At the hole’s bottom, I found skid marks from whoever dragged the drax bodies to the surface. Deep gouges made the trail highly visible. Scores of fresh footprints accompanying the drag marks compelled me to follow. The goblin-sized footprints could be from the ones who dubbed themselves The Deathless.

  The tunnels sloped downward and passed by doorways on either side. Openings in the ceiling revealed rooms above the hallway. I stood up straight and peered into the room above. Odors from ragged bedding dissuaded me from further inspection, but the ceiling’s height and the lack of staple rungs taught me something I’d never known about goblins—they jumped. It looked as if they comfortably cleared at least a 6-foot vertical leap.

  I stood up straight and stretched my back whenever I passed another ceiling opening.

  Going so deep into the maze would have made me more nervous if it weren’t for the skid marks. I followed the freshest footprints when the impressions split at an intersection. They’d killed at least a dozen hatchlings, so it made sense the fights occurred in multiple locations.

  I followed footprints until the sounds of combat ahead caught my attention. I ended Presence and pulled out a glow stone but acted too slowly. The light from my spell had given me away.

  After weeks of studying the goblin language, understanding their angry cries hadn’t come as a surprise.

  “Who makes that light?”

  “Go see who follows!”

  I retrieved the Dark Room rope from my inventory. It appeared in a mass of tangles, which was why I preferred keeping it out in case of an emergency. Luckily, I shook it loose without making any knots while backtracking to the nearest opening in the ceiling. After tossing the rope upwards, I climbed into the Dark Room and pulled the line inside before any goblins showed.

  While I climbed, I caught a glimpse of the room above the corridor from the Dark Room. I counted a dozen depressions filled with bedding. Sticks and rocks littered the area. It looked like an unremarkable sleeping chamber.

  But entering the transdimensional space plunged the room below into pitch black. I’d forgotten that the light and sound acted like a one-way street between the Dark Room and the world outside. The glow stone in my hand didn’t light the room beneath me. Making an executive decision, I tossed it into the room’s corner, bathing the space in soft light.

  I crouched on the Dark Room floor and waited until I heard shuffling below.

  Four goblins ran through the corridor below the room. They doubled back and jumped into the space, following my scent and the light source. Each nameplate bore the title Deathless and detailed monster levels ranging in the mid-teens.

  One goblin picked up the glow stone and smelled it while shielding his eyes. Its radiance compared to a candle. I expected them to fight over it, like the gold coin, but the goblin tossed it against the wall as if trying to break it. It cursed as the stone rolled to a stop—showing no worse for wear.

  “Human is here.”

  “Tell chief.”

  “No. You tell chief!”

  The quartet searched the room, looking for me—upending rags, skins, and pieces of bark. One batted a small sack of pebbles across the room as if I might have hidden beneath it.

  “Human is not here.”

  “But I smell human.”

  The foursome argued over one another’s merits for being the news bearer, squabbling over the paradox of smelling but not seeing me. I understood almost every word and recognized their dialect—they spoke Bonepit, not Shoughmeat.

  Greenie came from the Bonepit tribe—and so did his brother, King Rezan. An uneasy suspicion crept through the recesses of my mind. If the Bonepit tribe came into the area, Rezan might be close to the relic. Were these Deathless the royal servants or an entourage? It seemed strange that Greenie hadn’t mentioned them. He and I concentrated on studying their language and culture since Bonepits stood the highest chance of searching for the relic.

  About ten minutes after the goblins appeared, harsh barks of rebuke echoed down the hallway. A husky level 15 goblin named General Sturm stopped beneath the room’s opening. I translated his dialect into broken phrases. “What is problem? Is human here or not?”

  The four scouts lowered their heads and explained how I disappeared, leaving behind a glow stone, which the general repeated to someone in the hall. General Sturm stepped aside to make way for a tall level 16 goblin whose nameplate confirmed my worst fears.

  King Rezan stood a foot taller than his brethren, wearing a gown whose bulk, formality, and opulence would have made King Louis XIV envious. The garment’s precise tailoring belied its goblin origin. It offered a little armor, +4 stamina, +20 percent influence range, and extended spell ranges by 10 percent. It belonged inside a temple or palace, not a filthy tunnel. How could he even walk without tripping over himself?

