Mixing It Up (The World Book 2)

by Jason Cheek

  “Yeah, basically.” Sarka chimed in. “About time you got that leather clad ass of yours moving.”

  Ignoring the smirk on both women’s faces, I gathered up my weapons and began healing myself up as Tinyr looted the boss, before heading over to Yun. I had him up in a jiffy and then healed him up to full health as he muttered the entire time about needing to take the P&M exam first thing in the morning. By the time we made it back to the rest of the team, Tinyr had everything possible to loot piled up in the middle of the floor.

  Dividing up the loot went pretty easily. Unalia got some sort of Savage Hunter armor that the shaman had been wearing. Whatever the game called it, the armor looked more like something out of Fredericks of Hollywood meets Everquest Barbarians in leatherwear than real armor. I especially liked the leather wraps that the set used for boots that tied off near mid-thigh. Not that I was complaining. Still, I was happy Unalia usually stayed in the rear of the group, or I would’ve had a tough time trying not to stare at her ass. For once, I kept my mouth shut about my opinion of the armor and saved myself some grief.

  Yun got some pretty decent upgrades too. The Bonebreaker Staff the shaman dropped was unwieldy as hell, but it gave a nice 400% boost to all Spell Power and had an area effect knockback that could be cast every 30 minutes. A nice addition to his Marauder Warblade, since he typically didn’t close to melee range in most fights. Sarka and Tinyr pass on the rings since they were both plusses to Spirit and Intelligence, which all went to Yun and was another nice boost to his base stats. People rarely argued on loot when boosting up their party’s healer stats.

  Surprisingly enough, I ended up getting the last two items. No one particularly wanted the shaman’s Leeching Dagger of Piercing. I’m not sure if that was because of the whole “Leech” thing skived them out or if people wanted to be ahead for better loot for the next boss, but it was something I could use, so I took it. The only dagger I’d had up till now was a crude skinning knife which was mostly useless in any kind of serious fight. The second item made me especially happy. It was an especially powerful summoning item. Yea, I know. I still didn’t have any pets as of yet, but that wasn’t the point. I was playing a hunch for the future. One that I thought was a worthwhile gamble and especially easy since no one wanted the summoning bonuses for pets anyway. Worst case scenario would be that I just had to disenchant the items for materials. Even with that possibility, I still felt a smile come to my lips as I looked over both items’ stats.

  Leeching Dagger of Piercing

  Item Quality: Good

  Item Type: Common

  Attack: One-hand Edge

  Weapon Type: Dagger

  Damage: 34-41*

  Durability: 100/100

  Weight: 2.3 kg

  -Ignores target’s armor.

  *5% of maximum health leeched per second on successful strike until dagger is removed.

  Dark Amulet of Summoning

  Item Quality: Good

  Item Type: Uncommon

  Slot: Neck

  Weight: .06 kg

  +5 to the maximum number of Summoned Creatures.

  Tinyr found a hidden pulley that lifted the stone blocking the exit back into the ceiling, which made leaving the room a lot easier then we’d been expecting. Not that I was complaining. My Plan B was going to be mining the rock until the door fell apart. Either way, we would have been good since we had more than enough pickaxes for the work. Luckily it wasn’t needed. The mushroom forest was silent as we filled up our water skins, ate and cleaned up before moving on. Everyone was surprised to see that I’d only gained one level after all of the fighting we’d done and that they’d nearly managed to catch up with me after being so low. That is until they actually looked out how much experience it took to reach level 26. It looked like leveling quickly from this point out was over.

  Heading back through the tunnels to the original intersection was anticlimactic. Not that I was complaining. The only excitement we had was Tinyr trying to talk his wife out of wearing her new armor since it was completely impractical compared to the Marauder set she’d been wearing earlier. Unalia just laughed and said that melee protection wasn’t exactly an issue since she usually fought in back next to Yun in most fights and the bonuses were too good to pass up. I wanted to add that the new armor just made her ass look too good to switch out, but Sarka smacked me before I could get the first words out. Giving her a sheepish look, I stayed out of their semi-argument as we moved through the darkened corridors. The only other thing even remotely interesting was that the Large Rat corpses had already faded away and had taken their stench with them. Everyone was pretty relaxed until we were on the final approach back to the main intersection which is when we got serious once again.

