Chapter 220: Witchdoctor

Hop, hop, little frog. You won’t escape my pot.

- Aman Rak Witchdoctor

Aliandra

Ali pulled out her rune notes, intending to take a little study time while Mato whipped up something for breakfast before they broke camp and headed deeper into the jungle in search of answers for what had befallen Aman Rak. But right as she started to get stuck in, comparing the transcription of Kir’mogan’s tattoos to a few of the more intractable runes deeply entwined in Nevyn Eld’s disturbing array, her chime interrupted.

Variant: Lunaré’s Tears added to Imprint: Wildflower.

Ali looked up sharply at the unexpected notification and immediately switched her attention to her distant domain back beneath Myrin’s Keep. She skipped across the senses of her minions like a pond-skater darting across the water: Giant Bat, Kobold Warrior, Vampire Hornet, Icicle Bat, Tunnel Weaver, Forest Guardian, until she finally found a Glitter Dragonet gliding through the vast space among the canopy of Lirasian Oaks of her Forest Cavern that could see some figures far below. She immersed herself deeper into its awareness and swooped downward to get a closer look, leaving tiny trails of sparkling gold in the wake of her little dragon wings. Flying under her own power – even just borrowing the experience briefly – made her blood sing. Her tiny wings quivered in sympathetic excitement.

She caught the instant the Beast Tamer’s eyes locked onto her, bow readied, but she recognized Willow immediately; the girl who had won her Timber Wolf companion from her dungeon. As the bow lowered, Ali glided down towards the now-recognizable adventurer group, glancing from one to the other curiously. They were all here – a full raid group comprised of both Teagan and Aiden’s teams. They all seemed to be waiting for Basil to finish whatever he was doing in her flower garden.

Ali came to a stop, finding a perch on a rocky ridge beside him, and cocked her head to study his work, while another thread of her mind drew several other minions with diverse perception skills closer for a better look. She had loved the little garden of wildflowers he had planted for her, and she had even tried to recreate it as best she could after the burning of her forest, but this was the first time Basil had returned to it. He wielded a little silver trowel in one hand and a few small bulbs in the other while his delicate magic cradled and nurtured the ones he had already buried in the soil.

Before her tiny draconic eyes, his fascinating magic swirled and tiny leaves sprouted, springing from the carefully prepared ground. A stem and bud reached up to sample the world for the first time and tiny delicate petals of yellow-white opened to release a small pulse of mana into the surrounding area.

Lunaré’s Tears – Wildflower – level 24 (Holy).

Ooh, pretty! Ali made a short gliding hop and landed on his shoulder. Basil let out a startled squeak but did not drop the bulbs. Ali crooned softly and nuzzled his cheek with her little golden dragon head, burping up tiny motes of light magic that bounced off his cheek, before taking off again and leaving him to his work.

Thank you, Basil.

***

Ali got to her feet once everyone was done with breakfast and double-checked her minions before they headed out down the unexplored path leading further up the mountain, and deeper into the jungles of Aman Rak.

Birds sang in the trees, greeting the day. Combined with the lush greenery and the bright light filtering through the gaps in the canopy, it created the illusion of an idyllic nature walk, and Ali had to remind herself that she was in a deadly dungeon, and she couldn’t relax her vigilance.

“What are we going to do with her?” Malika asked, glancing toward Gara who stood beside Mato, carrying her shiny new axe and shield at the ready. “We can’t take her with us, this dungeon is way too high-level for her to be fighting.”

“We can’t leave her behind,” Mato said. “She’s all alone, and the dungeon has almost certainly respawned everything back the way we came in.”

“Let me ask her.” Switching to the challenging language of the Trolls, Ali asked, “We’re going to continue further in, but it’s very dangerous. What do you want to do?”

“I will reclaim Aman Rak,” Gara declared. “I am a Troll. Trolls do not flee from battle because it’s hard.”

“You’re level twelve,” Ali said, struggling to find the words to temper the harsh reality in her language. “Kir’mogan was level eighty-one. I can inscribe a teleport circle, but I can only send you to a human town. At least you will be safe and not die needlessly.”

Gara blanched, swallowing uncomfortably, clearly not having understood the enormous power difference, but she remained resolute. “I cannot leave without saving Val’korr. They took him too.”