  Rezan bore a striking resemblance to Hawkhurst’s interim governor, looking like Greenie’s evil twin. They weren’t as ugly or unkept as their constituents, almost handsome in a gobliny fashion. He looked upward into the room, squinting through luminous yellow eyes. A magic crown completed the ensemble.

  Aside from which school of magic it empowered, the relic resembled the crown we’d fought to keep out of Winterbyte’s hands. All experimentation showed I couldn’t target spells like Magnetize and Move Object on equipped items. I couldn’t destroy the crown with a rune while resting on someone’s head. Compression Sphere tests showed knocking things off people’s heads to be possible, but in such a confined area, I wasn’t sure he’d fly very far.

  I needed to leave the Dark Room to cast a spell, and I couldn’t channel with an honor guard attacking me. I couldn’t grab it without Archdemon Enoch moving into my brain like a homeless friend inviting themselves onto my couch.

  It wasn’t clear how long ago Rezan found the crown, but I couldn’t know if leaving Hawkhurst earlier would have made a difference. Had my procrastination and preparation cost me my first solo mission? Instead of beating myself up, I eavesdropped on the scene below. I needed as much intel as possible with a relic bearer in play.

  Rezan moved oddly when he approached the opening, almost with unnatural grace. The glow from his eyes revealed dangling feet, explaining his tall stature. Rezan hovered in place while he spoke to the general.

  Instead of floating upwards, the goblins lifted Rezan into the room as if the king’s airborne mobility didn’t include verticality. Once inside, he levitated inches above the floor. He searched every corner with his squinting, lightbulb eyes. Shadows shifted as he moved and turned his gaze.

  Rezan murmured, almost to himself, as he assessed the chamber. “A stone glows, Master, and yet we and we see no human.”

  The goblin king spoke to himself like Winterbyte had when she first placed the relic on her head. He used first-person plural twice—a strange way to refer to the demon in his head. He still related to the other goblins, so it seemed he harbored independent thoughts and memories. Yet it stood unclear how much agency the king possessed.

  Sturm bowed as he spoke. “Do you believe it is the same human from yesterday, Your Majesty?”

  The King ignored his general’s question, pausing as if listening to something else. “Yes, Master. Kesir wakes to warn us.”

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  I grunted at the mention of Kesir—the goblin name for Iremont. News of my infiltration reached the king’s ears—either that or my smoke signals had reached his glowing yellow eyes.

  Could I kill him now? He stood alone in this room, but if goblins could jump, any assassination attempt would quickly escalate into a room filled with honor guards.

  Eliminating Hawkhurst’s most dangerous neighbor needed more than a little luck—it needed timing.

  Rezan wasn’t on a campaign trail—he came here to hunt monsters. If I counted Rezan and his honor guards as enemies, then it made drax hatchlings my allies. The thought amused me. I could pull an old RPG trick on them, biding my time until they pulled a monster’s aggro. They’d be vulnerable to a rear ambush where Rezan would stand.

  After Rezan floated down to the corridor, he left. The goblins followed, leaving the glow stone behind. Poking my head through the Dark Room’s opening, I used Slipstream’s interface to see if any goblins lingered behind. They did not. The eerie yellow glow of Rezan’s eyes dimmed the tunnel at his withdrawal.

  Seeing the relic’s true name gave me the crucial piece of intel I needed to create a rune to destroy it. I dropped out of the Dark Room into the abandoned chamber when I felt sure the goblins had left. After pulling out a parchment with prepared runes, I cast Inscribe Rune and penned the destruction target—The Cursed Band of Light Ascendence. Luckily, I hadn’t lost many intelligence points in Iremont, so the mana potion I possessed gave me enough to finish the job of empowering the rune.

  If I somehow knocked the crown from his head, I would need to trigger the rune as fast as possible. It wouldn’t do me any good if another goblin picked it up before I destroyed it. With a relic bearer out of the picture, I felt confident I could mop up his honor guard. And the resulting earthquake would make it easy for me to escape if I wanted.