  The corridors felt barren as we stood at the main intersection looking down the final tunnel’s flickering torchlight. It was four in the afternoon. Plenty of time to knock out the final boss. Arching an eyebrow towards Tinyr and Unalia, I asked loud enough for the entire team to hear.

  “Have you guys heard anything about the last boss fight?”

  “Yes and no,” Tinyr said with a shrug.

  “Supposedly, no one has made it to the final boss yet,” Unalia said speaking up like usual.

  “Yea, it’s one of the few areas that players do talk about,” Tinyr said with a frown. “Mostly it’s all about how they trained the whole corridor on top of their team and wiped.” Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, he tried to explain what they’d heard. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, there are two checkpoints before the main Boss Area. The typical squad of seven, elite Goblins, except they’re level 26. After that, there are two more Elite Goblins at the end of the corridor before three rooms. Two of the rooms are barracks filled with the same squad that greets everyone upon entering the Dungeon; only the mobs are all level 27. Supposedly the last room is the boss’ with his retinue of priests, mages, archers, and warriors that are believed to be in the level 28 range.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If no one has made it to the final boss, or, let’s say, no one is talking about making it to the final boss, how would they know what was in the room?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Tinyr said pushing his hair back from his eyes as he talked. “When you attack any of the groups of Goblins in the corridor, a messenger is always sent to sound the alarm. If messenger escapes, he brings the rest of the guards down on top of the team from the other rooms. Basically, it’s an instant wipe. Oh yea, Vorgak the Brutal is said to be level 30.”

  “We shouldn’t have any problems stopping the messenger,” I said, giving Yun a fist bump. “The barracks will be a little hairy but nothing I imagine we can’t handle. I just wished we had a little bit more intel on the boss room’s adds.”

  “Okay, so we all know the deal. No matter what, no runners can escape.” I reiterated, tucking my Brutal Skullsplitter blade in with my shield hand as I looked around at the team. “Let’s git er done.”

  “Ugh, Jeff Foxworthy. I mean, really?” Sarka said, shaking her head in disgust.

  “What, you’re letting out your inner Redneck?” Tinyr laughed, slapping me on the back as he strode into the corridor ahead of me with the rest. “Seriously Dude, you just lost all kinds of cool points with that.”

  “Sometimes I hate your wife, man,” I said, falling in behind.

  “Yea … yea … yea, you just wish you had such a cool girl like mine.” Yun said, laughing at my complaining.

  After our strategy session and fun, we headed out. I didn’t mind being the butt of a joke as long as it was all in good fun with friends. If anything, the joking built comradery between the team and also helped to take the focus away from my character’s enhanced stats. Besides, I never wanted to be one of those asshats that took themselves too seriously. We got ourselves organized pretty quickly. This time it was Yun and I that took up the lead with Tinyr and Unalia following behind to back us up. We ran into the first squad relatively quickly. While Yun and I
froze the squad in place and then burned them down with Unalia’s help, Tinyr made sure to get on the far side of the group in case a runner surprised us while Sarka tanked, keeping the Goblins back. Within a minute the fight was over with both Yun and my Mana reserves completely depleted. A quick break to restore our Mana pools and we were on the move once again. Two minutes later, we’d found the second Goblin patrol and took them out just as quickly.

  It was hard not to get a little cocky with the ease we were taking these elite Goblins out. The skill set I’d been building meant that I could switch into any role the team needed, giving us the ability to dual tank, dual heal or even have the whole team focus on pumping out damage as the situation required. This gave us a flexibility that most teams could only dream of. The majority of players I’d met had one class or another that they preferred playing, with the default choice swinging heavily towards the damage dealing classes. While these damage dealing classes had cool looking spells or attacks and could dish out a shit ton of damage, they were basically glass cannons, meaning they couldn’t take a hit without dying.

