Chapter 18

Today we were jumped to a different segment of level #10 than we had visited yesterday. There was no particular plan in this, it was just a case of hoping to find a set of different monsters and demons to use as test subjects for the new lightning charm. Yesterday, we ran into mostly common demons and monsters, with the giant demons and the sandmen being the rarest that we could find. Today we were looking for ghosts and some different flying demons. The test laboratory was satisfied with what we had so far, but they simply wanted more variety so that they could be sure that they had not forgotten something.

I guess that you could say that we got lucky on this day. The first enemy we ran into was one that we had never seen before. It looked like an overgrown porcupine with quills that looked like dagger blades averaging about one foot long. As it happened, these quills were too heavy for the monster to throw them very far, and that was to our advantage. Okay, I did a double take the first time I saw these monsters. I had seen porcupines in the zoo, but I had never thought of encountering one this large.

As it happened, we ran into two of them, and that gave the two new charms an equal opportunity to try them out. Those porcupines were very tough monsters, but they were not able to stand up against two blasts from bolts of regular intensity or one bolt of maximum intensity. From that experience, we wrote them off as being no more danger that a small demon or a goat man with a throwing spear. The damage from the quills was purely physical, there was no augmentation by a magic spell.

Our next encounter about 20 minutes later was with a gang of small demons armed with throwing spears augmented with an electrical spell. Man, to quote a line from “The Wizard of Oz,” this was a horse of a different color. The dwarf demons could cast these spears as much as 150 yards, and we were very glad to have our protective rings against electricity. It was impossible to dodge a mass of these spears all cast at the same time toward the same spot. Our leather uniforms were barely adequate protection against penetration by one of these spears, and the electrical charge could produce quite a jolt. In fact, the electrical charge was very similar to the one on our Demon Banes, and we knew how dangerous that was.

There were 15 dwarf demons and two bosses in the gang we encountered, and it was kind of touch and go as to who had the better weapon when the throwing spears were compared to our Demon Banes. Fortunately, the charms were powerful enough to break through whatever electrical protection the dwarfs had against electricity. Man, I would hate to meet a gang of dwarfs armed this way without us having adequate protective magic!

The charms outclassed the throwing spears to the point that there was no real contest. A single blast from a charm could easily wipe out half a dozen of the dwarfs with one shot, so there was no real danger to us from these guys. Nevertheless, all three of us were happy to move on to another opponent.

It was almost an hour later that we ran into a large gang of ghosts. Those things cast fireballs, and it was a very good thing that we had adequate protection against heat of any sort. The fireballs were extinguished the moment they reached the outer edge of our anti-heat protection. What made the ghosts so dangerous was that it was absolutely impossible to harm them with a purely physical attack. Hitting them with anything solid was like waving a stick through a fog—nothing happened.

Were it not for the electrical charge on our Demon Banes, they would have had no effect on a ghost. It was easy to electrocute a ghost if it was hit by a beam of lightning or any other electric arc. The moment the lightning bolt hit a ghost, it vanished into thin air. I have no idea what happened to it, but we never saw that ghost again. On the other hand, we could have swatted a ghost all day with the sharpest of swords or the heaviest of clubs and have done no harm to it at all!

By the way, there were two versions of the revenant: a being that resembles the classic ghost of Earth folklore, or a being that is a fighter and returns as a transparent replica of that fighter and can be attacked and “killed” with a physical weapon. The latter type was one we had not run into yet, but Ed and Bill assured me that they existed. Well, for the rest of this narrative, the first type I will call a ghost, and the second type I will call a revenant.

We spent the rest of the day hunting demons and monsters. We found plenty of them, but there were none that withstood the new charms. We were actually a little bored when we finished our shift.

That was when we received some monumental news from our point of view. Master Wizard Marzil had petitioned the rest of the Hero Guild staff to assign us permanently to his operation. Pete was to be reassigned with the trio as our monitor. We would no longer be listed on the roll as apprentices, but our status would be changed to that of Special Agent Heroes. Nobody was sure at this early date exactly what that meant, except that we would continue testing new charms as they came from the R&D Wizards, but we would be available for special assignments as the need came up.

