were forty adventurers. All were said to have suffered the deep wound affliction. Matteel fought Tattaoh beside his dying followers and earned a cure deep wound scroll from the dungeon loot.

The original scroll resides in the eleventh volume of Matteel the Divine Shaman Lore in his temples. The author then expressed their frustration with Tattaoh, because the divine refused to confirm on the origin of the affliction and the cure.

“...and as divines are eager for followers and influence, Matteel the Divine Shaman will not confirm our research, preferring to be known as the divine that discovered a cure to the deep wound affliction, rather than possibly launch another entity to lore.”

“Sounds exactly like what a divine would do,” I mused to myself.

Beneath the story was another fist sized symbol. It was the cure deep wound rune. It was beautifully painted. The border of the rune was teardrop shaped. There was a ladder made of dots where the gash was located on the affliction symbol.

Below the symbol was the mana cost requirement of 50 points. Beneath that was the arcane imprint of its author. It was a gold fence of interlocking antlers. Upon each antler was a crescent moon.

I placed my spellbook on the podium just below the book of afflictions. I flowed my mana into a medium ring above the books. I retrieved my runic stylo from my bag. When I touched the tip of the stylo to the top of my mana bar, a single filament, a single point of ethereal mana drew into the pen.

Centimeter by centimeter, I copied the rune exactly. I drew it in mid-air right in the middle of my mana ring. Instead of blue ink, it had become gold. The rune wavered as though seen through rising waves of heat. Once the rune was complete, I touched the tip of the stylo to the rune I’d drawn, and dragged it down through thin air and onto the next empty page of my spellbook.

When the rune settled onto the page, it flashed a metallic red, then dimmed. The edges of the page wrinkled and curled, then flattened out straight again.

Creating the rune to add to my spellbook had cost 1 permanent mana point. I wondered if I’d need to spend more mana in order to have the description and cost as well. Beyond a handful of cure affliction runes, I’m sure to forget them as I collect more. I’m sure to forget both descriptions and mana costs. I could ask someone at the guild post. Perhaps Garmar.

For now, I knew that the cure deep wound rune cost 50 mana. All that was left for me to do was spend another few mana points to add: cure fear, cure burn, and cure frost burn. We went over the basics for a reason, right? Might as well be prepared. I could always erase a page then add another. With the mana that I was earning everyday (except the single crystal from today) I didn’t mind too much if I ended up wasting a single point. As long as I didn’t do it too often.