76 - Ghosting Yourself

  Joe needed more power to fight off the specter that had him in its clutches.

  Knowing he had windows waiting for him, he hoped that maybe there was something among them that he could use to fight back. Flaring [Diamond Focus], Joe steadied himself for the moment he needed to open the huge stack of alerts Hawking had waiting for him.

  As the sweep of euphoria flushed through his body and spirit, Joe watched most of his lesser physical wounds vanish, and his mind cleared further. He quickly scanned the new skill options and, just as quickly, passed on them. None would help him here. There were more efficiency buffs for his resources and the ability to use his [Healer’s Ward] on others. Good healer stuff, but no help for his current predicament.

  He was more interested in a secondary class. A shaman class that dealt with spirits would be just the sort of thing he needed, considering he was confronting a ghastly wraith creature that had ripped him out of his skin.

  Unfortunately, there was no dice on shaman. Even so, Hexer wasn’t bad. It would give him five attribute points instead of three and looked like it would award him skills he might be able to use against the specter that was chewing through his lifeline. Before Joe took it, he quickly looked at what else he had available. There might be something better.

  He auto-closed all the skill rank-ups and went to the next set.

  Even though reading these boxes was nearly instantaneous, Joe almost kicked himself for wasting the second on that block. Not only was it a loss of precious time, but it was also the loss of his mind-sharpening buff.

  His disgruntlement vanished when he noticed a drastic change in the wraith’s attack. The moment he regained [Iron Mind], the black smoke was driven away from his astral form and the silver cord. Joe realized the ebon miasma had been trying to take control of him, trying to dominate him.

  He threw a ghostly fist pump into the air. The red worms were still at work corrupting and warping his body and pattern, but it looked like Sougath had just lost the power to easily cut his spirit off from his body. He had more time.

  Before turning to the next set of alerts, he decided to see if he could [Identify] the phantasmal entity.

  Which turned out to be an utterly horrible mistake.

  The second Joe’s eyes landed on the empty sockets of the skeletal wolf-head, an overwhelming tide of fear swamped his soul. Icy dread filled his disembodied chest, while electric terrors sent his body on the ground below him trembling. Amidst the agony of being constantly reshaped, spasms of panic now his physical form twisting itself even further.

  Joe knew he was about to die. No, it would be something so much worse. He was about to be consumed and added to the thousand screaming ghosts that made up the nightmare creature that had torn his soul from his flesh. It would reel Joe in using the silver cord and devour him.

  His panicked mind conjured the goblin knife to cut the argent line. It would be better to exist as a ghostly apparition than become part of that prophetic horror.

  Just as he raised the spiritual blade to sever his tie to the mortal world, the Mark of Death countered the Mark of the Moon.

  Suddenly free of the soul-crushing dread, Joe looked at his own hand with a different horror. Sougath had almost won by getting Joe to commit spiritual suicide through terror. He dropped the knife, and it vanished the moment it left his hand.

  Furious Joe stared into the empty eye sockets, ‘You fuck!’

  Just naming it helped quell his fears even further. It was no longer a formless, overwhelming horror. It was the remnants of the Night Skinner. Something he could try and fight.

  Turning back to Hawking’s alerts, Joe continued to gather the pending empowerments waiting for him.

  He would probably take [Upgrade] when he picked his secondary class. Maybe he could upgrade an uncommon Hexer curse that would work on the specter to rare. Then, he might be able to go on the offensive. [Look Ahead] was the kind of trait everyone should take, but given that Joe had to survive this moment, he might be forced to take the attribute points if they could help him get out of this mess.

  He turned his focus to the corruption working its way through his body. Already, Joe’s hands seemed to have locked into their new form. His fingers had lengthened, and he had talons now instead of normal-looking fingernails. A coating of brown shaggy fur started from his middle knuckle, covering his hands and most of his forearms.

  ‘I am NOT going to become a werewolf,’ Joe swore. He focused his mind and fired [Dispell Rot] at his fingers. His ghostly eyes were able to watch the normally invisible spell fly at his hands and then pass futilely through his flesh.

  ‘Oh shit. Not good.’

  Joe tried casting all of his spells and found all the ones that affected his body failed. Only his Perception skills and [Crystal Mind] worked. Joe had his [Helping Hand] but no idea what to do with it.

  There was one other thing about his body he still felt very connected to: the Mark of Death. Even below the coating of hair, Joe felt drawn to the glittering symbol on his arm. Even detached as he was, he could feel it pulsing heavily against his flesh, practically begging Joe to use it against the invasion of the Sougath and the Mark of Moon.