  After packing away the Dark Room, I followed them on hands and knees. In nearly pitch-black conditions, even the faintest flicker of light carried, and Rezan’s glowing eyes provided ample ambient light, even from around corners. After having infravision for so long, I hated the idea of spending a power point on Arcane Sight to see in the dark.

  Using ambient reflections of the king’s yellow light, I followed the glow for ten minutes through winding crawlspaces until the crash of lightning and shouting rang ahead of me. The hunters had found another drax hatchling.

  I tucked the Dark Room rope into my inventory. While I wanted it handy, I didn’t want to lose it in the heat of battle. If sandwiching the relic bearer between a monster and my fist weapons would not work, I had movement tricks like Hot Air and Slipstream to escape. Rezan may be the best healer in town, but it would do him no good in a chase.

  The closer I crawled toward the noise, the more I could see. Some of the goblins’ words and phrases made no sense, but what I understood involved positioning and attack orders. Though Rezan specialized in court intrigue, he surrounded himself with warriors who were competent and coordinated by goblin standards.

  When I rounded a corner, yellow luminosity from Rezan’s direct gaze lit the scene. The folds of his gown didn’t quite touch the floor as he floated off the ground.

  “All the better to backstab you, my dear.”

  Nearly two dozen Deathless goblins faced a beast doing more damage than the entire honor guard. Yellow skulls capped almost all of them, but the make-shift helmets looked more decorative than defensive. They fought with nothing fancier than +1 or +2 weapons, and the lizard’s propensity for swallowing enemies hinted at how they killed such formidable monsters. They wore spiked armor to kill the monster with indigestion, sustaining a casualty rate of one goblin per hatchling.

  But the lizard they found wasn’t foolish enough to take the bait. The drax had 90 percent of its health with stats similar to the one I defeated.

  With their backs to me, I saw no reason not to use the Lance of Commitment. I had planned to use Blood Drinker, ramping up its bonuses on goblins before finding Rezan, but the possibility of losing him in these tunnels looked too great a risk.

  It seemed like a fair assumption the goblins could detect small amounts of light, so I didn’t buff my attack with Imbue Weapon. A pale blue illumination would immediately tip them off.

  I checked out Rezan’s stats to be sure I could kill him.

  Aside from the relic, the orange difficulty rating came from Rezan’s link to his royal guards. His high health came from the stamina bonuses of the relic and the ten rings around his fingers. The king’s levitation also seemed limited. He bobbed over the ground, maintaining a constant distance from the surface. That drawback seemed crucial. He couldn’t fly, so escape wouldn’t be easy.

  I counted a royal escort of only 20 goblins engaged with about 1500 pounds of a gnashing, lashing, lightning-flashing alpha predator. With so many goblins on the surface, a non-gamer might wonder why so few guarded the king.

  I recognized the scene—they were power-leveling. The sentient monsters min-maxed their experience gains by fighting in reduced numbers. Rezan seemed to have all the cunning of his brother.

  After 20 steps, the lance should deliver close to 200 points of damage—if I critted, he’d be dead, and attacking from behind greatly increased the chance of a crit. I could quickly switch to my Divine Bow, give the remaining goblins a healthy dose of Thrust arrows, and mop up the king’s retinue. The honor guard still had a drax hatchling to entertain. I might even top off the encounter by adding another lizard to my kill count, for it would be wounded by the time I finished off the Deathless. Before sundown, I could snatch another purple core and be on my merry way.

  Of course, I wasn’t so foolhardy as to expect any of this to go as planned.

  Rejuvenate healed every second for 10 seconds. Rezan’s Rejuvenates cranked out 50 health per tick, and he could also extend the duration to 100 seconds for 5,000 health. I expected ridiculous numbers from this confounded relic and wasn’t disappointed. I hadn’t counted on ten Rejuvenates at once. The combat log’s worrying messages showed the relic much worse than I’d guessed.

  /Ascended Rezan casts Rejuvenate on Deathless Brute for 50 health.

  /Ascended Rezan casts Rejuvenate on Deathless Javelineer for 50 health.

  /Ascended Rezan casts Rejuvenate on Deathless Honor Guard for 50 health.