  For some reason being the tank or healer wasn’t considered cool to most gamers, even though every team needed both classes to complete a dungeon successfully. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d heard people in teams bragging about how much damage they could dish out. Like somehow that made them LEET, aka Elite, in comparison to everyone else on the team, when in actuality their damage dealing class was a dime a dozen.

  In short order, we made it to the last corridor, which dead-ended at the three doors Tinyr and Unalia had described. The two elite Goblin Guards stationed at either side of the rearmost door would’ve been somewhat disconcerting if not for Yun and mine’s crowd control abilities. By now we’d been fighting so long neither one of us had to say a word. Stepping out, I cast Frost Nova and then started blasting the rightmost Goblin with Yun following my lead as we both hammered the Guard with dual blasts every second. It took two seconds for us to take one, guard, down and in five we were sitting down drinking from our water skins to speed up our Mana recovery process. As the rest of the team took up position around us, I went over the plan.

  The biggest problem we’d be facing were the fire mage and shaman in each group. Also, if the mobs followed the same schedule that players did for acquiring new spells, we were dealing with another chain lightning shaman with heals and something equally as nasty and unknown with the fire mage. Honestly, I didn’t know which would be worse. If the fuckers got a double shot off on the team, we’d wipe. It was as simple as that. Somehow we had to guard the door for runners, take out the casters first and not group up enough to have the team be taken out in a double-shot.

  Everyone came up with solid ideas for how to assault the rooms, but it still took some time for us to put a plan together that sounded like it had a reasonable chance of success. As the team bunched up on either side of the first doorway, I lined up in front of the thick wooden door as Tinyr unlatched the handle while keeping the door closed. On the count of three, I kicked in the door releasing my Frost Nova spell as soon as I stepped through the threshold.

  Immediately, the entire room full of Goblins was covered in a sheet of ice as we rushed into the room like gangbusters. For a split-second, the whole team slid to a stop looking around in horror. There weren’t just twelve Goblins in the room. Fuck no, there was at least twice that amount! Shaking the shock away, I began shoving the team into motion, before high tailing it for the closest caster as I yelled.

  “Move … move … move!” I swore under my breath at the loss of those split seconds as I began hammering my Flurry spell into the shaman as fast as possible. By my second shot, the shaman was beginning to raise its fist as I slammed my shield into the Goblin’s ugly face and finished it off with another two Flurry blasts at point blank range. Whipping around searching for the next closest caster, I heard Yun finish off his target just before another blast of ice coated the room as Sarka and Tinyr split up for the last two mages at the far end of the room. Catching Yun’s eye, I jerked my chin towards the doorway hurriedly altering the plan. “We need to take these last two casters out and fall back to hold doorway.”

  For a second, I thought Yun was going to fight me on leaving his wife to die, but a shriek from her telling him to do it made the problem a moot issue. Our first Flurry blasts hit just as Sarka and Tinyr made it to the last two casters. Our second shots impacted just as they dual Backstabbed the two Goblin mages. One more shot and I took off for the doorway dragging Yun behind me as the room exploded into action. The level 27 elite Goblin Guards shrieked after us in rage as I plugged the doorway with my sword and shield just as Yun and Unalia fell back to the doorway to take up a defensive position behind me.

  The good news was that we only had melee fighters left. The bad news was that the odds were three against twenty, although ten of those mobs had split off to take care of Sarka and Tinyr. Still, the ten elite Guards smashing into my ironshod shield made my teeth ache as Unalia shot at the Goblins hammering at my lone shield in the face, basically at point blank range for an archer. Still, the two of us managed to hold out against the initial rush as Tinyr and Sarka were slowly cut down. By the time I noticed their gray avatars, the rest of the elite Guards were charging for our shaky beachhead when my Frost Nova’s timer ticked ready. The icy blast brought the crush of mobs to a stop before they could overwhelm us as Yun sniped the Lead Goblin over my shoulder with a Flurry blast.