Val’korr, why does that name sound familiar? Ali weighed up the risks of dying to a stray high-level spell or an uncontrolled dungeon monster, against Gara’s resolve and her obvious need to do something to regain control of her life, and decided it was not her choice to make. Gara seemed to understand the implications of her position well enough.

“Will you stay back if we are fighting monsters you’re not yet strong enough to face?” She chose her words carefully, trying hard not to imply Gara was weak. Such a thing would be hard for a troll to stomach, even if it was blatantly evident.

“I… yes. But I want to do something… I need…” she trailed off helplessly, hanging her head.

“Can you tell us what we should expect along the road?” Ali asked, gesturing in the direction of the heavy drakes. Gara did not have to be high-level to give them effective intelligence.

“This is the path to Kir’vella’s cave,” she said, looking somewhat relieved at the prospect of contributing meaningfully to their goal of progressing through the dungeon, even though it wasn’t direct combat. “Kir’vella is the strongest of the Aman Rak Witchdoctors and the first champion. Not even Kir’mogan dared challenge her. She can banish people to the Spirit Realm and summon spirit beasts to haunt them.”

“Tell me more about this Spirit Realm,” Ali asked. They had already explored an Abyssal Realm, but this sounded like something else entirely.

“The Seeker teaches that the Spirit Realm is all around us, but most of us cannot see or connect to it except in dreams or death. Most trolls in Aman Rak only connect to the Spirit Realm with our Ancestral Spirit Runes, but Witchdoctors can visit and travel through it, see it, and touch it, unlike normal people. If you or I were to go there, our weapons and magic would not be able to affect anything, but we would remain vulnerable to attacks. It is an extremely dangerous place. Dangerous spirit beasts hunt in the Spirit Realm, and only the Witchdoctors have the knowledge and wisdom to survive.”

“That sounds… terrifying,” Ali admitted. “And magic doesn’t work there?”

“Witch doctors gather Ghost Mushrooms from the Spirit Realm for use in their concoctions and brews. If you find a few, I can show you how to use them to make your magic affect both realms briefly. Only with this will you be able to defeat Kir’vella.”

“So, we should hunt witch doctors and steal these mushrooms before we take on Kir’vella?” Ali asked.

“Yes,” Gara said. “But it will be difficult to defeat even one witch doctor.” She said it with a strange combination of tension and pride in her voice. “On the way to Kir’vella’s cave, we must pass the shrine where Val’korr was taken. I would like to go there and search for him.”

“Ok,” Ali said, quickly summarizing for everyone else.

“A new kind of Troll with crazy spirit-world magic that can only be defeated by eating special mushrooms?” Mato asked, summing it up in his unique fashion.

“Uh, I guess that’s one way to say it,” Ali answered.

“Mmm, tasty work.” He rubbed his stomach.

Malika snorted, “I’ll have none of your ‘funny mushrooms,’ Mr. Beastkin!”

***

Ok, here we go, Ali thought, eagerness filling her mind as Calen raced down the partially overgrown road towards them, a band of angry trolls hot in pursuit, throwing their bone axes at his swift and nimble form – a form that seemed to shimmer and warp erratically under the influence of his defensive shroud, and somehow was never quite where the flying axes were.

“That’s a really good skill,” Ali said.

“You can say that again,” Malika agreed. “Wish I had something like it.”

“Stepping out of the way of attacks before people even think of them isn’t enough for you?”

“Hmph.”

Ali drew her forces into a loose semi-circle with her Forest Guardian and imps along the outer edges, and her Abyssal Stalkers taking full advantage of the concealment of the trees and brush. Flanking Mato, in the center of the path, she marshaled her two Armored Drakes, ready to tank whatever Mato didn’t grab. Next to them, she had her two Hellfire Wargs, making six heads that could breathe fire. A little behind them, a pair of wiry Troll Bone Warriors guarded her newest minion: the Blood Shaman.

Ali darted between her minions, distributing mana potions to her Acolytes and minor agility elixirs to the troll warriors. She offered a mana potion to the Blood Shaman, getting a quizzical head tilt before she realized what she had done. She had faced their terrifyingly powerful blood magic from the perspective of a foe several times now and had thoroughly reviewed her abilities and skills, but none of it gave her any intuitive feel for how her shaman would affect their group strategy, nor how powerful she would be as one of their allies. However, mana potions were worthless for them; she quickly switched it for the biggest health potion she could summon and earned a grin from the troll.