  The 50 health wasn’t the sum of his Rejuvenate’s healing—it counted for just a single tick. With 10 Rejuvenates spread among his warriors, it meant Rezan had no instant-heals available for himself. Since the Lance of Commitment gave a +10 damage bonus for every step I took when attacking, I estimated I only needed to be 20 yards away to kill him. Estimating distances to small targets wasn’t easy, for they looked further away. Too often, diminutive monsters aggroed players who thought they stood at a safe distance. I didn’t want to make that mistake at such a crucial moment.

  With his back to me, I began my attack as quietly as possible.

  Halfway through my Charge, an eyeball appeared out of thin air. Nine more winked into existence in a rough semi-circle around Rezan’s flank.

  The king turned to face me while dodging to the side. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid the attack, though he moved as if he knew my intent. The lance impaled him for 192 damage. Thanks to his magical eyes, my attack didn’t critically hit.

  I let the lance go and equipped my short sword while letting fly the only spell that might foil his chances to heal himself—Moonburn.

  Enemies bunched in a narrow hallway created ideal conditions for channeling the cone of damage.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish Moonburn. It seemed the Deathless caught behind the drax figured out how to attack me. Launching arrows caused only minor damage, but they interrupted my concentration. At a 25 rank in nature magic, I sustained a 6-second Stunning attack for 120 damage before an arrow struck, ending the effect early.

  The spray of damage caught four more goblins, more than halving their health pool. Moonburn channeled glorious results, bringing Rezan to only 22 points of life and Stunning them all.

  Stunned combatants couldn’t cast spells, but they could consume health potions. The king did so, raising his health by 100 points.

  I hit Rezan with my only damage-dealing instant–Arcane Missile. Because my arcane magic rank reached 25, the spell unerringly inflicted 48 damage.

  Rezan’s health dropped to 72 points.

  A hail of arrows rained. Some missiles struck for minor damage, but many missed.

  The damage from Arcane Missile convinced me to use my robe to reset its cooldown and hit him again while I followed up with my next melee attack. The second missile hit for the same damage, bringing him down to 24 health.

  As a fellow healer, I knew his next spell—Restore. Since the normal casting time for Restore lasted 6 seconds, he could nuke-heal him back full in less than half a second—faster than I could land an attack, so I hammered him with Counterspell in the nick of time.

  Rezan’s snarl encouraged me as I equipped the first weapon I saw in my inventory, Tardee’s short sword I’d used against the lizard.

  I only needed to inflict 24 more damage to tip the scales in my favor. Without the king’s healing, I held the upper hand. While other goblins might lunge for the relic, I could fend them off, especially in these narrow tunnels.

  Before my blade landed, Rezan cast a second Restore.

  It seemed impossible! I froze time and puzzled out the mystery. Casters afflicted by a Counterspell must wait until their cooldown transpired before casting again. Despite doing all the math and preparation, I’d forgotten the relic’s bearing. One-tenth of Restore’s cooldown lasted only 3 seconds.

  /Ascended Rezan casts Restore on himself for 368 health (+132 overheal).

  /You hit Ascended Rezan for 35 damage (4 resisted).

  His nameplate health bar read 455/370. The king somehow gained a temporary Overheal surplus of 77 health, which ticked down to his normal health pool by 1 health for every passing second.

  Was Overheal a power I hadn’t seen before? Giving yourself health by Overhealing didn’t seem fair.

  Even after unloading my arsenal, the relic’s bonuses overpowered me.

  Rezan had proved himself to be unkillable, and now he knew of my whereabouts. Even if I ambushed him again, he’d be more prepared.

  Seconds after my gambit, Rezan topped off his warriors’ health bars to full. As he did so, he glided across the ground, behind the safety of his entourage, glaring at me over the intrusion.

  All the while, they fought a thrashing drax monster. The healing all but eclipsed its ability to kill them.

  Backing away, I directed Dig at the sides of the tunnel to create a hazard between us. The spell destabilized the passage, causing a partial cave-in. It made a minor obstacle for such adept diggers, and the porous tunnel system meant their detour route wouldn’t be long, but it bought me a little extra time.

  The lightning lizard wouldn’t survive long.

  I fled for my life.