[Grave Robber] - Chapter 58 (Patreon)

Author Note - I'm uploading this from the road. I'm entering the mountains where there's no reception. Hoping there are no issues with formatting. Please lmk if there's anything and I'll fix it once I get back to my PC on Thursday.

Also, tomorrow's chapter of BCA is scheduled to go out automatically.---

Chapter 58

Of the eight sarcophaguses in the room, three of them shuddered as the passage behind Oliver slammed shut.

Oliver quickly scanned the crypt in preparation for battle. Each sarcophagus had a torch over it along with an alcove filled with gems and treasures. Of the five unmoving coffins, two of them had been utterly smashed through. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the stone coffins' lids. The others were in better shape, but far from pristine condition.

The lid of the first sarcophagus slid off and a woman rose from within. Oliver only knew her gender from her feminine clothing and jewelry, her more biodegradable assets having long since been claimed by time. She wore cloth that criss-crossed across her chest, showcasing her emaciated stomach before coming together again at her hips where it formed into a skirt. She pulled herself from her resting place and her withered brown feet, literally just skin and bones, touched the atone floor as she stood to her full height. Prophet Ursula Lenz. Undead Devotee. Level 55. Upon the stone door slamming closed behind him, Oliver had feared far higher leveled opponents waiting within. One of these foes, he could eliminate easily enough. But there were three shaking sarcophaguses. That added a layer of difficulty. Not because he didn’t believe in his own skills, rather because of that irksome 60 threshold. Now might honestly be a great time to take the level. If he could kill all three at once. But if he became incapacitated for even half a minute after taking one undead prophet down, he was practically offering his neck to the other two in the room.

He spun his shovel, the silver gleaming in the torchlight.

“How about we talk this out,” Oliver offered, putting his powerful 5 Speech attribute to use.

To his surprise, the undead actually smiled.“Talk this out?” she asked, her voice surprisingly feminine, as if her vocal cords hadn’t long ago rotted away. “Perhaps. But first, prove to me that you’re worth talking to.”

She darted forward in a brown blur.“This is the exact antonym of ‘talking it out,’” Oliver growled. He slammed the flat of his shovel into her exposed ribs. She was surprisingly dense for a withered corpse, but he still managed to slam her backwards with the impact.

The undead woman tumbled against the wall, then clutched at the nearest torch. This time when she lunged forward, she led with the flames. Oliver ducked the flames and, with both hands, shoved the shaft of his shovel into her over-extended form. Her forearm snapped as he made contact. The torch fell from her grip and her arm dangled, loose.

The undead woman twisted, lashing out with her limp arm like a flail and whipping it towards his head.

Oliver batted away the broken arm, its nails only just barely raking his chest and scratching his shirt. He stepped back and offered the wound a brief glance of attention. That was enough to reassure him. Her attack hadn’t broken the skin and the enchanted clothing would mend itself back together in time.

The torch rolled across the crypt floor. Thankfully, there was nothing there to catch flame, though it cast a myriad of dancing and changing shadows over their battlefield.

Oliver prepared himself to go on the offensive, eyeing her kneecaps. If he wanted to end this without lethality, crippling her would be essential. He wasn’t certain how much magic was involved with sustaining this exact flavor of undead, but since it seemed she’d lost the ability to hold weight with the broken arm, he assumed that kneecapping her would drop her.

He stepped forward, preparing a feint for her torso while aiming to twist the blade of his shovel for the back of her knee.

Then a second sarcophagus lid fell open. This one fell to the stone floor with a boom.Both Oliver and his foe darted back in a retreat as dust filled the room.

“Ursula,” the undead from within moaned, sitting up and clutching its head like it suffered from a hangover. “What are you doing? We just went to sleep.”

“A mortal has entered our domain! Challenging—”

“I don’t care. Quiluhakkajalim has left us and our purpose is now rendered obsolete. We finally have a chance to truly rest. Why do you bother with these games?”

“Quiluhakkajalim will have need us again. We are not obsolete.” Ursula, the undead he’d been fighting, put both hands on her hips and turned on her fellow prophet. Her attention completely left their fight, as if a time-out had been declared.

Oliver eyed both of the undead. The one sitting up in the sarcophagus was clearly a male, based on his voice and clothing. Unlike what Oliver would expect from an undead prophet, he lacked zeal and passion in his words. He sounded tired and almost bored as he continued his back and forth with Ursula.

