Mizzlethain-galliegarde
Race: Human
Class: Mage
Level: 5
Jace wanted to roll his eyes at the monster names the girls still carried. Like him, when they’d used his “cheat code” to turn human, they’d retained the name of the monster they’d been last. It was extremely annoying, and he had to remember that Raajoget was Mika and Mizzlethain-galliegarde was Diana.
“Great job to both of you!” he told them. “You’re both level 5!”
The two girls looked pleased with themselves and Jace sat down across from them. The barmaid came over to them and he ordered a full halfling breakfast for himself and a fish for Luna.
“You getting anything?” he asked the two smiling women.
“I ate waffles,” Mika announced with a huge grin. “With whipped cream!”
“We both did,” Diana told him. “After all, food doesn’t affect your figure, blood sugar or heart in the game so why not eat whatever you want?”
“Good point,” Jace told her. He hadn’t really thought of it that way, but she was right. Food in game wouldn’t affect him in any way. Assuming Charlena was right, and he was in a coma, he was in some long term medical pod, being fed intravenously right now. Diana was right, he could eat whatever he wanted in the game. He changed his order to waffles.
“So, dearie,” Diana said when the barmaid had left. “What’s the plan today? Hopefully not more traipsing around the sewers. That place was wretched.”
“At least it was just water,” Mika cheerfully offered. Jace was once again amazed at how much fuller of life she seemed now.
“Charlena won’t be on until much later,” he told them. “So, we’ll be a man, or woman as the case may be, short.”
“We can handle it,” Mika stated and patted her katana.
“I like the enthusiasm,” Jace chuckled and Mika beamed.
Thinking about their options, it really only boiled down to two things they could do as a group at their level. They could either find some group quests or go out and fight some monsters. Despite Mika’s assurance, he wasn’t sure about the adventurers guild quests, since they’d barely survived yesterday with four people. That meant finding some monsters to kill. And that meant leaving the city.
He was about to tell the girls but at that moment, his waffles and Luna’s fish came and the two of them dug into their food. The first bite was absolutely delicious. The waffles were tall and golden brown. They were topped with some type of whip cream and fresh strawberries. Jace made an involuntary sound of pleasure as the flavors hit him.
Then he noticed the women were both staring at him, making him suddenly self-conscious. He looked up just after shoveling another bite in. “Wha?”
“Waffles are good!” Mika declared with a grin.
Jace tried to smile without opening his mouth. When he spoke, his words were muffled. “Waffles good!”
Chapter 18
After breakfast, Jace led the girls to the main city gate. It was where he had first arrived by caravan. It seemed like weeks ago now, but in actuality had only been a few days. Not sleeping or logging off tended to make the days feel like they blended together.
As they approached the gate, they encountered more and more players. He saw dwarfs, halflings, gnomes, elves, fairies, nephilim, and werebears. There was a smattering of all of the good races. He wasn’t surprised.
As a capital city, Whitecliff could be selected as a starting city for any of the good races, just like humans could select any of the other race’s capitals to start in. Since the larger cities had the most quests, they were favorite starting cities. Had Jace started here in the capital, he’d most likely be twice his current level.
When they finally made it to the gate, Jace walked up to one of the guards. “Well met, good fellow.”
The guard, a human around Jace’s general build, but dressed in the armor and livery of a Whitecliff guardsman, eyed Jace suspiciously. “Well met, stranger.”
Jace understood that by addressing him as ‘stranger’, the guard was essentially telling him that he had very little faction with the Whitecliff guards. That meant the guard wasn’t likely to help them much but would provide basic information.
“Is there some way we can help the guard with any problems around here?” he asked the guard.
The guard’s eyes darted down to the weapons Jace wore and then to the two girls with him, taking note of their weapons and armor. The man gestured to a different guard who wore more stripes than this guard. “Ask the Sergeant. He’ll know.”
Thanking the man, Jace walked over to the Sergeant and viewed the man in his HUD.
Name: Sergeant Wyot
Race: Human
Level: 50
Profession: Soldier
The sergeant was dressed similarly as the previous guard. He wore a chain mail hauberk and leggings under a white tabard embroidered with Whitecliff’s blue and gold crest. Wyot was a level 50 soldier, which was the NPC equivalent of the fighter. He was someone Jace didn’t want to mess with.
Like the previous guard, Wyot looked him up and down as he approached. “How may I help you, stranger?”
Jace smiled at the man, trying to appear friendly. “Is there anything we can do to help Whitecliff? Any tasks that you might need help with or foes that need to be vanquished?”
Sergeant Wyot gave Jace and the girls an appraising glance. “I’m afraid the orcs to the west are beyond your skill.”
“However,” the guard paused and stroked his chin. “A colony of giant beetles was found just this morning. I was going to have some of my men look at it, but two more caravans are due in soon. The Guard will pay you 1 gold for each of the little buggers you kill. I’ll give you a better reward if you find and kill the queen.”
Sergeant Wyot has offered you the quest, “Eye of the Beetle” (Repeatable)
Reward: +5 faction with Whitecliff City Guard, 5 gold.