Calen had explained that the shaman filled a hybrid melee-healer role, something that she had little direct experience with. Her closest match was the very low-level Storm Shamans serving as melee casters, or perhaps the Forest Guardian which served as a part-time healer and a tank with battlefield control using its plant magic. The Blood Shaman seemed to have a much more proactive skillset.

“Shaman first,” Calen said, sprinting through the armored front line.

“Got it,” Malika answered.

Ali extended her senses, taking several simultaneous minion points of view, the familiar Healer’s Sight of her Acolytes standing far behind the melee line with Gara, the sight of one of her Armored Drakes, and the still bizarre scent-based blood perception of her new shaman. The incoming trolls were mostly the familiar Bone Warriors, but they had a Blood Shaman amongst them. I’ll need to watch him for Bloodlust.

“You can begin,” Ali sent her instructions to her shaman, but her minion was already dropping her totems and slicing a gash in her forearm to begin feeding her own blood into her potent spells. Her axe and shield began to drip crimson blood which filled Ali’s nostrils with a nearly overpowering metallic stench, and then the Blood Restoration totem began hungrily soaking up the excess before it even touched the ground.

Ali couldn’t help seeing that Gara did the same, dropping a single totem and similarly anointing her shield with a self-bleed.

“Remember to stay back,” Ali cautioned. The incoming dungeon-spawned trolls would flatten her without even trying. Gara just hissed her displeasure, but she dutifully hunkered down behind the barrier Ali had summoned to protect her Acolytes.

The trolls met Mato and her two Armored Drakes out in front, generating an immense crash of bone armor against scales and hide. Birds screeched in fright, bursting upward from the trees in a frantic cloud as the overgrown road cutting through the jungle was suddenly filled with Mato’s roaring, sharp and powerful draconic talons screeching against bone armor, the chorus of Demonic Howls from Calen’s bow and Ali’s wargs, granting additional power to their forces, and the sizzling roar of hellfire and dragon’s breath.

Gleaming or bloodied axes slashed, ripping flesh and spraying blood, and Ali’s nose was assaulted with a riot of overwhelming scents. Every injury and wound told a story picked up by Scent of Blood with the precision of a bloodhound.

No, this is much, much more. She had tried familiarizing herself with the skill of her Abyssal Stalkers, but in the mines, they had been facing many bloodless elementals. Here everything had blood. She could tell the size of each creature, their health and injuries, and even identify individuals, all from scent – it was a perception that conveyed as rich a view of the world as her own vision. And, mid-battle, it was a riotous chaos, not unlike trying to focus on a single conversation in a loud bar filled with drunken dwarves.

Ali simply let it wash over her. I’ll get used to it with practice, she thought, focusing her attention on her shaman’s actions instead.

Malika picked out the enemy shaman from the fray as their primary target, and Ali’s trolls sprang into action, the warriors only marginally faster. Her shaman opened with a Lacerate critical strike, using its thirty-second recharge skill. Even overwhelmed by the sense herself, Ali witnessed the attack being delivered with precision and agility, guided by the Scent of Blood. As the blood-drenched axe struck, it sliced open a deep wound that gushed with blood – blood that began coiling and twisting through the air toward the nearby totem. At the instant the blood in her axe mingled with the enemy shaman’s wound, Ali felt her shaman trigger her Vampiric Hex, and through her Healer’s Sight, she could immediately tell all their attackers began receiving pulses of healing magic from every successful strike. Healing that was powerfully supplemented by the nearby Blood Restoration totem.

Ali glanced at her line of Acolytes standing by, but none of them had cast anything more than a few precautionary restoration buffs.

“Go!” Calen yelled, and a surge of light magic filled the battle, pulsing from the motes floating overhead.

“Bloodlust!” Ali yelled, structuring her mental and vocal command in the language of the trolls for added precision and clarity.

Out in the thick of battle, her shaman responded, instantly triggering the potent signature spell. Troll blood surged, exploding outward from her body as her health dipped dramatically, blood spent to power the spell. Ribbons and streamers of blood lashed out across the battlefield, forming the circling bloody runes, and coloring everyone’s eyes with tears of blood.

“Blood and Bone! For Aman Rak!” Gara screamed. A thin tendril of blood shot out from her hand, bending around the barrier and touching the much higher-level shaman in the middle of the melee, recovering just a little of her sudden loss of health. Moments later, the Kobolds reacted with holy spells.