I had no particular feeling about this change in assignment, but both Bill and Ed were upset because they had always looked forward to the day that they would become Journeymen Heroes working toward becoming Masters. I was able to calm them down by reminding them that the trio would be broken up if they refused the new assignment, and they did not want that to happen.

Frankly, I was getting a bit tired of the Apprentice training routine, so I was happy to hear of the reassignment. Instead of going out into the field, as soon as we heard of the new assignments and had some time to think about the possible ramifications, we were transported to the Isbard headquarters “campus” of the R&D folks. We were all impressed at the amount of work that was being done on new charms and adapting the spells now used on rings and amulets for implementation on charms.

The importance of the charms was that sometimes an agent sent into the field did not have the facilities to use rings or amulets, but an agent could always wear a baldric of some sort, and that could be used to mount the charms. One of the charms being concentrated on was one that was as similar as possible to Bills amulet that did the medical repair. Actually, that was several spells all embedded into the same charm, and there were a few problems that came up in which two charms interfered with each other. That usually involved making small changes to both spells and then checking that there had been no new cases of interference with other spells. In other words, these small changes were not always so small!

Several of the planets that were members of the Galactic Confederation were truly water worlds from the trio’s point of view. In other words, what little land there was on the planet was confined to small islands that had no value to the local inhabitants of the planet. I had already seen that situation on one occasion, but one planet was an even tougher case. This planet, Indigal, had no land at all, but was a rich source of jade. Jade had the ability to be ensorceled into an almost impenetrable barrier to physical penetration. The wizards among the demons had developed a monster that was similar to a Great White Shark, but this version had four arms with hands.

The pseudo shark was made of flesh, but nobody knew where that came from. The shark, from infancy, fed on the local inhabitants, the Indigalites. The locals were shaped much like Sperm Whales, and their size was close. They did have a language, but it was not the common language of the GC because they did not have the ability to make any kind of sound but whistles; however, they could understand the common language, and there were Master Wizards who could give one the magical ability to understand the language of the Indigalites. That made for some interesting conversations, that were almost musical in nature.

The pseudo sharks used knives, swords, and throwing spears when attacking an Indigalite, and any penetrating wound was eventually fatal because like their similar whales on Earth, they had no way for their blood to clot. Thus, any penetrating wound was bound to result in death unless a magic clot could be applied in time.

Indigal was under immediate threat of being taken over by the monster pseudo sharks if nothing could be done to help them. Okay, that was the first job for the trio. We were to try to hold the monsters in check until all of the Indigalites could be fitted with a charm based on the jade found on Indigal. Either white or green jade was effective in providing the needed protection, but the greed jade could also be made to exude a kind of poison field that the pseudo sharks could not resist, and the surrounding water had no effect on the poisoning field emitted by the green jade.

Unfortunately, the green jade was in somewhat limit supply, while the white jade, which did not have this ability, was readily available. Initial production of the jade augmented opal charms concentrated on the available green jade, and was issued to the male whales to form a kind of army to defend the rest of the population as best they could against the pseudo sharks.

The trio quickly discovered that their lightning charms and amulet did not work on Indigal because the electricity was shorted out by the water that was highly conductive. Furthermore, various forms of fire did not work either under water for obvious reasons. That left us almost helpless against the pseudo sharks.

On top of that, none of us were good swimmers. We had an underwater breathing apparatus that magically converted the carbon dioxide that we exhaled back into oxygen, so we were able to breathe underwater, but that did nothing to help us function as fighters.

We were able to dispense with our leather armor by dressing in a special rubberized cloth armor that functioned the same way. It took great force to push a blade through the new armor, and a pseudo shark could not manage that in the course of a fight. This new armor, was going to be used in place of our former armor, so it was made resistant to electricity, heat, and poison, as well as the usual blows from blunt instruments such as clubs.

Any fighting we did was going to be up close and personal, and that involved the use of the Demon Banes. When out in the open water, the electrical charge on the weapon was useless against the pseudo sharks, but once the blade penetrated the outer layer or “skin” of the pseudo shark, the electrical charge returned to what we considered normal and electrocuted the monster. The electrical charge on the club part of the weapon was never out of contact with the water, so we could not depend on that to be of any help in a fight.