Operation Rescue
As Jason walked through the gate, he noticed that the earth below had many different footprints that had trampled over the weeds. These footprints were going to and from the church that looked abandoned from the outside.
'So much for being abandoned' He thought to himself.
Walking up to the front door he put his ear up against the wooden frame, listening for any signs of activity on the other side. After a moment of hearing nothing on the other side, he slowly cracked open the door to peak through.
All he could see were broken pews, candelabras that lined the wall, and then finally an altar that had been split in half down the center.
Jason fully opened the door, nerves tense and ready to react at the slightest hint of danger. The user who had completed the quest before only gave information up to this point. The only information he gave to the public was that he fought cultists that wielded necrotic power – in other words death magic. He also mentioned that there were some minor demons that served these cultists, and many undead minions.
The church was similar in appearance to catholic churches back on earth, tall cathedrals, gothic looking architecture, and entirely made of stone. As Jason walked down the aisle, he passed by broken pews seeing old ragged books strewn here and there.
The people of Socrathia had stopped worshipping the Gods after The System was born. The reason being is that The Gods didn't step in to save the Universe when it was dying, so many people wondered why they should be worshipped? Since then, religion was generally neglected by most; though, throughout the ages religion would go in and out of popularity due to the ever changing whims of the public.
As Jason approached the cracked altar, he saw signs of intense blood flow over the smooth stone. Dried blood here and there had clotted on the stone, and small pieces of bone were strewn across the top. What looked to be the bottom half of a jawbone of a humanoid lay across the top.
Jason wasn't fazed by this. He had stood among thousands of demon, elf, dwarf, human and other allied corpses on the battlefield before. This wasn't even a small taste of what he had experienced.
Looking towards the back of the church behind a large statue of a headless god was a tapestry. This tapestry stood out among the church as it didn't have any holes or blemishes and covered the entire back wall. However on it was a gruesome scene of demons and creatures of the dark sitting at a large round table. These creatures all had sinister smiles and were in the act of laughing and toasting with each other as they feasted upon corpses and blood.
Keeping his sword at the ready, Jason pulled out the holy staff from his inventory and while gripping it in his shield hand he slightly moved the grotesque tapestry to the side, revealing a small staircase that descended into darkness.
Jason activated his Night Eyes skill and could clearly see into the depths, fading back to darkness about 15 meters ahead. His vision was very similar to an animal now, and he could only see in black and white.
He quietly stepped onto the staircase while putting his staff away and holding his shield in front of him. He then slowly made his way down, passing what appeared to be a torch sconce every feet he went.
After several minutes of walking down the stairs it opened into a hallway that split off into three different directions. In three alcoves lining the two walls before the junction were six skeletons, each holding two-handed claymores.
Taking a moment to analyze the situation Jason realized that the skeletons most likely activate when someone approaches.
'The cultists must have an item on them that causes the skeletons to ignore them.' He realized. 'I can either wait here and ambush the cultists when they come, or I can charge in, which will most likely alert them.
He checked the interface to see how much time he had. 'Sh*t, only a few hours before I have to meet Beth and the kids for dinner. Even though ambushing is the smarter idea…' Jason smiled, anticipating the battle before him.
The hallway was about 5 feet wide, just wide enough for the skeletons to swing the two-handed swords.
Jason quietly crept forward and once he was within three feet of the first skeleton, its eyes lit up with a green fire and stepped forward. Almost as if starting a chain reaction, each skeleton also ignited with a green flame and stepped forward while readying their swords.
Upon the first skeletons movement Jason rushed forward and swung his sword, cleanly bisecting the skeleton at the waist. As the top half fell, it weakly swung at Jason who easily parried it with his sword, who then followed up by stabbing his sword into its skull. With a loud shatter, the Vitality Bar of the skeleton drained, and the skull cracked into pieces as the body crumbled to dust.
Jason then turned to the rest of his new 'friends' and seeing that they were in a line walking down towards him he chuckled and calmly walked forward. Undead were highly vulnerable to fire, and since they had all lined up perfectly for Jason…
He held his shield up before him and activated flame-throw as he continued down the hallway.
The skeletons continued forward despite the flames, and one by one they quickly succumbed into ashes.
Their Vitality wasn't very high, so with the high damage over time and high vulnerability to fire the skeletons stood no chance.
[System Message – six level zero skeletons killed – 6 experience points gained.]
Jason glanced down both tunnels to make sure that nothing else was coming down either one before he gathered the 2-handed weapons of the skeletons.
[System Message – Claymore – Basic – Level 0
Requires: 5 Str 4 Dex
Attack 19-30
Claymore that does terrible damage, not worth much.]
Looking at the tunnels before him, Jason wasn't sure which tunnel to go down as there weren't any footprints to follow at this point. Not really caring which one he to start with, he chose the farthest one on the left and continued walking.
This hallway had a slight downward angle to it which he figured would be where he wanted to go. 'Bad Guys like it deep right?' He chuckled to himself amused at his attempt to give a dirty joke.
He continued on and eventually came to a room that opened up into a large open space. There were dozens of skeletons and zombies aimlessly walking around aimlessly with a large river separating the undead from what appeared to be numerous cages pushed up along the edge of the cavern. Upon closer inspection Jason could see a bridge over the river with a gate built on top of it to keep back the undead.
As Jason strained his eyesight to see what was within the cages, all he could make out were shadowy shapes hunched over in the cages.
'If I want to see what's inside those cages, I'll have to get past this large group of undead.' These are just low level undead; I should be able to easily defeat them. Just to be safe though…'
Jason put nine of his experience points into flame-throw to level it up to intermediate.