  After that, it was just a matter of wearing them down. My Ironshod Shield took a continuous beating, but the reinforced metal held up to the punishment the Goblins were dishing out. Our position worked like a charm. As the next Goblin took its fallen comrade’s place, Unalia continued hammering the mob over my shoulder as I struck with my Brutal Skullsplitter, thrusting the blade deep into the mob’s gut, while Yun continued his sniping attacks with Flurry blasts or strikes from his Marauder Warblade whenever he could manage to get an attack in. The triple attacks ripped the mob’s Hit Points down in no time.

  We continued this way for nearly forty minutes, wearing each Goblin down one at a time while keeping the squad jammed in the room. The constant fighting over such a long period of time was physically wearing. By the time the last elite Goblin Guard fell, I could barely lift my arm as I collapsed in a heap in the doorway from exhaustion. Yun and Unalia weren’t in any better shape, and they hadn’t been the one holding the line. I frowned at the thought. It wasn’t fair for me to say it that way. We’d all held the line together, even if I’d been the one who’d taken the brunt of the physical assault.

  It was a good few minutes before I felt like moving. Eating a quick snack and downing an entire water flask, I finally felt recovered enough to climb to my feet. Within moments I was back to work resurrecting Sarka and Tinyr. I was glad to see that neither of them was sore about taking a dirt nap for so long. If not for their sacrifice, we would’ve wiped for sure with the two mages hammering us from the back of the room. Although, they were both pissed-off once they realized they’d lost all of the experience they’d gained towards their next level. As Sarka and Tinyr finally calmed down enough to sit and recover, we got down to tweaking the emergency strategy that I’d come up with on the fly. Sarka figured out a modified version that sounded promising for the next fight that got everyone’s seal of approval. By the time we finished up, looted and got back into position at the front of the next barrack’s door, nearly another twenty minutes had gone by.

  This time when we bumrushed the room and locked the Goblins in place, Yun and I focused on taking out the fire mages at the back of the room first, while Sarka and Tiny waited behind the shamans nearer to the door. One of the mage’s got a fire blast off before we took him down, freeing the roomful of Elite Guards for a moment as everything in the area caught fire, but Yun’s Frost Nova locked the room down once again a moment later. After that, the rest of us took out the shamans in a matter of seconds, giving us more than enough time to fall back to t
he doorway. We had a little excitement when Yun’s Frost Nova spell expired, but Sarka and I managed to keep the mobs bottled up in the room as the rest of the team tore into them until my Frost Nova spell’s timer popped again. After that, it was rinse and repeat until the last Guard fell at our feet, albeit a lot quicker than the first room had taken.

  Looting the corpses, we hurriedly took up positions before the door to the last room as I tried to come up with a workable strategy for a boss room that we’d never seen and had zero data about. The rest of the team wanted to follow the same strategy as before: bash in the room, take out the casters and fall back to the doorway, but I nixed the plan right off. While that was a good Plan B or C, we had no idea if the room would seal itself like it did with the shaman Boss and, besides that, our freeze spell might not stop the boss from attacking us immediately. We argued back and forth for a good ten minutes, before coming up with a decent if-then-else Plan A. Yea, I know I’m a geek for using strategic conditional statement programming for boss room pulls. While the team wasn’t exactly happy with the added complexity, they grudgingly agreed that we had to be prepared for any possibility if we didn’t want to wipe on our first try. I just hoped it would be enough.

  I grimaced as we argued back and forth. We needed as much information as possible if we were truly going to succeed at this fight the first time around. Whether they wanted to admit it to themselves or not, the problem was that the team was getting cocky. We’d stormed down this last corridor basically without any true opposition. Even losing Sarka and Tinyr on a bad pull and being out outnumbered hadn’t stopped us. While these successes had made everyone’s confidence soar, I had no doubts that the final boss would have some serious surprises up its sleeves. Unfortunately, being the team leader didn’t make me the boss or give me the final say on our strategy. This wasn’t a military operation, but a group of friends completing a dungeon. Still, I did the best I could to come up with a winning strategy.