Despite this unexpected turn of events, Oliver didn’t lower his guard. He eyed the third rattling sarcophagus. This could still be a ploy to get him to catch him unprepared. He kept his shovel ready to strike the moment hostilities resumed.

“Don’t worry about Elijah,” the tired undead called out. “He’s pouting after our master rejected our service and sacrifice. He won’t come out for at least another half a century. And, by that time, he’ll claim he was in ‘deep meditation’ to save face.”

“Oh.” Oliver blinked. He didn’t lower his shovel, but he did feel a bit put out. He’d expected an epic fight between these prophets. "Can you explain what happened here?"

"There was a massive sacrificial ritual performed. With some assistance, the flesh formed into a host for our master, with our modern prophet acting as the keystone host."

That summery basically answered all of Oliver's questions. He looked back to the closed stone door. “Does this mean I can… go?”

“Eh. Sure. But aren’t you here to rob our resting place of all its treasure? Seems a shame for you to leave empty handed.”

“Gideon!” Ursula shouted at her peer. “You don’t just hand out our sacred treasures! He needs to at least fight for them! Challenge us for the right!”

“Why bother? Five of us have been obliterated already. He can take whatever he wants from those alcoves. Just keep your selection limited to, say, three trinkets?”

As the prophet said that, Oliver got a quest completion notification, confirming a reward of three objects. That reassured him that this wasn't just some trap designed to trick him into picking up a cursed item.

Oliver edged over to the nearest empty sarcophagus while the two of them continued to bicker amongst themselves.He scanned the treasure with his Appraisal skill, seeking anything useful. Golden vases and elaborate urns were lovely and all, but he couldn’t exactly lug those around with him. With the motorcycle in his sanctuary, he couldn’t even use that as storage. So, despite the high Mel numbers they offered, he passed over the bulkier options.

The jewelry was more interesting. Most were just plain, expensive gems, but he found an earring in the shape of a water drop enchanted to let him breathe underwater for one hour every day. There was also a necklace designed to bolster his resistance to Speech effects from others. Combined with his shirt's enchantment, he should be practically immune to the more dangerous Speech skills. Finally, he found a bejeweled monocle that allowed him to see from any mirror within a hundred foot radius from himself. Earring of the Depths. A relic of a bygone era when the sea and land lived in harmony. 1,200 Mel. Implacable Pendant. Created by a cultist in the pits of despair after committing a most desperate act to escape his patron. 3,300 Mel. Looking Glass Locator. Suspicion and paranoia kill and save in equal measure. Which will you use them for? 2,500 Mel. Oliver frowned at that last description. His Appraisal skill didn’t normally give him questions in the item description. He found he didn’t care for this new development. Still, he scooped all three of the artifacts up.

“You won’t fight me if I take these?” Oliver asked. The quest completion indicated as much, but he figured a verbal confirmation would be a nice additional assurance. While he felt decently confident he could normally take these undead prophets in a fight, if he could leave this place with expensive and rare loot without accidentally killing himself from leveling too fast, he’d count that as a massive win.

“Yes,” Gideon said at the same time Ursula shouted, “No!”

The tired undead rolled his eyes, the black orbs glinting in the light as they moved in their sunken sockets. “Most of our truly valuable treasure was already taken by Yorick. What remains are just bobbles. So long as you keep your greed in check and select only those, you’re welcome to them.”

“Thank you.” Oliver slowly dumped the artifacts in his bag. He’d equip them later. “Who is Yorick?” It wasn’t a name he was familiar with. He’d expected James to be the one they cited as responsible for their god’s absence.

“Yorick is a turd,” Ursula said. “He betrayed us.”

“He is the modern prophet of The Esoteric Order of Quiluhakkajalim’s Embrace,” Gideon explained. “A few days ago, rather than go through with our multi-century plan, Yorick instead decided to enact a rash scheme.”

“His coffin is the broken one over there.” Ursula gestured her broken zombified arm at one of the smashed sarcophagus. “Never been used, mind you.”

“A scheme involving what you spoke on earlier? The sacrifice?” Oliver asked.

Gideon took a deep, unnecessary, sigh. “He met a mortal who convinced him of another means of removing our god from this land. The mortal combined the power of our sacrificial chamber with his own repulsive abilities to stitch Quiluhakkajalim a body of flesh, with Yorick at its center. And it worked and our master is now granted passage to all worlds, so I suppose I cannot hark on the results. But at the cost of every soul in our kingdom.”Oliver licked his lips. They were dry and cracked to the point of bleeding. “This mortal’s name… I don’t suppose it was James?”