[System Message - Flame Throw – Proficiency level up to intermediate.
Fires a jet of flame out of arcane focus. Seven-foot length and four-foot width.
Thirty-five damage per second.
Consumes ten mana per second.]
'Alright, time to gather the mob and farm some experience!'
Jason looked at how slow these undead were moving and double-checked to make sure there weren't any other higher level undead. If it was just skeletons and zombies, he should easily be able to outrun them all.
Jason waited a few more minutes for his mana to recharge fully and started jogging around making sure to grab the attention of all the undead. Since he was jogging, he was able to stay ahead of all the zombies and skeletons, and would only have to dodge or parry the occasional attack as he would run by an undead.
Jason quickly gathered the twenty zombies and fourteen skeletons and made sure they were chasing him. He then ran around the group back towards the hallway so he could filter them into a tight-knit pack.
Jason backed up through the hallway waiting for the whole group to come in. Three of the undead could fit into the hallway abreast, and as they came limping and staggering down the hallway, Jason snorted at how stupid undead were. 'Why would anyone want to command creatures like these?' He wondered, 'I'm so glad I didn't choose the lich option.'
Once he saw that they were all in the hallway Jason stopped backing up and strode forward with his shield and activated flame-throw again. 'This is too easy' He thought as he strode forward incinerating all the undead before him. 'Free experience points.'
Jason only needed to use ten seconds to turn all the undead to ashes, which used up fifty points of his mana.
[System Message – Twenty-two Level zero zombies and thirteen level zero skeletons slain. Thirty-five experience points obtained.]
Jason now had thirty-six experience points in total. That was more than enough to level up a class twice if he had one. He decided to hang on to them for when he completed the quest or a situation that he would need to spend them on a specific skill or proficiency.
Jason then strode over to the bridge and opened the gate to the side where the cages were and strode through to the other side.
When he looked around, he saw various people of different races with gaunt faces behind the bars of the cages. He saw many humans, several dwarves, a fewelves, and an occasional gnome here and there. All of them obviously saw his actions on the other side of the river and were looking up to him with hope in their eyes.
Jason looked around to see if he saw any keys and noticed that they were over by the gate he had walked through. After picking them up he went and began opening every single cage. The now freed individuals all thanked him profusely, and began following him. Some of the caged individuals had been there for so long though that some of them lacked the strength to even stand.
Jason looked to the ones who were standing without any issues and urged them to help those too weak while he continued to unlock the cages.
When he got to the last cage, he noticed an elf who looked strong and healthy when compared to the others.
"What's your name elf?" Jason interrogated, a little suspicious.
"My name is Leviticus," he responded. "I thank you for the aid my friend, but I would've escaped on my own soon enough." The elf seemed relaxed and confident as he said that, leaning against the back of the cage.
Jason could tell that Leviticus was a city guard due to the blue guard uniform he was wearing. The elf stood at a lanky 6 foot tall, had blonde hair and green eyes that shown in the torchlight.
Jason raised his eyebrows "Really? Should I just leave you here then so you can have the satisfaction of leaving on your own?"
Jason figured this elf was just too full of pride to admit that he needed help from a human. 'Typical elf' he thought.
The elf hastily waved his hands back and forth, "No, no, my friend! This is actually very convenient that you came at this time as I was about to enact my plan for escape! But since you're here, there's no need for that. In return for freeing me, I shall aid you in punishing my captors!" The elf pounded his chest, expressing his intent for revenge.
Jason unlocked and opened the cage door, "There's no need for that Leviticus, I just need you to guide these people out of here." He then turned to the small group of thirty people that had formed, "Who here is the brother of Mona?"
A man raised his hand, surprised that his sisters name was said in such a dark place.
Jason eyeballed him, "I'm glad your still alive, your sister requested that I come save you." Jason was overjoyed, 'Bonus reward here I come!' He sang to himself in his head.
The man, Henry, beamed with joy, "Thank you kind sir! Thank you for saving us all!"
Jason waved his hands, "It's nothing, your sister offered to pay me, so I followed the clues here. What can you tell me about this place?" He asked as he looked at the group he had just saved.
Leviticus piped up saying, "I'm one of the guards that was assigned to locate these missing people, and like you I stumbled upon this church last night. Unfortunately, I arrived here as the cultists were coming out and as they had the number advantage they captured me before I could go for backup." He quickly explained the last part, afraid that Jason would misunderstand him for being weak.
"With you though, we should be able to stop this abominable operation they have here!" Leviticus raised his fist in the air, excited at the mere thought of destroying the cultists!
Jason chuckled, amused at the bravado of the elf. Looking at the elf questioningly he asked "Were you able to find out what the cultists are doing here?"
Leviticus scratched his head saying "I actually don't know. I just know that they return here every hour or so to bring more prisoners here. Occasionally these prisoners are taken and only ever return as corpses, which were the zombies you just burnt…" Leviticus trailed off in his speech, looking out at the vast empty field that remained after Jasons 'experience run'
"Very well then." Jason looked towards the group of prisoners, "I will help you return most of the way safely, but at the junction I will have to let you guys find your way out so I can continue on to stop whatever their plan is." Jason then handed out the weapons he had picked up from the skeletons to the few that were strong enough to stand and weren't carrying anyone else. "Take these to defend yourselves if the need arises."
He had given out six claymores for them to use, but most of them looked at the weapon as if it was their first time holding one.
Seeing their nervousness he said in a calming voice, "There should be nothing to worry about, I cleared out the enemies on the way here."
After Jason took one more glance around, also double checking to see if there wasn't any extra loot he had missed, he motioned to the group and lead the way out over the bridge and through the tunnel.
"Lets move out."