Ali felt the surge of power coursing through her body, the rush of new strength and lightness in her limbs. She forcibly ignored the powerful desire to rush over and hit something with her fists. I need to have her limit the targets in the future, she noted, wiping the bloody amber tears from her cheeks in what must have made an extremely grim picture. Bloodlust did nothing for a pure magic user like her, nor her Acolytes. The only creature excluded from her shaman’s power was her Forest Guardian fighting on the far flank of the battlefield.

“Burn it down!” Calen yelled; his voice far rougher than usual.

Across the battlefield, her minions, Malika, and Mato blurred with bloody haste and power. The enemy shaman’s health spiraled in an unprecedented freefall, visible to Ali with both her Healers’ Sight and Scent of Blood.

“Focus, everybody,” Malika said, her voice calm and steady. But even her punches seemed far faster and more powerful.

Ali kept her attention trained on the enemy shaman searching for the signs of a magic she couldn’t see forming. A few seconds later, it released its own Bloodlust in response, just as she had predicted. The blood magic exploded out of the shaman, surging toward all the enemy Bone Warriors, causing them to roar and yell battle cries and challenges.

“Use your recharge skills,” Malika called out.

But Ali’s friends and minions were already trained on the enemy shaman, and their empowered assault burned its health down relentlessly, killing it in seconds – before it could even use its powerful healing spell. She noted the clear vulnerability for future strategy: Bloodlust cost a substantial amount of health, leaving the shaman momentarily vulnerable – lower on health and briefly unable to heal.

“Good call, Malika,” Ali said. Her view of the battlefield showed the dramatic impact of the enemy Bloodlust on their overall health, but her shaman responded with Blood Siphon, targeting Mato. Thick ropy streamers of blood burst forth from her hand – far thicker than Gara’s – and slammed into Mato’s straining body as he aggressively defended against four hasted Bone Warriors. The streamers cascaded through him, hopping across to one Armored Drake and then the next in an instant. All three of them recovered dramatically, so much health restored that Ali was shocked. Less than a second later, the shaman did it again, this time the second and third jumps bursting through the Hellfire Wargs.

“This warrior,” Malika announced, picking the next target.

I guess that’s the real difference between a level seventy-one healer and a level twenty, Ali thought, shifting her minions to the new focus. It was as clear a demonstration as she could imagine of just how obsolete her Kobold Acolytes were in a battle against monsters more than three times their level. If I can get used to seeing health with Scent of Blood, there is no reason to use the Kobolds anymore. Or the Forest Guardians. For some reason, this thought made her sad. Maybe Naia can help me with working out how to level them further?

The rest of the battle proceeded predictably now that the enemy shaman had been killed. The Bone Warriors were strong, no doubt, but without their powerful healer, it was simply a matter of time. Malika called the targets one at a time, and they shifted efficiently through them. Before their Bloodlust ran out, Ali and her friends had taken out more than a third of their enemies, her shaman keeping their forces healthy by herself, only needing to supplement her Vampiric Hex and Restoration Totem with an occasional Blood Siphon to top off the tanks.

As the battle wound to a close, Ali had made up her mind. After deconstructing all the fallen trolls, she unsummoned her Forest Guardian, and all but one of her Kobold Acolytes. I only need one, she thought, deciding that Healer’s Sight was critical enough to keep – at least until she was confident with Scent of Blood. It didn’t feel good to part with her father’s Elemental Guardian and the trusty Kobold Acolytes that had served her so well for so long, but they were simply too low level to matter much against these dungeon-spawned trolls. She paged through her Grimoire and summoned a second female troll shaman, giving her the equipment from the enemy shaman they had just killed.

“That good, huh?” Calen asked, responding to the obvious readjustment of her forces.

“Yes,” Ali answered. The difference in capability was so large, that to not adjust and leverage her shamans would be irresponsible. She was beginning to understand why most of the dungeons they had encountered simply didn’t bother with lower-level summons. There had been a few fire spiders in the Emberforge Mines, and the swarm of Stinging Jellies in Naia’s ooze dungeon but, other than that, all the dungeons except for her had skipped the lowest-level creatures entirely. She had enough mana to support maybe one or two more creatures, but she decided to hold off and observe for now. Probably I’ll want another imp, she thought.

“Thanks, Ali,” Malika said.