Accept quest? (Yes or No)
Sergeant Wyot has offered you the quest, “Queen Beetle Mania”
Reward: +50 faction with Whitecliff City Guard, 60 gold.
Level: 6
Accept quest? (Yes or No)
Like the adventurers guild quests, the Beetle Mania quest was level specific and wouldn’t scale to their levels like the thieves guild quests. The Eye of the Beetle didn’t have a level but was repeatable so the more beetles they killed the more they could earn. Jace accepted both quests and shared them with his team.
“We’ll take care of it,” he told the sergeant.
Wyot grunted. “We’ll see. The beetles are to the north, just west of the cemetery. Oh, and be careful. You might get some young orcs out that way. They may be young, but they’re bred as warriors.”
Jace thanked the man and he and the girls started north towards the cemetery. They all knew where the cemetery was since they had all bound themselves to it when they’d first arrived. Now, whenever they died, they would respawn there.
Whitecliff was built on a cliff that sloped up and then dropped off into the ocean, providing the Royal Palace great defense from sea attacks. The terrain immediately around the city to the north and west was mostly grass-covered hills.
As they travelled up and down the hills to the cemetery, they would occasionally see the half-naked bodies of players who had been killed and had respawned. They were too far to see their level, but they were obviously being killed by something.
Finally, they crested one of the taller hills and spotted the cemetery. The group looked west towards where the sergeant had said they would find the beetles. And find the beetles they did. Even from what seemed a half a mile away, they could see large dark shapes dotting the western hills.
“Are those the beetles?” Diana asked, squinting to make out the details. “They must be huge if we can see them from here.”
Jace looked to the western hills and couldn’t help but agree. They had to be at least as large as a person for them to be seen from this distan
ce. “They do look big.”
“They will still die!” Mika said optimistically, her hand on her katana.
Jace smiled back at the enthusiastic girl. “Yes, they will! Come on!”
“Bugs?” came a small voice and Jace looked down to see Luna. His familiar had been quiet since they’d left the inn and he’d almost forgotten she was still with them.
“Very big bugs,” he told her.
“Big bugs?”
“Yes, very big bugs. Bigger than that giant rat we killed.”
“I killed,” the orange tabby insisted.
Jace chuckled. The giant rat had been about to take a bite out of Jace, possibly killing him, when Luna had pouched on it. She’d only did 2 damage, but it was enough to finish it off. So technically, she got in the final blow that killed it. Apparently, she had a good memory.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You killed.”
The girls were watching the exchange with amusement and he remembered that, like him, they could communicate with monsters too. That meant they understood the cat as well as he did.
“Luna is a good hunter,” Mika said and bending down, scratched the cat behind the ears.
His familiar accepted both the praise and the scratches. “Yes.”
“Let’s go see how big these bugs really are,” Jace told them once Mika had stopped petting Luna.
They traversed two more hills before they heard a loud voice from behind them. Stopping, they turned to see a naked dwarf, except for his loincloth, running at them.
“Make way! Make way! Dwarf comin’ through!” yelled the dwarf. This particular dwarf had a mop of unkempt red hair. His beard was red as well but had been braided. His chest and arms were a collection of what Jace thought might be Celtic tattoos. At least, they looked Celtic to him.
Jace guessed it was a player but scanned the dwarf to make sure as he ran past.
Thedrir Stronggut
Race: Dwarf
Class: Paladin
Level: 5
“For the honor of Graykeep!” the dwarf shouted and ran past them and disappeared over the next hill.
“That was odd,” Diana commented when the dwarf disappeared from view. Mika nodded.
“Welcome to VEIL Online,” he told them and continued on.
Cresting the next hill, they found where the beetles were. The things were as large as Jace had guessed. The things were as long as a man was tall, maybe five or six feet. But they were also wide, maybe three and a half or four feet wide. Their entire body was covered in incandescent black carapace that looked as tough as plate armor.
“Oh my,” Diana gasped. “They are huge.”
Beside him, he saw Mika nod. “And armored. Beetle shells are very tough!”
“It’s an ugly planet, it’s a bug planet,” Jace grinned. The two girls looked at him in confusion and he sighed, wishing Charlena was here to get his reference to an old science fiction vidstream. “Nevermind.”
Readying his weapons, he looked at them. “Let’s go kill some beetles.”
They came up the hill only to find a werebear player killing one of the beetles. In between blows with his two-handed axe he shouted over his shoulder. “Get lost. This is my area.”
Jace rolled his eyes at the player but gestured for the girls to follow him as they walked several hills over. There they found the red-headed dwarf, Thedrir, battling two of the beetles with an axe and shield. He must have retrieved his body because in addition to his axe and shield, he was now clad in plate mail armor. The dwarf was intent on the battle and didn’t notice them. They walked around and tried to find an open spot.
His group walked another few hills over and found that this area was both free of players and the hill they were looking at had three beetles on it. Out of habit, he scanned them.