  If the moon was seeking to overwhelm Joe with crippling fear and indecision, then he would use his omen to fight back.

  ‘Let’s change this up!’

  Joe narrowed his focus to just his hands and pushed hard against the prophetic mark, giving it full permission to flip the script. The reverberating gong was even more pronounced, trembling through his spirit than it had been inside his body.

  Joe had two unassigned points and two pending uncommon skills. He immediately dumped points into Strength and accepted the prompt. As the skill joined his sheet, the red corruption vanished from his hands.

  ‘Oh, fuck yeah!’

  He had a chance. He would have to convert enough of the corruption to stay a person. To do that, he’d need his new class and the points that came with it. Hexer would give him five, but a rarer class should give him more.

  Hey, Hawking? Is there any other way to gain classes?’

  ‘Shared?’

  Joe looked over at Azbekt and saw the myrmidon in prayer. His spiritual form was now burning with an intense blaze of golden flames. The spectral inferno seemed to be repelling the black mist almost as well as Joe’s [Iron Mind]. What was more worrisome was the huge masses of red tendrils writhing through the warrior’s ravaged body. Sougath must have repeatedly bitten Azbekt.

  Joe wondered if a rare [Dispell Rot] was what they needed.

  As if sensing his attention, the cantankerous enforcer turned to look at Joe. For the first time ever, Azbekt looked at Joe with warmth.

  “You are a man, after all, Joe,” the ghost stated. “Please forgive my behavior, newcomer. I was wrong about you.”

  “Don’t worry about that now. That thing,” Joe jabbered, pointing at the black mass. The large wolf skull had emerged again and seemed to be staring at them, “is trying to corrupt us.”

  “Yes. It has already altered our bodies and souls, mine more than yours. Should it finish, we will become monsters. I will not allow this abomination to occur. Phealti is preparing to take my soul and smite the baleful beast in the process. That may give you an opportunity to save yourself.”

  “Wait! You are giving up? You have been THE most stubborn person I have met here so far, and YOU are giving up? Don’t! Not yet! Help me, and I can try and save you.”

  “You will be hard-pressed to save yourself, Joe. I will not chance becoming something akin to what I have spent my life fighting. I go beyond into the hall of my lord Phealti. If I can bring down one more monstrosity before I go, so much the better. This thing is not from beyond our world, so my strongest abilities will not aid me,” the intractable apparition lamented.

  “What I can do is bring down the wrath of my lord in a righteous scourge. Yet if there is more I can do for thee, you have but to ask,” he continued, switching to a strangely archaic manner of speech. The flames coming off Azbekts back had become wing-like, as if the divine warrior was becoming something more heavenly already. “I owe thee a debt for my mistrust and misjudgment. I would like to see that paid before my death exacts its toll on the wraith assaulting us. What need have you?”

  “A class, rare or better. I think I have a way to fight back, but I’m going to need as many attribute points as I can get my hands on, fast.”

  “Of course. Myrmidon is only an uncommon. Dreadful Warden is a rare class requiring ten points of Vigor. Enforcer Champion is an epic class, but it requires sixteen points of Strength. You are welcome to any of these, but you must hurry,” the glowing spirit warned.

  Already, he was burning so brightly that Joe had to keep glancing away from the dwarf. His translucent arm and eyelids were no help in blocking the divine radiance building up in the zealous bomb that was Azbekt.

  An epic class would be amazing, but there was no way Joe could get to sixteen in any of his attributes, let alone Strength, which was still less than Vigor or Spirit. Still, Dreadful Warden was better than Hexer, so he dropped a point into Vigor. When Azbekt opened his sheet, Joe accepted the champion’s gift and then dove for the ground. He wasn't sure what sort of thunderbolt was coming, but he wanted as much cover for his ghostly body as he could get.

  Just as the astral Joe nestled itself against the grass, the world above him detonated. Searing light, along with the clarion of battle horns and blasts of thunder, ripped through the air and the Night Haunt. Joe was momentarily shaken, blinded, and deafened, but the searing energy left his disembodied soul undamaged.

  Sougath was not so lucky. More than half of the murky mass had been obliterated. The remaining coils flailed about, clearly writhing in agony. The massive wolf skull was half-melted, looking like a wax figure left too close to a fire. Even the moon above the tattered clouds was cratered and cracked

  Joe had a window where the mental assault and the horrid body morphing were stilled. Now was the time to take advantage of it.

  This was the second time Joe was taking a class he would normally not have chosen.

  On the plus side, he had come to truly appreciate being a healer. Maybe he would learn to like being a Warden as well.