Calen

Calen slipped through the trees without making a sound. His Explorer skill warned him that the area he was moving through was somehow different than earlier, even though the dense overgrowth and mossy trees looked the same – but his tracking revealed strange details about whatever had moved through this space, things he couldn’t readily explain.

Gara had told Ali about the witch doctors, and the presence of a special kind of mushroom they needed to continue through the dungeon. He didn’t know how to find mushrooms, but his skills were ideally suited to tracking down the trolls in this part of the jungle.

Except…

The distinctive three-toed tracks he was following inexplicably vanished again. It was as if his prey had simply taken the last step and then disappeared. The last time this happened, it had taken him about ten minutes of searching before he discovered where the tracks had miraculously reappeared.

A skill for obscuring tracks? Teleport? Calen’s mind supplied theories and explanations as he began searching.

His focus was so trained on the trackless ground, with his skills enhancing his visual perception, that he almost missed the strange flickering in the air by a nearby tree. He whipped his head around in time to see a lean, blue-skinned troll shimmer through from… elsewhere. The troll squatted down, balanced on the knuckles of one hand pressed against the ground. He wore a garishly painted bone mask that completely obscured his face but still allowed his tusks, adorned with dangling beads and leather braids, to jut out forward and to the sides. His lean torso was clad in armor of leather and bone, and in his left hand, he grasped a long segment of a humanoid femur, delicately etched and painted. The troll gestured with the bone and spoke a single word, following that with a cackle of laughter and a little hopping dance.

A wave of dizziness hit Calen as the world beneath his feet lurched. The cackling, brightly painted, capering troll began to grow rapidly larger. His Howling Hellfire Bow grew larger, and heavier in his hand until he was forced to drop it. The trees grew larger until even the bushes and ferns towered above him, while his body felt like it was twisting in all kinds of unnatural ways.

He yelled in alarm, but the only thing that came out was a croaking noise. “Ribbit!”

You have been cursed with Frog Hex
You are a frog.
Strength is reduced to 5.
Damage has a chance to dispel Frog Hex.
Curse – Duration: 2 minutes.

Fuck!

His obnoxious troll adversary let out gales of uproarious laughter, going so far as to hold the sides of his belly and slap his thigh.

Throughout the troll’s outburst of mirth, Calen flopped around. He was tiny and weak – far too small to even lift his bow. All his other equipment had gone wherever equipment went when shapeshifted. He couldn’t access his storage enchantment because his ring was gone. And he was green. He croaked again, but he couldn’t make a loud enough noise to attract the others, nor would they even hear him above the sounds of the other frogs and jungle animals.

He had no choice – he ran. But his tiny frog body refused to cooperate, waddling and flopping about. Shit! The troll pointed a broad finger at him and let out another peal of laughter. Calen had never been a frog in his life before. How does a frog even move? He flopped around again, but his legs were too long and bent in weird ways.

Frogs jump, he told himself. Careful not to flop over again, he concentrated. At least my dexterity is still good. He tensed his muscles and sprang forward into the air, executing a phenomenal leap, many times his own height and length, and landed a few feet further from the troll.

Panic began setting in, and Calen did the only thing he could think of. He identified the troll using Explorer.

Witchdoctor – Troll – level 80

[Explorer]
A Troll Witchdoctor in traditional Aman Rak attire.
Category: Dungeon Monster
Threat Level: Normal
Monster Type: Troll
Damage: Soul
Known Abilities: Regeneration

The witch doctor had finally stopped laughing, and conjured an earthenware jar from somewhere, making a scooping motion with it through the air. In the middle of the arc, the jar – and his hand – became ethereally transparent for a moment before returning to normal. The troll peered into his jar, shaking it a bit before he cackled again and tossed it hard at Calen.

Calen leapt again, barely avoiding being crushed as the jar exploded into fragments on the ground, spilling its contents everywhere – a horde of blueish, transparent spiders and several buzzing insects. To his horror, his throat and mouth convulsed at the sight and, before he could stop it, his tongue shot out and caught a fly.

Gagging and choking on his unwanted, nasty meal he turned tail and ran – or rather, hopped as fast as he could – as a horde of spiders almost as big as he was converged upon him.

 ----------

https://www.patreon.com/DungeonOfKnowledge

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1135403/dungeon-of-knowledge

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/80744/dungeon-of-knowledge-raid-combat-litrpg