Hive Beetle
Level 5
Despite their large size, they seemed to be only level five solo monsters. They should be about the same difficulty as the sewer gators. But he knew sometimes level was deceiving and some creatures had special abilities that made them more powerful than other creatures of the same level.
“Let’s pull one and see how easy they are to kill,” he told them, and the girls nodded in agreement. “I’ll pull it with my Taunt. I’ll bring it over here and then spin it, so it’s back is facing you. We don’t know if these things have any special attacks but if it does, hopefully it’s a frontal attack.”
“These are solo mobs,” he told them, using the game slang that mob, which meant monster or boss. “So, they shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Diana replied.
Mika tightened her grip on her katana, her face serious. “I am ready.”
“Here we go,” Jace said and turned to face the beetles. He targeted the closest one and shouted his Taunt. “Get over here!”
The beetle he’d targeted had been munching on some tall grass. It looked up at him and chittered angrily with mandibles that were as long as Jace’s forearm. Then it charged it.
Jace had been expecting this. What he hadn’t expected was that the other two nearby beetles clicked and hissed and charged him too.
“Oh great,” he muttered as the three enormous insects bore down on him.
Chapter 19
“They’re swarm mobs!” Jace announced as he heard Diana squeal. Swarm monsters generally did not display any tactics but if you attacked one, any nearby monsters of the same type would attack as well. So instead of pulling just the one beetle, all three had come.
Backpedaling, Jace tried to pull the incoming beetles further back so he wouldn’t have to turn them. Instead, he’d let the girls circle around.
The creatures were closing fast. Just before they reached him, Jace cast his Air Armor spell to give himself more Defense. He had no idea how hard they would be, but those huge mandibles had him worried.
The transparent armor swirled about him just as the three beetles came within melee range. All three chittered and snapped at him with their razor sharp mandibles.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Jace felt the mandibles snap at him, but they slid off the Air Armor. He took a moment to look at his Defense. With his new pieces of thieves guild armor, the buckler, the bonus from his skill and the griffon necklace, his Defense was at 11. That meant he’d ignore the first 11 points of damage now. These beetles may not even be able to touch him.
The girls circled around and began to hit the beetles with all they had. He seen Diana’s Flame Bolt flash out and hit the creature on its shell.
Mizzlethain-galliegarde burns Hive Beetle with Flame Bolt for 0 fire damage.
“What the -?” shouted Diana. “It didn’t even scratch it!”
Jace saw the system message too. Her flame attack hadn’t done anything. Jace considered their shiny carapace and guessed it must protect them against magic attacks as well as regular attacks. “The shell must be magic resistant! Try your wand!”
He heard Mika’s battle cry and could just make out the rise and fall of the katana.
Raajoget slashes Hive Beetle for 0 damage.
“Their armor is very tough!” he heard Mika’s voice.
Jace frowned. This was going to be a very long fight if they couldn’t actually hurt the creatures. The thought had entered his mind when the beetles snapped at him again.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Again, the intimidating mandibles failed to pierce his armor. That was good, but they needed to do damage to kill it. He struck out with his rapier and dagger to see if he could damage the giant bugs.
You stab Hive Beetle for 0 damage.
You stab Hive Beetle for 0 damage.
His own weapons bounced off the armored carapace as well. Were these thi
ngs that heavily armored or had they just had bad damage rolls?
Raajoget slashes Hive Beetle for 0 damage.
Mizzlethain-galliegarde shoots Hive Beetle for 0 magic damage.
“Uh,” Diana commented. “This isn’t working. I can’t do anything to them.”
Jace understood her frustration. They hadn’t met anything yet that had magic defense. That had been an advantage for her. Even though she had done less damage, her damage had always penetrated the creature’s defense. Now it wasn’t.
“Keep trying,” he yelled to her. “Switch back to your Flame Bolts.”
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
Hive Beetle bites YOU for 0 damage.
The beetles attacked again but his Defense held. Once again, he stabbed at the creature in front of him with his rapier and dagger.
You stab Hive Beetle for 2 damage.
You stab Hive Beetle for 0 damage.
This time his dagger found a gap in the plating and the beetle hissed angrily.
Raajoget slashes Hive Beetle for 5 damage.
Mizzlethain-galliegarde burns Hive Beetle with Flame Bolt for 3 fire damage.
The girl’s attacks got through this time. It was impossible to tell exactly how much armor the thing had but he guessed it had at least as much as the alligator boss they’d fought in the sewers. Only the beetle’s carapace also had defense against magic. It was going to be a long fight.
His group continued their attacks for several minutes before finally bringing down the first beetle. From Jace’s mental tally, these things had lower than normal health for a level 5 creature, but their armor seemed to make up for their low health.
“That was frustrating,” Diana gasped as the last of the three beetles fell dead. It had taken them at least another ten minutes of constant blows to kill them but all three beetles now lay dead.
Jace was breathing hard, having used much of his Stamina in the fight. Judging by the way the girls were breathing, they were feeling the same.
Veil Online - Book 2: An Epic LitRPG Adventure Page 12
